At night, he loved her hungrily, fiercely, but there was a distance between them for all that, that broke Bliss’s heart. She began to wonder if Jamie had lost the true love of his life in that hellish camp in Queensland—perhaps she herself was only a substitute for Peony Ryan.

Bliss found this possibility so unbearable that she couldn’t voice it—not to Jamie, anyway. But she did seek him out, in Peony’s offices in downtown Auckland, to say good-bye.

He looked up from the papers he’d been going over with a frown. “What the ’ell do you mean, ’good-bye’?” he snapped.

Bliss’s heart splintered. She couldn’t remember the last time he’d called her Duchess, or laughed with her, or really made love to her, instead of just using her to vent the powerful emotions he was grappling with.

She lifted her chin. “What does good-bye usually mean, Mr. McKenna?” she countered. “I’m leaving you.”

Jamie muttered an oath, shoved back his chair, and shot out of it. “And goin’ where?” he demanded.

Bliss didn’t retreat, cower, or avert her eyes. “Maybe I’ll fall asleep in some other man’s barn and see what comes of it,” she said.

Jamie’s eyes went as wide as she’d ever seen them, and his Adam’s apple moved the length of his throat. “By God, Duchess, you’ll never do that as long as I’m still breathin’!” he roared. “You’ll lie in no other barn—or bed—than mine!”

So he did care. That hard shell he’d surrounded himself with was beginning to thaw and fall away. Bliss could not have been more pleased, though she was careful to hide her feeling behind a saintly expression and a sigh. “In that case, I’ll have to content myself with going back to the country. I want to take up cooking again, and see Cutter and Dog, and find out if that old rooster is still on the straight and narrow path.” She paused, rising on tiptoes to kiss Jamie’s cheek. “Good-bye.”

He caught her shoulders in his hands, his blue eyes searching her face. “Don’t you dare go,” he bit out. “I need you.”

“What for?” Bliss asked sweetly, batting her eyelashes.

Jamie stared at her for a moment, and then he laughed, and the sound was wonderful to hear. He shoved a hand through his hair. “You’re right,” he marveled, as though that were a very unusual thing. Then he pulled Bliss close to him, subjecting her to a most intimate, and delicious, contact. “You didn’t need to go quite so far as to threaten me with your cookin’, though,” he added, sounding hurt.

Bliss’s eyes brimmed with happy tears. “My Jamie,” she whispered. “I missed you terribly.”

He kissed her much too lightly and much too briefly, then pushed her toward the door, reaching for the tailored suitcoat he’d been wearing of late, and the smart gentleman’s hat.

To Bliss’s enormous relief, he had second thoughts and left both items behind. When they boarded the train, just over an hour later, he was wearing the familiar leather hat that had seen better days. He watched her with a mischievous blue heat in his eyes, and Bliss was squirming in her seat before they’d even gotten past the outer perimeters of Auckland.