The lazy contemplation was far different from her structured routine of the past months and years. Mornings had been a time to dress, a time to run over her schedule and notes for the day’s classes over two cups of coffee and a quick breakfast. She never had time to give herself the dawn, so she took it now.

She slept better than she’d expected, lulled by the quiet, exhausted by the days of traveling and the strain on her emotions. There’d been no dreams to haunt her from the time she’d turned back the sheets until the first light had fallen over her face. Then she rose quickly. There’d be no dreams now.

Kate let the morning wash over her with all its new promises, its beginnings. Today was the start. Everything, from the moment she’d taken out her father’s papers until she’d seen Ky again, had been a prelude. Even the brief, torrid embrace of the night before had been no more than a ghost of the past. Today was the real beginning.

She dressed and went out into the morning.

Breakfast was impossible. The excitement she’d so meticulously held off was beginning to strain for freedom. The feeling that what she was doing was right was back with her. Whatever it took, whatever it cost her, she’d look for the gold her father had dreamed of. She’d follow his directions. If she found nothing, she’d have looked anyway.

In looking, Kate had come to believe she’d lay all her personal ghosts to rest.

Ky’s kiss. It had been aching, disturbing as it had always been. She’d been absorbed, just as she’d always been. Though she knew she had to face both Ky and the past, she hadn’t known it would be so frighteningly easy to go back—back to that dark, dreamy world where only he had taken her.

Now that she knew, now that she’d faced even that, Kate had to prepare to fight the wind.

He’d never forgiven her, she realized, for saying no. For bruising his pride. She’d gone back to her world when he’d asked her to stay in his. Asked her to stay, Kate remembered, without offering anything, not even a promise. If he’d given her that, no matter how casual or airy the promise might have been, she wouldn’t have gone. She wondered if he knew that.

Perhaps he thought if he could make her lose herself to him again, the scales would be even. She wouldn’t lose. Kate stuck her hands into the pockets of her brief pleated shorts. No, she didn’t intend to lose. If he had pressed her last night, if he’d known just how weakened she’d been by that one kiss…