She had her hair tied back, he noted, in a careless tail of gleaming brown the wind caught and whipped. She carried a trim leather bag with its strap crosswise over her body. Her gray slacks showed some wear and her shirt was the color of daffodils.

Her mouth was unpainted, her nails were short, her boots—so obviously new—showed a long, fresh scar across the left toe. The sight of her, muttering to herself as she climbed, both relaxed and annoyed him.

Then both sensations turned to pure amusement as she spotted him, jolted and scowled before she could school her expression to disinterest.

“Good morning to you, Rowan.”

She nodded, then clasped both hands on the strap of her bag as if she didn’t know what else to do with them. Her eyes were cool, in direct contrast to those nervous hands, and quite deliberately skimmed past him.

“Hello. I’d have gone another way if I’d known you were here. I imagine you want to be alone.”

“Not particularly.”

Her gaze veered back to his, then away again. “Well, I do,” she said very definitely, and began to make her way along the rocks, away from him.

“Hold a grudge, do you, Rowan Murray?”

Stiffening with pride, she kept walking. “Apparently.”

“You won’t be able to for long, you know. It’s not natural for you.”

She jerked a shoulder, knowing the gesture was bad-tempered and childish. She’d come to sketch the sea, the little boats that bobbed on it, the birds that soared and called above. And damn it, she’d wanted to look at the eggs in the nest to see if they’d hatched.

She hadn’t wanted to see him, to be reminded of what had happened between them, what it had stirred inside her. But neither was she going to be chased away like a mouse by a cat. Setting her teeth, she sat on a ledge of rock, opened her bag. With precise movements she pulled out her bottle of water, put it beside her, then her sketchbook, then a pencil.

Ordering herself to focus, she looked out at the water, gave herself time to scan and absorb. She began to sketch, telling herself she would not look over at him. Oh, he was still there, she was sure of it. Why else would every muscle in her body be on alert? Why would her heart still be tripping in her chest?

But she would not look.

Of course she looked. And he was still there, a few paces away, his hands tucked casually in his pockets, his face turned toward the water. It was just bad luck, she supposed, that he was so attractive, that he could stand there with the wind in all that glorious hair, his profile sharp and clean, and remind her of Heathcliff or Byron or some other poetic hero.

A knight before battle, a prince surveying his realm.