He was propelling her inside the hotel, his cane stumping on the floor as they walked. Since the dining room was still empty, he chose that spot for his inquisition. Flinging Maggie down in a chair, Reeve leaned against the table and ordered, “Tell me everything!”

“He lives somewhere in New Zealand, Reeve—probably near Auckland. That’s all I know, I swear it!”

Reeve’s hand caught under Maggie’s chin. “It had better be,” he said through clenched teeth.

Maggie slapped his hand away, her eyes stinging with tears. “Damn you, Reeve,” she spat out, leaping to her feet, the table between them for a barrier. “You have been using me all along!”

His face changed; Maggie saw him weaken. “No,” he protested. “That isn’t true.”

“It is!” Maggie cried, wiping away her tears with the heels of her hands. A moment later she wrenched the ring from her finger, hurled it at Reeve, and fled the hotel.

She didn’t stop running until she’d reached the beach, where she slumped to her knees in the pure white sand and covered her face with both hands. Her grief and her fury were noisy, and Maggie made no attempt to control them.

“I knew it would come to this,” observed a voice behind her.

And Maggie whirled at the familiarity of the tones and cadence of that voice. “Duncan!” she gasped, scrambling up from her knees.

He was dressed for Queensland, in a pristine white suit with an elegant string tie. He came toward her and, with a handkerchief as pale as his suit, dried her face as though she were a lost and errant child. “Come back to us, Maggie,” he said softly. “I swear there’ll be no more episodes like the one in Melbourne.”

Maggie shook her head, amazed that she’d been tempted, for just a moment, to go with Duncan. “I couldn’t. I love Reeve.”

Duncan’s face tightened almost imperceptibly. His eyes slipped over the bodice of Maggie’s simple cotton dress to her thickening waistline. “Good God, you’re pregnant, aren’t you?” he asked in a stunned whisper.

Maggie dropped her eyes. “Yes.”

There was a dreadful silence, during which she could feel Duncan’s fury, but when he spoke, his voice was even. Composed. “All the more reason for you to come with me, Maggie, right now.”

Maggie looked at Duncan in wonder. “How can you suggest that when you know—”

“I know that McKenna will tire of you just as he tired of Loretta. What will you do then, Maggie? Raise your child alone, on the generous stipend Reeve always provides for his former mistresses?”

Maggie swallowed. “I won’t accept anything from him!”

“That would be foolish indeed. Unless, of course, you’d already made other arrangements for your own support and the child’s.”

“Your tenacity never ceases to astound me, Kirk,” Reeve said.