Grudgingly, he smiled at her. “Maggie,” he said, stopping her and turning her in his arms so that she was looking up at him. “I love you.”

Maggie’s throat swelled with emotion and she swallowed. “Really, Reeve? Do you really love me?”

He nodded, his hands strong on her shoulders. She took one of them and placed it flush with her stomach.

“When I’m big and very fat, will you still want me?” she asked timidly.

“More than ever,” he answered, and then he was ushering her down the beach, through a gap in the rocks and into the cove Maggie had suspected was there. It was the Garden of Eden, shut off from the rest of the world; exotic flowers of the richest purples and crimsons nodded from the bushes on the hillside behind it, and parrots of every color squawked in the trees.

Maggie plopped down in the snow-white sand and began unlacing her shoes. “Oh, Reeve,” she breathed, awed, “it’s so beautiful here.”

He dropped to his haunches beside her and, with slow, sensuous motions of his hands, removed both her shoes, then rolled down her stockings and tossed them away.

Maggie’s heart was hammering and her breath had already quickened to a gasp; all her instincts bid her to lie back in the warm sand and let Reeve love her. She resisted those instincts because she wanted this time to last.

Bolting to her feet, Maggie lifted her skirts and went splashing into the water up to her knees. Reeve hung back, his face suddenly taut with unpleasant memories, and some of Maggie’s joy faded away. She made her way slowly back toward him.

“You have shadows in your eyes,” she said softly, placing one hand on each side of his face.

He dragged her to him and held her close for a moment, his grip fierce, but after a few seconds he relaxed. His hands went to her hair, and he plucked away the last remaining pins, watching as her pale hair tumbled down around her shoulders and breasts in shining waves. “You can drive the shadows away, Maggie,” he said, his voice low and husky. “You and only you.”

She began unbuttoning his shirt, and when she’d opened it to his muscle-ridged stomach, Maggie laid her hands to Reeve’s flesh, caressing him. He groaned as she toyed with his taut nipples.

“Oh, God, Maggie,” he rasped, “I need you.”

Maggie stepped closer, touching one button of flesh with the tip of her tongue and taking delight as Reeve shuddered with pleasure. She grew bolder then, kissing her way across his chest to the other nipple and tasting that as well. Beneath her hand, the muscles of his stomach tensed to a hardness as dense as granite. When she took hold of his belt buckle, he gently displaced her hand and opened it for her.