"Oh, you're going to be practical." Serena tilted her face toward the sun. The sky was as blue as the water, and cloudless. "It's too beautiful here to be practical. There's as much barbarism and cruelty today as there was three hundred years ago, and not nearly as much adventure. I'd love a ride in H. G. Wells's time machine."

Intrigued, Justin picked up the comb she had discarded and began to run it through her hair. "Where would you go?"

"Arthur's Britain, Plato's Greece, Caesar's Rome." She sighed, finding the sensation of Justin drawing the comb through her hair both sensual and soothing. "Hundreds of other places. I'd have to meet Rob Roy in Scotland or my father would never forgive me. I'd like to have seen the West before the settlers discovered it, but then, I suppose I'd've been on the first wagon to Oregon." Laughing, she tilted her head back farther so that she had upside-down view of his face. "It would've been worth the risk of being scalped by your ancestors."

Justin weighed her hair in one hand. "It would have been quite a prize."

"I'd just as soon have kept it," Serena admitted wryly. "What about you?" she asked. "Wouldn't you like to go back a couple of centuries and play Red Dog in a Tombstone saloon?"

"They didn't welcome Comanches."

Reaching back, she brushed damp hair from his forehead. "You're being practical again."

His eyes held hers a moment. "I would have been in the war party, attacking your wagon train."

"Yes." She looked out to sea again. It was foolish to forget who and what he was, even for a moment. He was different. It only added to the attraction. "I suppose you would have. We would have been forging new frontiers, you would have been defending what was already yours. The lines get misted and you wonder if either side was wrong in the beginning. Do you ever feel cheated?" she wondered aloud. "Your birthright?"

Justin drew the comb slowly through her hair. As it dried he could see all the subtle shade variations that merged together for the rich gold. "I prefer making what I own rather than thinking of inheritances."

She nodded, because the words so exactly expressed her own feelings. "The MacGregors were persecuted in Scotland, forced to give up their name, their plaid, and their land. If I'd been there, I would have fought. Now it's just a fascinating story." She gave a low laugh as her mood shifted. "One my father will tell again and again at the least provocation."

A toddler, racing across the sand to escape her mother, landed like a plump ball in Serena's lap. Giggling, she tossed her arms around Serena's neck and clung as if they were in the conspiracy together.

"Well, hello.'' With a laugh Serena returned the hug, then she tilted the child's head back enough to see fun-filled brown eyes. "Making a break for it, are you?"