“Well, you didn’t rent me! Turn this thing around, now!”

“I’d need a football field to do that, sweets,” came the happily resigned reply. “We’re in this for twenty-four hours, plus mileage, I’m afraid.”

“You idiot! You—you caveman—” Shay paused, breathless, and looked around for something to throw.

“I like the idea of dragging you off to a cave, I must admit,” Mitch reflected good-naturedly. “It’s the whacking you over the head with a club and hauling you off by the hair that I can’t quite deal with.”

“You’d never prove that by me!”

Mitch laughed and someone honked as he switched lanes to fly up a freeway ramp. Shay gave a choked little cry and slumped down on the floor in a bundle of sugared synthetic wool. There, she considered her options.

Jumping out of a vehicle traveling at fifty-five miles per hour was definitely out. So was putting her clothes back on without showering first, and she couldn’t face the thought of taking a shower with this maniac at the wheel.

A sweet, throbbing warmth moved beneath Shay’s skin as she reviewed her situation. There were worse things than being alone with Mitch Prescott, whatever their differences. “Was Ivy in on this?”

“I’m pleading the Fifth on that one, sugar plum.”

Just the mention of sugar made Shay itch all over. She squirmed in her blanket and wailed, “When I get my hands on her—”

There was, for the first time since that crazy ride had begun, a serious note in Mitch’s voice. “We have to talk, Shay.”

“You didn’t have to kidnap me for that!”

“Didn’t I? The last time I tried, you were something less than receptive.”

Shay yawned. It was crazy, but all her sleepless nights seemed to be catching up to her, demanding their due. Now, of all times! She curled up in her blanket and closed her eyes. The swaying, jostling motion of the RV lulled her into a languorous state of half slumber. “Why…are you…doing this?” she asked again.

She could have sworn he said it was because he loved her.…

Nah. She’d only dreamed that.

Mitch paced the length of the secluded beach, his hands pushed into the hip pockets of his jeans. What had he done? Was he losing his reason? For all his exploits, he’d never stooped to anything like this. Never.

He looked back at the RV he’d taken such pains to rent and sighed a raspy sigh that grated in his throat. Shay was still asleep, he supposed. When she woke up, she was going to fly into his face like a mother eagle defending her nest. He bent and grasped a piece of driftwood in one hand, and flung it into the surf.

Maybe it was that week of twenty-hour workdays. Maybe that had shorted out his brain or something.

The door of the RV creaked open and Mitch braced himself. Shay was going to give him hell, and the knowledge that he deserved whatever she might say didn’t make the scenario any easier to prepare for.