Reasoning with him amounted to wasted breath. But if she could dribble a little honey on her tone, he might calm, back off, and give her a chance to get inside and lock the door.

“You’re right. I’m little more than a wanderer. I’ll be gone soon, and in a few months you and your wife won’t even remember my name. Go back to your wife, Mr. Manchester.”

“My wife? I don’t even know who she really is. I thought I did, but I don’t.”

Had he found the letters Beth Ann had mentioned? “Talk to your wife.” The Beth Ann she’d once known would already be figuring a way to fix this problem.

“You both are witches.” Dimming anger in his eyes gave way to a more ominous glint. “Both of you are chameleons who know how to charm and entrap men.”

His gaze slid over her body, down the silk dress cinched at her waist, over her bare legs, to the red tips of her toes.

“Let me get you a drink,” she said.

“Sure.”

She was turning her back, ready to dash up the stairs, when he grabbed her by her hair and yanked her toward him. Surrendering to the pain, she stumbled, and when he shoved her hard sideways, she fell to the sandy beach.

“I found the letter from her mother. The woman she swore to me had died when she was a girl.”

Beth Ann, for all her talk of never going home, couldn’t completely walk away. “I don’t know what you are talking about!”

“You’re her sister. Her twin. What the hell else is she hiding?”

The truth, which hadn’t been spoken out loud ever, stunned her. “I don’t know.”

Peter kicked her hard in the gut, knocking all the wind from her body. Pain radiated along her ribs and up her spine. She tried to scramble back, dropped one heel, but as she tried to stand, another blow sent her flying onto her back. She looked up in time to see Peter looming over her. His face was grim, angry, and determined. He wanted to hurt her, and she feared he would kill her.

He dropped down, pinning her body with his. His hand ran up her leg, under the hem of her dress, to her panties. He groped at the silk, pulling and ripping.

Carlotta gripped the remaining high heel in her right hand and hit him squarely on the back of the head.

He howled, recoiled, and then slapped her hard. “Bitch!”

In her left hand, she scooped up a handful of sand and then hurled it in his face. She hit him squarely in the eyes, and immediately he recoiled.

“Get off me, you pig.”

She shoved him off her and was scrambling away when he grabbed her ankle. His fingernails bit into her skin.