“You sacrificed your future for your father’s, and he doesn’t have a future. Your father—if alive, if released—will be going to prison for the rest of his life. But what will you do while he’s in his comfortable, minimum security prison cell, getting three square meals a day? Where will you sleep? What will you eat? How will you get by?”

“I’ll figure it out.”

“You are so brave and yet foolhardy. Do you ever look before you leap?”

She flashed to Vienna and their wedding and the four weeks of honeymoon, remembering the intense love and need, the hot brilliant desire that had consumed her night and day. She hated to be away from him, hated to wake up without him, hated to breathe without him.

She’d lost herself completely in him. And no, she hadn’t looked, hadn’t analyzed, hadn’t imagined anything beyond that moment when she’d married him and became his.

“No,” she answered huskily, lips curving and heart aching. “I just leap, Drakon. Leap and hope I can fly.”

If she’d hoped to provoke him, she’d failed. His expression was impassive and he studied her for a long moment from beneath his thick black lashes. “How long has it been since you’ve spoken to your father?”

“I actually haven’t ever spoken to him. My mother did, and just that first day, when they called her to say they had him. Mother summoned us, and told us what had happened, and what the pirates wanted for a ransom.”

“How long did she speak to your father?”

“Not long. Just a few words, not much more than that.”

“What did he say to her?”

“That his yacht had been seized, his captain killed and he had been abducted, and then the pirates got back on the phone, told her their demands and hung up.”

“Has anyone spoken with your father since?”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Why not?”

“They won’t let us. They say we haven’t earned the right.”

“But you’ve given them three million.”

Her lips curved bitterly and her gaze lifted to meet his. “I can’t sleep at night, knowing I was so stupid and so wasteful. Three million dollars gone! Three million lost forever. It would have been fine if we’d saved my father, but we didn’t. I didn’t. Instead it’s all gone and now I must start over and worse, the ransom has doubled. I’m sick about it, sick that I made such a critical error. I didn’t mind liquidating everything to save my father, but it turns out I liquidated everything for nothing—”

“Stop.”

“You are right to despise me. I am stupid, stupid, stupid—”

He caught her by the shoulders and gave her a hard shake. “Enough. You didn’t know. You didn’t understand how the pirates operated, how mercurial they are, how difficult, how unpredictable. You had no way of knowing. There is no handbook on dealing with pirates, so stop torturing yourself.”

With every sentence he gave her a little shake until she was thoroughly undone and tears filled her eyes, ridiculous tears that stung and she swiped at them, annoyed, knowing they were from fatigue, not sadness, aware that she was exhausted beyond reason, knowing that what she wanted was Drakon to kiss her, not shake her, but just because you wanted something didn’t mean it was good for you. And Drakon wasn’t good for her. She had to remember that.