“Ginny, I’m leaving next week for Mexico.”
“Next week? Were you going to tell me as you walked out the door? Oh, God, Steve, I thought this time it would be different, that—Take me with you.”
After a silence that seemed far too long, he shook his head, a faint smile crooking his mouth. “I suppose if I don’t, you’ll just follow me anyway.”
“Yes,” she said, “I will. And I’ll make certain that I’m an inconvenience.”
He laughed and hooked his hand behind her neck to pull her hard against him, his breath wafting across her cheek as he bent to kiss her.
And then everything else was forgotten as Steve scooped her into his arms, carried her the few steps to the wide canopied bed against the wall and tossed her onto the mattress, his lean body following her down as he slid his hands beneath her silk dressing gown. She arched upward, hungrily, reaching for him and twining her arms around his neck.
There was no more talk as they came together with a savage intensity. Lips and hands made new and remembered discoveries as their bodies moved apart, then joined again, the passion that was always between them reignited. The restraint of the past month was gone, replaced by the familiar need that always consumed them. And Ginny knew that she would do whatever she had to do to stay with him.
He was her past, her present, her future….
ROSEMARY ROGERS
SAVAGE DESIRE
To the Righteous and the Truthful and the Honest.
May they always win out!
WALK IN THE LIGHT.
CONTENTS
THE BEGINNING MAY, 1876
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
NEW ORLEANS
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
MEXICO
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
LA CORTESANA
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
THE JOURNEY
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
THE DESTINATION
CHAPTER 42
TURNING POINTS
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
THE PROMISE
EPILOGUE
THE BEGINNINGMay, 1876
1
Despite a cheery fire burning behind brass firedogs it was cold in the parlor, a chill that had nothing to do with the fusillade of rain blowing against leaded-glass windowpanes. Outside Steve Morgan’s London town house, gusts of wind swept around pink sandstone corners with a hollow moan that only added to the sense of gloom inside. Heavy velvet drapes of dark green shrouded windows flanked by Chinese pots of delicate ferns. Two wingback chairs of rich gold brocade sat on each side of the hearth, the sweeping lines of their ball-and-claw legs cushioned atop thick Turkish carpets patterned in green, gold and umber.
Virginia Brandon Morgan perched stiffly on the brocade ottoman, with its dangling fringe, her hands clasped in her lap in an effort to appear calm under the unnerving, steady gaze directed at her from the man in the chair angled against the warmth of the fire.
Tension hovered as if alive, as tangible and dangerous as a lion prepared to pounce. But then, Steve had always had the power to make her feel uncertain, ever since their first meeting nine long years before.
The fragrance of roses was almost overpowering; a huge bouquet dripped loose petals atop a gleaming parquet table next to the ottoman. Velvety crimson petals lay like drops of blood against the wood. Ginny suppressed a shudder and glanced up, her eyes briefly meeting his hard blue gaze.
Even while she struggled for words to break the sudden awkward tension between them, she resented the necessity for it. Why must he regard her so closely, his eyes shuttered, his face unreadable as if—As if she had chosen to stay away from the children? After all, she had been on her way to them when she’d left New Orleans and then had been injured before she could reach them. It wasn’t as if she had wanted to be taken so far away from them. And Steve knew that.
But he had still taken them from France to England and hidden them in the countryside with his old flame, so Ginny could not see them without his permission. If not for this attempt at reconciliation, she would no doubt never get to see her children again.
In truth, that was not the only reason she wanted to be with Steve, to try again. She needed to renew the love they had once felt so strongly for one another, and that fact was both frightening and promising.
Could they renew the love they had once shared after everything that had come between them? There was hope….
Yet now he regarded her so intently, his dark face set into harsh lines, black brows a straight slash over eyes that held volumes of unspoken censure.
He had often told her how much he admired her ability to always survive. Yet there were times it seemed as though he resented that ability. Her throat tightened. The tension was so palpable it throbbed like a live beast.
Across the room Steve sprawled in a wingback chair, his long legs stuck out in front of him and crossed negligently at the ankles. He looked far too comfortable when she was so ill at ease. Oh God, she was so nervous! Why? Why could she not be as unaffected as he obviously was? But she couldn’t be, of course, for this was too important.
This first meeting, with children she had not seen since they were infants, terrified her. Laura and Franco—her own children—twins born when she and Steve had been separated by distance and conflicts. The children had been left in Mexico, then sent to stay with Tante Celine in France for far too long. It was unintentional, of course, for Ginny had never dreamed of all the events that would take her so far away from them….
Hazy images danced in front of her eyes: the lush green beauty of the harbor town of Gibara in Cuba, the earthquake that had temporarily blinded her, Richard Avery’s rescue of her, his kindness and love on the journey that ended in the sultan’s palace in
