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nothing to
barter with."
    "No?" He stopped with his hand on the jamb
and glanced back. He studied her with a maddeningly contemptuous smirk, giving
each tear in her pantaloons, each pucker and strain in her wrinkled smock a
pointed assessment. "I can think of one or two things offhand that might
interest a desperate man."
    She gasped and bent over to snatch the fallen quilt up
off the floor.
    "I should have expected nothing better from you,
Captain," she said disdainfully, wrapping the quilt tightly around
herself. "I was told you Americans were all desperate little men with few
values and no moral fortitude. I see now the evaluation was, if anything,
charitable."
    Wade's eyes narrowed to slits and something very much
like a snarl threatened deep in his throat. "By God, I should have left
you to the sharks."
    "I might have preferred their company," she
said succinctly.
    Wade stared long and hard at the mutinous set of her
mouth. At the best of times he was not known for possessing an excess of
patience. The fact that it was a woman testing his limits—a paid nanny who
should have known better than to flaunt airs—well, it was enough to make him
smile, almost to laugh. And Summer, white with righteous indignation, badly
misread the tight slant on his lips and gave her tangled blonde hair a haughty
toss of dismissal.
    "You may leave me now, Captain. I shall call if I
require any further assistance from you or your lackeys."
    The thin veneer of civilization vanished from Wade's
dark eyes. He expelled the breath from his lungs and closed the partially open
door with a bang. She saw him reach up to the bookcase for a brass key. She saw
him twist it in the lock and return it to its perch on the top shelf.
    "What do you think you are doing?" she asked
in a low voice.
    He strode across the cabin to where she was standing,
and before she could react, curled one arm around her waist, one beneath her
knees, and swept her off her feet. He carried her struggling and shrieking to
the bed and dumped her unceremoniously on top.
    Summer scrambled to cover herself and pressed as far
against the wall as she could go. "What are you doing?"
    He grinned slowly and in one smooth motion had his
shirt lifted up and over his head.
    "Showing you just how charitable we Americans can
be, Governess."
    Summer stared at the sun-baked expanse of his chest,
at the muscles in his arms that flexed as he lowered his hands to the fastening
of his breeches.
    "You wouldn't dare," she gasped.
    "Wouldn't I? As a pirate and miscreant, pray
tell: what would stop me?"
    "You're . . . you're insane!" she cried.
    Wade laughed and caught her wrists before she could
slash her nails across his face. He twisted both arms behind her back and
trapped them there with one calloused hand, while the other made short work of
what remained of her tattered clothing.
    She shrieked and squirmed to break free of his grip.
"No! Damn you . . . no!"
    Wade covered her mouth with his, silencing her. The
kiss was long and bruising, allowing her no escape and very little breath with
which to fight him. The hand holding her wrists forced her flat on the bed and,
in the next wild heartbeat, he was stretched out alongside her, his leg thrown
across the top of her thighs to restrain the frantic thrashing.
    Summer screamed to no effect. His lips were crushing
her, smothering her every sound; his tongue lashed her like a wet, hot flame,
distracting her, confusing her. She lunged furiously against his weight as she
felt his lower body shifting. She screamed again, wide-eyed and horrified as
she realized his breeches had been loosened and flung aside.
    Without the slightest hesitation or apology, Wade took
advantage of another reflexive twist of her slender body to insert a knee
firmly between her thighs. Summer writhed and shrank from the unwanted
intrusion, but even as her body tensed against it, she could feel the startlingly
hard and determined length of him begin to slide forward.
    She groaned