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Orleans.
Smiling warmly at her, he said softly, "It doesn't matter how long it
takes, just as long as you and Sam come with me."
    Savanna's decision to leave O'Rourke's Tavern was not quite
the instant capitulation that it appeared— she had always feared that
one day she would come up against a situation over which she had no
control, and Micajah's unwanted attentions certainly were that! She'd
known when she'd struck out on her own that she was attempting the
impossible; that it would not be the life her mother wanted for her,
nor would it be a comfortable life, free from danger and brutal
difficulties, but she'd been prepared for that. After all, hadn't she
grown up watching her mother struggle desperately to keep all of them
in the bare necessities? Surely she could do better unencumbered by two
children. Savanna had also been grimly confident that no man would ever
hold her in the same demoralizing enchantment that Davalos had wielded
over her mother.
    With little more than sheer nerve, some desperately needed
luck and a lot of obstinate determination, she'd headed back for the
only home she had known—Crow's Nest—only to discover that Crow's Nest
and Stack Island no longer existed. The island and the small tavern,
which Elizabeth had sold for a meager sum when the news of Davalos's
death had reached them, had disappeared beneath the Mississippi River
in a tremendous earthquake that same year. A resolute tilt to her chin,
Savanna had turned her back on the past and crossed the river,
searching for somewhere else to start up another tavern. She'd found
what she was looking for in this deserted old homestead and, by sheer
grit and guts and with Sam's help, had turned it into a passable
business. It was not an easy life she had chosen, perhaps not even the
life she wanted, yet she took a stubborn pride in it. But life on the
wilderness frontier of Louisiana was relentlessly hard for
everyone—especially for a woman alone and for a young woman who looked
like Savanna…
    Studying her features in a small spotted mirror that night,
Savanna sighed.
She
didn't think there was
anything remarkable about the stunning clarity of her aquamarine eyes,
or the elegant shape of her high cheekbones, or even the lush fullness
of her provocatively curved mouth. As for the luxuriousness of her wavy
red-gold hair, which only emphasized the milky fairness of her skin and
the darkness of her brows and long lashes, well, she didn't think very
much of it either! Actually, she hated the color of her hair, wishing
instead that she had been endowed with hair as black as Bodene's and
eyes that were a plain, unremarkable blue. And what there was about her
shape that roused the unwanted interest and pursuit of men like Micajah
Yates utterly baffled her— after all, she was formed just like any
other woman, she had exactly the same parts and they were precisely in
the same places!
    Impatiently putting down the mirror, Savanna turned away and
walked toward her bed. If Yates and others like him would only leave
her alone, she and Sam would do just fine. But no! There was something
about her, something about the tall body that she took for granted,
something about the voluptuous curves that she secretly despised that
made her the angry, unwilling target of the lusts of so many men who
crossed her path.
    It wasn't, Savanna argued with herself as she slid into bed,
as if she ever
encouraged
any of their advances!
Painfully aware of what a man had cost her mother, she had sworn never
to let that happen to her. Savanna didn't like men very much, all they
represented to her was heartache, trouble and tears, and she'd never
met one who had stirred the least little tremor of excitement within
her breast. Not one.
    In the darkness she smiled—not so surprising when she lived in
a society where someone like Murdering Micajah was considered quite a
catch! Unfortunately, she didn't expect that the men around New Orleans
were any different, except for being