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person to bring it back up the hill and easily store the vessel in the boathouse again and out of the elements.
    If it really was his only mode of transportation off the island, aside from helicopter, he would clearly want to take good care of it. That could work to her advantage, if only she could find a way to hijack the boat, though that brought its own set of fears and worries.
    The idea of traveling on open water in the small boat, even for just twenty-six nautical miles, was enough to make sweat bead her brow. The water would be so close, and if the boat failed, or if she fell in, there would be no one to save her there, because he wasn’t likely to join her for her ride to freedom.
    Feeling weak and shaky, and hoping it was simply lack of food since the apple had done little to take the edge off her hunger, she made her way up the steps and in the direction of the center of the island, plowing toward the large house with determination. She would endure dinner, because she was starving, and then she’d lock herself in the room she had commandeered and try to devise a firm plan for escape.
    When she entered the house, she heard a pan rattle from the kitchen, and the smell of something that seemed divine filled the air. She hesitated before entering the kitchen, since she was still wearing only her sandals. She nibbled her lip as she looked up the stairs and decided to go that way instead.
    A few moments later, she entered the room she had taken over as hers and found a stack of boxes and bags on the bed that hadn’t been there before. A quick glance revealed several names with which she was unfamiliar, and a few that even she had heard of, including La Perla. She grimaced at the pile, assuming they were all the lingerie he had mentioned buying for her, and all that she was allowed to wear besides nothing, if she followed his rules.
    She wanted to be defiant and pick another one of her own outfits, but she didn’t want it to be cut or torn off her and ruined beyond all repair as the last dress had been. Having him cut off yet another outfit would also leave her naked to him again. Even one of the flimsy pieces of lingerie he’d picked had to be better than that, right?
    She sat down on the bed and began sorting through the underwear, nightgowns, and skimpy teddies, some with matching peignoirs and others without even so much as a pair of panties underneath. She hated the circumstances, and she was humiliated at the idea that he had ordered all of these with her in mind, but that didn’t stop the pieces from being beautiful and exquisitely made.
    She’d never held anything so pricey in her life, and when she saw a price tag still attached to a sheer pair of underwear that had nothing to them besides mesh and lace, her eyes widened at the amount. She could buy about a hundred pairs of her usual brand of panties for that price. They were gorgeous, but seemed to be ridiculously extravagant for something so insubstantial.
    With a shrug, she set them in the Absolutely Not mound, having established three piles. The first were things she would never wear under any circumstances, because they revealed far too much. The second pile were Maybes; things she would wear if she had no other options available; and the last were the ones she was mentally classifying as Acceptable. They were a little more modest than the others and at least gave the pretense of trying to cover her intimate places.
    After everything was sorted, she shoved the Absolutely Not pile into a bottom drawer of the empty dresser before filling the second drawer with the Maybe pile, and finally tossing everything into the top drawer that were Acceptable possibilities for wearing—at least until she could find a way to keep her own clothes without getting them cut off of her.
    For dinner, she picked a demure white gown and matching peignoir, deciding when she had it on that it wasn’t quite as modest as she had hoped, since the peignoir tied under her breasts,