He stroked a hand over the back of her head down to her neck and smiled with pleasure as she arched into his touch like a cat.

"Let's get you out of these clothes," he murmured, stepping away from her, reaching for one cuff of the gossamer blouse she wore.

"No." Savannah pulled her hand back, smiling shyly to cover her shame. Laurel 's words were too fresh in her mind. Coop would think the same when he saw the marks on her wrists-that she degraded herself. She didn't want to hear that from him, not today. Today she wanted to pretend they had a normal life. She sent him a coy look. "I want to wear it for you."

He said nothing, but stood and watched as she shed the bikini top and the cutoffs, leaving only the sheer white blouse to cover her. The picture she presented was more tantalizing than if she had been completely naked. She knew because she had stood in front of the mirror in her room and studied the look. Provocative. Dressed but not decent. The sheer fabric was a misty barrier that invited a man to reach past it to the treasures of her lush feminine body.

Time lost its meaning for her. They could have been in bed a week. She wanted it to last forever. With his slow, gentle lovemaking, Cooper made her think it could last forever, that they had all the time in the world instead of just a few stolen hours.

And time meant nothing as they lay together afterward, skin sticky with their mingled sweat, the air redolent with the exotic musk of sex and perfume, the dusty scent of the moss-stuffed mattress. They lay touching, despite the heat, limbs tangled, hearts thudding slowly, their breathing shallow, as if to keep from disturbing the peace that had settled around them.

This was happiness, Savannah thought, being here with Coop. She loved him so much it frightened her. Too good to be true. Too good to be hers. Sex with him was so different from what she sought out with others. With others she felt wild, wicked. With Coop there was nothing depraved, debauched, dissipated, dissolute. She felt all the things she had spent her life yearning for but never finding. She shivered a little at the thought. Too good to be true.

"Will you marry me, Coop?" The words seemed to spill directly out of her overflowing heart, and instantly a part of her wished them back, because she knew deep down what his answer would be.

The air hummed with silence for a few moments, then with the electric whine of cicadas, then with the tension of an answer unspoken. Tears stung Savannah 's eyes and seared her heart like acid, and all the gold wore off the afterglow, leaving her feeling like what everyone said she was-a slut, a whore, not deserving of anything like the love of a good man.

"Why do you have to degrade yourself that way?"

Because that's what whores, do, Baby.

Coop sighed and sat up with his back against the headboard as Savannah got out of bed. "I can't give you that commitment, Savannah," he said sadly. "You know that. I have a wife."

She stepped into her shorts and jerked them up, her fingers fumbling with the fastenings as she shot him a burning look from under her lashes. "You have a vegetable."

"I can't abandon her, Savannah. Don't ask me to."

Frustration swelled and burst inside her like a festered wound, its hot, caustic poison shooting through her, penetrating every muscle, every fiber. Unable to stand it, she clamped her hands on her head and doubled over, a wild animal scream tearing from her throat.

"She doesn't even know who you are!" she sobbed.

He just sat there, looking handsome and sad, his blue eyes locked on her as if he were gazing at her for the very last time, memorizing her every feature.

"But I know who I am," he whispered, that low, smooth voice capturing futility and fatalism and a sense of inevitability she recognized but didn't want to hear.

He would never leave Astor as long as she was alive. And Savannah knew he would never marry her because wife was not the role he had cast her in in his real-life drama of the South. Unless she could purge herself somehow, cut out and dispose of what she had been all these years, and that seemed as impossible a task as cutting out a piece of the ocean.

She stared at him through tear-washed eyes for several silent moments, thinking she could feel her heart shatter like a glass ornament. Then she turned and left the cabin without a word, hating him, hating herself for what she was… and for what she would never be.