A fuzzy memory of Coburn carrying her in from the car, half-asleep, and up to this room followed it. She had woken only long enough to ensure herself he was sleeping somewhere else before she’d buried her face in the lavender-scented sheets and surrendered again to unconsciousness.
She flicked her gaze to the door. She needed to get out of here.
Swinging her legs over the side of the bed, she reached for the short robe draped over the back of a chair and pulled it on. With barely a glance at the beautiful nautically themed room with its huge canopied four-poster bed and multiple views across the sparkling sea, she found her purse on a chair near the window and rummaged through it for her phone. Rummaged some more. Frowned. She had definitely put it in there when they’d left Africa. It was the one thing she wouldn’t leave behind.
Coburn. Heat, the combustible kind, spread through her like wildfire. Yanking the door to her room open, she flew down the hallway to the other bedrooms in search of her target. But they were all empty, including the one Coburn had commandeered. Spinning around, she left the room and went down the stairs two by two to the living room. The beautiful airy space that overlooked the sea was empty. So was the magnificent library with its ten-foot-high built-in bookcases and scads of priceless old volumes lining them. She turned on her heel and walked toward the kitchen, the only place she hadn’t checked. It was empty, too. If she knew Coburn, he was out for a ten-mile jog or taming the water with some sort of boat or machine.
Combing the kitchen, she searched for a phone. When she didn’t find one there she went back to the library. It didn’t have one, either. What kind of a house didn’t have phones? Had Coburn gotten rid of them along with her cell phone?
Her heart slammed into her chest. She could not be kidnapped on a private island. She could not. She spied Coburn’s laptop on the desk. Pouncing on it, she tried to log on, but it was password protected. A curse escaped her lips. Really?
She went back to the kitchen, looking for something, anything that would tell her where she was. She was rifling through drawers when Coburn strolled lazily into the kitchen in shorts and a T-shirt soaked with perspiration. She froze, hand in the drawer.
“Looking for something?”
She pulled her hand out of the drawer, closed it and leaned against the counter. “My phone, actually. You wouldn’t happen to know where it is?”
“I took it,” he responded casually. Conversationally. “You can’t have it.”
Her blood boiled in her veins. She pushed away from the counter and crossed the kitchen to stand in front of him, her body vibrating with fury. “Give me my phone.”
“No. We are here to work through our issues, Diana. I’ll not have you calling Daddy so you can orchestrate a rescue.”
“That would be difficult when I don’t know where I am.”
“Double insurance.”
She looked at him in disbelief. “You can’t keep me here like this. Kidnapping is a crime.”
His mouth curved. “You are my wife. That would be kind of hard to prove.” He waved a hand at her as if she was a six-year-old in need of diversion. “Why don’t you go put on a bathing suit and come for a swim? The sea’s like bathwater.”
Her boiling blood heated to a ferocious roll. He was holding her here against her will, had taken her phone and now he wanted her to go swimming with him? Was he insane? She flew at him, her fingernails poised to inflict maximum damage. He caught her easily, his fingers manacling around her forearms. “I take it that’s a no?”
She struggled against his grip. “You can’t do this. Let me call my father right now and I will consider giving you partial custody of this child by not siccing the police on you for kidnapping.”
He tightened his fingers around her wrists, his blue gaze ice-cold as it rested on her face. “You left me no choice, Di. You walked away from me without telling me we were having a baby. If I take you back to New York you will disappear again and I will be talking to you through our lawyers. And since I intend for us to make this marriage work for the sake of our child, that is not happening. We are hashing this out right now, this inability to coexist together.”
“In a week? I understand you are angry. I understand we have things to work out with regards to this baby, but I am not staying married to you, Coburn.”
“Why?” His gaze lashed her face, all belligerent testosterone. “Don’t you think it’s better for our baby to grow up with both parents?”
“If we didn’t hate each other, yes.”
His gaze narrowed. “We have a lot of emotions in the mix right now, but hatred isn’t one of them.”
She wasn’t sure what to call it, but whatever it was, it wasn’t a good basis for a marriage. “We can’t make this work. We’ve proved that.”
“The only thing we’ve proved is what doesn’t work. How good we are at running away from our problems instead of facing them.”
Her eyes widened. “Yes,” he said harshly, “I’m including myself in that. I know I wasn’t perfect, either. We have fundamentally different views on how we want to live our lives, Diana, but somehow we are going to have to reconcile those views for the sake of this baby. To give him or her a chance to grow up with the solid foundation of a cohesive family unit.”
“What if I want to be happy?” she blurted out. “You don’t want to marry anyone else right now, but what if you do someday? What if I want to? Shouldn’t I have that choice?”
His eyes darkened into that midnight shade of blue she knew signaled imminent danger. “You don’t want to marry someone else, Di, because if you did, you would have filed for divorce months ago. You wouldn’t have waited a year to do it, until you were about to step on a plane and fly off to another continent so the coward in you wouldn’t have to face your unresolved feelings for me until the papers were signed and we were beyond the point of no return.”
“I don’t have unresolved feelings for you.”
His mouth twisted in a derisive curl. “That night on my terrace was strictly you getting yourself off, was it? The questions you asked about my other women, the way you tried to take me apart? That was all because you are so over me. I can see it now.”
An all-over body flush suffused her. “That was closure for me, Coburn.”
“Yeah, you looked like you had it when you left.” He studied her with that analytical intensity that seemed to reach right inside her. “There’s this thing that happens when I touch you. A need inside of you to connect that makes you slip out of that shell of yours and try to crawl inside of me. I can feel it when you do it. I felt it that night we were together, Diana. It’s still there.”
The husky play of his words singed her skin. If she’d tried to verbalize how being with Coburn made her feel, she couldn’t have done it better. Except he didn’t want her anymore—he wanted his child.
“I think you flatter yourself,” she denied. “Are you sure that isn’t your own emotion talking? Because there was a hell of a lot of anger in you that night, Coburn.”
“There still is.” He surprised her by admitting it. “But we’re talking about you and your refusal to acknowledge your emotions. You ran away because I was forcing you to address a part of yourself that terrifies you. You were afraid I would break down those walls and leave you wide-open for scrutiny.”
“That’s ridiculous,” she scoffed, pulling against his hold. “Let me go.”
“Not until you admit it.”
“Admit what?”
“You still have feelings for me we can build on.”
“I don’t.” She lifted her chin. “But even if I did, why would I tell you, a man who professes to feel nothing for me?”
A guarded expression passed over his face. “I believe if we put the past behind us, we can find something in what we had. Maybe it won’t be love, but it can be enough.”
A sharp pain went through her at his blunt admission. “You honestly think that’s enough to raise a child together?”
“I know it is. It’s more than the political arrangement my parents had. They didn’t even sleep together. There was no affection.”
And there it was, three years into their relationship, finally a clue into what made her husband tick. She yanked on her arms again, still manacled by his hands. “Let me go.”
He let go of one of her arms but only to move his palm to her back, her other wrist still held firmly in his grip. His gaze latched on to hers. “Kiss me right now without emotion, and I will call the pilot to fly us out of here before the day is done.”
She recognized it for the ploy it was. “I’m not playing that game, Coburn.”
“It isn’t a game. If you can prove to me there is no connection left between us to build on, I give you my word we will leave.”
She stared at him. At the matter-of-fact expression on his face. Surely she could do that. Surely after what he’d done to her that night at his apartment, she could kiss him without emotion. All she needed to do was channel the intense hatred she felt for him in that moment and she’d be out of here, free, because she knew if she stayed the consequences would be worse.