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The floor struck her instead Luckily she wokeon her knees with a dull thud, her hands still twisted in the sheets

Only a dream

If it was a dreaht under the dressing-room door?

She shook off the sheets and very quietly opened the door

Definitely not a dream

She’d dreae naked these past weeks, but not in the bath This i her since that night in Cairo

One of the wonderful changes Lucas had e baths in the separate suite of rooenious apparatus of pipes to cisterns of water heated by a great fireplace in the attics that also served to heat the servants’ quarters It was decadent and utterly ht now it did not appear so big—Edge took up quite a bit of the generous structure

He reathed in steaainst the raised ri the sides His face was flushed and da his shoulders, pooling in the hollows above his collarbone and speared in the straight dark hair that fanned across his torso and disappeared into the water It was too dark to see beneath the surface, but her i the all-too-brief ined following that arrow of hair down into the stea water

She forced her gaze to his face He looked tired, the lines beside his mouth even deeper than she re away the lingering fear of the portent of her dreahtened its hold instead Not even the sight of his beautiful body and the answering heat that shot through her could counter it No, it made it worse A hundred times worse

There was an ewer of water on a side table and she tested it Cold Good

She barely ed to pour half its contents on to her nemesis when he was on his feet and out of the bath Prudently she stepped back, holding the ewer out like a weapon as water poured off his body on to the carpet He looked enor out of the Nile in her dream She took another step back

‘What the devil Sam!’

‘I could say the sae’

‘This is one hell of a welcome’