Free Man Trouble by Melanie Craft

corners of her eyes and gave her face a sudden wry humor that contrasted with her flashy clothes and makeup. She was pretty, he thought, surprised. He had found her physically attractive when he first saw her, but this was something more subtle, and more interesting.
    “You were running after me,” he said, remembering. “Why? What were you going to say?”
    Sandra gazed at him for a moment. “Would you believe,” she said, “I have no idea.”
    “You belong to me, Angeline,” said Lord Percy. “Never forget that.” The softness of his voice was belied by the coldness in his eyes, and Angeline shivered, remembering the tortured screams of the horse thief echoing within the crumbling walls of the abbey. “You are my wife, and that pirate will never soil you with his filthy hands. I'll see both of you dead first.”
    Molly had come right back to the cottage after saying good-bye to Jake, without waiting for Carter to return with the doctor. She had ordered lunch from room service: fresh fish cooked in spiced coconut milk, served with tropical fruit salad and champagne. The butler had brought it on a tray, and she had eaten it in this very chair, on the deck outside the cottage, and then spent the next hour napping in the sun.
    She was not actually writing a sequel to
Pirate Gold,
of course, and had no intention of doing so, despite the frantic pleas of her agent. She didn't have time. In the past two years, her only academic output had been two journal articles and a textbook chapter adapted from her book about eighteenth-century seafaring women. That wasn't enough to earn tenure at Belden, where “publish or perish” was an imperative. If she wanted to survive, she needed to focus her thoughts and her energy on a real project.
    Unfortunately, her thoughts had not been cooperating.
Pirate Gold
had begun as a movielike daydream that ran through her head whenever she was tired, bored, or in a faculty meeting, and merely typing the words “THE END” at the bottom of page 642 had not stopped the flow of the story.
    It wasn't her fault. She had gotten attached to her characters, and the idea of cutting them off and not thinking about them anymore made her feel like a murderer. Anyway, she enjoyed the daydream. It relaxed her. Just because she allowed herself to indulge in the story—and occasionally wrote down some of the better passages—didn't mean that she was writing another novel. She had no intention of making this kind of thing a way of life. It could be somebody else's life, certainly, but it wasn't hers.
    She dozed off again and woke to the sound of Carter's voice.
    “
There
you are,” he said. He sounded petulant. “Where have you
been?
I looked everywhere for you. I even came back to the cottage, but I didn't see you out here, so I left again. Where's Jake? Why didn't you wait for me to come back?”
    Molly kept her eyes closed, hoping that he would think she was still asleep and go away. After the excitement of the morning, she just wanted to be left alone.
    “Molly! It was a brilliant plan. It was divine inspiration. What happened?”
    He was not going to go away. Molly opened her eyes. “Let me get this straight,” she said, sitting up. “Your idea of divine inspiration is sticking a kayak paddle between my knees and tripping me? I could have broken my leg! Or was that also part of your plan?”
    “I knew you'd be fine,” Carter said hastily. “And it worked, didn't it? It was perfect! It was genius. We had Jake right where we wanted him, on day
two.
Do you know what this means? We're
ahead
of
schedule
!”
    “You're out of control, Carter,” Molly said. But despite her irritation, she had to admit that the morning had not turned out to be the disaster she'd feared. Amazingly, she was sure that she'd seen a spark of interest in Jake Berenger's eyes when he looked at her. It was far from the instant magic that Carter had predicted, but it was enough to boost her confidence. He may not have