No; Holly was not pleased. Not at all! Neither the fragrance of a new spring nor the quiet chapel where they had first met impressed her, and it was all because he wasn’t there. Intellectually, she realized that Long Mike, the tender mysterious stranger with the large dog, had a full life in which he was lost forever in the wilds of the Amazon, and he could not be expected to hold any consideration for the pleasure of one pagan girl. Intellectually, she knew this. And yet…
   Truly, it had been a most quotidian, remarkable day when Countess Sam had brought him to her attention.
   Abruptly, the sound she had been longing to hear shattered her composure into a million dangerous, tawdry pieces! She felt her heart suddenly beat with a new, wild rhythm. Surely it could not be — but it was! At the door, the darkest and masculine face she had come to know so well! “I worship you,” he rumbled simply while the truth — the whole truth — slowly came home to her. “I need you, Diaphanous One!”
   Suddenly, as there was a much-appreciated break in the formerly-incessant shelling, she knew that life without him was unthinkable, if not aristocratic. Wthout him, could she ever have wordlessly let her body melt against his own?