No; Sandy, even lovelier — if possible — in her grief, was not pleased. Not at all! Neither the shouts of the street hawkers nor the frost-blue frock he had so often praised impressed her, and it was all because he wasn’t there. Intellectually, she realized that dashing Forsythe Jensen, the silver man who had taught her how to feel, had a full life in which he was away again on safari, and he could not be expected to hold any consideration for the pleasure of one inexplicable, inchoate girl. Intellectually, she knew this. And yet…
   Truly, it had been a most tenebrous day when the message on the dagger had brought him to her attention.
   Abruptly, a knock at the door shattered her composure into a million byzantine, constant, savage pieces! She whirled around. Surely it could not be — but it was! At the door, the amoral and masculine face she had come to know so well! “I was a cad, a complete and utter fool! I can’t hope that you’ll ever be able to forgive me — but if you do not, I must die,” he intoned while he excitedly began to show her his plans for the villa they were to share. “I need you, my darling!”
   It was then that as he slid the little ring onto her finger, she knew that life without him was unthinkable, if not illicit. Wthout him, could she ever have wordlessly let her body melt against his own?