More to avoid him, she rested her head back against the seat and let her eyes close. She would call her father in the morning. Then the cavalry would be on its way.
CHAPTER SEVEN
DIANA AWOKE TO brilliant sunshine, a pure, magnetic version of it that reflected off the turquoise sea in a blinding display of light that cast everything in a warm, resonant glow. She would have lain there, reveling in it, had the thought of exactly where she was not flashed through her head at that precise moment. And whom she was with.
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.”