“Are you following me?”

His features froze for about a second before he answered. “Sorry, but I can see where you’d get that impression. Guess we have to chalk this one up to fate.”

There it was again. Fate. And Kel felt it, too.

A small prickle of conscience stabbed her as she arched her eyebrows in feigned disbelief, and a darker slash broached the tanned skin covering his cheekbones. He leaned closer, resting one arm on the back of the seat her day pack still guarded, and swiped his other hand over his chest in a cross. “Honest.”

His voice was low, husky, intimate. She fell into it, into his eyes, her heart skipping at the dark, liquid intensity begging to be believed in their expression.

“I didn’t think men believed in fate.”

His dark eyebrows knitted. “What else could it be?”

Dear Reader,

This is definitely a month to celebrate, because Kathleen Korbel is back! This award-winning, bestselling author continues the saga of the Kendall family with Some Men’s Dreams, a journey of the heart that will have you smiling through tears as you join Gen Kendall in meeting Dr. Jack O’Neill and his very special daughter, Elizabeth. Run—don’t walk—to the store to get your copy of this genuine keeper.

Don’t miss out on the rest of our books this month, either. Kylie Brant continues THE TREMAINE TRADITION with Truth or Lies, a dicey tale of love on both sides of the law. Then pick up RaeAnne Thayne’s Freefall for a haunting, mysterious, page-turner of a romance. Round out the month with new books by favorites Beverly Bird, who’s Risking It All, and Frances Housden, who’ll introduce you to a Heartbreak Hero, and brand-new author Madalyn Reese, who gives you No Place To Hide from her talented debut.

And, as always, come back again next month, when Silhouette Intimate Moments offers you six more of the best and most exciting romances around.

Enjoy!

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Editor

Heartbreak Hero
Frances Housden

FRANCES HOUSDEN

has always been a voracious reader, but she never thought of being a writer until a teacher gave her the encouragement she needed to put pen to paper. As a result, Frances was a finalist in the 1998 Clendon Award and won the award in 1999, which led to the sale of her first book for Silhouette, The Man for Maggie.

Frances’s marriage to a navy man took her from her birthplace in Scotland all the way to the ends of the earth in New Zealand. Now that he’s a landlubber, they try to do most of their traveling together. They live on a ten-acre bush block in the heart of Auckland’s Wine District. She has two large sons, two small grandsons and a tiny granddaughter who can twist her around her finger, as well as a wheaten terrier who thinks she’s boss. Thanks to one teacher’s dedication, Frances now gets to write about the kind of heroes a woman would travel to the ends of the earth for. Frances loves to hear from readers. Write to her at P.O. Box 18-240, Glenn Innes, Auckland 1130, New Zealand.

This book is dedicated to the next two generations

of my family. To my son John, his partner, Angela, their

children Tyler and Georgia, and my youngest son, Owen,

and his son Max.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Epilogue

Prologue

If only he’d gotten here five minutes sooner. If only. The two most damning words in the English language.

Kel Jellic wove his way through a dimly lit maze of tables and upturned chairs. Mood as black as pitch, he cursed the snarled traffic, cursed the snares of hookers and touts whose importuning had delayed his progress down Darlinghurst Road. Cursed the alley littered with 2:00 a.m. drunks and druggies, and reviled the stuttering neon sign that caused his night blindness as he’d negotiated the obstacle course of flesh and bone.

Regret clutched at his gut as he took in the scene.

If only he’d gotten here five minutes sooner, Gordie Tan, G&T to his buddies, might be performing a ribald routine instead of sprawled faceup on the minuscule stage. The blood leaking from a stab wound to his ribs was no stage prop. Kel dipped his fingers in it as he bent over his best friend. Still warm, it ran across the uneven wood flooring to add another stain to the blue velvet curtains at the wings.

Of all the gay night joints in Australia’s Kings Cross, this had to be the sleaziest. The crowd had been spilling into the alley as he arrived. His “Out of my way. Let me through!” hadn’t been enough until he’d put his elbows to use.

He’d squeezed through the crush, ignoring the pathetic squeals and grunts battering his ears. Hell, he might even have passed the jerk who’d knifed Gordie.

And then again, maybe not. This kind of club always had a back exit for those in the know with the need for a quick getaway.

Kneeling on a floor stained with spilled liquor and cigarette burns, Kel balled a handkerchief, pushing it tight against Gordie’s wound. Pain gasped from his buddy’s lips and forced open, opaque dark eyes in a face that used to be inscrutable. “Kel?”

“Yeah, it’s me. Help’s on its way, not to worry, buddy.”

Gordie’s chin lifted a fraction. “Tell you…” It chewed Kel up to see sweat bead his mate’s face, making his painted eyelids and rouged cheeks garish in contrast.

Taking particular care not to add to Gordie’s pain, Kel slipped his other arm under the shoulder away from the injury till he could lift him closer. Close enough for the slick, oily smell of greasepaint to hide the coppery tang of blood. Any casual observer, too drunk to make their escape, might have been fooled into thinking them lovers taking a last fond goodbye.

“What is it? You see who did this?” Kel turned his head to hear him better and felt Gordie’s breath tickle his ear. From this angle he was more than aware of the blood oozing through his handkerchief, then dribbling down the back of his hand. And that the grotesque splash of red matched the lipstick cutting a slash on his buddy’s face. In this place, at this time, it was just one more reason, one more fear, for the crowd to abandon G&T to his fate.

Drag queen extraordinaire, Gordie could have made a good living at it; instead it had served well as his cover in some of the seamier corners of the world.

Kel leaned closer to catch his mate’s rough whisper, “Family member…bugger cut my best frock.”

It took a second to register that Gordie meant Chinese or Eurasian. Kel no longer noticed the difference in their heritages, if he ever had, but he did recognize he was in danger of losing the best partner he’d ever worked with.

Their association went right back to the days after Kel left the SAS. Two raw Global Drug Enforcement recruits with visions of saving the world. Damn! He’d never thought it would come to this. His mind clouded, blurring scenes from the time they’d thought themselves invincible. Had it only been yesterday?

Another lesson learned.

A chair toppled somewhere in the gloomy depths of the club. He jerked his head toward the sound, jarring the cords in his neck. A painful reminder there was no one to watch his back.

Bile burned the back of his throat. Slight, wiry Gordie had a mind like a steel trap with muscles to match, plus a black belt in karate. All of which went to show Kel the assailant must have been damn good to get close enough to stick his friend.

Gordie clutched Kel’s sleeve, the rattle in his throat heightening the urgency as he forced out his information. “Kiss-and-tell, leaving Papeete… Air Tahiti Nui to Auckland…in two days. Name… N. Two Feathers… McKay.” Gordie finished on a weak groan, the weight of his slight frame growing lax in Kel’s arms.

With more haste than expertise, he checked the carotid pulse in Gordie’s throat. He captured a flutter in the artery beneath his sweat-damp fingertips and let a harsh groan of relief echo through the stillness.

Two Feathers…McKay? Beyond his more immediate problems, he pondered whether it was one guy or two. Useless pressing G&T for more information even if his job required a certain degree of callousness. The guy was his best buddy. The wonder was, he’d managed to pass on what he had.

Sirens blared. Their wails of distress prickled the skin at the nape of Kel’s neck. Much as he hated to leave anyone bleeding, the feeling of cutting the cord on friendship made this worse. Like losing an arm. But hanging around, spinning explanations for the cops, could blow their cover big time.

Still reluctant to leave the smaller guy, he pushed the bloody handkerchief into Gordie’s fist and pressed it to the wound. “G&T, can you hear me? I’ve got to go. Help’s arrived, either medics or the cops, but whichever…”

Gordie’s eyes flared for a second as if dark holes burned in his face. With a weak push he sent Kel on his way. “Go, I’ll be all right.” The brave words made Kel’s leave-taking more arduous as conscience warred with duty.

Duty won.

Disappearing behind the shabby velvet curtain, he let his instincts—honed in similar situations—lead him to the rear exit. The information he carried was worth more than one man. “Harrumph,” he snorted in derision at his excuse. It didn’t help.

He wanted to believe he was doing the right thing.

If the powerful drug kiss-and-tell was allowed to hit the streets, the lives of millions would be at stake. It crossed his mind as he slipped out into the darkness that maybe this was too big a job to handle on his own.

The sound of car doors banging echoed around the corner. Kel headed in the opposite direction. Keeping to the shadows, shoulders hunched, he wound his way through the back alleys, trying to appear invisible. A necessary habit for undercover work. And, like the people in the drug world he targeted, he knew to keep his head down in the vicinity of Sydney cops.

Kel never imagined this case would drop in his lap. At the first whispers of the drug, his senses had given a slight prickle, going into overdrive, as innuendo became news of known addicts dropping like flies round pyrethrum plants.

The first postmortems had been done at San Francisco’s exotic diseases center, where the docs feared they had a new plague on their hands. They hadn’t been far off the mark.

The information Gordie’d just given him was every bit as vital as the news that supplies of the deadliest new experience to hit the streets had run out, ringing a knell for its users.

He’d been to San Francisco, seen the pale shades of gray human remains and shuddered at the ghostly color broken by pout-shaped marks, as if shortly before dying someone wearing hooker-red lipstick had kissed them all over. And from that had come the name, kiss-and-tell.

At last, one poor soul, still alive when rushed into the doctors’ care, had wiped all their carefully calculated medical conclusions. But they hadn’t saved the one who’d given them the clue that put them out of their collective misery.

Too bad. If anyone had deserved to live, it was the victim who’d set the clinicians on the right track. But nothing they did prevented every organ in the guy’s body from shutting down. His death was inevitable from the moment his supplier disappeared.

That’s where Kel and Gordie’s team came in. As members of the covert organization, Global Drug Enforcement, they worked undercover to cut off drug supplies at any stage from manufacturer to dealer. From Colombia to the Golden Triangle, or a back room in San Francisco, GDE agents went after the scum of society who traded in weakness and misery.

Another quick glance over his shoulder as he unlocked his car showed nothing had changed. The touts still harassed the passersby and the hookers continued to patrol their patches with their giveaway, one-hip-slung-out walk.

And he’d no way of knowing if Gordie was alive or dead.

Instead of the way-to-go delight he’d felt at him and Gordie being paired up again, now he wished his buddy had stayed in San Francisco to play out his contract at the Glamorous Gals club.

The little guy had been a big hit with the crowds, as well as turning a huge profit in good reliable information.

Kel had worked with the local DEA while they’d tracked the chemist to his laboratory—too late. He’d been long dead when they got there, his place trashed, every particle wiped clean of any evidence linking it to the drug, particularly his notes.

Not one of the team had argued that it hadn’t been a fitting end for the psychotic inventor of the formula. But it was obvious the same thought lurked at the back of their minds. For instance, his exit could have been better planned. Say three months after they’d caught up with him.

Kel put his car in gear and pulled into the stream of traffic, cruising Darlinghurst Road for fresh meat.

He pulled over just through the lights giving way to a fire engine, its siren screeching as it left the dark gray sandstone station on the opposite side of the Cross. He’d have been better pleased to see an ambulance. The noise tugged at his conscience as he sorted through his memory, trying to remember if more than one type of siren had sounded as the cops pulled up in the alley. Damn, he needed Gordie to be saved, by someone. Anyone.

Was there ever a good time to die?

It bugged him that a month down the time chain, even with new information, the researchers were no closer to finding an antidote to the drug. It only took one dose, just one, and users had to keep on buying or be prepared to die. Not only did the drug induce instantaneous addiction, less than five days without supplies and addicts were dead meat.

Kiss-and-tell was a real little money-spinner in the wrong hands, but whose hands? Now the drug, either product or formula, was on the move, and he’d be doing his damnedest to follow its courier from Papeete, across the South Pacific to New Zealand, the only place he could call home.

Chapter 1

Kel bit down on the inside of his cheek until he tasted blood. But it didn’t diminish the pain in his gut just thinking of Gordie. His buddy’s life had ended up as a crapshoot. Gordie had played craps with opponents who thought themselves above the law, and when his turn came to roll the dice they’d come up snake eyes.

Goddammit!

His shoulder ached as though his right arm had been brutally wrenched from its socket. He sucked in a long drag of a cigarette in concert with about a dozen others hovering outside the air-conditioned terminal. It burned all the way down.

Hell, he didn’t even smoke. But as part of his cover, it gave him a reason for standing outside Papeete’s Faa’a International Airport building where No Smoking signs threatened at every turn. It was all part of the fresh skin he’d donned, like the white-on-black tropical shirt he’d been buying when the news came through about Gordie dying. Its cotton still retained the creases his fist had scrunched in it while Garnet Chaly’s cool voice had come over his cell phone.

As special agent in charge of Southeast Asian Ops, a huge territory including the South Pacific, he supposed it behooved Chaly to remain calm. The guy hadn’t lost a partner, only an operative.

Kel knew the drill. Agents weren’t allowed the closure of a funeral. They might be spotted among the mourners. No dragging their asses in sorrow; they picked themselves up and got on with the job. Changing his appearance hadn’t changed that, or relieved the guilt-induced nausea roiling under his ribs. Or the knowledge there’d be no time for grief.

Heat struck at him from the concrete pavement. It caught him a glancing blow from a midday sun filling the Tahitian sky with a wide, mean streak of brass, taking its spite out on the palms till their leaves drooped. Not a solitary cloud challenged its dominance, yet inside him the rain came down in sheets.

With one last drag of his smoke, he assumed an outward calm. To maintain the pretence he daren’t blink. Sure his eyes felt raw as a day-old recruit, but it was better than the image inside his lids of Gordie, like a broken china doll someone had tossed aside.

His latest info on the courier put the guy on a ferry from the neighboring island of Moorea, where the mountains rose high and dark and ancient, like castle turrets in a fairy tale. Not one like Rapunzel, but a dark, blood-filled tale to fit his mood.

The connection keeping him out in the heat was an airport bus that, by his watch, should have arrived five minutes ago even on island time. Part of his problem was the lack of a photo to help recognize his target. Though going by the name, and life’s conditioning, he’d concluded Two Feathers to be of Native American extraction. That’s unless the feathers in his name belonged to a wild goose.

Kel lit another cigarette.

“Monsieur.” A stranger’s rough accent infiltrated the roar of a jumbo jet rising through the fine suspension of kerosene vapors hanging in the air, waiting for a breeze to come along.

“Yeah?” Kel grated at a bulky islander whose four spare chins overlapped a red shirt that reminded Kel of an old sofa cover his grandmother once had.

Flashing a grateful grin, the man said, “Whoa man! You speak English. Great. Could I bum a light off of you?”

Kel let his thoughts race through the Filofax in his head, the place he kept everything too important to write down. The accent had none of the French flavors he’d tuned into since his arrival yesterday; instead it reminded him of home.

“No problem, mate.” Kel handed over a matchbook, picked up the night before in a downtown bar where the drums kept time with the dancers’ hips.

The guy sweated noticeably as he tapped his Marlboro on the cigarette packet, then clamped it between his fleshy lips, drawing hard as the match flared. “Thanks, mate, you’ve no idea how I needed that.” He tossed the matchbook over.

Kel caught it and nodded toward the other smokers, saying, “You, me and about ten others. Wouldn’t say no to a cold one to accompany it.”

“A beer wouldn’t touch the sides. This heat bites.”

He looked like a guy who should be used to hotter climates, but appearances could be deceiving. Kel should know.

Slipping the matches into his shirt pocket, he hefted his suit carrier, gave the guy a brief salute and moved over a few feet, following the shade. He traveled light. No waiting for the carousel to disgorge his stuff while Mr. N. Two Feathers McKay, like Elvis, left the building. Having nothing to hide, after a mandatory inspection, both his carrier and laptop would be allowed on board.

Of course, this meant nixing all weapons, other than the skills he’d learned in the SAS and a few dirty moves Gordie had taught him that had helped keep him alive more than once. They were all part of the game. Part of being an agent who might be in Sydney one day and Tahiti the next.

Five days of sun at Club Med had painted Ngaire pale bronze, her skin’s natural inclination. And she’d enjoyed the soft rush of cooling air as the ferry skimmed the waves between islands.

By contrast, the current bus ride sucked. Small, packed tight, with no air-conditioning to speak of, it made her long to be winging her way toward New Zealand in the relative luxury of economy class.

For the first time since she’d left San Francisco, she almost felt homesick for the cool mist that had crowded the Golden Gate Bridge as she flew out of the good old U.S. of A.

Heaven knows, she wasn’t the only one with problems. The legs of the lanky guy behind her stretched into the passage. His bony knees and ankles had invaded her comfort zone, while he had the nerve to grumble in German to his lady companion.

Then, like a snowstorm in hell, all her complaints melted away instantly as she caught sight of the airport, with its regulation stands of palms edging the road, for the second time in a week.

Her skin crawled with anticipation, tightening round her bones until she wanted nothing more than to stand up and stretch it back into shape. In a few hours she’d be landing in New Zealand where her grandmother had been born.

The land her grandfather had called paradise. Though she preferred the words of American author Zane Grey, last, loneliest, loveliest. An evocative description that sang like a siren’s call in her ears. Though she had the blood of four nations rushing through her veins, Ngaire felt ties to none.

Maybe in paradise she would find herself.

The sigh of air brakes announced the arrival of a blue bus carrying a yellow hibiscus logo, pulling up a few yards ahead.

Kel measured its size with his eye and did the numbers, reckoning on a twenty, twenty-two seater. He’d expected to deal with a luxury coach, so this put him ahead of the game.

Maybe his luck had turned.

The bus door swooshed open, folding in two. A pair of shoulders balanced above a belly like Buddha’s took its place as the driver lumbered off in a shirt as loud as his bus. Following him in a jumble of leis and woven palm-leaf hats, a half-dozen colorful Tahitian women alighted, swaying and giggling as the driver unclipped the baggage compartment, calling “Un moment, mademoiselles, s’il vous plaît, un moment” over one shoulder.

Kel took a few swift puffs of his cigarette, letting hot smoke roll over his tongue to release through his nose in short, sharp bursts. Not a sign of anyone resembling the image he’d built of Two Feathers McKay. “Dammit!” He spat the word out under his breath. The curse didn’t relieve his frustration.

Tossing the half-smoked butt into a sand bucket, he moved closer as the passengers dribbled out slowly and began to blend. He counted twelve islanders with a filtering of Europeans, French extraction, going by the casual elegance of their clothes. Behind the anonymity of his dark glasses, he eyed a tall man in a crumpled beige suit, heard a smattering of German as the dude snapped an order, a curse, then a demand at the driver.

One more to cross off his list.

His heart rate picked up. What if McKay had taken a different route? From the smell of things, their info could be a red herring. Wrapping his fist round the strap of his bag, he clamped down on his frustration. He wanted—no, needed—to be the one to find the goons responsible for Gordie’s death.

The last passenger left the bus, tightening the thumbscrews on the fear of failure raging inside him. This was a woman, medium height, with muscles lightly sculpted under glowing skin. She flicked a long black braid behind her shoulder, stepping into the remaining space to complete the crescent of passengers awaiting luggage.

As she dropped her small day pack between her feet, he watched her reach high, stretching with all the athletic grace of a dancer.

Every instinct shouted “Trouble,” with a capital T.

Latent sexual greed slugged him a good one. He wanted some of that, wanted a taste of the peach-fuzz skin making his mouth water. Wanted to feel it slide against his own in the heat of passion, as he sank into her to ease his pain.

He’d heard it could take you this way, but until now he’d never experienced the need to sublimate grief with sex.

To screw your ass off as opposed to crying. Death substituted by procreation. Lust mollified by this cockeyed piece of home-brewed psychology, he swung his eyes round the passengers one more time.

Where’n all hell was McKay?

He began circling the crush, his impatience as obscure as theirs was obvious while the driver dumped piece after piece from the baggage compartment into a heap on the sidewalk. Gucci took its chances with cheap blue-and-pink-striped plastic as the owners pulled their bags from the bottom of the pile.

Lazy movements at the far side of the crowd snagged his glance and zapped him again. Pushing his sunglasses back to improve the view, he gazed at the growing distance between the black crop top and matching hipster pants, separated by lush skin.

Isolated by her unhurried attitude, she reminded him of a cat, easing out its kinks as all hell let loose around it. “Eyes left, Jellic, you’re working.”

As he scolded himself, a piece of crimson, hard-bodied Samsonite, defaced by a Chinese good-luck symbol and propelled by the removal of the one below it, slid from the top of the heap onto his side of the crowd. Kel took off his shades to read the gold words glinting on its side: Blue Grasshopper, Chinatown, San Francisco.

“Now, that’s what I call carrying promotion to the nth degree.” It didn’t prevent the back of his neck pricking as he moved in for a closer inspection. San Francisco?

McKay couldn’t be that dumb, surely, or that cheap. Could he?

The urge to take a gander at the address tag was blocked by a red floral shirt he recognized. The meaty fingers he’d seen lighting a cigarette captured the handle and pulled it away from the rest. He heard the slap of it against the guy’s bare calves as he hopped off the sidewalk toward the back of the bus, swiping the sweat off his brow through his hair as if the exertion was killing him.

“Hey! That’s mine.” The owner was feminine, unmistakably American and anything but happy.

Simultaneously, but not in order of importance, Kel watched Ms. Bronze-skin whip off her sunglasses. Her shocked gaze, bluer than a Tahitian lagoon, followed the red shirt, while her pink sunglasses tumbled from her hand, catching the light.

As their glances clashed, his body tensed, gearing itself to spring after the thief, then he remembered who he was and why he was there. Although he hadn’t moved an inch, Kel felt as if he’d hit a brick wall. A sensation every bit as painful as her swift expression of disappointment, coursed through him.

As the woman hotfooted it round her side of the vehicle, pride overcame caution. Dropping his suit carrier, he chased the good-luck-charm that wasn’t living up to its publicity.

She was fast but in trouble now; the guy outweighed her by more than a hundred pounds. Kel heard her yell as she ran, “Drop the case, you jerk, it’s mine.”

Kel was at least four paces behind them when she confronted the guy, taking up a fighting stance, hands karate style like miniature lethal weapons, as if anything that small could hurt.

He had to do something quick before she copped a lesson no amount of stretching would get rid of.

The thief yelped, dropping the case as though it burned before the woman had to follow through with her threat. Two fast paces later Kel grabbed the red collar and felt it rip in his hand as the chunky guy twisted out of his grasp, leaving his ill-gotten gains behind. Then, before Kel could grasp him again, he shambled off at a fast clip without looking back.

Kel could easily have overtaken him—hell, he ran like a red sofa on speed—but GDE business came first, no matter how beautiful the victim. His first reaction had been correct.

She was trouble.

As the woman straightened, he checked her over with his eyes and tossed what was left of the shirt collar away with a grin. “That’s the problem these days, nothing’s made to last. You all right?”

“I’d have managed.” Her features were tight, the fabulous blue eyes shuttered. The words “Without you” hung in the air like a film title on a theater marquee. He realized she’d seen him hit that wall. How was she to know that just this once he hadn’t let duty win. A first for him. Though, instead of squandering the occasion on her, he wished he’d spent it on Gordie.

“You want to watch it, lady. Acting as if you’re in some kung fu TV show could get you more than you bargained for. Someone might take you up on it, and then where would you be?”

He reached for the case, flicking the name tag over to read. She was too quick for him. No surprise, considering he was working under two handicaps—the lush, arousing scent of her body and the way her breasts fell forward, cupped by the knit of her crop top.

One thing for sure, she wasn’t wearing a bra.

She caught him looking.

Well hell, he was only human.

“Thanks, I’ll remember that,” she replied, voice cool as the drink he’d fancied earlier, especially with the ice in her eyes to chill it.

She curled her fingers round the handle, pulling it closer.

“Let me get that for you.”

“No problem, it has wheels.” She flicked a catch on the curve of the red monstrosity and conjured up a handle. The laptop case still in his hand was written off by a raised brow that made him feel roughly the same size. “Shouldn’t you be saving your own luggage before it disappears?”

He recognized a dismissal when he heard it. His carrier still where he’d abandoned it, he picked it up and realized she must have been watching him, as well. At least he’d been savvy enough not to damage the laptop. Gorgeous she may be, but he’d long ago given up abandoning his gear in a lost cause, or given the IT engineers who’d invented its programs cause for complaint.

That given, why did that look she’d shot him earlier still rankle? For sure, he wouldn’t disappoint her in the sack, but what man wanted to be needed just for the sex?

He joined the tail-end passengers, all too caught up in their own affairs to react to the contretemps. But on his way to the terminal, he noticed her shades in the gutter and picked them up. He wouldn’t mind another close-up of those cool blue eyes.

A vision startled him with its clarity. A hank of black hair twisting round one hand, to pull her closer, the other sliding under her crop top, bringing an end to another ice age.

Hell, a guy could dream, couldn’t he? That and no more.

Time to scrape the bottom of the barrel and see what floated to the surface.

Waiting at the boarding gate, the thought of how close she’d come to losing the package in her care bathed Ngaire in cold sweat. It was worth a fortune. The fear of not living up to the trust placed in her yawned at the back of her mind like a bottomless pit waiting for her to trip. By now it had been checked in and was secreted in the plane’s hold, safe while no one suspected its nature. The attempted theft today had to be a coincidence. She’d told no one but Leena of her plans. And her best friend would never let her down, not even for the million dollars Paul Savage had brandished under Ngaire’s nose. Savage thought her a fool for turning it down. Like a spoiled child he couldn’t imagine not getting his own way, yet Savage was as every bit an outlaw as the ones who once held up coaches saying, “Your money or your life.”

She’d chosen life. The money didn’t come into it.

Taking a long, cooling drink of orange juice, she scanned the passengers for the guy in the black-and-white shirt but couldn’t see him. So, why bother?

“Yeah, yeah,” she chided herself, knowing his features had made her heart jolt at first glance. One of those things you read about but never in a million years expected to happen.

Disillusionment had come hard on the heels of the first thrill spiking low in her belly. He was no different from all the rest.

Sure, she could take care of herself. She was a hapkido master, for heaven’s sake. No fragile rosebud ready for picking.

Then again, she yearned for just one man to treat her like that bud, even after discovering her talent. Was that why she hadn’t set him right when he’d patronized her attempt to regain her luggage? Annoying, yes, but she couldn’t have it both ways.

Even as he’d been telling her off, “You want to watch it, lady,” the timbre of his voice had made her shiver with desire. You mean lust, don’tcha? She’d been careful not to let it show and now she was kicking herself for pouting like a spoiled brat.

For real, the thief hadn’t been quite so certain her stance was all show and no substance. She’d caught a flicker of fear in his eyes as she faced up to him. Her rescuer had been the mugger’s last straw, sending his fat, sturdy legs into a Road-runner windmill.

The guy who’d made her heart leap from her breast would be in no doubt of her abilities by now, if she’d had to carry through and taken the bozo out. Shooting herself in the foot again by losing any chance of seeing a look in his eye that said she was special. Not superwoman special. Just the ordinary, everyday meeting of minds, attraction, desire and falling in love.

Foolish, when she’d never see him again. But for a moment, she’d looked, and wanted something more than the same old, same old. Her relationships all took a predictable cycle.

Me man, you wo…man.

Then bring out the role confusion. Me man, you…?

She was five-four and could down a two-hundred-and-fifty pound man with a flick of her wrist. What did she need a man for?

Ngaire had never yet come out with “Duh? Sex, dummy!” But she’d wanted to.

Surely there was one man in the world she couldn’t intimidate?

What she needed was someone with X-ray vision. Someone who could see through her soft black cotton do bock uniform pants and tunic to the flesh-and-blood woman underneath.

She remembered when their eyes met, how the crush scrambling to find their gear had melted away. For a brief moment there had been only her, only him.

Then she’d caught his fight-or-flight reaction. Ngaire knew the sensation well, adrenaline pumping hard, flowing out to the nerve endings and the body’s response. She never felt so alive as when she was afraid of death. And these days that was every time she let her mind wander.

He’d hesitated, sending her gratification on a steep downward slide weighed by chagrin.

So, she’d been wrong before and she’d be wrong again. No sense in putting herself through the wringer for a guy she’d exchanged less than a dozen words with. She’d never see him again.

“Mind if I sit here?”

Scratch the last statement.

He was here, and he wanted to sit at her table.

His eyes narrowed and the words, dark and dangerous took on new meaning. Ngaire’s heart began practicing rolls and break falls, beating its little self up against the barrier of her sternum. Stay cool. Remember, he hadn’t survived the cut in the macho stakes. She looked around, counted four empty tables. “No worries, help yourself.”

She’d known he was tall, but until he sat opposite she hadn’t had the pleasure of assessing the width of his shoulders. They made his chair look as if it came out of a kindergarten classroom. She could tell that every last bit of him, narrow waist and hips, broad chest, were in perfect proportion. And that was only the bits she could see. Maybe she should stop staring at him as if she’d escaped from someplace surrounded by high walls and barbed wire.

He’d bought a beer. The hands carrying it were large, palms wide, fingers long, blunt-tipped and workmanlike as he set down a dewy bottle already dripping rings onto the table. “Glad to see you’re none the worse for your adventure.”

“It was nothing, thanks to you. And there’s nothing to get over. I’ve had worse experiences.” Memory plucked a knife out of the past and laced it with pain.

Now, what had made her say that? On average, it took longer to refer to the most horrific incident in her life. Right about the time she got over worrying about taking her clothes off and showing her scars.

She shrugged it off with a quick piece of trivia. “Did you know that, worldwide, the odds of getting mugged are 260,463 to one?”

“I guess I do now.”

He grinned at her, making his dark, almost black eyes crinkle at the corners. He was the first honest-to-God guy she’d met with a Kirk Douglas dimple in his chin. Maybe that was why his mouth had a little curl to the lip that reminded her of someone.

Someone else. Hazy, dreamlike, the notion tugged at her mind though she couldn’t put a name to him.

“Of course the odds increase depending on where you live.”

“Bet you never thought you’d become a statistic in a little place like Tahiti.” He lifted the bottle to his mouth and drank.

It was unrealistic to envy an inanimate object. The bottle had no way of knowing how lucky it was. “Guess I’m now a three-time loser.”

His drink halted midway to the table. “I don’t know about the other two, but you didn’t lose this round. Better to say third time’s the charm.”

Charm? Dare she give any credence to that stupid good-luck sign on her case working? She felt like a dweeb carting it around, but it had been a condition of her trip. As if anyone in the South Seas would be interested in the whereabouts of the Blue Grasshopper? So they’d taken a ratty old building and done it up into a variety of bars, restaurants and nightclubs. That was only a smattering of the attractions in Chinatown.

When she didn’t answer, he said, “Jeez, I hope you don’t think I was minimizing your ability to look after yourself.”

His dark eyes glinted above high slashed cheekbones as he pushed a curl of thick dark hair from his forehead. Sheesh, he was disarming. Something about this man called to her, no matter that there wasn’t a hope in hell of this meeting leading to anything more.

“It’s just that I’m not very big, right?” she murmured, her voice as low as she’d learned to set her expectations.

They perked up at his “From where I’m sitting you look just about perfect. A real live doll.”

His top lip lifted in a half smile. The guy was hitting on her, she could tell. Pity the line wasn’t new, but it did make her smile. Men had to have a secret phone number that dished those lines out, so many a dollar.

The trouble with hope, it kept floating to the surface. “I have taken self-defense lessons for women.”

Taken them, taught them, what was the difference?

“What kind? Judo or karate?”

“Neither. Hapkido…” She took a slug of orange juice, anything to stop from talking. If she didn’t fill her mouth, her life story would come spilling out. Keep telling yourself that those muscles are more poster boy than superhero.

“That deserves kudos. Women should know how to defend themselves.” He stretched across to take her hand. “We didn’t exchange names. Mine’s Kel.”

Good grief, she was going to have to touch him. She put down her glass, wiped a palm that had gone sweaty on her pants, until she could no longer leave his hand floating in midair without looking as dweebish as her luggage.

No good pretending her hesitation had anything to do with knowing the average amount of germs on the human hand. It was the thought of ending up as a wet puddle melting all over his shoes.

Too late, she laid her hand in his. Held it a moment too long as the shock sent the blood rushing from her extremities to vital organs like her heart, which was pounding fit to burst. “Ngaire, I’m called Ngaire,” she repeated like an idiot with a few brain cells short of a mind.

“Now, I guess that’s spelled N-y-r-e-e?”

“No, N-g-a-i-r-e.”

“That’s Maori, isn’t it? I thought you were an American.”

He leaned closer, interested, maybe too interested. And, with the response he’d wrung out of her gone-haywire body, dangerous. Before she knew it she’d be spilling her guts about the package she had to deliver. Too dangerous.

She shrugged, dropping her gaze to hide the lie. “I guess my mother read it in a book.” A book with her grandmother’s name in the flyleaf.

She decided to turn the tables, ask questions and let him do the talking while she got ready to leave. “Are you a native of New Zealand?”

“Yes, but it’s been a long time since I was home.” Kel put the bottle back to his lips and took a long swallow.

The movement in his throat, the earthy slide of his Adam’s apple while he downed the rest of his beer in one, hypnotized her. Keep away from there, girl, she scolded herself. This isn’t a pleasure trip you’re on. It’s more important than sex. A life depended on it.

Her own.

Leaving her unfinished juice on the table, she stood. “I need to freshen up. You have a nice visit back home. Bye, now.”

He stood. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“I doubt it. We’re just two planes who had a near miss, never to waggle wings again.”

“Take care, now.” He held out his hand. It hurt to ignore it, but the cost of touching him was way too high.

“Don’t worry, I will.” She’d take care not to run into him again before her plane left. Ngaire glanced around, her eyes seeking the nearest rest room and safety. It was one thing to shake a man off physically, emotionally it was a whole other ball game. She didn’t need anyone taking her mind off her goal. That track led to trouble.

Kel’s time was running out. A pleasure though it had been talking to Ngaire as he gave the other passengers the once-over, his target needed identifying before he got onboard that plane. Not that her back view wasn’t as easy on the eye as the front as she strode away with her small navy day pack swaying above her hips.

Ngaire’s unwitting remark about near misses reduced his sex life to a metaphor. Brief encounters were his specialty, a quick fumble beneath the covers, a halfhearted satiating of the soul, then back to work. That’s how he liked it, with nothing to come between him and his career—no wife, no family, not even a relationship. Not anymore.

Yeah, he had no regrets about watching her walk away. Not that she would be alone for long. Something about her set men’s mouths drooling. Even the guy on the phone broke off his conversation, holding the receiver at chest level as he watched her go by.

“Thank you, Ngaire,” Kel muttered as an idea struck him that put a wide cat-that-got-the-pigeon grin on his face. She’d given him the perfect solution simply by walking out on him.

He didn’t feel so bad now about the distraction. One look at her braid swinging behind her chair, like a come-hither signal, and he’d been lost, driven to speak to her.

Having rescued her sunglasses from the gutter seemed the perfect excuse, but the second he got within sniffing distance of her honeyed scent, all had been forgotten.

It was her eyes, he thought, as he opened his cell phone. Those blue irises, with their unusual tinge of green, were out of kilter with her skin and hair coloring. The long lashes framing them made them look as if a coal miner had set them in her face. He knew she was American, she’d told him so, but there was something exotic, different, to the cast of her features, as if they’d been culled from different parts of the world and put together to make her look like a houri, all temptation and forbidden delights.

But enough speculating. She had it right, they’d never meet again. Unless they were on the same flight. Nah, the gods couldn’t be that kind, or that cruel.

Kel punched the Faa’a airport’s number into the high-tech pad of the cell phone and asked for the information desk. Once the clerk came on line he fixed his problem by asking her to page Mr. Two Feathers McKay, traveling on flight ATN 104.

Simple.

The best plans always were. All he had to do now was wait and see which man in the passenger lounge answered the call.

The announcement filled the terminal for the third time, and still no one had moved. The best laid plans, et cetera…

He began sweating on it.

From the corner of his eye he caught sight of Ngaire, pack in hand, her braid like a pendulum counting the seconds as she headed straight for the nearest hospitality phone. In no time at all, Kel heard her incredulous, “Hello. You wanted me?”

Kel hung up.

Yeah, he’d wanted her, but not anymore. Now he knew what the initial N. stood for. Ngaire.

Ngaire Two Feathers McKay.

He’d aced her features: Maori, Native American and Scottish, an eclectic mix and a damn beautiful one. She reminded him of a pup he’d had as a kid. Bitzer, he’d called it. Cute as all hell. But the moment his back was turned, it would creep up and sink its little, sharp teeth into the back of his heel.

So, Ngaire had rung his bell and he hated her for it. Hated being wrong about her. But she was wrong, too.

She would be seeing him again.

Chapter 2

Ngaire couldn’t believe she was here in the flesh instead of her imagination. As the plane circled before landing she’d had her nose glued to the window, would have been halfway through the thing if she’d been able to open it.

Paradise, her grandfather had called it as he’d told her stories of his time here as a GI during World War Two. From on high it had all looked so beautiful, the sea blue, the lakes silver, the snow-capped peaks like models from some school project. This was where George Two Feathers had met her grandmother, this land of myth and legend. Like the ones he’d read her from books her grandmother had brought to America. They’d been her fairy tales, and the one that leapt to mind was the Maori god Maui, and fishing up the North Island using a whale’s jawbone as a hook. Ngaire did a mental eye roll as she headed for the escalator down to immigration, grinning wide enough to make her jaw ache.

“Kia ora.”

Ngaire handed her passport to the immigration officer, wishing she could return her greeting without making a mishmash of the language. “Hi.”

Her passport was stamped New Zealand and passed back to her with “Enjoy your stay.”

“Thanks, I will.”

Less than fifteen minutes later Ngaire’s case went through the X-ray machine. She caught the operator’s frown as his chair swiveled away from the monitor, pointing something out to the customs officer towering over the end of the conveyer belt.

“Is there a problem?” Pretending she hadn’t a notion what might have caught his attention, she smiled, blanking out the urge to wipe her palms.

“Did you pack this case yourself?” He looked down his long nose at her, grim as an Easter Island statue.

“Yes, before I left Moorea this morning.” She wasn’t fluffy enough to play it sweet; more brown sugar than candy floss, she stuck to being pleasant, just a woman enjoying a holiday in the South Pacific.

“Open it for me, please?”

It was stupid, but her first reaction was relief that she’d packed all her undies in the pocket. Darn stupid, to worry more about watching his hands slide through her silk thongs than what she knew he would find.

Her glance spun around the Customs hall as fast as her fingertips twirled the numbers of the lock. Pleased to find Kel wasn’t there to witness her humiliation, when she’d done dialing in the codes she turned the clasps toward the customs officer, leaving him to open the case.

As he worked, her mind listed every souvenir she’d bought, dismissing them all as trash alongside what she carried.

There could be only one thing he was after.

As her eyes lifted she caught the inquisitive stare of the elegant French woman she’d been seated beside during the flight and felt herself color. She’d envied the other woman’s cool panache on the plane, knowing she’d never achieve its like in a million years. Such things were bred in the bone, and each of her hodgepodge of ancestors was still fighting for top billing, unable to decide if she was Native American, Maori or Scots.

Her ears picked out the rustle of bubble wrap, drawing her gaze to the officer’s hands. He’d gotten down to the layer where she’d packed her black do bok. She didn’t know why she’d brought it except for the security it represented. Heart jumping to her throat, she watched him untie the black belt with its gold insignia proclaiming her status as a hapkido master.

“Stop!” The command left her lips before she could prevent it, earning her a scowl from the guy with his fingers through the loops of her belt and a muffled curse from the guy on the monitor who’d knocked his papers to the floor.

“If you’re carrying illegal goods into the country, too late. You should have worried about it before you entered New Zealand.”

“It’s not that. I don’t mind you searching. I’d just prefer you did it somewhere private.” Her chest heaved as she took a deep breath and held it, waiting for a reply to her request.

Without answering or permitting a crack to soften his stony features, he signaled another officer, one in a supervisory position stationed close to the exit. A quiet word in the other guy’s ear and her case was refastened. “Follow Team Leader Bennett. He’ll take you to a private room. Do you wish to be accompanied by a female officer?”

Visions of a body search made her feel she’d lost everything from the knees down, but she brazened it out. “That won’t be necessary. I can explain everything.”

He didn’t say he’d heard it all before, but she’d bet anything the T-shirt under his uniform had that written across the chest, probably in capital letters. Without another word she followed the guy carrying her chintzy-looking suitcase out of the Customs hall.

The first time she’d seen it, with its stupid good-luck symbol, she’d known its luck had been meant for someone else. That the owners of the Blue Grasshopper hadn’t meant for her to win their contest for the trip to the South Pacific, or the luggage they’d thrown in with the prize.

Kel had wedged himself in a corner with a good view of the customs area while he spoke on his cell phone. “Where to now?”

The answer made him straighten, banging his elbow against the wall. “The Hilton? Are you sure? She doesn’t look the type.”

It wasn’t that he minded going upmarket, but it didn’t make sense. Most couriers he’d taken out were more concerned with blending into the woodwork. The heat invading his bloodstream confirmed the only place Ngaire would blend was an X-rated movie. His mind distracted by lust, he almost missed the rest of his instructions. “Tell me you’re joking?”

But his contact wasn’t.

They’d booked him on a guided tour of New Zealand. Seven days with his every move up for inspection by a busload of tourists. What was the cartel up to, transporting their courier that way?

There could be only one solution, kiss-and-tell was to be dropped off at some tourist destination. And if he didn’t stick like glue to Ngaire Two Feathers McKay, she’d be making the drop down some dark cave with glowworms as the only witnesses.

His gut tightened. He’d known that woman for trouble the first time he saw her, and he’d been right. How the hell was he to stay up close and personal and still keep his hands off her?

From the moment Team Leader Bennett flung open the door on the wrong side of the glass screens shielding the arrivals area, all Ngaire’s bodily apertures began displaying withdrawal symptoms. Hardly surprising since the first person she saw was a female officer who looked as if she enjoyed her work. One hint of snapping latex and Ngaire would be outta there.

Heck, she could handle all of them, no problem, including the big guy sitting behind the desk. But she had a feeling some countries got a mite upset with visitors who threw their officials against the walls, even walls that were as bare and gray as a prison cell.

“This lady’d prefer her things searched in private,” said Bennett. From his expression as he thumped her case onto the desk, he thought she was acting just too precious for words.

It sat there unopened while the handsome, copper-skinned officer with Manu Pomare on his name tag flipped through her passport. A quick read, since this was her first time out of the States. Hope sparked at the sight of his Maori name; surely he would understand that her reasons for leaving her precious cargo off her declaration form weren’t simply to avoid paying duty.

Finished, Pomare looked up and asked her, “What brings you Down Under, Ms. McKay?”

“I won a quiz show sponsored by a local nightspot. I’m a trivia nut and…” Ngaire could see her excuse didn’t cut any ice with the guy in charge, and her explanation stumbled on her lips. “First prize was a trip to the South Pacific, Australia and Singapore.”

A quick glance showed the prize impressed no one. Pomare flicked a finger and thumb at her suitcase. The sound of his fingernail hitting the lock filled the lumbering silence left by her boast. “And what are you carrying that needs to be hidden from the general public?”

“Open the case and I’ll show you.”

It took only a couple of seconds to remove her black do bok, the bubble wrap with its brown sticky tape would take slightly longer. She loosened one corner and pulled off a strip. Five more to go. Hesitation stilled her hands as her heartbeat gave a hiccup. Had the warm pulsing sensation she’d experienced when wrapping the parcel been more than just her imagination?

And had the startled yelp from the guy in Tahiti as he dropped her case come from pain rather than fear?

“Here,” Pomare said, offering her a letter opener.

“No, thanks. I can’t use anything that might damage it.”

The final layer under the bubble wrap was a white silk scarf more than fifty years old, yet more than two hundred years younger than the treasure hiding in its folds. This very scarf had been wrapped lovingly by her grandmother before she set out on her sea journey to the States. A silken cocoon to protect the only physical piece of her heritage she’d taken with her.

Ngaire pulled the scarf aside, the backs of her shaking knuckles skimming fifteen inches of paddle-shaped jade, careful of its cutting edge. She’d always known her inheritance was special. Magic. She’d been a child when her grandfather had spoken of the way the jade had darkened in the days before and after the deaths of her father and grandmother, and how the mottled spots had turned red as if flushed with blood.

She’d seen the phenomenon herself, seen the changes in the mere before her mother died. But, no warnings for her mother to please be careful had made any difference or stopped a car from ramming into her mother’s in the fog.

Less than four months ago George Two Feathers, master carpenter and carver, had been hard at work building display stands for an exhibition of Pacific Rim artifacts and weapons in the Halberg Museum.

In a casual conversation with one of the curators, George had mentioned the greenstone mere the family owned. The mere’s bloody history and the belief that an ancestral spirit lived inside it had intrigued the curator and her grandfather had been persuaded to loan it as part of the display.

It had been a curiosity when the mere had looked suffused with blood where everyone could see, and it earned a couple of inches in the local newspaper. The day George Two Feathers fell off scaffolding and broke his neck, the mere became front-page news.

That was how the mere came to the notice of Paul Savage.

The museum was high on the philanthropist’s list of charitable donations, topped only by places like the San Francisco opera house and the Savage Art Gallery, which his great-grandfather had endowed in the thirties. He was old money and never let anyone forget it. And the words borderline Mafia were never spoken aloud. At least, not to his face. Which meant her refusal to sell him the mere could make life downright hazardous. And now that she’d had time to think it over, Savage could be connected to the man who’d hijacked her case.

As Ngaire touched the greenstone, she felt it pulse with life. Then again, it might simply be the rush of blood through her veins. She shrugged off the eerie feeling of icy fingers counting the notches in her spine. Soon you’ll think you hear spooky music, she chided herself. It was one thing to believe the greenstone could become darkened with blood, another to imbue it with a heartbeat.

The original leather thong was still looped through the hole carved in the handle. Slipping her hand through the narrow strip, Ngaire lifted the paddle-shaped artifact above the desk from its resting place on the silken shawl and repeated its name. “Te Ruahiki.” She named the warrior chieftain, the Rangatira, whose spirit was said to have entered the mere on his death.

For a deadly weapon, the greenstone mere had a deceptive beauty, its sharp polished edges pale and almost see-through. It was as if all the light in the room had been sucked into the translucent green jade to produce an otherworldly glow. As if it knew that after all its years away from Aotearoa, New Zealand, it had come home.

And the theme tune from Jaws would start playing any second now. Get a grip, girl.

She saw Bennett’s jaw drop as if that would prevent him blinking his surprise. “A greenstone mere.”

“And not any ordinary one,” Manu Pomare said reverently as he got to his feet. “That’s inanga greenstone. Look at the hours of work in it, and the intricate carving on the handle. I’ve never seen another like it.”

As if fascinated, he reached out to touch, his gaze sliding from the mere to Ngaire as she swung it away from his hand.

His voice firmed. “How on earth did this come into your possession? There’s been a ban on exporting Maori artifacts for more than twenty years. The only ones to leave the country have either been stolen or smuggled out.”

“Whoa! Back up there. I’m no thief! No smuggler, either, unless you count bringing Te Ruahiki back home where it belongs. I do have letters of provenance, also one from William Ruawai, the chief of my grandmother’s subtribe.

“She was the last of her family and living in Auckland during the war when she met my grandfather, a GI, and part of the American contingent in New Zealand. After they married, naturally she took Te Ruahiki with her to the States. That would have been 1946, long before the law came into force.”

Bennett and the female officer crowded the desk. Ngaire’s shoulder ached from holding out the mere, but she hoped the sight would do more to further her cause than laying it down. “Can you understand why I wanted to reveal it in private? William warned me that some people will do anything to get their hands on it.”

Paul Savage included. The man had become obsessed with owning the Te Ruahiki. Obsessed, it seemed, with being forewarned of his death. She remembered the gleam in his eyes the last time he’d made her an offer, thinking she’d never refuse such a large sum.

He’d been wrong.

Wrapping the mere inside the silk scarf once again, she eyed the others in the room one by one. “Apart from William Ruawai, there are only four people in New Zealand who know what I’m carrying, and they’re all in this room.”

Thirty minutes had passed since Ngaire had been led away. Thirty minutes of talking and persuading them she wasn’t running a black-market scam, until finally a call to William Ruawai in the South Island had secured the release of herself and the mere.

Thirty minutes, time enough for all the other passengers on her flight to be in Auckland by now. No, she was wrong. One still remained.

A rush of overwhelming tiredness had replaced the excitement she’d felt on her arrival at Auckland. There was much more to the mere’s return to the land of her ancestors than she could have explained and still hoped to be believed.

Maybe one person in that cold gray office would have believed her life depended on the trip she would make to the South Island. Yeah, for all his modern haircut and clothes, Manu Pomare would fit right into a painting of a Maori warrior. All that was missing was the moko, the face tattoo.

He would know about breaking a tapu, and the curse it could bring down on a family. But would he believe that if her quest wasn’t successful then she only had six more weeks to live?

Ngaire didn’t know whether to be pleased or worried as she saw Kel approach. Her first reaction had been a slight lifting of her spirits at the sight of a face she knew, followed by the lead-weighted anxiety of wondering if Paul Savage had sent Kel to follow her. Yet, slow starter or not, he had tackled the thief.

A laugh, half hysterical, half foolish, forced its way through lips dry from talking her way out of a tense situation. It had made her see spooks where there couldn’t possibly be any.

It was hardly logical to blame Kel for her problems, yet she couldn’t rid herself of the feeling that everything in her world had been working perfectly until she’d laid eyes on him.

She turned her face away, pretending she hadn’t noticed him, hadn’t noticed the supple grace of his stride, or that he looked remarkably fit and cheerful for someone who’d sat in the same cramped seats as herself for more than six hours.

Weakening, she let her eyes draw back to him. Darn, he was still coming her way. The air left her lungs in one short, sharp huff. Disapproval, or a way of releasing the tingling feeling inside her? She couldn’t make up her mind.

Kel was an outstandingly attractive guy. Some woman’s dream man. “Handsome is as handsome does.” The thought produced a picture of him hesitating as her case disappeared, rather than his sexy smile. Why couldn’t she shake the feeling he had let her down even before they met?

The glint in his eye told her she would have to be rude to get rid of him. But she couldn’t very well say “Beat it! I need time to get my mind round the assumption that one of my ancestors is alive and well, if only in spirit, and I’m carrying him inside my case.”

The feeling of having a stopwatch running down the seconds of her life wasn’t quite as new. She’d learned to live with it, which might qualify as an oxymoron when what had really happened was that she’d discovered she’d likely die with it.

“So, Ngaire, we meet again,” he said, stopping less than three feet away, not quite invading her space but hovering on the outskirts.

Again, his crooked smile tugged at a memory, a bittersweet one that hinted at the refrain, long ago and far away. She refused to let it affect her. Refused to let hope surface where there was nothing to sustain it, except tiredness and a feeling of being alone and vulnerable. So she answered, “What I’m wondering is, why? I thought you’d have taken off ages ago. Were there no shuttles into the city?”

“It was a question of having to check in with my travel agent. All my arrangements were made in such a rush that I didn’t know which hotel she’d booked. Just one of the drawbacks of acting on the spur of the moment.”

“So you’re all fixed up now?”

“Yeah, but I was hoping to catch you before I took off. What took you so long?”

His teeth cut a white slash in his features. Another time, another place, that smile would have made her toes curl. But too quickly it disappeared as he came out with “They catch you trying to smuggle something into the country?”

Ngaire felt heat flame in her face as her sense of humor took a nosedive. His joke struck closer to the mark than was comfortable. “Just a small problem with my declaration form. I put a cross in the wrong place and the customs guy took some convincing of it. This is my first overseas trip and some of those questions are pretty ambiguous.”

“Your first? I’d never have guessed.” His gaze skimmed her body, breaching the space she’d thought protected her. “You look pretty experienced to me.”

Thanks for the nudge. Kel was so hot a woman was apt to lose her perspective. She shrugged. “A jerk’s a jerk no matter where you find him.”

Let him make what he would of that remark.

Ngaire accompanied the statement with a stare that should have made him back off, but he was obviously too full of his own appeal to take the hint.

“Tell me about it. In my line I must have met them all.”

“And what is your line?” Apart from hitting on strange women in airports. Tiredness, it seemed, had caught up with her again, making her feel disgruntled.

“I’m a sales rep for a software company.”

“Well, nice to meet you, Kel, but I’m not in the market for software.” Or soft looks. Or anything else he was selling, even if his eyes did look like melting chocolate and she was a chocoholic from way back. From this moment on, she was a recovering one.

“No problem. I’m on leave at the moment. Taking a vacation around my old stomping grounds before I head back to Australia. I cover the Pacific Rim and Southeast Asia.”

“Did you know Australia has twenty-five different varieties of fleas? More than any other country in the world.”

“No, I didn’t. It’s not something I’ve personally had to deal with. Now, snakes on the other hand—”

“Don’t get me started on those.” She shivered. “Nasty things, thank heavens there are none in New Zealand.” Only two-legged ones. “Just as well, because the way I feel at the moment, the only thing that could make me run is the sound of a hot shower.”

“How about having dinner with me after your shower?”

Kel must be good at his job. Tenacity was a big requirement for a sales rep. She’d thought she’d made herself pretty plain without being in-your-face rude. “I don’t think so. The only place I’m going after my shower is bed. And no, I don’t want company.”

“Too bad, I know all the best places…for dinner, that is.”

Despite her weakened condition she averted her gaze from Kel’s melting eyes and too sexy mouth and caught sight of a shuttle pulling up outside the terminal. “That’s my ride, I’ve got to run.”

“I’d better give you back your rose-colored glasses, then. You’re starting to sound as if you need them.”

She gasped with delight as he dangled the pink shades in front of her. She’d thought they were gone for good.

Guilt dropped into her conscience, cold and heavy and weighing on her. Her shoulders jinked slightly from side to side, as if that would shift the blame. It didn’t.

“It was kind of you to wait. I’m sorry if I seemed less than sociable, but you know how it is. It’s been a long day. All I want to do is find my hotel.”

“No worries, you didn’t offend me. Which hotel are you in?”

“The Hilton.” Ngaire felt uncomfortable saying the name. Every time she did, it sounded too much like boasting for a girl who lived in the blurred area where Chinatown and North Beach merged. But it was all part of her prize, and she wasn’t one to look a gift horse in the teeth even if they were gold plated.

“The Hilton? Great! That’s where I’m staying.” He looked over his shoulder at the shuttle just starting to fill up outside. “I can ride along with you. It’ll be fun.”

Too frazzled to disagree, Ngaire simply went with the flow as his laptop case changed hands and he took her elbow to accompany her to their transport. Her heartbeat kept time with the wheels of her suitcase as it clicked, clicked, clicked across the tiled floor. Now, what were the odds that they’d both be booked into the Hilton? Neither of them looked to be of the platinum-card variety. But then, looks could be deceiving.

Garnet Chaly eased his slim backside into the chair, a hand on each arm as if it might rock under him. The illusion brought about by the fact that all he could see below him was water. The Waitemata Harbour that the Auckland Hilton perched over.

Running a hand through silver hair just long enough for studied elegance, he leaned back in the chair. Surveying the hotel room, Chaly rubbed his thumb against his fingertips with a shivery whisper of skin against skin that he found soothing. Outside the window, the lowering sun had turned the sea silver, as if the Hilton had ordered it to match its decor of pale gray, blond wood and white. Luxurious, yet minimalist, like a sleek ocean-going yacht. The company was doing Jellic well this time around.

Chaly crossed his ankle over one knee and twitched the cuff of his black pants level with his socks as he heard the click of a keycard sliding through the slot in the door.

As it swung open, Kel filled the gap between the doorjambs, silhouetted against the light from the corridor, but there was no mistaking the high-bridged nose or the cheekbones that made his Dalmatian heritage unmistakable.

Instead of looking into the room, he faced right and gave a wave, not turning until after he heard the sound of a door closing nearby. Shifting sideways, he eased the bag over his shoulder and into the room. He was a big bugger, rough around the edges when he needed to be, but tonight he looked like a beach bum. “Aloha, Kel. Where’s the luau?”

Kel’s suit carrier hit the stand provided. “I know, the shirt needs changing, but I didn’t want the target out of sight for however long it took. One of many drawbacks to working without a partner. Have you fixed me up with a new one?”

Kel threw him a swift, hopeful glance as he placed his laptop bag on the writing desk. Its spindly metal legs barely looked able to support its top, never mind all the gear Chaly knew his agent would be carrying.

“None available. Training new agents takes time, and Gordie Tan was the third casualty in as many months. There’s been a lot of negligence doing the rounds, watch it’s not catching.”

Hands fisted on his hips, Kel prowled toward the window and stared at the water. Without turning he said, “I bet that just cuts you up.”

“All my agents are important. Without them the South Pacific would be the hellhole it became after Cook navigated these waters. Meanwhile we all have to pick up the slack, you included. That said, I’m only a call away if you need me.”

Hiding his face couldn’t disguise the emotion choking Kel. Chaly’s fingertips moved faster against his thumb. Damn Jellic, a perpetual do-gooder. He’d always been a sentimental fool. Hell, the only reason he’d joined GDE was to right all the perceived wrongs his father had done. Chaly knew all about Jellic’s father. A man who’d driven off the top of a cliff rather than face the consequences of being a bent cop caught dealing drugs.

His sister was similarly maimed by their family history. He’d heard that Jo McQuaid Stanhope and her brand-new husband, a millionaire, had started digging around in the past, trying to prove the father innocent. Idealists, they never could be happy with just the money.

With the sea and the islands of the gulf blocking in the rest of the window frame, Kel worried at the stubble on his chin as if considering an apology for his rudeness. Too easy. No way was Chaly going to give him a chance to back down or pull out. Knowing Jellic the way he did, he solved his problem by going for the jugular.

“If you can’t handle the pressure, say so now and I’ll take the job on myself. I hear the target’s built. Maybe I could get myself some of that.”

Chaly’s silky sarcasm relieved the tension. He resisted giving away his thoughts by shaking his head. Hell, he could take on Jellic’s job, no sweat. But Kel could never do his until he learned how to spell dispensable.

“I never said I couldn’t cope, but a bloody bus tour! How crappy is that? Do you know where they take you to on those tours? The Waitomo Caves, for God’s sake! Walks through the rain forest. She could ditch the papers anyplace and we’d never find them. It’s obvious now she’s only carrying the formula, because they checked her out at customs and didn’t find anything.”

The satisfaction of getting his way stuttered to a halt. “You’re sure they didn’t find anything?”

“She’s here, isn’t she? Right next door.” Kel started unzipping the bag holding his laptop. “Ngaire said it was only because she’d marked the wrong square on her declaration form.”

“Ngaire?”

“You didn’t really think I’d been wasting my time?” Quickly opening his laptop case, Kel palmed a small device from one of the pockets, then walked to the dividing door separating his room from the one next door. He opened it quietly, attaching the electronic gadget to the other door, listened for a moment, then tried the handle. “Locked. She’s having a shower. I’ll check out her gear later.”

“Don’t get caught. If she knows we’re on to her we might as well pack up now, as we’ll never know her contact or the drug cartel behind them.” For the first time since Jellic arrived Chaly felt a need to stand, get on the same level.

“You trying to teach me to suck eggs?”

“Sure, and spiders have wings. I’m just reminding you of the importance of this mission. If kiss-and-tell reaches Asia, we’ll never be able to halt its production.”

“How can you be sure this is the only copy of the formula?”

“I’m sure. Dead sure, and that’s all you need to know. Whoever knows the formula can hold the world at ransom. You know how easy it is to slip ecstasy into someone’s drink, do it with kiss-and-tell and they’ll be paying for it the rest of their life. It’s either that or death.”

“Then let me go in there now and search her luggage.”

“Do you really think it’s that easy? No country in the world will prosecute her for carrying a piece of paper with a formula written on it. We have to strike at the optimum moment and take out her contact. I doubt if he’ll be as clean as she appears to be. We need to know who we’re up against. There hasn’t been a whisper of the outfit’s name on the streets, only some scuttlebutt about the drug. And there’s always someone who thinks he can take a rumor and turn it into a profit, so you might not be the only one with an eye to the main chance where Ms. McKay’s concerned. It has to be one of the triads. But which one?

“They’re holding all the cards and keeping them close to their chest.”

“So take it now and let’s be done!” Kel exclaimed.

“No. You’ll have to steal the formula eventually. Whatever happens, the secrets of kiss-and-tell must end up in our hands.”

“That reminds me.” Kel produced a plastic bag from the case on the desk and tossed it in Chaly’s direction. There was a matchbook inside.

“What’s this for?”

“My fingerprints will be on there, and with a bit of luck, the prints of the guy who tried to steal Ngaire’s case outside Faa’a airport. Maybe he was an opportunist, but with the amount of Gucci luggage in the same pile I’d say he’d targeted hers.”

“This is the one time I hoped not to be proved correct quite so easily. At least now we know we’re not the only ones on her trail. Stay close to her. Hell, sleep with her if necessary. I’m sure it wouldn’t take much for a guy like you to pull her. And for God’s sake, take care they don’t take out the courier before we do.”

“The target thinks she can take care of herself—she’s taken self-defense lessons,” Jellic snorted. The first bit of humor Chaly had heard in his voice since he arrived.

“That won’t help against a gun.”

“Speaking of which, did you bring what I need?”

Chaly approached the bedside table and opened the drawer. “See for yourself.”

There, lying beside the Bible, was a Smith & Wesson Chief’s Special Airweight with a two-inch barrel and filed-down trigger to prevent it from catching on his boot, plus a load of ammunition.

Jellic joined him, picking up the ankle holster. “Just the thing for a trek through the rain forest. Are my vouchers for the tour here as well?”

Outside the sun was going down and the room looked as if it was filled with gray water. Chaly switched on the bedside lamp and encouraged it to drain away. “That’s them in the wallet with the New Zealand dollars. Your itinerary’s there, too.”

His stomach pinched as he watched Kel flip through the papers. Time to eat. “Now that you’re armed and dangerous, I’ll take my leave.”

At the door he turned, his fingers on the handle. Jellic was stripping his black floral shirt off. He stood wearing only his crumpled slacks, bathed in the light from the lamp like a modern version of a white knight. Maybe the target would take a shine to him. Chaly believed in using any ammunition he had.

“One more thing, Jellic, try to stay out of trouble.”

“Don’t worry, boss. I already made that decision for myself. And believe me, I’m going to do my damnedest to stay out of her… Slip of the tongue. I meant trouble.”

Chapter 3

Next morning, Kel took a chance to give his sister Jo a call while he knew Ngaire was in the shower. He didn’t have her home number, but she was sure to be at work by eight. Jo was the baby of the family, the only girl, and probably had had a rougher upbringing than she might have if their mother had lived. He and his brothers had teased the hell out of her. Since Jo was scarcely three inches shorter than him and had been a cop for more years than he could remember, he’d think twice about doing it now.

With Jo’s phone ringing in his ear he kept an eye on the picture on his computer screen. This came courtesy of the fisheye lens he’d slipped through the lock of the connecting door last night. Fiber optics had come a long way. The reception was almost as good as being there. Almost.

So why did it make his skin itch to watch her every move? It had never troubled his conscience when he’d used the setup before. Why did he feel like a voyeur in this instance?

“Detective Jellic.” His sister answered at almost the same moment he saw Ngaire leave the ensuite wearing only a towel.

He had to swallow before he could answer. “Hey, sis, what’s with the name? I heard you’d got married, congratulations.”

“Is that you, Kel? Where are you?”

“Yeah, it’s me, and I’m in Au-ck-land.” The name of his hometown came out mangled as Ngaire dropped her towel. She was tanned all over, and low on her belly a few silvery scars that looked like a botched appendix operation stood out against the bronze skin.

“Yes, I’m married, but I don’t use my name on the job. The powers-that-be have a problem with the wife of one of the Stanhopes using her real name. Too dangerous, they reckon. A temptation to kidnappers. So, when can we meet? I can’t believe you’re home after all these years. Have you spoken with Kurt yet? I’m sure your twin would appreciate a call.”

Ngaire stepped into her black lace thong. Turning her back to the camera, she skimmed a finger between the silky narrow strip and her rounded buttocks, adjusting it to fit.

His mouth went dry as his mind imagined his fingers doing the same. Finally his sister prompted him to answer. “Kel, are you still there?”

“Uh, yeah. Sorry, I got distracted.” More than that, he felt embarrassed, as though standing talking to his sister with a hard-on pressing against his zipper put him beyond the pale.

“No. Kurt and I haven’t been in touch.”

At least not in any way he could explain to Jo. He’d been feeling his twin’s pain for more than a year now and knew that though Kurt’s body had healed from the accident on Mt. Everest where two of his friends lost their lives, his mind was a long way from getting over it.

“I won’t be able to see you this time, I’m on the job.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any point in me asking what job?”

“Right, sis, but don’t worry, I’m not crossing into your territory.” The hardest part of his work was not being able to discuss it with his family. The only one he couldn’t completely hide things from was Kurt. The link between them went both ways, like one of those old phones they’d made as kids with a tin can at each end and a string carrying vibrations.

“I guess I’ll have to take your word for that.”

As he began to answer Jo, Ngaire started dressing and robbed him of speech. He’d been sure Ngaire didn’t wear a bra, and now he knew for certain as she slipped a baby-blue T-shirt over her head. It wasn’t as short as the crop top she’d worn yesterday, but as it barely covered her waist, and she’d still to put her pants on, it did nothing to help his predicament, which was rock-hard.

Seemed his sister had taken his heavy breathing and sighs as something else. “Well, you can’t blame me for being skeptical. I’m a cop, it comes with the job. I wish we could meet, though. I really wanted to speak to you about Dad.”

One leg at a time, Ngaire’s oh-so-tempting skin disappeared from view behind navy capri pants. “Thank God!”

“What?”

He realized Jo had thought his heartfelt exclamation was meant for her and quickly turned it to fit his feelings about his father. “I mean, thank God we can’t meet, because he’s the last person I want to talk to you or anyone else about.”

“The situation isn’t going to go away, Kel. You have to face it some time. I’m sure Kurt would agree.”

“Leave him out of it. Kurt knows my feeling on this better than anyone else.” The screen showed Ngaire gathering up a few things, then she disappeared from view inside the wardrobe. What seemed like an age later, she reappeared holding her small navy day pack and a light nylon yellow raincoat.

“So, have you been in touch with him? Did you know he was living near Queenstown?”

“No, but I knew he was depressed. I thought it was because of his accident. Talk about shades of masochism, what’s he doing surrounding himself with mountains?”

“He’s building a lodge down that way to cater to skiers in the winter and climbers in the summer.”

“Damn, it’s worse than I thought.” He knew instinctively that Kurt had no intention of ever climbing again, so what the hell was his twin up to? The sight of Ngaire opening her bedroom door brought his speculation to a halt. “Gotta go. Talk to you on the way back and we’ll sort out Kurt.”

He slipped one foot, then the other into his boots, pulling them up blind as he checked the clock on the bedside table, then lifted the cell phone that Chaly had left beside the wallet and gun. It only took a second to straighten his khaki pants over his boots and cover the S & W in its holster.

He allowed himself another minute to shut down the computer while he removed the lens from next door, because of an inborn belief that people would as soon take a shortcut as not, housemaids and himself included. That minute and the few others it would take him to search her room should give Ngaire time to descend the five floors to the restaurant for the breakfast included in the tour package.

Kel punched the requisite numbers into his cell phone on the walk to the elevator. He’d found nothing in Ngaire’s luggage but some underwear, and that had made him feel a regular letch as he pawed his way through it with the scent she wore floating up from a pile of silk fancies. The clothes she’d hung up in the wardrobe were easier on his concentration, and though his search was swift, it was thorough and there was no evidence of the formula.

“Heartbreaker,” he said, giving his code name to control. Gordie’s idea, because Kel pulled the girls yet brushed them aside.

Heartbroken would have been more appropriate, but he hadn’t told Gordie that. His buddy had thought it funny, but with him gone the joke had worn thin. There was no room for relationships in his life; his work didn’t lend itself to anything permanent. If he’d discovered anything about love it was that the two Ds, death and divorce, would take care of it for him.

“Anything new?” He listened as the guy on the other end gave him what little information Chaly had already passed on. This assignment had him fumbling around in a fog, half blind. Whoever said “No news is good news” was in a different line of work.

“No, nothing to report at this end. She had room service, no calls in or out and went to bed early.” Almost naked.

“A woman, huh? I’ll add that to what I’ve got here.”

“Right. I’ve just made a fruitless search of her room. Whatever she’s carrying she has it on her. I’ll be out most of the day. No contact unless it’s an emergency. I’ll have company. Heartbreaker signing off until 2200 hours.”

He was the only one waiting, and was amazed when the elevator arrived empty. No distractions. Nothing to stop him questioning the unfamiliar sensation curling in his gut.

Guilt? That would be a new one. It never bothered him spying on the people he investigated. They were the scum of the earth and asked for everything they got.

His father included?

Usually, he avoided going down that road, but Jo had set his memories stirring. One thing for sure, his father’s children hadn’t deserved the fallout from Milo Jellic’s brief flirtation with drug dealing. Sure, in a one-parent unit they’d been halfway dysfunctional before his death, but the final years of childhood, with only Grandma Glamuzina in charge of five teenagers had completed what his mother’s early demise had started. There’d been times when he’d thought suicide—the option his father had taken—put Milo Jellic one up on the rest of the family. They’d had to take all the crap that followed.

Although he hated to admit it, the military had given him some sense of what he’d been missing, and when he met Carly, his ex-wife, he’d been certain he had it all.

So, he couldn’t be right all the time. About two years after his divorce was finalized he’d been offered the chance to join GDE and jumped at it.

Payback time. Payment for the devastation his father had helped wreak on the families of addicts, and more personal, for being robbed of what little childhood he’d enjoyed.

So, why the guilty feelings about watching Ngaire?

Why did the guilt feel stronger when he thought of her going to bed in the white, opaque silk nightdress that hid none of her lush charms, than when she’d been naked? Was it the hot blood pulsing in his groin while doing his job that sent tentacles of shame spreading through his veins?

He shook off the feeling as the silent disappearance of the elevator doors brought the second-floor lobby into view.

The word tentacles was a dead giveaway to the state of his subconscious. Ngaire was making a sucker of him with her exotic looks, white virginal silk sleepwear over a siren’s body sculpted in pale copper with her shoulders cloaked in the shining jet veil of hair she’d left loose. Under his breath, he let out a wry curse at the direction his mind was taking.

As if written in headlines, A Mata Hari for Our Times flashed across his retina in a subconscious warning. One thing for sure, unlike James Bond he had no intention of sleeping with the enemy.

Sleeping with the enemy.

The echo flirted with his memory. Chaly saying, “I hear the target’s built,” then later, “Sleep with her if necessary.”

When had his boss discovered the courier was a woman? And why hadn’t he passed the news on to either him or control earlier? Come to that, what else did he know that he hadn’t passed on? Time had taught him that when the top brass started keeping secrets from you it was essential to watch your back.

His gaze zoomed in on Ngaire’s table, an automatic response from some sort of residual magnetism, useful even if annoying.

“I’d like a table at the rear by the window,” he told the hostess, knowing the restaurant wasn’t busy enough for her to mind him choosing.

Ngaire was supping cereal as he approached her table. He caught her with the spoon to her mouth as he said, “’Morning, Ngaire. I hope you slept well.”

The spoon in her hand waved in response as she desperately chewed what she had in her mouth—muesli, judging from the amount of crunching going on. Her eyes widened, focusing on the chair opposite as she swallowed. He knew it was perverse to take satisfaction from her discomfort, though he had to admit she looked cute, and young.

Too young for the game she was playing.

“’Morning, and yes, I slept fine. Did you want to join me?”

“No, I won’t disturb you.” I’ll leave that until later. “Maybe I’ll see you around.” Count on it.

When he finally caught up with the hostess, she motioned him to a table by the window where the wind spattered the glass with sea and rain. Sitting farther back, he could keep Ngaire in plain view without affording her the same opportunity.

He shrugged off his light rainproof bomber jacket, hanging it over the back of his chair before heading for the breakfast buffet to load up his plate. No problem there, he was a quick eater, a trait that came with being a member of a large family.

Soon they’d have to board the bus for the Gannets and Grapes part of the tour northwest of the city. Their bus would leave at 0900 hours. Ngaire’s small day pack looked as though it was loaded for everything but bear. Being a guy he needed much less—a jacket to keep off the rain, his wallet and a gun to take care of the rest. Maybe even bears. The human kind.

Kel planned to be last onboard. That way he wouldn’t have to endure sitting beside Ngaire with a libido still fragile from watching her this morning. He’d never had any trouble imagining a woman naked, but Ngaire had exceeded anything his mind could conjure up.

Spearing bacon, eggs and mushrooms, he layered them up the tines of his fork and took a bite. If nothing else, he could enjoy the food. Everything was first class on this job.

Including his target.

Ngaire stifled a yawn as she squirmed farther down into the cushioned seat. “The tour is full, but I’ll find someone compatible to sit with you,” the tour guide had said, showing her to a window seat roughly halfway up the aisle. The guide’s accent had been pure Kiwi, though her looks were Oriental, and Ngaire found a sense of fellowship.

Outside in the cafés bordering Prince’s Wharf, where the hotel was built, umbrellas drooped miserably, like sun hats caught in a sudden downpour, and what patrons there were hid inside. This wasn’t exactly the welcome she’d expected from paradise.

Though she’d told Kel she’d slept well, last night her slumber had been filled with visions of Te Ruahiki. Not the war club, but its spirit, the original owner of the mere.

At least she knew she wasn’t going mad. There had been no escaping the reaction of the others at Customs; their eyes had widened, bulged. Even Manu Pomare had looked be-mused.

Once she’d had the temerity to tell her grandfather that no matter how much she’d enjoyed the legends as a child, stories of spirits locked up inside inanimate objects were way off the planet. The scary thing was, even though she’d long since done an about-face, she now believed with every fiber of her being that George Two Feathers had known best. There was indeed a spirit inside the greenstone mere.

With five minutes to go, it looked like she’d have a whole seat to herself. This suited her. She’d soon realized she was the odd man out, since most of her fellow passengers appeared to be Chinese. Considering she’d won the trip from the Blue Grasshopper, she shouldn’t have been surprised.

Although she’d picked up more than a few words of Cantonese, and even fewer of Mandarin, from living around Chinatown, she was anything but fluent, so from her standpoint it looked like this would be a lonely trip.

“You two should get on well together.” The tour guide spoke softly, but there was a big stick behind her words that brooked no argument. “None of the others speak much English,” the guide continued, smiling at Ngaire. Her almost black doe eyes twinkled in the calm masklike perfection of her face, as if she thought she’d done Ngaire a favor by bringing her Kel. She guessed the guy must have international appeal. “I’ll leave you to introduce yourselves.”

Kelvin Johnman. He’d honored her with his full name yesterday as they’d traveled in on the shuttle. Kelvin. She didn’t think it suited him. Nor did she know if she wanted the distraction he represented, even if he did have the smile of a fallen angel. Or that when he pushed his hair back from his eyes, like he was doing now, his palm ruffled his curls, making her wonder how his fingers would feel forking through her hair.

“We meet again.” The shirred band of Kel’s bomber jacket lifted as the last swipe of his hand added a few extra damp spots to its shoulders. Ngaire’s eyes were caught by a glimpse of a slim brown belt that emphasized the narrowness of his waist and hips. Today, instead of the loose floating shirt that had hidden this very masculine trait yesterday, he wore a tan polo shirt tucked into his khakis.

As she lifted her chin, and with it the level of her gaze, she saw his eyebrows quirk as if he expected some comment about seeing him again so soon after making an idiot of herself. She could still feel tenderness in her throat from trying to swallow her muesli without choking.

Kel’s smile cut the thread of her thoughts.

Darn the man. He had the cheek of the devil and he knew it. Plus he fitted every criteria of her wildest fantasies—tall, dark and devastating—making her wonder if Te Ruahiki had conjured him up just for her.

A gurgle of suppressed laughter left her mouth as a gasp. Her far-fetched fantasies had as much chance of coming true as a snowball had of lasting in hell.

Though if that little bundle of ice and slush should take its time melting, maybe that was the best reason in the world to reach out, hang on and let fate take her for a ride.

The code her grandfather had lived by and had drummed into her at the worst moments of her life had been Never Give Up. She’d lost the most important people in her life, including George Two Feathers, whose words had been his legacy. But since her time in the hospital, when she’d won her last battle with life, Ngaire had never backed down from a challenge.

She wasn’t about to change now, while the latest battle still had five weeks, six days until New Year’s Eve. “Are you following me?”

His features froze for about a second before he answered. “Sorry, but I can see where you’d get that impression. Guess we have to chalk this one up to fate.”

There it was again. Fate. And Kel felt it, too.

How long was it since the last time she’d gone into a match blind, with no knowledge of her opponent or his moves? How long since she’d pitted her skills and enjoyed a contest where the balance of throws could go either way?

Too long, according to her best friend Leena Kowolski, who’d urged her to indulge in a holiday fling, who’d been so insistent that Ngaire had had to laugh and say she’d think about it, but only if the guy was the kind dreams were made of. And he was.

A small prickle of conscience stabbed as she arched her eyebrows in feigned disbelief and a darker slash broached the tanned skin covering his cheekbones. He leaned closer, resting one arm on the back of the seat her day pack still guarded, and swiped his other hand over his chest in a cross. “Honest.”

His voice was low, husky, intimate. She fell into it, into his eyes, her heart skipping at the dark, liquid intensity in their expression, begging to be believed.

“Returning your pink shades was deliberate on my part, but that’s all. Unless it was fate that made you drop them. Though if I’d known…”

“I didn’t think men believed in fate.”

His dark eyebrows knitted. “What else could it be?”

What else? Let’s face it, she was a sucker for those eyes. She gave him a melting look, putting her own to good use. Leena said they were her best feature, canceling out the nose she’d inherited from her Modoc ancestors. “I owe you an apology. Blame it on the world today. It’s hard to know who to trust.”

His smile drew her eyes down to the indent in the center of his chin and the square, no-nonsense line of his jaw, tempting her to trace the shape and see if it was as firm as it looked.

“Face it,” he said. “We’ve been thrown together by a common language. The only thing to do is grin and bear it.”

“And since the bus is almost full.” Out of the corner of her eye, Ngaire saw the tour guide wave some tailenders onboard.

It was then she felt the engrossed stares and turned to see two Chinese women in the seats behind them. Her next words froze in her throat as they smiled and nodded. She crossed her fingers mentally that the guide had been correct about Kel and her being the only English speakers. The body language she couldn’t do anything about.

She tried to tip him the wink about their audience with her eyes, but he had his own agenda. “If there’s something about me that rubs you the wrong way, tell me and I’ll do my best to help you get over it. Meanwhile, I’m blocking the aisle and there are people heading this way.”

Grabbing her day pack off the empty seat, she made room for him. He slid his beige jacket from his shoulders swiftly, bundling it to toss into the overhead rack. Actions that were easier than folding his length, all six foot three of it, into an amount of space more suitable for her own five foot four.

It took her a moment to notice the last passengers were familiar. Kel had no such problem. “I suppose you’re going to think they’re following you, as well?”

A smile softened his words, turning it into a joke.

“I’m not really that paranoid,” she protested, though the coincidences seemed to be piling up thick and fast. First Kel, and now here was the German couple who’d sat behind her on the shuttle from the ferry.

As the bus eased its way through the city traffic Ngaire stared out the window. The streets went by in a blur of raindrops. Her mind was elsewhere, negotiating the twists and turns of an awareness she hadn’t expected to find. She’d been looking for something in New Zealand, but it wasn’t an affair.

Her heart had called for something much more familial and an answer to the dread that had haunted her since they’d added her grandmother’s history to her mother’s and come up with an answer that had scared her spitless.

First there were the similarities in the manner of their deaths, both the same age almost to the minute and both killed by a car that had gone out of control. Then there was the fact that both deaths had been foreshadowed by changes in the mere. But were they coincidence or curse?

She couldn’t afford not to believe it was more than coincidence; the risks were too great.

Then she’d come up with a solution to possibly guarantee her a future.

Te Ruahiki was tapu, sacred, and returning the mere to his tribe might break the curse on the females of her line.

With all that was going on in her mind, she still found it impossible to ignore Kel or the source of heat as his thigh brushed her own. In an attempt to escape what she saw as a growing problem of too much too soon, she offered, “I don’t mind taking turns at sitting by the window. I wouldn’t want to take advantage by arriving here first.”

“Later. There’s no rush, or anything I haven’t seen before.”

So, no relief there, for a while. In some other place or time, being pressed against the wall with nowhere to go without crawling all over him might have been fun. But they weren’t alone. They had an audience, and she’d no ambition to become their main source of entertainment.

Better just to suck it up and get on with the tour.

Easier said than done.

Beneath the light fabric of her capri pants, her skin burned with an energy that raced to all the salient points of her body. Kel was all solid muscle, thigh, hip, arm. Large, lean, hard. No use reminding herself she’d handled heavier men with ease.

Beside him she felt puny, susceptible, and all female.

She could have told him her problem didn’t stem from him brushing her the wrong way. From her angle it felt too right.

The rain had lessened but not stopped by the time they reached their destination. It made some matrons twitter like sparrows as their husbands helped them into their rain gear.

Kel stood in the gangway, leaving Ngaire room to maneuver a snarl of sleeves and arms. As she started juggling her day pack and raincoat he stretched out a hand to take the one she wasn’t struggling into. “Let me grab that for you?”

For a heartbeat her eyes flashed a warning with all the force of a push in the chest. Back to square one?

“No need, I’m used to managing,” she answered lightly. Had he imagined the back-off signal? He wondered as she hatched into a canary in her bright coat, instead of another brown sparrow.

He blamed it on Chaly. The man had given him leave to do whatever necessary and unleashed the rampant attraction he’d felt the moment he’d laid eyes on her.

Sleep with her if necessary.

Lies were all part of being undercover. Maybe it was being back home that made him feel Grandma Glamuzina’s finger and thumb twist his ear with every falsehood falling from his lips.

Look what almost an hour of having her scent tease his nose had brought him. With every breath, he’d calculated the risk factors in this operation, not to his health, to his libido.

He was here to watch, not to touch. Yet every time they were thrown together by the movement of the bus driving down Muriwai’s winding lanes, he remembered the lines of separation were only two thin lengths of cotton. Though she’d edged away from the contact, while he’d wrapped a white-knuckled fist around a handle to prevent him chasing her across the blue upholstery, he’d known he was in trouble. Big trouble.

He was the hunter and she was his prey. Now her spoor was firmly fixed in his head along with a picture of her naked. A lethal combination meant to keep him clinging to the edge of his seat for the duration of the trip.

For once, he felt torn between duty and desire.

A park ranger awaited them all outside the bus. Ngaire dawdled at the back. Kel kept close, not wanting to force the situation and mindful of her look. His grandma had had one that could strip paint off walls, and Ngaire’s had run a close second.

Grouped with the other passengers in the car park, he’d no problem seeing over their heads as he listened to the ranger. He and the German guy were the tallest, with a couple of Taiwanese runners-up.

Maori Bay was small compared to the other beaches nearby and sheltered by the arms of land stretching on either side. But in this kind of weather with the wind from the southwest, every now and then a gust whipped the ranger’s voice away. “So easy to get the feeling of being dominated by Muriwai…” he shouted, standing against a backdrop of sand-churning waves as gray as the sky, the black silhouette of a lone surfer balanced on top like a bolt holding the two together.

“Powerful elements…wind and sea formed, dominate…this wildlife park.” Ngaire appeared intent on the ranger’s spiel as she clutched the straps of her day pack, arms crossed. Just then a crack of sunlight broke through the clouds, caught her for a second, disappearing as if her black hair had swallowed it.

“Imagine the lifeblood…earth, lava, spilling here from a massive undersea volcano. Where you…stand was born of fire from that eruption.” Every time the ranger paused, the tour guide filled in with translations, and while the cameras whirred and clicked gannets and terns performed a ballet over rocks of greenish black like a licorice stick newly bitten in two.

“This fire still rages beneath the surface.” A ripple of in-drawn breaths punctuated the translation. Their guide spoke so swiftly, she had to know the spiel by heart.

“Imagine its rhythm beating a pulse…echoing its heartbeat.”

Finished, the ranger turned, leading them up the path to the summit, their heels on the gravel sounding like crunching toffee.

Two paces ahead of him, Ngaire’s dark braid bumped against a bed of yellow, begging to be tugged. He caught up to whisper, “That guy’s a shoo-in for the lead in The Tempest.”

She forgot herself long enough to give him a glimpse of her smile. Gaining her trust was like pushing sludge uphill, one step forward, two steps back. And though he’d gone ahead, he was aware of her every move. As they crested the path, a squeal made him turn. “You okay? What happened, did you turn your ankle?”

For a microsecond she took her eyes off the view beyond the rail. “No.” She gestured with a hand flung out to encompass the horizon. “I saw all of that.”

He guessed it might take your breath away if you’d never seen Muriwai beach before, its black sands fringed with gray-and-white surf, curving for more than sixty kilometers into the distance. Too far to see on a day like today when it resembled a monochrome photograph.

“What makes the sand black?”

“Nothing romantic. Just plain old iron,” he said, but she’d stopped listening and was focusing her camera instead.

To reach the viewing platform they walked across a wooden boardwalk, which wound through a tunnel of pohutukawas. It was one of the only native trees that didn’t mind salty air, but it was too early yet for the red tassled flowers that heralded Christmas. There was still beauty to be found in the twisted shapes from its no-holds-barred tussles with the wind.

All too soon, they stepped out of the green-washed light onto wooden treads that softened their footfalls and led to a cliff top spiked with flax plants.

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