by Dixie Browning Letter to Reader Title Page DIXIE BROWNING Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Copyright

by Dixie Browning

Silhouette Desire has something very special for you—The Passionate G-Man by Dixie Browning, book one of her new miniseries, THE LAWLESS HEIRS.

In The Passionate G-Man, irresistibly sexy secret agent Daniel Lyon Lawless has a simple mission—to expose the operative who double-crossed him. But he has a hard time keeping his mind on the job and off the beautiful woman by his side when he gets stranded with Jasmine Clancy!

Be sure to look for the second book of THE LAWLESS HEIRS miniseries, tycoon H. R. Lawless’s story, available in November from Silhouette’s new 12-book promotional series, WORLD’S MOST ELIGIBLE BACHELORS.

THE LAWLESS HEIRS: A surprise will unites the Lawless family—and leads them to love!

Dear Reader,

MEN! This month Silhouette Desire goes man-crazy with six of the sexiest, heart-stopping hunks ever to come alive on the pages of a romance novel

Meet May’s MAN OF THE MONTH, love-wary secret agent Daniel Lawless, in The Passionate G-Man, the first book in Dixie Browning’s fabulous new miniseries, THE LAWLESS HEIRS Metsy Hingle’s gallant hero protects an independent lady in danger in the last book of the RIGHT BRIDE, WRONG GROOM series, The Bodyguard and the Bridesmaid. Little bitty Joeville, Montana, has more tall, dark and rugged ranchers than any other town west of the Mississippi. And Josh Malone has more sex appeal than all of ’em put together in Last of the Joeville Lovers, the third book in Anne Earnes’s MONTANA MALONES series.

In The Notorious Groom, Caroline Cross pairs the baddest boy ever to roam the streets of Kisscount with the town virgin in a steamy marriage of convenience. The hero of Barbara McCauley’s Seduction of the Reluctant Bride is one purebred Texas cowboy fixin’ to do some wife-wranglin’—this new groom isn’t about to miss a sultry second of his very own wedding night. Yeehaw! Next, when a suddenly wealthy beauty meets the owner of the ranch next door, he’s wearing nothing but a Stetson and a smile in Carol Grace’s The Heiress Inherits a Cowboy.

Silhouette Desire brings you the kind of irresistible men who make your knees buckle, your stomach flutter, your heart melt...and your fingers turn the page. So enjoy our lineup of spectacular May men!

Regards,

Senior Editor

Silhouette Books

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S: 3010 Walden Ave., PO Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian. PO. Box 609, Fort Ene, Ont. L2A 5X3

The Passionate G-Man

Dixie Browning

www.millsandboon.co.uk

DIXIE BROWNING

celebrated her sixtieth book for Silhouette with the publication of Stryker’s Wife in 1996. She has also written a number of historical romances with her sister under the name Bronwyn Williams. A charter member of Romance Writers of America and a member of Novelists, Inc., Browning has won numerous awards for her work. She divides her time between Winston-Salem and the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

One

Lyon hobbled away from the truck stop with as much haste and dignity as he could muster, leaving the waitress staring after him, her tired blue eyes filled with sympathy. By all rights she should have clobbered him. Instead, she’d taken one look at his stricken face, another at his cane, and started in with the, “Oh, you poor man” routine.

Levering himself into the driver’s seat, he brushed a crumb of fried oyster off his sleeve and shifted until he found a position that was bearable. He’d been warned against driving at all, much less driving for hours at a stretch.

Needless to say, he’d ignored the warning.

Dammit, he’d tried to apologize to the woman. It wasn’t her fault he’d been in the process of extracting himself from the cramped booth just as she passed by with two big seafood platters.

Lyon was no good with apologies. Never had been.

He’d wanted to help her clean up the mess, but he knew better than to try, so he’d done the next best thing. He’d crammed a fistful of bills in her apron pocket and got the hell out of there, red face, grease-stained shoulders and all.

At least, with the help of a back brace, a knee brace and a cane, he could do that much. Walk away. There was damned little he was good at anymore, but he’d always been good at walking away.

Five weeks ago he had walked away from an explosion that had killed two other agents and three civilians. Crawled away, actually, after being blown clear. Miraculously, he’d suffered only minor burns, but he’d been thrown against the side of the surveillance van, injuring his back and one knee.

At least he’d survived.

Five days ago he had walked away from the hospital. He’d had a choice of lying there taped up like a mummy, waiting either to mend or to croak from sheer boredom—or for the bad guys to find him and put a permanent end to his career—or get the hell out.

He’d got out. Walked away. Because if the bad guys hadn’t got to him first, the boredom would’ve done him in.

Although there’d been a couple of nurses who’d done their best to relieve it. One, a sweet-faced, middle-aged woman, had joked about adopting him.

Another one had been more interested in seducing him.

He might even have considered it—the seduction—if only to prove to himself that he still had a few working body parts, but the last thing he needed was to get involved with a woman.

It had been Lyon’s experience that men and women viewed sex from widely different perspectives. Women—at least the few he’d been involved with for any length of time—used sex the same way he used the tools of his trade. As a means of achieving an end.

To all but one or two of the women he’d known, sex was bait. The female of the species was programmed by nature to latch onto the richest mate available. His old man had drummed that lesson into his head before he’d cleaned out the cash drawer where he worked and disappeared, leaving behind a bitter wife and an angry twelve-year-old son.

Lyon hadn’t learned much from his father, but he’d heard that little homily repeated too often ever to forget it.

Cautious by nature, he’d learned to be even more cautious, both in his work and in his relationships with women. Not all women were dishonest. Not all of them were looking for commitment, but enough of them were so that he didn’t care to take chances.

To a man, sex was relief. A basic requirement, like food and water and a couple of hours sleep out of every twenty-four or thirty-six hours, conditions permitting. For a man in his position, it didn’t pay to think beyond that.

Back on the highway, Lyon tuned to a country music station and set his mind on automatic. There were too many things it didn’t pay to think about. Not yet. Not until he was fully recovered, had a few answers and was ready to go back and deal with them.

He spotted the patrol car in plenty of time to ease his speed back to a safe and legal seventy. Not that he was afraid of getting pulled over. His ID, if he cared to use it, would get him past any branch of law enforcement. It was more a matter of common sense.

A matter of survival.

Common sense told him that a man in his condition had no business being on the highway at all. A well-honed sense of survival—which, admittedly had taken a beaten lately—told him that driving like a bat out of Daytona wasn’t particularly smart, either. Especially as he’d quit cold turkey taking painkillers and muscle relaxants three days ago. As a result, he was hurting. As a result of something else, although probably not the pills, he was jittery.

The smoky lost interest. Lyon breathed a sigh of relief. Near the Virginia-North Carolina border he pulled into the visitors’ center, parked and scanned the immediate surroundings out of habit. It was called situation awareness.

He took his time getting out of the pickup, not that he had an option. By the time he’d done three slow laps around the parking area, his muscles had loosened up enough so that he barely limped, even without the cane.

Mind over matter. His body might have been screwed over pretty thoroughly, but his mind was still in first-class working order.

Although there’d been some argument over that when he’d signed himself out of the hospital.

Following the road map, he left the interstate at Roanoke Rapids and took an east-southeasterly course, using two lanes and what was euphemistically called “other roads.” There was no deadline. He had three months before he had to make up his mind whether to put in for early retirement or go back on line.

At least where he was headed there wouldn’t be any reporters. Or any drug-runners, terrorists, or survivalists, any one of which was bad enough. When the territories started overlapping, things got spooky.

And when there was a leak from somewhere in the chain of command, things got even spookier. The wrong people started dying.

“How’d you want your burger, hon? We can’t fry ‘em rare no more, gov’ment rules. We got sweet onions up from Georgia, though. A thick slice, and even shoe leather’d taste good.”

Lyon ordered two burgers, well-done with extra onion, extra cheese and a quart of coffee. When the waitress leaned across in front of him to realign the salt and pepper shakers, offering him a front-row seat in her balcony if he was interested, he said, “To go, please. And could you give me directions to—”

“Any old where, darlin’, you name it. You here for the huntin’ or the fishin’? I could show you some real good places.”

“Yeah, both,” he muttered. I’ll just bet you could, sugar, and I’d probably enjoy them all, but not today, thanks. “Could you point me in the direction of the nearest hardware store, supermarket and the local tax office?”

Jasmine was depressed. All the way across the country she’d been pumping up her expectations. She’d managed to keep them high during the long drive from the airport to the nursing home, but there they’d collapsed like a wet souffle.

Her grandmother didn’t know her. Her only living relative, whom she hadn’t seen since she’d moved with her mother from Oklahoma to California eighteen and a half years ago, didn’t know her from Adam.

Make that Eve.

And the worst part of it was, Hattie Clancy wasn’t interested in knowing her. She was sweet and polite and a little vague—well, a lot vague, actually—but Jasmine could tell right off that she was more interested in playing cards with her friends and watching her favorite soaps and game shows than she was in getting to know the granddaughter who had flown all the way from the West Coast to see her.

Jasmine told herself it was probably for the best. Why get attached to someone who lives thousands of miles away, someone who’s old and might die—someone who’s probably set in her ways and wouldn’t be interested in moving to L.A., even if Jasmine could afford to move her there?

All the same, it would have been nice...

She shook off the sense of depression. It hadn’t been a total waste. She’d met her only living relative, after all. Now when she sent snapshots and letters and greeting cards, she’d have a face to attach to the name and address she’d found among her father’s papers after he’d died.

Having barely known the man before he turned up one day on her doorstep, sick and broke, she’d been surprised to learn that his mother—her own grandmother—was still living, much less living in North Carolina. She would have thought Oklahoma if she’d thought at all, because that’s where her parents had parted company.

Jasmine had written to Hattie Clancy immediately. She hadn’t heard back, but she’d continued to write. For an actress who was unemployed more often than not, she’d been too busy trying to pay off her father’s medical bills, along with her own living expenses, to have much free time, but she’d made time to send cards and brief notes, and sometimes a clipping when she happened to land a part and her name was mentioned in a review.

Which was practically never.

To make ends meet she’d done a few commercials and taken a fill-in job in a dress shop. It paid minimum wage, plus a tiny discount on clothes she couldn’t afford to buy anyway.

And now she’d spent money she didn’t have to fly east to see a grandmother who didn’t know her and didn’t seem particularly interested in getting acquainted. She might as well have stayed home. It had been a total waste of time and money.

No, it hadn’t. She’d earned herself a vacation. The last one had been—

Yes, well...that was another reason she’d needed to get away. Her last vacation had been with Eric. A week after they’d come back from Tahoe, Eric had started seeing her best friend. Jasmine had made excuses for him at first. She was good at that.

What was that popular song? Cleopatra, Queen of Denial?

Boy, was she ever. Her friends said she was easygoing. Laid-back. Which meant more or less the same thing—that she didn’t blow her stack at the least little thing, which was a definite advantage in the dog-eat-dog world of acting.

All the same, she hadn’t felt very laid-back when Cynthia had breezed into the shop one day last week and said, “Guess what! Eric and I are getting married. You’ve got to be our maid of honor, you’ve simply got to! After all, if you hadn’t introduced us, it never would have happened.”

Right. Smartest thing she ever did. Introduce the man she was in love with to her best friend, who was blond and beautiful and had a continuing, if minor, role in Wilde’s Children.

“When?” she’d managed to ask. Actually, it had sounded more like a whine, but Cyn had been so wrapped up in her own euphoria she hadn’t noticed.

“Valentine’s Day. Isn’t that just too, too perfect?”

Jasmine had agreed that it was just too, too perfect. And then she’d come up with the too-too perfect excuse. “Oh, but my grandmother—it’s her seventy-ninth birthday. Actually, her birthday’s on the fifteenth, but I promised to help her celebrate. You wouldn’t want to wait until next year, would you?”

They couldn’t possibly wait, and so Jasmine had been stuck with her excuse. She’d told herself it would be a lovely thing to do, to surprise her grandmother—her only living relative, unless her father had taken a few more secrets to the grave—and so she’d flown all the way across the country on a ticket she couldn’t afford, and gone still deeper in debt renting a car to drive to the nursing home, which was hours away from the airport.

And now, here she was at loose ends for a whole week. She’d planned to stay near the nursing home, only there wasn’t really any place to stay—at least no place she could afford. She’d asked for a weekly rate on her car, and planned to drive her grandmother around, just the two of them, and talk about her father and her grandfather, and any aunts or uncles and cousins she might have.

Family things. Things like, who else in the family had kinky maroon hair and legs that went all the way up to her armpits?

Things like who else in the family loved animals, hated insects and was allergic to cantaloups?

Things that would have taken her mind off the fact that Cyn and Eric were at this very moment honeymooning in Cancún.

Instead, she’d spent a day at the nursing home, looking at pictures of grandchildren of people she didn’t even know, watching soaps and seeıng a few people she did know, but not Cyn, thank goodness—and being largely ignored by her own grandmother.

She.’d played cards with three lovely old ladies, gradually coming to realize that they weren’t all playing with a full deck. She’d strolled around the grounds once the rain had let up, exclaiming over straggly little flowers and squishıng through the mud to pick a bunch of red berries for one of the residents who admired them.

She’d had to battle great swags of Spanish moss and several thick, hairy vines to get to the things, but when her grandmother had asked for some, too, she had gladly waded into the jungle again to oblige her.

What else were granddaughters for?

Feeling lost, rootless, she’d woken up the next morning and considered her options. If she went back now—that’s if she could even exchange her tickets—she’d have to pay the daily rate for her car instead of the cheaper weekly rate.

Of course, she would save on her motel bill, but money wasn’t her only problem, or even her biggest one. Eric and Cynthia would be back on Friday. Cynthia would insist on giving her a detailed description of the honeymoon. Cynthia insisted on giving anyone who would listen a detailed description of her entire life. It was one of her charms—her breezy openness.

And Eric, blast his gorgeous hide, would gaze adoringly into his bride’s eyes the way Jasmine had dreamed of his gazing into her own eyes, only he never had, and she’d probably throw up or something equally embarrassing.

Dammit, he knew she loved him! She hadn’t even tried to hide it. They’d met thirteen and a half months ago at a New Year’s Eve party and it had been one of those magical, magnetic moments that come once in a lifetime.

They had everything in common. They’d both grown up in the Midwest in single-parent households, but they’d been happy, comfortable households. They both believed in love at first sight, in fate. They both liked vinegar on their french fries.

The first time they’d gone away for a long weekend together, Jasmine had thought of it as a honeymoon. She’d been waiting ever since for a proposal, being just old-fashioned enough to believe it was the man’s prerogative. Which was a hoot considering she was an actress who had lived in L.A. for nearly five years.

And then she’d made the fatal mistake of introducing Eric to Cynthia.

After driving aimlessly for hours, she pulled into a service station, filled her tank, hoping her credit card wasn’t maxed out, and splurged on a candy bar and a diet cola. Savoring the unfamiliar aroma of nature in the raw mingled with diesel oil, she studied the map in search of anything of interest between where she was and the airport.

She’d had to ask the attendant where she was. It seemed she was somewhere in the vicinity of Frying Pan Landing, not too far from Gum Neck, smack dab in the middle of that part of the map labeled Eastern Dismal Swamp.

Dismal. If she’d been looking for something that suited her mood, she couldn’t have found a better place.

“I don’t suppose there are any hotels around here?” she said hopefully. It was getting late. She’d been driving more or less aimlessly all day, trying to make her up mind what to do.

The motel catered to fishermen and hunters. The bed was more like a hammock, but it was clean and cheap, and Clemmie, the woman in the office, told her that the café next door opened at five every morning for breakfast and closed about dark.

Jasmine managed to stay awake long enough to eat a bowl of clam chowder before she fell into bed, too tired to think about tomorrow. A pale sun was shining in through the one small window when she opened her eyes the next morning. She stretched, scratched her left cheek and yawned. And then she scratched again.

Shower. Breakfast. Then maybe spend another day looking around before she went home. As long as she’d come this far, it would be a shame to go back without seeing anything other than a nursing home, a gas station and a cheap motel. She might as well soak up a little atmosphere as long as she’d spent money she couldn’t afford to spend just to get here.

Jasmine had never been farther east than Tulsa. There was a different feel to North Carolina. For one thing, it was quieter. Unnaturally quiet, in fact. But that could be because, according to the map, the nearest city was miles away. Or maybe because it was the dead of winter, and here where they had real seasons, things like that made a difference.

By the time she had rinsed off under a trickle of lukewarm water, she felt marginally better. She might even write about it, she thought, idly scratching her face. She hadn’t written anything in years, even though she had a perfectly good degree in journalism.

The Further Adventures of Jasmine Clancy. A Thousand Miles From Heartbreak? In Search of Family Ties?

Her stomach growled. How about in search of breakfast?

She was hungry, which was a good sign. Even heartbroken and suffering from acute disappointment, she wasn’t bothered by a lack of appetite. In fact, she felt surprisingly good.

That is, she felt good until she looked in the mirror.

“For Pete’s sake, what happened to you?” she whispered, touching her red, swollen face, which instantly began to itch like crazy.

Clemmie was alone in the office, thank goodness. The wife of the owner of the four-unit motel, she did the rooms, helped out in the café, and after one look at Jasmine, she told her to go back to her room.

Twenty minutes later she brought her a breakfast tray of scrambled eggs, sausage and hash browns, with a side order of calamine lotion and a handful of tourist brochures.

“We got these things—mostly nobody ever wants ’em, but since you’re not from around here, it might give you something to do. Sort of take your mind off your troubles. If you don’t think about it too much, you forget to scratch.”

“I can’t believe it,” Jasmine wailed. “I haven’t had poison ivy since I was a child.”

“I used to get it real bad, every summer. My mama used to threaten to make me wear boxing gloves to keep me from scratching.”

“But it’s February!”

“Poison ivy don’t die, it just hides out over the winter. Gets you just as bad, though. Now don’t scratch, you hear?”

He’d been there for one full week. The first few days he’d nearly gone nuts without his cell phone, his laptop and all the other accoutrements of civilized living he’d grown used to.

Daniel Lyon Lawless, chronological age thirty-seven, physiological age one hundred and seven, rolled over onto his back after the last push-up and stared at a pair of buzzards circling overhead. Maybe they knew something he didn’t.

“Not a happy thought,” he muttered just to hear the sound of a human voice.

Closing his eyes, he listened to the hollow echo of birds deep inside the boggy forest. Nearby, a frog tuned up. First one, then a dozen. He’d have thought, if he’d thought about frogs at all, they’d be buried in the mud this time of year, but then, what did he know about roughing it in the wilds of the great Dismal Swamp?

Not much. Enough to know that he’d been right to come here, though. In a place like this, away from all distractions, a man could think. If thinking got a little too uncomfortable, he could concentrate on more immediate things, such as keeping the damned bugs from eating him alive. Such as working out until he dropped from exhaustion. Such as wetting a hook in a black-water creek in hope of catching something to relieve a monotonous diet of tinned meat, tinned soup, stale crackers and black coffee.

He had a feeling it wasn’t a healthy diet. On the other hand, he’d shed his knee brace three days ago and his back brace the day before that. His cane was no good in this boggy terrain. No good for walking. He carried it anyway, because he felt naked without a weapon, and foolish carrying one here in the back of beyond, where the most dangerous critter he was apt to encounter was a damned mosquito.

He carried a knife, though. It was useful in whacking through vines and opening cans of Vienna sausage. And he walked. He counted it in hours, not miles. He’d done four hours yesterday, on top of six miles rowed back and forth on the nameless creek that bordered his campsite.

Tomorrow he was going to row in one direction until he was exhausted, then he’d go ashore, give his knee a workout and then row himself back to camp. It was a good system. It was working for him. Except for a few minor problems, he was in better shape now than he’d been before the explosion.

He was a hell of a lot more relaxed. Couple of days ago, he’d actually found himself whistling. Another few weeks and he might even find something to smile about.

He wondered what was going on back in Langley. Madden had promised to find out who’d been turned. Who had leaked names, times and places so that two of the best men in the unit had been taken out in one night. Lyon’s name would be on that list of expendables. Which was one more reason why he hadn’t cared to hang around the hospital like a sitting duck.

A duck on the wing had a far better chance of surviving.

A camcorder. Even a disposable camera. Jasmine would give anything for some way to record what she was seeing. No wonder half of Hollywood had moved to North Carolina, with scenery like this. Moody, spooky, fraught with atmosphere—not to mention the exotic noises and all the different odors. Perfect for a remake of the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

At least there were plenty of black lagoons, if mercifully few creatures.

Away from the motel, there was practically no traffic. None at all once she’d left the narrow two-lane highway. Clemmie had told her about the old logging road, and she’d followed it, determined to stay out of public view until her face improved, but wanting to take something back with her after spending the better part of eight hundred dollars on a wild-goose chase.

She’d had sense enough to shove a notepad into her shoulder bag. Clemmie had provided that, too. Her writerly instincts had been stirring all morning. She was even considering doing a travel piece on spec to help pay her expenses.

She might even offer it to one of the two newspapers where she’d briefly worked as a special features writer before being laid-off, downsized or consolidated, depending on who was offering excuses.

At least it had led to her acting career, which paid at a better rate, only not nearly as regularly.

Fortunately, she was good at rolling with the punches. Going with the flow. Surviving.

The logging road ended at a hill, which turned out to be a mound of rotted sawdust, covered with creeping, crawling vines. Something was blooming somewhere nearby—something with a sweet, spicy scent.

There was enough high ground so that her feet didn’t sink in the mud, so she followed an all but imperceptible trail deeper and deeper into the woods.

Red berries beckoned from the wild tangle of vegetation. Gorgeous, big fat red berries, like the ones she had picked for her grandmother. Uh-uh. Not again.

She scratched her face, careful not to dig too hard because poison ivy was bad enough without scars. Her face, after all, was her fortune. At five foot ten, her height and her long legs helped, but mostly it was her face. She would like to believe it was her acting ability, because then a few scars might not matter too much, but she was realistic enough to know better.

She had a modest talent and the kind of looks that were just different enough to land her a few parts. Until another kind of look came into fashion, and then she’d do commercials or even catalog work, and maybe some modeling.

Not that modeling appealed to her. The few models she knew were obsessed by diets, cutaneous laser resurfacing, ultrasound liposuctioning. One of them was actually growing her own collagen for when she needed a major overhaul.

Jasmine would much rather settle into a comfortable, low-key life with Eric and their children, and maybe her grandmother living together in a little bungalow somewhere. Fashion was fleeting. Film fame was fleeting. Family was forever.

Oh, yeah? So what happened to all of yours?

Somewhere up ahead she heard a sound that didn’t belong in this mystical, moss-hung environment.

A splash. A bump, a yelp...

And then a groan.

Two

The boat looked out of place in the muted setting. It was painted a muddy shade of royal blue, the paint scuffed in places to reveal a previous coat of turquoise.

Idly, Jasmine scratched her right cheek with her left hand and her left ankle with the toe of her right shoe. When she itched anywhere, she was inclined to itch all over. Power of suggestion.

Either that or mosquito bites.

A canoe would have been good. A dugout canoe would be wonderful, but probably too much to hope for, even in this wilderness. At least it was wooden, not aluminum. It could still belong to a native hunter or trapper or maybe a fisherman with a rich lode of stories to share. Travel pieces with a human interest angle had a far broader appeal. Oklahoma had Will Rogers. North Carolina had...Daniel Boone? Black-beard?

Well, surely they had somebody interesting. A place like this must have a fascinating history. She’d have to ask Clemmie about it before she checked out tomorrow.

“Hello-oo,” she called out tentatively. “Anybody there?”

The sound that greeted her could, she supposed, have come from a hunter or a trapper. As profanity went, it was not particularly original. At least it didn’t reek of filth and venom. She didn’t mind a few damns and hells when the occasion demanded, but she hated filth and venom.

Whoever it was, he didn’t sound as if he were in the mood for company. Carefully, she began to edge away from the creek, or stream or rivulet—whatever it was. According to the map, there was supposed to be a big lake with a name that reminded her of mosquitoes and a rıver called the Alligator somewhere around here.

What if he was an alligator poacher? She’d read somewhere that hunting alligators was against the law. Jasmine had been called laid-back. She’d never been called stupid.

“I’m leaving now,” she sang out, in case he decided to cut the odds of getting caught. “I didn’t see anything, so I think I’ll just go on back now. Have a nice day.”

“Dammıt—hold on!”

She held on. It was the kind of voice that commanded obedience. Clutching the straps of her shoulder bag, she held on as if her life depended on it, thinking that in a pinch, she might use it as a weapon.

“I’ve, um...I’ll send somebody if you need help, all right?”

“Need—help!”

He sounded as if he were in pain. Tom between curiosity, concern and a healthy respect for hidden danger—she’d been at an impressionable age when she’d seen Deliverance—Jasmine hesitated just a moment too long.

“Can’t move. Need—a hand. Please.”

That last word was uttered too reluctantly to be anything but sincere. Whoever he was—whatever fix he was in—one thing was clear. He hated like the very devil having to beg for help.

“Sorry, but I’m on the other side of the creek.” That prompted more cursing, and then another, “Please?”

“It looks awfully deep. I can’t swim.” Even if it was only up to her knees, she wasn’t particularly eager to step off the bank into that dark, sluggish stream. She couldn’t see a glimmer of bottom. Even if she didn’t drown, she might get eaten alive. Maybe not by piranhas, but there might be leeches. She’d seen African Queen three times.

“Follow bank—south—forty yards. Fallen tree.” Fallen tree. Uh-huh. “Which way is south?”

She peered through hanging branches, hanging vines and swags of gray-green Spanish moss, trying to catch a glimpse of the man behind the voice. If she was going to take the risk, she’d just as soon know what she was getting involved in.

“Toward sun.”

Well, that was easy. As dense as the trees were, there weren’t enough leaves to block out the pale, low-riding sun. “Well...all right, I’ll try.”

Her mind raced ahead as she picked her way along the narrow, winding creek. It could be a heart attack, snakebite—anything. He might even have tripped on one of his own traps and now he was lying there in agony, his lifeblood seeping into the muck while hyenas sniffed at his carcass.

There weren’t any hyenas in North America, even she knew that much. That didn’t mean there weren’t scavengers. Predators.

“Where the devil are you?”

“I’m coming!”

Forty yards. How was she supposed to measure forty yards when every few steps she had to circle around a root or a fallen tree or a tangle of vines—none of them hairy, thank goodness, but some with wicked briars.

There was the tree he’d promised. It had fallen across the creek, blocking two-thirds of its width. Barely enough room to squeak past in a boat, if he’d come from this direction.

And he must have come from this direction, because he’d known about the tree.

Scratching her cheek—not actually scratching, but pressing into the itch with her fingernaıls—Jasmine surveyed the situation. If she could keep her balance, keep from falling in, she might be able to walk out far enough to jump the rest of the way. That’s if she didn’t lose her nerve first.

She lost her nerve, but it was too late. Teetering on the lower edge of the huge trunk, she faced two choices. Turn around on the mossy rounded slope and go back...or jump.

She jumped.

“Ow! Oh, shoot!”

“What happened?” His voice held an edge that could have come from pain, or it could have come from anger. She’d like to think it came from pain.

Well, that didn’t sound very nice, either: She certainly didn’t wish the man any more pain. All the same, an angry man—an angry strange man. all alone here in the wilds of the jungle...

Not jungle—swamp. There was a subtle difference, although she wasn’t certain just what it was.

No lions or tigers, only alligators and poisonous snakes?

Oh, God, why didn’t I stay home? Being a bridesmaid couldn’t be much worse than this.

At least this place was on the map. It had a name.

Dismal. Oh, great. She slapped at a mosquito and swore a mild oath. This probably wasn’t the dumbest thing she’d ever done, but it was right up there near the top of the list.

“What happened?” he called again.

“Nothing happened! I landed on my knees in the mud,” she yelled back.

She was filthy. No more scratching, at least not until she’d scrubbed her fingernails with soap and water. Unless she used a stick. A twig. Natural things were naturally sanitary, weren’t they? Hadn’t she read that somewhere?

Sure they were. Like natural poison ivy.

Lyon had plenty of time for second thoughts while he lay there waiting for deliverance, his face set in a grimace of pain. He’d tried ignoring the agonizing spasms in his back. He’d tried forcing himself to relax, muscle by muscle. He’d tried mind over matter, but pain was pain, and his mind wasn’t up to the task.

Here she came. It would have to be a female. With his luck, she’d be one of those environmentalists, ready to land on him with both feet for disturbing the pristine wilderness with his beer bottle and his Vienna sausage can and his crass human intrusion.

He could have told her the possums would eat the grease. The can would eventually rust away. They did still make ’em out of tin, didn’t they? As for the bottle, he’d take the damned thing with him if she could just help him get on his feet and back in his boat. Eventually, he’d drıft back to the campsite.

Eventually Like maybe, in a couple of weeks.

Either she was wearing snowshoes or she was leading a troop of cub scouts. He heard her thrashing through the underbrush long before she came into sight.

Long. That was his first thought. That she was long all over, especially her legs, which were pink and white and muddy. That she was wearing a fright wig the color of raw venison that stood out around her face like a halo, only he’d never seen a halo in that shade of red, nor one decorated with leaves, cypress needles and twigs.

She smiled. It was a surprisingly sweet smile in what would have been a pretty face except that there was something wrong with it. He wanted to tell her she shouldn’t go around smiling at strange men that way. For all she knew, he could be dangerous, only she could probably tell by the way he was lying here flat on his back sweating bullets that he was no threat to anyone.

“Did you fall?” She had a nice voice when she wasn’t yelling; low, husky—no discernible accent. Even half dead, his brain automatically noted and filed away such details.

“Not recently.” At her look of puzzlement, he added, “Bad back. Took off brace, rowed too far in one stretch.” He sort of grunted the words, trying to keep from breathing too deeply because every breath he took was sheer agony.

She sat on her haunches beside him, her knees projecting over his chest. God, didn’t the woman have a grain of sense under that fright wig?

A man would have to be dead not to react to all that satiny white skin, even when it was daubed with mud and laced with red scratches.

He drew a cautious breath, inhaling the scent of perfume, calamine and feminine sweat.

“Never wear perfume in a swamp,” he grunted.

“I know. I only wore it to, um—boost my morale, but it draws mosquitoes. Is it sort of like a Charly horse?”

“Your perfume?”

“Your back.”

He kept staring at her. Jasmine was used to being stared at; she was a minor celebrity, after all. A very, very minor one.

Somehow, she didn’t think that was the reason he was staring at her. What did he expect her to do? She was no medical missionary. She’d never even been a Girl Scout. They’d moved around too much.

“Yeah, sort of,” he said through clenched teeth. He had nice teeth. White, even, but not quite perfect. They showed to an advantage in a face that was covered in several days’ growth of beard.

He closed his eyes. Without the distraction of a pair of intense periwinkle blue eyes, he looked tired and miserable. Logic told her she had no business being there. Instinct told her that he was harmless and that he desperately needed her help.

Jasmine always trusted her instincts. Every time she went against them—as in the case of Eric—she lived to regret it.

“So...what can I do to help you? Go for help?”

“No!”

He winced, as if speaking sharply hurt him. If she didn’t know better, she might even have thought he was afraid of something.

Of course, she didn’t know better. For all she knew, he was a criminal on the run. Might even have been injured in a shoot-out, only she didn’t see any sign of blood.

“Are you a criminal?” she asked. Might as well get everything out in the open. He didn’t appear to be armed, and she was pretty sure she could outrun him, if push came to shove.

“No way,” he gasped. “Retired...cop.”

“You’re too young to be retired, and how do I know you’re a cop?”

“Disability,” Lyon said, not without a glimmer of humor. Damn, she was persistent. If he’d had to be rescued by a female, why couldn’t she have been a physical therapist?

“Then you really are a policeman?”

He nodded, which was a mistake, the neckbone being connected to the backbone, et cetera, et cetera. He wasn’t a cop and he wasn’t retired, but it was close enough to the truth.

Close enough for government work, as the old saying went.

“Well. I don’t suppose you can walk, but if we can get you in the boat maybe I can take you back to the motel and have someone send for a doctor. It’s right on the water. The motel, I mean. It might even be on the main river, I’m not sure, but if it is, this stream should get us there sooner or later. All we have to do is follow—”

“No way.”

“No way, what? Everything east of the Mississippi flows into the ocean by way of streams and rivers. If we—”

“No, I mean—ah, hell, it hurts!” Lyon closed his eyes and willed himself to let go—not to tense up. “Get me back to my campsite and we’ll call it even.”

“I don’t see anything even about that. I do all the work and you—”

“And I do all the bitching and groaning. Sorry about that. I’ll pay you for your time.”

“I don’t want your money.” She had dark eyes—brown with a hint of maroon, like her hair. They were shooting off sparks.

“Take off, then. Sooner or later someone else will come by.” They both knew that was a crock. They were so deep into uncharted territory it was a wonder the buzzards could even find them. “How’d you get here? The road doesn’t come anywhere near here.”

“I followed an old logging road and then just kept on walking.”

“Why?”

“Why not?”

“Lady, that’s no answer, but if it’s all right with you, I’d just as soon skip the dialogue and head on back to camp. You wouldn’t believe how dark it can get this far from the nearest streetlight.”

Jasmine was no judge of distance. There was a security light outside the motel, but that would be miles away. Miles and miles and miles. The trouble with long legs was that they covered so much territory, even at a leisurely pace. “If I can get you into your boat, can you do the rest by yourself?”

He gave her that “Duh” look.

“Okay, so maybe I’ll paddle you as far as your camp—and even help you get out, but then I’ll have to get back to the motel. I’m catching a plane to L.A. tomorrow.”

She was catching a plane nowhere, no time soon. That much quickly became obvious. By the time she managed to get him into the boat, they were both practically in tears. He from pain; she from sheer exasperation.

Not to mention the fact that he was about a hundred eighty pounds of solid muscle and bone, and fighting her all the way. Or if not her, fighting the pain.

She’d have sympathized more if he hadn’t cursed under his breath every step of the way. “Relax,” she snapped.

“Lady, if I could relax, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Fine. Then don’t relax. If I had a brain, I wouldn’t be here, either.”

The fighting didn’t stop at the edge of the water. “It’s not a paddle, it’s a damned oar!”

“I know what it is, and stop cursing.”

“Then stop jiggling around and sit down.”

She sat. On the back seat, because he was sprawled out across the front seat, taking up most of the middle space. He was sweating. It wasn’t really cold, even though it was February, but it wasn’t warm, either. Especially not now that the sun was almost out of sight.

Jasmine wished, not for the first time, that she’d worn jeans instead of her white shorts. And a jacket instead of a long-sleeve yellow denim shirt. She was a summer person. She didn’t own clothes suitable for a North Carolina winter.

“Don’t you even know how to row a boat?”

“Of course I know how to row a boat.” She’d seen it done plenty of times in the movies.

“You don’t row from the stern thwart, you row from amidship.”

“I know that.”

“Then move!”

“You’re there. Amidship, I mean.” He was propped up against a seat cushion on the whatsis up front, but his legs stretched out so that his feet were under the middle seat.

“Straddle my damned feet!”

She’d rather straddle his damned neck. With her bare hands.

But she moved, rocking the boat, causing him to gasp so that she was thoroughly ashamed of herself. The man was injured. She didn’t really want to hurt him any worse than he was already hurting, but if anyone deserved a bit of pain, he probably did.

Once settled on the edge of the wooden seat, she eyed him cautiously and reached for the oars. There were no oarlocks, only wooden notches that had been wallowed out until they were all but useless.

The oars stretched almost all the way across the creek. Cypress knees reached out from both sides. Lyon could have told her she’d need to shove from the stern until they cleared the fallen gum. Once past that point, the creek widened out.

He didn’t tell her because the last thing he needed was a clumsy, clueless beanpole dancing around in the stern of his boat. They’d both end up overboard, and he’d sink like a stone.

She muttered enough so that he pinned down her accent. Bible Belt with a faint patina of West Coast, polished by a few diction lessons. He wondered what the devil she was doing here, and then he quit wondering about anything except whether or not he would survive the night.

If he could’ve gotten his hands on all those muscle relaxants he’d quit taking cold turkey, he’d have downed the lot. And then, if he was still capable of unscrewing a cap, he’d have started in on the painkillers.

She shipped the oars as they approached the fallen gum tree. One of them swiveled around and struck him in the shoulder. The other one rolled across his shin.

“Oops. Sorry,” she said. “It’s getting dark. How far is this camp place of yours?”

“About six and three-quarters miles.”

Her mouth fell open. She had a nice mouth, well curved, full lower hp, but not too full. The swelling on her right cheek and eye was probably poison ivy. Even with most of his attention taken up by his own situation, he’d noticed her trying not to scratch. She’d reach up, hesitate, frown at her grimy nails and sigh. He’d have scratched it for her if his back had permitted him to reach out.

“I can’t go that far, I have to get back to the motel.”

“Fine. Pull over to the bank and get out.”

“What about you?”

“What about me? I won’t starve, if that’s what you’re worried about. I had half a can of Vienna sausage for lunch.”

“How will you get home?”

“Not your problem.”

“It is so my problem! I can’t see my way back to the motel in the dark. I’ll take you to your camp and you can lend me a flashlight and point me in the direction of the road, and...”

She gaped at him, her mahogany-colored eyes growing round. Even the one that was swollen half shut. “Did you say six and three-quarter miles?” she whispered.

The boat scraped against a cypress knee, and without even looking, she reached out, grabbed the thing and shoved off. Her survival skills were on a par with her rowing ability.

“Like I said, pull over to the bank and get out. Follow the creek to where you found me and then retrace your steps back to wherever you came from.” If he’d known there was a motel within walking distance, he might have gone even deeper into the swamp.

Company, he didn’t need.

Jasmine was having trouble making out his features. He was facing away from the rapidly fading light. His shoulders looked enormous in the baggy gray sweatshirt. She had a feeling they would look even more impressive without it. A surly man with shoulders the size of a refrigerator she didn’t need.

With a heavy sigh, she retrieved the oars now that the creek had widened out. One of them scraped his hip. He caught his breath, she apologized, and told herself it would make a wonderful travel piece. Lost in the wilderness, surrounded by silence, Spanish moss, cypress knees and a perfectly splendid sunset that was reflected, now that she’d come around a bend, on the water.

So far she’d seen no signs of any predators, but she had seen a huge, graceful bird she recognized as a heron type. It lifted from the bank just as they’d rounded the bend and flapped right overhead. If she’d been standing, she could have reached out and touched it.

If she’d been standing, she would have probably fallen overboard. Heaven help her if that happened, because she couldn’t swim a stroke and whatsisname wouldn’t be able to pull her out.

“What is your name, anyway?” She slapped at a mosquito and winced when it set off her itching again.

He hesitated just long enough for her to wonder why he hesitated at all. “Lyon,” he said.

“Oh, right. As long as it’s not alligator.”

“What’s yours?”

She didn’t hesitate. She, at least, had nothing to hide. “Jasmine. Jasmine Clancy,” she said, just in case he was wondering where he might have seen her before.

“Great. That takes care of the flora and fauna.”

“Ha-ha, very funny. How far is it now?”

“At a guess, I’d say about five and a half miles.”

She groaned. She’d been rowing steadily ever since the creek widened. Thanks to his constant carping, she was beginning to get the hang of it, but her hands would never be the same. “I don’t suppose you have a pair of gloves, do you?”

“I’m sorry.” Actually, Lyon thought, she wasn’t all that bad. Her form was lousy, but what she lacked in physical strength, she made up for in determination. He should have thought about her hands, though. If he could have got to his knife, she could have hacked off his sleeves and pulled them over her hands like a mitt.

Jasmine felt tears sting her eyes. She hated pain, she really did. She hated itching, hated mosquitoes, hated noxious vines that hated her right back, but most of all, she hated being here in the middle of the wilderness, not knowing where she was or how she was ever going to get back.

She was a coward. She’d always been a coward. After her father left, she and her mother never stayed in the same place more than a year or two. She used to wake up in the middle of the night terrified that she would come home from school and find her mother gone, too, and strangers living in her house.

She leaned forward—from the hips, the way he’d told her—and bumped the oars against the wallowed-out wooden oarlocks. Dammit, she would get him there if it killed her! She refused to be put out in the middle of this damned swamp in the dead of night, without so much as a flashlight.

“Take a break.”

“It won’t help.”

“Do it. I’ve got a handkerchief. Dig it out of my hip pocket, rip it in two pieces and wrap it around your palms.”

She really didn’t want to break her rhythm. And she had one, she really did. He had a lousy disposition. He’d fussed at her constantly, but he’d taught her the rudiments of rowing a boat.

Taught her enough to know that if she never set foot in one of the damned things again, it would be too soon.

“Do it, Jasmine. I don’t want you bleeding all over me.”

“Why, because you’re afraid the scent of fresh blood might attract alligators?” She lost her rhythm. A blade caught the water and jerked at her arm, and she uttered a five-letter word. Tears trickled down her cheeks, making her rash itch all the more.

“At least when I hit the headlines—Actress Lost in Damned Dismal Swamp, Feared Dead—my grandmother won’t recognize my name.”

Three

The sky was beginning to grow pale when Lyon opened his eyes. Being careful not to move, he drew a shallow, experimental breath. He still hurt. Hurt like hell, in fact, and where he didn’t hurt, he ached. The difference was subtle, but it was there.

He toyed with it as his senses came quickly alive. Mental exercises served a purpose when physical exercise was out of the question.

Like now. A fourteen-foot skiff was no place to spend a night. Especially not with a broken back and a knee that was still none too reliable.

Especially not an open skiff. In February. The warm spell was over. The temperature must’ve dropped into the forties last night.

They’d stopped for a rest. Her hands had been hurting. He’d been hurting all over. He’d known there was no hope of reaching camp before dark, and rather than risk taking a wrong turn, he’d let her sleep. And then he’d fallen asleep himself. Not a smart thing to do, but then, his options weren’t exactly limitless.

“Ah, hell,” he muttered, gazing bleary-eyed at the woman still huddled in the stern of the boat. She’d turned up the collar of her shirt, rolled down her sleeves and done her best to cover those long, naked legs with a few rumpled tissues and the flap of her shoulder bag.

“Wake up,” he rasped.

She groaned and tried to draw her knees up to her chin. Her no-longer-whıte shorts weren’t particularly skimpy. They’d been designed to come halfway down her thighs, but when a woman had legs as long as hers, there was still a lot of flesh left exposed to the elements.

Not to mention exposed to the eyes.

“Jasmine, look alive. We’ve got to get some heat going.”

“Turnip therm’stat.”

“Right. You do ıt—you’re the closest.”

She opened one eye. The other one was swollen shut. Shivering, she mumbled something that sounded like “Where Nell ama?”

“By my reckoning, you’re approximately five miles north of Billy’s Landing, about half a mile west of Two Buzzard Ditch, and a mile or so east of Graceland.”

“Oh,.”

She scratched her cheek and then her ankle, and smiled. There was something dangerously disarming about a woman who woke up shivering, scratching, blinking one eye and still managed to smile.

She yawned, rearranging splotched remnants of calamine lotion. “Graceland? I thought that was in Tennessee.” Her voice was early-morning soft. Husky. In another woman, under other circumstances, he might have taken it as an invitation.

With Jasmine he took it as merely easy on the ears.

“Bad joke. Think you can do a few warm-ups without falling overboard? We need to get your blood circulating.”

“Too late. ’S frozen like a raspberry snow cone.”

He yawned, too. And then, unexpectedly, he grinned. Couldn’t recall the last time he’d smiled, especially before breakfast, but she seemed to have that effect on him.

Lyon had come here to be alone. If he had to have company, he’d have preferred a chiropractor or a physical therapist. Instead, he got Jasmine Clancy with her poison ivy and her blistered hands and her world-class legs. He wasn’t sure just what breed of woman she was, but she didn’t belong here. One way or another, he probably ought to get rid of her.

“How’re you doing? Back still broken?” she asked in a voice that reminded him of late nights, rumpled beds and soft women.

“It’s better.” It was worse. A hell of a lot worse, but there was no point in giving her all the bad news at once. “Are you hungry?”

“Starved. I don’t suppose this yacht of yours runs to a galley?”

“Chef’s night out If you can manage to get your hand into my left side pocket, you might find half a chocolate bar. It’ll be messy, I’m afraid.”

“I’ll take it.”

It wasn’t quite as simple as it sounded. She eased herself up to a kneeling position, but in doing so, she was forced to straddle his legs. The boat rocked. She grabbed the sides, winced at the pain and waited for things to calm down again.

Lyon waited for her to recover her balance, grab the thing out of his pocket and get the hell off his lap. He would have dug it out himself if he hadn’t been afraid to move anything connected to his back. Which included his arms.

Fine pair they were. He shifted slightly to give her access. Cargo pants had plenty of storage room. He didn’t particularly want her exploring it all.

Cautiously, she dragged one knee alongside his legs and leaned forward to slide one hand into his left side pocket. Her hair tickled his face. It was wilder than ever—probably hadn’t seen a comb in days—and it smelled faintly of...lilac?

Oh, hell, if there was one thing he didn’t need it was a woman who smelled of lilacs. “Come on, come on, we don’t have all day,” he growled.

He was discovering—rediscovering, at least—things about himself that he’d just as soon have left safely buried for another few years.

Such as the fact that the male of the species was about ten parts brain to ninety parts testosterone. If there was one thing he didn’t need screwing up his ten percent at the moment, it was that other ninety percent.

Her fingers fumbled against his groin. He could ick himself for not wearing a shirt with pockets. He could kick himself for not eating the whole damned thing instead of saving half for the trip back to the campsite in case he ran out of energy.

She dug out a knife, a pocket calculator and a shapeless lump that was half a chocolate bar that had melted and stuck to the wrapper. “Don’t you want any? One bite, that’s all I need. Just enough to wake me up. Chocolate has caffeine, doesn’t it?”

“Nah, I don’t want any. You eat it all, you’re the one who’s going to have to get us out of here.”

So then he had to watch while she unwrapped the thing and licked it off the paper. Nearby, a small flock of fish ducks dived for breakfast. A great blue squawked a protest and lifted from the banks, long legs dangling gracefully.

He scowled at the birds and then he scowled at her long, graceful, mud-stained, briar-scratched legs. And then he scowled some more just on general principle. “We’d better get going. If you want to go ashore for a minute, there’s a place just downstream from here where the bank’s pretty clear.”

“I’m thirsty. I don’t suppose you have anything to drink, do you?”

“Warm beer?”

She shuddered. “I’ll wait for coffee, thanks. You will offer me a cup of coffee before I head back to the motel, won’t you?”

He shrugged, which was a painful mistake, but it was all the answer she was going to get. He’d offer her coffee, all right, but she wouldn’t be going back. Not anytime soon.

As dainty as if it were a perfumed finger bowl, she dipped her hands over the sides, swished them around, then wet a tissue and daubed at her face.

Pity. He’d been admiring the rım of chocolate around her mouth. Shifting painfully into the most comfortable position he could achieve for the long trip ahead, he said, “You missed the spot beside your nose. No—left side. Got it.”

And then he had to wait while she took a brush from her purse and set to work on her hair. “I won’t be much longer,” she said when she caught him staring at her. “It’s just that I can think better once I’ve washed and brushed. I’d give anything if I had my toothbrush.”

Closing his eyes, Lyon braced himself to endure the next few hours.

“This is it?” Jasmine shipped the oars. He’d used the phrase earlier and she liked the sound of it. It sounded...brisk. Decisive. If there was one thing she could use about now, it was a shot of brisk decisiveness.

He appeared to be waiting for further comment. When none was forthcoming, he began the painful, awkward business of getting to his feet. She offered to help.

“Just stand back, okay? No, don’t touch me!”

She wasn’t about to touch him.

Well, yes...maybe she had reached out to him, but that was purely instinctive. It would take someone really heartless to stand by and watch a man suffer the way Lion—Lion?—the way he was suffering. “Watch out for the wet place on the floor,” she cautioned.

“Deck.”

“I knew that.”

The look he sent her would have blistered paint. “Hold the boat steady when I start to swing my left leg over the side, will you?”

She grabbed the sides. Her hands hurt like the very devil, but she grabbed and held on until something in the way he was looking at her tipped her off that this wasn’t what he’d had in mind.

Crouched over, one hand on his back, the other gripping the scarred wooden trim that ran all the way around the edge of the boat, he glared at her over his shoulder.

Jasmine glared right back. “I’m doing the best I can. If you don’t like it, hire someone else.”

Under the heavy growth of beard, his face was roughly the color of wet plaster. He was sweating. The temperature had to be somewhere around zero minus ten. Personally, Jasmine had never been colder in her entire life than she’d been last night, and he was sweating.

“Pick up one of the oars,” he said through clenched teeth.

She picked it up. He obviously read her mind, because he said, “If you’re going to knock me in the head, wait until I’m on shore, will you? You don’t want to show up at your motel with a dead man on board. Too much explaining to do.”

She took a deep breath, puffed out her cheeks, which made her face start itching all over again, and said with deceptive mildness, “All right, I’m holding onto the oar. I’m pretty sure this one won’t try to get away, but what about the other one?”

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