Lily Knew What Their Kiss Meant.

Oh, yes, she knew it. Knew that no matter how much she wanted to deny the inevitable, she couldn’t do it. Eve and that damned apple. The dark, sweet taste of temptation—of his mouth on hers, his hands on her body. Wherever they were headed, she was going willingly, knowing she’d be hurt in the end, because there was no way on earth she could protect herself against something so powerful, so wonderful—so compelling. For the first time in her life, she knew what it must be like to be addicted. To need—to want so desperately that nothing else in the world mattered.

And Curt Powers was the only cure.

Men bound by blood, tied to the sea

and destined to be heroes.

Dear Reader,

Our 20th anniversary pledge to you, our devoted readers, is a promise to continue delivering passionate, powerful, provocative love stories from your favorite Silhouette Desire authors for all the years to come!

As an anniversary treat, we’ve got a special book for you from the incomparable Annette Broadrick. Marriage Prey is a romance between the offspring of two couples from Annette’s earliest Desire books, which Silhouette reissued along with a third early Desire novel last month as Maximum Marriage: Men on a Mission. Bestselling author Mary Lynn Baxter brings you November’s MAN OF THE MONTH…Her Perfect Man. A minister and a reformed party girl fall for each other in this classic opposites-attract love story. A Cowboy’s Gift is the latest offering by RITA Award winner Anne McAllister in her popular CODE OF THE WEST miniseries.

Another RITA winner, Caroline Cross, delivers the next installment of the exciting Desire miniseries FORTUNE’S CHILDREN: THE GROOMS with Husband—or Enemy? Dixie Browning’s miniseries THE PASSIONATE POWERS continues with The Virgin and the Vengeful Groom, part of our extra-sensual BODY & SOUL promotion. And Sheri WhiteFeather has created another appealing Native American hero in Night Wind’s Woman.

So please join us in celebrating twenty glorious years of category romance by indulging yourself with all six of these compelling love stories from Silhouette Desire!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

The Virgin and the Vengeful Groom
Dixie Browning

www.millsandboon.co.uk

DIXIE BROWNING

has been writing for Silhouette since 1980 and recently celebrated the publication of her sixty-fifth book, Texas Millionaire. She has also written a number of historical romances with her sister under the name Bronwyn Williams. An award-winning painter and writer, Browning lives on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. You may write to her at PO Box 1389, Buxton, NC 27920.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

One

His bare, size-eleven feet propped on the railing, Curt let the long-neck bottle slip through his fingers to rest on the sandy porch floor. Gazing out over the Atlantic, he continued the word game a fellow patient had introduced him to in a certain Central American hospital.

Applicable words only. Even playing alone he stuck to the rules. He’d started over with the As once he’d settled here at Powers Point. After less than a week he was up to the R words. There was not a lot to do here.

Not a lot he could manage yet, at any rate.

Rest and relaxation.

Recuperation and recreation.

Nah. Scratch recreation, it didn’t apply.

Rebuild, restore…retire? At age thirty-six?

Well, hell—how about rotting, raving, royally pissed-off?

Too much like the Bs. Bored, bad, broken. And bitter. Yeah, that, too, but he was working on that one.

The Ps had come easy. Powers Point. Private. Privateer?

Could his old man have been a pirate? Being the descendent of several generations of seafarers about whom he knew next to nothing, Curt had to wonder. Powers Point was a pretty valuable chunk of real estate, at least, it was now that the island had turned into a tourist haven. What about a hundred years ago? Two hundred? Why would anyone settle in a place like this unless he valued privacy and needed easy access to the sea?

Private, privacy, privateer…

It was only a word game, he told himself. He would never even have thought of it if he hadn’t fallen heir to six sealed boxes a few months ago. After years of believing his father was dead, he had discovered that Matthew Curtis Powers had lived right here in Powers Point until a few years ago, when he’d entered a nursing home in Virginia, suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. Curt could have passed his own father on the street and never known it. Never even recognized him. Just thinking about it made him want to strike out at something.

He’d been on twelve-hour notice before leaving on another mission when the lawyer had finally tracked him down to inform him of his father’s death. Stunned, he had accepted a deed and two keys—one for a house at a place he’d never even heard of at the time, Powers Point, and another one to a storage unit in Norfolk. He hadn’t had time to absorb the knowledge—barely had time to locate a storage place and stash the stuff. Six boxes of ledgers, logbooks, diaries and old newspapers, not to mention half a dozen old novels. He’d glanced at a few of the titles and seen enough to know that he wouldn’t be in any great hurry to read them.

The Virgin and the Vengeful Groom. Was that an example of his family’s taste in literature?

But then, what the hell did he know about his family’s taste in books or anything else? At a time when he’d been too young to know what was going on, his mother had taken him away and told him his father was dead. All those years he’d believed it, because he’d had no reason not to.

As for the boxes, he’d had little time to do more than scan the top layers, but even that had been enough to fuel his imagination. Later, lying in a series of hospital beds with nothing but time on his hands, stories his father had told him more than thirty years earlier had started coming back. Fragments. Images—things a kid might recall, never knowing if it came from a comic book or a television show or something real. Even now he wasn’t certain how much was real and how much was invented out of need. Like the memory of a ship named the Black Swan.

He’d just about decided it was a bunch of bull when those six boxes of papers had turned up. At least some of those papers were definitely ship related, triggering a few recollections of some female relative who had grown up aboard a ship and then written a few wildly imaginative stories.

In fact, once he’d set his mind to it, he’d begun to recall quite a few tales about a family—his own, a few generations back—that had gone to sea and stayed there, men, women and children alike.

The Powers of Powers Point. He hadn’t put much stock in any of the old tales as a kid. Probably more into space rangers at that age. But then, soon after that the family he’d taken for granted had disintegrated, and for the next few years he’d been too caught up in trying to understand things no kid could possibly understand to worry about his father’s old stories.

They were trying to come back, though. Bits and pieces—nothing particularly outstanding, but then, memories were notoriously unreliable. Ask five men about an event that had taken place a week ago and you’d get five different stories.

So, although he hadn’t put much stock in old memories, while he’d been lying flat on his back in a series of hospitals he’d had plenty of time to wonder. And, yeah, he had even wondered whether or not old Matthew might have indulged in a bit of skullduggery. Blackbeard had operated in these parts. Met his grisly end, in fact, on the next island south in the Outer Banks chain—Ocracoke.

At least it had served the purpose of occupying his mind while he waited for skin grafts to take, for broken bones to heal, for torn muscles to mend. Not to mention the time it took his body to rid itself of a variety of exotic bugs he’d caught while lying buried up to his ears in a stinking mud hole in a Central American jungle.

There wasn’t a whole lot he could do yet, physically, but as soon as he was up to making the trip to Norfolk, he fully intended to retrieve his legacy and learn a little more about his past. After years of being a rolling stone, he could afford to gather a bit of moss. That didn’t mean he was under any obligation to hang around, once he was back in shape.

Physically he was still a mess, but mentally he was pretty solid. Certain things were beginning to make sense to him now. Such as the way he had always felt like an alien in corn country, Oklahoma, after his mother had remarried. He’d been about eight then. His stepfather had been a decent enough guy, but they’d never been close.

Eventually Curt had joined the Navy and ended up seeing more of the world than he ever cared to see again. That was still up for grabs. His future. Meanwhile he was here in a place that bore his name, if not his imprint. Along the way he had loved and lost, as the old saying went. Loved not wisely but too well—another cliché. Alicia was a fast-fading memory he hadn’t even tried to recover.

Somewhere in one of those boxes might lie the explanation for why he’d always felt drawn to salt water. Why he’d ended up choosing a career as a Navy SEAL over his stepfather’s farm.

A mosquito landed on the tender flesh of a newly healed skin graft. He swore, slapped, and swore again. This recovery business was a pain in the—in various parts of his anatomy. Patience had never been one of his virtues. At least here he had time and privacy. The house itself was a gaunt, unpainted relic, sparsely furnished but, surprisingly enough, still solid. The outbuildings had weathered a few too many storms to be worth repairing, even if he’d had a use for them. Even if he’d planned on hanging around. As for the rest of his estate, it consisted of roughly a hundred-odd acres of blowing sand, stunted trees and muddy marsh that stunk to high heaven whenever the wind was off the sound.

Not to mention the small, private cemetery with half a dozen or so leaning tombstones. Most of the names had been sandblasted until few of them were even legible. One stood out. His father. Matthew Curtis Powers, born September 9, 1931, died, September 9, 1997. Ironic. He could think of better ways to celebrate a birthday.

Curt took a deep, cautious breath. Too deep and it hurt; too shallow and he got that suffocating feeling again. Nightmare stuff.

It’s over, man. You’re out of it.

Physically he was out of it. Mentally…he was getting there.

At least he had something to focus his mind on. That helped. The nightmares came less frequently now. Once he got involved in rediscovering the father he remembered only dimly—the man who had taught him to fish when he was barely old enough to hold a fishing pole and promised that one of these days they’d buy a boat and sail to the West Indies—he’d be well on the way to full recovery.

In a week or so he would drive to Norfolk and reclaim the rest of his inheritance. While he had no intention of hanging around any longer than necessary, it didn’t hurt for a guy to know something about his past—his roots.

Moving with the deceptive ease of someone afraid of jarring something loose, Curt made his way to the kitchen, squeaked open the rust-speckled refrigerator and scowled. “Well, hell,” he said plaintively.

No beer. Also, no bacon, no eggs—nothing but a chunk of green cheese that wasn’t supposed to be that color. No more leftover pizza—he’d finished that off for breakfast. He wasn’t exactly looking forward to making another supply run. Especially as he’d insisted on keeping his four-by-four instead of trading it in on something with an automatic transmission. The drive down from the hospital in Maryland had damn near killed him, but he’d stuck it out on the theory that if it hurt, it must be good for him. Once he’d opened the house up, aired it out and unloaded his few possessions, he had hauled south to the nearest village to hire a carpenter. While he was there, he’d stocked up on the necessities of life: beer, bacon and eggs and a variety of canned goods.

This time the drive wasn’t too bad. The usual beach traffic, but what the devil—he was in no hurry. He pulled in at the post office to collect the accumulation of junk mail, then drove on to the nearest supermarket. It was late August. The place was mobbed. As a rule he did his shopping before eight in the morning or after ten at night. If there was one thing that galled the hell out of him—and actually, there were several—it was having strangers stare at him as if he were some kind of freak. So he had a few scars—so what?

So he walked kind of funny. So what?

Kids were the worst. They’d stare at him, half scared, half fascinated. As if he were a carnival display or something instead of a guy who’d happened to get in the way of a few pounds of miscellaneous scrap metal. “You ain’t seen nothing, kid,” he was tempted to growl. “Wait till I take off my pants.”

But of course, he never did. His own mama, bless her frivolous, lying soul, had taught him a few manners before he’d left the nest.

Bracing himself not to use the shopping cart as a walker, he started with the As and tossed in a couple of apples. Next, he grabbed a few cans of beans, some corned beef, bread and beer. Enough of the Bs. He moved through the alphabet to cookies, candy, cheese and coffee, then located the eggs. His unwritten list was another of the mental exercises designed to keep his brain from atrophying. By the time he’d done pickles and preserves, he’d had enough. Skipping ahead to the Vs, he opted for a copy of today’s Virginian Pilot instead of vegetables. He had canned beans and pickles, after all.

Three days after she’d brought them home, Lily still hadn’t got around to finding putting-places for the contents of a single box. She was too caught up in exploring her treasure trove. Organizing could wait. Imagine, a diary written more than a hundred years ago. For all she knew, she was the first person to read it since the woman named Bess had made the last entry.

“Okay, Bessie, where did we leave off?” she murmured. “We were hiding from that jerk who had locked up your crew, right?” Propping her feet on one of the boxes, she opened the diary she’d been reading. The stuff was gold, pure gold. Diaries, travel journals—and she hadn’t even started on the novels yet. Six boxes full of who-knew-what wonderful material. It was better than winning the lottery.

The handwriting was better formed than her own, but it was still hard to read. Now and then Lily had to look up a word in the dictionary. Even so, it was amazing how a woman of the twenty-first century could slip into the skin of a woman from another era. Bess Powers had grown up in an unorthodox way and gone on to do her own thing.

So had Lily. They had both overcome amazing odds to make something of themselves—Bess in an age when women were supposed to be seen and not heard, to wear corsets and bustles and high-top shoes.

She’d even smoked cigars. Lily didn’t smoke. She didn’t drink. She didn’t even take aspirin for headaches or cramps; however, she occasionally allowed herself to over-indulge in junk food.

“You’d have loved subs, Bessie. With peppers and onions and provolone and oil and vinegar—we’d have royally pigged out.”

Bess had eaten raw fish aboard ship and something called salt horse, which might be horse, or it might be kangaroo, for all Lily knew. Neither animal sounded particularly appetizing. She had picked and eaten fruits that Lily couldn’t even pronounce, much less visualize. Lily wanted to believe she would have done it, too, in Bess’s place, because the more she read, the more convinced she was that she and Bess Powers were two of a kind, separated by a century, give or take a few years.

It was almost as if fate had guided her that day. She had gone to the storage unit to leave a box of books—author’s copies of her first three paperbacks, plus a few foreign copies. Doris, her housekeeper, threatened to burn the things the next time she tripped over them, but there was simply no more room on her crowded bookshelves. That was when she’d noticed the auction. A few people were bidding on the contents of three units on which the rental payments had fallen too far behind. Standard procedure, she’d been told when she’d asked what was going on. “But that’s awful,” she’d said at the time, even as she edged closer to get a look at what was on the block.

The boxes had been opened. Nothing but old books and some old newspapers—the others only glanced and turned their attention back to the two chairs, three bicycles and a suitcase of winter clothing.

For reasons that hadn’t made sense at the time, and hardly did even now, Lily had felt defensive on behalf of the papers. Poor things, no one had wanted them. Lily knew what it was like to be shunned. Sensible or not, she’d gone all defensive and put in a bid on the lot. At least she could give the things a decent burial. Burn them or something. Maybe even try to locate the owner.

Feeling self-righteous, she had taken a second look and discovered among the ancient newspapers what appeared to be travel journals or logbooks, a few old novels, the covers all mildewed, and several diaries, the locks no longer effective as the leather straps had more or less disintegrated. That was when she’d first felt it—that all-but-imperceptible quiver of excitement that always came when she hit on the seed of a solid plot. Sometimes it was the people, sometimes the conflict—this time it was a woman named Bess, who had written diaries.

Diaries that Lily was increasingly certain she’d been meant to find all these years later, because she and Bess were kindred spirits. Oh, yes they were, and if that sounded spooky, so be it. She didn’t have to admit to anything, all she’d had to do was pay for the stuff, drag it to her car, squeeze it in and get it home and up to her third-floor apartment.

Which she had ultimately done, her appetite whetted by the promise of mystery, tragedy, possibly even romance….

The boxes had been heavy, her car was small. Enter the second coincidence, or as Lily preferred to think of it, the second omen. She was of two minds when it came to publicity. Personally, she hated it. As Lily O’Malley, bestselling novelist, she had learned to tolerate it, although even the best publicity was not without dangers. Occasionally a fan grew somewhat…obsessive.

She’d been struggling to load the boxes on a dolly to get them to her car when she’d sensed someone behind her. Braced instinctively for trouble, she heard the man say, “Hey, aren’t you Lily O’Malley? My wife reads everything you write. I thought I recognized you from your picture inside the back cover.”

She eyed him warily. He was wearing an Atlanta Braves cap. The press pass clipped to his pocket looked legitimate, but with what had been happening to her this past week—the phone calls and the awful things she’d found in her underwear drawer—she didn’t dare take chances. If this guy turned out to be her stalker, she would just as soon confront him here in a public place, where one loud scream would bring help.

On the other hand, if he really was a reporter, she would rather not be discovered wearing her oldest grungies. Hardly the image her publisher liked her to present.

Never show fear, she reminded herself. Cardinal rule. “And you are?” she demanded in her most imperious tone.

“Bill DeSalvo, Virginian Pilot. Whatcha got here, books?”

He looked harmless, but then, so had Ted Bundy. “Nothing at all valuable—mostly old papers. Actually, I’m really not sure yet.”

“Bought yourself a pig in a poke, huh?”

“You have a way with words,” she said dryly. After hearing his voice, she was pretty sure he was not the one. In fact, he was a fellow writer. So she ventured a smile, but a quick one. Not a particularly warm one.

“Let me give you a hand with that stuff.” By the time he’d helped her lift the last box and squeeze it into her open sports car, she had gleaned quite a bit of information. She knew, for instance, that his wife read a chapter over her breakfast every morning and three chapters before she fell asleep each night, which didn’t say a whole lot for their marriage.

DeSalvo learned that the boxes contained old logbooks, a few moldy novels and the journals of a woman who seemed to have spent some time at sea. He also learned that Lily’s latest title, Blood Will Tell, was due to hit the stands within days and that she would be appearing at a local bookstore. And yes, of course she’d be delighted to sign a book for his wife.

Asked where she got her ideas, she nodded to the boxes. “Who knows? I might have just bought six boxes of ideas.”

The young man jotted down a few notes. “You mean you do this kind of thing all the time, looking for inspiration?”

By then Lily had learned that DeSalvo was brand-new at his job, and that running into a celebrity was a big break. Flattered in spite of herself, she told him about the time she’d paid eighty-five dollars for the diary of a nineteenth-century prostitute only to find that it was a combination account book and recipe book. “All I learned was that bay leaves keep weevils out of cornmeal and that the diarist earned a grand total of two dollars a night, six nights a week and paid someone named Leandra ten dollars a month.”

“For what, bed, board and clean sheets?”

“Probably.”

It was then that she’d noticed the photographer he’d waved over. “D’you mind?” the young journalist asked, and she brushed back her hair and tried to look as glamorous as possible, wearing the ancient white shirt and baggy slacks she’d put on to deal with the accumulation of books Doris kept threatening to burn.

And now here she was, piling up still more stuff to trip over. Pack rats didn’t need housekeepers, they needed warehouses and bulldozers.

“Hope you find something in there worth all the trouble,” the young reporter had said when she’d climbed behind the wheel.

“Or at any rate something more intriguing than budgets and household hints,” she returned, laughing. This time the flash caught her with her mouth open and her hair blowing across her face. Oh, well. Any publicity was supposed to be better than none at all. “There’s bound to be something here. A bit of mystery, a bit of romance—who knows what I’ll find?”

She waved and backed out of the parking slot, muttering under her breath, “Just don’t you dare refer to my books as bodice rippers.”

“The hell you say!” Curt’s feet hit the deck with a jarring force that caused him to wince, swear and catch his breath. He had read and reread the piece in the Pilot. It was the picture of a laughing woman that had first caught his attention. Something about the way her windblown hair swirled around a face that was more intriguing than pretty—the way her shirt was lovingly plastered over small, high breasts. It was only when he’d read through the two short columns the second time that something struck a nerve. Storage unit? Six boxes? Papers, ledgers, journals and a few musty old novels?

“When asked where she got her ideas, the novelist replied that ideas were everywhere. ‘Glimpses of strangers. Snatches of overheard conversation. A few lines in a newspaper. Ideas are never the problem, what’s hard to find is the time to do them all justice.”’

Ideas, hell, the woman was a common thief! Unless he was very much mistaken, those boxes piled in the back seat of her toy car were his own personal property!

Not that he was into material possessions, other than his dive gear and his wheels. Naturally, those were top of the line. If creature comforts had been a priority, he would never have holed up in a place like Powers Point. He was into solitude. Solitude, singlehood and simplified living.

But dammit, what was his was his! Just because he happened to miss a couple of rent payments on a dinky little storage locker, that didn’t give those jerks the right to auction his stuff off to the highest bidder. It wasn’t as if he’d had nothing better to do than keep up with such trivial details. He’d gone all the way to hell and back serving the interests of his country. Fighting terrorists, arms dealers and drug dealers, who were more and more often turning out to be one and the same, hardly fell into the category of a nine-to-five job.

He didn’t care what was in those boxes, his father had wanted him to have them, and he was damned well going to have them, and Miss Lily O’Malley could get her ideas from the city landfill as far as he was concerned.

It took three days to locate the woman. The drive to Norfolk took longer than it should because he’d had to get out every fifty miles or so to work the kinks out of his carcass. First thing he did was find a motel, check in and stand under a hot shower until his eyelids began to droop. After that he dried off and ordered in a pizza. He fell asleep with a half-eaten pizza before him and an open phone book, roused just enough to fall into bed and slept for ten hours.

Most of the next day was spent in tracking down a woman who obviously didn’t want to be found. The phone company was no help at all. Gave him a hard time, in fact. When he’d pressed he’d been told that the woman had been having trouble with crank calls and that he could talk to the police if he insisted. He’d declined the offer.

Next he tried the storage company, but the birdbrain in the office spouted the company line. Skip three months and you’re dead meat. Company policy.

He refrained from telling her what she could do with her company policy and tackled the newspaper office, with no better luck. City directory? Sorry. He was an officer in the United States Navy? Big deal. They had naval officers running out their ears here in the Norfolk area.

Curt still had a few sources of information not available to the general public, but as national security was not at issue, he wasn’t about to pull rank over a bunch of old papers and the works of some nineteenth-century hack writer.

It was at a public library that he finally got his first lead. Lily O’Malley would be appearing at a local bookstore to sign copies of her newest book between the hours of twelve and two the next afternoon.

Bingo.

Thanks to a friendly, informative librarian, he also learned that the lady had earned herself a nice collection of awards and was on the way to building a reputation writing something called romantic suspense. What he couldn’t figure out was why a successful contemporary writer would fork over even a few bucks for the scribblings of an obscure nineteenth-century spinster who, according to what little family legend he could recall, had made a career of distorting the truth.

At the bookstore he spent ten minutes checking out the site, pretending an interest in astrology while he watched a table being set up, complete with lace cover, flowers, posters and a stack of books a foot high and five feet long. If they were expecting to sell that many copies, he’d better move the hell out of the way or get crushed in the stampede.

Nobody stared at the shiny new skin on the side of his neck, or if they did, they were discreet about it. He’d worn khakis and a black T-shirt, something to blend in with the Saturday-afternoon crowd. His hair had grown shaggy since he’d left the hospital. The gray seemed more pronounced, but all in all, there was nothing about him that should spook a lady writer.

After rethinking his initial plan to confront and demand, he opted for diplomacy. A brief, polite explanation, followed by an offer to repay whatever she’d laid out, after which he would collect his property and leave.

“I hate this, I really do,” Lily told herself as she shoved her lucky roller ball pen in her purse, dropped her purse in her tote and let herself out the door. No matter how many signings she did, she always got butterflies. What if nobody came? What if she had to sit there for two hours, trying to appear friendly and approachable when she felt like hiding in the rest room? What if no one showed up? What if they did, but not one single book sold?

It could happen. Once, in the early days of her career, before all the mergers had done away with the small distributors, she had spent two hellish hours in a huge discount store at 6:00 p.m. on a Friday, before towering stacks of her third paperback novel. Four sales reps, all young, all built like football players, had lined up behind her, arms crossed over their chests. Not a single person approached her table. When she’d taken a rest room break halfway through the ordeal, she’d overheard one woman wondering who she was and another one saying, “I don’t know, but she must be important, she’s got all those bodyguards with her.”

After all the those slimy phone calls she’d been getting from some creep who got his jollies by talking dirty to women, not to mention the fact that someone—the same creep, she was sure of it—had actually been inside her apartment, she almost wished she did have a few bodyguards. Not that she couldn’t handle herself in a pinch, but all the same… Deep breath, Lily. You can do this. You’ve done it a dozen times before. This is only one teeny little bookstore, not a five-city tour.

It was still hard to believe—sometimes, even now, she had to pinch herself—but people took her at face value. The bookstore manager had baked cookies and brought a lace tablecloth from her own home. Lily was so touched she felt like weeping. Nerves did that to her, and her own had been stretched to the breaking point. Her best friend, who was also her agent, had urged her to get out of town until the police could do their job. Instead, she had done as they suggested and changed her unlisted number, changed the lock on her door and had a chain installed.

That had hurt. One of the things she loved most about her apartment was that it was in such a safe neighborhood, half the time when residents visited someone else in the building, they left their doors unlocked. And while she had never quite gone that far, she’d never felt threatened. Until now.

At least here in broad daylight, in a busy mall bookstore, she should be safe.

There were already several people glancing this way, looking as if they might be coming over. The woman with two children—the teenage girls with the pierced eyebrows. The man in the black T-shirt…

Mercy. She would willingly go back to “clinch covers” if he would agree to pose. What was there about dangerous-looking men? she wondered. Men with dark, slashing eyebrows, shaggy, sun-streaked hair, unsmiling mouths and lean, hawkish features?

Hawkish features? Lily, my girl, you sound like a writer.

Then there was the way he moved, as if he had ball bearing joints. She could imagine a dancer moving that way, or a hunter silently gliding through the forest. Odds were this man was no dancer. There was no shotgun in evidence, which meant he probably wasn’t on safari, either. He could be one of those foreign correspondents who put on a battle jacket to stand before a camera and read a script, or he could be—

Oh, God, he was—he was coming over here.

What if he was the one?

Ohmigod, ohmigod, ohmigod.

He’s not going to hurt you here, not out in public!

Where was the security guard? Every mall had security guards, because stuff happened. There were creeps everywhere.

Uncapping her pen, she gripped it in her right fist and lowered her hand to her lap. Smile, Lily, smile! Don’t let him know you’re afraid, bluff! You can do it, you’re an old hand at bluff and run. Besides, even if he turned out to be her crank caller, the policewoman had told her that nine times out of ten, crank callers were harmless. Pathetic losers who couldn’t interact with women except anonymously.

The last thing this man looked was harmless.

He was staring at her. Now he was moving in her direction. Years of soft living had taken its toll, because she was suddenly having trouble breathing. Surely someone was looking this way—someone would notice if he started anything? The store manager—

“Miss O’Malley? I believe you have something that belongs to me,” he said in a voice that could best be described as chocolate-covered gravel.

It didn’t sound like the voice she’d heard on the phone, but voices could be disguised.

Her mouth was so dry she couldn’t have spit if her pants were on fire, but she forced herself to look him in the eye. Coolly, graciously she said, “I beg your pardon?”

Two

I beg your pardon?

Lily was tough. She had grown up tough. In the neighborhoods where she’d spent her formative years, toughness was a prerequisite to survival. Over the intervening years she had moved countless times, to different cities, different states. She had learned how to dress, how to speak, which fork to use for oysters, which to save for cake. The one thing she had never quite managed to do was lose the urge to slip away rather than confront trouble head-on.

And this man, whether or not he was actually her crank caller, was trouble.

“I said, you have something that belongs to me,” he repeated, never breaking eye contact. Her fingers tightened on her Montblanc pen, the one she had treated herself to after her first book went to number two on the bestseller list and stayed there for three weeks. As a weapon it was slightly better than car keys. As a reminder of who she was and how much she’d accomplished, how far she had come from the skinny kid who had scrounged for food from restaurant garbage, worn clothes snagged from backyard clotheslines because she didn’t dare risk getting caught shoplifting, it served well enough.

She opened her mouth to beg his pardon again, snapped it shut and looked around for mall security—for anyone bigger and tougher than the man towering over her.

“If you’d like to buy a book, I’ll be—”

“I’ll pay you whatever you laid out for them.” Unblinking. She’d heard of unblinking eyes—probably used the phrase herself a time or two. This was the first time she had actually been confronted by a pair of deep-set, intensely blue, unblinking eyes.

How the dickens could a man make her feel threatened and dithery at the same time? She’d been threatened by experts. The crank caller who insisted on telling her in detail what he’d like to do to her made her want to kick him where it would do the most damage. The creep who had actually invaded her home, leaving disgusting things in her underwear drawer!

But dithery? The last time she could remember feeling dithery was when she’d been offered her first three-book contract after her first book had gone back to press five times. Getting a grip on herself, she said in her best Masterpiece Theater voice, “I’m sorry, but you’ve obviously mistaken me for someone else.”

He glanced at the nameplate: Lily O’Malley, Bestselling Author. His unblinking eyes shifted to the newspaper clipping mounted on a poster along with one of her publicity stills. He said, “I don’t think so. Look, you’ll be finished here at two? Why don’t I come back later, and we can settle things then?”

Totally confused, Lily watched him turn and walk away in that odd, gliding way he had of moving. In a woman it would have been called graceful. He could have balanced a book on his head. In a man it was something else altogether. Subtle? Scary? How would she describe it as a writer?

She knew very well how she would describe it as a woman. In a word, sexy. He might not be the weirdo she had first taken him for, but any dealings with a man like that could definitely be classified as a walk on the wild side, and what woman hadn’t been tempted at some time in her life to walk on the wild side?

Not Lily, though. Thank you very much. She’d been there, done that.

Turning her attention to the woman who was examining one of her books, she eased into her famous-author mode. “What do you think of the cover?”

“Well, it’s real pretty, but I’d rather see who the story’s about,” the woman replied with a faint frown.

They discussed covers. They discussed her last two novels. By that time a line was forming, and Lily tucked the dangerous-looking man into a compartment of her mind and shut the door. It was another of her talents—compartmentalizing—that had stood her in good stead over the years. Some doors had not been unlocked in years.

A few never would be.

So that was Lily O’Malley, Curt mused as he sought out the food court and ordered a pastrami on rye with horseradish. She didn’t add up. Classy didn’t quite say it all. Neither did sexy. Yet she was both of those and more. Intriguing was a word that came to mind. He reminded himself that he wasn’t here to be intrigued, he was here to get back what she had stolen from him, legally or not, and get the hell back to the island, where he could take his own sweet time going through it.

The more he thought about it, the more important it became, now that he was the Powers in residence at Powers Point, even if only on a temporary basis. As far as he knew, he was the last of the lot, and while the concept of family had never meant much to him personally, the least he could do for those responsible for his existence was to hang on to what they’d left behind. For a professional rolling stone, it was a pretty heavy responsibility, but what the hell—he’d shouldered heavier loads. He could do that much before he moved on again.

Lily signed a respectable number of books. She’d done better, but she had also done a lot worse. She accepted a number of compliments—graciously, she hoped—and one or two criticisms: there wasn’t enough sex; there was too much sex; did the guy in her last book, or did he not, ever pay for that apple? She hadn’t said.

She answered each critic seriously and wished the stint would end. Fourteen minutes to go. After that, a few more minutes spent thanking the staff, and she’d be free to leave.

Idly she wondered about the dark-eyed stranger with the sexy way of walking. He’d claimed she had something of his—which was absurd, of course. She’d heard just about every pickup line in the books. Some people said the most outrageous things in an effort to grab her attention.

A few went even further.

Ten minutes and counting. “I’m so glad you liked it. It was one of my favorites. Shall I sign it for you? Adella…that’s a lovely name.”

Seven minutes to go. No one in sight. Lily reached for her purse, capped her pen and felt around with her feet for her shoes.

And then, there he was. Those same slashing eyebrows, several shades darker than his streaky tan hair. She hadn’t imagined the intensity of those eyes, nor that odd, sexy way he had of walking, as though his legs moved independently from his torso.

“Are you ready?” he asked.

“I beg your—”

“You’ve already begged it. If you’re about finished here, why don’t we go someplace where we can talk?”

“Look, Mr….”

“Powers,” he supplied. “The name ring any bells?”

Powers. The voice might not have rung any bells, but the name surely did. What have we got here, Bess?

“If this has something to do with those old papers I bought at the auction—”

“I figured it might come back to you.”

“There’s nothing to discuss. It was a legitimate business deal. The things were up for sale—I bought them, ergo, I’m the—”

“Ergo?”

“What is your problem?” she demanded, rising to her full height, which was almost five feet eight inches, now that she had her shoes on again.

The store manager appeared, a questioning look on her round face. The man who claimed his name was Powers towered over both of them. “Just trying to decide on where to go for a late lunch,” he explained with hard-edged geniality.

Ignoring eyes that sliced through her like a welder’s torch, Lily forced a smile. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to wash the ink from my hands.”

There wasn’t a single smudge on her hands. She’d visited the washroom less than an hour ago, but if there was one lesson she had learned early in life, it was how to avoid trouble. She might look like a sheltered hothouse flower—it was an image she had deliberately cultivated, in keeping with her name—but she was far more like the kudzu vine that thrived in the most barren places, surviving droughts, floods, sweltering heat and withering frost. If there was one thing Lily prided herself on, it was being tough. If there was one thing she was good at, it was avoiding direct confrontation.

Emerging a few minutes later, she saw Powers talking to the manager. He was obviously the type who enjoyed impressing women, and Mrs. Saunders was visibly impressed.

Lily was not. At least not enough to impair her sense of self-preservation. Head down, she crammed her small purse in the large canvas tote she was never without and slipped behind the reference section, then out into the mall to merge with the crowd.

Early in life she’d been forced to become a chameleon, able to blend in with her surroundings, to disappear—to do whatever it took to avoid trouble or to keep from being sent back to whatever authorities she had managed to elude. During those years between the ages of eleven and fifteen, after she’d run away from a drug-addicted mother and her mother’s series of abusive men, she had managed, against overwhelming odds, to keep herself safe in an extremely hostile environment. Desperation was the mother of invention, she reminded herself as she unlocked her car, slung her tote inside and sat behind the wheel, unmindful of the dark-clad figure who watched from the shadow of an enormous evergreen outside the main entrance.

Lily had been a mean, homely kid. She’d been told that too many times not to believe it. As a woman she was mean and plain. The miracle was that she had never quite lost the ability to dream. In the end it was that very ability to escape into a world of her own invention that had led to where she was today.

She had stolen her first book before she could even read, shaping stories in her head to match the pictures. Once she discovered public libraries, she’d spent hours browsing, puzzling out words, afraid to ask for help, afraid of being chased out into the cold. Not until years later had she realized that the kind librarians probably knew why she was there, if not who she was. No matter how many hours she spent in that magic kingdom, they had left her in peace. Often they even “found” an extra sandwich that needed to be disposed of.

It was there that Lily had discovered kindness. Discovered a world—a whole universe—she had never dreamed existed. Once the doors closed behind her and she emerged into the real world again, she had carried that dream in her heart like a talisman.

Her writing career had been a fluke from the start. She’d been working at a car wash by day and cleaning offices at night when she had impulsively bought herself a package of cheap ballpoint pens and a spiral notebook. Writing had quickly become addictive—embellishing the harsh reality she knew with the fragile budding dreams she had somehow managed to keep safe inside her all through the years.

Next she’d bought a used, manual, portable typewriter from Goodwill. A year later she had stoked up her courage, marched into a publisher’s office where she’d cornered a startled editor, shoved a manuscript at her and growled, “Here, read this!”

It wasn’t supposed to happen that way, especially not when the editor she’d approached worked for a company that published technical books. By all rights she should have been kicked out on her skinny behind. She’d been terrified, which always came out as belligerence. But evidently something in her attitude had captured the woman’s sympathy. She had glanced at the first page, then the second and then reached for the phone.

Hot target! Take it out! The words rang in his ears.

But that was then, Curt reminded himself, and this was now. The lady might be hot—his internal sensors had registered that right away—but he had no intention of taking her out, in either sense of the word.

He waited until just before dark. Timing was vital. Go in too soon and she’d still be on guard. Wait too long and the evidence could disappear.

How the devil had she managed to handle those heavy boxes, anyway? A couple of them probably weighed more than she did.

Yeah, timing was vital. Planning, too, only he didn’t know how to plan this particular mission any more than he already had. Get in, get the job done, get out. SOP. Standard Operating Procedure.

Downstairs in a lobby that smelled of pine-oil cleanser, he checked the registry and found one L. H. O’Malley on the third floor. It was an old building. He would have figured O’Malley for something more modern. Something with a swimming pool and wall-to-wall parties. He eyed the elevator and reluctantly opted for the stairs. Climbing wouldn’t be comfortable, but he still had an aversion to being confined in an enclosed space.

Upstairs in the apartment that had until recently been her safe haven, Lily went through her routine. Lock the door, fasten the chain, then cross her fingers and play back the messages on her machine, praying any calls would be from her agent or editor.

“Hello, Lily, this is me, your best fan. What are you wearing? Have you taken off that pretty thing you were wearing in the store today? I was there, Lily. I stood so close I could smell your perfume. I almost touched you once, but you were busy signing books. Did you like my gift, Lily? I straightened your panties—they were all jumbled up. I bet you’d like it if I—”

She switched the machine off, swore in her old Lily style, and then took a deep breath. “Forget it, you creep, you’re not yanking my chain again, not tonight.”

Deep breath, flex shoulders, do one of those yoga thin-gees…’atta gal, Lil!

Carefully she removed her pearls, hung up her suit and blouse and peeled off her panty hose, tossing them at the hamper. After a few extravagant movements that bore little resemblance to any recognized exercise regimen, she headed for the kitchen to make herself a mug of cocoa. Even in the middle of summer hot chocolate was her favorite comfort food. There’d been a time when any food at all had been a comfort food, but now she could afford to pick and choose, and like millions of other women she chose chocolate.

And she needed it now. Oh, damn, oh, damn, oh, damn! Just when things were going so well—number two on the bestseller list, with a new contract in the works—and this creep had to go and ruin everything! She’d been told that crank calls were a part of being a high-profile woman living alone. She’d set herself up by being successful.

Or rather the PR firm her publisher used had set her up.

Thirty minutes. She would reward herself with half an hour of pleasure, because after all, she was between books. She didn’t have to start on her next one quite yet. And the signing had gone well today—she had sold more than half the stock and signed the rest. The manager had mentioned another session when Blood came out in paperback.

“I’ve earned this, and no slimeball with a damned telephone is going to take it away from me,” she muttered. Sliding open the drawer of the side table, she grabbed a package of cheese crackers. Opening one of the diaries, she munched and read and sipped, thinking, genuine pearls and fancy pens are okay, but this—this is real luxury. What more could any woman ask?

For twenty-five of those minutes she followed Bess down something called the Chesapeake and Albemarle Canal, trying to imagine what it had been like to be a woman alone with three men in a small open boat. Not only had Bess been up against heat and mosquitoes, she’d constantly had to fight against the kind of male chauvinism that had prevailed in those days. What was a parasol, anyway? Something to wear? Something to spray on you to keep from being eaten up by mosquitoes?

Another word to look up and add to her growing vocabulary.

She read a few more paragraphs and murmured, “Way to go, girl,” as she reached for another treat from her chair-side cache. At five before the hour, she reluctantly laid her book aside, dusted the crumbs from her fingers and untangled her feet from the ratty old velour bathrobe. Her agent, Davonda Chambers, had called that morning to say that the contract was ready for review.

“You know I won’t understand a word of all that legal mumbo jumbo, Davie. If you say sign it, I’ll sign.”

“Oh, you are my worst nightmare, girl. Look, it’s your career we’re talking about here, not mine. You’re going to read every word, and then I’m going to Mirandize you.”

“Okay, okay,” Lily had laughed. “Bring on your whereases and heretofores.”

Davonda had made a growling noise, but she’d laughed, too. She knew better than anyone about the great gaping holes in Lily’s education. Schooling had not been a priority in Lily’s youth. Thank God reading had.

She wished now she’d put it off until tomorrow. Even without the stress of the past week, with that nutcase ruining her life, playing lady for any length of time was exhausting. Here in the home she had made for herself, she could relax, think about her work in progress—or think about nothing at all. If she wanted to sleep all day and write all night, it was nobody’s business but her own. She did the tours and signings because her publisher had more or less mandated it—another new word—and because she knew for a fact that it had a direct bearing on her sales. The one today, for instance, would probably gain her a few new readers, and that would multiply exponentially, in the words of her publicist. Lily had come home and looked up exponentially to see if it was going to be good or bad. Given a choice, she’d much prefer to put on her oldest sweats, stock up on junk food and get on with the task of disappearing into the nice, safe world of fiction. She could write her way into all sorts of trouble, knowing that she could write her way out again. It was…exponential.

But even without the overeager fans and the few cranks, there’d been changes in her nice, comfortable lifestyle once she started showing up regularly near the top of the bestseller lists. Not all of them were to her advantage. Like luck, success was extremely fragile. One flop—one disappointing sellthrough, and it could all go up in smoke. So she juggled her career, dealt with her fans, most of whom were wonderfully supportive, and tried to ignore the few who weren’t. She listened with half an ear to the experts, afraid to trust in today or to look too far into tomorrow because she couldn’t quite forget yesterday.

The doorbell caught her halfway to her room to change into something presentable. Other than the police, the locksmith and the pizza delivery man, the only people who knew where she lived were her agent and her housekeeper.

“You’re—” Early, she’d been going to say, already reaching for the chain. Her first impulse was to slam the door. Her second was to scream bloody murder. She was still debating when the phone rang.

“The cops are already on the way,” she lied, shoving hard at the door that was blocked open by a big, water-stained deck shoe.

Behind her, the machine picked up, and she heard the familiar whispery voice. “Lily…guess what I’m doing right now. I’m in bed, and I’m not wearing nothing, and I’ve got your picture right—”

“Oh—damn!”

Confusion, impotent anger, frustration—embarrassment—it was too much. She closed her eyes and leaned against the door, never mind that his foot was still in the crack.

“You want to tell me what’s going on?” Curt pushed against the security chain, half-tempted to extricate his foot, walk away and forget he’d ever heard of Lily O’Malley. He didn’t need any more complications at this point in his life.

Trouble was, the officer-and-gentleman stuff had been drilled into him at an impressionable age. Regardless of the fact that she was either an outright thief or a conscienceless opportunist, she obviously needed help. “Open the door, O’Malley.” He made an attempt to sound reassuring.

She was not reassured. Glared at him, in fact. “Look, I don’t have time to play games,” he growled. His back was acting up again, thanks to yesterday’s long drive and a night of trying to sleep on a bed that was too short, too hard, in a room where the window was sealed shut. His left leg still hadn’t forgiven him for those three flights of stairs.

“Or maybe you enjoy dirty phone calls? Some people even pay for the privilege of crawling through that particular gutter.”

She closed her eyes. Her face, already pale without the war paint, grew a shade whiter.

“Okay, if that’s the way you want to play it, I’ll just state my business, you can hand over my property, and I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Property?”

He did a quick countdown, trying to hang onto his temper. “I believe I mentioned before that you’ve got something that belongs to me?” He wouldn’t have been surprised to find the lady in the process of sneaking out with all six boxes, after the way she had tried to elude him at the mall. He had let her get away, just to see what she was up to, but the game was over.

“Look, just hand over the boxes and we’ll call it even. I won’t prosecute and you can get back to your—”

“You won’t what?”

“Uh…prosecute?” Indignation wasn’t precisely the reaction he’d expected.

“Look, for your information, I don’t have one damned thing that belongs to you, and what’s more, I’m tired of jerks like you who won’t give up!”

“You’re tired? Well, that’s just tough, lady!”

Jerks like him? By the time he had tailed her here, nearly losing her twice in rush hour traffic, found a parking space a block and a half away, jogged the distance on concrete sidewalks and then climbed three flights of stairs, what little patience he might have been able to scrape up had eroded down to bedrock.

“If you want your friend to quit calling, sic the cops on him. The advice is free. Now you can hand over my personal property. I won’t even press charges.”

“Charges! What charges? You’re crazy, you know that? I’m going to call 911 right now and report—”

“Fine. Then you can explain how you came to be in possession of six boxes of my personal, private property!”

Gray eyes. Clear as rainwater. You’d think a woman with eyes like that couldn’t hide a damned thing, but she was hiding something, all right. Guilt, obviously, because if she’d been innocent, she wouldn’t have run away. “I’m waiting. Want to make the call or shall I make it for you? I’ve got a cell phone in my truck.”

She was leaning against the door now, one hand gripping the edge so hard the tips of her fingers were white. She wasn’t anywhere near as cool as she would like him to believe, not by a long shot.

He shoved his foot another inch through the crack and hoped to hell she didn’t throw her weight against the door. His metatarsals were about the only bones that hadn’t been busted at one time or another in his colorful career. He would kind of like to keep it that way. “You going to call the cops?”

“The cops,” she repeated numbly.

“Right, O’Malley. The men in blue. So I can reclaim my boxes and you can get your boyfriend off your back. That is, if you want him off your back?”

Heavy sigh. Her fingers slid down the edge of the door. They both knew she was fighting a losing battle—evidently fighting it on two fronts. Hell, even the U.S. armed forces had trouble doing that in these days of military cutbacks. “Miss O’Malley? You want to talk about this?”

Somewhat to his surprise, a few protective instincts kicked in. It was part of the code every SEAL team operated under, only this was no team operation. If there were rules to cover a situation like this, he’d never heard of them. With his back on the verge of spasms, his left leg giving him fits and his gut complaining about the pastrami and horseradish he’d had earlier, he had to reach deep for patience. “Look, there’s obviously something going on here. You need to call 911. I can wait out here, or I can wait inside. Either way, I’m not leaving.”

Small gasp. Could’ve been a sob, but he didn’t think so. And then the chain fell and she opened the door. Roughly 110 pounds, swathed in a shapeless velvet tent, hair spilling over her shoulders like a dark waterfall, not a speck of color in her face except for those wide gray eyes…and she was mad as hell. Ready to knock his head off.

Ignoring an inappropriate and totally unexpected sexual response, he held up both hands. “Unarmed, see?”

She backed down half an inch but still had that pit-bull look on her face. He couldn’t blame her. Evidently there was more going on here than six boxes of stuff he owned and she was trying to claim. “You want to make that call now or shall we get our personal business done first?”

“Personal business.” She was stalling, trying to come up with a good story, so he pushed a little harder.

“We can do this the easy way, or we can fight it out in court. Your choice.”

“You’re still upset about those papers? I’ve got this fruitcake who won’t let me alone—someone breaks into my apartment, meddles in my underwear drawer, and you’re worried about some papers?”

Oh, boy. “You want to run that by me again? Your underwear?”

“It probably wasn’t you, because you were right here at the door when he called, but…but—oh, dammit, I am so tired of this…this harassment!”

“It’s happened before?” He was inside her door now, automatically sizing the place up. A few nice pieces—way too much clutter. Potted plants, books, papers—bottom line, it looked like a cross between one of those house-and-garden spreads and a city dump.

“It happens almost every day. Not the…the flower and the awful underwear, but the calls.”

“The, uh, awful underwear?”

“Some creep left a rose and a pair of really disgusting panties in my underwear drawer day before yesterday, and then he had the nerve to call me and brag about it. I just want it to stop!”

“Have you reported it?”

“Well, of course I’ve reported it, what do you take me for, an idiot?”

He didn’t think she really wanted him to answer the question, and so he didn’t. “What did they advise?”

She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “Change my phone number, change my lock—go on an extended vacation until the creep loses interest.”

“And?” Curt prompted. He needed to get on with his own business, but no officer who called himself a gentleman would walk away, leaving a lady in this much distress. Not that he was much of a gentleman—in name only, maybe.

And not that she was that much of a lady.

“Oh, I did it all—the works. The caller missed one day, and then he started in again. I hope he fries in hell. I hope he catches an awful disease and rots from the toes up. Slowly!”

“Remind me never to tick you off,” he said dryly. “Uh, about the other. My boxes?”

She took a deep breath and crossed her arms over her small but definitely feminine chest. “Look, whether you like it or not, I bought those boxes. They’re mine, along with whatever happens to be inside them, end of argument.”

“End of defense argument,” he corrected smoothly. “Now it’s my turn.”

“I’m expecting my lawyer at any moment. If you have anything further to say, you may take it up with her.”

“All prepared, huh? Lawyer already on the hook. I’d say that’s a pretty good indication of guilt.”

“Just what is your problem, Mr. Powers? Hearing or understanding?”

“My problem? I think I stated it pretty clearly, but for the record those papers you took from my storage unit are my property. I lost them through no fault of my own.”

“The sale was perfectly legitimate. I have a receipt to prove it.”

He could have told her what she could do with her receipt, but he had better manners. Marginally. Instead, he gave her a smile that would have done credit to a barracuda and deliberately allowed his gaze to move over her, from the crown of her head to her bare toes.

She was tall?

He was taller.

She was tough?

He was tougher.

Two sets of arms crossed over two chests. Full battle stations.

Lily did her best to stare him down, but her best wasn’t working. There was a crude name for this kind of contest. Little boys—and even big ones—were equipped for it. Women weren’t. Even so, if it weren’t for this other thing that had her nerves so ragged that all she wanted to do was run and bury her head under a blanket, she could have taken him, easy. At least she could have run.

Only she had nowhere left to run. It was all she could do when she thought about that creepy voice not to cry, and she had never been a crier, not even in the bad old days. So she took another deep breath and offered him the smile she had perfected in front of her bathroom mirror. Lily the Diplomat. Lily the Gracious Lady. “Tell you what, Mr. Powers, why don’t you leave your card and I promise I’ll let you have anything I don’t need, once I’ve had time to go through it. Is that acceptable?”

Smile still in place, she looked him directly in the eye. She knew better than to look a strange dog in the eyes, but as a last resort it occasionally worked on bullies. Having come up through a tough school, she had seen her share of both, including her mother’s so-called boyfriends, one of whom had locked her in the basement and tried to starve her into letting him teach her “a new game.”

“My card,” he repeated, sounding as if he might actually be considering it.

Way to go, girl! She lifted her shoulders in an elegant shrug, something else she’d practiced in front of a mirror. “Or you can jot down your address and I’ll mail them to you.”

“Or we can look through them now and I’ll save you the bother of shipping them. My truck’s parked just down the street.”

Behind her the phone rang again. She froze. “You going to get it?” he asked.

“The machine will pick up.” It was probably only Davonda, telling her she wouldn’t be able to make it tonight. The creep almost never called twice in the same evening.

The answering machine cut in. They both listened as the familiar voice began to whisper his filthy insinuations. Lily bit her lip to keep from screaming. She grabbed her cocoa mug and would have hurled it at the phone, but Curt moved swiftly past her and picked up the receiver. “You want to run that by me again, sir? I’m not sure our technician caught that last phrase.”

Waiting until he heard the dial tone, he softly replaced the receiver. “How long has this been going on?”

“A-about a week. Maybe eight days?” She was doing her best to hide the tremor in her voice, but her best wasn’t good enough. “The police are working on it, but evidently crank calls aren’t a high priority. They couldn’t even do anything about…about the stuff in my drawer. When I told them I would never in this world buy anything so disgusting for myself, they only looked at each other—you know, the way men can do. Besides, there was no evidence of a break-in.” She lifted a pair of stricken eyes. “Which means somebody—some horrible pervert—has a key to my home.”

Something inside him shifted, coming dangerously close to sympathy. Being threatened by an unseen, unsuspected enemy was nothing new for someone in his line of work, but for a woman—a civilian—

He had to remind himself that he had a legitimate beef with her. He would do well to leave her and her problems to the Norfolk PD and get out before she undermined his mission.

“Lily—Miss O’Malley—I happened to be out of the country when the rent on my storage locker came due.”

As he’d hoped, the diversion pulled her back from the edge. “Tough. That’s your problem, not mine. Besides, I was told they gave you notice.”

“Unfortunately, I was delayed. Still haven’t caught up on all my mail. It’s possible I might have missed a payment, but that doesn’t mean—”

“Try three payments.”

“Three? That many, huh. Well, the fact remains, the stuff’s morally mine. I can understand why you might think otherwise, but now that we understand each other, I don’t see why we can’t settle things now, and then I’ll just get out of your hair and leave you in peace.” He figured she was bluffing about the lawyer, but if he had to, he could deal with it. One way or another, he needed to settle this business and get out of town. Back to where he could breathe, where he could do his own thing—or not. Where he could damn well sleep in his own bed until he was ready to move on.

Gnawing on her lower lip, she appeared to be considering his offer. Leave your lip alone, dammit. If it needs chewing, I’ll chew it for you!

She smelled of wildflowers. Once on a training mission he’d crawled on his belly through a whole field of the things. He would never forget the scent. “Well?” he prompted when she seemed reluctant to respond.

“I’m still thinking.”

“There’s nothing to think about. The stuff belongs to me. I’ll pay you whatever you paid—double it, for your trouble—but one way or another, I’m taking those boxes with me.”

“Who was Bess Powers to you?”

“What?”

“I’ve been reading her diaries. She was a writer, too. Actually that’s only one of the things we have in common. She wrote novels and travel pieces for a newspaper under the name E. M. Powers, but I know it was Bess, because she covers some of the same material in her diaries. Did you know that back in those days women weren’t allowed to do much of anything? But she did it, anyway. Did you know she was raised at sea aboard her father’s ship? Well, of course you did—after all, she had to be kin to you if your name really is Powers.”

If his name really was Powers? “What the devil—you think I’m lying about my identity?”

“Not necessarily. I don’t have any proof, though, do I? That you’re who you say you are.”

Easy, man—no matter how tempting that elegant neck of her looks, you probably can’t get away with strangling her. “I believe she might have been my, uh, great-great-aunt or something.” He’d been too young when he’d heard his father talking about his seafaring ancestors to remember much about them. His father had been merchant marine, off and on. After they’d split up, his mother claimed his father had walked out on them, but they’d been the ones to leave—she’d told him at the time they were going on an adventure. When he’d cried to go home again—a hotel hadn’t seemed like a great adventure once the novelty wore off—she’d said they weren’t going back, she didn’t want to hear any more about it, and that she knew best. After that she’d refused to allow his name to be mentioned. Hurt, angry and bewildered, Curt had simply wanted his father back. Wanted his old life back. Not until years later had snatches of the old stories he’d heard as a child come back, usually triggered by some experience in his own life. By then he wasn’t sure how much was true and how much was a combination of wishful thinking and imperfect memory.

Now, figuring it would be to his advantage to claim kinship with anyone mentioned in any of the papers, he said, “Sure she was kin to me. They all were—all the people in those papers. That’s why I want them back, they’re the only record I have.”

“What about the Black Swan?”

His eyes narrowed. “What do you know about the Swan?”

“I’ve been reading. Mostly Bess’s things, but some of the other stuff, too. It’s not easy reading. I mean, sure, your ancestors were literate and all that, but I’ve got to tell you, except for Bess’s stuff, it’s pretty heavy going.”

“Why waste your time and effort? I’ll reimburse you and take the boxes off your hands and you can get on with your life.” He waited. “Best offer. Take it or leave it.”

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