The intensity of his stare made her remember the dream she’d been trying all day to forget…

The two of them had been—

No!

She couldn’t allow herself to have those thoughts about Nathan.

He looked down at her, and in the soft light his eyes were like obsidian pools—deep and fathomless. Dangerous, if you weren’t careful.

He reached out a hand to touch her hair.

“Don’t do something we’ll both regret,” she warned. But she didn’t move away from his touch.

“I would never ask you to do anything you didn’t really want to.” Nathan wove his fingers in her hair, applying a gentle pressure until they stood only inches apart. He was so tall, she had to look up at him, and when she tilted her head back, he lowered his mouth to hers.

Her first thought was to shove him away. Let him know she was not his for the taking.

Instead, she stood perfectly still, allowing his lips to whisper over hers in a promise of passion.…

Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

We have another outstanding title selection this month chock-full of great romantic suspense, starting with the next installment in our TOP SECRET BABIES promotion. In The Hunt for Hawke’s Daughter (#605) by Jean Barrett, Devlin Hawke had never expected to see Karen Ramey once she’d left his bed—let alone have her tell him his secret child had been kidnapped by a madman. Whether a blessing or a curse, Devlin was dead set on reclaiming his child—and his woman.…

To further turn up the heat, three of your favorite authors take you down to the steamy bayou with three of the sexiest bad boys you’ll ever meet:Tyler, Nick and Jules—in one value-packed volume! A bond of blood tied them to each other since youth, but as men, their boyhood vow is tested. Find out all about Bayou Blood Brothers (#606) with Ruth Glick—writing as Rebecca York—Metsy Hingle and Joanna Wayne.

Amanda Stevens concludes our ON THE EDGE promotion with Nighttime Guardian (#607), a chilling tale of mystery and monsters set in the simmering South. To round out the month, Sheryl Lynn launches a new series with To Protect Their Child (#608). Welcome to McCLINTOCK COUNTRY, a Rocky Mountain town where everyone has a secret and love is for keeps.

More action and excitement you’ll be hard-pressed to find. So pick up all four books and keep the midnight oil burning.…

Sincerely,

Denise O’Sullivan

Associate Senior Editor

Harlequin Intrigue

Nighttime Guardian

Amanda Stevens

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amanda Stevens has written over twenty novels of romantic suspense. Her books have appeared on several bestseller lists, and she has won Reviewer’s Choice and Career Achievement in Romantic/Mystery awards from Romantic Times Magazine. She resides in Cypress, Texas, with her husband, her son and daughter and their two cats.

Books by Amanda Stevens

HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

373—STRANGER IN PARADISE

388—A BABY’S CRY

397—A MAN OF SECRETS

430—THE SECOND MRS. MALONE

453—THE HERO’S SON*

458—THE BROTHER’S WIFE*

462—THE LONG-LOST HEIR*

489—SOMEBODY’S BABY

511—LOVER, STRANGER

549—THE LITTLEST WITNESS**

553—SECRET ADMIRER**

557—FORBIDDEN LOVER**

581—THE BODYGUARD’S ASSIGNMENT

607—NIGHTTIME GUARDIAN

HARLEQUIN BOOKS

2-in-1 Harlequin 50th Anniversary Collection

HER SECRET PAST

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Shelby August—Twenty-one years ago she saw something rise out of the river and come after her. Whether the monster was real or imagined, Shelby’s life has never been the same since that night.

Nathan Dallas—For over two decades he’s kept his feelings for Shelby a secret. Now she’s come back home, but another terrible secret threatens to keep them apart.

Annabel Westmoreland—Shelby’s grandmother has lived on the river most of her life. She’s seen a lot of strange things.

Yoshi Takamura—He’s built a laboratory near the river, and there are whispers in town of strange experiments.

James Westmoreland—Annabel’s son. How far would he go to get his hands on her money?

Delfina Boudreaux—Her midnight walks along the river are troubling. What is she looking for?

Virgil Dallas—After Shelby’s monster sighting, his paper made the nine-year-old famous…and then infamous.

Miss Scarlett—Annabel’s neurotic cat may be the death of Shelby yet.

Dear Reader,

They say you can’t go home again, but Nighttime Guardian took me straight back to my roots along the White River in Arkansas. The journey started, oddly enough, on the Internet when I came across a site for a jewelry store in Newport, Arkansas, which deals in freshwater pearls from the White and Black Rivers. I was fascinated to learn that river pearls can be worth thousands of dollars and that in the late 1800s a White River pearl was mounted in the royal crown of England!

I was hooked. Intrigued. But I still didn’t quite have the spark I needed for my story. Then one day Phyllis Holmes, the manager of the store, reminded me about the White River Monster. That prehistoric, sea-serpent-like creature, affectionately dubbed Ole Whitey by the locals, had been the stuff of local legends. I began to wonder what would happen to a child who had a close encounter with the monster. How would she function in a world that didn’t believe in such creatures?

In Nighttime Guardian I’ve changed the name of the river and created a fictitious town, populated with fictitious characters. I’ve even taken artistic license with the monster. But make no mistake. This is where I grew up. These are my people.

And the monster? Well, a 1973 resolution was passed in the Arkansas state legislature creating the White River Monster Refuge.

Now, to you city folk, this may seem a mite eccentric. But if you’re ever out on the river at midnight, when the air is still and the shadows deep and the water so murky it’s like pea soup, you won’t think it strange. Not one bit.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue

Prologue

From the Arcadia Argus, June 18, 1980:

Pearl River Monster Strikes Again!

Well, folks, just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water, the Pearl River Monster has reared its ugly head again. A few days ago, a couple of local farmers reported missing livestock, and another one says he found a mutilated cow carcass down by the river. Now little Shelby Westmoreland, Annabel Westmoreland’sgranddaughter, has told Sheriff McCaid that she saw a huge scaly beast rise up out of the river last night right around midnight.

Unlike previous eyewitness accounts, which claimed the Pearl River Monster resembled some sort of prehistoric sea serpent, this creature apparently walked upright, like a man.

The child was clearly terrified and what she described “sent cold chills down my spine,” said McCaid.

Just what little Shelby was doing out there alone at that time of night is still unclear, but one thing seems certain, folks. There is something in that river besides pearls and catfish….

From the Arkansas Democrat, June 25, 1980:

Nine-Year-Old Sees Monster

An Arcadia girl swears she saw a “huge scaly monster” rise out of the water near her grandmother’s home on the Pearl River. The nine-year-old’s claim is the most recent in a rash of Pearl River Monster sightings that have swept the small communities along the river in the wake of reports of missing livestock and cattle mutilations. Cross County Sheriff Roy McCaid told a group of reporters outside the courthouse yesterday that the child either saw something that badly frightened her, or else she’s a very accomplished actress. “I’ve never seen a kid that scared. She could hardly talk when her grandmother brought her in.”

The child’s grandmother, Annabel Westmoreland, who deals in freshwater pearls harvested from the river, says her granddaughter left their house just before midnight on a dare from one of her friends. According to the grandmother, the child came running back to the house, screaming that she’d seen a horrible creature rise out of the water and come after her.

From the Wall Street Journal, July 2, 1980:

Monster Hunters Invade Arkansas

Following a recent Pearl River Monster sighting by a nine-year-old girl, an army of scientists, sightseers and so-called monster hunters have descended on the small, northeast Arkansas town of Arcadia, located on the Pearl River.

In addition to missing and mutilated livestock—supposedly the handiwork of the monster—there have been numerous alleged sightings of a “huge, scaly, humanoid creature” that inhabits the river.

In Arcadia, where Shelby Westmoreland lives with her grandmother, feelings are mixed concerning the sightings. “We’re all spooked around here,” one woman says uneasily.

But another resident openly scoffs at the notion of a monster. “That girl is obviously trying to get herself some attention.” The woman admits, however, that she has started locking her doors at night and might have second thoughts about swimming in the river.

Meanwhile, nine-year-old Shelby has become something of a celebrity, with tabloid reporters camping on her doorstep and an appearance scheduled later this week on the “Tonight” show.

From the Arkansas Democrat, July 9, 1980:

The Vanishing Monster

Three weeks after the latest and most dramatic sighting of the Pearl River Monster, scientists from Arkansas State University and from the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission have pulled up stakes and gone home. “If there is something living in that river other than an assortment of freshwater fish and mollusks, it certainly knows how to camouflage itself,” says Dr. Dean Carey, a zoology professor in Jonesboro. “We’ve found no evidence of anything out of the ordinary in the Pearl River, except, unfortunately, for a high level of pollution.”

Dr. Carey speculates that what people along the river may have witnessed recently is an alligator gar, which can sometimes reach lengths of ten to twelve feet. “And they aren’t your most attractive creatures,” he adds. “I can see how a child might think it a monster, particularly at night.”

When asked how an alligator gar might “rise up out of the river,” he laughs. “Chalk it up to a child’s vivid imagination. That’s the only possible explanation.”

From the Arcadia Argus, July 16, 1980:

Monster Sighting A Clever Hoax?

Well, it looks like we’ve all been had, but it was a fun ride while it lasted. Sheriff McCaid now believes Shelby Westmoreland’s claim that she saw the Pearl River Monster a month ago was, in fact, a hoax perpetrated by the girl’s uncle, James Westmoreland, to capitalize on the influx of sightseers to the area.

According to the sheriff, business at the Pearl Cove probably increased by as much as tenfold during the weeks following little Shelby’s claim. Anxious for a souvenir, visitors to the jewelry store were willing to plunk down hundreds of dollars for freshwater pearls from the river, guaranteed to protect the wearer from the monster.

With her uncle’s confession, Shelby’s fifteen minutes of fame have officially come to an end. Following recent developments, her second scheduled appearance on the “Tonight” show has been canceled, and the tabloid reporters have all gone home. Evidently, their feelings now are that the girl’s story just isn’t very credible.

Let’s hope little Shelby doesn’t go crying wolf in the near future because it’s doubtful anyone would be willing to listen….

Chapter One

Twenty-one years later…

Nathan Dallas swatted a mosquito on the back of his neck as he guided the Buford boys’ aluminum fishing skiff across the dusky water. The two brothers sat in the prow, drinking and muttering to one another until Nathan couldn’t help but wonder what they might be up to. He’d been gone from Arcadia for a lot of years, but he still remembered the rumors that had always swirled around the Bufords.

He remembered a lot of other things, too. The river stirred powerful memories for him. His father, strong and agile, diving into those murky depths for pearls. His mother, gentle and pensive, calling Nathan in to supper.

And Shelby, suntanned and sweet, waiting for him on the bank.

Cutting the outboard motor, he let the boat drift. In the ensuing silence, the twilight came strangely alive. A few feet from the skiff, a water moccasin glided like a ribbon of silk toward the bank. Somewhere nearby a turtle plopped into the water, and a whippoorwill called from the branches of a sweet gum.

The melancholy sound brought back even more memories. The nights Nathan had camped out alone by the river because he couldn’t stand seeing the grief in his father’s face, the defeat that had stooped Caleb Dallas’s shoulders and dulled his eyes before he’d reached fifty.

Back then Nathan had sworn he would never be caught in the same trap that had drained the youth from his father. He’d get away from this river if it was the last thing he did. He’d make something of his life, be somebody. And no one—especially not a woman—would ever take it away from him.

Well, at least that part had come true. His downfall hadn’t been caused by a woman. It had been his own hubris that had wiped out his career and his good name. And now here he was, back where he’d started. Back on the river, but this time, he wasn’t diving for mussel shells with his father. Caleb Dallas was dead, and Nathan now hunted something far more precious than pearls. A story that could launch his comeback. An exposé that could not only restore his reputation, but the self-respect he’d so carelessly tossed away in Washington.

He let his gaze travel downstream to where spotlights illuminated Takamura Industries. Yoshi Takamura had made millions selling freshwater mollusk shells to the Japanese cultured-pearl industry, but now that the mussel beds in the Pearl River were badly depleted, he’d turned his attention elsewhere.

He’d built a laboratory along the water, but to what end no one in town seemed to know. Or care, for that matter. Takamura was too important to the local economy for anyone to get overly concerned about their activities. But the secretive nature of the lab had triggered Nathan’s natural curiosity.

He’d cultivated a deep throat on the inside, a man named Danny Weathers who was an old school buddy of Nathan’s and who now worked as a diver for Takamura. So far, Danny hadn’t been able to shed much light on the activities inside the lab, but Nathan wasn’t about to give up. Not when he smelled a story.

At the other end of the boat, Ray Buford slapped at his bare leg. “Hellfire, Bobby Joe. Why’d you go and forget the bug spray? Skeeters gonna eat us alive out here.”

“Not if you get enough alcohol in your bloodstream. This is better’n any old bug spray.” Bobby Joe drained the last of his beer, smashed the empty can against his forehead, then slung the can overboard with a bloodcurdling yell.

Frowning, Nathan watched the container sink. Obviously, the Bufords didn’t put much stock in river conservation. No wonder the Pearl River suffered from such dangerous levels of pollution. Nathan was sorely tempted to give them both a stern lecture, but he doubted it would do any good, and besides, he didn’t want to risk alienating them. They both worked part-time for Takamura, and Nathan figured if the brothers got drunk enough, they might be willing to talk to him—which was precisely the reason he’d convinced them to let him help run their fishing lines tonight.

“Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if we saw that ol’ monster out here tonight?” Bobby Joe drawled.

“Yeah,” Ray replied dryly. “That’d be real hilarious, Bobby Joe.”

The younger Buford laughed, belched then pulled a wicked-looking knife from his belt and trailed it in the water. “Here monster, monster, monster. Where are you, boy? Come show that ugly face of yours. Make us famous.”

“What’re you, stupid or something?” Ray grumbled. “Shut the hell up.”

“Chill, man.” Bobby Joe made a chopping motion in the water with the switchblade. “That monster comes up here, I’ll show him, like I did ol’ Shorty Barnes that time.”

Shorty Barnes was the reason Bobby Joe had spent three years in Cummins Prison Farm, but Nathan wasn’t about to remind him of that fact.

“You’d show him all right,” Ray scoffed. “Hell, boy. He’d chomp your arm off in one bite, knife and all.”

“Sounds like you boys believe all those stories about the Pearl River Monster,” Nathan said.

“Oh, Ray believes all right. He saw that thing himself, didn’t you, bro?” There was a goading quality in Bobby Joe’s thick voice. “Go ahead, tell ’im.”

Ray didn’t say anything, but in the fading light, Nathan saw something that might have been fear flicker across his homely features.

Unlike Bobby Joe, Nathan wasn’t about to ridicule Ray Buford for his fears. Nathan used to dive in this river, in water so murky he sometimes couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. There’d been times when he’d become so disoriented, he couldn’t tell up from down, and in a cold, black panic, he’d sensed things he’d never told anyone about.

Twenty-one years ago, he’d never been as certain as everyone else in this town that Shelby Westmoreland had been lying.

An uneasiness settled over the boat. They were in the middle of the river now, over the deepest part. The water was more than fifty feet in places. Nathan had often wondered what kind of creatures could survive on that cold, muddy bottom. Man-sized catfish, if legend could be believed.

But it was the giant river loggerheads that had always given Nathan a healthy dose of caution. Diving in water populated by those creatures wasn’t for the faint of heart. Also known as alligator snapping turtles, they sometimes grew to over two hundred pounds, and Nathan had once seen a smaller one snap a broom handle in two with its powerful jaws. He hated to think what one of the larger specimens could do to a man’s hand.

The boat drifted toward the first marker, and Ray reached over the side of the boat to grab the white bleach jug fastened to the end of the trotline. He gave it a yank. “Damn. The line’s tangled.”

“Looks like one of us’ll have to go down and get it freed up.” Bobby Joe fingered his knife. They both looked at Nathan.

He reached over the side of the boat and grabbed the line. “Let’s try working it loose first.”

They tugged and pulled for several minutes before the line finally snapped free. Bobby Joe grunted as they hauled it up. “Musta hooked us a big sucker.”

When the line popped to the surface, Ray leaned over the side to get a look. “What the hell is that?”

The realization hit all three of them at once, and Ray yelped, jerking back so violently the boat threatened to tip. Nathan clung to the sides as he stared at the mass of flesh and bone tangled in the line.

“Man, oh, man,” Bobby Joe said almost reverently. “Would you look at that? Something’s done ripped that poor bastard all to hell.”

Ray didn’t say anything. He stared at the corpse with a look of sheer terror, flinching almost pitifully when the beam of Nathan’s flashlight accidentally caught him in the face.

Nathan leaned over the edge of the boat, playing the light over the body, what was left of it. The black neoprene wet suit was in shreds, but the mask was still in place. Sightless eyes stared up through the lens, and an icy chill sliced through Nathan.

The dead man was Danny Weathers.

Chapter Two

Exhaustion tightened the muscles in Shelby August’s neck and shoulders, and she lifted her hand from the steering wheel to massage the soreness. Not so much exhaustion as tension, she realized, feeling the knots. Ever since she’d left the hospital in Little Rock where her grandmother had been admitted two days ago, Shelby had been experiencing a strange sense of disquiet, an uneasiness that had strengthened the farther north she drove on the interstate.

An hour out of Little Rock, she took the Arcadia exit, bypassing downtown to head east on a paved road that would take her to the river. A few miles in the opposite direction would have put her in the foothills of the majestic Ozarks, but Shelby came from the river bottoms—acres and aces of flat, swampy farmland steeped in superstition and mosquitoes.

Trees rose on either side of the road, obliterating the sky in places and turning the countryside almost pitch-black. The farther from town she drove, the more primal her surroundings. If she rolled down her window, she would be able to smell the river. But Shelby kept her windows up and her doors locked.

“Coward,” she muttered. She was thirty years old, no longer the same little girl who had cried “monster” more than two decades ago. But if the passing years had dimmed her memory of that night, time had done nothing to convince her that monsters didn’t exist. She knew all too well that they did.

But real monsters didn’t creep up from the river in the dead of night, as she’d once believed. They walked into offices in broad daylight and killed for the contents of a safe.

He can’t hurt you now, Shelby. You know that, don’t you?

She could picture Dr. Minger sitting behind his desk, his kind eyes soft and a bit blurred by the thick lenses in his glasses. Albert Lunt is in prison, serving a life sentence. No chance for parole. It’s over.

But it wasn’t over, Shelby thought, fingering the silk scarf she wore at her throat. It never would be.

Months of therapy had helped. The nightmares were fewer and farther between now, but they still came. Albert Lunt still terrorized Shelby’s sleep just as surely as he’d done the day he’d murdered her husband. Or the night he’d broken into her home and tried to kill her. As long as he was alive, he would always have this terrible hold on her.

I’ll find a way to get you, he’d promised as the police had dragged him from her home that night.

And a part of Shelby still believed—would always believe—that he would.

She shivered, even though the evening was warm and humid and the air conditioner in her rental car was turned low. She reached over and shut off the fan, wishing she could turn off her memories as easily. But they were there, niggling at the fringes of her mind as they had been ever since she’d left L.A. Distance wouldn’t quiet them, nor time. Nothing would.

Outside, the night deepened. Through the patches of trees, she had an occasional glimpse of moonlight on water. A silvery ribbon that wound for miles and miles through the very heart of Arkansas, the Pearl River had once held a fascination for Shelby, and then terror, after that summer. Now she realized that she had been hoping it might hold the key to her salvation.

Sixteen months, she thought numbly, as her headlights picked out the last curve in the road before she reached her grandmother’s house. Michael had been gone for over a year. Sometimes it seemed like only a heartbeat ago that the two of them had been planning their future together. Sometimes it seemed like a lifetime. Those times were the hardest, when Shelby would lie awake at night, unable to remember what he’d looked like. Oh, she could recall his beautiful grey eyes, the sound of his voice, the way he smiled. But she had trouble putting all those features together, making him seem real again.

It’s time to let go, Shelby.

I can’t. It’s my fault he’s dead. If I hadn’t been late—

Lunt would have killed you, too. You know that.

Getting out of L.A. was a good idea, Dr. Minger had said. There were too many memories that bound her to the tragedy. She’d been trapped in a terrible limbo since Michael’s death, not seeing friends, not going to work. Their savings and the proceeds from the sale of Michael’s business had enabled her to let her career as an accountant slide into obscurity because she hadn’t wanted to cope with the day-to-day pressures of getting on with her life.

If it hadn’t been for her grandmother’s call for help, Shelby wasn’t certain she would have yet had the courage to break free.

Around the curve, the silhouette of her grandmother’s house, perched on wooden stilts, came into view, but the sight of flashing lights down by the river almost stopped Shelby’s heart. For one terrible moment, she thought she was back in L.A., back in her husband’s office, bending over his lifeless body while the sirens wailed outside.

Then she thought of her grandmother, but Shelby quickly reminded herself that she’d left Annabel little more than an hour ago. Her grandmother was safe in the hospital and slowly on the mend. This had nothing to do with her.

Her uncle James? No. James didn’t like the river. He had a place in town now. This was nothing to do with him, either.

But the reassurances didn’t stop Shelby’s hands from trembling as she pulled into her grandmother’s drive, parked the car and got out. The lawn ran to the edge of an incline that dropped gently to the river. Several police cars and a hearse were parked along the road, and she could hear voices down by the water. With increasing trepidation, she walked across the yard and stood at the top of the bank, gazing down. A flashlight caught her in its beam, and someone shouted up to her. After a moment, a policeman scurried up the slope toward her.

“Get back in your car, Miss, and move along. This is police business.”

“But I live here.” She waved her hand toward the house.

“Annabel Westmoreland owns this place, ma’am. I happen to know she’s in the hospital.”

“I’m her granddaughter,” Shelby said a bit defensively. “I’m going to be staying here for a while.”

The deputy cocked his head. “Shelby?” He shone the flashlight in her face, and she flinched. “Sorry.” He doused the light. “You are Shelby, aren’t you?”

“Yes.” She still didn’t know who he was.

He chuckled ruefully. “Guess you don’t recognize me in the uniform. No one ever expected a Millsap to be on this side of the law.”

“Millsap?” she said incredulously. “Dewayne?”

He nodded and grinned. “Been with the county sheriff’s department almost ten years now.”

The Millsaps, along with their cousins, the Bufords, had once terrorized all of Cross County and half of Graves County. No one had ever expected any of them to amount to a hill of beans, as her grandmother would say.

“What happened, Dewayne?” Shelby asked uneasily. “Why are the police here?”

His expression sobered. “My cousins found a body tangled in one of their trot lines.”

Shelby caught her breath. “Oh, no. Who was it?”

He hesitated, then shrugged. “Guess it won’t matter if I tell you, seeing as how we’ve already notified his next of kin. His name was Danny Weathers. He was a local diver.”

“How did he…die?”

“Looks like a boating accident. The coroner’s down there now.” Dewayne nodded toward her grandmother’s house. “Look, maybe you best go on inside. This isn’t something you want to see.”

“But—”

“Hey, Dewayne!”

He turned at the sound of his name, then muttered a curse as a tall figure topped the bank and headed across the yard toward them. “Pardon my French, but I sure as hell don’t need this tonight,” he muttered to Shelby. He called to the newcomer, “Look, you got questions, you need to talk to the sheriff, Nathan.”

Shelby’s mouth fell open in astonishment. Nathan? Nathan Dallas? The boy who had once gotten her into so much trouble? Was it possible?

She’d heard Nathan had left this part of the country years ago. Like her, he’d migrated to a big city. Her grandmother had told her once that he was some hotshot reporter in Washington, just as he’d always said he would be. What in the world was he doing back in Arcadia?

“McCaid won’t talk to me, you know that. Come on, Dewayne, cut me some slack here, okay?” Nathan strode over to the deputy, his back to Shelby. “I want to know what the coroner found when he examined the body.”

Dewayne sighed. “And have my words splashed across the Argus? No thanks. Been there, done that.”

“You got burned once by my uncle,” Nathan said. “But you’re dealing with me now. If you say something is off the record, it’s off the record.”

“Yeah, right.”

Nathan ignored the sarcasm. “You don’t really think this was a boating accident, do you? Come on.”

“What else would cut a man up like that?” Dewayne said grimly. “He got caught in a boat propeller.”

…cut a man up?

Shelby shivered uncontrollably. She’d forgotten how dangerous the river could be, how unpredictable. She’d come here seeking solace from the violence of her past only to find more death, more horror. But surely this was an accident. A terrible, tragic mishap.

“It’s how he got caught in a prop that makes me curious,” Nathan persisted. “Why was he out there diving alone?”

“His wife said he liked to go night-diving.”

“Night-diving? In that river?” Nathan’s tone was clearly incredulous.

Dewayne shrugged. “He got too close to the surface and a boat ran him over. Probably thought they hit a log or something.”

“So that’s going to be the party line, is it?” Contempt crept into Nathan’s voice. “Are you even going to question Takamura?”

“That’s none of your damn business,” Dewayne countered. “You let the police handle the investigation.”

“Which means you’re not.” Nathan shook his head in disgust. “Takamura’s got an iron clamp on this town’s throat, that’s for damn sure.”

The deputy’s voice hardened with anger. “I don’t think I like what you’re implying, Nathan.”

“No,” Nathan said quietly. “I don’t imagine you do.”

Shelby had stood silently during this exchange, but Dewayne glanced at her now. “Look, I don’t have time for this. I have to get back down there. It was nice seeing you again, Shelby.”

“You, too, Dewayne.”

Nathan spun, peering at her in the moonlight. As Dewayne walked away, Nathan took a few steps toward her. “Did I hear him right? Shelby? Shelby Westmoreland?”

“It’s August now. It’s been a long time, Nathan.”

“At least you remember me,” he said.

“Oh, I remember you all right.” She wasn’t likely to forget the kid who had dared her to meet him down by the river at midnight so they could watch for the Pearl River Monster together. Nor would she forget that he’d stood her up that night. If he’d been there to corroborate her story, Shelby never would have become such an object of ridicule.

At least that was the way she’d felt back then. But time had put that night in perspective. It hadn’t been Nathan’s fault that her imagination had conjured up a monster, or that, after the initial terror, she’d enjoyed the rush of attention. It hadn’t been his fault that maybe, just maybe, she’d embellished her memory of that night because the spotlight had somehow made her abandonment more bearable. She’d been dropped on her grandmother’s doorstep that summer by parents who didn’t want her. Didn’t love her. But for a while, everyone in Arcadia had adored her.

Then, of course, they’d turned on her.

But Nathan hadn’t. He’d broken his word to her that night, but he’d stood by her in the humiliating days afterward.

Hey, Shelby, seen any monsters lately?

Where’s your monster, Shelby?

You shut your face, Nathan would tell the smirking crowd of kids who gathered around Shelby. Before I shut it for you.

And then, inevitably, a fight would ensue. Nathan had been so scrawny, he’d almost always gotten his butt kicked, but he’d never once backed down.

Judging by his conversation with Dewayne Mill-sap, Nathan was still just as stubborn. But Shelby doubted he’d be the underdog in a skirmish nowadays. He looked strong, capable, almost formidable in the darkness as he stared down at her.

He’d turned out to be an attractive man, from what she could see. She wondered what he thought of her.

He grinned suddenly, as if reading her mind. “Look at you, all grown up.”

“I should hope so,” she said dryly. “I’m thirty years old.”

“Where did the time go?” he said softly.

“It…vanished.” Just like my monster.

He tipped his head slightly, gazing down at her. “I heard you were living out on the west coast. What brings you back here?”

“I came to help my grandmother,” Shelby said. “She broke her hip.”

“Yeah, I heard about that, too. Is she going to be okay?”

“The doctors think she’ll make a full recovery, but she’ll be out of commission for quite some time. She asked me to come back and run the shop for her.”

“Why not your uncle James?”

“He’s a busy man,” Shelby said. There was no need for further elaboration, because Nathan knew as well as she that James Westmoreland was not a man who could be trusted, not even by his own mother. That was why Annabel had been compelled to call Shelby for help.

James was so much younger than Shelby’s father that he was more like a cousin or an older brother in age, but he and Shelby had never been close. When Shelby had first come to live with her grandmother, her uncle’s coldness had hurt her feelings, but she’d learned to stay out of his way. Everything had been okay for a while, but then James had gone and told that awful lie, claimed the monster sighting had been his idea so the family business could profit from the influx of tourists. He’d been willing to tarnish his own reputation in order to defame a nine-year-old girl, and to this day, Shelby didn’t understand why.

Nathan had fallen silent, and she followed his gaze across the yard. They were bringing the body up the bank. The stretcher was covered, but Shelby couldn’t bear to look. She turned her gaze instead to the river. The water looked iridescent, shimmering like an opal in the moonlight. On the far side, trees crowded the bank, and the fronds of a weeping willow trailed like fingers across the glassy surface.

She wrapped her arms around her middle, shivering in the warm June night. “Why don’t you believe it was an accident?” she asked softly.

Nathan glanced at her in surprise, as if he’d forgotten her presence. “What?” Then, shrugging, he said, “It doesn’t add up. A lot of things don’t add up around here.”

“Such as?”

He hesitated. “Maybe I’m just being paranoid.”

He didn’t strike her as the paranoid type, but then, she hadn’t known him since they were kids. “You mentioned Takamura earlier.”

“Yeah. Do you remember him?”

“Vaguely.” Shelby remembered one afternoon coming back home after a day on the river with Nathan. Her grandmother was sitting on the front porch, clearly upset, as a long, black car pulled away from the house.

“What’s the matter, Grandmother?” Shelby asked worriedly.

“That man!” Her grandmother’s tone was scathing. “He thinks he can barter for anything he pleases, but I’ve got news for him. Some things around here just aren’t for sale!”

Only recently, Shelby’s grandmother had mentioned Takamura again. She’d said he was still trying to buy the supply of freshwater pearls she’d acquired from a man named Wilson Tubb years ago. Most of the jewelry she sold in her shop now was made from pearls that came from the original collection, although she still bought from a few local divers. But the river pearls were almost gone now because the mussel beds had been so badly depleted by pollution and by dredging by people like Takamura.

“He takes and takes and takes,” Annabel had said with scorn. “But one of these days, the river is going to claim a price.”

Maybe it already had, Shelby thought, glancing at the shrouded stretcher being loaded into the hearse.

She could feel Nathan’s gaze on her and she glanced up at him. “You’re still a reporter, I take it.”

He shrugged. “Some might say that’s debatable. I work at the Argus now.”

“Your uncle’s paper?” Memories of past headlines flashed through Shelby’s mind. Virgil Dallas had pursed her relentlessly after her monster sighting that night. His stories had drawn reporters from all over the country, had made her a celebrity, but like everyone else in town, he’d turned on her after James had told his lies. “Why did you come back to Arcadia?” she asked Nathan. “As I recall, you couldn’t wait to get away from this place.”

Something flickered in his eyes, an emotion Shelby couldn’t define. “Things change.”

“Yes,” she agreed quietly. “They do.”

He paused, his gaze deep and unfathomable in the moonlight. “I’ve thought about you over the years, Shelby. Wondered where you were, how you were doing.”

The way he said her name sent a soft shiver up her spine. “I’ve thought about you, too,” she admitted.

“Have you?” He sounded surprised. “It’s funny, isn’t it, how the more things change, the more they stay the same? Look at us. For years we lived on opposite sides of the country, thousands of miles apart. And yet here we both are. Back where we started.”

“Full circle,” Shelby murmured. “Maybe it’s fate.”

“Yeah,” he said, smiling. But there was an edge of bitterness in his voice when he added, “Fate can play some pretty strange tricks all right.”

NATHAN CLIMBED into his Bronco and waited for the procession of police cars and the hearse to pull out so that he could fall in line behind them. From his rearview mirror, he could see Shelby standing in the yard, gazing after them. He couldn’t see her face in the darkness, but the way she lingered on the lawn, looking a little lost, reminded him of the way she’d seemed that first summer she’d come to live with her grandmother.

Mentally he calculated the years, shocked again to realize how much time had passed since he’d last seen her. And yet the moment he’d heard her name, he’d felt that old, tingling sensation along his backbone. That old awareness.

She’d been nine that first summer, and Nathan had been ten. Older, wiser, he’d naturally stepped into the role of her protector, even though they’d been about the same size—and both small for their ages at that.

Shelby was still petite. When they’d stood talking, she hadn’t even come up to his chin. And she’d seemed frail somehow, as if maybe life hadn’t been exactly kind to her. The notion made Nathan a little sad because he’d always imagined Shelby Westmoreland living a charmed life, maybe because he’d never gotten over his first impression of her.

In his mind, he could still see her sitting so prim and proper on Miss Annabel’s front porch, nibbling a strawberry ice-cream cone that was the exact color of her dress. Even in the shade of the porch, her blonde hair had shone like new money, and her eyes were wide and clear, forget-me-not blue.

Nathan had been out fishing that day. His bare feet were muddy, and his clothes reeked of the river. To this day, he remembered how daintily Shelby’s perfect little nose had turned up in displeasure as he climbed the porch steps and held up a string of catfish for Miss Annabel’s inspection.

“Nathan, this is my granddaughter, Shelby. She’s going to be staying here with me this summer. I’m very lucky to have her, but I’m afraid she might get a mite lonely, what with just the two of us out here. How about you come around every chance you get and help me keep her company?”

“Okay,” he’d mumbled, tongue-tied, having not the faintest idea how one entertained such a creature.

But to Nathan’s amazement, he and Shelby had become best friends that summer. In spite of her delicate appearance, she’d been game for almost anything. The pink dress had soon given way to shorts and shirts that had grown, under his expert tutelage, almost as ragged and disreputable as his own clothing.

He’d taught her how to dig for worms in Miss Annabel’s flower beds, how to bait a hook, where to find the best fishing holes. He’d taught her how to clean a catfish and how to cook it over a campfire. How to run a trotline. How to dive. Where the currents were safest to swim and where they weren’t. He’d shown her his hidden spot—a secret he would have guarded with his life, if necessary—for finding the highly coveted mussels. He’d taught her everything he knew about the river, and then some. All the while, he’d kept his adoration to himself—then, and as they’d grown older—because he’d always been afraid that if she’d suspected his true feelings, she would be so embarrassed and disgusted that she would never want anything to do with him again.

Starting his ignition, Nathan turned on his lights as the last police car moved in behind the hearse. But he didn’t put the Bronco in gear because he couldn’t quite tear his gaze from the rearview mirror. It came to him, as he watched Shelby in the mirror, that she had seemed like a woman who was badly frightened of something.

Of what? Surely that summer night had long since faded from her memory. There were no monsters, nothing to be afraid of here. Not for her.

But the old protective instinct rose in Nathan anyway, and he had to fight the urge to swing his truck around and go back to make sure she was safe.

He tightened his grip on the wheel. They were adults now, and Shelby was a married woman. A lot of years had passed since he’d tried to slay dragons for her. And monsters. He was out of practice, and besides, the boy who had once had such chivalric tendencies had grown up to be a man with weaknesses of his own.

A man too flawed to be anyone’s hero.

NOT UNTIL the last flash of red taillights disappeared around the bend in the road did Shelby turn and start across the yard toward the house.

Police cars. A violent death. Not exactly a desirable welcome home. Certainly not a scenario she would have chosen.

Halfway across the lawn she hesitated, glancing up at the house. Rising on stilts, the looming white structure, so charming by daylight, had always seemed a little spooky to Shelby in the darkness. It wasn’t so much the house itself that was eerie as the area beneath. Enclosed in whitewashed latticework, the spider-infested space was used to store everything from garden tools to trunks of old schoolbooks.

Once upon a time, Shelby and Nathan had commandeered the enclosure as a secret clubhouse. But after that fateful summer night, Shelby had considered that cool, smelly dankness a prime hiding place for her monster. She wouldn’t go near it.

Even now, she could almost feel eyes staring at her from the darkness, and she hurried up the porch steps, resisting the impulse to glance down. Or over her shoulder at the river.

A light shone through the lace curtain at the front door, and Shelby breathed a sigh of relief. Her grandmother had said Aline Henley had been keeping an eye on the place since the accident and had come by today to tidy up and stock the refrigerator. Annabel must have cautioned Aline to leave a light on for Shelby.

Using her grandmother’s key, she opened the door and stepped inside, glancing around at the familiar surroundings. This was better, she thought. Homey. Comforting. Nothing the least bit frightening in here.

Everything was exactly the way she remembered it, although the plank flooring was a little duller, the furniture a little shabbier. But with her grandmother’s touch almost everywhere, it still felt more like home than any place Shelby had ever lived with her parents.

The living room was to her left, a long, narrow area decorated with an old-fashioned settee, velvet tufted chairs and a Tiffany-style lamp that gave off a soft, greenish glow. There were ferns everywhere, hanging at the windows that looked out on the river and in terra-cotta frogs and turtles flanking the brick fireplace. The fronds stirred gently under the ceiling fan, and the sluggish movement, coupled with the verdant lamp glow, gave the room an odd, underwater feel that Shelby had never noticed before.

Leaving the front door open, she went back out to the car to get her bags. The scent of the river followed her back inside. Setting her suitcases in the hallway, Shelby turned quickly to close and lock the door as a sense of aloneness settled over her.

She wondered if Nathan was still her nearest neighbor, and wished suddenly that she had asked him earlier if he was living in his father’s house. Knowing that Nathan was nearby had once been a great comfort to Shelby.

But he was right. Things had changed since then.

She recalled what he’d said about fate playing strange tricks. His words disturbed her, not because of the melancholia they invoked, but because of the edge of bitterness she’d heard in his voice. The hardness she’d glimpsed in his eyes. When she’d thought about Nathan Dallas over the years, she’d pictured him traveling the world, living the fascinating, adventurous life he’d always seemed destined for.

As a kid, Shelby couldn’t imagine how he could ever top diving for pearls. It had seemed like the most romantic profession in the world to her then, and she’d thought Nathan just about the bravest, most exciting person she’d ever known. She’d suffered from a bad case of hero worship that first summer, but, of course, she hadn’t let him know that. He’d been too full of himself as it was.

As Shelby had grown older and learned more about the pearling industry from her grandmother, she’d come to understand what a truly grueling occupation diving was. And dangerous, with the river’s treacherous currents and all the fishing nets and lines to contend with.

Not to mention loggerhead turtles, she thought with a smile. Those particular bottom-feeders had been Nathan’s secret terror, he’d once confided.

She’d liked knowing that even Nathan Dallas was afraid of something.

Picking up her bags, Shelby carried them upstairs and down the hallway to her old bedroom. An alcove of windows, draped with lace, looked out on the river, and almost against her will, Shelby crossed the room and stood staring out at the water.

After a moment, she started to turn away, but a movement on the water stilled her. A series of circles, undulating in the moonlight, grew wider and wider until they lapped gently at the bank.

Chapter Three

“Nathan? You got a minute?” Virgil Dallas’s booming voice carried over the usual pandemonium of the newsroom. He stood in the doorway of his office, and when Nathan glanced up from his monitor, his uncle motioned him inside.

Clearing his computer screen, Nathan smothered a groan. In the three months since his uncle had offered him a partnership in the paper, Nathan had had difficulty asserting his autonomy as editor. He’d entered the relationship on one contingency: that he be allowed complete editorial freedom. He would run the newsroom while Virgil would remain at the helm as publisher and business manager.

But Virgil couldn’t quite relinquish control. He’d managed every aspect of the paper for over thirty years, and he couldn’t help offering unsolicited advice on everything from the editorials to the obits.

His uncle’s obstinacy sometimes grated on Nathan’s nerves, but he knew he had to suck it up for one very good reason. He had nowhere else to go. He’d once been an award-winning reporter for one of the most respected newspapers in Washington, D.C., but by the age of thirty, he was finished. Unemployable. A has-been. A freelance hack for the tabloids because no reputable newspaper in the country would touch him after one of his stories had been repudiated as a fraud. He’d trusted the wrong source, and just like that, his career was over.

The partnership with his uncle was Nathan’s last chance to prove his journalistic worth, to redeem not just his career and reputation, but his self-respect.

But working at the Argus was proving to be more of a challenge than Nathan had anticipated. For one thing, he’d been astounded to learn how poorly managed the paper had been in the last few years as Virgil’s age and flagging health had taken a toll. Circulation and ad sales were at an all-time low, and the paper relied much too heavily on filler—stories picked up from news services—with no real reporting. If the trend couldn’t be reversed, the Argus was destined to go the way of so many small-town newspapers. First, they would have to cut back from a daily circulation to weekly, and then perhaps fold altogether.

Nathan couldn’t allow that to happen. He’d poured every last cent he had into the partnership, but it was more than just financial ruin he had at stake here.

He stuck his head inside his uncle’s office. “You wanted to see me?”

“Close the door.” Virgil leaned back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head as Nathan took a seat across from his desk.

At sixty, his uncle was still an impressive-looking man. Tall and muscular, with keen eyes and a thoughtful, if sometimes mulish, disposition, he had the same world-weary air Nathan had seen on editors and publishers of much larger publications. His hair was completely gray and his face heavily lined by a lifetime of deadlines, pressure and—Nathan suspected—hard drinking. He wouldn’t be the first Dallas to succumb to the temptation of the bottle.

“I heard about Danny Weathers at the diner this morning,” Virgil said grimly.

Nathan nodded. “I was with the Buford boys last night when they found the body.”

His uncle unfolded his hands and placed them on the desk, leaning toward Nathan intently. “I heard that, too. What were you thinking, son? What in the holy hell were you doing out on the river with that pair of lowlifes?”

As always, Nathan grew a little defensive. “I had my reasons. Besides, I’m a grown man. You don’t have to worry about bad influences anymore.”

“Hell, it’s too late to worry about that,” Virgil blurted.

“Yeah, I’m a lost cause,” Nathan agreed.

As if regretting his harsh words, Virgil’s expression softened. “If I thought you were a lost cause, you wouldn’t be here, son.”

“I appreciate that.” Nathan paused, then prompted, “So, is that what you wanted to see me about?”

“Partly. I wanted to find out what you knew about the accident.”

“Not much. Only that I seem to be the only one who isn’t convinced it was an accident. I hope Sheriff McCaid has the good sense to treat this case as a homicide.”

“Homicide?” Virgil looked as if the word were almost foreign to him. “Why would he do that?”

“It’s standard procedure. Evidence could be destroyed or lost if he waits for the autopsy results.” Nathan glanced at his uncle. “Of course, maybe that’s the whole point.”

Virgil gave him a long, worried appraisal. “This isn’t Washington, D.C., son. There’s not some ‘vast conspiracy’ behind every accident.” He put quotation marks in the air with his fingers. “You’ve got to learn to think like a small-town newspaperman, not like some hotshot city reporter. If you don’t, you’re apt to make yourself some real enemies around here.”

“Isn’t that the purpose of the fourth estate?” Nathan argued. “To be cynical? To question motives? We’re supposed to be the public’s watchdog, not some cuddly pet who rolls over and plays dead.” He leaned forward in his chair, as if to stress his point. “You can bet I’m going to be all over this story, no matter who I tick off. If Danny Weathers was murdered, I won’t rest until his killer is exposed.”

Virgil sighed, running a hand through his gray hair. “Look, son, you’re the editor now, and far be it for me to tell you how to do your job. But if you ask me, there’s another story right in your own backyard you ought to be focusing on.”

Nathan lifted a brow. “Which is?”

“Shelby Westmoreland. I hear she’s back.”

That tingle again at the very mention of her name. Nathan said carefully, “Yeah, she’s back. I saw her last night. But her name’s August now. She’s married.”

“No, she’s widowed.”

“She is?” Nathan tried to keep his tone neutral, but the truth was he still hadn’t gotten over the shock of seeing her last night. She’d been sixteen when she’d left Arcadia for the last time. Her parents had come for her after yet another reconciliation, but Nathan had consoled himself with a certainty that she’d soon return. Her parents would split up again, as they always did, and Shelby would be shipped back to her grandmother.

But months had passed, and then a year. Eventually, even her letters had stopped. Nathan had finally become convinced that he would never see her again.

But there she’d stood last night, looking a little too much like the girl he’d never been able to forget.

And now his uncle had informed him that she was a widow. What kind of person would feel happy about that?

“How long has her husband been dead?” he heard himself ask.

“Just over a year. He was murdered.”

A shock wave rolled through Nathan. “My God, what happened?”

Virgil shrugged. “Best I recollect, he owned some kind of restoration business. Antiques, I think. He was working alone in his office when a gunman walked in, made him open the safe and then shot him dead. Shelby was the one who found the body.”

“Damn.” No wonder she’d seemed so fragile last night. So frightened.

Virgil nodded, his expression sober. “That was bad enough, but it got worse. Turned out she’d seen the killer driving away when she pulled into the parking lot. She was able to give the police a description. Even remembered part of the license plate under hypnosis. There was an all-out manhunt for a man named Albert Lunt, but he managed to elude the police for weeks. Then Lunt started making threats toward Shelby.”

“What kind of threats?”

“You name it. He made phone calls. Stalked her. The police even suspected he killed her dog, maybe as a warning, maybe because he was just one sick S.O.B. She was assigned protection, but eventually Lunt made his move. He broke into her house one night and waited for her with a knife. The police officer outside heard her scream and came running, but not before Lunt attacked her. Cut her pretty badly from what I heard, but she must have fought him like a demon, or he would have killed her. The cop shot him, but the wound was superficial. Lunt stood trial a few months later and was convicted of first-degree murder.”

“And Shelby?”

“She was in the hospital for a while. Annabel went out to California to be with her. She told her neighbor, Aline Henley, the girl was a mess, more so emotionally than physically.”

“I don’t doubt it,” Nathan muttered. He didn’t want to think about Shelby in the hospital, fighting for her life. He didn’t want to think of her terrified, at the mercy of a brutal killer. He liked to remember her in that pink dress, sitting on her grandmother’s front porch.

He glanced at his uncle. “As fascinating as all this is, I don’t see what difference it makes. You said it happened over a year ago. It’s not news. Where’s the story?”

“The story is not what happened to Shelby out in L.A.,” Virgil said impatiently. “It’s what happened to her here.”

“You mean the monster sighting? Come on. That isn’t news, either. Besides, James Westmoreland said he concocted the whole thing for profit. You printed his confession yourself.”

Virgil shook his finger at Nathan, a habit he had when he wanted to drive home a point—or browbeat Nathan into doing something he didn’t want to. “Listen to me, son. It doesn’t matter if she saw a monster that night or not. It doesn’t matter if she saw anything. What matters is that she became a celebrity. Her story was carried by major newspapers all over the country. She was even on the ‘Tonight’ show. You don’t think people would be interested in finding out what happened to the little girl who cried monster?”

Something stirred in the pit of Nathan’s stomach. Revulsion mixed with anger. “Are you suggesting we exploit Shelby’s personal tragedy for the sake of some human-interest piece? That isn’t reporting. It’s gossip. Tabloid journalism.”

“With which you aren’t unfamiliar,” Virgil was quick to point out.

Nathan counted to ten, reminding himself that he owed his uncle more than he could ever repay him. If he had to take a little ego-bashing once in a while, so be it.

Virgil eyed him sagely. “What I’m trying to say is that you’re chasing a pipe dream when you go after Takamura. You think you’re going to uncover some big exposé out there on the river that will put you back where you were three years ago, but that’s not going to happen. That part of your life is over.”

“I realize that,” Nathan said through gritted teeth.

Virgil stared at him for a moment. “I’m not sure you do. The Argus is a chance for you to start over, rebuild your life. But you have to realize, things are different down here. Priorities are different. Takamura Industries helps put food on the table for a lot of folks in this town, so they don’t much care what’s going on inside that lab. But Shelby Westmoreland…Why, hell, son. She once claimed she saw the Pearl River Monster.”

Thinking of the Argus as his last chance rather than as a stepping-stone had been a bitter pill for Nathan to swallow. He still had a hard time imagining himself covering weddings and funerals and family reunions for the rest of his life. He couldn’t help wanting back what he’d once had. The excitement, the drama, the accolades from his peers. Everything that he’d so carelessly and shamelessly tossed away three years ago.

But his uncle was right. That part of his life was over, and things were different down here. As editor of the town’s only newspaper, Nathan had a duty and a responsibility to the community that he couldn’t afford to take lightly. He couldn’t just go after the stories that suited his purposes, the ones he deemed newsworthy. Building the Argus into a paper he could be proud of couldn’t come at the expense of his readers. He had to give them what they wanted.

And whether he liked it or not, in Arcadia, Shelby Westmoreland’s return was news.

LIKE FAIRY DUST, the treasures inside the Pearl Cove had always cast a spell on Shelby. Made from the finest gold and silver, her grandmother’s creations were truly breathtaking, but the focal point of each piece, the absolute stars of the shop were the magnificent freshwater pearls that came in shapes and sizes as varied as their delicate colors—cream, peach, pink, lavender, gold, and more rarely, blue.

Each piece and each pearl was an exquisite work of art, but the blue gems had always been Shelby’s favorite, perhaps because they were so rare and so highly coveted.

With a sigh, she tried to rein in her fascination. There was a lot of work to do in the office, and very little time in which to do it. Shelby had come in early to try and reacquaint herself with the shop’s operating procedures and accounting methods before the start of business at ten o’clock. As much as she would like to examine leisurely each enticing piece in the display cases, there were more pressing concerns at the moment.

Annabel’s faith in Shelby had touched her deeply, but she also had her misgivings about running the shop. She hadn’t worked in retail in a long time. But with her previous experience at the Pearl Cove and her accounting knowledge in general, she felt fairly confident she would be able to hold down the fort, at least until her grandmother could return to work.

If she returned, Shelby thought with a pang. The injury, sustained from a fall down the porch steps, had taken a toll. It had been over a year since she’d seen her grandmother, and Shelby had been shocked yesterday to find how much Annabel had aged in that time, how frail she now seemed. What would happen if she could never return to work, if she would always need someone to look after her?

Was Shelby prepared to move back to Arcadia permanently?

It wouldn’t be easy. She no longer had a job to worry about since she’d resigned her position at a small, independent film studio, but her home was still in L.A. Michael was buried there. How could she not go back? How could she move thousands of miles away without feeling as though she’d somehow betrayed him? Abandoned him?

Rationally, she knew that wouldn’t be the case, but her emotions were a different matter. She wasn’t ready to let go yet. She couldn’t.

Concentrate! she chided herself. With an effort, Shelby put her mind back to the task at hand, scanning the numbers on the computer screen. Recent natural disasters befalling the Japanese cultured-pearl farms had enhanced the desirability of American freshwater pearls, and it appeared that her grandmother had utilized this demand to great advantage. Not only had she increased the size and distribution of her catalogue, she had also added online shopping to the Pearl Cove’s web site. The supply of gems on hand, many of them worth several thousand dollars, would allow the shop to maintain the same level of prosperity for years to come, even with the growing scarcity of mussels.

The inventory alone would be worth a small fortune on the current market. Shelby couldn’t help but admire her grandmother’s keen business acumen. No wonder the shop rested on such a secure financial foundation.

“I see you’re wasting no time.”

The deep voice startled Shelby. She jumped slightly as her gaze shot up to meet her uncle’s. He stood in the doorway, arms folded, impeccably dressed in an expensive gray suit as he glared across the office at her.

The front door was still locked. How had he got in? Shelby wondered. Had her grandmother given him a key, even though she’d admitted to Shelby that she no longer trusted him?

Shelby wasn’t surprised. She hadn’t trusted her uncle James since his lie had made her a laughingstock in this town. She’d learned only to well what he was capable of, especially where she was concerned.

She hadn’t seen him in more than five years, and the fact that he didn’t appear to have aged a day was a startling and disturbing contrast to the deterioration Shelby had seen in her grandmother.

Tall, slender, with sun-kissed hair and piercing blue eyes, James, at forty-one, was a striking-looking man who’d left in his wake a long line of soured business deals as he’d drifted carelessly through life, looking for easy money. He wasn’t all that different from his older brother, Richard. Shelby’s father was a successful stockbroker in California, but after the final breakup with her mother, he’d gravitated from one marriage to another, searching, it seemed, for something that always eluded him.

Shelby’s grandmother was the very salt of the earth, kind and generous to a fault. How her two sons could have turned out the way they had was a puzzle to Shelby.

With pantherlike grace, James moved across the room toward her. He stopped at the desk, placing his hands on the glossy surface as he leaned toward her. “Look at you, already settled in Mother’s office.”

“I’m here because she asked me to come.” Shelby refused to let her uncle intimidate her. After all she’d been through, a small-time hustler like James hardly seemed a threat.

Still, there was something about the way he stared at her, the way his lips curled upward in the softest of sneers that chilled her blood. His hatred for her was almost a tangible thing, and such a powerful emotion couldn’t be ignored. Whether she wanted to admit it or not, her uncle frightened her. He always had.

“Oh, I don’t doubt she asked you to come,” he said coolly. “You were always her favorite. You made certain of that.”

Shelby frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Always the innocent. Poor little Shelby, all alone because her parents didn’t want her. Poor little Shelby, moping around the house, playing on sympathies, worming her way into a lonely widow’s good graces.”

“For God’s sake, I was nine years old!” Shelby said in astonishment. “You can’t honestly think I was that devious.”

“Oh, I never underestimated you.” He straightened from the desk as she rose to face him. “I still don’t.”

“Why?” Shelby forced herself to walk around the desk, challenging him on his own turf. “Why do you hate me?”

“Because you’re Shelby,” he said with a casual shrug.

She lifted her chin, gazing up at him. “I never did anything to you.”

He gave a low, bitter laugh. “You did plenty, by God. But if you think I’m going to let you waltz in here and take what’s rightfully mine, you’re in for a very nasty surprise.”

Her initial impression of him had been wrong, Shelby realized. He had changed. He was even more dangerous than she remembered, and she would be a fool to underestimate him.

“I’m here because Grandmother wants me here,” she said with an edge of defiance. “There’s nothing you can do about it.”

“Oh, no?” He grabbed her suddenly, and Shelby gasped, more in surprise than pain. “You’ve seen Mother recently. She’s old and frail, and I don’t just mean physically. Her mind’s going. With the right incentive, I think the courts could be persuaded to find her incompetent.”

“You wouldn’t,” Shelby said in horror. “Even you couldn’t be that cruel. There’s nothing wrong with Grandmother’s mind, and you know it.”

“Then how come she put a nutcase like you in charge of her business?”

Shelby’s heart thudded against her chest. What did he mean? What did he know?

He grinned, as if reading her mind. “I know your dirty little secret, Shelby. You had to be hospitalized after you were attacked by your husband’s killer. You were sent to the psychiatric ward, weren’t you?”

Shelby gasped. “How did you know that?”

“I have my ways. I know a lot of things about you, Shelby. You’d be surprised. You went a little crazy, the way I heard it. Saw monsters everywhere.” He paused, smiling, enjoying himself. “They still talk about you at that hospital, you know. The nurses still remember your screams, your little sleepwalking excursions.”

So he’d been to the hospital. He’d talked to the people who had cared for her. But why? To use the information against her somehow?

Shelby closed her eyes briefly. She had no wish to be reminded of that time, to revisit the terror of those nightmares, but James’s taunts had already opened the wounds.

She tried to struggle away from him, but his grasp tightened. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a movement in the doorway. A man’s voice said sharply, “What’s going on in here?”

James released her as suddenly as he’d grabbed her, and Shelby staggered back a step. Nathan was instantly by her side, steadying her. He towered over them both. James had once seemed enormous to Shelby, but now she realized that he was only an average-sized man. A bully who was suddenly dwarfed in Nathan’s powerful presence.

“The front door was open. When I came in I heard voices back here. Are you okay?” Nathan asked Shelby. He held her arm gently, but Shelby winced at the tenderness of her skin.

He turned slowly back to James. “I’ll ask you again. What’s going on?”

James shrugged, his expression suddenly benign. He smoothed his hand down his silk tie. “A little family powwow. Nothing for you to be concerned about. Unless, of course, you’re looking to turn a family squabble into front-page news.”

“Shelby?”

Nathan was looking to her for confirmation of James’s explanation. All she had to do was say the word and he would take care of her uncle. He would defend her just as ferociously as he had when they were children. Shelby didn’t know how she knew this, but she did.

She also knew that she couldn’t draw Nathan into her personal problems. She had to find a way to deal with James on her own.

“He’s right,” she said, glancing up in time to see her uncle’s smirk. “We were having a business discussion.”

Nathan didn’t look as if he bought it for a second, but there was very little he could do under the circumstances. “Well,” he said, his gaze troubled, “if you’re finished, there’s something I’d like to discuss with you, too.”

“We aren’t finished,” James said smoothly. “Not by a long shot. But the rest can wait. I’ve always been a patient man.”

His smile didn’t fool Shelby one bit. Nor did it deceive Nathan. His eyes narrowed as James walked over and patted Shelby’s shoulder.

“We’ll talk again real soon, Shelby, honey. In the meantime, you take care. I worry about you out there on the river, all by your lonesome. You always were scared of your own shadow.” His laughter was soft and mocking as he turned and headed for the door. He said over his shoulder, “Now, you call me if you see that monster again, you hear?”

Chapter Four

“What the hell was that all about?” Nathan demanded before James barely had time to get through the door.

“He’s just upset that Grandmother put me in charge.” Shelby tried to shrug off the incident, but Nathan could see she was still shaken. Her face was pale, and her eyes glittered just a little too brightly. She walked out to the showroom, as if to assure herself that James had really left. Nathan followed her. “He’s worried about the business, I guess.”

“Worried about getting his hands on Miss Annabel’s money, you mean.” Nathan had never liked James Westmoreland, and after that summer when he’d made Shelby’s life a living hell, Nathan had hated him even more.

He’d never known the full truth of what happened down by the river that night—what Shelby had actually witnessed—though he’d never doubted for a minute that she’d seen something. But after James had claimed that he’d made the whole thing up and gotten Shelby to go along with him, everyone in town—the whole country, it seemed—had ended up laughing at her.

Nathan would have taken great pleasure in pounding James Westmoreland into a bloody pulp, but he’d only been a kid and James had been a grown man. He would have throttled Nathan if given half a chance, but things were different now. If James ever so much as laid a hand on Shelby again…

Nathan drew a deep breath, trying to quell the gnawing urge to go track James down right now and settle that old score. But he didn’t think Shelby would welcome his interference. She didn’t seem too happy about his presence in general.

He thought about what he’d overheard James say to her—that she’d been hospitalized after her attack. That the nurses still remembered her screams. Those bleak images ate at Nathan. He hated to think of Shelby so vulnerable, alone and frightened.

She’d been through something pretty horrible, and yet here she was, a survivor, a woman with more inner strength than probably even she knew.

Virgil was right. Her story would make a hell of a human-interest piece.

“So what brings you by so early?” She toyed with the filmy scarf tied at her neck. The blue floral pattern brought out the azure of her eyes and the creamy quality of the pearls in her lobes. Her hair was cut in a short, choppy style that looked as if she’d taken the shears to it in desperation, but that had, in reality, probably cost a fortune at some exclusive Beverly Hills salon. She looked both elegant and sophisticated standing behind a display case, and it struck Nathan anew how many years had come and gone since he’d last seen her.

He moved around to the other side, so they were standing face-to-face, with only the expanse of the glass case between them. “It’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other, and we didn’t get much of a chance to talk last night.”

“No, I guess we didn’t.” She paused, her gaze anxious. “Have you heard anything more about the body they found in the river?”

“Not much. His name was Danny Weathers.”

She nodded. “Yes, Dewayne told me last night. The name sounds familiar.”

“He was my age. We used to hang out sometimes.” Nathan frowned, remembering Danny Weathers as a boy, the times they’d gone fishing together, camped out on the river together. Nathan had used their childhood friendship as a way to reconnect with Danny once he’d found out Danny worked for Takamura. Now Danny was dead, and Nathan had a bad feeling—a very bad feeling—that it might be because Danny had talked to him. If that was the case, it was as Nathan had told his uncle—he wouldn’t rest until the truth came out.

Shelby gazed at him strangely, as if she’d somehow picked up on his thoughts. “You’re still not convinced it was an accident, are you?”

“Let’s just say I’m keeping an open mind.” He glanced down at the jewelry pieces and the assortment of loose pearls protected inside the glass. “Your grandmother still does beautiful work, doesn’t she?”

Shelby smiled. “Do you remember what we used to call some of the shapes of the pearls?”

“Angel wings, rosebuds, turtlebacks, dog’s teeth.” Nathan grinned. “Strange how it all comes back. I always figured pearlers gave the baroque shapes such colorful names to add to their mystique, since they were less valuable than the rounds.”

“Very possibly.” Shelby unlocked the case and took out a cream-colored pearl with a magnificent luster. Nested in her hand, the gem came alive, glowing like moonlight against her palm. “Grandmother always said pearls are like candlelight. So romantic and very flattering, no matter the skin tone.”

“I agree.” Nathan took the pearl from Shelby’s hand, lifting it to her face.

The pearl felt cool against his fingertips, a fine counterpoint to the warmth of Shelby’s smooth cheek. He hadn’t touched her in a very long time, and the feel of her skin against his, the knowledge that she was so close after all these years…

She stepped back suddenly, as if she’d been burned. The pearl would have dropped to the glass surface if Nathan hadn’t caught it in time.

Her gaze flew up to meet his. She seemed a little dazed. Nathan wondered what she was thinking, if the touch of his fingers against her cheek had affected her the same way it had him. “Have dinner with me tonight,” he said impulsively.

She looked almost shocked. “I…can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t go out.”

“Even with an old friend?”

“No.” Her tone was adamant.

“I don’t understand.” Nathan gazed at her for a long, silent moment. “We were once best friends. Why would it be so wrong for us to have dinner together?”

Her expression turned almost defiant, as if she were fighting very hard to control her emotions. “Our friendship was a long time ago.”

“Yes, but I haven’t had a really close friend since you left town.” He paused, then said softly, “I think maybe it’s been that way for you, too.”

She frowned. “What makes you think I don’t have close friends?”

“Because you were always a loner. Just like me.”

“Don’t assume you still know me,” she warned. “People change in twenty years.”

Not you, he thought. In spite of the changes in her appearance, Shelby was very much the way he remembered her. Sweet, quiet, very intense. Soft-looking on the outside, but tough on the inside when she had to be.

She’d never been one to run from her fears—even going so far as to wait on the riverbank at midnight for a glimpse of the Pearl River Monster. And then later, when people in town had turned against her, she’d faced the ridicule with the same quiet determination, never once running away. Never once dissolving into tears.

Nathan had been the one to act a fool, swearing at her tormentors, picking fights, getting his nose bloodied more times than he could count. That was what had made Shelby cry.

He gazed at her now, haunted by the pain in her eyes, and he wished fervently that he could have been there the night Albert Lunt had come after her. Wished, even, that he could have saved her husband.

“I’m sorry about your husband,” he said softly.

Her gaze faltered. “I don’t like to talk about it.”

“Then we don’t have to. We can talk about anything you like. Think of it as two old friends catching up. We haven’t seen each other in years, Shelby. There’s a lot I’d like to know about you.”

One brow lifted slightly. “Such as?”

“Have dinner with me and I’ll tell you.” Shelby had never been able to resist a challenge. It had been her downfall more than once. If Nathan hadn’t dared her, she never would have gone down to the river that night. “Come on. For old times’ sake.”

She gave him an exasperated look. “You haven’t changed much, have you? You still don’t like taking no for an answer.”

“Is that a yes, then?” he asked hopefully.

“It’ll have to be an early dinner,” she finally conceded. “I don’t like driving home alone after dark.”

“Deal,” he agreed, smiling. Feeling triumphant for no good reason. “But don’t worry. I wouldn’t dream of letting you drive home alone. I’ll follow you.”

She said nothing to that, but her expression seemed to suggest that his words were hardly reassuring.

SHELBY WAITED until the door closed behind Nathan before hurrying over to the window to watch him stride down the street. The sidewalk was empty this time of morning, but with his looks and bearing, he would have been noticed even in a crowd.

Last night, under cover of darkness, Shelby had thought him attractive, but this morning, in broad daylight, with sunlight gleaming against his dark hair—

She drew a sharp breath.

He was more than attractive. Nathan Dallas had turned out to be a very handsome man. Drop-dead gorgeous, in fact. The single women in town were probably leaving tracks on each other’s backs in their haste to capture his attention.

But Shelby wasn’t one of them.

Watching him disappear around a corner, she rallied her resolve. She wouldn’t be going to dinner with Nathan Dallas tonight or any other night. She’d only agreed in order to quell his persistence. In an hour or so, she’d call the Argus and leave a message. She’d say something had come up. She couldn’t make it after all.

But the thought of spending the evening alone was hardly tempting, either. Shelby hadn’t slept well last night. She wanted to believe the country quiet had kept her awake, but she knew better. The river was a spooky place, had been since that summer night when she’d seen something rise out of the water and start toward her.

Realistically, she knew the Pearl River Monster didn’t exist. The vision had been conjured by her imagination and by all the talk that summer about the creature. She’d been just a kid back then, frightened and lonely. It might have been nothing more than shadows in the moonlight that had terrified her. Nothing more than an illusion caused by the darkness. But she had seen something.

Over the years, Shelby had managed to look back on that night with an open mind and even with some humor. She’d created quite a stir in Arcadia that summer. The ridicule she’d taken after the Argus had declared her sighting a hoax had, in time, taken on comic overtones. The town had turned on her because the national media had made them all look like fools. Shelby accepted that now. She even speculated with some amusement that her monster sighting was what had compelled her to go into accounting instead of the arts, although she’d always had a creative flair. After that summer, she’d wanted to deal in the concrete, not the abstract.

But after Michael had been killed and Albert Lunt had come after her, her logic had deserted her. Entering her darkened house that night, Shelby had sensed Lunt’s presence before she’d seen him, and the cold, black, mind-numbing terror of that long-ago summer had come rushing back.

But somehow she’d managed to survive both river monsters and Albert Lunt.

You’re stronger than you give yourself credit for, Shelby.

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