“You’re going to go through with this, aren’t you? On your own?”

Ellie shrugged and turned to walk on. “I don’t know. Maybe. If I have to.”

McCall caught her arm and held on to it when she would have jerked away. “I can’t let you do that.”

She gave a small, incensed gasp. “You mean you think you can stop me?”

“No,” McCall said with a weary sigh. “I mean I’m going with you.”

There were a lot of reactions he could have anticipated from her, and he got none of those. What she did instead was look at him for a long time without saying a word, a long enough time for him to start to have second—and third—thoughts.

Then she put her palms flat against his chest, stood up on her toes and kissed him. And he stopped thinking altogether.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to another month of hot—in every sense of the word—reading, books just made to match the weather. I hardly even have to mention Suzanne Brockmann and her TALL, DARK & DANGEROUS miniseries, because you all know that this author and these books are utterly irresistible. Taylor’s Temptation features the latest of her to-die-for Navy SEALs, so rush right down to your bookstore and pick up your own copy, because this book is going to be flying off shelves everywhere.

To add to the excitement this month, we’re introducing a new six-book continuity called FIRSTBORN SONS. Award-winning writer Paula Detmer Riggs kicks things off with Born a Hero. Learn how these six heroes share a legacy of protecting the weak and standing up for what’s right—and watch as all six find women who belong in their arms and their lives.

Don’t miss the rest of our wonderful books, either: The Seduction of Goody Two-Shoes, by award-winning Kathleen Creighton; Out of Nowhere, by one of our launch authors, Beverly Bird; Protector with a Past, by Harper Allen; and Twice Upon a Time, by Jennifer Wagner.

Finally, check out the back pages for information on our “Silhouette Makes You A Star” contest. Someone’s going to win—why not you?

Enjoy!

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

The Seduction of Goody Two-Shoes

MILLS & BOON

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KATHLEEN CREIGHTON

has roots deep in the California soil but has relocated to South Carolina. As a child, she enjoyed listening to old timers’ tales, and her fascination with the past only deepened as she grew older. Today, she says she is interested in everything—art, music, gardening, zoology, anthropology and history—but people are at the top of her list. She also has a lifelong passion for writing, and now combines her two loves in romance novels.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Epilogue

Prologue

“This one’s alive,” the customs inspector said, “but barely.”

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist Rose Ellen Lanagan—Ellie to family, friends and a few select co-workers—took the limp body in her hands, her heart thumping a slow and steady dirge. One hooded yellow-ringed eye glared listlessly at her as her fingers stroked the satiny blue feathers…such an incredible shade of blue. Hyacinth blue.

“Sure got a full crop for being packed so long in that crate,” she remarked in a soft and even tone that would have been a warning to anyone who knew her well. Ellie Lanagan was angry. Angry with a cold intensity that shocked even her. Deep inside where no one could see, she was shaking with it.

Her eyes went to the rows of brightly colored bodies laid out on a sheet that had been spread on the warehouse floor. The customs inspector was already bending over them, his fingers gingerly probing, careful not to disturb the bodies more than necessary lest some vital clue as to their point of origin be lost to the experts waiting to examine them in the department’s forensics labs.

“These, too,” he said on an exhalation. Squatting on his heels, he drew a pair of tweezers from his shirt pocket. A moment later he held up a small plastic bag filled with white powder. Carefully, he opened the bag, dipped the tip of a pinky finger in the powder, tasted, then spat. He shook his head, swearing softly.

“Two for the price of one,” Ellie muttered, as she felt the body in her hands suddenly go limp. She had to swallow hard before she could choke out the words, “I’d give anything to get these people.”

The third person in the warehouse had been standing well back from the evidence in the spread-legged, crossed-arms stance that screamed “law enforcement” even without the shoulder holster that criss-crossed beneath an immaculate gray suit. Now he moved forward and spoke in a quiet drawl. “Anything?”

“Anything,” Ellie grimly—perhaps recklessly—confirmed.

USFWS Special Agent Kenneth Burnside’s eyes narrowed and his cheeks broadened with his smile, so that he looked—deceptively—like a good-natured baby. “Glad to hear you say that, darlin’,” the Savannah native drawled. “And I believe I know a way you might do that.”

Ellie glared up at him, frustrated and torn; it wasn’t the first time Agent Burnside had tried to recruit her, and quite frankly, she’d sometimes been inclined to distrust his motives. “I’m a biologist, not a cop.”

“You’d be fully trained.” Burnside’s voice was persuasive, in the soft and lilting way of the South. “Come on, Doc…we need you. Together we can get these guys.”

Ellie stared down at the now-inert body in her hands, picturing it instead in the rare and heart-stopping flash of blue against the unremitting green of a Brazilian rain forest. She felt the helpless anger drain out of her and a cold resolve come to take its place.

“All right,” she said at last, in the snappy, rough-edged, almost angry-sounding way that was her norm. “You got me. I’m there. Just tell me where I have to go to sign up.”

Burnside chuckled and held out his hand. “You just did. Welcome to the team, darlin’.”

Chapter 1

Quinn McCall applied one more daub of electric-blue paint to his newest masterpiece and stood back to admire the result. With one eye squinted against the glare of the late-morning sun, as well as the trickle of smoke that curled lazily skyward from a dangling cigarette, he considered the grouping of three parrots—one in each of the primary colors—pleasingly arranged amidst a riot of green foliage and orange hibiscus blossoms. Yep, he thought, he’d been right to stick to just the three; throwing in that cockatoo would have been a bit much. Even for a McCall.

Alerted by the baritone bellow of a boat’s whistle, he glanced at the cheap watch nestled amongst the sun-bleached hairs on his left wrist. Praises be, in spite of the sinister presence of Tropical Storm Paulette, still lurking somewhere out there in the Caribbean, the launch from the weekly cruise ship was right on time. At this very moment, in fact, it was opening its gates to disgorge the latest wave of tourists eager to fork over their money on “authentic” local souvenirs. And he, Quinn McCall, was ready and waiting to take it from them. As, of course, were the hordes of street vendors, con artists, beggars and pickpockets that regularly plied their trades in the main plaza and adjoining market streets of Puerta Marialena.

McCall had staked out his favorite spot, near the main traffic flow from the harbor but commanding a view of the entire plaza, so that his was very nearly the first and the last shopping opportunity a tourist would encounter on his way to and from the pier. And, with the island of tropical landscaping, including some picturesque palm trees, behind him, he’d have shade before midday, not to mention banks of bougainvillea to provide an appropriately gaudy backdrop against which to display his wares. Yes, it was a good spot; he usually did well here.

He always did well, actually. Well enough. It seemed the only thing more popular with the tourists than the genuine native stuff was an honest-to-God exiled gringo wasting away in Margaritaville. There was an element of envy in their stares, he’d always thought, especially the men’s. A touch of there but for a wife, a mortgage and a lack of cojones go I.

And from the women…well, call it a sort of subdued nervous excitement, as if they felt they might be in the presence of some wild, exotic and possibly dangerous creature. Someone not quite civilized, more Hemingway than Jimmy Buffet.

And he took pains to look the part, in his standard uniform of cutoff jeans, sandals and a tropical print shirt—worn hanging open if the day was particularly hot, which it almost always was on the Caribbean shores of the Yucatan—accessorized with the dangling cigarette and several days’ growth of beard. No sunglasses: that would make him look too much like one of “them.” He preferred a Panama hat to keep the sun out of his eyes, but only when absolutely necessary. Actually, he rather liked the crow’s feet the Mexican sun had etched at their corners. More important, so did his female customers.

Of which there were bunches heading his way at that very moment. Mentally rubbing his hands in anticipation, McCall turned the just-finished painting ever so slightly on the easel and made a show of adding a tiny daub of paint to the blue parrot’s feathers. Out of the corner of his eye he monitored the progress of the latest wave—the usual assortment of pasty middle-aged norteamericanos, in pairs, mostly—anniversary couples or the odd honeymooners—or noisy, boisterous groups of women from places like Dallas, Atlanta and Hoboken. Young, single women were a rarer commodity, which he thought was maybe why he noticed that particular lady right away. Then again, the fact that she was cute as a pup might have had something to do with it.

Either way, once he’d spotted her, it was hard to pull his eyes or his attention away from her. Not that she was such a knockout—cute really was the best word to describe her—but there was something about the way she moved, with a seemingly contradictory blend of self-confidence and a beguiling naïveté. Pert, he thought, mildly surprised to realize he even knew a word like pert. She was short, petite without appearing fragile, with the kind of trim and tidy little body that had always appealed to him. Hair the color of cinnamon, worn short and with a bit of curl that looked natural. Too far away to tell about her eyes.

He could feel his awareness of her creep along the back of his neck as the wave of newcomers swept into the plaza. Would she stop? Or, as anyone with a lick of artistic taste ought to do, wrinkle her nose fastidiously and move on.

“Good grief.”

The exclamation was muttered, barely audible, but McCall heard it, felt it almost, like warm breath across his skin. He glanced around and there she was right beside him, her head barely topping his shoulder.

He turned toward her, eyebrows raised in pretended surprise, teeth bared in a wolfish but welcoming smile around the stump of his cigarette. “Yes, ma’am,” he said, expansive, inviting. “How’s about a nice little souvenir of old Mexico—every single one hand-painted and hand-signed.”

She jerked her fascinated gaze from the painting to throw him a startled glance. “You’re American.” Her voice was husky with what he thought was probably embarrassment, realizing he’d have understood that little comment of hers.

Still smiling, McCall plucked the cigarette from his teeth with a sweeping gesture. “Guilty.” He pointed the butt at the three parrots. “You like that one? Sorry, can’t let you have it, it’s still wet. But hey, I can ship it to you later, if you—”

She shook her head, and he saw her turn slightly pink. “No! I mean, it’s…uh, they’re very…colorful.” He could see honesty arm-wrestling with politeness. Honesty won. Impatience gave her voice an edge as she added, “It’s just…way too big.” The edge wasn’t unpleasant, he decided, just sort of like an itch between his shoulder blades he couldn’t reach to scratch.

“You think so?” McCall considered his work in progress, frowning. “I try to make ’em small enough so people can take ’em home in a shopping bag. I’ll ship if I have to, but I’d rather not.”

“No, I mean the conyer—the yellow one,” she earnestly explained, seeing his blank look. “It should be only half the size of the two macaws.”

Oh brother. Everybody was an art critic. Mentally rolling his eyes, McCall snatched the remnants of the cigarette from his mouth in mock amazement. “No. Is that right?”

“I own a pet shop,” she explained, and her flush deepened slightly as she shrugged. He wondered why.

“Hmm.” McCall’s fingers rasped on his beard-stubbled chin as he thoughtfully regarded the painting. He looked sideways at his critic. “You ever hear of perspective?”

She shook her head. “The conyer’s behind the macaws—that would make it even smaller.” She gazed steadily at him, not giving an inch.

He could see now that her eyes were hazel, almost golden in this light. And that the sprinkle of freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks exactly matched her hair. And that she was wearing a gold wedding band on the appropriate finger of her left hand.

“Damn,” he muttered for more than one reason, snapping his fingers, and was rewarded with the sudden and unexpected brilliance of her smile.

To his regret, before he’d even had time to absorb the wonder of that smile she’d moved away from him to stroll among the rest of his stock—a riotous mix of tropical flora and fauna, hung without regard for color compatibility on their racks against the garish backdrop of bougainvillea—with lips slightly parted, as if in awe. Having reached the end of the display, she gave her head a little shake and turned it toward him to inquire in a tone of disbelief, “You actually sell these?”

He was amused rather than insulted—even, in some remote part of himself, pleased to discover that she seemed to possess both taste and intelligence. But he hid it from her, instead scowling around his cupped hands as he lit a new cigarette. “Like hotcakes, sister.”

Undaunted, her eyes held his, and he saw laughter in them as she persisted in a cracking voice, “Where do you suppose they hang them?”

Oh hell. He threw back his head and laughed. How could he help it? When he looked again, she’d moved on to the next booth and was idly fingering through a pinwheel of embroidered shawls. He felt a pang of genuine regret at her going, but the laughter stayed with him for a while, quivering just beneath his ribs as he turned his attention to more likely customers.

Ellie was still smiling as she wandered among the stalls in the sun-baked plaza, touching an embroidered blouse here, a painted clay pottery pig there. For some reason the exchange with that scruffy American artist—using that term extremely loosely—had lifted her spirits. She hadn’t any idea why—the paintings were almost wonderfully dreadful, and the artist himself the very image of the sort of man conscientious mamas once warned their innocent little girls about. Perhaps she’d just so badly needed her spirits lifted.

It took only that thought to make them plummet again. How could Ken… No. Firmly, and not for the first time, she squelched the desire to blame her partner for a circumstance that truly was not his fault. Probably it was so tempting—it felt so good to blame Burnside for every little thing that happened to annoy her—simply because he annoyed her so. Which she judiciously admitted wasn’t his fault, either. He couldn’t help being the kind of overly macho, arrogant know-it-all type of male for whom she’d always had zero tolerance. Most likely he’d been born that way, and being raised in the male-chauvinist bastions of the Old South hadn’t helped his personality development any. Certainly, he was never going to change.

And, in spite of that character flaw—perhaps, she secretly admitted, even because of it—he was a very good agent. He was cautious, a meticulous planner, which Ellie liked and wholeheartedly approved of. Like her, he left nothing to chance. But not even they could have foreseen food poisoning.

Food poisoning! Because of it—or a twenty-four-hour-flu bug or turista or whatever you wanted to call it—at this very moment her erstwhile partner in an undercover operation it had taken two years to lay the groundwork for and countless hours of tricky and dangerous negotiations to set up, was back on the ship, flat on his back in his stateroom, groaning in helpless agony. Now, at the most critical stage of the operation, when the trap had been baited and the quarry was circling, the culmination of all they’d worked for actually in sight!

No, it wasn’t his fault.

But dammit, how could he have let this happen?

The impotence of her anger penetrated even into her muscles, it seemed, and she drifted to a halt, frowning and lost in thought, amidst the sluggish river of tourists.

“Oof!” she gasped suddenly, as a small, wiry body collided with hers, hard enough to knock her breathless.

Off-balance, she struggled to stay upright, only to feel the strap of her handbag slipping off her shoulder. She felt a tug and snatched at her purse—and grabbed thin air.

“Hey!” she yelled in futile outrage, as a child wearing only a pair of ragged jeans darted and squirmed his way beyond her reach with her brand-new straw handbag clutched to his scrawny chest.

Around her, pudgy people with sun visors on their heads and cameras dangling from their necks turned to stare in the dazed and clueless way of those witnessing the unexpected and out-of-the-ordinary.

“Come back here!” Ellie bellowed, incensed. Knowing it was useless, she took off in pursuit anyway, gasping, “Somebody stop him! He took my purse!”

My purse. Just that quickly, panic replaced anger. Not that there was so much money in the handbag—this was, after all, a government operation, and she certainly wasn’t rich—but the instructions, the procedure for setting up a meeting with their contacts—that was something that could not be replaced.

Oh God, what would she do if she lost it? Compared to this disaster, Agent Burnside’s case of food poisoning was a mere blip. A hiccup.

Trying to make headway through the knot of tourists, most of whom had now stopped dead in confusion, was like trying to walk uphill in a mudslide. Still, she was sure she’d have had a chance if it hadn’t been for the sandals. Ellie wasn’t used to sandals, which, like the Hawaiian print shorts and tank top she wore, were part of her “tourist” disguise. Give her a nice solid pair of Nikes and she could outrun just about anybody; in spite of—maybe because of—her size, she had always been quick. In these cursed hard-soled sandals, though, all she could do was flail her way among the frozen spectators, slipping and stumbling on the uneven adobe brick pavers, while far ahead through a shimmer of frustrated tears she could see the purse-snatcher darting through the crowd, making for the entrance to the plaza. If he got beyond the plaza, Ellie knew, he’d vanish into the maze of narrow, dusty streets, the warren of scrap wood and tin shacks, the tangle of fishing boats…the part of this tourist town the tourists never saw. She’d never see him or her purse again, of that she was certain.

A moment later she wasn’t certain of anything, even the evidence of her own eyes.

One second the boy was there, shaggy dark head and narrow sun-bronzed back plainly visible, all but branded on her retinas. The next second he’d disappeared—vanished—and her purse…her precious purse! was flying…flying in seeming slow motion, tumbling lazy as a butterfly through the shimmering sunlight, shoulder strap like a looping lariat against the sky. And then an arm, lean and tanned as leather, reached up and fingers stained with electric blue snatched the purse right out of the air.

Breath gusted from Ellie’s lungs as she halted, open-mouthed, rendered speechless by overwhelming relief coupled with wonder. Not that miracles, and the silent, breathless awe that accompany them, were unknown to Ellie; in her lifetime so far she’d been privileged to witness quite a few: Orcas breeching in the Alaskan Straits; the birth of a dolphin; a loggerhead turtle struggling up a sandy Georgia beach on an inky-black night. Not to mention a thousand smaller miracles, the kind that happen every single day and so few people even notice. But this was different. This was the first miracle she could recall that involved another human being. And a male human being at that.

The crowd parted almost magically, and even that seemed only part of the miracle. Still stunned, Ellie watched the culprit shuffle toward her, now sniffling piteously, tears making shiny tracks on his dusty cheeks. His skinny ribs were heaving, and there were fresh, quarter-sized abrasions on his knees—a matched set. The paint-smudged hand clamped on the back of his neck looked large against its vulnerability, and strong enough to snap it.

“This belong to you?” The owner of the hand, only slightly less scruffy than his captive, was holding out her handbag, dangling by its strap from one hooked finger. Under the brim of his Panama hat his eyes were squinted and his teeth were showing, but it didn’t look to Ellie like a smile. More like Clint Eastwood in one of those old westerns where he always seemed to be wearing a serape.

It suddenly seemed necessary to lubricate her voicebox before she spoke, although when she tried to swallow it didn’t help much. The scratchy sound that came out was just pretty much Ellie’s normal speaking voice. And she couldn’t do much about that, since she’d inherited it approximately twenty-eight years ago from her mother.

“I…I don’t know how to thank you.” It was no more than the truth; having always prided herself on being an uncommonly independent and resourceful person, she’d never been in such debt to a man before.

The artist—her benefactor—snorted and made a jerking motion with his head, aiming it over his shoulder in the general direction of his display. “You want to thank me, you can pay me for that picture I brought him down with.”

That was when Ellie first noticed that the boy’s bare feet and shins bore smears of the same blue paint that decorated the artist’s hands. Her mouth dropped open and she smothered a gasp of dismay with her hand. “Oh. Oh, I’m so sorry. Well, I—of course I’ll…” And she was rummaging through her purse, fumbling for her wallet. “How much do I—”

He waved her off, like someone swatting at a fly. “Forget it. Water over the bridge.” Bestowing a look of annoyance upon his captive’s dusty bowed head, he growled, “What do you want to do with him?”

“Me! Do with him?” She clapped a hand to her forehead and looked around at the gathering of tourists, perhaps in hopes of some sort of advice. Though officially a member of law enforcement, she’d had no experience in dealing with juvenile delinquents, or juveniles of any kind, for that matter.

Plus, beneath her crusty exterior there lurked a guilty secret: a heart like a half-melted marshmallow. This was a little boy, for God’s sake! One who didn’t appear to have been eating regularly lately, if not for most of his life so far. And at that, panic of a new sort seized her. She knew herself very well. She had her wallet in her hand; in another moment she was afraid she was going to give the kid every dime she had with her.

“Do with him?” she repeated in a hissed undertone, sidling closer to the boy’s captor. “What am I supposed to do with him? He’s just a little boy.”

“A little thief,” someone in the crowd muttered. There were rumblings of agreement. Someone else added something that included the word police.

“Look, I’ve got my purse back,” Ellie said to placate the gathering at large, and then, to the keeper of the captive, trying to keep a pleading note out of her voice, “There’s no harm done, can’t you just let him go?”

The “artist” shrugged.

Just then the purse-snatcher, seizing the moment—and taking no chances on anyone changing his mind or being outvoted—squirmed out from under his captor’s hand and vanished into the crowd.

There were a few cries of mild protest and dismay. Someone—a man—said loudly, “What’d you let him go for? Kid’s nothin’ but a thief. Shoulda handed him over to the police before he hits on somebody else.”

“Not my problem,” the artist mumbled around the revolting stump of his cigarette. With that he turned and shambled back toward his stall, sandals slapping on the baked adobe bricks.

For a moment or two Ellie just stood and watched him go, frowning and chewing on her lip while around her the crowd slowly dispersed, talking in breathless, gossipy undertones to one another as people do when they’ve been privileged to witness some untoward, possibly violent event. Presently, she drew a quick, decisive breath. No way around it—at the very least she owed the man a thank-you.

She couldn’t have said why she should feel such inner resistance to doing something simple good upbringing demanded. Such a peculiar tightening in her belly. A quickening of her pulse. It made no sense to her. Certainly it wasn’t his surly manner that put her off. Rose Ellen Lanagan didn’t know the meaning of the word intimidation.

Besides, she’d seen the twinkle in those cool blue eyes of his. Heard the warm, contagious peal of his laughter. That crustiness was ninety percent show, she was sure of it, though what purpose he thought it served she couldn’t imagine.

The artist had retrieved the painting he’d sacrificed in the interests of justice and was regarding it stoically, held at arm’s length in front of him. He must have sailed it, Ellie now surmised, into the path of the fleeing purse-snatcher, rather like an oversized Frisbee.

“That was quick thinking,” she said, coming up behind him.

The artist grunted without looking away from his masterpiece, which, smeared and smudged almost beyond recognition, in Ellie’s opinion now had actually attained a certain surrealistic charm. Personally, she considered it a vast improvement over the original.

With “thank you” hovering on the tip of her tongue, she hesitated; once again, the words seemed meager, hopelessly inadequate, not to mention alien to her nature. They came out sounding more prissy than anything.

“I really would like to pay you—for the painting,” she briskly added as the artist shot her a sharp, almost hostile look. His eyes weren’t cool at all, she realized, but a clear, almost transparent blue, like midsummer skies, with whites as soft and clean as cotton clouds. All at once her voice seemed to stick in her throat, and when she forced it through anyway it emerged sounding even more raggedy than usual. “It’s the least I can do.”

The moment stretched while he stared at her with that keen and piercing glare. While she noticed for the first time that his lips, without that awful cigarette clamped between them, seemed finely chiseled, almost sensitive—unusual for a man’s lips. For some reason her own suddenly felt swollen and hot, giving her a wholly alien urge to cool them with her tongue. And then…

“Keep it,” he said, thrusting the canvas at her so abruptly that she actually gasped. “Maybe it’ll remind you to be more careful next time.”

He turned away from her and was almost immediately swallowed up by a crowd of lady tourists, all cooing and chirping their appreciation for his heroism and his compassion, and eager to take home a souvenir of the Purse Snatching Incident.

Feeling somehow dismissed, Ellie left him posing for photographs with a group of middle-aged belles from Atlanta. And as she made her way back to the pier she was wondering, with a cynicism that was also foreign to her nature, if he might have paid that boy to snatch her purse, just to drum up business.

Ellie dropped the painting of three drunken-looking parrots onto one of the two single beds in the stateroom she shared—platonically—with her partner and fellow agent with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

“Don’t ask,” she said, plucking a Hershey’s Kiss from the bag on her bedside table, even though the muffled groan that was her supposed husband’s only response made it clear he’d no interest in doing anything of the kind. Concern and guilt quickly banished the grumpy mood she’d come in with. “Still feeling lousy?”

The question was wholly unnecessary; Ken Burnside looked, to quote one of her mom’s favorite clichés, like something the cat dragged in—and given the sorts of things the cats were prone to dragging into her mom’s barn back in Iowa, that was saying something.

“I think I’ve got a fever,” Ken said in a hushed and pitiful voice.

He looked it, too, but Ellie squelched an instinctive urge to step closer and lay a ministering hand on his brow. She’d had to fight off the man’s attentions often enough in the early days of their working relationship so that, even though the ground rules between them had been firmly established long ago, she still didn’t quite trust him. Not even now, when he was laid out in his bed with his eyes closed, skin sweaty and roughly the color of old library paste.

“Maybe you should see a doctor,” she offered by way of compensation, peeling the last of the foil off the chocolate and popping it into her mouth.

“It’s just the stomach flu.” Rousing himself enough to open both eyes, he inquired blearily, “How’d it go in town?”

“Umm. Great.” Feeling calmer, she helped herself to a couple more Kisses and settled herself cross-legged on her own bed, carefully avoiding the still-gooey canvas. “I think I’ve pretty well established myself as your typical dopey tourist,” she said as she pulled off her sun visor. “Got my purse snatched.” Burnside made a strangled sound that may have been a snort. “Don’t worry,” she assured him, “I got it back—intact.” She didn’t think it was necessary to tell him how close she’d come to losing the vital meeting information. She was the rookie on this operation, and suspected her partner was already nervous about how she was going to handle herself when things got tricky.

“No further contact from the smugglers, though, and I gave them plenty of opportunity.” She gave the lump of misery in the next bed a dubious glance. “You going to be able to go with me tonight?”

“Don’t…think so,” Ken said in an airless whisper that alarmed her.

“We have to make that meeting.” Ellie’s heart rate was beginning to speed up. She hurriedly unwrapped another chocolate. “The instructions were clear on that. They won’t contact us to set up a meeting until they’re sure it’s not a trap. We have to be out there where they can look us over—make sure we’re not being followed.”

There was some deep, carefully controlled breathing. Then, in a voice tight with pain, “Maybe we should contact General Reyes—let him know what’s going on.”

“Let him know what? There’s nothing to report, and won’t be until after that meeting. If there’s a meeting; we don’t even know for sure they’ll go for it. It’s for sure they won’t if we don’t show up at—where is it?—José’s Cantina.” She paused, then said flatly, “If you can’t make it, I’ll just have to go by myself.”

This time there was no doubt about the snort. “Lanagan,” Burnside said in a faint but firm voice, “I know these people. They’re old May-hee-co—back-country Mexico. They won’t do business with a woman—especially one that looks like you. They’ll chew you up and spit you out…” He closed his eyes and licked his lips, clearly exhausted by that effort.

Ellie watched him for a long moment, a knot of cold fear taking shape in her stomach in spite of the insulating coating of chocolate. Finally she said in a low voice, “Ken, we can’t screw this up—not now.”

Her partner gave a deep, guttural sigh, then mumbled, “I’ll be okay. We still have a few hours. Don’t worry, I’ll make it to José’s with you…you’ll see.”

It was an important part of McCall’s credo that any day could be made better by a shot of tequila washed down with several bottles of pulque. Not that today had been all that bad; it had turned out to be a pretty good day, actually, in spite of the loss of “The Three Caballeros” to the feet of a street thief and a turista with golden eyes and hair and freckles the exact color of cinnamon.

As a matter of fact it was the integrity of that personal creed of his, as affected by the street thief and the cinnamon girl, that had him worried, and making for his favorite watering hole for reinforcement at the first soft promise of twilight. Live and let live. He’d come way too close to forgetting his favorite motto to suit him. Today a lady’s purse, tomorrow…who knew where such a careless act could lead? If he didn’t look out, before he knew it he’d be sliding down that long slippery slope toward a social conscience. Uh-uh, no thank you, not for him. No sirree.

That was why he sailed into José’s Cantina with a wave and his usual, “José—¿Qué pasa?” for the guy behind the bar—who also happened to be the owner—and swam his way through the noisy murk to his favorite table without taking much notice of who else was in the place. If he had, he’d have turned around and walked right out again and never looked back. He swore he would have.

As it was, by the time he saw her—Lord help him, the cinnamon girl!—sitting there all alone at the table in the front corner by the glassless window, he was already settled comfortably in his own favorite creaky rattan chair with the tequila, a quarter of lime and a saltshaker and the first of the local brews making wet rings on the table in front of him, and it just seemed like it would be too much of a waste to go off and leave them sitting there. Hell, he thought, might as well drink ’em and see what happened in the meantime.

Maybe nothing would. Maybe none of the regular patrons of the place would notice her. Maybe she’d come to her senses and leave. Maybe the person she was obviously waiting for would show up and McCall wouldn’t have to think about how she was going to get herself back to her cruise ship without getting her bones jumped in one of the dark alleys between here and the tourists’ part of town.

Maybe it would turn out to be true that the Lord looked out for children, drunks and fools.

Hell, it was none of his business, anyway. Live and let live.

But the image of that smile of hers kept crowding into his mind, the way it had burst so suddenly, so wonderously over her grave little face, like…oh, a dozen comparisons he could think of, all of them clichés, none of them quite worthy. So naturally he couldn’t help but watch her as he licked lime and salt, slugged the tequila and sat back to enjoy his pulque, though he tried to look as if he wasn’t—watching her, of course he meant, not enjoying the beer. Noticing the way she kept looking at her watch, frowning.

Noticing the growing ripples of interest from the regulars lounging around the bar, and the helpless looks José—who knew his customers well—kept throwing McCall. The ones that said plainly, Hey—she’s a gringa, you’re a gringo, that makes her your responsibility. So do something!

To which McCall’s response was a shrug uniquely Latino in character, but which in any language easily translated to, She’s not my problem, man.

He’d just about decided to take a chance on ordering a second beer when, Lord help him, he saw the woman get up from her table and head straight for the bar. How could any woman be so stupid, he wondered, even for a turista? He’d thought her pretty cute, he remembered, when he’d seen her this morning, but she was seeming less and less cute by the minute. Even her smile was fading from his memory. In fact, he was experiencing a powerful urge to yank her up by the scruff of her neck and haul her home to her mama—or her husband, he amended with a frown, belatedly recalling the gold band he’d seen on the third finger of her left hand.

That memory inspired a new spurt of anger. What was her husband thinking of, to let his wife go off alone to such a dive? Or—a new thought—if he was the one she’d been waiting for, to stand her up like this?

He blamed the anger for making him once again forget his motto as he watched the woman push her way through the massed male bodies at the bar, cinnamon head barely topping burly shoulders—and Mexican men weren’t that tall. His muscles tensed and anger sizzled in his belly as he watched those bodies turn to let her through, but just a little, being sneaky about giving way just enough to let her pass but with plenty of contact. Watched her ask José a question, apparently oblivious both to the bodies and to the leers on the faces around her. Watched José shrug and shake his head in reply.

With a sinking feeling in his gut, McCall then watched the woman squeeze back through the pack, and with one final frowning look at her wrist and a sweeping glance around the cantina, go out the door.

A moment later he knew a sense of inevitability—of fate, if you will—as two of the more disreputable-looking bar patrons separated themselves from the wolf pack and slunk out after her, smirking to one another and their comrades in an anticipatory way that made McCall go cold.

Live and let live…live and let live…she’s not my problem, he chanted hopelessly to himself, staring into the gloom at the bottom of his pulque bottle.

And then, “Ah, the hell with it,” he muttered to nobody in particular, tossed a handful of pesos onto the tabletop and followed.

Chapter 2

Outside the cantina, McCall paused to light a cigarette while he checked things out, caution being, in that part of town, always the better part of valor.

A soft breeze—a subtle reminder from Tropical Storm Paulette, like a blown kiss—was whisking away with it the heat of the day and the odors of poverty and inviting in the cool green smell of the sea, and he was savoring that along with his tobacco when the sound of voices drifted to him, carried on the wind. Male voices first, slurred and guttural, speaking Spanish…answered by a lighter one, low and scratchy but definitely female.

And becoming all too familiar.

Following the sound of the voices, McCall was finally able to make out three shapes a little farther down the narrow sandy street, in the shadows just beyond the yellow patch of light from the cantina’s open window. He exhaled, tossed his match into the dirt and started reluctantly toward them.

He was still several yards away when he heard a man’s laughter abruptly interrupted by a sound rather like, “Oof.” At the same time, one of the bulkier shapes suddenly and mysteriously doubled over on itself.

A moment later, the taller of the two remaining shapes began to perform a sort of hopping, stumbling dance, like a broken marionette.

Sharp, staccato Spanish rent the velvet night. Cuss words, if McCall was not mistaken. Very angry cuss words.

Seizing the moment, he lunged forward, pushed between the two would-be assailants and their intended victim, grasped her firmly by her upper arms and hustled her rapidly away from the scene of the intended crime.

Naturally, she resisted—silently except for some heavy breathing—until he growled, “Cut it out, you idiot—can’t you see I’m trying to help you?”

He felt her body go taut and her face jerk toward him, but she still didn’t say anything, not until they’d turned a corner and were out of sight of the cantina and well out of range of the two disgruntled thugs. There McCall halted and let go of her arms.

She stepped away from him then and said breathlessly as she set herself to rights with little brushing, tugging motions, “You’re the artist. The American. From the plaza this morning.”

McCall snorted. He could see her face, a pale blur in the darkness.

“I didn’t need help.” She sniffed—a disdainful sound. “Not to handle those two.”

McCall made a disgusted sound of his own. “Lady, you don’t need help, you need a nanny. All you did was tick them off. What were you going to do when they decided to come after you?”

“Outrun them,” she answered promptly, with an arrogant little toss of her head. “I came prepared this time—see?” And she lifted one foot to show him a tidy white running shoe.

“Lord help us,” he breathed, exhaling smoke. But in spite of his very best efforts to squelch it, he felt the beginnings of admiration—just a tiny burr of amazement in the center of his chest. Fearing that in another breath he might even laugh out loud, he said instead, “You’re way off the tourist path, lady. What the hell were you doing in a dive like that anyway? Much less alone.”

“That’s none of your business,” she said in a surprised and huffy tone.

“Sister, you got that right,” McCall shot back. He was thinking dark and sour thoughts about sticking to his motto from now on, no matter what. Live and let live. No doubt about it, that was the way to go.

So what were his feet doing, carrying him along with the foolish turista, walking him right beside her as she started off down the now-deserted street? She didn’t want his help, she’d told him so. And besides, she was none of his business—she’d told him that, too, and on that subject at least, they were in complete agreement.

“You sure you’re headed in the right direction?” he inquired sarcastically after a while, keeping his lips firmly clamped on the filter of his cigarette.

She ignored him and strode confidently on, finding her way as he did, by the light of a rising three-quarter moon and the occasional splashes of pale yellow from an open window or doorway. Voices—snatches of conversations, bits of laughter, a crying baby—made little sparks, tiny explosions of sound in the quiet. Far away McCall could hear the shushing of waves on the playa, keeping up a quirky rhythm to their own crunching footsteps.

He said in a pleasant tone, “What’d you do, leave a trail of bread crumbs?”

She threw him a look but didn’t reply, and a moment later jerked impatiently, like a balky child, when he took her arm. “The playa’s this way, ma’am,” he said with exaggerated politeness as he steered her oh, so gently in the right direction. “So’s the launch that will take you back to your ship. I assume that’s where you wanted to go?” He figured with this woman, you never knew.

“Yes. Of course. Thank you.” He could hear the prissiness of chagrin in her voice, and feel the stiffness of wounded pride in her arm just before he let go of it.

She didn’t say another word, though, not even when they were back on the main tourist drag, safe among oblivious honeymooners strolling beneath strings of lights looped between palm trees, where music swirled and wove through soft voices and bright laughter and white-coated waiters bearing trays of margaritas glided among rattan tables. Instead she kept throwing him questioning, half-puzzled looks.

They were within sight of the pier when she finally said dryly, “I think I can find my way from here, don’t you?”

He had no answer for her and his thoughts were too dark and bitter to share, so he just kept on walking beside her in glowering silence, all the way to the pier gate. There they both halted.

McCall jerked his head toward the far end of the long narrow pier where the cruise ship’s pristine white launch bobbed on Tropical Storm Paulette’s gentle swells, and said, again rather sarcastically, “There you go.”

The pier was brightly lit. He could see the brief flash of a gold stud in her earlobe, then the sprinkle of freckles on her cheeks and across the bridge of her nose when she turned her face to him. From somewhere out in the harbor came the sudden thump-thump-thump of a helicopter’s rotors. He listened to it fade rapidly into the distance while he watched the reflections of the pier lamps in her golden eyes.

They searched his for a long moment, those eyes, and then he heard the soft intake of her breath, as if she was on the brink of saying something.

Still she hesitated, and he wondered if, in different light, he might have seen her blush. Then, as if she’d come to some sort of decision, she held out her hand. “I’m Ellie. Thank you.” She said it on the breath’s delayed exhalation, in that scratchy voice he was beginning to get used to…even find sort of sexy. And impatiently, as if she thought he might not believe her, “I mean that sincerely, Mr.—”

“Just McCall. And you’re welcome—sincerely.” But he made a lie of that as he sardonically tipped the brim of an imaginary hat.

She gave him one long level look that made him feel vaguely ashamed he’d mocked her before she nodded, then turned and walked away down the long pier.

“And I sincerely hope I never set eyes on you again… Mrs. Whatever,” McCall muttered grumpily to himself as he jammed his hands into the pockets of his paint-stained dungarees and headed for the friendlier bustle of the plaza. Damned shame the best-looking and most interesting woman he’d run into in a long time turned out to be married, but…what the hell. Just as well. Live and let live.

He was wading into the swirl of tourists’ laughter and party music before it came to him—the reason for that nagging little sense of disappointment: he’d been waiting…hoping, one last time, to see her smile.

By the time the launch had delivered Ellie back to the cruise ship, both the adrenaline rush that had sustained her through the incident outside José’s Cantina and its embarrassingly trembly aftermath had faded to a hazy memory. What was left was the Alice-in-Wonderland feeling, that sense of sheer disbelief that such events could be happening to her.

Had she, Rose Ellen Lanagan, really struck a man in the…um…in such an effective place? Had she really managed to disable two large—admittedly clumsy—male attackers? It didn’t seem possible. She’d always been such a nonviolent person, gentle and sunny-natured to a fault. Even in her animal-rights activist days her protests had been limited to peaceful demonstrations, sit-ins, parades and picket lines. Even though, true to Ken Burnside’s promise, the government had seen to it that she was well trained in the necessary law-enforcement skills, including the use of firearms and basic martial arts techniques, it had never really occurred to her that she might one day be called upon to use that training. At heart she was still a nice Iowa farm girl who happened to have a doctorate in biology—and a badge.

A badge! Lord above—as Great-aunt Gwen might have said—if anyone had even suggested, back in her teenaged years and college days, that she, Ellie Lanagan, would one day be a special agent working undercover for the United States government, she would have fallen down and rolled on the floor with laughter. How had such a thing happened?

The only answer Ellie could come up with was that it had seemed like a good idea at the time. She’d been so sickened by the carnage the traffickers in endangered species were inflicting on some of the earth’s rarest and most beautiful creatures…so enraged by their callous disregard for living things…. Okay, Ken had gotten to her in a weak moment, maybe, but she’d certainly had plenty of opportunities to change her mind since. The fact was, she’d truly believed in what she was doing. She still did.

But what was all this physical stuff? She was supposed to be the brains of this operation—the technical advisor, the wildlife expert. Ken Burnside, former cop and FBI agent, was supposed to provide the muscle—not that they’d expected to need much. Their purpose, after all, was simply to make contact with the smugglers, a band so elusive and cunning they’d managed for years to elude every attempt on the parts of both American and Mexican authorities to put an end to their operation. One reason for that, it was believed, was that the smugglers seemed to have no permanent camp, and always managed, like guerilla fighters, to slip away into the jungle one step ahead of a raid. It was hoped that Ellie and Ken, posing as eager American buyers with more money than sense, might manage to gain the confidence of the smugglers enough to work their way into their camp. If they were successful, their job was to record evidence and plant a tracking device that would enable government forces to locate them and put them out of commission once and for all. Their mission was nonviolent; the weapon of choice would be American dollars, not bullets. And so far, things had been moving slowly, but according to plan.

How was it, then, that in her first day on Mexican soil she’d already been involved in not one, but two incidents involving physical violence? And both times, if it hadn’t been for that American artist stepping in when he had….

Both times. She’d thought about that on the way back to the pier, thought about it as she walked beside the man—a stranger—through dark and empty streets, her adrenaline-charged brain worrying the notion like a starving wolf attacking a bone.

What is he doing there? Coming to my rescue—again? Can this be coincidence? Could he be one of them? Could he be the contact? If so, why doesn’t he say so? Why hasn’t he identified himself, or at least slipped me something with the meeting information on it?

All the way back to the pier, on the alert and aware of his body so close beside hers, remembering the wiry strength in his hands when they’d gripped her arms, she’d waited for him to make his move. He hadn’t. In the end she’d felt foolish, out of her depth, questioning her own judgment. Of course he wasn’t involved. He was exactly what he appeared to be—an American artist and social dropout trying to make a living hustling tourists. His being there to rescue her twice in one day was just coincidence. Those things happened.

Besides, according to all the information so far, the smugglers were Mexican—back-country Mexican, as Ken put it. Old-fashioned Macho Mexican Males who wouldn’t lower themselves to deal with a woman.

That was fine. But people in law enforcement are taught to distrust coincidence as a matter of principle. And there were those paintings. Parrots. Macaws. Tropical birds of all kinds, many of them the very same ones that so often turned up dead in customs inspections. Gaudy and Godawful Mr. McCall’s paintings might be, but there was no denying he had the details right.

Still the question remained: If the American was a member of the smuggling ring, why hadn’t he established contact with her?

She was still pondering those questions as she stood before the door to her stateroom, key in hand, frowning and gnawing on her lip as was her habit when deep in thought. Consequently she didn’t notice the white-uniformed ship’s steward hurrying toward her down the long passageway, not until he spoke to her with alarming and breathless urgency.

“Mrs. Burnside—Mrs. Burnside, thank God you’re back. We’ve been trying to reach you….”

A few tense and worried minutes later she was shown into a small cluttered office where two men were already engaged in grave consultation. They both straightened at Ellie’s entrance to murmur, “Come in, Mrs. Burnside.” One, a dark-skinned, salt-and-pepper-haired man with kind, liquid eyes, shook her hand and identified himself as the ship’s physician, Dr. Singh; the other, judging by his frown and the resplendence of his uniform, she took to be the captain.

The fear that had clutched Ellie’s stomach with the steward’s first breathless words outside her stateroom squeezed even tighter. Even though Burnside wasn’t really her husband, and there were times, in fact, when he annoyed her beyond bearing, he was still her partner, mentor and even, in an odd sort of way, a friend.

She gasped out, before anyone else could say a word, “Ken—my husband—is he all right? What’s happened? Is he—he’s not—”

The doctor’s tone was stern, even though his voice was limpid with the accent of his native India. “It is very fortunate that he called us when he did, Mrs. Burnside. If he had waited even one more hour…. You should have come to us when his symptoms first occurred. As it is—”

“He had an upset stomach,” Ellie cried, defensive in the face of the two men’s unspoken disapproval, though she wasn’t quite sure what she was supposed to be guilty of. “He said—he insisted it was just a twenty-four-hour bug!” She carefully made no mention of food poisoning; apparently her stock with ship’s personnel was plummeting as it was. “I asked him—” She paused to draw a shaky breath, one hand pressed to her forehead. After a moment she said testily, fighting for calm, “So—what’s wrong with him? Where is he? I want to see him.”

“He has acute appendicitis,” the doctor said gravely. After a polite pause for Ellie’s horrified gasp, he continued, “At this moment he is on his way by helicoptor to the airport at Cozumel. From there he will be flown to Miami for immediate surgery.”

Ellie was groping for a chair. The captain unfolded his arms from across his chest long enough to guide her to one. “We will, of course, make arrangements for you to join him as soon as possible,” he said politely as she sank into the chair, limp with shock. Oh, what she would have given for a Hershey’s Kiss just then.

The censure in the captain’s voice and expression seemed to have softened somewhat at this evidence of appropriate wifely concern, but his opinion was no longer of any concern at all to Ellie. Having been reassured that her partner was alive and in good hands, what concerned her now was the fate of their undercover operation. This, after all, was the mission, the goal, the crusade she’d dedicated her life to for over a year—dedicated being the operative word and one people often used to describe Ellie Lanagan…although members of her immediate family would probably have been more inclined to say pig-headed, or stubborn as a mule. This also was no concern of Ellie’s; it was just the way she was, the way she’d always been. When Ellie got involved in something she tended to develop tunnel vision, or what Ken referred to as a “pit-bull mentality.”

Now, thinking hard and once again frowning and chewing on her lip, she muttered, “No…no…I can’t. I can’t leave now—”

Well, tough, was her annoyed thought when she saw the captain’s face freeze up again. Even the doctor looked slightly taken aback. But Ellie’s mind was starting to function, although still in the crazily spinning, drunken wobble of an out-of-balance top.

“You don’t understand,” she went on. “We—my husband and I—had some business here. It was very important.” The wobble had sneaked into her voice now, and for once to her advantage. She cast an appealing look from one disapproving face to the other and back again. “That’s why he didn’t want to believe there was anything seriously wrong. He was convinced it was just an upset stomach. He convinced me….” She gulped a breath and pushed resolutely to her feet. “I know he’d want me to stay and try to take care of…our business…for him. I don’t know if I can, by myself, but…I have to try. And,” she added with a touch of asperity, “there’s not really anything I can do for him there, is there? In Miami I mean? Except wait?”

She looked at Dr. Singh, who was looking slightly dazed. He nodded and murmured, “Of course. I understand….”

The captain cleared his throat and finally growled an ambiguous, “Well.” He coughed, then continued, “As you know, we’ll be staying in port for several days to allow our passengers an opportunity to explore the Mayan ruins, visit the biosphere reserve, or dive the reefs, if that’s their preference. You have until day after tomorrow, seventeen hundred hours, to let us know whether or not you’ll be continuing on with us.” He paused with one hand on the door. “Or, whether you wish us to make arrangements for you to join your husband.” He opened the door and waited for Ellie to precede him. “It’s up to you.”

“Thank you.” She was looking past the captain’s out-stretched arm at the doctor. “You’ll let me know…how—”

“Yes, of course, Mrs. Burnside,” said Dr. Singh with a slight bow. “As soon as I know anything I will contact you immediately.”

Ellie nodded and turned to go, then, spotting the steward hovering just outside the door, halted once more to ask whether there had been any messages for her, or rather, for her “husband.”

While the captain took his leave with poorly concealed impatience, the steward promised to check for messages as soon as he’d seen her back to her stateroom.

That turned out not to be necessary. When Ellie unlocked her stateroom door she found an envelope lying on the carpet, where it had apparently been slipped under the door.

“Well, there you are,” the steward said, showing friendly white teeth. “Must have just come in.” He hovered while Ellie tore open the envelope and read the brief handwritten message inside. “Is that the message you were expecting, Miss, uh…ma’am?”

“Mmm…” she murmured absently. “Yes…I think so. Thank you…” For a moment longer the steward hovered, then shrugged and went out, closing the door behind him. Belatedly, the word tip flashed into Ellie’s mind. But only fleetingly; she had more important things on her mind.

Mañana—twelve o’clock noon. Take a taxi from the plaza. Give driver this following instruction….

Noon. Tomorrow.

Ellie’s knees suddenly went weak, and she sank onto her smooth undisturbed bed, reaching automatically for the bag of Kisses. A few feet away, tumbled sheets dragged half onto the floor bore mute testimony to the disaster that had befallen her—or more accurately, her partner.

Her partner. Wait a minute. Ken was the one with appendicitis. There was nothing whatsoever wrong with her.

Heart thumping, even chocolate momentarily forgotten, she stared down at the piece of paper in her hands. Tomorrow noon. Okay. This was it. The meeting they’d been working toward, hoping for, for months. Okay, so Ken was out of the picture, but she was still here. There was nothing wrong with her. Why couldn’t she still go through with it? Why shouldn’t she?

Okay, Ellie, think about this logically.

On the downside, according to Ken these smugglers were a backward lot, with some annoyingly primitive ideas about women. He’d said they probably wouldn’t even do business with a woman alone. Probably.

All right, so what? At the worst they wouldn’t do business with her—a little humiliating, maybe, but she could handle that. And at least she would have a chance to explain what had happened, perhaps try to postpone the meeting until Ken was back in action.

But what if that wasn’t the worst?

Memories of the evening’s incident at José’s Cantina crowded fresh and vivid into her mind, complete with the residuals of sour breath and hot, unwashed bodies. Reluctantly, she thought about the number one rule in law enforcement: never go into anything without backup.

Tonight she’d had backup—unplanned, but backup nonetheless. She forced herself to consider what would have happened if that artist hadn’t arrived when he had. Probably nothing—she really did believe she could have handled those two drunks without any help. But that was just it—the men who’d accosted her had been a couple of relatively harmless neighborhood punks, and drunk to boot. The smugglers, she was certain, would be a different breed entirely.

But if she didn’t keep the rendezvous, what then? How many months would it take to win back the smugglers’ trust and set up another meeting? And in the meantime, how many hundreds, even thousands, of rare and beautiful animals would die in horrible, cruel ways? As always, that thought made Ellie’s stomach clench and her skin go clammy.

She jumped up and began to pace—to the extent such an activity was possible in the cramped stateroom.

I should at least contact General Reyes, she thought, nibbling furiously at her lip. General Cristobal Reyes was the head of the Mexican government agency that had been working in close partnership with the USFWS and the man in charge of the Mexican phase of the operation. Though she’d never actually met him, he was, in effect, at this juncture, anyway, her boss. He would have to be told about this latest development. Of course he would.

And the general would call off the operation, or at least postpone it until Ken was back in action. He would tell her in no uncertain terms not to go to this meeting alone. Of course he would.

What shall I do? Think, Ellie, think! Use your wits….

It was the word wits that made her stop pacing and begin instead to smile. Keep your wits about you. It had always been one of her mother’s favorite sayings, and Ellie could hear Lucy’s stern and scratchy voice as clearly as if she’d been standing there beside her. Keep your wits about you, Rose Ellen Lanagan.

A sweet and childish longing swept over her as she sank onto the bed, popped a Kiss into her mouth and reached for the telephone.

Ordinarily Lucy found October’s lull a welcome respite after the busy rush of September and its jam-packed schedule of back-to-school, 4-H meetings, fairs and livestock sales. For a little while, between harvest and the hardships of winter, she could spend time with Mike, or simply relax and enjoy the cool, crisp mornings and bright, golden noontimes—as much as Lucy had it in her nature to relax.

Oh, but she did like the lovely sense of satisfaction that came with having once again, against all the odds man and nature could throw at her, successfully brought in a decent harvest. And though she always felt a small twinge of regret at the first soft furring of frost on the corn stubble, she never failed to feel her spirits lift when she heard the distant honking of migrating geese and paused, shading her eyes against the glare, to watch the fluid arrows dipping and floating through a crystal-clear autumn sky.

Infused with restless energy, she spent those days cleaning the house, raking leaves, or, something she’d always enjoyed much more, working in the barn, piling the stalls full of sweet-smelling straw and declaring all-out war on the summer’s accumulation of spiders.

Her husband Mike, the journalist, attributed all this activity to a primitive, instinctive fear of winter, the same instinct, he said, that prompts squirrels to run about gathering nuts.

Well, of course, Mike was a writer, and Lucy was used to his tendency to over-verbalize—not to mention dramatize. She certainly was not afraid of winter, or anything else, for that matter. Except maybe thunderstorms, which she considered only basic good sense; as far as Lucy was concerned, thunderstorms were violent, dangerous and destructive, and anybody with half a brain ought to be afraid of them. And as far as instinct went, why, it seemed only natural that someone who’d spent her whole life on a farm would be more sensitive than some people to the rhythms of nature…the turn of the seasons…the cycles of life and death.

For everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under Heaven…. That had been one of Aunt Gwen’s favorite passages of scripture and she’d quoted it often and taken comfort from it. So had Lucy.

But this year, for some reason, she acknowledged a certain…sadness at the turning of the seasons. Perhaps it was partly because Gwen was no longer here to share them with her, but this year the autumn evenings seemed longer to her than usual, the big old farmhouse emptier, the silence…lonelier.

When the phone rang that particular evening, Lucy was curled up on the couch in what had once been, and what Lucy still considered to be, Aunt Gwen’s parlor.

Earlier she and Mike had eaten supper together off trays while watching the CBS Evening News and Jeopardy. Then, while Lucy clicked irritably through the channels looking for her favorite shows, which seemed to be all out of place since the start of the new TV season, Mike had returned to work on his weekly column for Newsweek magazine.

He’d moved his computer into the parlor after Gwen’s death the previous year, since it was cooler there than any of the spare bedrooms upstairs. In the summer it was a dim and peaceful working place, with dappled shade from the big old oaks that grew on that side of the house. In the fall, afternoon sunlight diffused through autumn’s leaves filled the room with a lovely golden warmth, and in winter, the last of each day’s meager ration of sunshine found its way between the filigree of bare branches. It had always been Lucy’s favorite room, with the upright piano and its collection of family photographs on top, the white-painted mantelpiece covered with still more photos, the shelves full of books. And of course, Gwen’s ancient recliner, empty now this past year, and yet…sometimes Lucy swore she could still feel Gwen in that room, and hear the musical grace note of her laughter.

The telephone’s polite trill made Lucy jump; calls late in the evening weren’t all that common in rural Iowa, and seldom meant good news. As she reached for the cordless that had replaced the old kitchen wall phone a few years back, Mike stopped typing and peered at her expectantly, blind as a mole in his special computer glasses, the dark-rimmed ones that give him a distinctly Harry Potter look.

“Mom?”

Lucy came bolt upright on the couch. “Ellie? Well, for goodness’ sake!” Her mom-radar was lighting up like a Christmas tree. Across the room, Mike took off his Harry Potter glasses. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong, Mom, just called to say hi.”

Lucy was unconvinced. “Your voice sounds funny.”

“Probably because I’m eating chocolate. Plus, I’m on a cell phone. Mom, I’m fine, really.”

“A cell phone!” Lucy was just getting used to cordless. “Well, you sound like you’re a million miles away.”

“Not quite—I’m in Mexico. On a ship. Listen, Mom—”

“Oh Lord. Not that Save the Whales stuff again? I thought you were through with—”

“It’s not that kind of ship. Mom, listen—I need some advice.”

“Advice!” Once again Lucy jerked as if she’d been poked. Across the room, Mike’s eyebrows had shot up. As they both knew, Rose Ellen, being her mother’s daughter, had never been one to take, much less seek, anyone’s advice. “From me? Are you sure you wouldn’t rather ask your dad? He’s right here.”

“Hey—give him a big hug and a kiss for me.” Ellie’s voice sounded odd again—slightly muffled, which Lucy knew meant she probably had her mouth full of chocolate. Which made her radar light up even more; Ellie always turned to chocolate in times of stress.

“Mom—I need to ask you something. I haven’t got a lot of time…. There’s something I need to do—at least, it’s something I believe I should do—I think other people would probably tell me I shouldn’t do it—they might even tell me absolutely not to do it, and then I’d have to do it anyway, and probably—”

“Ellie—slow down. You’re not making sense. What is this thing you think you have to do?”

There was a pause, and then, “I can’t really tell you that, Mom.”

“I see. Is it dangerous?” Lucy’s voice cracked on the last word. She cleared her throat while Mike pushed back his chair.

After an even longer pause, Ellie said, in the voice nearly everyone said was very like her mother’s, “I think maybe…it could be, yes.”

Lucy sat very still. Mike came to sit beside her, dipping the cushions so that she had to lean back against him. But she straightened herself and said very quietly, “Rose Ellen, you have a good level head on your shoulders. I know you wouldn’t do anything foolhardy.”

“No, Mama.” Now she sounded like she had as a little girl, angelically, breathlessly protesting her innocence. Ellie never had been able to lie convincingly.

Lucy said, in what Mike always called her rusty-nail voice, “But, I know how you are when you really believe in something. If there’s something you think you have to do….” She felt Mike’s arms come around her and hurriedly cleared her throat as she gripped the phone hard. As if she could somehow force her strength of will and passion through those nonexistent wires. “Listen…honey—you just have to trust yourself. We’ve taught you to use your head and think for yourself, so you use your own judgment—your own good judgment, no one else’s. You do what you have to do, honey. But you keep a level head, now, you hear me? You keep your wits about you.”

“Yes, Mama. Thanks…I love you.” Ellie was laughing…wasn’t she? “Mom—tell Dad I love him, too, okay? Hey, listen, I’m sure it’ll be okay. So don’t worry about me, okay? I’ll call you later and tell you all about it.”

“Ellie, wait—”

“Bye Mom, bye, Dad. Don’t worry.”

“Wait—” But the line had gone dead. Lucy punched the disconnect button and swiped angrily at her cheeks. “Damn,” she rasped, “I didn’t even get to tell her the news about Ethan getting married. You know he was always her favorite cousin.”

Mike cleared his throat as he pulled her back against him. “Probably not a good idea, if she was on a wireless phone.”

Lucy sniffed. “You think?”

“Not unless you want to read all about it in tomorrow’s headlines: President’s Son to Wed Notorious Rock Star!”

Lucy laughed…and sniffed again. Mike’s arms tightened and he kissed the top of her head. “Hey, love, why’re you crying? Ellie’ll be fine—like you said, she’s got a good head on her shoulders.”

Lucy burrowed her face against the chest of the only person in the world who was allowed to see her cry. “Our children are so far away, Mike. Rose Ellen off on some ship, and Lord only knows where Eric is—it’s been months since he’s called.”

“A little delayed empty-nest syndrome, love?” Mike said softly, holding her close. “It’s been quite a few years since our kids flew the coop.”

“Yes,” Lucy gulped, “but I think it just hit me that they’re not coming back.”

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