“You’re pregnant?”

“I don’t owe you any explanations.” Bethany said, trying to push past Dylan. She might as well have tried to move a boulder.

“If you think I’m going to let you walk out of here by yourself, you’re out of your mind. You told me yourself you’d do what it took to protect your child. No way am I going to risk you driving off into those mountains and never coming back.”

“I appreciate your concern, Dylan, but I’m not some fragile flower, and I don’t need you playing bodyguard or bounty hunter or whatever it is you think you’re doing.” Even if for a few dangerous moments she wanted to feel his arms close around her more than she’d ever wanted anything.

His expression darkened. “I’d call it father.”

Everything inside her went very still. “W-what?”

“This child you’re carrying, Bethany. This child is mine.”

Dear Reader,

A new year has begun, so why not celebrate with six exciting new titles from Silhouette Intimate Moments? What a Man’s Gotta Do is the newest from Karen Templeton, reuniting the one-time good girl, now a single mom, with the former bad boy who always made her heart pound, even though he never once sent a smile her way. Until now.

Kylie Brant introduces THE TREMAINE TRADITION with Alias Smith and Jones, an exciting novel about two people hiding everything about themselves—except the way they feel about each other. There’s still TROUBLE IN EDEN in Virginia Kantra’s All a Man Can Ask, in which an undercover assignment leads (predictably) to danger and (unpredictably) to love. By now you know that the WINGMEN WARRIORS flash means you’re about to experience top-notch military romance, courtesy of Catherine Mann. Under Siege, a marriage-of-inconvenience tale, won’t disappoint. Who wouldn’t like A Kiss in the Dark from a handsome hero? So run—don’t walk—to pick up the book of the same name by rising star Jenna Mills. Finally, enjoy the winter chill—and the cozy cuddling that drives it away—in Northern Exposure, by Debra Lee Brown, who sends her heroine to Alaska to find love.

And, of course, we’ll be back next month with six more of the best and most exciting romances around, so be sure not to miss a single one.

Enjoy!

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

A Kiss in the Dark
Jenna Mills

www.millsandboon.co.uk

JENNA MILLS

grew up in south Louisiana, amid romantic plantation ruins, haunting swamps and timeless legends. It’s not surprising, then, that she wrote her first romance at the ripe old age of six! Three years later, this librarian’s daughter turned to romantic suspense with Jacquie and the Swamp, a harrowing tale of a young woman on the run in the swamp and the dashing hero who helps her find her way home. Since then her stories have grown in complexity, but her affinity for adventurous women and dangerous men has remained constant. She loves writing about strong characters torn between duty and desire, conscious choice and destiny.

When not writing award-winning stories brimming with deep emotion, steamy passion and page-turning suspense, Jenna spends her time with her husband, two cats, two dogs and a menagerie of plants in their Dallas, Texas, home. Jenna loves to hear from her readers. She can be reached via e-mail at writejennamills@aol.com, or via snail mail at P.O. Box 768, Coppell, Texas 75019.

A book about a woman who longs for the joys of motherhood deserves to be dedicated to the wonderful women who’ve loved, nurtured and supported me—my mother, Sharilynn Aucoin, my dear grandmothers, Rosemary Aucoin and the late Marie Allison, and my special mother-in-law, Judith Miller.

You’re the best!

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Epilogue

Prologue

“Had laws not been, we never had been blamed; For not to know we sin is innocence.”

—William D’Avenant

“Stop!”

The broken cry shattered the silence of the night. He awoke abruptly, heart hammering, adrenaline surging. Disoriented, he sat upright on the sofa and blinked against the grainy dryness of his eyes, tried to focus. The cabin was dark, shadows blurring detail. Nothing moved save for the orgylike frenzy of snowflakes outside the window.

A dream, he told himself. Just another nightmare. They were stronger here in the cabin, where memories crowded in from every direction like ghosts in a desecrated cemetery.

He was a fool to keep coming back.

“D-don’t kill him!”

This time there was no mistake. He was on his feet in a heartbeat, running across the cold wood floor toward the hallway. She didn’t belong here. Not here. But the snowstorm had turned vicious, rendering the roads too treacherous for driving.

“S-stay away! Stay away from me!”

The pain in the voice he’d never forgotten, despite the passing of six long years, pierced deep.

“Don’t touch me…”

He reached the closed door at a dead run, knew it was locked before he tried the knob. He pulled back, then rammed his body against the wood, crashed inside the room.

The sight greeting him almost sent him to his knees. The need to protect, to comfort, reared up from somewhere dark and forgotten and sent him toward the bed, where she fought the tangled sheets, lost in a nightmare he knew too well.

“My baby…”

He reached the bed and pulled her to his body, holding her against his chest. “It’s just a dream,” he assured roughly, running his hands along her back. She was thinner than he remembered. And she was trembling. “Just a dream.”

Her arms twined around his waist, her soft palms stinging like ice against his bare back. “S-so real,” she murmured as he held her, rocked her. “Just like before.”

“It’s this place,” he reasoned, trying to ignore the feel of her soft breasts pressed against his chest. “Too many memories.”

“S-so c-cold.”

He pulled back to look at her and felt something deep inside splinter. Her sable hair was tangled, her devastated eyes an impossible shade of arctic blue, her skin like ice, the coral of her lips practically translucent. His threadbare black and blue flannel shirt had slipped over one shoulder, baring the curve he’d once loved to skim his mouth along.

A long time ago.

In the years since then, he’d lived without her. He hadn’t touched her, seen her, talked to her for six long years. She’d come to him only during the long, dark hours of the night, when his defenses lay in tatters and desire made him weak.

He’d always felt things intensely, passionately. He’d never been able to walk away from a fight. Or from her.

Except when she told him to go, to never come back.

Clenching his jaw, he reached for the comforter and draped it around her shoulders. “You should be fine now. I’ll be in the other room if you need me.”

She reached for him, curled cool fingers around his wrist. “Don’t go.”

He went very still. “You don’t know what—”

“I want to be warm again,” she said, lifting her eyes to his. They were huge, dark. “Is that so very wrong?”

A hard sound broke from his throat. In some hazy corner of his mind, he knew it was a mistake even as he reached for her. It was like throwing a lit match into a pile of dried leaves and expecting nothing to happen. But too much emotion burned inside him. Too much need. That had always been the problem. He’d never been able to care about nasty things like consequences.

She didn’t seem to care, either. She reached for him, pulled him to her.

“You’re real,” she murmured against his chest. “I never thought…”

Her words trickled off, but he didn’t need to hear them. He knew. God help him, he knew. And he could no more stop touching her, wanting her, than he could change the past. Make it better. Write a new ending.

“Neither did I,” he said hoarsely.

Outside, the temperature hovered just below freezing, but inside, the fire licking at the grate crackled and sizzled, filling the cabin with the scent of burning pine and times long past. But never forgotten. Memories hovered everywhere, slipping around him and slicing through him, seducing even as they destroyed. The joy and the desperation, the smiles and the laughter, the tears. The cold, hard truth.

Against his chest he felt the moisture, and knew that she was remembering, too. He pulled back to wipe the silent tears away, but instead of swiping a thumb beneath her eyes, he put his mouth there. Very gently, he kissed away her pain, though he could do nothing about the emotion stinging his own eyes. He could only skim his mouth along her cheekbone, the line of her jaw, finally finding her lips.

The onslaught of sensation stabbed deep. She tasted of regret and longing, tomorrows that never came. Of hope and possibility, dreams that never died. She tasted of the hot chocolate he’d made shortly before midnight. Of the tiny white marshmallows that had finally coaxed a smile from her.

The first she’d given him in almost nine years.

Now her mouth moved against his with the same hunger, the same urgency, that drove him. And when at last she pulled back and lifted her eyes, he saw the glaze of mindless passion that had haunted him for a seeming eternity.

“I…forgot,” she whispered.

He pushed up on one arm. “Forgot what?”

“What it’s like when you touch me, how everything else just…fades to the background.”

He told himself to quit touching her. Walk away, close the door. And again, he wished he was a different man, the kind who couldn’t be lured into stepping off the side of a cliff.

“It’s been so long…” Her voice was soft, distant. Almost pained. “Did you forget, too?”

Yes was the smart answer. Yes. “No.”

“Then help me remember,” she murmured, tugging him toward her. “Help me remember what I’ve forgotten.”

That was all it took. He returned his mouth to hers, and she came alive in his arms, touching him, running her hands along his body like a benediction of cool spring water. Everywhere she touched, he burned. Wanting to touch her, too, all of her, he lifted a hand to the buttons, but his fingers were too big, too impatient. He pulled the fabric, sent the buttons popping.

And then there she was. Through the flickering light of the fire, he drank in the sight of her sprawled against the flannel sheets. Her skin was flawless, almost shimmering. Her breasts could make a grown man weep.

And her smile. Dear God, her smile. He had forgotten. It had been the only way to stay sane.

“Are you sure?” he somehow managed to ask.

She answered not with words, but by skimming a hand down his chest, along his abdomen to his waistband. There she tugged.

On a low groan, he kicked off the ratty sweatpants. He told himself to go slow, to linger and savor, but the second the scrap of pink silk no longer separated them, she curled her legs around his and restlessly tilted her hips. And restraint shattered. He heard her name tear from his throat as he pushed inside, pushed home, nearly blinded by the rush of heat and pleasure. She was tight, almost virginal. But he knew this wasn’t her first time. He’d taken care of that nine years before. And then the marriage—

“Hurt her, and I’ll kill you.”

Six years hadn’t lessened the punch of the vow he’d made to his cousin that starkly cold January morning, nor the emotion behind it, but as she twisted in his arms, murder was the last thing on his mind. He destroyed the memory, refusing to grant power to the past. It was over. Done. Meaningless. She was here now, gazing up at him with untold longing in the blue of her eyes. That was all that mattered.

Need took over, the raw, soul shattering kind that could send a strong man to an early grave. It burned and seared, demanded. He wanted to take away the pain, the sorrow. To prove once and for all that fire didn’t always burn.

Past and present collided, melded, their bodies remembering what time couldn’t fully erase. They moved together as one. She cried out when he brought her to the edge, a distorted gasp from deep within her throat. He answered, twining his fingers with hers and tumbling over after her.

Stranded there in the mountains, surrounded by a forest of the tallest, most beautiful old-growth pines in all of Oregon, the real world seemed a distant entity, a faraway place that didn’t matter, couldn’t harm.

In the hazy light of early morning, he awoke alone.

She was gone. He didn’t need to leave the bed to know that. She’d been gone a long, long time. Years. Many of them. A snowstorm and a nightmare couldn’t change that.

On a low oath, he ripped the tangled covers from his body and surged to his feet, crossed the braided rug to stand at the window. The ending never changed, not in real life, not in his dreams. No matter how hot the fire raged, in the end, only ashes remained. And no matter how beautiful the snowfall that had temporarily transformed the mountainside into a winter wonderland, it always, always faded into a cold, relentless drizzle.

A snow globe sat on the small pine table beside the bed, the foolishly romantic one he’d bought her so long ago, the one that contained a cabin nestled in the mountains.

“It’s…beautiful.”

“I thought you might like it.”

She smiled. “What happened to fairy tales don’t come true?”

“Maybe I was wrong.”

Like hell he’d been wrong.

In one fluid motion he picked up the dome and hurled it across the room, taking obscene satisfaction in the way it smashed against the wall and fell to the floor, shattered just like all those pretenses he abhorred.

“Never again,” he vowed in a voice shaking with an emotion he refused to call hurt. “Never the hell again.”

Chapter 1

Six weeks later

The upper hand felt good.

With insulting detachment, Lance St. Croix studied the sunlight glinting through the cathedral window in a violent wash of light. Shadows stretched languidly across the white carpet of the opulent living room, one threatening, the other nearing the massive fireplace in retreat.

“You’ll never get away with this,” he warned with deliberate dismissal. “Not after what you’ve done.”

The one who’d accused him of having a God complex laughed, not yet sensing the trap. “You can’t just use people and discard them at will. Life doesn’t work that way.”

“Get off your high horse,” he said with a cutting smile. “The shadow of innocence doesn’t touch you any more than it touches me. Have you forgotten I know what you did?”

A glitter moved into blue eyes that invited trust and hid betrayal. “If my secret comes out, so will yours.”

No, it wouldn’t. He’d make damn sure of that, just like he made damn sure of everything else. Every action had an equal and opposite reaction, no matter how innocent, how misguided, the intentions.

“People will be hurt,” he pointed out, changing tactics.

“You should have thought about that before!” the misguided one muttered with all the foolishness of the doomed. “It’s too late now.”

The shadows against the carpet blurred, the sudden absence of the sunlight leaving only an indistinguishable mass of darkness. It was impossible to discern predator from prey.

“Please,” Lance added, playing the emotional card he’d fashioned into an art form during long years of marriage. “Just listen to me. I wasn’t thinking clearly. I was careless, I let emotion take over. Trust me, it’ll never happen again.”

“Cut the innocent act!” his betrayer shouted, shattering the illusion of calm. “I’m not falling for it again. You knew exactly what you were doing, and I have the evidence to prove it. Soon, everybody in Portland will know what a gutless coward you are.”

He attacked without thinking, swift, necessarily brutal. There was only a second to react. One second to grab the shiny fire poker before the violent impact of flesh to flesh. The ensuing scream was hideous, the blow shocking, the contrast of red on white horrifying.

The end came obscenely fast.

Dylan St. Croix was nearing the Portland art district when the scratchy report came across the police scanner.

Ten forty-nine at 1467 Lakeview Road confirmed. Requesting backup.

Everything inside him roared violently in protest. Blindly, he changed lanes and whipped his Bronco around, fighting the gnarled rush hour traffic like a living beast. His heart pounded as he slammed his foot down on the gas pedal and tore down crowded streets. Red lights meant nothing. Time seemed to crawl.

1467 Lakeview Road. He knew that address. Knew only one person lived there. One woman.

Ten forty-nine. He knew that code. Fatal Injury.

Something dark and primal tore through him. No! he thought savagely. No. He clenched the steering wheel as tightly as he could, determined not to let his hands shake. But he could do nothing about the adrenaline pooling in his gut like poison.

Never was supposed to last longer than six weeks.

Fatal Injury.

Questions battered him, but the scanner granted few answers. Crime scene technicians had been dispatched. The coroner. Possible homicide.

Dylan swerved off the highway and zipped through a Yield sign. And then he was there, the posh Portland neighborhood greeting him like a sleepy still life. He blinked hard, not sure how half an hour had raced by in the space of a heartbeat. He hardly remembered leaving downtown.

With no regard for the sanctity of the quiet community, he swerved around a slow-moving minivan, turned sharply onto Lakeview, then accelerated toward the house two blocks down. Against a crimson-streaked sky, pines towered high and the sun sank low, working in unison to obscure his view. Squinting, he barely saw the police cars that blocked his progress.

He jerked the Bronco to a stop against the curb and threw open the door. Then, God help him, he ran. Men and women and children blocked the sidewalk, crying and wringing their hands, staring. Dylan pushed past them, until he reached the line of yellow police tape. Then he stopped cold.

The fading light of early evening cast long shadows across the wooded lawn, while a tulip-lined walkway meandered toward the wide porch. Golden light spilled from the cathedral-style front door and arched windows. Bushy baskets of impatiens and petunias swayed in the breeze.

So this was where she lived, he thought morosely.

Perfect, was Dylan’s first thought. Tranquil. Deceptively serene. Just like her. Except for the garishly flashing lights of the four squad cars. The two ambulances blocking the street. The cops swarming the yard like a freshly kicked anthill.

This was where she lived, he thought again. This was where she’d died.

Bethany.

His vision blurred, as an unwanted pain sliced through him. He should feel nothing, he knew. Not anymore. But he’d never learned how. He felt everything. Intensely. Always had. He called it passion. She’d called it out of control.

Shoving aside the memory, he forced his long legs to move up the driveway. Steady. Measured. He was a strong man. He’d seen a lot of ugliness in his life—crime scenes were nothing new to him. He’d visited many. He’d even caused a few.

But the cheerful flowers drove home the reality that this time was different.

This time was personal.

“You don’t want to go in there, son.”

Dylan glanced over his shoulder to see Detective Paul Zito break from a cluster of patrolmen and cut across the lawn. Dylan’s work as a private investigator brought him in contact with the homicide veteran often enough that the two had formed an unlikely friendship.

On the third Tuesday of every month, they met by the river at Shady’s for beer and cards. Nothing rattled Detective Paul Zito. Nothing fazed him. Dylan couldn’t remember a single time when the irreverent cop had looked the least bit uneasy. Certainly not stricken.

Until now.

Dylan’s heart rate accelerated. Dread twisted through him. And for a moment, he wanted to turn and walk away. Walk far. Like she had. He wanted to get back in his car and drive, get on with his life. He wanted to pretend the only woman who’d ever crawled under his skin didn’t lie dead inside.

But that was the coward’s way out, and while Dylan had been called many names in his thirty-two years, coward wasn’t one of them.

“Trust me,” Dylan said when Zito joined him on the tulip-infested walkway. “This has nothing to do with what I want.”

The homicide veteran frowned. “Technically, I can bar your sorry ass from taking another step. This is a crime scene. You have no right to be here.”

“I’m family. That gives me every right.”

“So that’s what you’re calling it these days?”

He ignored Zito, stared at the front door. It hung open, allowing light to spill like blood from a starkly white foyer. A wide staircase swept toward the second level. She was in there. He wondered where. If she’d suffered. If she’d known.

A primal emotion he didn’t understand bled through the indifference he struggled to erect. The last time he’d seen her—Christ, he didn’t want to think about that night. Until the scanner report, he’d done a damn fine job of blotting it from his mind. But now he had to wonder. If he’d known it was to be their last, would he have done things differently?

He didn’t want to think about that, either.

Needing to do something, anything, he stooped and snapped off a bloodred tulip. Indifferent, he reminded himself. Objective.

At the sight of his cousin’s white Ferrari parked in the street, his gut clenched. He could only imagine how Lance must feel, the shock and the grief. Lance and Bethany had long since gone their separate ways, but once, he’d pledged to love her forever.

“Where’s Lance? Is he inside?”

“In the living room.”

Dylan pushed past Zito. “How’s he holding up? Is he okay—”

“Christ, Dylan. I thought you knew.”

The tone, more than the actual words, stopped him cold. He’d heard that tone before, the sunny day eighteen years ago when the police chief had shown up on his grandfather’s doorstep.

“I’m sorry, Sebastian. I don’t want to be standing here any more than you want me to, but I didn’t want you to hear from strangers. There’s been a terrible accident…”

Adrenaline spewed nastily, prompting Dylan to turn toward Zito. The white porch rail and neatly trimmed hedges blurred, but the grim-faced detective looked carved of stone.

“Knew what?” Dylan bit out.

“There was some kind of struggle,” Zito said. “Someone took a fire poker to the side of his head. He probably never even knew what hit him.”

“Never knew what hit him?”

His friend frowned. “Looks like the end came pretty damn fast.”

Horror slammed in, hard. Shock numbed the pain. Lance. His smooth, invincible cousin. The St. Croix prince. Dead. Just like so many St. Croixs before him.

“The ex called 911,” Zito added. “She was pretty incoherent.”

The point-blank statement jolted Dylan back from the whirring vortex like a frayed lifeline. “B-Bethany?”

“The first officers on the scene found her in the living room wearing a torn nightgown.”

“She’s alive?”

“Found the body…or so she says.” Zito glanced at a small notebook in his hands and shook his head. “Story’s got more holes than the ozone layer.”

Dylan swore softly. For the past forty minutes, images of Bethany hurt and bleeding, dead, had tortured him. Now…

Lance.

Jagged emotion cut in from all directions, but Dylan didn’t miss Zito’s insinuation.

“You think she did it?”

“It’s her house, her fire poker, her ex. The blood was on her hands.” Zito shrugged, shook his head. “I count my blessings when Pam was done with me, she was content to sign a few damn papers. Don’t know why people have to complicate a good divorce with murder.”

Blood on her hands.

The image formed before he could block it, turning everything inside him stone cold. Disbelief surged. Too well, he knew how misleading Bethany’s porcelain-figurine exterior could be. Intimately, he knew there was nothing she couldn’t accomplish, if she put her mind to it. Hell, she’d cut him out of her life with the ruthless precision of a heart surgeon. But murder?

“Where is she?” He needed to see her, to—

To nothing.

Zito flipped his notebook shut. “Out back, by the pool.”

“Is she…hurt?”

“A nasty blow on the side of her head, but no concussion.”

Dark spots clouded Dylan’s vision. “Someone hit her?”

“Maybe. Or maybe she hit herself.”

Revulsion knocked up against disbelief. He’d heard worse, a young woman slashing her throat with a steak knife to cover the fact she’d killed her lover, but Bethany…

“I want to talk to her.”

“This is a crime scene. I can’t have you contaminating—”

“Her, damn it! I want her.”

Zito cocked an eyebrow.

“You’ve already taken her statement,” Dylan reminded, fighting a pounding urgency he didn’t understand. “What do you think I’m going to do? Tell her how to change her story?”

Zito’s dry smile said just that. “Stranger things have happened.”

“Ten minutes, Zito. You can listen to every word. Just let me see her.” He had to. God, he had to. He didn’t know why, just knew that he needed to look into those languid blue eyes and see if he saw a murderer looking back at him.

Zito sighed, motioning for Dylan to follow him around the wide porch. “Five minutes.”

The side of the house boasted a wall of windows, giving Dylan a distorted view into Bethany’s world. The thick, beveled glass denied detail, but not impression. Everywhere he looked, shades of white glared back at him—flooring, furniture, art.

Near the back of the house, French doors hung open, revealing another room, where a sheet lay draped over a form near the fireplace. Three uniformed cops stood around talking, while two technicians examined the fire poker. A photographer busily recorded the scene.

“No matter how hard it is, boys, we go on. From now on, I’ll be more like a father, than a grandfather. And you’ll be more like brothers than cousins.”

“But you’re not my father!” eleven-year-old Dylan raged. “And he’s not my brother! We don’t even like each other.”

“Then you’ll just have to pretend, won’t you?”

“It’s the St. Croix way,” thirteen-year-old Lance added, earning his grandfather’s approving smile. “It’s not so bad once you get used to it.”

But there was no pretending now. Lance, the complicated cousin who’d never become a brother despite how hard Dylan tried, really did lie dead on the living room floor. And apparently Bethany had blood on her hands.

Remorse clogged Dylan’s throat, the hopes and dreams of two very different little boys who’d grown up to fall in love with the same woman. Somehow, he kept walking.

“She’s just around the corner,” Zito said.

Dylan stopped before turning, taking in the elaborate cabana and pool area. In the distance, the fading light of early evening cast the Cascades a giant, misshapen shadow against a horizon streaked with shades of crimson.

Even the sky seemed to be bleeding.

And then, for only the second time since that cold night on the mountain, when a snowstorm had shattered the preternatural indifference he’d lived with for six years, he saw her.

“She’s all yours,” Zito indicated with a sweep of his hand.

A hard sound of denial broke from Dylan’s throat. Zito couldn’t be more wrong. Bethany Rae Kincaid had never been all his. Never all anyone’s.

But still, his heart kicked, hard. And the years between them crumbled, just like they had on the mountain.

The ice princess, they’d called her in high school. She held herself apart from the world, refusing to fully give, fully surrender herself to anyone, least of all Dylan. Except when they’d been in bed. Then, she’d literally come apart in his arms. But after, after she’d always sewn herself up a little tighter.

Some things never changed.

The sight of her sitting in a chaise lounge, holding a black-and-white cat and staring toward the mountains, stirred something he’d thought finally dead. Her long chestnut hair was tangled, her creamy skin alarmingly pale. Blood stained her slinky ivory robe. Her feet were bare.

“Pink or red?”

She looked at him, laughing. “What?”

“Your toenails,” he said, running his hand along her high arch. “I want to paint them. Pink or red?”

The memory cut in from somewhere long forgotten, prompting Dylan to swear softly. In the end, she’d chosen red. At her wedding, she’d worn pink.

That damning, defining night in the cabin, there’d been no color at all.

Dylan clenched his hands into tight fists. Damn her. Damn her for turning him into a gnarled mess, while his cousin lay dead inside and she sat there perfectly calm. Untouched.

Untouchable.

He wanted to tear across the patio and take her shoulders in his hands, put his mouth to hers, breathe some life into her. He wanted answers. He wanted to understand. He wanted—

He wanted to stop wanting.

A cool breeze drifted across the flagstone, bringing with it the scent of jasmine that was quintessential Bethany. Or maybe that was only his imagination. Slowly, he stepped into the shadows of twilight and started toward her. Birdseed crunched beneath his loafers, drawing the cat’s attention, but not Bethany’s. Big and scruffy and missing most of one ear, the black-and-white narrowed yellow eyes and watched Dylan approach.

His heart hammered cruelly. Look at me, he raged silently. He wanted her to turn to him, acknowledge him. He wanted to see those startling blue eyes rimmed by the darkest, thickest lashes he’d ever known, see what truths lurked in those deep, deep depths. What lies.

But classic Bethany, she didn’t grant his wish. She just sat there, seemingly oblivious to the world around her, staring beyond the pool that looked more like a lagoon. The evening breeze sent ripples across the turquoise surface, while a stunning waterfall at the far corner babbled peacefully. The wall of rocks seemed to weep. Birds sang.

And deep inside Dylan, something twisted.

It was a damn peaceful scene for a murder.

Beth St. Croix stared blindly across the cabana. Nearly sunset, she knew shadows would be stretching across the pool, but she could bring nothing into focus. The world beyond was hazy, cold. Frozen.

Or maybe that was her.

Till death do us part rang with a finality she’d never expected on that cold day she and Lance had quit pretending theirs was a real marriage. Legal documents couldn’t make up for the distance that had settled between them. She could still see the suitcases sitting against the white marble of the foyer, the empty shelf in the entertainment center where CDs and DVDs had once been stacked. She hadn’t asked him to stay.

Hadn’t wanted him to.

Ma’am, where’s the body?

Horror surged, clogged. Bile backed up in her throat. Once, in a fit of rage, her mother had thrown an iron candlestick at a sliding door. The thick glass had cracked into thousands of misshapen pieces, but by some miracle remained intact. Fascinated by the sun streaming through the prism of color, a six-year-old Beth had put her hand to the surface, only to have the shards crumble, slicing her palm to the bone as they fell to the cold tile floor.

Now, with absolute certainty, Beth knew if she so much as moved, she’d shatter just like that door.

Wake up, she commanded herself fiercely. Wake up! It was time to leave this terrible dream behind, to claw her way out of the frozen cocoon where each breath stabbed like daggers. She had to make her legs work, so she could go back inside and make Lance wake up. Tell the police there’d been a terrible mistake.

Without warning, a low hum broke through the stillness, a sharp wind rushing through a narrow ravine.

“Bethany.”

Her heart staggered, but in some faraway corner of her mind, she wondered what had taken him so long. He always invaded the shadowy realm of her dreams sooner or later, tall and strong, eyes burning, touch searing.

“I came as soon as I heard.”

The hoarse voice settled around her like a steadying hand, a lifeline back from that frozen place she’d slipped into upon finding Lance. She wanted to turn to him, feel his arms close around her like they had one cold, desperate night. Instead, she held herself very still, acutely aware that if she so much as blinked, if she let go of that tight grip she held on herself, she risked losing hold of all those nasty sharp pieces she’d gathered up and shoved deep before the police arrived.

“Bethany,” he said a little stronger, a lot harder. “Look at me.”

No, she thought wildly. No. But slowly, she turned to face him. She’d never been able to deny him anything, at least not in her dreams. In real life the cost had been shattering, but she’d learned the importance of denying him everything. Fire burned. She knew that, couldn’t afford to forget.

He towered over her, his big body blocking out the last fragile rays of the sun. Familiarity faded as well. In her dreams, her memories, he always, always touched her.

Now he just stared, his eyes hot and condemning. And she knew. God help her, she knew. Dylan was here. Here! Which meant she wasn’t dreaming. She was awake. Horribly, vividly awake.

The past two hours came crashing back, breaking through the blanket of shock like a hideous rockslide. “Lance…”

Dylan swore softly. “I thought it was you.”

The strangled words shattered the jagged pieces she’d been trying desperately to hold together. Everything fell away, the haze and the blur and the vertigo, leaving the cold hard truth.

And it destroyed.

For six years this man had stayed away. He hadn’t touched her, spoken to her, even acknowledged her, except that one shattering night on the mountain, when loose ends had played them both like puppets. At a charity auction just two nights later, he’d walked right by her with a gorgeous woman hanging on his arm, looking through Bethany as though she didn’t even exist.

But now, now that he thought she lay dead on the living room floor, he was first in line to view the body.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” she managed through the broken glass in her throat.

The hard planes of his face were expressionless, but a pinprick of light glimmered in his eyes. “Rest assured,” he said softly. “Of the many ways I’ve imagined you over the years, hurt, bleeding, or dead isn’t even close. Not when I watched you marry my cousin, not when I woke up alone.”

The pain was swift and immediate, forcing her to blink rapidly to hide it from him. She looked at him standing close enough to touch, but saw only a man bursting in through a closed door, running across the darkened room, shouting her name.

“What happened, Bethany? What the hell happened?”

The slow burn started deep inside, pushing aside the shock and giving her strength. She released Zorro and stood, welcoming the bite of cool flagstone beneath her bare feet.

Dylan St. Croix was not a man to take sitting down.

He loomed a good six inches over her five-foot-eight, bringing her first in contact with the wrinkled cotton of his gray button-down. He wore it open at the throat, revealing the dark curly hair she’d once loved to twirl on her finger.

Shaken, Beth looked up abruptly, only to have her breath catch all over again. It was bad enough facing him after the night on the mountain, but to do it here, now, like this, seemed crueler than cruel.

Time and maturity had served him well, hardening the lanky, reckless boy into a devastating man. Tall and broad-shouldered, he wore his thick dark hair neatly clipped, obliterating the curls he’d always hated. His green eyes were narrow and deep-set, his cheekbones shockingly high. There was a cleft in his chin. His jaw always needed a razor.

He looked like a million tainted bucks, her friend Janine had once said. The description fit.

“You don’t belong here,” she said, but the words cracked on the remembered smell of sandalwood and clove. “Please. Just go.”

“So you can slip back into your pretend world where roses don’t have thorns, we weren’t lovers, and Lance isn’t dead on the living room floor?” He paused, stepped closer. “Sorry, no can do.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said, instinctively stepping back.

His gaze hardened. “Zito says you found him.”

The memory speared in before she could stop it, Lance lying near the fireplace. So still. So cold. She’d lain there for a few minutes before opening her eyes, dizzy, disoriented. The sun cutting through the windows had blinded her at first, but after several moistening blinks, she’d brought him into focus.

Odd place for a nap, she remembered thinking. Odd time.

Then she’d become aware of the stain on the carpet. And the fire poker in her hand.

“What else did the good detective tell you?” Lance had been a prosecutor with the D.A.’s office; she knew how weak her story sounded. Murder was rarely random or anonymous. Spouses almost always topped the list of suspects.

“Did he tell you they don’t believe me when I say I have no idea what happened? That they don’t believe the gash on my head isn’t self-inflicted? Did they tell you that?”

Dylan frowned. “Not in so many words.”

But she didn’t need words. Everything Dylan St. Croix believed, felt, wanted, burned in that dark primeval gaze. He was a man driven by the kind of searing passion that incinerated everything in its path. Her included. Her especially. That he stood there now, so ominously still, so silent and expressionless, chilled in ways she didn’t understand.

“I can see it in their eyes,” she whispered, “just like I see it in yours.”

“It’s a logical assumption.”

In another lifetime, she might have laughed. Logic and Dylan went together as well as fire and ice.

Needing to breathe without drawing in sandalwood, she turned and walked to the edge of the pool, where an empty blue raft floated near the waterfall.

“I came home and walked inside,” she said, looking out over the pool. In the distance, jagged mountain peaks blended into sky, only the faint stars indicating where one world ended and another began.

“Someone grabbed me. I screamed, but…everything went dark.” She lifted a hand to the back of her head, where a nasty knot throbbed. “When I came to, I was in the living room next to Lance. He was…” A sob lodged in her throat. “The blood…There was nothing I could do.”

She stiffened when she felt a warm hand join hers at the base of her scalp. She hadn’t even heard him approach. He circled the injury, making her acutely aware of his fingers in her tangled hair, gently exploring the wound the detectives wondered if she’d given herself.

“Does it hurt?”

“Not anymore.” Liar.

Somewhere along the line, the birds had stopped singing. There was only the sound of cascading water and the hum of activity inside the house. The sound of their breathing. The crazy desire to lean back, to feel the solid strength of a hard male body.

“When did you change into your negligee, before or after?”

Cool evening air swirled around her bare legs, reminding her that beneath her robe, she wore only a white silk chemise. One she hated. One she’d never worn, though Lance had bought it for her over a year before.

“I—I didn’t put it on,” she said, stepping from Dylan and tightening her sash. “I was wearing a suit. It’s hanging in the closet now.”

“What was Lance doing here? I didn’t think you two were even speaking. Had something changed?”

“No.” No way. Their marriage had ended long before he had walked out the door, long before she took a drive one deceptively beautiful afternoon. Long before she learned truths that violated everything she’d ever believed.

“Then why was he here?”

“He called and said he had a few things to pick up, wanted to know when I’d be home. He sounded…strange.”

“Strange how?”

“Just…strange. Upset.” Very unLancelike.

“And?”

“And nothing.”

Dylan swore softly. “Don’t hold back from me,” he said, turning her to face him. Inches separated their bodies, their faces, years their hearts. “I’m a private investigator, for God’s sakes. I make a living finding what people don’t want me to know. And I see secrets in your eyes. What, damn it? What are you hiding? Are you afraid? Is that it?”

Deep inside, she started to shake. He was too close. Much, much too close. The mere sight of him ripped her up in ways she hadn’t known were possible, resurrected feelings and desires and dangers she’d tried to bury.

She didn’t want to see him now.

She didn’t want to see him ever, ever again.

“I came home to find Lance dead and the police think I did it. I had blood on my hands. How do you expect me to feel?”

Dylan frowned. “I learned a long time ago not to have expectations when it comes to your feelings. Still waters run too deep for me. Too cold.”

She angled her chin. “Only because you can’t muddy them.”

“This isn’t about me!” he practically roared. He took her shoulders and pulled her closer, forcing her to tilt her head to see his eyes. “This isn’t about us or what happened on the mountain. It’s about what went down in this house a few hours ago. It’s about you. It’s about a whole hell of a lot of questions, and too few answers.”

A hard, broken sound tore from her throat. “You think I don’t know that?” she tried not to cry. The wind whipped up, sending tangled strands of hair into her face. Agitated, she lifted a hand to push them back, but Dylan did the same. Their fingers met against her cheekbone, hers cold, his thick and hot. She closed her eyes briefly, but the sound of a vicious curse shattered the moment. Heart pounding, she looked up just in time to see hot fury erupt in Dylan’s eyes.

It was the only warning she got.

Chapter 2

Something inside Dylan snapped.

He stared at Bethany’s wrists, at the smears of blue and black circling pale flesh like violent bracelets. She said she’d been hit on the head and the gash there bore testimony to her claim, but clearly she’d been grabbed by the wrists, as well. Grabbed hard. Crushed with more than casual force.

The picture formed before he could stop it, heinous, damning. Bethany as a cold-blooded murderer he couldn’t see. But crimes of passion required neither forethought, nor intent. They simply exploded, destroying everything in their path.

Dylan knew that well.

“Did he do this to you?” he demanded, taking her cold hands and turning them palm up. Deep, crescent-shaped gouges in the fleshy part of her palm told him just how tight she was holding on. The discolored thumbprints on the inside of her wrists turned his blood to ice. “Did he hurt you?”

She gazed up at him, her eyes cloudy and confused, her mouth slightly open. She looked lost and alone standing there in nothing but the pale silk robe, like she’d just rolled from bed and found that while she slept, the whole world had slipped away.

“W-what?”

The thought of anyone getting rough with her, hurting her, chased everything else to the background.

“Lance. Did Lance put these bruises around your wrists?”

Slowly, she looked down, as though just now noticing the discoloration. But she said nothing.

His mind worked fast, reenacting the crime with a brutal precision learned from years as a private investigator. He could almost hear Lance and Bethany arguing, the elevated voices, the desperation. Hear her telling him to leave. See his cousin grabbing her wrists and squeezing. Hurting.

“Bethany.” His voice broke on her name. “Did Lance do this to you?” Tell me no, he thought savagely. Tell me no!

She blinked at him. “Would you care if he did?”

Once, he would have killed. “Answer me, damn it!”

“Let go.” The words were soft, but carried unmistakable strength. Strength the girl she’d been had not possessed. Strength that would have threatened the St. Croix prince.

“Maybe the two of you were arguing,” he theorized ruthlessly. He needed to crack through her control, and a toothpick wouldn’t cut it. “Things got out of hand and Lance lost his cool, got rough. Maybe he even found out about—”

“No!” She jerked her hands from his and backed away. “That’s not how it happened.” The wind whipped long locks of hair against her mouth, but this time neither of them moved to slide the silky strands back. “I told you—someone knocked me out when I walked in the door.”

Dylan studied her standing there against the darkness, that skimpy robe falling open at the chest and revealing too much cleavage. He didn’t need to be a seasoned detective to see the secrets in her eyes. The fear. He didn’t need to be a man practiced in seeing through pretenses to notice how badly she trembled.

But he did need Herculean strength to keep his hands off her.

Too damn well, too intimately, he knew how passion could blind and distort, make even the most rational person snap like a sapling in a gale force wind.

He’d just never thought passion played a role in Bethany and Lance’s relationship. The thought, the reality that it might have, made him a little crazy.

“If it was self-defense, you need to tell me.” He tried to speak casually now, to match calm with calm, but the horror was like a rusty stake driven through his core. “If he grabbed you, tossed you around—”

“No—”

“You wanted him to leave,” he pushed on, needing to hear her denial as badly as he’d ever needed anything. Even her. “He wouldn’t. Maybe he grabbed you. You only picked up the fire poker to protect yourself. You never meant to hurt—”

“Stop!” she shouted, lifting a hand as though to physically destroy his nasty scenario.

He caught her wrist, just barely resisting the crazy desire to pull her into his arms. He knew better than putting a snub-nose to his temple.

“I wish I could stop,” he said as levelly as he could. “But I can’t. Don’t you understand what’s going on here? Lance is dead and his blood is on your hands.”

The change came over her visibly, the glacierlike wall she used to separate herself from the world slipping into place with eerie precision. “I don’t owe you any explanations.”

Come back, he wanted to shout, but for the first time Dylan could remember, he envied her the ability to isolate herself from what she felt. He wanted to do that now, to shut himself off from the horror and the rage and the fractured grief that splattered through him like vivid splashes of color all mixed together until nothing was discernable except for dark, jagged smudges.

But lack of feeling was her specialty, not his.

“You may not owe me anything,” he said, “but the cops are a different story.” He glanced toward the door, where Zito stood watching. “And their questions are going to be a hell of a lot harder.”

She lifted her chin in a masterful gesture of cool defiance that was pure Bethany. “If you’re trying to reenact the crime, it’s not going to work. The fire poker is inside.”

The words were soft, but they landed like crashing boulders. He looked down at his big hand manacling her slender wrist, the nasty bruises completely hidden. It was a miracle whoever roughed her up hadn’t snapped the small bone in two. It wouldn’t have taken much extra effort. Just a little pressure—

He let go abruptly and stepped back.

Slowly, Bethany lifted her eyes to his. “Do you really think I’m capable of murder?”

The night fell quiet, so silent he would have sworn he heard the pounding of his heart, the rasp of his breathing. Or maybe that was hers. Theirs.

Everything else faded to the background, Zito waiting in the wings, the ugliness inside. There was no horror or blind rage, no stabbing grief, no crime to be solved, no betrayal to be forgotten. There was only a man and woman, a silent communion he neither understood nor wanted.

He drank in the sight of her standing there, finally allowing himself to look into eyes he’d relegated to the darkest, coldest hours of the night. They were deep and heavy-lidded, fathomless, liquid sapphire framed by full dark lashes. A man could lose himself in those eyes, swirling and serene, but somehow, always, always, lost.

But they were dull now, huge and unfocused, her pupils dilated. Long, tangled brown hair concealed a portion of her face, but not the smear of blood on her left cheekbone. Nor the fact that no tear tracks marred her features.

Because he didn’t want her to see how badly they’d started to shake, Dylan shoved his hands into his pockets. He tore his gaze from hers and let it slide lower, to the silk garment gaping to reveal the swell of her breasts, the indentation of her waist, the curve of her hips. He couldn’t help but wonder about the negligee beneath, whether it would be pristine, as well, or if at least in the bedroom, she’d displayed a little warmth and creativity.

Like she had with him.

Before.

“Sweetheart,” he drawled, “you’re capable of anything you put your mind to.”

Beth curled her fingers into her palms, digging deep. The lingering smell of stale cigarette smoke and scorched coffee burned her eyes and throat; the gash at the back of her head throbbed with every beat of her heart. She wasn’t going to wake up. Two detectives really did sit across from her in the small interrogation room, tossing out one nasty scenario after another, as they’d been doing for over an hour.

“So you invited him over, slipped into that skimpy negligee, and tried to seduce him back into your bed.”

“No.”

“You didn’t like being divorced. You wanted your fancy life back. You were a little desperate. Didn’t enjoy being a has-been, the butt of town gossip, like your mama, is that it?”

“No!” The word burst from her with the force of a bullet. The fact they’d finally thrown her mother into the fray pushed Beth dangerously close to the edge. One way or another, everything always circled back to the notorious Sierra Rae.

They were trying to break her, she knew, rattle her, find some way to make her trip. It was their job.

Dylan didn’t have the same excuse.

“This has nothing to do with Mrs. St. Croix’s mother,” Janine White bit out. A longtime friend of Lance’s, then of Beth’s, the attorney had met her at the station without hesitation. The women who’d laughed over martinis sat side by side in the small room, cups of bitter coffee and a tape recorder separating them from detectives Paul Zito and Harry Livingston.

Detective Zito picked up his pencil. “Just trying to establish motivation.”

“There is no motivation,” Janine shot back, “because you’re talking to an innocent woman. Beth did not kill Lance.”

Gratitude squeezed through the icy tightness in Beth’s chest. Janine’s sleek white evening gown made her look more like an Amazon priestess than a savvy attorney, but she had a reputation for being as tough as nails. Even now she appeared amazingly composed, the red rimming her eyes the only evidence of tears Beth knew she’d shed.

“Did you and Mr. St. Croix have intercourse today?”

The question might as well have been a knife. It sliced deep, robbing Beth of breath. Disgust bled through.

Janine recovered first. “This woman’s ex-husband has been murdered!” she said, surging up and slamming her palms down on the table. “What the hell are you trying to prove?”

“You know damn well what I’m trying to do,” Detective Livingston drawled, turning his stony eyes to Beth. “Did he take what you offered and walk away? You felt used and hurt and ran after him—”

“That’s disgusting,” Beth bit out.

The balding detective frowned. “Murder is.”

Beth sucked in a sharp breath, trying not to splinter despite how effectively the detectives thrust the battering ram. For nine years she’d done her best to live a quiet, simple life. She didn’t want the spotlight Lance had developed a fondness for. She didn’t want the passion that propelled her mother from marriage to affair to marriage. To affair. She didn’t want the chaos Dylan created without even trying.

“A husband who loves me and a couple of kids, that’s all I want.”

“That’s all?”

“Well, maybe a house in the mountains, a couple of dogs and cats, some goldfish.”

The innocence of that long ago day burned. At the time, she would never have imagined how quickly things could fall apart, that within a month she’d tell Dylan that she’d never loved him, never wanted to see him again. That she would lay her hand against the tiniest casket she’d ever seen. That Lance would sit quietly beside her hour after hour, listening to her cry her heart out. That Dylan would leave town, but Lance would stay. That she wouldn’t see Dylan again for three long years, until the day she pledged her life to his cousin.

That Lance would become blinded by ambition.

That she would be sterile.

That the marriage she’d been so determined to make work would crumble.

That Dylan would suddenly reappear in her life.

That Lance would one day lie dead on the living room floor.

That the fire poker would be in her hands.

“Beth?” Janine asked, touching her hand. “Are you okay?”

She blinked, a steely resolve spreading through her. Slowly, she looked up, meeting Detective Livingston’s hard gaze. “I didn’t have sex with him today, this week, this month, or even this year. And I didn’t kill him.”

The older man leaned forward and steepled his fingers. “Then maybe you’d like to tell me why you were in a negligee.”

“She’s already told you she doesn’t know,” Janine reminded.

“So she’s said.” This from Detective Zito, the tall, strikingly handsome man who’d stood in the shadows with Dylan.

“What about your wrists?” he asked, flipping through the pages of his small notebook. “Who put those bracelets there?”

Beth looked at the nasty purplish bruises, but saw only Dylan’s hands curled around her flesh. “I don’t know.” The claim sounded weak, but she spoke the truth. “I had no reason to kill him. We were divorced. There were no hard feelings.”

“You wouldn’t be the first woman to strike out at the man who walked out on her,” Livingston pointed out.

The pale green walls of the cramped room pushed closer. “That’s not how it happened.”

“Refill anyone?” Detective Zito asked, crossing to pick up the coffeepot.

Beth looked at the paper cup sitting in front of her, its contents long cold. She’d barely taken a sip. The mere smell of the burned coffee made her gag.

“Guess not.” He filled his cup and returned to the table. “Did your husband have any enemies?”

“He worked for the district attorney’s office,” Janine answered for her, practically snarling at Zito. “You know that. He was a prosecutor.” Just like Janine was. If Beth was arrested, Janine would be unable to help in an official capacity. “We all have enemies. It’s a hazard of the job.”

“Anyone in particular? Had he received any threatening phone calls or letters?”

“Not that I know of,” Beth said, but then, she and Lance had rarely spoken of that kind of thing. Toward the end, they’d barely spoken at all. She’d lost herself in her work at Girls Unlimited, a center for underprivileged teenage girls, and Lance had worked ungodly hours as one of Portland’s leading prosecutors. His political future had never burned brighter.

“That’s quite a security system you’ve got at the house,” Zito went on. “Was he worried about someone coming after him?”

Obviously, the detective hadn’t known the man whose murder he investigated. “Lance wasn’t scared of anything or anyone. He was born a St. Croix. It never occurred to him that something bad could happen to him.”

“And you?” Zito asked. “Did the thought occur to you?”

Icy fingers of certainty curled through her. “Bad times don’t discriminate. They touch us all.”

“Even the St. Croixs?”

“Yes, even the St. Croixs.” Especially one in particular. But then, Dylan preferred it that way. He’d caused an uproar by dropping out of law school six months before graduation, opting for private investigations rather over the formal justice system. His grandfather the judge had been furious, and while Lance had put on a good show, she knew he’d secretly embraced the opportunity to outshine his black sheep cousin.

Beth stiffened, shaken by the direction of her thoughts. She had no business thinking of Dylan now. No business remembering. He was a living, breathing reminder of mistakes she’d give almost anything to erase. Fire burned. Fire always, always burned.

“I’ve told you everything I know,” she said, and stood. The room spun like a tilt-a-whirl, prompting her to brace a hand against the chair. The two detectives looked at her oddly, Janine in concern.

“It’s late, I’m tired and my head is pounding.” And she was afraid she was going to be sick. Gingerly, she lifted a hand to the gash at the back of her head, but rather than feeling her fingers, she felt Dylan’s. Gentle. Disturbing. “I’d like to go now.”

“We’re not done—” Livingston started, but Zito cut him off.

“Don’t leave town without letting me know first.”

She hardly recognized the woman in the mirror. Beth stared at the pale mouth and dark eyes in the reflection, and felt her throat tighten. Cupping her hands, she returned them to the stream of cold water running from the faucet, then lifted them to her face. Over. And over. Only when two female patrol officers strolled into the bathroom, laughing, did she stop.

Very quietly, very deliberately, she patted her face dry and slung her purse over her shoulder, walked out the door.

She saw him the second she stepped from the elevator. He stood not ten feet away, talking on his mobile phone and slicing a hand violently through the air. He had his back to her, but she didn’t need to see the hard lines of his face to recognize him. She always felt him first, that low hum deep inside, followed by a tightening of her chest.

Somehow, she kept walking.

“No, damn it,” she heard him bark. “Let me handle this.”

Her heart revved and stalled. Handle what?, she couldn’t help wondering. Her? It didn’t matter. She’d—

“Beth, wait!”

She stiffened and, though she wanted to keep going, had no choice but to stop. “Janey,” she said, turning to her friend. “I appreciate all you did for me. I hope I didn’t pull you away from anything important.”

“Don’t think twice about it.” Janine took Beth’s hands and squeezed. “How are you holding up? I know things weren’t great between the two of you, but this has to be hard.”

Her throat tightened. Janine was Lance’s friend first, but in her soft voice and expressive brown eyes, Beth found a concern that almost undid her. “I didn’t do it,” she whispered.

“Of course you didn’t,” came a rough masculine voice.

Beth barely had time to turn before the man was beside her, pulling her into his arms. “I just heard, Beth. I’m so sorry.”

The hug caught her off guard. As district attorney, Kent English had been both Lance’s mentor and friend. And though she and Kent had been cordial, the man whose place the media had speculated Lance would soon take had never touched her beyond a handshake. Now the embattled D.A. skimmed a hand along her back in a gesture that should have been comforting.

But wasn’t.

Instantly, she looked across the hall and found Dylan watching her through the most scorched-earth eyes she’d ever seen. Her chest tightened, and her heart started to thrum. The breath stalled in her throat. The truth disturbed.

This hug. This embrace. It was what she’d wanted from Dylan the second she’d seen him standing on the patio, to feel his arms around her, his body against hers. To just lean against him and be held.

She’d be safer dancing naked in a bonfire.

“Thank you,” she said against Kent’s chest, struggling to free herself. His arms suddenly felt like a net, sending panic twisting through her. She needed to get away. Not from the cops or Kent, but from Dylan and those hard, penetrating eyes.

Kent, a shrewd politician with a well-earned reputation for cutting throats and breaking hearts, didn’t try to stop her, just stepped back and frowned. For a man rumored to be on his way out, he still held himself with commanding presence.

“I’ll have Livingston’s badge for putting you through this. Anyone who knows you knows you couldn’t hurt a flea.”

Involuntarily, Beth looked toward the end of the hall, only to find Dylan gone.

“Thanks for coming down,” she said, turning back to Lance’s colleagues. “It means a lot to me.”

Kent pulled her in for another quick hug and Janine did her best to smile. Beth bade them good-night, then crossed the lobby to the front door. A few uniformed cops lingered by a counter, talking in loud tones. A woman rushed inside, demanding to know where her Donny was. Across the room, a young girl with ratty hair and torn clothes yelled to anyone who would listen.

Pushing open the glass door, Beth welcomed the blast of cool night air.

“Mrs. St. Croix!” came a shouted voice, as a crowd of reporters rushed up the steps. “Mrs. St. Croix, can you tell us what happened?”

Flashbulbs exploded around her. Microphones were jammed toward her. “Do they have any suspects?”

“Was the murder weapon really a fire poker?”

Beth tried to turn away, but the swarm had circled her.

“Did you really find his body?”

Revulsion surged through her. She saw the collective gleam in the eyes of the reporters, the thirst for a story with no regard for the fact that the roadkill they picked apart was someone’s world. She’d worked hard to keep her personal life private, but when Lance went to work for the district attorney’s office, anonymity became a luxury of the past. He’d thrived on the adulation, fed off it. And the press had fallen in love. He was the grandson of a wealthy state judge, he was handsome, and everyone believed it only a matter of time before he capitalized on his popularity and ran for public office, starting with D.A. The press had been having a field day with rumors about English stepping down, Lance taking over.

No one was quite sure why.

But now the golden boy was dead; murdered, she thought with a sharp stab, and the media he’d used so shamelessly wanted to know why.

“I have no comment,” Beth said. No intention of telling them anything. Even words of innocence could be twisted into stones of condemnation.

“If you’ll excuse me,” she said, trying to push through the tight circle of reporters.

“Did you kill him?”

The question stopped Beth cold. Yvonne Kelly, an investigative reporter whose love of going for the jugular Lance had always admired, pushed her way to the front. The wind blew pale hair into her face. Her eyes glittered.

“Was it a crime of passion?” she asked icily. “Is that how you ended up with blood on your hands?”

Control shattered. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you—” she started, but the crowd erupted into a frenzy of shouts and curses and shoving before she could finish. Someone screamed. Flashes of light ricocheted through the darkness. She heard a low roar, then the sound of something smashing violently to the concrete.

“You can’t do that!” a reporter shouted.

“Watch me.” Dylan broke from the throng and pushed to her side, hooked an arm around her waist without breaking his stride. “Sorry, folks, but this feeding frenzy is over. Ms. St. Croix has no comment.”

Disappointment tittered through the reporters, but the swarm instantly loosened, obeying Dylan’s command like he was some fallen deity and the price of going against him was eternal damnation. He led her down the steps, his stride long and purposeful. Determined. She almost had to run to keep up with him. He never looked back, just kept his arm around her waist and guided her to the dark SUV at the curb.

He opened the passenger door and grabbed a bulging file from the bucket seat. “Get in.”

Beth hesitated. The interior of the black Bronco looked as dark and isolating as a cave, and once inside, they’d be completely alone. Just the two of them. No outside interference. Just like that cold night at the cabin, the terrible mistake that still had her jerking awake in the middle of the night, heart hammering, chest tight, body burning from his touch.

She didn’t want that. Lance was dead. She was a suspect. There was no room for the chaos that was Dylan in her world. Hadn’t been for a long time. She’d worked hard to carve him from her life, her dreams. But God help her, because of one mindless slip, he’d stepped out of those shadowy, forbidden images and into the worst nightmare of her life.

And Yvonne Kelly was closing in fast.

“We don’t have all night,” Dylan prompted.

Beth cut him a sharp look then slipped into the Bronco. In a heartbeat he had the door closed and was sliding into the driver’s seat, effectively shutting them off from the world. Through the tinted windows, Beth saw Yvonne Kelly hit the sidewalk at a run, but the engine purred to life and they tore from the curb with a shriek of tires.

Her heart raced as fast as the blur of buildings and cars they passed. He took a right curve too fast, then another, then swerved onto the side of the deserted road and threw the gear into park. A few cars lined the street, but no activity, and very little light. They were behind the police station, she realized. Not far away, but completely out of sight.

“You sure do know how to attract a crowd, sweetheart.”

The insolent words brought her back to familiar territory. Or at least, remembered territory. For a few dizzying minutes, Dylan had seemed more stranger than one-man wrecking crew. In his touch, she’d felt a protectiveness she didn’t remember. In his rough-hewn voice, she’d heard a strain she hadn’t understood. This bold, in-your-face proclamation was much more suited to the man she’d foolishly given her heart so long ago.

Little light made its way from the street lamp through the tinted windows, leaving only the blue glow from the dashboard to cast his face in shadow. He watched her intently, his six-foot-two frame dominating the front seat. She could hardly move without touching him.

She didn’t want to touch him.

She hadn’t wanted to spend the night at the cabin with him, either. She’d driven to the mountains after an emotional appointment with her doctor, in search of peace and quiet, to clear her mind. Instead, she’d found Dylan. She hadn’t realized he spent weekends there, at the St. Croix retreat. She hadn’t known the snow would make the roads impassable. She hadn’t anticipated all the memories closing in on her, the nightmare that had pinned her to the bed, waking up to find Dylan by her side, so big and strong, so…gentle. That had been new. Or maybe just an illusion. A dream. A wish. Regardless, it had shredded every remaining particle of her defenses.

Until she’d awoken just before sunrise, sprawled over his big hot body, their legs tangled, his arm draped possessively over her waist.

She’d wanted to cry.

Even now, weeks later, she could hardly believe the gravity of her mistake. She should have been able to tell him no. Tell herself no. She should have been able to resist that keening deep inside, the acute longing to feel his arms around her. It was tempting to make up some excuse like she’d been confused, hadn’t realized what she was doing. But that was a lie, and she knew it. She’d known. And she’d wanted. Badly. That was the problem. Being with Dylan went against everything she believed in, violated the life she’d built. And still, she’d given herself to him.

Still, she’d given.

Never again, she’d promised herself on the cold, slick drive down the mountain. Never, never again would she let herself give in to the kind of desire that burned everything in its path. Passion was intoxicating, but it never, never lasted.

Believing otherwise only led to pain.

She had to focus on Lance now, couldn’t let her irrational reaction to Dylan blur her focus all over again.

“Thirsty?” he asked.

She blinked. “What?”

“Good old-fashioned H₂O,” he said, offering her the plastic bottle from his cup holder. “It’s nothing fancy and a little warm now, but it’s better than you passing out on me.”

She stared at his big, scarred hand, but rather than seeing those capable fingers wrapped around clear plastic, she saw them closed around her wrist. She’d felt the strength of his grip, but an unmistakable tenderness, as well.

It had been the tenderness that made her lash out.

Now she forced herself to look from the hand that could play her body like a song, to the hard line of his mouth and those eyes so deep and dark. And for a shattering moment, she didn’t see the uncompromising man who wanted to know if she’d killed the cousin who shared his last name but not his life.

She saw what she’d remembered on the mountain, the reckless boy he’d been, the one who’d coaxed her from her safe little world and made her want to be a little bad. Daring. To take chances she’d never even considered. And from that mirage came the crazy desire to lean closer and soak up the warmth of his body, to feel his arms close around her and hear his rough-hewn voice promise everything would be okay.

But that was impossible, and she knew it.

With Dylan St. Croix, nothing was ever okay.

“No, thanks,” she said, reaching for the door. “I don’t need you charging in and playing hero.” She’d learned the hard way that leaning on Dylan St. Croix was like leaning on a volcano ready to blow. And if she forgot, she had only to drive thirty minutes south of town, where two cold tombstones stood in silent reminder. “I can take care of myself.”

Curling her fingers around the handle, she pulled.

But the door didn’t budge.

“This isn’t a game,” came Dylan’s dangerously quiet voice from behind her. He reached across the passenger’s seat and pulled her hand from the door. “And I’m sure as hell not doing this for fun.”

“Then let me go.”

“I can’t.”

She turned to face him. Only inches separated them, making her painfully aware of the whiskers shadowing the uncompromising line of his mouth. “Yes, you can.”

“Lance is dead, Bethany, and you’re just barely hanging on. Queen Cutthroat was ready to crucify you. What kind of man would I be if I just melted into the shadows?”

The breath stalled in her throat. His words were soft, silky, but the warning rang clear. She sat there crowded against the seat, stunned, struggling to breathe without drawing the drugging scent of sandalwood and clove deep within her. Not only was he still holding her hand, but his body was pressed to hers, seemingly absorbing every heartbeat, every breath.

“It’s a little late,” she said slowly, deliberately, “to pretend you care what anyone else thinks about you.”

The light in his eyes went dark. “I’ll say it one more time.” He let go of her hand, but didn’t ease away. “I don’t do games. I don’t do hero. And I sure as hell don’t pretend. That was always your specialty.”

The pain was swift and immediate, driving home the truth. Dylan St. Croix had a penchant for streaking into her life like a shooting star, big and blazing and beautiful, but he’d never really known her. Never understood her. Never loved her. He’d just wanted her. In his arms and in his bed, but not in his heart.

“No,” she said, hoping he couldn’t hear the ragged edge to her breathing. “You just blaze along seeing how many applecarts you can knock over.”

He didn’t retreat as she’d hoped, didn’t pull back to his side of the car. “Sometimes that’s the only way to separate the good fruit from the bad.”

“And what am I?” she asked before she could stop herself.

“It’s not for me to decide.”

“Then why won’t you let me go?”

His lips thinned. “I’ve already told you, Bethany, I’m not into standing on the sidelines and watching someone get raked over the coals. Not even you. I’m not that cold.”

There was a rough edge to his voice, a hoarseness that hadn’t been there before. “I never thought you were cold.”

“What about Lance?” he asked, leaning closer. “Did you think he was cold?”

The urge to pull away engulfed her, but with her back against the locked door, she had nowhere to go. Instead, she reached for the blanket of numbness.

“I don’t want to talk about Lance.”

Dylan lifted a hand to her face, violating the space she’d put between them by skimming his index finger beneath her eyes. “You haven’t cried.”

She swallowed against the tightness in her throat. No way would she tell him she was all cried out, that before that ill-fated night on the mountain, the last tear had spilled from her eyes the night before she married Lance, when she’d awoken with the remembered touch of Dylan’s hands on her body.

“Crying doesn’t help, Dylan. Crying doesn’t change a damn thing.” She squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting Dylan to see truths she couldn’t hide. Not even from herself.

She realized her mistake too late. A woman should never close her eyes on Dylan St. Croix. Never turn her back to him. Never give him an advantage to press. Because he would.

Dylan St. Croix never turned down the killing blow.

Out of the darkness his mouth came down on hers, and just like that explosive, snowbound night in the cabin, the bottom fell out from her world.

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