r. Pleasant’s office was located on the top floor of a two-story building. Faith climbed the stairs, hoping against hope that she would find him there, that his telephone had been out of service, that he would be all right. A malfunctioning telephone wasn’t much of a possibility, because if he hadn’t been able to call out, he would have known about it and simply gone to another phone. Surely, too, he would have noticed if there were no incoming calls. Maybe he’d taken another case, and forgotten about her.

She doubted Francis P. Pleasant ever forgot anything.

His office was the first door on the left. The upper half of the door was glass, but the interior blinds had been closed, preventing her from seeing inside. The day she had met him, the blinds had been open. She tried to open the door and found it locked. Not really expecting a response, she knocked, and put her ear against the glass. The room beyond was silent.

There was a mail slot in the door. Faith pushed the little flap open, and angled her head to look inside. Her view was extremely limited, but she could see the mail, quite a lot of it, scattered across the floor.

He wasn’t here, and the amount of his mail indicated that he hadn’t been here in several days.

Growing more worried by the minute, Faith walked down the hall to the next door. According to the lettering on the door, she was at the law office of Houston H. Manges. She could hear the clatter of a typewriter and voices, so she opened the door and entered.

Houston H. Manges’s environs were small and cramped, with file cabinets crammed into every available space. She was in the reception area, populated by a tiny white-haired woman and three rubber plants, one of which had reached gargantuan size. The room beyond, which she could see through the open door, was about the same size, with floor-to-ceiling books. A heavyset man lounged behind a battered desk, and he was talking to a client who sat in one of the two cracked imitation leather chairs positioned in front of the desk. All that was visible of the client was the back of his head.

The tiny woman looked up and smiled in question, but made no move to close the door and give her employer and his client any privacy. Faith gave a mental shrug and approached.

"I’m a client of Mr. Pleasant, next door," she said. "I’ve been trying to reach him for several days and can’t seem to locate him. Do you happen to have any idea where he is?"

"Why, no," the tiny woman said. "He left about a week ago to go to this little town up close to Mississippi, I don’t remember the name. Perkins, something like that. I assumed he was still there."

"No, he left there the next day. He has a bad heart, and I’m worried about him."

"Oh, dear." The small face took on a distressed look. "I never thought about his heart. I knew, of course. His wife, Virginia – we used to have lunch together, it was so sad when she died – told me about his trouble. It was really bad, she said. I never thought to check on him." She reached immediately for the phone index, and flipped through it until she came to the Ps. "I’ll try his home phone. It’s unlisted, you know. He didn’t like business intruding on his private life."

Faith knew. She had called information, trying to get the number. It was her lack of success that had spurred her to drive down and try to find him.

After a minute the little lady hung up the phone. "There’s no answer. Oh, dear. I am worried now. It isn’t like Francis not to let someone know where he is."

"I’m going to call all the hospitals," Faith said decisively. "May I borrow your telephone?"

"Of course, honey. We have two lines, so people will still be able to get through. If a call comes in, though, I’ll need you to hang up so I can answer it."

Thanking God for southern hospitality, Faith accepted the New Orleans directory and flipped to the listing of hospitals. There were more than she had expected. Starting at the top, she began dialing.

Thirty minutes and three interruptions for incoming calls later, she hung up in defeat. Mr. Pleasant wasn’t a patient in any of the local hospitals. If he had taken ill while driving back from Prescott, he could be in a hospital somewhere else, but where?

Or something could have happened to him. It was a possibility she didn’t want to consider, but one she had to accept. If Guy Rouillard had been murdered, and Mr. Pleasant had been asking questions that made someone uncomfortable… She felt sick at the thought. If anything had happened to that sweet old man, it would be her fault for involving him. It wasn’t as if she’d had anything to go on, other than Renee’s statement that Guy hadn’t been with her at all, that she hadn’t seen him since that night twelve years ago.

Most people wouldn’t have suspected murder. Most people wouldn’t now be afraid that poor Mr. Pleasant had somehow run afoul of the same person who had killed Guy. But neither had most people been dragged out of their home in the middle of the night and thrown into the dirt; until Renee and Guy had disappeared, Faith’s life had been predictable, if a bit grim. But that night her trust in the comforting ordinariness of life had been shattered, and she had never regained that sense of security, of obliviousness to things that just didn’t happen to normal people. It was as if a curtain had been torn aside, and after that night she was acutely aware of all the dangers and what-ifs. Bad things were not only possible; in her experience, there was a damn good chance they would happen. She had held Scottie’s hand as he died, she had identified Kyle’s body in a morgue… Yes, bad things happened.

"What are you going to do?" the little secretary asked, automatically accepting that Faith would do something.

"File a missing person’s report," Faith said, because it was the only thing she could think to do. Mr. Pleasant had disappeared as suddenly and thoroughly as Guy Rouillard had; he had been asking questions about Guy. Coincidence? Not likely, but neither did she have any evidence that would warrant a criminal investigation. The best she could do was file a missing person’s report. At least that would trigger an investigation of some sort.

She asked directions to police headquarters, and managed to find it with only two wrong turns. A desk sergeant directed her to the proper office, and soon she was seated in a straight-back chair reciting what information she had to a tired detective in a tired suit, who nevertheless managed to seem interested.

"You called the motel where he’d been staying, and he’d checked out?" Detective Ambrose asked, his world-weary eyes warming a bit when he looked at her.

"The clerk didn’t actually see Mr. Pleasant. He said the key was left on the nightstand, and Mr. Pleasant’s things were gone."

"Had the room been paid for in advance?"

Faith nodded.

"Nothing unusual in that, then. Let’s see. No one has seen him since he left Prescott, the mail is piling up at his office, there’s no answer at his home, and he has a bum ticker." The detective shook his head. "I’ll go by his house and see what I can find, but…" He hesitated, sympathy in his expression.

But probably the old guy’s heart failed, was what he was thinking. Faith hunched her shoulders in misery. She would hate it if Mr. Pleasant had died, and she hadn’t been there to hold his hand or even attend his funeral. She had checked only the current admissions at the hospitals, not whether he’d been a patient any time in the past week. But he’d known about his heart, had been prepared, had even been waiting to join his wife; she would grieve, but there would be a sense of lightness if he’d gone that way. The real nightmare would be if the detective couldn’t find him. Then she would fear the worst, and have no way of knowing for certain.

She extracted a business card from her purse and handed it across the desk. "Please call me if you find anything," she said. "I didn’t know him very well, but I liked him a lot. He was a sweet old man." To her horror, she realized she was referring to him in the past tense, and flinched.

The detective took the card, and rubbed his fingers along the thin edges. "There’s something I’d like to know, Mrs. Hardy. What was he investigating for you?"

She’d known he would ask, and told him the truth. "Twelve years ago, my mother ran away with her lover. I wanted Mr. Pleasant to find them, if he could."

"And did he?"

She shook her head. "He hadn’t the last time I talked to him."

"Which was…?"

"I had dinner with him, the night before he left the motel."

"Did anyone see him after that?"

"I don’t know." It was easy to see the direction of this line of questioning. At least the detective was taking her seriously.

"Did he seem all right when he left?"

"He seemed fine. I had some unexpected company, and Mr. Pleasant left right after dinner."

"So you weren’t the only one to see him?"

She gave him a faint smile. "No."

"Who was your visitor?"

"A neighbor, Gray Rouillard. He came to see about buying my house." It was amazing how far the bare facts could be from what had really happened. She was becoming an expert at exposing the tip while keeping the rest of the iceberg of truth submerged.

"Gray Rouillard," Detective Ambrose repeated, tired eyes lighting with recognition. "Would that be the same Rouillard who played football for LSU, oh, ten or so years ago?"

"Almost thirteen years," she said. "Yes, he’s the same man."

"The Rouillards are big stuff in this part of the state. Well, well. So you’re selling your house to him?"

"No. He asked to buy it, but I don’t want to sell."

"Are you on good terms with him?"

"Not exactly."

"Oh." He seemed disappointed. Faith stared at him a moment, then her mouth curved in a tiny smile. This was the South, after all. Pro football had made some inroads, but college football still reigned supreme.

"No, I don’t have any influence with him to get tickets to the games," she said.

He shrugged, and a responding smile twitched his lips. "It was worth a try." He clicked his pen and rose to his feet, indicating that he had no more questions to ask. "I’ll see what I can find out about Mr. Pleasant. Will you be in town awhile longer, or are you going home now?"

"I’m going home. My only reason for driving down was to see if I could find him." Gratefully she stood up from the straight-back chair, and refrained from stretching.

He put his hand on her arm, the touch light. "You know my first check will be of the obituaries," he said gently.

Faith bit her lip, and nodded.

His hand made two brief pats. "I’ll let you know."

She cried during most of the drive back to Prescott. She had cried very little in the past twelve years, some tears shed for Kyle and more for Scottie, but the thought of losing Mr. Pleasant made her ache inside. She hadn’t had much room for optimism in her life, and she expected the worst.

Detective Ambrose was on the ball. When she checked the answering machine immediately on arriving home, there was a message from him: "I’ve checked Mr. Pleasant’s residence, and there’s no sign of him. The mail has piled up there, too, and the neighbors haven’t seen him." A pause. "He hasn’t been listed in the obits, either. I’ll keep checking, and get back to you."

He wasn’t there. The thought echoed around and around in her mind. No one had seen him since he’d left Prescott. Assuming he had ever left.

Pure rage began to build, and push aside the grief. Her mother and Guy had created a tangle, twelve years ago, that was still wreaking destruction. Faith had to absolve Renee of any involvement in Mr. Pleasant’s disappearance, since her mother hadn’t known the man existed, but she was still part and parcel of the root cause.

For Faith, deed followed closely on the heels of thought. Furiously she picked up the telephone and dialed her grandmother’s number.

She was thwarted, however, by the endless ringing on the other end. No one was home.

She called four more times before she got an answer, and her grandmother’s cracked voice called Renee to the phone. "Who is it?" she heard Renee ask in the background. "That girl of yourn, the youngest one." "I don’t want to talk to her. Tell her I’m not here." Faith’s hand tightened on the receiver, and her eyes ‘narrowed. She heard her grandmother fumbling with the phone again. She didn’t wait for the parroted excuse. "Tell Mama that if she doesn’t talk to me, I’m going to the sheriff." It was a bluff, at least at this point, but a calculated one. Renee’s response to it would tell her a lot. If her mother didn’t have anything to hide, the bluff wouldn’t work. If she did –

There was a pause as the message was relayed, then more fumbling with the telephone. "What on earth are you talkin’ about, Faithie? What’s the sheriff got to do with anything?" The tone was too bright, too cheerful. "I’m talking about Guy Rouillard. Mama – " "Would you quit harping about Guy Rouillard? I told you, I ain’t seen him."

Faith suppressed the nausea roiling in her stomach, and made her voice more soothing. "I know, Mama. I believe you. But I think something happened to him that night, after you left." Don’t let Mama think she was suspected of anything, or she’d close up tighter than a miser’s purse. "I don’t know nothing about that, and if you’re as smart as you think you are, missy, you’ll stop pokin’ your nose into other folks’ business."

"Where did you meet him that night, Mama?" Faith asked, ignoring the motherly advice.

"I don’t know why you’re so worried about him," Renee said sullenly. "If he’d done what he should, I’d’ve been taken care of. You kids, too," she added as an afterthought. "But he kept puttin’ it off, waiting until Gray was out of school – well, it don’t make no difference now."

"Did you go to the motel? Or did you meet him somewhere else?"

Renee drew in a seething breath. "You’re like a bulldog when you get something on your mind, did you know that? You always were the most stubborn of my kids, so bound and determined to have your way that you’d do what you wanted, even knowin’ your Pa would slap you for it. We met at the summerhouse, where we usually went, if you just have to know! Go nosing around there, and you’ll find out in a hurry that Gray ain’t nearly as easygoin’ as Guy was!"

Faith winced as Renee slammed down the phone, then drew a deep, shaky breath as she replaced her own receiver. Whatever had happened that night, Renee knew about it. Only her own self-interest could stir her to do something she didn’t want to do, so she had a reason for not wanting Faith to talk to the sheriff. Getting her to admit it, however, would take some doing.

It had to be the summerhouse, of course, Faith thought with resignation. Why couldn’t Guy and Renee have rendezvoused at a motel, in keeping with the American tradition? Faith’s memories of the summerhouse were bittersweet, like everything else connected with Gray Rouillard. She didn’t want to see it again, for doing so would remind her too vividly of the child she had been, of the long hours she had spent lurking at the edge of the woods, hoping for a glimpse of Gray. She had lain on her belly in the pine needles and contentedly watched him and his friends swimming in the lake, listened to their boisterous Shouts of laughter, and woven fancy daydreams of one day joining in their fun. Silly dreams. Silly child.

There, too, she had watched Gray making love to Lindsey Partain. Her stomach tightened now as she thought of it, and her hands curled with an impotent mixture of anger and jealousy. At the time, she had merely thought how beautiful he was. Now, however, she was a woman, with a woman’s needs and desires, and she didn’t want even to think of him making love to another woman, much less see it.

That had been fifteen long years ago, but she could still call up his image in her mind as if it had been yesterday. She could hear his deep, smoky voice murmuring French love words and husky reassurances, see his powerful young body moving between Lindsey’s spread legs.

Damn him. Why had he kissed her, that day in New Orleans? It was one thing to dream of his kisses, and another to know exactly how he tasted, how soft his lips were, how it felt to be in his arms and feel his erection thrusting insistently against her stomach. It was unfair of him to feed her hunger, and then try to use it against her. But then, everything about Gray was unfair. Why couldn’t bis hair have thinned over the years, rather than remaining that thick, vibrant mane? Why couldn’t he have put on weight, developed a beer belly and worn his pants slung low under it, rather than honing down to such lean muscularity, even more finely tuned than during his football days? And even if he hadn’t changed, why couldn’t she have, altering enough so that he no longer affected her so violently, or her heart would beat normally in his presence?

Instead, in that respect, she was still the adoring girl who had spent hours, weeks, months of her childhood lying on her belly in the woods, her eyes straining for a glimpse of her hero. Not even finding out that her hero could be a ruthless bastard when he wanted had been able to shake that painful fixation.

She didn’t want to go back to the summerhouse, to the scene of her youthful foolishness. What could she possibly find there, after twelve years? Nothing.

But no one else had looked at it with her eyes. No one had suspected that Guy Rouillard might have spent the last hours of his life there.

Faith growled at herself. She was tired and hungry, after the long drive to New Orleans and back, as well as exhausted by worry over Mr. Pleasant. She didn’t want to go to the summerhouse, but she had just given herself a convincing argument on why it was necessary. And if she was going, she should do it now, while the afternoon sun was still strong.

She grabbed her keys and stalked out of the house.

The best way to get there, she supposed, was the way she had gone when she’d been eleven. There was a road from the Rouillard house to the lake, but she could hardly take that route. From her younger days of roaming and spying, however, she knew the Rouillard land as well as she knew her own face. She drove to a secluded spot close to the old shack where she had grown up, but when she reached the last curve before the shack would come into view, she stopped the car and sat for a moment, hands gripping the steering wheel. She couldn’t bring herself to drive around the curve. The shack had probably fallen in by now, but that wouldn’t ease her memories. She didn’t want to see it, didn’t want to relive the memories of that night.

Pain was a lump in the middle of her chest, obstructing her breathing, making her eyes burn. She didn’t cry. She had cried for Mr. Pleasant, for Scottie, for Kyle. She hadn’t cried for herself since the night Renee had left.

Well, delaying wouldn’t accomplish anything except putting off dinner, and she was already starving. She got out of the car and locked the doors, and dropped the keys into her skirt pocket. Brush grew thickly along the sides of the road, now little more than a track as the vegetation gradually reclaimed the land. She had to pick her way around some briar bushes, but once into the woods, it was fairly easy to walk. She picked up a stick, in case she came across a snake, but she wasn’t at all afraid. She had grown up in these woods, played in them, hidden in them when Amos had been drunk and slinging his fists at anyone who got in his way.

The familiar scents washed over her, fresh and powerful with spring, and she stopped for a moment to absorb them. Her eyes closed so she could concentrate. There was the rich brown scent of the earth, the fresh verdant of leaves, the spicy golden scent of pine sap. She inhaled that last with a little shiver of recognition. Gray’s scent contained a hint of that golden spice. She would love to have him naked and at her disposal, so she could explore all the shadings of his scent. She would absolutely wallow on him, drunk with delight –

Her eyes popped open. The telltale wanning of her body told her where that particular fantasy had been going. It was coming back here that had done it; in her mind, the smells of the forest were inextricably linked with Gray: the hope of seeing him, the fizzing joy of seeing him.

Resolutely she walked on. If she didn’t get him out of her mind, she’d find herself lying on her stomach in the pine needles at the edge of the woods, completely reverted to childhood.

The walk to the lake wasn’t a long one, about twenty minutes. The forest had changed, of course; time didn’t stand still with trees any more than it did with people. She had to pick her way around obstacles that hadn’t been there before, and old landmarks were missing, but still she knew her way with the accuracy of a homing pigeon.

She approached the summerhouse from the angle she always had, from the back and right side. From there she could see the dock, and a corner of the boathouse. Once she had prayed to see a Corvette parked in front, but now she was just as glad not to see a Jaguar there. It would have been too ironic for Gray to appear. Thank God he had business concerns now, and didn’t have the luxury of spending long, lazy days swimming and fishing.

Time had laid its hand on the summerhouse, too. It wasn’t dilapidated, Gray had kept it up, but an air of disuse had fallen over it. Things that had regular human use wore a certain sheen of accomplishment, a sheen that the summerhouse no longer possessed. There was a subtle reverse of order. Before, the grass had always been neatly manicured, and though the yard wasn’t overgrown with weeds now, it still showed a certain roughness that said it had been over a week since the grass had been cut. On the other hand, the summerhouse had always been littered with the flotsam of human habitation, and now it was too neat, without the activity that had kept it cluttered and alive.

She went up the back steps, the same steps where she had crouched to listen to Gray making love to Lindsey Partain. The screen door to the porch wasn’t latched, and creaked a little as she opened it. The sound made her smile, so woven was it into the days of her childhood.

For all the difficulties, she hadn’t had a horrible childhood. Much of it had been downright enjoyable, rich with fantasy, especially the long hours spent exploring the woods. She had waded in creeks, caught crawdads with her bare hands, marveled at the delicate tracery of a leaf held up to the sun. She had never had a bicycle, but she’d had fresh air and blue skies, the anticipation of turning over a rotting log to see how many insects and worms it hid. She had eaten wild berries straight off the bush, found the occasional arrowhead, and painstakingly constructed her own bow and arrow from a green limb, old fishing line, and sharpened sticks. The joys of all those things had created a reserve of strength for her to draw on when times were bad.

The boards of the porch creaked beneath her feet as she crossed to the back door. In the old days, there had been several rocking chairs scattered about the porch, for the enjoyment of fine summer nights. All swimming and fishing paraphernalia was supposed to have been kept in the boathouse, but somehow bits of it had always been lying about on the porch: an inner tube that needed patching, a fishing rod, an assortment of lures, hooks, and floats. Now, however, the porch was empty, no longer a place for rowdy teenagers and rendezvousing adults.

She walked to the window where she had watched Gray and Lindsey making love; the room was empty now, the hardwood floors bare and coated with a light layer of dust. She stood for a moment, remembering that long-ago summer day, gilded with the magic of childhood.

Turning away, she tried the back door, and was surprised when the knob twisted easily in her hand. She had never been inside the summerhouse. The closest she had ever been was on the porch, that one time. She stepped into the kitchen, looking around with interest. Once there had been a refrigerator and stove, for empty spaces and the electrical connections marked where they had stood. She opened the cabinet doors and drawers, but they were all empty. Each sound echoed through the bare rooms.

Everything was clean enough, without the smell of mice, though it had obviously been a couple of weeks since the last cleaning. As she wandered into the other rooms, she saw that none of the light fixtures sported so much as a single light bulb. There was a small closet in each of the two bedrooms, and she looked in both of them. Nothing, not even a single clothes hanger. The summerhouse was completely empty.

Which one of the bedrooms had Renee and Guy used? It didn’t matter; there was nothing to be found here, no interesting nooks or crannies where a body could have been hidden. There was absolutely nothing suspicious about the house. Any evidence had long since been swept away, mopped up, or painted over. She wondered that there wasn’t any sign of vagrants, considering the house was unlocked, but since it was in the middle of Rouillard land, she supposed there weren’t many passersby.

There was still the boathouse to check, though she didn’t really expect to find anything. She had come only to satisfy herself that she had done everything possible to find out what had happened to Guy, and Mr. Pleasant. Leaving by the front door, she walked down to the dock. Both the dock and boathouse were set at an angle to the house, slightly to the left, positioned on the curve of a small slough. Since she had been here last, twelve years ago, vegetation had been allowed to grow over the banks. Young willow trees, growing in clumps along the lake’s edge, had matured to provide much more shade and cover than she remembered. Once there had been an almost unobstructed view of the lake, except for the boathouse, but now saplings and bushes had taken advantage of the subtle neglect to sink their roots into the rich soil.

The dock had been kept in good repair, though, and she walked out to the end. It was a calm day, with an almost imperceptible breeze making faint ripples in the water, which lapped against the dock pilings with wet, rhythmic slaps. It was one of those hot, lazy days that made her want to lie on her back on the dock, and stare up at the fat white clouds floating across a deep blue sky. Birds were calling in the trees, and somewhere a fish jumped, a quiet splash that didn’t disturb the peace. Over to the left, a red and white float bobbed happily on the little ripples – She stiffened, her eyes widening with dread as she slowly turned. A fishing float meant someone was fishing, someone who had been hidden from her view by the angle of the boathouse. Like a felon approaching the gallows, her gaze followed the fishing line as it arced gracefully up from the float, across the water, to where it was threaded through the eyes of a fishing rod. A fishing rod that was held by Gray Rouillard, standing shirtless on the bank on the other side of the boathouse, watching her with narrowed dark eyes.

For an instant they stared at each other across the small expanse of water. Faith’s thoughts darted about in panic, trying to think of a good reason for her presence, but her normally nimble mind was blank with shock. She had thought herself totally alone, and then to turn and see Gray, of all people – a shirtless Gray, at that. It wasn’t fair. She needed all her wits about her when dealing with him; she couldn’t afford to be distracted by that bare expanse of chest, and his long hair hanging loose to his shoulders.

He began reeling in the float with quick, deliberate movements. Choosing caution over valor, Faith bolted up the dock, her feet thudding on the planks. He threw down the fishing rod and sprinted around the boathouse. Panting, she reached for more speed; if she could just get to the edge of the woods ahead of him, he wouldn’t be able to catch her. She was smaller, slimmer, and would be able to dodge between trees he would have to go around. But as fast as she was, he still had the speed of a linebacker. She saw him out of the corner of her eye, too close, and gaining ground with each long stride. He beat her by a split second, his big body suddenly blocking her way off the dock. She tried to stop, but she was already on him, and her shoes weren’t made for traction. She slammed into his chest, the impact knocking her breath out with a whoq/J He grunted and staggered back a few steps, his arms coming up just in time to catch her against his chest and prevent her from falling on her face.

He caught his balance, and gave a muffled laugh as his arms tightened around her, holding her off the ground. "That’s a pretty good hit, for a lightweight. Nice speed, too. Where’re you going in such a hurry, Red? And what the hell are you doing here in the first place?"

She fought for her breath, sucking in desperate drafts to fill her aching lungs. God, he was as hard as a rock! She had probably bruised herself, barreling into him that way. After a short while she managed to say, "Reminiscing," and pushed against his bare shoulders in a hint that he should set her on her feet.

He snorted, and ignored the hint. "You’re trespassing. You’ll have to think of a better reason than that."

"Nosy," she offered breathlessly, still finding oxygen in somewhat short supply. The tightness of his arms was interfering with her efforts to take deep breaths. She squirmed against him, then immediately stopped. The friction of his bare skin against her was too distracting, too dangerous.

"That I can believe," he muttered. "What are you up to now?" He decided to let her down, loosening his grip so that she slid against his body. Faith’s cheeks flushed as she stepped away from him, and the color wasn’t just from the deep breaths she was taking. He was wearing only a pair of glove-soft jeans and scuffed boots, and she stared in helpless fascination at his naked torso. His shoulders were a good two feet wide, and heavy with muscle, a powerful layering that continued in plates across his chest. Curly black hair grew there, almost completely hiding his tiny, flat nipples, and arrowing down the middle of his abdomen to where it grew straight and downy around his shallow navel, which was exposed by sinfully low-riding jeans. A light sheen of sweat gleamed on his skin, making him glisten like a warm-toned statue with carved muscle and sinew.

"How did you get here?" she blurted, not answering his question. "I didn’t see a car."

"Horseback." He jerked his head toward the field on the other side of the slough. "He’s over there, eating his head off."

"Maximillian?" she asked, remembering the name of the prize stallion Guy had owned.

"One of his sons." Gray frowned down at her. "How do you know about Maximillian? And how did you get here?"

"I imagine most of the people in the parish know you have horses." As she spoke, she edged sideways.

He reached out and clamped one hand on her arm. "Hold it. Yeah, a lot of people know we have horses, but not many would know the name of our breeding stallion. You’ve been asking questions about us again, haven’t you?" His hand tightened. "Who have you been talking to now? Tell me, damn it!" He emphasized the demand with a slight shake.

"No one," she flared. "I remembered the name from before."

"How would you have known it back then? Renee didn’t balk at much, but I doubt she went home and regaled her family with details of her lover’s life."

Faith closed her lips tightly together. She had known the stallion’s name because she had been like a sponge, absorbing every little snippet of conversation she overhead, if it pertained to Gray. She wasn’t about to admit such a thing to him, though. "I remembered it from before," she finally repeated.

He didn’t believe her, and his face darkened.

"I haven’t been talking to anyone!" she cried, trying to tug away from him. "I remembered the horse’s name, that’s all." Why did every encounter with him seem to involve playing tug-of-war with one or both of her arms?

He surveyed her upturned face with narrowed eyes. "All righf, I’ll give you that one. Now tell me why you’re poking around my summerhouse, and how you got here. I know damn good and well you don’t have a horse."

That, at least, seemed safe enough to tell him. "I walked," she said. "Through the woods."

Pointedly he looked down at her feet. "You’re not dressed for hiking through the woods."

That was true enough. She hadn’t taken the time to change clothes, so she was still wearing the midcalf skirt, hosiery, and dress flats that she’d worn to New Orleans. She had grown up roaming barefoot through those woods, so she certainly hadn’t worried about wearing flats. Shrugging to show her indifference, she said, "I didn’t think about it." Quickly she added, "I’m sorry I trespassed. I’ll leave – "

"Whoa." He drew her to a standstill again. "You’ll leave when I say you can leave, and not before. I’m still waiting for an answer to my other question."

Thankfully her brain was working again. "I was just curious," she said. "They used to meet here, so… I wanted to see it." There was no need to elaborate on who "they" were.

To her dismay, his eyes grew cold. "Don’t give me that. You’ve been here before, because I’ve seen you."

Shocked, she stared at him. "When?"

"When you were a kid. You slipped around through the woods like a little ghost, but you forgot to cover your head." He tugged on a strand of hair, then smoothed it behind her ear. "It was like watching a flame bob through the trees."

He had known she was there. For an appalled, heart-stopping moment she wondered if he had guessed he was the attraction that had drawn her like a moth. Bitterly she remembered all her childish fantasies, that one day he would look up and see her, and ask her to join their fun. He’d seen her, all right, but no invitation had been issued. The surprise would have been if he had asked her to join them. The eight-year age diiference between twenty-six and thirty-four was almost nonexistent, but an enormous gulf between eleven and nineteen. Even if she hadn’t been too young, she was a Devlin, forever locked outside his circle.

"I’m going to ask you one more time," he said softly, when she remained silent. A chill ran down her spine at the steel in his tone. "What are you doing here?"

"I told you." She lifted her chin and met his gaze. "Nosing around."

"The next question is: Why? You’ve been doing a lot of nosing around since you moved back here. What are you up to, Faith? I warned you about stirring up old gossip and upsetting my family, and I meant every word of it."

She had already given him the only answer she could, and he hadn’t believed it. She could tell him the entire truth, or she could lie. In the end, she chose to do neither, but stood silently in his grasp.

His jaw flexed with anger, and his hand tightened on her arm. Faith winced, and his gaze dropped to the livid marks where his fingers bit into her soft skin. He cursed and relaxed his grip, and like a shot she tore away from him, sprinting for the safety of the woods. Within two steps she knew it was a mistake, but emotion rather than logic had the upper hand. He reacted like the predator he was, springing after her. She was barely halfway across the grass when the impact of his heavy body knocked her off her feet, a tiger bringing down a gazelle. He fell with her, holding her tight against his chest and twisting his body so that he took the brunt of the fall, with her on top of him. Her vision was filled with a confusing tumble of grass, trees, and sky as he rolled, deftly placing her beneath him.

Oh, God. The surge of primal recognition shocked her body into stillness, as if she didn’t dare move in that first shattering moment of delight. Being in his arms was one thing; lying sprawled beneath him was quite another. His considerable weight pressed her into the grass, releasing the sweet green fragrance of the crushed blades to mingle with the heady masculine scent of his sweaty skin. The fall had rucked her skirt up to midthigh, and one of his legs rode high between hers, so that her thighs clasped the muscular column. Instinctively she had clung to him as they were falling, and now her fingers were digging hard into his bare back, feeling the slick heat of his flesh. Their position was that of lovemaking, and her body responded with mindless intensity. Her senses blurred, overloaded in that first explosion of sexual signals.

"Are you all right?" he muttered, raising his head.

Faith swallowed, words sticking in her throat. Her insides were clenching, urging her to lift against him in blind, searing need. She resisted the urge, turning her head to the side so she couldn’t see if it was mirrored in his dark eyes.

"Faith?" His tone was more insistent, demanding an answer.

"Yes," she whispered.

"Look at me." He lifted himself to his elbows, removing most of his weight so that she breathed easier, but he was still far too close, his face mere inches from hers.

Temptation shimmered between them, made all the more potent by the times she had resisted it. It took so little to bring desire into full flame, a kiss, a touch, like a spark to dry straw. Each time it was more difficult to resist him, and only the strength of her aversion to casual sex, to being a moral replica of her mother, had enabled her to hold him at bay. But each contact with him eroded her willpower, wearing it down bit by bit so that each refusal took more effort.

His breath wafted over her lips, the subtle touch making them part as if she would inhale his essence. His head lowered, his mouth moving toward hers.

Desperately she wedged her arms between them, bracing her hands against his chest. The curls of hair tickled her palms, and she felt the hard nubs of his nipples against the heels of her hands. Hidden beneath blouse and bra, her own nipples had peaked.

He paused, hovering over her. A trickle of sweat ran down his temple and curved along his jaw. His nipples felt like tiny spikes, burning into her hands. She wanted to touch them, to put her mouth over them and feel them with her tongue, taste the saltiness of his skin, feel him stiffen and shudder from excitement.

Temptation gnawed at her, sharp and insistent. He inhaled, his chest expanding beneath her palms, and the sand castle of her resistance crumbled beneath the wave of pleasure. Letting out her breath on a soft sigh, she turned her hands, moving them so that her thumbs brushed over his nipples, once, twice, again. The delight of it made her feel dizzy.

His pupils dilated, the black centers flaring until they all but eclipsed the dark irises. His head fell forward between his arms, his long black hair curtaining their faces, and his breath hissed between his teeth. Having given in, she couldn’t make herself stop touching him. She explored the hard planes of his chest, returning time and again to the hard little peaks that had lured her so far into dangerous territory. She couldn’t touch him enough, couldn’t sate her hunger for the feel of him.

Then he drew her hands away from his body, and his eyes were fierce as he looked down at her. "Turnabout’s fair play," he said, and put his hand on her breast.

She arched beneath him, crying out at the hot lash of pleasure. Her breasts strained into his touch, so taut and sensitive that the hot weight of his hand was almost unbearable, and yet the cessation of contact would be torture. Even through her clothes, the rasp of his thumbs made her nipples burn and throb.

He lowered his head and kissed her, the pressure hard and ravaging, while he tugged her blouse loose from the waistband of her skirt. When it was free, he thrust his hand beneath the cloth, burrowing under her bra to close his fingers on the satiny mound of her bare breast. "You know what I want," he said roughly, moving more fully onto her and pushing his muscular legs between hers to make a place for himself.

She knew. She wanted it too, so fiercely that the need almost obliterated all other considerations. His callused fingers plucked at her nipple, rolling it between finger and thumb. She wanted his mouth there, sucking strongly. She wanted him to take her, here on the grass with the hot sun burning down on their bare bodies. She wanted him, forever.

"Tell me," he said. "Tell me why." The words were muffled against her throat as he trailed kisses down to her collarbone.

She blinked, staring up at the clouds in confusion. Then the meaning of the words washed over her like a dash of ice water. He wanted her – the thick ridge of proof pushed against her loins – but while she had been lost in the fog of desire, his brain had been clear, still working, still trying to get answers.

With a hiss of rage she erupted, shoving against him, kicking. He rolled off of her and sat up, looking like a half-naked savage with his hair tangled around his face and his dark eyes narrowed with dangerous lust.

"You bastard!" she spat, so angry she was quivering. She surged to her knees, hands clenched into fists as she fought the urge to hurl herself at him. Now wasn’t the time to challenge him physically, not with his entire big body taut with the need to mate. Control, his and hers, was stretched to a hairsbreadth; the least pressure would snap it. He waited, poised to meet her attack, and she saw the sexual anticipation hot in his eyes. For a long moment they faced each other, until gradually she forced herself to relax. There was nothing to be gained in this confrontation.

There was nothing to be said, either. Perhaps she hadn’t exactly started the fire, but she had certainly fanned the flames by caressing his nipples the way she had. If things had gone beyond what she wanted, she had only herself to blame.

At last she got to her feet, moving stiffly. Her skirt was torn, her panty hose shredded down one leg. She turned away, only to find herself caught again, this time by a handful of skirt. "I’ll take you back," he said. "Let me get the horse." "Thank you, but I’d rather walk," she replied, the words as stiff as her body.

"I didn’t ask what you wanted. I said I’ll take you back. You shouldn’t be wandering around in the woods by yourself." Not trusting her to remain there if he released her, he began dragging her along in his wake.

"I wandered around them by myself for over half my life," she growled.

"Maybe so, but you aren’t doing it now." He slanted a brief, hard glance her way. "It’s my land, and I make the rules."

He kept his fist twisted in her skirt, so she was obliged to keep step with him or have her clothes torn off. They walked past the boathouse and around the slough, a distance of about a hundred yards, to where Gray had hobbled the stallion so he could graze. At his whistle, the big, dark brown animal began moving toward him. To her dismay, there was no saddle anywhere in evidence.

"You rode him bareback?" she asked uneasily.

His dark eyes glinted. "I won’t let you fall."

She didn’t know a lot about horses, having never been on one, but she did know that stallions were fractious animals, difficult to control. She tried to back away as the horse ambled closer, but Gray’s grip on her skirt kept her at his side.

"Don’t be afraid. He’s the sweetest-tempered stallion I’ve ever seen, or I wouldn’t be riding him without a saddle." The horse came within reach and he caught the halter, crooning praise into the pricked ears.

"I’ve never been on a horse," she admitted, staring up at the big head as it lowered. Velvety lips whuffled at her arm, scooped-out nostrils flaring as he caught her scent. Hesitantly she put out her hand and stroked above his nose.

"Then your first ride will be on a Thoroughbred," Gray said, and lifted her onto the broad back. She clutched at the thick mane, alarmed by the height at which she found herself, while the living platform beneath her moved restlessly.

Gray gathered the reins, then caught two handfuls of mane and swung up behind her. The stallion skittered beneath the extra weight, making Faith catch her breath, but Gray’s touch, and the sound of his voice, soothed him immediately.

"Where did you leave your car?" he asked.

"On the last curve before you get to the shack," she replied, and those were the only words spoken during the ride. Gray guided the horse through the trees, avoiding low-hanging limbs, walking him around obstacles. Faith held on, acutely aware of Gray’s bare chest against her back, and of the way her buttocks were nestled against his crotch. His muscular thighs hugged her hips, and she felt them clenching and relaxing as he guided the horse. They reached the road far too quickly, but in another sense the journey had taken a small eternity.

He reined in beside her car and swung to the ground, then reached up to catch her under the arms and lift her down. Suddenly alarmed that she might have lost her keys in the scuffle, she patted her skirt pocket, and heard the reassuring rattle. She didn’t want to look at him, so she took out the keys and turned to unlock the car.

"Faith."

She hesitated, then turned the key in the lock and opened the door. He stepped forward, and the expression in his eyes made her grateful for the car door between them.

"Stay off my property," he said evenly. "If I catch you on Rouillard land again, I’m going to give you the fucking you’ve been asking for."