“Can I help you find something, ma’am?”

“Yeah, could you put out an APB on my youth?” A rhetorical question, but when the kid gasped and made a move as though to summon the men in white suits, I dredged up a reassuring smile. “Just kidding,” I lied, vaguely trying to pinpoint the moment in life when I’d gone from miss to ma’am. But with forty-two guests due to arrive in under five hours, I could hardly afford to wallow in self-pity, so I grabbed a box at random, tossed it in my basket, and slunk to the check-out line.

Just ahead, a woman roughly my age pointed at the cover of a glossy tabloid devoted to the latest batch of celebri-spawn and their stick-thin moms.

The smell assaulting her, the repugnant odor of dust and stagnancy, was the same scent that had haunted her steps these last four years. This unshakable companion was loneliness. An emotion that was her companion by choice, but that fact did not make bearing its company any easier.

Pushing aside the feeling, Grace tied her apron with the same grim determination that medieval knights donned their armor with before a battle.

What cruel twist of irony would take her life at the hands of the very people she’d tried to save? It wasn’t fair, certainly unjust, but as she dropped her head to her knees, she knew it was the truth.

The hard jungle ground beneath her rumbled with the pounding of the natives dance. Darkness enclosed the clearing where the tribe congregated and the startled cries of jungle creatures filtered through the trees from all directions.

She should be scared, terrified really, but somehow – she wasn’t.

Actually, the more she thought about it, the situation she found herself in seemed somewhat poetic – or maybe the crash had just rattled her brain more than she’d originally thought.

She could see it now – her eulogy would read; Myla Jordan, twenty-six year old InterCorp engineer was killed in a helicopter crash somewhere in the Peruvian jungle…

Fate had dealt an unfair hand this time around and now she’d be remembered as one of the bad guys, nothing more than another of the oil company’s ethically deficient employees.

A flash of red hair, spinning lanterns and Latin dance music raced through his mind before it went blank. Levering his eyes open, he winced as the first fingers of yellow sunlight bounced off the white sand to hit him right between the eyes. The infernal beat of bongos intensified just behind his right temple.

Shit, thirty-two was too old to wake up, hung-over, not knowing where he was or how he had gotten there.

Just what the hell had he done last night?

Well, what was fairly simple to answer if the sand digging into his butt and Red’s silken skin against his chest was any indication.

Drawing her dark cloak tighter around her, Shallah edged quietly through the throng gathering around him, never taking her gaze from his battered face. Even partly obscured by his matted, bloody hair, she could see his dark eyes were keenly intelligent, dangerously angry…and hauntingly familiar. A snarl curled lips that had they not been cracked and split, would have been full and sensuous.

As she watched him glare defiantly at the mob closing in on him, an echo of a dimly remembered dream tugged at the corners of Shallah’s mind, forgotten images and vague memories she could find no root for.

What treachery had brought him here?

Destiny Ryder hunched over the steering wheel and stared through the car window in awe even as apprehension skittered down her spine.

“This is beyond insane,” she muttered as she put the car in gear and coasted through the beckoning wrought iron gates.

The crunch of tires on gravel was the only sound as she pulled up in front of the ghostly yet captivating manor and leaden legs carried her up the cracked marble steps leading to the scarred wooden doors.

Heart pounding, she raised a hand to knock but before she made contact with the door, it was wrenched open with such haste, she jumped back in fright.

“I’ve been waiting for you, Miss Ryder.”

The Scottish accent was darkly sexy but Destiny wasn’t fooled.

After all, she had the smarts to know that voices never matched the face.

A strong, masculine hand grasped hers and pulled her unresistingly into the house where she finally got her first look at the owner of that voice.

With anticipation fizzing through his veins—as effervescent as the finest batch of imported champagne—he plowed through the sprinkler mist dampening the walkway and took the steep steps to her porch two at a time. The sheath strapped to his ankle pinched with each step. Trying to ignore the irritating sensation, he concentrated on the sprinkler mist cooling his face. The tactic had a secondary, even more welcome effect, it curbed the eagerness.

Upon reaching the cover of the porch he shook the moisture from his hair and paused to look around. She had a beautiful view up here on Fancher Heights, below—the lights of Wenatchee spread from east to west in a glittering cobweb of diamond dust.

Her neighbors were set well back, hidden behind lush borders of emerald arborvitaes. Secluded upon this bluff, estranged from her nearest neighbor by a leafy barricade of sound-deadening vegetation, the setting couldn’t have been more perfect.

“Sunshine?” The darkness swallowed her whisper.

“I’m here, but you need to be quiet.”

Relief started to flood through her, but slowed to a trickle, as the cold from the cement floor seeped into her bones.