Serpent in Paradise

by Jayne Ann Krentz

  “It’s about time you came back, Amy. I knew you’d be returning one of these days. When Jase left to get you, I knew it was only a matter of times” Maggie released Amy from a huge hug and reached for the baby in Jase’s arms. “Let me see what it was that kept you so long in San Francisco!”

  With a grin he made absolutely no attempt to conceal, Jase handed over his son for inspection.

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Ray chuckled, examining Damon as Maggie held him. “Will you just look at those eyes!”

  “I’ve only seen one other human being in the whole world with eyes that shade of turquoise blue,” Maggie mused. She looked up at the one other person and smiled. “You have a beautiful son, Jase. He will grow up strong and healthy here on Saint Clair.”

  Much later that evening, Amy drifted out of the master bedroom of her new home and stood on the veranda, inhaling the scented tropical breeze. Saint Clair really was a lovely slice of Paradise, she decided. A woman could do a lot worse for herself than taking on the job of making a home in Paradise.

  She turned her head to glance back over her shoulder as Jase emerged behind her, fresh from a shower. He was wearing only a towel loosely hitched around his lean waist. “I can’t decide whether you’re sexier pregnant or unpregnant. Either way, you drive me out of my mind,” he drawled, coming up behind her and fitting his hands to her hips.

  “It’s the nightgown,” Amy explained demurely, smoothing the folds of the fabulously expensive peach- colored silk. “The French designers can do wonders for a woman’s image. I brought along a year’s supply of lingerie.”

  “At the end of the year we’ll have to fly back to San Francisco and get you another year’s supply,” Jase decided. “But to tell you the truth, I don’t think the nightgown has anything to do with it.

  “You don’t think so?”

  “Nope. I’ll show you. Watch what happens when I remove the gown.” With a sweeping movement of his palms he slipped the gown down to her hips and then over the full curves to let it fall to her feet.

  “Jase!” she gasped, half laughing, half appalled. She felt absurdly vulnerable standing on the veranda with nothing on, even though she knew that no one could see her. Automatically her hands came up to cover herself.

  “This is an experiment, remember? We’re trying to see whether it’s you or the gown I’m reacting to tonight.”

  “And...?” she taunted.

  “And there’s no question but that it’s you.” He pulled her firmly back against his thighs, cradling her rounded bottom into the flaring heat of his body. “Any doubts?”

  “I think,” Amy whispered with wry laughter, “that this is how I got into trouble the last time I came to Saint Clair.”

  His hands slipped around to her stomach and then stole lower as he bent his head to nuzzle the line of her throat. “Don’t worry,” he teased, “Dr. Carson assures me that you’re no more likely to get pregnant this time than you were the last time “

  “Yes, I know, but I can be so amazingly clumsy!” Amy turned in his embrace, wrapping her arms around his neck. She looked up into his gleaming eyes and smiled dreamily. “Oh, Jase, I love you so.”

  With a husky exclamation of passion he moved his rough leg between her soft thighs, forcing her gently against him. She felt the heavy, waiting masculinity and sighed passionately. “You are my life, Amy,” Jase said. “Together we’ll be able to share Damon for the years he’s growing up, but we’ll have each other for the rest of our lives. My God, I love you, Mrs. Lassiter. Come to bed and let me show you how much.”

  Amy put her hand trustingly into that of her husband’s and allowed herself to be led toward the shadowy bed that awaited them. Loving Jase involved no risk at all. His love and passion carried a lifetime guarantee.

  * * *

  Keep reading for a special excerpt from Raven’s Prey, another novel by Jayne Ann Krentz.

  Excerpt from Raven’s Prey

  Chapter One

  Perhaps he was merely an adventuresome tourist who had drifted into the obscure little Mexican town in search of some action. Perhaps he had wandered into the cantina for the same reason she had: to get a bite to eat and have a bottle of the local beer. Perhaps he was a perfectly innocuous male who, when he realized there was another North American in the cantina, would come over to her table to chat.

  Then again, perhaps he was her executioner.

  My God, Honor Knight thought bitterly, I’m really getting paranoid. She forced down another swallow of the robust beer she had been nursing for the last hour and deliberately looked away from the line of men who were standing and leaning with varying degrees of casualness against the bar. That was all she needed now, she chastised herself. She mustn’t lose her grip on reality. She must not succumb to genuine paranoia or life would become intolerable. She really would go out of her mind with fear.

  But the image of the stranger as he hooked a booted foot over the bottom rung of the bar would not be banished simply because she chose to look away. It was natural that he would stand out in this crowd, Honor assured herself. He was the only other gringo in the room besides herself. Standing at the bar, even lounging against it on one elbow as he was, he topped the Mexican men around him by several inches in most cases.

  And while the other men were dressed in the dusty, loose-fitting trousers and shirts of poor, hard-working farmers, the stranger was dark and hard and lean in a pair of black jeans and a black cotton shirt.

  His clothes weren’t the only things that were dark about him and that made him seem a part of the shadowy night outside. In the brief glance she had allowed herself, Honor had been aware of the deep black shade of his hair. There were subtle highlights of iron-gray in the heavy pelt which indicated the stranger at the bar would soon be staring his fortieth birthday in the face.

  Even without the iron in his hair Honor would have been able to guess his age from the unforgiving hardness of his features. Uneasily she allowed her eyes to slide once again over his profile.

  He had ordered tequila, not beer, she realized, watching from her sheltered table as he sipped the clear liquid in the small glass he held. How much longer before his roving gaze discovered her against the back wall? She hadn’t yet confronted that gaze directly and, based on what she’d seen of the rest of him, Honor didn’t particularly want to do so. There was a ruthless predatory quality about this man, which disturbed her on several levels. It was there in the hawkish nose, the grimly set mouth and the fiercely etched lines of his face. Somehow he seemed aloof and coldly removed from the scene around him, as if he didn’t particularly need human companionship.

  Determinedly Honor picked up her fork and took another bite of the corn tamale she had been eating when the newcomer had walked through the door a few minutes earlier. There was nothing to fear, she told herself firmly. After all, she thought on a note of half-hysterical humor, she’d seen plenty of pictures of professional hit men and none of them had ever been wearing jeans and boots! They always seemed to be attired in suits that bulged in the wrong places, and they tended to speak in East Coast accents. Not that she’d heard the stranger when he’d ordered his tequila, but somehow Honor didn’t think he would have an eastern accent. More likely a southwestern drawl.

  No, she wasn’t going to give in to the lure of paranoia. She had to keep a realistic perspective on her present situation or she would become a gibbering idiot! Honor swallowed another sip of the warm beer and resolved to keep her head. It was the only way to survive.

  The stranger was probably from Texas or Arizona. Perhaps he had business here in this Mexican village or perhaps he’d merely come south looking for some amusement. One way or another he wasn’t a threat to her. He couldn’t be!

  And then she glanced up again and found his night-dark gaze on her.

  For an instant everything in the smoky too-warm cantina seemed to freeze, including Ho
nor’s insides. She had known instinctively that she didn’t want to meet his eyes directly but instinct hadn’t prepared her for the devastating experience when it finally did occur.

  She had been half expecting a predatory sensuality in those eyes, Honor realized as her throat went dry. Casual, masculine lust would have fit with the man and the scene in which he found himself. After all, men who wandered into smoke-filled taverns the world over were usually looking for liquor and a willing woman. But there was no sign of even the most superficial desire in his gaze.

  If there was no sensuality in his eyes, neither was there any other emotion she could name. No curiosity, no dislike, no anger, no expectation, no friendliness, no resentment, no humor, nothing. Just the chilling, totally self-contained, nonreflective gleam of a beast of prey. Honor had never seen such a total lack of emotion in another human being in her entire life. In a very real sense it was far more frightening than if the man had simply pulled a gun and aimed it at her.

  Then he picked up his glass of tequila and started toward her. In that moment she realized he knew exactly who she was. The panic threatened to choke her. It welled up from the pit of her stomach and literally immobilized her limbs. Desperately she fought to keep it under control. It was one feeling that definitely would not aid her now. Unfortunately she couldn’t think of anything that would help her. She had no choice but to play out her role and pray that the presence of so many local townspeople there in the cantina would lend some protection. Did professional killers have the cold, emotionless eyes of a hawk? It seemed far too likely that they did.

  “Honor Knight.” Her name was a statement, an identification, not a question, and there was a slight southwestern drawl in the low, gravelly intonation of his voice. The dark stranger sat down across from her without bothering with the formality of asking permission. He moved with an easy, smoothly coordinated energy which suggested controlled strength and physical prowess.

  When Honor made no response, continuing to sit utterly still staring at him, the man sipped again at his tequila and then asked calmly, “Are you going to make this easy on yourself or are we going to do things the hard way?”

  He wasn’t armed, Honor told herself frantically. At least not with a gun. It would have bulged somewhere against the fabric of the sleek-fitting jeans and shirt, wouldn’t it? Perhaps he used a knife? Or perhaps her imagination had truly run amok. Maybe he wasn’t there to kill her. Above all else she must keep her head and not panic.

  Knowing that her life depended on staying calm, Honor made herself exchange a level glance with the man across the table. She stifled a shiver as the impenetrable darkness of his gaze met hers. “I’m sorry,” she began stiffly, “but you must have mistaken me for someone else. I don’t know you and I don’t know who it is you think I am but I would appreciate it if you would leave me alone.” She tried to make her voice as cold as his eyes.

  He watched her silently for a moment and she could almost feel him assessing and cataloging the sum of her features. Good God, how detailed a description had he been given? Could she bluff her way through this? After all, there was nothing all that remarkable about her looks, was there?

  She was twenty-nine, but age could be deceptive in a woman hovering between her twenties and her thirties, especially to a man. Her hair was a dark amber brown, but he would probably have been told she was simply a brunette. There were a lot of brunettes in the world, especially in Mexico. And hazel eyes were surely almost as common? Dressed as she was in jeans and a white shirt, her slender figure with its small breasts and gently flaring hips must have appeared similar to the body shapes of countless other women in the world.

  “Honor Knight,” the man said again and then reached into his shirt pocket and drew out a color photograph. Deliberately he placed it on the table between them, and then he waited. Honor went even colder.

  In helpless fascination she stared down at the picture of herself. There, caught by the camera’s eye, were all the elements that were so hard to describe verbally, the elements that went together to make each human being distinctive and unique. In her case that meant not just hazel eyes, but wide, intelligent eyes of a complex shade somewhere between green and gold. It meant not just brunette hair but a heavy, amber mane which, although she had recently cut it to shoulder length, still had a characteristic wave even when worn in a clip at the nape of her neck as it was that evening. It meant a mouth that was soft and, in the photo, smiling with feminine warmth. It meant a faintly tip-tilted nose, a proud lift to the chin. It meant no real beauty in the accepted sense but rather an impression of sensitivity, intelligence and a hint of vulnerability.

  It meant, Honor realized, disaster. The man could be in no doubt whatsoever that he had found the right woman. Slowly she lifted her eyes from the damning photograph.

  “There is also a scar,” the stranger went on coolly, “on the left wrist.” He reached across the table and caught her hand before she could hide it in her lap. “A mark left over from a botched suicide attempt, I’m told.”

  She flinched as he captured her hand and exposed the delicate skin on the inside of her wrist. The angry red scar was clearly visible, even in the smoky light.

  “A rather badly handled effort,” the man observed, his touch remote and dispassionate. “You either didn’t want to do a good job or else you must have used a pretty dull knife.” He released her hand and Honor shoved her fingers into her lap to hide the trembling in them. “My guess is you probably didn’t set out to really take your own life. You probably just used the attempt as a means of getting the kind of attention you seem to need.”

  “Who are you?” Honor whispered.

  “I’m the man who’s been sent to bring you home,” he said quietly, lifting his tequila glass again. The dark, unfathomable eyes went over her stark expression with a total lack of sympathy or any other emotion. “My name is Judd Raven.”

  Raven. The name fit him, Honor thought bitterly. A bird of prey. A bird of menace. That explained the eyes, the lack of emotion. The connotations of danger and ill fate that surrounded the word “raven” were not lost on her. In her lap her nails began to eat into the palm of her hand, but her chin stayed proudly lifted.

  “Home?” she questioned grimly. There was some cause for hope, she told herself. If he had been sent to fetch her rather than to kill her she still had some chance.

  “Your father and brother are damned worried about you,” Raven said musingly. “But, then, I suppose you know that, don’t you? That’s why you’re here in the first place.”

  Her father and brother? “How did they know where I was?”

  “They don’t. Not precisely. They only knew the general region of Mexico into which you disappeared. They don’t speak Spanish themselves so they realized they didn’t have much chance of tracing you. That’s why they hired me. I’ve been tracking you for almost a week. You’re a foreigner in this country and people remembered the nice gringa with the big hazel eyes and the lousy Spanish. It took some legwork but here I am.”

  “My father and brother,” Honor said carefully, “sent you to bring me home?”

  He raised his glass in mocking acknowledgment of her apparent slow-wittedness. “Are you disappointed? Would you rather one of them had come with me to look for you? Afraid you won’t get as much comfort and attention from me as you would from them?”

  “No!”

  “What’s the matter, Honor? You’ve achieved almost everything you wanted, haven’t you? A lot of time and worry has been spent on you and that’s the main thing you were after, wasn’t it? This little adventure worked even better than the suicide attempt.”

  She ignored that, leaning forward to stare at him with wide, searching eye. “Just tell me the truth. Have you really been sent to bring me home or have you come to kill me?”

  He considered the question. “What do you think?”

  She blinked and then
sat back in her chair, taking in a deep steadying breath. “I think that if you’d come to kill me I’d probably be dead by now.” Which was the truth, she realized. This man wouldn’t sit around chatting with his target. He’d get the job over with the efficient cruelty of a hunting bird. Raven watched the play of emotion across her tightly drawn features. There was a long silence and then he said quietly, “They told me you had a hell of an imagination. That you were borderline paranoid, according to your doctor.”

  Honor’s vulnerable mouth twisted. “I can just imagine what they told you.” She stared down at her nearly empty bottle of beer. She had to think, had to find some logical way of dealing with this situation. But it had been almost impossible lately to think logically at all. There had been too much fear and her imagination had been so damn active.

  That wonderful, vividly romantic imagination that had always set her apart from her practical, restrained, disapproving family had proven to have a dark side, one which was capable of painting her dreams with nightmarish colors and her daytime thoughts with fear.

  Well, there was no point dwelling on that now. At the moment she had to force herself to think very pragmatically indeed. Judd Raven, apparently, was only a hired hand. Or was he merely allowing her to think that so she wouldn’t complicate matters by running screaming through the village? “Do you always believe everything you’re told, Mr. Raven?”

  “No. Sometimes I don’t believe anything I’m told.”

  “That sounds as if you might be suffering from a bit of paranoia yourself!” she challenged wryly.

  “I’ve always felt that a certain degree of paranoia was a useful survival trait,” he allowed calmly. “Keeps a man alert.”

  “Or a woman.”

  “But in this case,” he continued easily, “it doesn’t much matter what I believe. I’m just being paid to do a job. I learned a long time ago that it’s bad policy to ask too many unnecessary questions.”