“Go ahead.”

Heather set the old case on Samuel’s bed and flicked open the catches. When she raised the lid, her breath caught in her throat.

She looked closer, running her fingertips along the satiny varnish and the exquisite arching of maple and spruce. The grain was tight and well defined. But it was the scroll that caught her eye and made her catch her breath. She carefully lifted the instrument from the case and looked for the telltale stylized A.

Her heart rate tripled. “Samuel?” It was impossible to keep her voice from shaking.

“What’s wrong?”

“This is an Ambrogino.”

“No, it’s a fiddle.”

She shook her head. “This is no fiddle. Ambrogino was second only to Stradivarius as a master violin craftsman.”

She pivoted to face Samuel. “Do you know where your father got this?”

Samuel’s brow furrowed. “Are you insinuating he stole it?”

“Of course not. Quit being paranoid. Does your family have money or something?”

“Only what I make.”

“Because this is museum quality.”

“I think he got it from his dad.” There was a faraway look in Samuel’s eyes. “It was just what he played on the porch after supper.”

Heather looked back down at the magnificent instrument, her fingertips itching. She’d give anything to play it on somebody’s porch after supper. “May I?”

Samuel shrugged.

She drew the bow out of the case, found the rosin and tightened the strings. Then she plucked the strings, bringing them into tune. When the violin was ready, she took a very deep breath.

She started with Vivaldi, the rich tones flowing through her like melted honey. Then she moved to Chopin and finally to a Bach sonata.

When the last note died away, Samuel frowned. “It didn’t sound like that when Dad played it.”

She couldn’t help but smile. “He actually played Cajun music on an Ambrogino.”

“Well, that sure made you sound like an insufferable snob,” said Samuel.

Heather’s conscience twigged again. But Cajun music was repetitious, full of simple double-stops and open string drones. It seemed sacrilegious to own an Ambrogino and not play around with intricate shifting and vibrato.

He crossed to the closet, going to the same shelf where she’d found the violin, and pulled out an old, leather-bound book.

He dropped it on the bed in front of her, staring defiantly into her eyes. “Here’s what my dad played. I loved his music. Didn’t like yours much.”

Heather bit guiltily down on her lip. She’d insulted a man’s dead father.

Samuel went back to gluing, and she gingerly opened the leather-bound book. It was full of random sheets of paper, some twenty years old, some maybe a hundred years old. It looked to be original music.

She stared at the beats and run-ups on the first pages-fascinating, intriguing and not nearly as simple as she’d imagined.

She went over the top tune in her mind, mentally feeling out the notes, nodding her head to the rhythm and ghosting the fingering until she was sure she had it right. Then she brought the violin to her shoulder, drew her bow and worked her way through the tune.

When she finished, she looked up to see Samuel standing frozen across the room, his expression haunted.

She set down the violin and rushed toward him. “Samuel?”

He blinked away a sheen of tears.

“Oh, Samuel. I’m so sorry.” That had been horribly unthinking of her. He probably hadn’t heard that music since his father died.

She placed her hand on his arm. His muscles were taut as steel beneath her fingertips.

“Play it again,” he said, blinking her into focus. “Will you play it again?”

She felt her own tears well up. “Of course. Of course I will.”

“I know it’s not your kind of-”

She put her fingers to his lips. “It’s beautiful music. It’s wonderful music. I was a fool to think it was undeserving of an Ambrogino.”

He nodded.

“You okay?”

He nodded again, kissing her fingertips one at a time.

She returned to the bed, spread the music in front of her, and went through a selection of the songs. Some were simple and catchy, some were breakneck and rollicking.

And Samuel danced.

It was incredible to see such a large man shuffle his feet to the beat. He turfed the sling, and she didn’t blame him.

She joined with him when she could, moving her body to the simpler tunes that didn’t require her concentration on the written music.

And when the last note from her final song died away, he pulled her into his arms and swung her around.

He kissed her on the mouth, and she quickly replaced the violin in its case so that she could kiss him back properly. She stretched up, tangling her hands in his curly hair, opening her mouth to welcome his tongue.

“You’re beautiful,” he murmured, running his big hands down her body.

She pulled her T-shirt over her head and stood before him in her lacy bra. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

He reached out to trace his index finger up her stomach, dipping under her bra, deftly clicking the front catch so that it dropped away.

“You got that right,” he breathed.

She slipped her hands under his T-shirt, reveling in his hot skin, his tense muscles, the gasp of his breath.

His hand closed over her breast, and he kissed the crook of her neck, his tongue flicking out to leave a hot trail along her collarbone to her shoulder. It was nice. A little sweeter and safer than she’d expected, but very nice all the same.

She urged him to remove his own shirt, and they were skin to skin. He kissed her mouth, smoothed her hair, trailed his fingers along her spine, stopping at the waistband of her shorts.

She kissed him more deeply, waiting for his hands to move down, waiting for that swift, intense sensation, when he took her by surprise. He kissed her back, his mouth roaming her face, her cheek, her temple, the tip of her nose. But his hands didn’t move.

Finally, he drew gentle circles at the base of her spine, until she squirmed in frustration.

He cupped her face, kissing her eyelids.

She arched her spine, hinting, waiting, hoping.

He kissed her neck, her collarbone, the mound of her breast. His hand was shaking where it bracketed her rib cage. Okay, now they were getting somewhere.

But then he stopped, and went back to her mouth.

She drew back. “Samuel.”

“What?” he asked from between clenched teeth.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you think I’m doing?”

“You’re treating me like I’m fragile.” She peered at him. “You’re treating me like I’m…” She pulled out of his arms. “Like I’m your Ambrogino.” She launched forward and smacked him on the chest. “I can get that in Boston, bucko.”

He grabbed her wrist, and she hit him with the other hand.

He grabbed that, too, pulling her arms apart, forcing her up against him, breathing hard as he stared down into her face.

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” she said.

“You want it rough?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know. How am I supposed to know? But you’ve been pushing me, teasing me, promising me something different for days now.”

A slow smile grew on his face. “You’re ready to do what you want instead of what’s proper?”

“Yes.” She was definitely ready for that. She could go back to being proper next week in Boston. For today, she wanted to belt out fiddle tunes and have wild, unbridled sex with Samuel.

He nipped at her neck, moving down toward her breasts, leaving small love bites as he made his way toward her nipple. “You ever been on top?”

Her eyes fluttered shut, and she shivered. “No.”

“You ever been tied up?”

Her eyes flew open at that one.

He chuckled. “Okay. Baby steps.”

“I don’t. I mean. I-”

He tugged her shorts down in one decisive motion. “I’m not tying you up.”

“Good.” She licked her lips. It might not be that bad. Maybe…

“You scare the hell out of me, you know that?”

“Why?”

He answered her with rough kisses. “Because you are the most gorgeous, exotic, erotic, repressed… You make me want to teach you everything.”

“So teach me.”

“We don’t have that kind of time.” He retrieved a condom from his pocket then shucked off his pants and sheathed himself.

He slid his hands behind her thighs and easily lifted her from the ground. Then he wrapped her legs around him and pulled her into the cradle of his body, immediately sliding inside her, making her groan with pleasure.

He took the few steps to put her back against the cool wall. Then he pinioned her hands against it, forcing pulses of sensation through her body.

“Fast or slow,” he rasped.

“I can get slow back in Boston.”

He immediately jerked into motion. “That’s my girl.”

His kisses were soft. The wall was hard. And his body possessed an inexhaustible supply of strength and stamina. She lost track of time and space as fireworks went off inside her head over and over again.

Finally, when she was limp and tingling and totally satisfied, he slowed, then stilled against her. She blinked her eyes open, and the world shimmered back into focus-the plump, white pillows, the messy floor, and his father’s violin surrounded by sheet after sheet of priceless music.


JOAN SMACKED a file folder down on the table in the breakfast nook of La Petite Maison. “I just don’t get it. What are they scared of?”

Anthony empathized with her frustration. He’d read the entire transcript from the inquest, and he couldn’t make any kind of an incriminating connection with Bayou Betrayal.

Heather sat up, cross-legged on the window seat overlooking the back lawn and the oak grove. “What do we know for sure?”

“That my parents were murdered,” said Samuel.

“That’s beginning to look more and more likely,” Anthony agreed. He was surprised the state police hadn’t followed up on the blunt force trauma suffered by Samuel’s mother.

“But why come back now?” asked Joan, picking up Luc’s copy of her book. “What is in here that’s got him spooked?”

Anthony stood up and paced across the room. “And why your parents?” he asked. “Was it random? Was it theft? Did they see something? Were they-” He snapped his fingers, freezing in place. “Is there any chance your parents witnessed a crime?”

“In Indigo?” asked Joan.

“Why not in Indigo?” He turned to Samuel. “Can you remember anything about that week? Did they seem spooked? Upset? Did they try to contact anybody?”

Samuel shook his head. “Everything was normal. It was a Monday. They’d been down to the shack over the weekend. I stayed home because of-”

“The shack?”

“Dad liked crayfish. He had a little shack about thirty miles up the bayou.”

“What else is up there?”

“Nothing, as far as I can remember. I haven’t been back since.”

“Moonshine? Drugs? Gunrunners?”

Samuel frowned. “Moonshine’s hardly worth getting shot over.”

“Survivalists?” asked Heather.

“Or lunatics,” said Samuel. “There’s a few people in the backwoods that I wouldn’t want to meet on a dark night.”

Joan shook her head. “A crazy hillbilly isn’t going to follow them all the way back to town and shoot them.”

“Drugs, then,” said Heather.

It was a distinct possibility.

“But why did my book spook them?” asked Joan. “There were no drugs in my book.”

“But there is money,” said Anthony. “Or maybe it was as simple as you guessing it was a murder and not a suicide.”

“So what are they looking for in Samuel’s house?”

“Son of a bitch,” Samuel barked.

All three heads turned his way.

“The first time the guy broke in, he went through my photo albums.”

Anthony turned cold. “Your parents took pictures that day?”

Samuel shook his head. “No, they were just family photos.”

Heather uncurled her legs and swung them over the edge of the bench. “But the bad guys might think you have pictures.”

Anthony met Samuel’s gaze. “Thirty miles up the bayou, you say?”

“Luc!” called Samuel, rolling to his feet. “We’re gonna need a boat.”


ANTHONY FOLLOWED Samuel’s hand signals from the bow, maneuvering the airboat toward an aging dock on the lush shore as the atmosphere and insects thickened around them. They were ten miles down Bayou Teche, another twenty miles into an increasingly complex web of narrow, winding channels that formed tributaries draining into the bayou. The oak canopy had closed over them. Gnarled roots from half-submerged cypress trees twisted between strands of hanging moss that curtained the forest and undulated in a snaking breeze.

If something happened to Samuel, they could be lost out here for months.