Killian's Passion. Barbara McCauley

at the sky; the rain blasted him with the force of liquid bullets.

       Dammit, dammit, dammit.

      He swiped at his face and stared back at the hog-tied woman. He’d planned on leaving her out here to stew for a while, but in this weather, she’d end up shish-kebab if a lightning bolt zapped her. When the heel of her boot caught his knee he grunted sharply, considered dumping her into the lake, then swore again as he bent and flung her over his shoulder. She gave a loud ommph, and he was momentarily blessed with her silence while she gasped for breath.

      Her wiggling body was slender but firm under her overalls, her legs long and powerful. Any other time, any other place, he would have appreciated those attributes in a woman. Her knee caught his chin and slammed his teeth together, reminding him this was definitely not any other time or place. He stilled her thrashing with a none-toogentle grip around her knees.

      “I believe a little gratitude is in order here, Blondie.” He quickly scooped up her backpack before she could knee him again. “If I left you out here, you’d either be a crispy critter or drowned, probably both.”

      She expressed her gratitude with a fresh and imaginative onslaught of opinions of him and what she intended to do to him at the first opportunity. He winced at one especially descriptive suggestion and decided he had better make certain she never had the chance.

      Lightning speared a tree fifty feet away, exploding a huge branch. The woman miraculously ceased struggling. The air crackled with electricity and the scent of burned pine.

      “Would you quit lollygagging and get us inside?” she yelled over the storm and kicked him, only this time he knew it was to hurry him up. Annoyed, but just as eager as she was to get out of the storm, he ran back around the lake, bouncing her the entire way. It wasn’t an easy ride, but it was a fast one.

      They were both soaking wet by the time he kicked the cabin door shut behind him. He dumped the woman unceremoniously on the hardwood floor in front of the unlit rock fireplace and stood over her. With her ponytail plastered to her head and her drenched overalls, the term drowned rat came to mind. She sat in a spreading pool of water, fury darkening her moss-green eyes.

      He glared at her. She glared right back.

      “Untie me,” she demanded.

      “‘Fraid not.” He dragged his hands through his dripping wet hair, then scraped the rain off his face. “Not until I get some answers.”

      “Mrs. Patterson is going to hear about this,” she sputtered at him through the water dripping down her face.

      “Mrs. Patterson?” He lifted one brow. “As in Beverly Patterson at the real estate office?”

      “That’s right. When she rented me the cabin next to yours she said I’d be safe up here, and that you were a fine boy I could trust. She obviously doesn’t know you like to tie women up for sport and kidnap them.”

      “For a woman who’s been tied up and kidnapped,” he said dryly, “you’ve got quite a mouth on you. Maybe you like that sort of thing.”

      She swung her heavy boot out at him, and he yelped when she made contact with his shin. He jumped away as she drew back for a second blow. Narrowing his eyes to fierce slits, he rubbed at his leg and growled at her. “I had no intention of hurting you. At least, I didn’t, but you certainly know how to change a man’s mind.”

      When she lifted her chin and pointed it indignantly at him, Ian couldn’t help but notice the delicate shape of her face; her cheekbones were high, her skin smooth, her lips wide and lush. Too bad that gorgeous mouth of hers didn’t know when to quit.

      “You don’t scare me.” She tossed back her head. “I have four brothers, every one of them mean as a rattlesnake and big as a Mack truck. They’ll hunt you down, and when they’re done with you, folks will be calling you Jigsaw instead of Flash.”

      In spite of himself, he almost laughed. He had to admire her spunk, especially considering which side of those ropes she was on. He wasn’t sure if she was lying about the brothers, but he was damn certain she was fibbing about why she was up here in the mountains.

      He picked up her backpack that he’d dropped on the floor beside her. “Well now, what have we here.” He smiled at her. “Let’s have a look, shall we?”

      “That’s my personal property, and if you know what’s good for you, you’ll stay out of it,” she threatened, but he caught the edge of distress in her voice.

      “Blondie, if I knew what was good for me, I’d have left you tied up in the cattails.”

      As if to punctuate his statement, thunder rattled the cabin’s windows and rain pounded the roof. They’d brought the scent of the storm in with them, and the air inside the small cabin was as thick as it was hot.

      Her jaw clamped tight as he snapped open the backpack. “Nice camera.” He pulled out an expensive 35mm Nikon and gave a soft whistle of appreciation. “You could take pictures of moon craters with this baby.”

      “I’m a photographer for a nature magazine. I need a powerful lens.”

      “Then I’m sure all this film—” he ignored her gasp when he rewound the film, then popped open the camera case “—has pictures of yellow-rumped sapsuckers and furry little critters, right? There’s a one-hour in town. How ‘bout I take them in for you and develop them?”

      “How ‘bout you eat dirt and die?” she said sweetly.

      Despite the foul mood she’d put him in, he grinned at her, then turned his attention back to her bag. He pulled out a small, brown leather wallet and flipped it open. “Let’s see if you have a name other than Blondie. Ah, here it is. Sinclair.” He held up her driver’s license. “Cara Sinclair.” He glanced up sharply. “Philadelphia?”

      She said nothing, just shot poison arrows at him while water dripped off her pert little nose. Jordan didn’t have any agents in Philadelphia that Ian knew of. And there would be no reason for his boss to pull an agent out of their own jurisdiction for a simple, surveillance. He stared at the woman, wondered for one brief, horrible second if he might have made a mistake.

      No. She was lying, all right. He might be wrong about her being an agent, but he wasn’t wrong about the fact that she was lying through her perfectly straight, beautifully white teeth.

      So why the hell had she been watching him, then?

      Her driver’s license appeared authentic; he could spot a fake from ten meters. It certainly described her accurately. Five foot eight, blond. Green eyes, 125 pounds, though it was hard to tell under the heavy overalls she had on. She was twenty-six and lived in an apartment on Brooks Avenue in Philadelphia. Nothing ominous, nothing suspicious.

      Ian ignored her continued protests while he flipped through the rest of her gear. Binoculars, bottled water, a package of dried apricots, three rolls of film. Nothing to link her to Jordan or any government agency, but nothing that confirmed her story about working for a nature magazine, either.

      “If you’re through,” she said with enough ice in her voice to slice ten degrees off the heat in the room, “you can untie these ropes now.”

      If the southern section of his anatomy weren’t still aching from contact with her knee, and his shin wasn’t throbbing from that kiss from her boot, Ian would have appreciated the woman’s nerve. Even tied up, soaking wet, she made demands with the air of an aristocrat.

      Tossing the backpack onto the worn leather couch facing the fireplace, he hunkered down beside the woman, draping one arm casually over his knee while he studied his prey. Chin lifted, she stared right back, her eyes shooting green lightning bolts that matched the ferocity of the storm outside.

      He leaned in close, brought his face within an inch of hers and caught the scent of raspberry drifting from her wet hair. “I’ll make you a deal, Miss Sinclair. You tell me the truth, and maybe, just maybe, I’ll let you go.”

      “I’ll