Moonlight and Shadows (20 page)

“I
can’t
cook.”

He gazed at her for a long moment, then
calmly said, “I knew that.”

“Impossible.”

“No.” He shook his head. “I knew. I
swear.”

“How?”

“Pots and pans. You don’t seem to need them
no matter what you serve for dinner. Nobody’s freezer is that well
stocked. I knew you had to have an outside source.”

“Outside source?”

“Your mother.”

She started to blush, but ended up laughing
instead. “You’re bad, Jack Hudson, leading me on with all those
compliments. And you’re the best.” Her voice softened, and her hand
found his. “You’re the absolute best thing to ever happen to me. I
never thought I’d love anybody the way I love you. I look at you
and my heart flips right over. You kiss me and I come alive inside.
I want to build dreams with you, yours and mine, and ours. I want
us to last forever.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Lila,” he assured
her with all the truth in his heart. “I’ll still be with you when
the moon catches silver in your hair.”

“When I’m old and wrinkly?”

“And forgetful.”

“And slow to get around?”

“And crabby.”

“I’m not going to be crabby,” she said,
still intensely serious.

“Good.” He kissed the frown off her brow.
“You promise not to get crabby, and I’ll promise not to get
stubborn. Deal?”

“Deal,” she said, slipping her hand around
in his for a shake.

“Good.” He grinned and headed for the
outside door. “Now let’s go home and make love before we both get
too old and forgetful, and crabby and stubborn, to remember how to
do it right.”

“I’m sure we’ve got a few good years still
in us,” she said, her heels clicking rapidly with her effort to
keep up with him.

“Yeah, but at this stage of the game, who
wants to take any chances?”

He had a point, she thought. A darn good
point. So she let him slip her mink over her shoulders, and she let
him hold her hand on the drive home, and she loved him the whole
night long . . . and as she slept within the circle of his arms,
with his warm breath sighing across her skin, she dreamed of hazel
eyes and gentle strength, of a man and a woman under a harvest
moon, and of forever.

* * * * * * * * *

Read on for excerpts for
Dragon’s Eden
and
A Piece of Heaven
.

Sugar Caine stood next to the wicker chair
closest to the bed, her gaze traveling the length of the man
sprawled facedown across the tumbled disarray he’d made of her
sheets. He was naked and beautiful . . . so beautiful, his body
intrinsically sensual, a tawny, seductive landscape of lean
, muscled
curves and hard planes. Just looking at him started a wave of
longing in her heart. She’d been alone for so long.

Jackson was his name.
Jack Sun
. His
dark hair fell forward, hiding his face and draping his shoulder
before disappearing underneath him. Sunlight filtering through the
jalousies that covered the leeward windows made stripes of light
and darkness across his broad back, but most of his body was veiled
by the deepening shadows of a Caribbean afternoon. The soles of his
feet were callused, as were the palms of his hands. One shoulder
was bandaged with white gauze, and the rest of him was simply
perfect.

A soft groan escaped him, a breath of pain
as he shifted. Concern drew Sugar’s brows together. She leaned
forward ever so slightly, ready to help him if he needed help, even
while she prayed he wouldn’t. She didn’t want to touch him. She
didn’t dare. She couldn’t afford to get that close to so much
trouble, and he was trouble of the worst kind, a magnet for danger,
a man marked for murder by Fang Baolian.

With the grace and languor of a slowly
awakening animal, he rolled onto his back, sending a silky cascade
of ebony hair sliding across his torso. The dark strands reached
his waist, curving across his sleekly muscled chest and abdomen
like a river of black satin. She’d wondered how long his hair was.
When Shulan’s men had carried him up from the beach at dawn, it had
been impossible to tell. The sky had still been too dark, his hair
tangled in his ragged clothes. Her concern then had been more for
his vital signs than his physical attributes.

She wished she could still say the same. Her
gaze lifted to his face, and she felt warmth bloom in her cheeks.
He was easily as beautiful as his half sister, Sun Shulan, and
equally exotic, a rare blend of East and West. Thick black lashes
fringed his closed eyes. His eyebrows were dark with a slight
curve, more like a red-tailed hawk’s wings than a shorebird’s. She
wasn’t surprised. Even wounded and sound asleep, he had the aura of
a predator.

The blush she wouldn’t have admitted to for
the world deepened as her gaze strayed to the juncture of his
thighs. He was beautiful, his hair there silky and dark, his
manhood glorious. Chastising herself, she reached down and pulled
the top sheet up to his waist, for all the good it did her. A
moment later he’d worked the sheet back off.

“That boy, he likes being naked, Sugar.”

Sugar took a moment to clear her throat
before she agreed with her friend. “I know, Carolina,” she said,
looking up at the tall black woman standing in the open
doorway.

“You want I should tell your papa that boy
is here?” Carolina asked, tying a bow in the yellow sash belting
her tangerine-colored dress.

“No. Not yet.” Sugar knew Dr. Thomas Caine
would be apoplectic if he knew his daughter was harboring a bounty
hunter who had crossed Fang Baolian. It would remind him too much
of her youthful mistakes and a past best forgotten—though it could
never truly be forgotten.

“I don’ know why they brought that boy
here,” Carolina said. She tilted her head and clipped a large
tangerine-and-yellow earring on one ear. “It don’ make no sense, no
how. They should’ve taken him to Kingstown and let your papa have
him.”

Sugar had told her old friend as much, but
Shulan had assured her that the man she called half brother wasn’t
in danger of dying. He’d been treated by the finest doctors in Hong
Kong and spent weeks recuperating there before Shulan had
transported him halfway around the world to the Caribbean. He did
need care and watching over, but nothing beyond Sugar’s skills.

Mostly he needed protection, Shulan had
said, protection and confinement—for his own good.

Sugar had understood what was being asked of
her: repayment of a debt left too long unpaid. Shulan had given
Sugar a sanctuary when she’d most needed it. In return for that
salvation, the pirate princess wanted her to hold this man at
Cocorico Bay, Sugar’s refuge at the end of the world, where her
home hugged sheer rock walls and the sea offered the only
escape.

She wasn’t so sure Shulan had been right
about her half brother’s health. The only sign of life he’d given
all day, besides his breathing and occasional movement, had
happened between the time when Shulan and her cohorts had left him
fully clothed on the bed and a half hour later, when Carolina had
gone in to check on him and let out a little scream of shocked
sensibilities.

What would possess an injured man to use his
last ounce of strength to take his clothes off was beyond Sugar’s
understanding. Unless, even injured and drugged, the pile of coolie
clothes they’d found at the foot of the bed had offended him as
much as they had offended Carolina. Carolina had immediately
carried them over to the cabana and dumped them in the ragbag,
grumbling about having no bondslaves on Cocorico.

“If he hasn’t wakened by morning, I’ll make
sure he gets to St. Vincent,” Sugar told Carolina. She wondered if
Shulan knew what lengths she might have to go for the stranger’s
life, what risks might be involved. She hadn’t been back to
Kingstown since she’d left with the fear of God in her heart.

“Your papa isn’t gonna like this. He isn’t
gonna like any of this,” Carolina warned, clipping on her other
earring.

“I know. That’s why we’re not telling him,
or Mamma either.”

“What about that man?” Carolina asked,
gesturing toward the courtyard.

Sugar shook her head in resignation. She
didn’t know anything about the ancient, fragile-looking man Shulan
had left at Cocorico, except he was Chinese and he was there to
protect Jackson.

As she returned her attention to the man
stretched out on the bed, a few quaint sayings went through her
mind. Ones about chickens coming home to roost and reaping what
you’ve sown. She’d learned a long time ago that some mistakes
lasted a lifetime. The stranger on her bed was proof of that.

“I don’ like the look of the old Chinee,”
Carolina went on. “You want I should stay?”

“No.” Sugar glanced at her friend. “You go
on back to Kingstown. I’ll be fine. If it makes you feel better,
have Henry come back in the morning.”

“Henry.” Carolina gave a ladylike snort.
“That man good for nothin’ at all.”

Despite her friendship with the old sailor,
Sugar couldn’t disagree. Henry, sweet as he was, was truly good for
nothing. Too many years of rum and sunshine had taken all the
gumption out of him.

“I jus don’ like leaving you with a foreign
devil and a naked boy. That’s all.”

If the man on the bed had been a boy, Sugar
would have had far fewer doubts herself. As for the foreign devil
standing guard in the courtyard . . . She glanced out the open
doorway at the old man staring at the sea. If a good wind didn’t
blow him over, she’d count herself lucky. If a good wind did blow
him over, then she’d have some explaining to do.

Letting out an exasperated sigh, Carolina
strode forward and snapped the sheet up over the sleeping man’s
body. Then she bent down and tucked the sheet under the mattress.
“If this don’ hold him, nothin’ will,” she grumbled, walking around
the end of the bed to do the same to the other side. “I swear, I’ve
only covered this boy five times today. I ain’t never seen—”

She stopped cold, the sudden halt in her
speech bringing Sugar’s head up. Carolina had gone pale beneath the
café au lait color of her skin. She dropped the sheet and took a
step back from the bed, crossing herself.

“Sweet God A’ mighty,” she murmured.
“Obeahman.”

Obeahman
? Sugar turned to stare at
the man on the bed. One look at where the river of his hair had
flowed onto the bed, revealing the left side of his chest, was all
she needed to see to know why Carolina suddenly held him in fear,
why she thought he was a sorcerer of the island magic, obeah.

Sugar was a bit more skeptical, despite his
elaborate tattoo.

“There are no white obeahmen, Carolina,” she
said dryly.

“There was, missy,” the older woman scolded
as she crossed herself again. “Once they had a white obeahman on
St. Lucia. I seen him myself.”

“I saw him too. He wasn’t white.”

“White enough,” Carolina said, arching an
aristocratic eyebrow in her direction. “Jus’ like this boy.”

Sugar tried another tack. “This man came
here from Hong Kong. Who would go to Hong Kong to get an
obeahman?”

“Nobody with no sense, that’s for sure.” The
older woman huffed.

Sugar nodded in agreement. “This man is no
obeahman.”

“Well, he sure is something,” Carolina
insisted.

Sugar agreed with that, too, but she wasn’t
sure what name to put to him—until she looked again at his
tattoo.

“He’s a dragon man, Carolina, and dragon men
have no power in the lower latitudes.”

Carolina rolled her eyes and cast a droll
look in Sugar’s direction. “You, missy, got so much to learn, it
ain’t even funny.”

Sugar pressed her lips together to keep from
grinning.

“What you know about men fit on the head of
a pin, girl. What you know about dragon men you don’ even need a
pin to hold.”

Sugar’s lips twitched.

“Don’ you go grinnin’ at me, missy. You may
be too big to have your bottom paddled, but that don’ mean I might
not try.” Carolina turned her attention to the man on the bed,
leaning over and taking a good long look at the tattoo emblazoned
on his left breast. “Why this here is nothin’ more than a naked
dragon boy,” she said in a dismissive tone, rising to stand tall
and straight next to the bed. “If’n he gives you any trouble, you
call your papa.”

“I will,” Sugar promised, her gaze straying
to the sleeping man.

Her smile faded. He was already giving her
trouble, just by lying there. Without another move he was an added
misadventure in a life she’d tried damn hard to keep on the
straight and narrow.

He kicked at the sheet, and a softly
muttered curse rose from his lips. Sugar felt her heart sink lower
in her chest. Lord help her. She had a dragon man in her bed, a
beautiful, dangerous, fascinating dragon man.