Contact. Evelyn Vaughn

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      EVELYN VAUGHN

      has written stories since she learned to make letters. But during the two years that she lived on a Navajo reservation in Arizona—while in second and third grade—she dreamed of becoming not a writer, but a barrel racer in the rodeo. Before she actually got her own horse, however, her family moved to Louisiana. There, to avoid the humidity, she channeled more of her adventures into stories instead.

      Since then, Evelyn has canoed in the East Texas swamps, rafted a white-water river in the Austrian Alps, rappelled barefoot down a three-story building, talked her way onto a ship to Greece without her passport, sailed in the Mediterranean and spent several weeks in Europe with little more than a backpack and a train pass. While she enjoys channeling the more powerful “travel Vaughn” on a regular basis, she also loves the fact that she can write about adventures with far less physical discomfort. Since she now lives in Texas, where she teaches English at Tarrant County College SE, air-conditioning remains an important factor. Feel free to contact her through her Web site, www.evelynvaughn.com, or by writing to: P.O. Box 6, Euless TX, 76039.

      For my sisters at Silhouette Bombshell.

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 1

      I t was sensory overload. Especially for her.

      “You been here before?” shouted the bartender over the noise. He was a gruff old Vietnam-vet type with a long cowboy moustache and tattoos, but Faith didn’t sense any threat off him. Of course, in this chaos, he’d have to come at her with a switchblade before she sensed a threat.

      Maybe noise created its own kind of pseudo-silence—a benefit to partying with her new roommates that she hadn’t expected.

      “Here, New Orleans?” she shouted back from the sanctuary he’d allowed her on his side of the bar, out of the worst of the crowd. “Or here, DeLoup’s?”

      With a bottle of tequila he pointed at her green crop top which read, Tulane University. Ah, proof of her previous life. He could see she’d been in New Orleans awhile now. He grinned. “DeLoup’s.”

      Faith shook her head and grinned back while, ever in motion, the bartender set some tourists up with shot glasses, lemon and salt. She usually avoided places like DeLoup’s. She wouldn’t be here now except that she hated to back down from a challenge.

      Like she’d told her mom in that last, ugly argument before she’d moved out, she was through hiding in the shadows. Faith wanted people in her life, even if only people on the margins of society could really accept her. And people—social people—went dancing. And drinking. And…

      And other things she’d avoided.

      On that determination, she said, “It’s fun!”

      And despite her enhanced senses, inexplicably keen for as long as she could remember, it was. Fun. In a throw-you-in-a-blender-and-hit-puree kind of way.

      Jazz music bounced off walls hung with crooked neon beer signs and dented license plates. It mixed with laughter and shouted conversation—and heartbeats, the vibration of dozens of thudding heartbeats. Bare, multicolored bulbs dangled from ceiling fixtures, not quite reaching some of the bar’s intense shadows, but Faith could see in the dark almost as clearly as she could in the light. Frigid air-conditioning fought a losing battle against the hot, humid Louisiana night that poured into the bar every time the doors opened, not to mention the heat rolling off of its gyrating patrons. The aromas of beer and rum, sweet fruit drinks and fried appetizers mingled with colognes, breath mints and sweating, pressing humanity.

      Faith could also smell the emotions, almost like perfume, could hear them on intermingled heartbeats. Currents of attraction. Patches of jealousy. Pockets of lust. From more than one area she smelled the decay of unhappiness and uncertainty.

      And a whiff of…fear?

      Faith frowned. Surely she’d imagined that amidst all the confusion. But real fear had its own scent, cold and acrid like metal. She did a quick head count of the roommates who’d brought her here.

      Absinthe, a kohl-eyed Goth, dirty-dancing with a frat boy.

      Evan, the unassuming, sandy-haired boy-next-door type, dancing with the kind of wiry, sharp-eyed guy who never pledged a fraternity.

      Innocent Moonsong, hair dyed far lighter than her brown skin, rings and necklaces and piercings glistening as she belly danced in solo circles, with at least three admirers looking on.

      And Krystal…

      Where was Krystal?

      The bartender’s hand settling onto Faith’s bare shoulder might as well have been an exposed power line. But instead of electricity she got a hard shock of concern, curiosity, wary attraction. Now she sensed that he smoked more than cigarettes…took pain pills for old pains…had pins in his knees from that wreck, shrapnel from when he saw some buddy blown up—

      She stumbled back, away from the uninvited information dump, away from her own freakishness. She caught herself with an elbow on the bar’s sticky wooden surface. Jazz music swirled back in around her.

      When the bartender reached for her again—“You okay, kid?”—Faith ducked quickly back, avoiding contact.

      “I’m—” But what could she say? She was a freak, strange enough that even her mom couldn’t explain it, strange enough that the most accepting friends she’d found so far were French Quarter psychic readers, not exactly mainstreamers themselves. That wasn’t new. But tonight, she was a freak with a missing roommate. “I have to go find my friend. I haven’t seen her