In Too Deep

building was infused with power and heat. It was a place filled with secrets.
    She walked close and aimed her flashlight at the name on the front door. JONES & JONES .
    She switched off the flashlight and stood there in the fogbound street for a long time wondering if she should knock. Before she could make up her mind, a thin, scraggly-looking man strode briskly toward her out of the shadows of a narrow alley. He did not have a flashlight, but he moved as if he had no difficulty seeing in the dark. His hair and beard were long and unkempt. He wore a heavy, black all-weather coat and a pair of hiking boots. Everything about him spelled
homeless man
but the coat and the boots looked surprisingly new.
    Her senses were still heightened. She could see that the man was enveloped in a lot of fog but she did not sense any threat.
    “You’re n-new here,” he said. His voice was hoarse and he stammered a little as if he was not in the habit of speech. “You’ll be w-wanting the inn. They’ll have a room for you. C-come with me. I’ll take you there.”
    “Thank you,” she said.
    She allowed him to lead her to the darkened inn. She rang the bell. A light went on in the hall, and a short time later two women in their midfifties, dressed in robes and slippers, opened the door. They smiled when they saw Isabella standing on the porch.
    “Yes, of course, we’ve got a room,” one of them said.
    “It’s January,” the second one explained. “We rarely have any guests at this time of year. Come on in.”
    Isabella turned to thank the stranger in the long black coat, but he was gone.
    “Something wrong?” the first woman asked, stepping back to let Isabella into the hall.
    “There was a man,” Isabella said. “He brought me here.”
    “Oh, that must have been Walker,” the woman said. “He’s what you might call our night watchman here in the Cove. My name is Violet, by the way. This is Patty. Come on upstairs and I’ll show you to your room. You must be exhausted.”
    “Shouldn’t I register?” Isabella asked.
    “We’re not real big on the formalities here in the Cove,” Patty explained. “You can register in the morning.”
    Half an hour later, Isabella had crawled into a cozy bed and pulled a down quilt up over her shoulders. For the first time in weeks she slept through the night.
    The following day no one remembered to ask her to register as a guest at the inn. She handed over enough cash to cover the first week and then, on Patty’s advice, went down the street to see about the gig at the Sunshine. Marge Fuller, the proprietor of the small café, immediately put her to work waiting tables and helping out in the kitchen. There were no pesky applications or tax forms to fill out. Isabella knew then that Scargill Cove was her kind of town.
    Fallon Jones had walked through the front door of the café that same morning and sat down at the counter to order coffee. When she emerged from the kitchen, she had seen him talking to Marge Fuller. A thrill swept through her, igniting all of her senses.
    Everything about Fallon Jones whispered of power. He wore the fierce energy like a dark cloak but something in the atmosphere around him told her that he was living on the edge of exhaustion.
    A dark, ice-cold fever burned in Fallon Jones. With her senses cranked up, she could see the glacial heat in his eyes. The para-fog swirled around him, indicating deep secrets and mysteries.
    He had the hard, unyielding face of a man who lived life on his own terms. He was big, too, tall, broad-shouldered and solid as a boulder. She had never been attracted to physically overpowering men. She stood five-foot-three and three-quarters in her bare feet and she had always preferred males who did not tower over her. Usually when she was around men Fallon’s size, her instinct was to put some distance between herself and a creature who could pin her down with one hand.
    But with Fallon she felt none of the usual wariness. Instead, she was amazed to discover that when she was near him, she experienced an oddly sensual feminine recklessness. A part of her wanted to challenge him, probably because of the self-discipline that emanated from him in waves. She sensed that his formidable control was his way of handling his equally formidable talent.
    All the evidence indicated that he lived an austere, almost ascetic existence, but she was quite certain that he was no monk. There was an inferno burning just beneath the surface. In