The Pirate & The Adventurer & The Cowboy

she had successfully exorcised that damned cowboy from her mind.

    Margaret stepped out of the elevator into the hushed, gray-carpeted hall. Near her door a soft light glowed from a glass fixture set above a small wooden table that held an elegant bouquet of flowers. The flowers were shades of palest mauve and pink.

    Margaret halted to fish her key out of her small gilded purse. Then she slid the key into the lock and turned the handle. She thought fleetingly of bed and knew that, tired though she was, she was not yet ready to sleep. Perhaps she would go over the last chapter of her current manuscript. There were a few changes she wanted to make.

    It was as she pushed open the door and stepped into the small foyer that she realized something was wrong. Margaret froze and peered into the shadows of her living room. For a moment she saw nothing but deeper shadow and then her vision adjusted to the darkness and she saw the long legs clad in gray trousers.

    They ended in hand-tooled Western boots that were arrogantly propped on her coffee table. The boots were fashioned of very supple, very expensive, pearl gray leather into which had been worked an intricate design of desert flowers beautifully detailed in rich tones of gold and blue.

    A pearl gray Stetson had been carelessly tossed onto the table beside the boots.

    The hair on the back of Margaret's neck suddenly lifted as a sense of impending danger washed over her.

    Sarah's words came back in a searing flash.
Promise me you'll be careful
.

    She should have heeded her friend's intuitive warning, Margaret thought. Instinctively she took a step back toward the safety of the hall.

    "Don't run from me, Maggie. This time I'll come after you."

    Margaret stopped, riveted at the sound of the deep, rough-textured voice. It was a terrifyingly familiar voice—a voice that a year ago had been capable of sending chills of anticipation through her—a voice that had ultimately driven her away from the man she loved with words so cruel they still scalded her heart.

    For one wild moment Margaret wondered if her thoughts had somehow managed to conjure reality out of thin air. Then again, perhaps she was hallucinating.

    But the boots and the hat did not disappear when she briefly closed her eyes and reopened them.

    "What on earth are you doing here?" Margaret whispered.

    Rafe Cassidy's faint smile was cold in the pale gleam of the city lights that shone through the windows. "You know the answer to that, Maggie. There's only one reason I would be here, isn't there? I've come for you."

1

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    "H ow did you get in here, Rafe?" Not the brightest of questions under the circumstances, but the only coherent one Margaret could come up with in that moment. She was so stunned, she could barely think at all.

    "Your neighbor across the hall took pity on me when she found out I'd come all this way just to see you and you weren't here. It seems the two of you exchanged keys in case one of you got locked out. She let me in."

    "It looks like I'd better start leaving my spare key with one of the other neighbors. Someone who has a little more common sense."

    "Come on in and close the door, Maggie. We have a lot to talk about."

    "You're wrong, Rafe. We have nothing to talk about." She stood where she was, refusing to leave the uncertain safety of the lighted hall.

    "Are you afraid of me, Maggie?" Rafe's voice was cut glass and black velvet in the darkness. There was a soft, Southwestern drawl in it that only served to heighten the sense of danger. It was the voice of a gunfighter inviting some hapless soul to his doom in front of the saloon at high noon.

    Margaret said nothing. She'd already been involved in one showdown with Rafe and she'd lost.

    Rafe's smile grew slightly more menacing as he reached out and flicked on the light beside his chair. It gleamed off his dark brown hair and threw the harsh, aggressive lines of his face into stark relief. His gray, Western-cut jacket was slung over a convenient chair and his long-sleeved white shirt was open at the throat. Silver and turquoise gleamed in the elaborate buckle of the leather belt that circled his lean waist.

    "There's no need to be afraid of me, Maggie. Not now."

    The not so subtle taunt had the effect Margaret knew Rafe intended it to have. She moved slowly into the foyer and closed the door behind her. For an instant she was angry with herself for obeying him. Then she reminded herself that this was her