The Pirate & The Adventurer & The Cowboy

staircase at the far end of the hall. The footprints were still there. She had not imagined them. The staircase went down, not up to the next level.

    She leaned forward and splashed the light over the steps. They twisted and vanished into a forbidding darkness.

    She had known the answers weren't going to come easily. She took a deep breath and considered her next move. There was no real option. If she wanted to know where the footsteps led, she would have to follow them.

    When she started slowly down the narrow steps, she learned firsthand the meaning of having the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. Her fingers trembled as she grasped the flashlight. Her every instinct was alive with warning.

    But she forced herself down the steps, following the muddled prints in the dust. It crossed her mind that the guide had emphasized several times that the castle was not structurally safe, but she decided that as long as she followed the footprints she would be reasonably safe. Jared and Max had come this way more than once, she reminded herself. And at midnight, too.

    The gloom thickened around her as she descended below the level of the entry hall. Down here there were no slits in the walls to provide air and light. A dank, damp odor swirled around her. When she paused to flash the light around, Kate saw only more stone.

    Then, without any warning, the stone steps came to an end in a tiny cell of a room. Perhaps this was a storage cellar, she thought. But when she examined the floor, she found that the footprints continued on, straight into a wall. There must be some sort of concealed doorway in the stone, she decided, but she had no idea of where to begin hunting for the hidden lock.

    There were more prints leading off in the opposite direction back under the staircase. Kate followed these to a dark opening that proved to be a doorway. The door itself was long gone. When she flashed her light down the dank hall that was revealed, she saw a barred room that must have been used as a dungeon or secured storage room at one time.

    Her uneasiness grew. The more she studied the barred room, the more it looked like a dungeon cell. Kate suddenly wanted very badly to get back upstairs into the light. She started quickly up the steps, stumbling in her haste.

    When she was within sight of the last step, Kate switched off the flashlight and quickened her pace. She couldn't wait to get out into the warm light of the new day. Later, when she was safely back in her room, she would try to figure out what to do next. Perhaps she should confront Jared, after all. But what would she do if he simply denied everything? She could not bear the thought that he might be a real-life pirate.

    The questions hammered at her, driving her forward until she practically leaped up the last step.

    She was so intent on getting out of the hall that she didn't even see the man who stood concealed in the shadows at the top of the dark staircase. When his arm closed suddenly around her, snagging her and pulling her back against a solid male body, Kate opened her mouth on a terrified scream.

    There was no scream: a large hand clamped over her mouth. Kate reacted in fear and rage, driving her elbow back into what felt like a very solid midsection. The blow brought a muffled curse, and for an instant the man's grip slackened.

    That was all the time Kate needed. She moved, grasping his arm and stepping to one side in an effort to yank her assailant off balance. He went readily in the direction she wanted, too readily—the way Jared had that morning on the beach. Instead of losing his balance, he added so much force to the momentum she had established that Kate was thrown off her feet. In that instant Kate finally realized who she was dealing with.

    "]ared."

    He came down on top of her, pinning her to the floor. "Oh, Christ, it's you. I should have known. Quiet, you little fool. Sound carries. Are all romance writers so damnably curious?"

    A new kind of anger surged through Kate. How dared he treat her like this? How dared he sneak around in the dark and grab unsuspecting people who were merely trying to get to the bottom of a few crucial questions?

    "Let me go, you bastard. Let me go, dammit. You're a liar. A liar ."

    "Stop it," he ordered roughly. "Will you just stop struggling, for crying out loud? Listen to me, you little shrew. Settle down or you'll hurt yourself."

    But Kate was too incensed to stop. She had never been so angry. She felt