Rebel (56 page)

Heather Graham’s magnificent Florida series continues with the marvelously exciting and breathtakingly passionate story of Risa Magee and Jerome McKenzie.

Turn the page for a tantalizing preview….

Coming soon from Topaz Books.

Risa awoke, hearing the crackle of a fire. She opened her eyes slowly. She could remember hitting her head, but oddly enough, she didn’t seem to be in pain. For a moment, the world was fuzzy. Then it began to fall in place.

She lay on a handsome sofa, encompassed in a warm blanket, her head on a soft pillow. She was in a pleasant room, with the fire warm against the salt-sea coolness of the night. The fire was all that gave light to the room, so it was cast into a pleasantly soft realm of dark crimson shadows. Despite the deeply muted light, she could see shapes and forms, a soft glint of firelight against handsomely polished pine floors, area rugs scattered comfortably about. She was in a home, she realized. Several wing-backed chairs faced the fire, creating a warm seating arrangement. Family portraits lined the coral rock mantel. The fire captured her vision for several long moments.

Then she saw him.

Ian!

Oh, God, Ian!

She had fallen into the sea—but found rescue.

Ian was here; he stood in this parlor, leaning against the far end of the mantel.

His back was to her; his dark head bowed. He’d been out in the water as well, obviously, and recently. He’d stripped down to his breeches, which were still damp, clinging to his lean hips and muscled thighs. His feet were bare, his broad shoulders caught the glow of firelight and gleamed and rippled with bronze power.

She sat up slowly, a heady sensation of relief flooding through her. She discovered that her skirts had been cut and ripped away, certainly in his efforts to save her life.

She was left with nothing but pantalettes, bare feet, corset, and ragged chemise, but she couldn’t be decently distressed at her lack of apparel—not when she was alive. She was a realist. Ian and his men had ripped up her clothing to save her life, and she was simply grateful. “Ian!” she cried, leaping up before he could swing around. She threw herself against him, so very relieved, arms wrapped around him, cheek against his bronze back. “Oh, Ian, oh, thank God, I thought I was dead, in serious trouble at the very least with those wretched Rebs—they’re trying to take a supply boat, bound for Key West. I can tell you all about it. I heard them talking! But that’s not why I’m here, you have to… you have to catch the Moccasin! Oh, God, I never thought that I’d make it here… but I made it, and now I’ve found you….” She paused for breath, shaking. She was becoming incoherent. He turned around, his hand on the top of her head, stroking her hair, drawing her to his chest. Bittersweet pain filled her. She could find comfort with him, yes. She could be soothed. Because they were friends now. But he was Alaina’s husband, even if he had loved her first, and it was nothing but self-torture to remember she had once been held so with ardent longing. They had both let their imaginations play, knowing that marriage would give free rein to the depths of passion kept just barely beneath the surface.

Still…

For a moment, she allowed herself to feel the gentleness of his fingers in her hair. She luxuriated in the feel of her face against his chest, breathing the decidedly masculine scent of him, clean salt, sea air, a hint of brandy and…

“Ah, you heard about Reb plans to attack a Yankee ship?”

She nodded, trying to think and reason.

“Yes, but, Ian… you have to go after…”

His wife.

“You have to go after Alaina. Ian, I’m so sorry, but she is the Moccasin. It’s a long story, but she was sick, and ranting, and I pieced together what she was saying. I tried to follow her… but anyway, she went to the Bahamas, and is making landfall here. Near here. And I’m so afraid that she’ll be caught by someone who
doesn’t care that she’s a woman, and that… and that she’ll be hanged. Ian, you must capture her, you must somehow dissuade her from her course.”

He had gone very tense, and she was sorry, so sorry. Risa knew he had suspected his wife of espionage, but he had surely prayed that she was not the deadly Moccasin—the spy wanted dead or alive, condemned by military justice, no quarter to be given.

“You have to go, Ian. You have to find her. Send one of your men out to warn the Union Navy that a despicable, cutlass-wielding Reb captain is out to seize the
Maid of Salem,
and steal her cargo of weapons and medicine. Oh, my God, I know that the war effort must be sustained, that the Reb captain has to be fed to the damned sharks, but Ian, Alaina has to be found!”

His fingers were moving in her hair again; he was holding her close, very close. It felt good. She wished that she could forget time and the war.

Forget that he had married. And that his wife had become one of her best friends.

“Oh, Ian.”

“Shhh… shhh… it’s all right. I will go for Alaina. I will find her.”

She nodded against his chest. His fingers brushed her cheek, and she felt ridiculously like a cat, so glad just to be stroked. She had to pull away. But another few moments wouldn’t matter.

His flesh was as warm as the fire that cloaked it in crimson, and that warmth seemed to radiate into her, nearly stilling her shivers. His arms had all the strength she seemed to lack. His knuckles moved gently over her cheek, her bare shoulders; his hand stroked her, holding her, warming her.

“So, a wretched Reb is out to take the
Maid of Salem
—and you know all about it,” he murmured.

“I heard them talking!” she whispered. “Just before your men came—before the bastard stepped aboard my boat! His men were out in a second dinghy, searching, and I heard them talking.”

“Mmm…”

She closed her eyes. She had to break away. He felt … so strong and warm. Muscle rippled beneath her touch. His bare skin seemed electric.

She felt a tender, erotic stroke upon her face, lifting her chin. She didn’t open her eyes. For a moment, just a moment, she wanted the past, the dream, the memory.

She felt his mouth. It had been so long. His mouth, on hers, demanding, tender, overwhelming her so very quickly. His tongue parted her lips, sweeping the fullness of her mouth, seducing…

His hands moved over her ribs, her hips, her breasts, a blaze of fire despite the fabric of her chemise and bone of her corset. As heady as wine, as warm as flame, overpowering, so intimate…

He’d married Alaina.

She couldn’t do this.

She tried to shake her head, but his fingers had threaded into her hair, and her lips were fully captured by the passionate assault of his kiss, the thrust of his tongue. His left arm was around her, supporting her, arching her back as his lips at last left hers, falling against her throat. Lower. Against the rise of her breasts. He whispered as he pressed his mouth to her flesh. “Did you hear… anything else?”

“No, no, Ian…”

She struggled to rise, pressing her hands firmly against him, opening her eyes, determined to face him.

“Ian—”

She broke off, captured within arms that seemed to have the power of steel. She’d been hearing him speak, low, huskily. She’d stared at his back, seen the way that he stood, the breadth of his shoulders, the rippling bronze of his back.

But it wasn’t him.

This man’s eyes were blue, very much like Ian’s. Dear God, his height and build were nearly identical… but his face…

His features were different; his cheekbones were higher, slightly broader. And he was very bronze. Though his dark hair carried a hint of red that wasn’t just the firelight, she realized, it was very thick and straight. His nose was straight, his forehead high and broad, his mouth well sculpted, his lips full, sensual. Damp from their kiss, curved in a curious, mocking smile as he stared down at her. His features, she realized, be-
trayed Indian blood, strikingly combined with classical European lines.

“Oh, my God!” she breathed.

She desperately tried to free her arms, struggling fiercely. “Let me go, you’re not Ian. Oh, God, you’re so much like him—”

“Stop it, calm down!” he commanded, sweeping her up as she struggled wildly to free any limb to strike him, kick him, wound him—escape!

“My God, you are related, you have to be—you’re a Rebel, oh, Lord…”

She kicked him, aiming higher to truly immobilize him, catching a kneecap instead. He grunted, and swept her up, striding back to the sofa where she found herself slammed down as he crawled atop her, capturing her wrists as she tried to pound his chest and face. She could barely breathe. He forced her wrists down to the arm of the sofa just above her head, and she was left with nothing to do but gasp for breath and stare up at him, incredulous, horrified. Oh, God, he was built so very much like Ian, but he wasn’t Ian at all. He carried Seminole blood, she thought, and she tried to remember everything she knew, and of course, she knew that Ian had cousins who lived down here….

“I thought you were him!” she breathed hatefully, gritting her teeth as she attempted to wrench her wrists free, to dislodge him from straddling her.

“No, I’m afraid that I’m the despicably wretched Rebel captain who intended to take the
Maid of Salem
— which my men will have to do without me now.”

“But who—” she began.

“Obviously, I’m Ian’s cousin—Miss Magee.”

Miss Magee.
She felt so incredibly stupid. He knew who she was. She’d been a fool to think that just because he was here, he had to be Ian. But she had never imagined that he and his relatives could be so very much alike in build and appearance!

“I’m cousin—Jerome,” he continued, a sardonic tone to his voice. “I’m trying to imagine the outcome had you stumbled upon his brother, Julian. The two of them are so much alike, you might have bedded with him for an hour before discovering your mistake.”

“Oh!” she gasped, appalled, so furious that she suddenly
had the strength of Atlas. She freed a wrist with a wild wrench and brought her hand crashing against his bronze cheek. He recaptured her wrist so tightly that she let out a soft cry, her heart beating a staccato rhythm of pure panic as he leaned low over her.

“Were you really trying to save Alaina—or make sure that my cousin was aware that his wife was an enemy agent?”

“You bastard!” she hissed, shaking. “Damn you, they’ll hang her! I came here to save her life, and if you don’t want that to happen, you need to do something quickly. If you can find your cousin out here, find him. And if not, let me go, and I’ll damned well do it myself!”

“Oh, really? You couldn’t find my cousin in the swamps if I handed you a bloodhound and a detailed map.”

“I came this far! So, you can just let me up and I’ll be on my way!”

“Oh, no, Miss Magee. I’ll find my cousin and Alaina. But I’m afraid you won’t be going anywhere.”

“What? You can’t possibly stop me—”

“Oh, but I can.”

“You can’t mean to keep me prisoner—”

“I’m afraid that I do. You are a grave risk to national security, Miss Magee. Besides, just what do you think you’re going to do? Survive the swamps?”

“Do you know, Mr. MacKenzie—”

“Captain, Confederate States Navy.”

“Well, my father is a colonel—United States of America—and he’ll see to it that you’re hunted down and annihilated on the seas—”

“Will he?”

“As soon as I see him. And I have been raised around military men all of my life, Captain. I can survive quite easily, thank you, no matter what the circumstances. And I will get away from you, and I will tell the Union Navy—”

“Precisely. Except that …”

His voice trailed huskily for just a moment and he leaned close.

And she was painfully aware then of her ragged state of undress, and of his build, so like lan’s. Long, hard,
honed as tight as a drum. A
savage
drum. An Indian, and a Rebel.

She couldn’t breathe. He held her too close. She felt as if she burned with a strange unease. She had hurled herself at him, held him. Felt his hands, touching her. Felt his lips… and she had… God, yes … for just a few moments… kissed him back.

“You have to let me go!” she whispered desperately.

He shook his head. Dark hair fell over one sharp blue eye. He assessed her critically. She felt the pressure of his body.

“Miss Magee, your pardon, but we are at war, and you are very definitely the enemy.”

“
You
are the enemy!”

“Be that as it may, ma’am, this is war. And you are a prisoner of the Confederate States Navy.” He smiled grimly. He leaned even closer. “
My
prisoner. And I promise you, I’ll be damned before I let you escape.”