Twilight Man

Twilight Man

Karen Leabo

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Epilogue

Prologue

Dusk fell early on that dismal March day. Already aggravated and way behind schedule, Faith Kimball flipped on her car lights and peered intently through the windshield for some sign of the turnoff that would lead her to the campgrounds.

Every motel within casting distance of Caddo Lake was full this weekend, thanks to some fishing tournament. At least she’d brought her camping supplies with her on this trip, although she wasn’t looking forward to pitching a tent and fixing dinner in the dark.

Black Cypress Campgrounds was supposed to be three or four miles down FM 23, according to the manager at the last motel she’d tried. But, dammit, she’d driven four miles already and she hadn’t seen—no, wait a minute. What did that sign say?

She slowed way down as she approached the faded, peeling sign, which was hung too high for her headlights to illuminate. Yes, that was it!

Her triumph was short-lived. She looked up to see a huge dump truck barreling toward her at an alarming speed. His headlights were off, and he was driving dead center down the narrow, two-lane blacktop road.

Several thoughts flashed lightning fast through her mind. My God, didn’t the idiot see her? She should honk. She should veer off the road and take her chances in the ditch. She did neither when it seemed the truck would miss her after all. Then it swerved and slammed head-on into her compact car without ever hitting the brakes.

Faith’s car folded in on itself as it spun around and around, then rolled end over end like a nightmarish carnival ride. She was conscious of her head striking the windshield and a pressure against her left thigh, but there was no pain.

She wondered if she was about to die. Oddly, that idea didn’t frighten her. She felt only a few regrets—that she hadn’t married or had children, that she hadn’t told her mother goodbye, and that her doctoral dissertation would go unfinished. Then she felt nothing.

A voice brought Faith back through a dark curtain. “Wake up, dammit. Unfasten your seat belt! Lady, I know you’re alive. Wake up!”

Unable to disobey, she opened her eyes. Now she felt the pain and the fear. Her clothes were soaked with blood, and her lungs were filled with smoke. She coughed and tasted more blood.

Oh, God, she didn’t want to die!

“Unfasten your seat belt,” the commanding voice said again.

Although the effort cost her, she did what he asked.

“Give me your hand.” Now that he had her attention, the voice was gentler.

There was a whoosh of heat as something nearby caught fire. Closing her eyes against the blinding, stinging smoke, Faith reached out.

Strong hands caught hers in a crushing grip. She bit her lip to keep from screaming from the pain as he pulled her up or sideways—she wasn’t sure which way was up anymore.

“That’s it, almost there,” he crooned as the crumbled safety glass from a shattered window scraped her bare legs. As soon as she was free of the twisted metal that had once been her car, her rescuer clutched her against his chest and ran like hell.

Moments later a deafening explosion sent them both flying. As they hit the ground, the blow knocked the breath out of her—what little breath was left. Her world went black.

She awoke to the strange feel of her rescuer’s hard mouth on hers, breathing life-giving air into her lungs. She pushed him away, coughing from the thick black smoke she’d inhaled, but breathing on her own.

“Thank God,” he muttered. “Just relax. Help is coming. I flagged a car down, and the driver called from his mobile phone.” As he spoke in low, reassuring tones, his strong but gentle hands probed for injuries.

She opened her stinging eyes just once so that she could see what he looked like. As he removed a headband of some sort, she got only a fleeting impression of longish, dark hair and deep-set eyes, a straight nose and a square chin with a cleft.

He tied the headband around her upper thigh.

“Hurts,” she mumbled.

“I know it hurts, darlin’,” he said, brushing a lock of her curly blond hair from her face. “Hear that siren? Help is here.” Then he stood and walked away.

“Wait. Wait!” she called out with the last bit of strength she had in her. “Don’t leave me! Who are you?”

He never broke stride.

One

As the April day dawned warm and clear, Jones Larabee had nothing more pressing on his mind than whether to go fishing or simply work on his tan. Nothing, that is, until he looked out the window of his cabin and spied Miss Hildy’s canoe heading toward him through the swamp.

He wondered how she kept from tipping over. She was wider than the boat, which sometimes wobbled alarmingly. But she always managed to deftly maneuver the canoe to shore without mishap.

Jones went down to meet her. Although she was meddlesome and tended to hover over him worse than any mother hen, he liked Hildy. A descendant of the Caddo Indians who had settled in the area centuries ago, Hildy was known as the local medicine woman. Some people disliked her, others feared her, but everyone on both sides of the Texas-Louisiana state line respected her knowledge of the swamp and its flora and fauna.

“Howdy, Jones,” she said as she heaved herself over the edge of the canoe and waded in the last few feet, soaking her ragged, much-patched tennis shoes.

“Mornin’.” He grabbed the boat’s bow and eased it onto the muddy shore. “What brings you here? It’s not your usual day to come calling.”

“A body doesn’t have to have a reason to call on a friend, does she?” Hildy reached into the canoe and retrieved two large plastic buckets, in which were stored a variety of treasures from her vast garden. “‘Sides, with all this rain we’ve had, my early crops are already out of control. I’ve got to get rid of this produce somehow. I can’t sell it all at the stand.”

Jones relieved her of the heavy buckets. “I haven’t finished what you gave me last week.”

“Then you’re not eating enough greens,” she scolded. “What about the tea? You’re drinking my special tea, aren’t you?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’m almost out.”

“Then it’s a good thing I came today,” she said as they headed toward Jones’s rough-hewn pine cabin, dwarfed by the towering cypress, pine and oak trees surrounding it. “I brought you a big jar.”

Months ago, when Jones had first come here, Hildy had sniffed him out like a bird dog hunting quail. She just wanted to have a look-see at her closest neighbor, she’d claimed, but Jones doubted that. He didn’t know where she lived—somewhere deep in the swamp, where a man could get lost and wander for days—but he didn’t think it was anywhere close to him. She was just nosy.

Since her first visit, she had paddled to his island once a week, whether he’d invited her or not. Eventually he’d found himself charmed by her backwoods philosophy and her no-nonsense approach to life, and he now counted her as a friend.

His only friend. None of the other locals came near his cabin, and that was fine with him.

A chair in Jones’s kitchen creaked as Hildy plopped down in it. “I really did come for another reason,” she said, watching Jones where he stood at the sink washing the greens she’d brought. “There’s a gal lookin’ for you.”

His whole body stiffened. “Who is she?” But who else could it be except Mary-Lynn?

He had taken precautions so that no one from his old life could follow him here. He hadn’t applied for a driver’s license or even a post office box. He didn’t have a telephone. He had left his car behind, so there were no license plates to trace. His boat, which had come with the cabin rental, wasn’t registered in his name. How could anyone have found him?

“Pretty little thing,” Hildy said. “Blond curls all over.”

Jones allowed himself to relax. Not Mary-Lynn, then, whose hair was almost as black as Hildy’s.

“I saw her at Pete’s,” Hildy continued. “She had that old green bandanna of yours. The thing’s in pieces, and she was showin’ it around to everyone in the store, trying to find someone who could tell her who it belonged to.”

He allowed himself a smile. “Ah, then I know who she is.” The blonde had to be the hit-and-run victim he’d pulled from the burning car several weeks ago. He’d been tromping around in the woods, minding his own business, when he’d heard the crash on the road just a few yards away. Although he didn’t like involving himself in other people’s problems, he could hardly have ignored a life-and-death situation.

He had applied hasty first aid to the woman, enough to get her by until the paramedics arrived. As soon as they did, he’d hightailed it out of there. He didn’t need some strange woman’s undying gratitude for saving her life.

“You didn’t say anything to her, did you?” he asked Hildy.

“No. I know how you like your privacy.”

He could see she was brimming with curiosity, but he declined to tell her the story. He didn’t feel much like a hero, and he didn’t want anyone thinking of him that way.

With promises to drink his tea and eat his greens, he hurried Hildy on her way. He knew she needed to open up her roadside produce stand, which provided her only income—she wouldn’t accept any money for the vegetables she brought him.

When she was gone, his thoughts returned to the angel-faced woman who had been so near death, her skin as white as an egret’s feather. He was glad to hear she had recovered. But he hoped like hell she didn’t find him.

* * *

Faith studied the crude map the campgrounds manager had drawn for her, then peered at the scene ahead. This wasn’t the first time she’d tracked down someone who lived in an area so remote that she had to follow landmarks rather than street names or house numbers. This was, however, the first time she’d attempted to do it in a swamp from a leaky dinghy with a balky outboard motor.

Ahead of her loomed a huge cypress tree, cleaved down the middle as if a giant’s ax had split it. She recognized it as one of her landmarks. “Struck by lightnin’,” Hoady had said. With a mild pang of apprehension she turned off the clearly marked “lake road” and onto a much narrower channel, slowing her speed in deference to the submerged logs and other hazards that lurked just below the water’s surface.

Fortunately, the channel wasn’t hard to follow. A definite path wended its way through the water lilies, as if another boat had recently passed. She settled back and tried to relax.

Over the past few months while working on her dissertation she had learned to enjoy the sights and sounds of the swamp, the strange creatures, the earthy smells and the people who lived here—especially the people. They were a breed unto themselves. Judging from Jones Larabee’s eccentric reputation, he was a prime example. She couldn’t wait to meet him.

The campgrounds manager, Hoady Fromme, had tried to talk her out of going to see Larabee. He’d said the man was spooky, a loner and a mean one at that. But Faith only half believed what Hoady told her. Country people, she had discovered, were prone to exaggeration when they met her and noticed she was enthralled with their every word. And anyway, a man who risked his own life to save hers couldn’t be all bad.

At the very least, she would give Mr. Larabee the new bandanna she’d bought him and thank him for saving her life. At best, she would get him talking and convince him to let her videotape him. An interview with the local hermit would make a nice addition to her dissertation. He might be one of the last bastions of local folklore and superstitions, which were dying out as civilization encroached.

Faith spotted the next landmark, a vast “field” of water lilies on her left. Later in the summer those huge lily pads would produce impressive, waxy white flowers as big as dinner plates. From there she turned into an even smaller channel, slowing the motor further until she barely putted along, ducking under tendrils of Spanish moss that dangled from low branches.

She had never been to such a dense part of the swamp. The dimness pressed in on her, and the sounds made by creatures on the bank no longer seemed friendly. She had an overwhelming urge to flee back into the sunlight, but unless she wanted to flee in reverse, she would have to find a wider place to turn the boat around.

The idea of backing out was sounding better all the time when, unexpectedly, the channel widened into a sunlit area of open water. And in the middle of that water a tiny spit of land protruded, on which sat one of the prettiest little houses Faith had ever seen.

The steep-roofed, pine log cabin, which stood on tall stilts, featured an inviting wraparound porch. Faith could easily imagine sitting in a rocking chair on that porch with a cold glass of lemonade, watching the sun set. The neatly maintained yard was dotted with carefully sculpted cedar trees. Geraniums, blooming in a profusion of pink and white, were grouped around the staircase that led to the front door. A pair of woodpeckers darted back and forth to a bird feeder hanging from one of the trees.

The storybook image didn’t look anything like the weathered, broken-down hermit’s shack she had anticipated. If this wasn’t Jones Larabee’s home, perhaps the residents could direct her to where he lived.

Faith nosed her dinghy onto the shore and climbed out. After tying the boat to a stump, she climbed the steps to the front door and raised her fist, intending to knock briskly.

She didn’t get the chance. The door opened abruptly and the man coming out nearly plowed her over. When he backed up a couple of paces, clearly stunned to find a strange woman on his front porch, she could see he carried a fishing pole in one hand, a tackle box in the other, and he wore nothing but a skimpy pair of cut-off jeans.

“Who are you?” he barked as he dropped the tackle box with a thud. “What are you doing here?”

That voice. She couldn’t be mistaken. In anger, the timbre of this man’s voice was identical to the one she remembered ordering her to unfasten her seat belt. Although she couldn’t recall much about his face, the voice had stuck in her mind. Mostly, though, she remembered the gentleness.

He sounded far from gentle now.

Well accustomed to the sometimes ornery resistance she encountered from the people around here when they were confronted by an outsider, she flashed her most winning smile. “I’m Faith Kimball, Mr. Larabee. I came to give you this.” She held out a brand-new, bright green bandanna. “I bought it to replace the one you used to bandage my leg. The paramedic had to cut it off—the bandanna, not my leg,” she said with a nervous laugh as she realized she was babbling.

The man continued to stare at her with undisguised hostility. “Lady, have you lost your mind?”

For the first time she wondered if she might possibly be mistaken. “You’re Jones Larabee, aren’t you?”

“No.”

The response was quick, defensive—and a lie. Faith had studied human behavior enough that she was very good at spotting lies. She briefly studied his face. He looked about right—the dark brown hair that reached almost to his shoulders, deep-set hazel eyes, a long, straight nose and a square chin with a cleft.

And a gorgeous torso. Naturally she hadn’t noticed that when she’d thought she was dying, but she sure noticed it now.

“Then you’re not the man who pulled me from my car after a truck hit it down on FM 23?” she asked carefully. “I could swear you’re the same man.”

His gaze flickered lower, then back up. He’d seen the scar on her leg, she was sure. “You’re mistaken,” he said coolly. “Now would you mind leaving?”

Pushing Hoady’s warnings to the back of her mind, she persisted. She pulled the genuine item—the ragged, faded bandanna—still stained slightly with her blood—from her pocket. “You don’t recognize this?”

“Lady, if you don’t get off my property—”

“Oh, I get it. You’re afraid I’ll sue you or something. You don’t have to worry about that. The doctor who patched me up said you undoubtedly saved my life with the tourniquet and the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.”

Finally he showed her something besides anger. As if remembering those tense moments when he had breathed life back into her body, his expression turned pensive, and he moistened his lower lip with the tip of his tongue. Still, he didn’t admit that he was her rescuer.

Discouraged, she decided she had no choice but to retreat gracefully. The man had his right to privacy. She thrust the new bandanna into his hand. “Take this, anyway,” she said. “The color brings out the green in your eyes.” Before he could object, she turned and descended the stairs. As she returned to her boat, she felt the heat of his glare on the back of her neck.

Strange man, she thought as she pushed the dinghy into the water and climbed in. Her overdeveloped sense of curiosity made her wonder what set of circumstances led to his forsaking society to live alone in the swamp. Or perhaps she was awarding more melodrama to the situation than it warranted. Maybe this was the only society he knew.

She grabbed the outboard motor’s starter cord and gave it a pull. The engine growled weakly but didn’t start. She gripped the handle for another pull, this one with more muscle. The results weren’t encouraging.

Determined, she knelt on the plank seat in the back of the boat, put both hands on the starter, and yanked for all she was worth. This time the rope broke and she tumbled over the edge of the dinghy onto her rear in two feet of muddy water.

It wouldn’t have been so bad, if she hadn’t had an audience. But as she sat there in the muck, she could see Jones Larabee, all six-foot-plus of him, standing at the bottom of the stairs watching her with undeniable amusement on his face.

“Problems?” he asked innocently.

She almost let her temper get the best of her. But before she could make a rude retort, one he richly deserved, her common sense intervened. Maybe the Fates were giving her a second chance with the moody Mr. Larabee.

“It appears the motor isn’t working,” she said as she stood and tried to wipe the mud off her shorts and her legs with the remnants of his old bandanna. “Guess I’ll have to paddle back. Unless... Do you know how to fix it?”

He shook his head, but he did come closer. “Other than adding gas, I don’t know anything about boat motors.”

That was odd, she thought. Any man who’d grown up on these waters would surely know all there was to know about boats.

“Where’d you get this piece of junk, anyway?” he asked.

“I rented it from the Black Cypress Campgrounds.”

He nodded his understanding. “Hoady. That explains it.” He didn’t elaborate.

“Any suggestions?” she asked.

After a moment of consideration, he seemed to make a decision. “I was on my way out fishing. I’ll find Hoady and send him in. He can either fix the motor or tow you out.”

That wasn’t the solution Faith was hoping for. “Couldn’t you tow me out?”

His expression told her just how distasteful he found that suggestion. “My boat’s too big to handle that narrow channel you came through. There’s another waterway I use, but it comes out on a completely different part of the lake. You’d be miles from your campground.”

“Then could I call Hoady from your phone?”

“You could, if I had a phone.”

Now she was desperate. She didn’t want to spend her whole day waiting all alone for Hoady Fromme to rescue her. She had work to do, and besides, she didn’t entirely trust the shifty-eyed little man.

“Let me come with you,” she said. “You can dump me off at the first opportunity, wherever there’s a road nearby or a house with a phone. I’ll handle it from there.”

He sighed, defeated. “Okay. But you’re not getting in my boat like that.” His eyes raked up and down her body, clearly disapproving of the mud still clinging to her.

“I don’t suppose you’d let me use your shower.”

“There’s a hose in back of the house. Water’s cold, but it’s clean.” Dismissing her, he turned.

“Wait a minute. Say that again.”

He stopped and looked over his shoulder at her. “Say what?”

“About the hose.”

“It’s in back of the house. I said the water’s cold but it’s—”

“That’s it! You’re not even from this area, are you?” she declared triumphantly, pleased with her deduction but disappointed nonetheless. Jones Larabee wouldn’t be part of her dissertation.

“Lady, what are you talking about?”

“The name’s Faith. And I’m talking about the fact that you didn’t grow up here.”

The look in his eye was as close to sheer panic as she’d ever seen. “Where in the hell did you get an idea like that?”

“Your accent, your diction,” she replied, her conviction unshakable. “A casual listener wouldn’t pick it up, but I’ve made a study of the subtle nuances among the various dialects of Texas. It’s a dying art, actually. In our mobile society, the dialects are blending more and more. But I’m intimately familiar with the Caddo Lake pronunciations. It’s most notable in the way you say water.”

His eyes narrowed. “Think what you like.” With that he continued toward the stairs, where he’d left his fishing gear, then headed for a small boat house to one side of the cabin.

I’m right, she thought. And you’re hiding from something, Mr. Jones Larabee. What better place to hide than here in this private lagoon in the midst of an almost impenetrable swamp?

Faith figured if she didn’t hurry he would leave without her. So she grabbed her tote bag and video camera case from the disabled dinghy and scampered around to the back of the house to douse herself with the hose.

As soon as Jones entered the boat house, safe for the moment from Faith Kimball’s sharp blue eyes and even sharper ears, he consciously took three deep breaths until his heartbeat returned to normal. She’d almost scared him to death back there. He’d thought she’d actually recognized him.

It could happen. Dallas was a huge city, but he’d once been fairly visible, appearing in dozens of courtrooms in front of hundreds of jury members. Once, he’d even gotten his picture in the Morning News when he’d been the defense attorney in a high-profile bank fraud case.

But Faith hadn’t recognized his face—only doubted his accent. Since moving here he’d deliberately cultivated a slower Southern drawl so he wouldn’t stand out. His efforts fooled most people. No one had ever questioned his origins before. Only Faith.

She was a persistent little thing, he mused. And a beauty, no doubt about that, with a round, angelic face framed by a cloud of blond curls that spiraled halfway down her back. Even the thin, still-healing scar on her forehead didn’t detract from her appeal. In fact, he hadn’t noticed it at first, so drawn was he to the intelligence behind those vivid sky blue eyes and the implied promise of her cupid’s bow of a mouth.

The angry red scar on her slender thigh was a little harder to ignore, but it was fresh yet. In time it would heal, just as his had, until it was no more than a slight pucker in the smooth, touchable skin. He imagined how it would feel—

Immediately he recognized the pang of sexual awareness, and guilt slapped his conscience. How could he even think of another woman? Perhaps he didn’t love Mary-Lynn, not the way a prospective husband ought to, but he was fond of her. She had been so loyal throughout his ordeal, hardly ever leaving his side. Although he couldn’t be with her and would never see her again, she didn’t deserve betrayal, even in his thoughts.