?Two.

He thought the roaring was in his head.

Chantz slowly opened his eyes, anticipating another stab of intense pain between his temples. How long had he floated in and out of consciousness? One day? Two? There were vague memories of Andrew Buley hauling him in a wagon to the shanty in the woods where Chantz buried himself when he needed a place to escape... or meet women- the women like Phyllis Buley who wouldn't be caught dead with him in public.

The roaring again, like constant thunder. The bed under him vibrated.

Gritting his teeth against the pain in his side, Chantz struggled to sit up. The bare room spun around him and the effort to breathe sent a knife blade of heat through his chest. He recalled, then, what had happened to him. Recalled lying helplessly on his back while someone dug the money from his pocket. Boris Wilcox? Horace Carrington? Tylor Hollinsworth?

He would find out, of course, if it was the last thing he ever did.

He finally managed to stand. Pain cut up under his rib so sharply the breath rushed from him. The open doorway rocked from side to side like a boat on troubled water. He staggered toward it, gripping his ribs, swallowing the copper-tasting old blood in his mouth.

The shanty's small main room consisted of a fireplace with hook and iron pot for cooking, a sideboard, a crude table, and two ladder-back chairs with husk seats. Chantz plowed into the table, knocking a tin cup to the floor, leaned heavily on it until he could collect his balance enough to focus on the door.

The table beneath him trembled like a terrified rabbit.

Realization crawled in his throbbing head, and a flash of panic speared through him. He stumbled to the cabin's door and flung it open. Heat drove him back momentarily as he did his best to focus on the surreal world outside the shanty. Briefly, he wondered if he was hallucinating again.

Dense black and green clouds boiled just over the high tree-tops, turning the daylight into a sickly dim haze. The air felt ominously still and thick with impending rain. More rain, by the looks of the saturated ground and the waterlogged branches of trees drooping toward the earth.

Chantz stepped from the shanty and moved unsteadily along the wheel-rutted tracks, his boots splashing through standing water. Breaking into a slow run, he followed the ruts to the road that was pitiful during the best of weather. Now it was a mire of mud that sucked at his feet as he followed it around the bend and- The roaring cacophony vibrated his eardrums as he stared out at the roiling brown water that was fast eating up the earth in its wake. The deep crack of snapping timber punctuated the violence and power of the driving, boiling force, followed by an explosion of thunder and a sudden wall of wind that nearly knocked him from his feet. With it came rain driving fiercely, skewering his skin like needles. He couldn't breathe, and he was forced to turn his back to the wind and brace his legs to keep from being driven into the water.

That's when he saw the woman.

Surely he was imagining things- hallucinating again, thanks to his brains being beaten to a pulp. He blinked and, shielding his eyes from the rain, focused on the water again.

Caught like flotsam amid a dam of brush and timbers, she floated facedown in the yellow, turbid waters of the storm-driven Mississippi, her dark red hair like a silken web around her head. The raging currents had stripped the clothes from her body. Her flesh glowed like moonlight, pale as alabaster, against the swirling mud.

"Jesus," he whispered.

No chance in Hades she could be alive. He'd be stupid to risk wading into that torrent, especially in his sorry condition. Although she was caught up in a brake of snagged-up brush, he knew the dam could and would give at any moment.

And if she wasn't dead now, she would be.

He cursed.

Rain drove into Chantz's back as he stumbled to the water and waded in up to his chest. Debris slammed into him with the force of a mule's kick, driving him under. Suddenly the world became a rushing brown wall that sucked him deep and clawed his face with tree branches. He fought them, lungs aching, legs kicking; he planted his feet and lunged upward. His head breaking the water, he gasped for air and searched for the woman- there!- his hands reached for her, tangled in her hair, drew her toward him until he could wrap his arms around her.

Hauling her out of the water and onto the shoal, he collapsed to his knees. The woman sprawled beneath him, facedown, skin pale as pearl, hair a fiery skein of wet silk in his hands. Her flesh felt warm, still. He pressed his dark hands against her slender back and began pumping, cursing.

"Breathe, dammit. Breathe."

She moved. Just slightly. Moaned.

"Breathe."

She vomited, then gasped. Her arms thrashed, as if she were still fighting the water. "I won't!" she cried. "I won't do it, damn you. You can't make me!" With a violent shudder, she lay still again.

Blinking the rain from his eyes, Chantz carefully rolled her over, swept the tangle of hair from her colorless face. Blinked again and covered his eyes with one hand- he'd never believed in specters, or haints, as Rosie liked to call the undead, but damn if he wasn't looking at one now.

The vision of the young woman's flawless, stunning features sat him back on his heels. The driving rain felt suffocating; focused on the churning river of water and mud, the thought occurring to him that maybe he'd died in that goddamn alley. Maybe he was on a spiral straight to hell and this face was the first to greet him: a succubus. Temptation personified. The embodiment of seduction. The female serpent of Eden who drove intelligent grown men to a fever pitch of sexual stupidity.

But Maureen Broussard was dead, fifteen years ago this summer.

The woman groaned again.

His gaze flashed down her naked body. His mouth turned dry and his skin hot, despite the bite of the cool rain and wind that whipped the roaring water into white peaks.

Chantz, gritting his teeth against the pain in his own abused body, lifted the woman into his arms, tossed her over his shoulder, and made his way, stumbling, along the washed-out road-bed to the shanty nestled under the sprawling oak trees. He carried her into the bedroom, dumped her on the bed, and flung a sheet across her, backed away as if her presence were as threatening as a timber rattler prepared to strike.

Sinking back against the wall, he closed his eyes and waited for the pounding of his heart to ease.

As thunder shook the house, memories stirred. He hadn't pondered on them for years; though, occasionally, when he rode by the blackened ruins of the deserted old plantation on the high grounds overlooking the river, he would briefly allow himself to recall the occurrence that had crumbled the grandest house in the area. Not just the area, but one of the finest homes in Louisiana. Belle Jarod. Jewel of the River Road. A palace built by a man's obsession and love for a woman who would ultimately bleed him dry of his last dollar and dignity and shatter his heart, not to mention his sanity.

Chantz frowned and walked again to the bed. He lit the lamp next to it, then stood staring down into the woman's face. His skin warmed.

It wasn't possible. Maureen Broussard was dead. Max Hollinsworth had buried her. Or what was left of her after the fire that burned most of Belle Jarod to the ground. Max wasn't a man given much to any emotion but spite and meanness, but in this instance he'd fallen to his knees and blubbered like a baby into his hands. Chantz had always wondered why. Because Max had truly been in love with his best friend's wife? Or because he was burying his only hope of getting his greedy hands on Belle Jarod?

Knowing Max, it was the latter. Then again, Maureen Jarod Broussard had a way of looking into a man's eyes and upending his soul. She had been a whore with a tempter's body and an angel's face.

Something stirred deep down as Chantz studied the woman's features. Only, he realized as he stood there with the roar of the river trembling the house that this was no woman. Not yet. She was an eyelash flutter from crossing that finite line into womanhood. Oh, she had the body, all right. The mouth that could tempt a saint. The smooth as marble flesh that made men think of lapping sweet rich cream. But there was yet a softness about her features that made him think of the young women who attended the St. Elizabeth's Academy for Young Ladies in New Orleans, the ones who coyly smiled and batted their lashes at him when he rode by.

Again, his mind tumbled back to that sultry afternoon, not unlike this one, his lazing under the sprawling, twisted old oak while the oppressive heat of the day made his clothes cling to his skin, while the whirring of cicadas in the grass and trees pulsated like a slow heartbeat in the heavy air.

He and Max Hollinsworth had been returning to Holly House from Baton Rouge. Max had risked one last visit to Maureen, thinking her husband, Jack, would not be returning from New Orleans until the next day. Sitting there in the sweltering heat, listening to the deep growl of thunder from an approaching storm, Chantz had heard them laugh. Saw Maureen dance through her bedroom balcony door dressed only in a shift, so thin she might as well have been wearing nothing, her torrent of dark red hair pouring over her white breasts and shoulders.

She had looked down and seen him there, under the tree, and her ruby lips had curled, her lashes had lowered. She'd leaned over the balcony rail, giving him an unobstructed view of her scantily clad bosom.

"Why, Chantz Boudreaux, you're becoming quite the handsome young man. You got a lady friend, Chantz?"

"No, ma'am," he'd answered, and her smile had grown and her eyes had narrowed.

"That's too bad. Come see me sometime and I'll give you a few pointers on what it takes to charm a woman off her feet."

Then he'd watched Max Hollinsworth tear away what little clothes she wore and mount her right there against the wall. And even as Max thrust himself into her, she had turned her eyes down to Chantz's and smiled.

Jack Broussard had found them that way.

Juliette. Could it be? All grown up, a woman herself now? The child who had clung to his neck and screamed for her papa as flames licked so high into the sky it seemed even the thunderous clouds blazed with them.

Had Juliette come home, back to Belle Jarod, at long last?

Returning to the main room, Chantz prodded at the embers in the hearth and tossed in a handful of tinder. The flames soon fingered the twilight shadows, as lulling as the drone of rain on the roof.

There had been times over the last years when the slightest hint of smoke had roused those best forgotten memories. Mostly he remembered the silence and the stillness, like those moments before a lightning strike. Remembered the expression on Jack Broussard's face during those moments after he'd found his wife and best friend together- his eyes pools of pain. More pain than anger... initially.

The thought had struck Chantz in that moment of looking into Jack's tormented face, as Chantz stood in Belle's open front door with storm winds scattering leaves around his legs and over Belle's cypress floors, that if loving a woman could so unman a man then he would have to think long and hard about doing it. He'd reminded himself as he grew older, most men didn't love their women like Jack loved Maureen. Then again... there weren't a hell of a lot of women like Maureen. None, as a matter of fact, and that was probably a damn good thing. Man simply wasn't created with enough willpower to resist her kind of temptation.

Chantz located a bottle of whiskey in the sideboard, tucked behind a tin of coffee and a jar of Rosie's kraut.

Taking a long drink straight from the bottle, he turned his eyes again to the bedroom door.

Surely he would return to that room and discover he had dreamed that he fished Maureen Broussard from the river. No, not Maureen. Couldn't be. He'd helped Max bury Jack's wife under the old live oak overlooking the grand spread of cane Jack and his Negroes had sweated over all summer.

Could it be... Juliette? The exquisitely beautiful child with untameable hair and flashing eyes like green fire?

Chantz took another deep drink and sank into a chair.

He could still recall the day he'd first discovered that there was more than friendship going on between Max and Maureen. Rosie, Maxwell's cook, had been occupied by kitchen duties, and Chantz, only fourteen at the time, had been summoned up from the field and ordered to "occupy" the little girl while Max and Maureen discussed "business" in the house.

Juliette had been a handful. Although Chantz was no stranger to children, often overseeing the Negro children while their parents worked, Juliette had tried his patience to extremes. She'd been saucy, rebellious, and so full of excess energy he had been hard pressed not to lock her in the storehouse. She'd managed to fall down Holly's steps before he could catch her, severely cutting her knee, and although her lower lip had pouted in a charming way, not a solitary tear had fallen. Chantz had hauled her in his arms to Max's office with the intention of summoning her mother, but the sounds he'd heard through the door had frozen him in his tracks.

So he'd carried her off to the kitchen located a distance from the house where Rosie had clucked and tutted and murmured under her breath that "somebody gonna git killed one of these days over that hussy woman."

Juliette hadn't so much as whimpered as Rosie ministered to her injury, and Chantz had rewarded her with a piece of ho'hound sweetened with molasses candy. She'd rewarded him with a kiss on his cheek and a "Merci, Monsieur."

His head and body pounding with pain and whiskey thrumming in a slow heat through his veins, Chantz could almost feel Juliette's lips on his cheek again- except those lips didn't belong to a child any longer. Far from it.

Damn, he was tired. He'd come to this deep-woods shanty to spend a few days alone. Rest and solitude went a long way toward extinguishing the temper that more often than not these days got the better of him. He'd had it up to his throat with Tylor Hollinsworth. One more slur out of his mouth and Chantz was going to drive his fist through Tylor's teeth. Or worse. And that's what had started to bother him the most. His hatred for the soft son of a bitch was going to prompt him to murder if he didn't get control of himself.

But Tylor Hollinsworth was going to be the least of Chantz's problems. Judging by the looks of that river, Holly House Plantation, and its crops, were going to be several feet under water. Max Hollinsworth had been scrambling to recover from the flood that wiped him out two years ago. This disaster could put him in the poor house, and he was going to want to take out his anger on someone... and that someone was usually Chantz.

No doubt about it, plenty were going to suffer under Max's tirades. The thought of it made Chantz turn up his bottle and drink until it felt as if his throat and stomach were going to ignite.

Christ, he wanted to sleep. He needed a bed. The whiskey pooled like thick molasses between his ears, and if he didn't lie down he was going to fall down.

But there was a woman in his bed. A naked woman. With the face and body of a whoring witch who was probably burning in Hell at that very moment for her wicked ways- who had no doubt dragged a few souls down with her- other women's husbands, mostly.

Tossing the empty bottle aside, he returned to the bed. She slept still, her face turned toward the lamplight, her long lashes like rusty feathers upon her smooth cheeks. There had only been one other woman put on God's earth with a mouth like that, a cupid's bow pink as a pomegranate, the tips slightly turned up making her look always as if she were about to break into a smile. And the chin- obstinate. The brows sweeping as egret wings.

"Open your eyes," he said softly, a bit drunkenly, he realized as the room shifted dizzily. "Open your eyes and I'll know for certain if you're Maureen's little girl."

They would be turbulent, of course. Stubborn. Challenging. Lustful. At odds with her angelic features. Sparkling pools of heartbreak.

The bed creaked as he eased down beside her, stretched his body out, groaned as his head rested on the goose-down pillow.

The woman shifted, rolled, and nestled against him. Her lips parted with a soft sigh. Her eyes opened, briefly, a flash of color that reminded him of the deep rich green of magnolia leaves. Then she drifted off again.

Chantz listened to her breathe, felt the warmth of her body ooze through him, easing the raw pain of his injuries. As the rain drove harder against the roof, he closed his eyes and returned to that sultry summer afternoon, with the heavy scent of jasmine in the still air, and saw Maureen on the Belle Jarod balcony, peering down at him, smile and eyes like temptation personified...

Only it wasn't Maureen, but the woman next to him whose soft, tangled hair coiled over his chest. Whose complexion glowed pale as magnolia blossoms. Whose full naked breasts were like china globes in the golden light.

And it wasn't Max Hollinsworth who took her against the wall. But himself.

For a blurry, confused moment Chantz thought he'd dreamed the whole thing: the incident in the alley... the flood that was surely, in that very moment, washing Maxwell's sugarcane into the Gulf of Mexico... fishing a red-haired siren out of the water.

No such luck because the siren stood in the bedroom doorway draped in his only clean shirt, hair a fiery shadow around her pale face. There was no mistaking those eyes. They were enormous and flashing with challenge. On any other woman her red lips would look sullen. On this woman, however, they were as alluring as the sweet meat of a ripe plum. And her legs... long and slender beneath his shirttails. Apparently she didn't care in the least that her knees were showing.

Stiff and sore, Chantz raised up on one elbow, watched as she approached him, cautious, her hands fisted and pressed to her breasts as if the act would somehow hide the way she filled out his shirt. She appeared mesmerized by him and studied his face as if she expected to discover the meaning of life in his eyes.

"Hello," he said softly.

She jumped and backed away a step, tipped her head to one side, and studied him intensely.

"You want to tell me what you were doing in the river?"

She shook her head, no.

"Can you talk?" He grinned.

Her expression became as dark and turbulent as the storm crashing over the cabin. Still, she advanced, stopped by the bed so the light of the oil lamp cast her profile in soft gold. Her hand reached out. Fingertips brushed his hair, touched the swelling on his brow, lightly traced the curve of his cheek, hesitated briefly at the laceration she found there- she frowned- then continued to his chin that needed shaving.

He caught her wrist; although she flinched and acted as if she would attempt to flee, he held on.

"Shhh," he soothed her, and eased his grip on her arm. "I'm not going to hurt you."

Lifting her wrist to his mouth, he pressed the soft, pale underside to his lips, as if he were attempting to calm the child he had once held, her face smeared with soot and flushed by heat, eyes streaming with tears and rain. Then he had made a funny noise with his lips against her wrist- as his own mother had done when he was a child and frightened- then her light, melodious laughter had bubbled up through her whimpers and her tears had dried.

But he made no funny noise now. She was no longer a child, after all. Far from it.

He brushed the delicate pale place with a kiss that made her gasp. Made her soft lips part. Made her eyes that were full of lamp fire grow wider and brighter.

And something shifted in his chest: an unfamiliar emotion that made his senses expand to a keen pain that brought a rise of sweat to his flesh and robbed him of breath.

"Juliette," he murmured, "you've grown up."

The sound of her name drew a harsh breath from her. A look of shock followed by fear twisted her features and she lunged away, breaking his hold on her arm. She spun on her heels and fled the room. The next thing he heard was the front door slamming open against the wall and the drone of hard rain.

Chantz rolled from the bed and ran to the open door. He struck out through the rain, stumbled, clutched his side, forged through the night darkness in pursuit, sliding in the deepening mud and splashing through broad puddles. What the devil was she about? If she wasn't careful she would find herself in the river again. He sure as hell didn't intend to dive into the swollen Mississippi in the dark.

The growl of the roiling water magnified. He ran harder, his heartbeat quickening as he lost sight of her amid the trees- hell, maybe she was a ghost after all- then she reappeared, just a flash of white before dissolving again into the darkness.

"Stop!" he yelled. Useless. The rain and river drowned the sound of his voice.

He saw her then, at the bluff's ledge, shirt whipped by the wind and gnashed by the rain. Christ, she was going to jump- "Juliette, don't do it!" he shouted.

The sound of his voice brought her head around. She stared at him like a terrified doe, as if with the

slightest provocation she would bound off the precipice into oblivion.