LITMIR.BIZ

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      NANCY MORSE

      Nancy lives in New York and Florida with her husband, Talley, who works in the film industry, and their Alaskan Malamute, Max, aka Big Fur. An early love of reading and happy endings led to the publication of her first historical romance in 1980. She has an avid interest in Native American art and culture and takes pride in her collection of nineteenth-century artifacts. In addition to writing, she keep busy with reading, gardening, aerobic workouts and a full-time job in health and education.

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 1

      Rennie Hollander was desperate.

      The practiced hands at the controls trembled and her usually steady grip was scared and unsure as she piloted the single-engine Cessna southward, hugging the Florida coastline.

      All around, lightning snaked the black sky. The sudden, violent thunderstorm that ripped through the night shortly after takeoff should have forced her to turn around and head back to Palm Beach International, but the radio frequencies were flooded with diverted pilots trying to talk to tower controllers. And besides, it would have been a mistake to go back.

      Fixing her coordinates, she flew on into the thick night. The steady hum of the engine was the only reassuring thing as the plane bumped its way through the turbulence.

      South Florida was called the lightning capital of the world. It was a reputation well deserved, Rennie thought grimly. Two years ago the senator’s caddy was struck and killed by lightning on the tenth hole, and last summer a workman repairing the roof of the guest house was knocked into the air by a bolt of lightning.

      Rennie knew from the weather report she received before take off that she was taking a chance flying in such weather, but she was an experienced pilot, and desperate to get away.

      Far below, the Everglades stretched into the darkness. Rennie shuddered, recalling the only time she had ever been to the Everglades. It was the summer after her father died, when her mother’s friend, Senator Trevor Hollander, took her on an airboat ride. Of course, he wasn’t a senator back then, merely an overambitious businessman eager to impress an eight-year-old and her wealthy, widowed mother.

      She found the place treacherous and frightening, with alligators sitting like partially submerged logs in the still water. Yet to her child’s eye it was also strangely beautiful. Though Rennie had been too young to understand the dichotomy, the Everglades haunted her until she grew older and came to realize the place mirrored her own life, for it, too, was filled with beautiful things and long, endless stretches of loneliness.

      In the years following her mother’s marriage to the senator, the conflict within her deepened. Hers was the kind of life that most people only dreamed about, with private flying lessons, the best schools, summers in Southampton, winters in Palm Beach. But like the vast wetland somewhere down there in the darkness beyond the plane’s window, Rennie felt empty and alone. Something was missing. She referred to it as her missing link.

      The family wealth notwithstanding, Rennie preferred to earn her own living as a professor of anthropology with the University of Miami. Her work gave her life some focus. She didn’t earn much, but at least she earned it herself. Besides, there was always the trust fund to fall back on. Not that she needed it. She already had everything she could want—except, of course the things that really mattered, like the love she lost when her father died and the attention she rarely received from a mother who had been too busy hosting lavish parties and fund-raising events for her husband.

      Growing up, money had always been the only constant thing in her life. The more she had of it, the less she needed of everything else. But as she grew older, what was once difficult for a little girl to understand became frighteningly clear to the woman she had become. Where was the desire? The need? The sheer necessity for life? That old missing link churned deep inside, filling her with the need to need something…someone.

      She had thought her fiancé, Craig Wolfson, was that someone. She’d met the handsome land developer at a fund-raising party for the senator. A whirlwind courtship led to a proposal of marriage. Craig would make a good husband, she had reasoned

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