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alive.”
    “You’re still the fool, the loser, McKenzie! What woman is worth three hundred dollars?”
    “This one!” McKenzie snapped. Tara was stunned to discover his long, powerful fingers winding around her wrist, drawing her to his side. Jesu! She shouldn’t have been standing there, gaping! She should have been making a swift disappearance, slipping away while she’d had the chance!
    “You make sure your friend Eastwood knows that she’s made three hundred dollars for him this evening. Andyou make damned sure he knows why she’s gone,” McKenzie continued.
    He started walking out with long strides, dragging Tara with him. She tried to hang back, desperate to convince him that she couldn’t go anywhere with him. He didn’t allow her to stop. He was far too powerful a man for her to break his hold. She couldn’t just scream within the tawdry little tavern—Eastwood would come running over to strip her himself for three hundred dollars. No help there.…
    No help from anywhere.
    Everyone in the tavern had gone silent at the outbreak of the fight.
    And now everyone was staring at the two of them. Eastwood was watching them, apparently delighted that she’d be paying off part of one of his debts.
    “I’d say she’s well worth three hundred!” a drunk suddenly bellowed.
    She flushed silently, furiously tugging to free her hand. Jarrett didn’t release her. He knew her cloak. He lifted it from the peg where she had hung it when she’d come in, barely breaking his stride. At the entryway he finally paused, sweeping it over her shoulders.
    “Wait! I can’t—”
    “Come on. Let’s get out of here!”
    And for a moment his near ebony gaze touched hers and the curve of a smile just lifted the corners of his mouth. His whisper came close to her lips, sending little shivers of fire to dance down her spine. “You little fool! Run with it. You’re mine for the night! Freedom from this hellhole.”
    But at what price?
    Scream!
she thought, panic finding a renewed life within her.
Scream and scream.…
    But there would be no one to heed her. If a cry ofdesperation escaped her, no one would give a damn, no one at all.
    He was pulling her along once again. McKenzie. The black Irishman with the searing eyes and the touch of steel.
    Dragging her with him into the night.
    His night.

Chapter 2
    I n seconds they were outside in the cool New Orleans streets, surrounded by wrought iron and the scent of flowers, with only a faint odor beneath of the river and the wharf rats.
    Tara tugged hard upon her hand once again, fighting to remain calm, to reason with the man. “Mr. McKenzie, you’ve got to understand. I can’t really be a payment in a game. I had nothing to do with any of that, I’ve never seen that horrible man before in my life.”
    He wasn’t responding. He was just walking down the street—still dragging her along.
    She jerked back furiously.
    “Damn you, I’m not—”
    He stopped beneath a streetlamp, swinging around to study her. “What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing in a place like that, then?”
    She was astounded by the question. He sounded just like her older brother at that moment.
    “Trying to make some money,” she said irritably.
    “Oh, Jesu!” he muttered.
    “Not like that!” she defended herself, seeing the way his mind was turning. He didn’t believe her! If he had perhaps begun to believe her before, he certainly didn’t now.
    “I need money! I was trying to make legitimate money!”
    He lifted her hand suddenly, running his thumb over her flesh, cocking a brow at the smoothness of it. “I see. You don’t come from any, right?”
    “Any what?”
    “Money!” he snapped.
    She tore free, staring at him.
    “I was trying to make a few honest dollars and nothing more!”
    “At Eastwood’s?”
    “I heard that it was a respectable place—”
    “More respectable than some of the more perverted whorehouses!” he retorted harshly. He continued in a blunt vein.