When Tally Addison’s brother goes missing, she knows who to turn to—gorgeous ex-cop Christien Castille. Only, when she and Christien stumble into a search for hidden treasure, she discovers she’s already found hers…in him.

Harlequin Blaze | ISBN 0373792239 | December 2005 | BUY IT HERE

---

READ AN EXCERPT

Prologue

He walked across the courtyard of Court du Chaud. The moon was out, full and yellow like a feral cat’s eye. The wind blew gently, but it didn’t touch him.

Court du Chaud would always be associated with his name, since he’d financed the building of the four rows of French colonial townhouses that boxed in his very own mini-town within the City of New Orleans.

He passed the piazza where a women’s soft, sultry laughter sent his thoughts back to another moonlit night-a night full of drunken laughter and debauchery. Wenches shrieked with merriment, taunting men with their low cut dresses and their honeyed lips.

An old woman flipped up her coat collar as he passed, the eerie sound of his boot heels echoing sadly.
He made his way up the stairs to the café where the pretty owner was wrapping up for the night. Taking one of the café chairs, he sat. She had a gorgeous aura, all pure blue light, like the aching blue of a summer sky. She glowed with copper rich, earthy power.

The man came out of the kitchen, the one whose aura used to be black with despair, like dark soot. It was now as pure blue as the café owner’s, but pulsing with the golden light of a warrior, strong of heart, sure in battle.

“Stronger than you could ever be.”

He turned to see his nemesis standing next to his chair. White hair the color of bleached bones lay thick and lank around her withered face. Her eyes, like dark wells of desolation, stared at him without emotion, except for the deep hatred that now seemed as much a part of her as the shawl that covered her stooped shoulders.
“I despise when you sneak up on me, Belle Grandmere.”

“It is for that very pleasure that I do it.”

“There is not much more that can be done to me that has not already been done.”

“You blackguard,” she hissed. “Your suffering is like manna to me. I love to watch.”

“You are a bloodthirsty, bitter old woman. Very bitter.”

“And why shouldn’t I be? My granddaughter lost everything, including her life. You’ve never loved anyone or anything except gold and whoring.”

He closed his eyes at the old woman’s words, knowing in his heart that they had been true. But he wasn’t that man anymore. Out of a dusty and dead past, she flowed with color and energy. He could see Madeleine like she’d been the moment he met her at the Celebration Ball.

She had been draped in peach silk a contrast to her ivory skin that would feel so very silky beneath his fingertips. Touch, a half-forgotten sense bloomed to life.

For a fierce minute, he could almost taste her luscious lips, so real she was to him in the crucial silence. The sensation of her flowed over him like a tangible half forgotten memory then was gone. The ache that it brought remained.

“I may not have realized it until too late, but I loved Madeleine. Nothing you say or do will change that fact.”
“You broke her heart and her spirit.”

“And you punished me for it.”

“Yes, you are doomed to walk the cobbles alone. I made certain of that in the voodoo curse I placed on your soul. I also made certain your soul would remain here in Court du Chaud where you defiled my granddaughter, left her with twins in her belly and made her a pariah from society.”

“But old woman, you tied your fate to mine.”

She shrugged her thin shoulders. “Everything comes with a price.” She looked away and whispered, “Everything. I am sure my precious Madeleine discovered that too late.”

“Her descendents–our descendents–have had to pay the most terrible price of all.”

“You speak in riddles, pirate.”

“I am not a pirate, old woman,” he said automatically, even now the words hollow and heavy on his soul. “You cursed our descendents with ambition, and forever robbed them of the chance for love.”

“I blessed them so that they would not follow in Madeleine’s footsteps and make fools of themselves in the name of love.”

“Curses. Blessings. All a matter of opinion.”

“I am connected to you through eternity,” she sneered, “But it is a small price for revenge.” Her voice echoed in his ears and then she was gone.

Belle Grandmere might derive great pleasure out of his pain, but he believed there was hope. He turned to look at the twins who had emerged from their respective town homes, Tallis and Breanne Addison.

He watched them walk toward the café. Their auras were lifeless pewter gray, a gray heralding the sad fact that true love had never touched their beautiful souls.

These were the first twins born in their family in two hundred years. It might signify a way to break the curse. The crone would never tell him outright, but he could speculate. He had watched his descendents for a very long time.

There must be a way to break the curse.

He turned his attention to the wall behind the counter. The full length mural painted with vibrant colors depicted a pirate dressed in a rakish hat, a long plume of a feather stuck jauntily in the brim, his expression cocky and invulnerable.

The pirate’s scarlet waistcoat with white piping and black velvet accents was meant to poke fun at the redcoats he and Jean Lafitte had defeated at the battle for New Orleans.

The pirate had also risked life and limb to smuggle in the falderals and trappings for the society of which he longed to be a part. What did he get for it? A boot in the face. Thumbing his nose at them, the pirate had built the elegant Court du Chaud-the “hot” court-right in their midst on prime property gifted to him by Lafitte.
But the tough, rakish man in the mural had learned nothing. Society would never accept him, not even after he had claimed an upper-class miss. Defiant and scorned, he’d sailed his flagship The Crescent to Texas to lick his wounds.

Off the coast of Texas the pirate finally found an enemy he could not fight.

Death.

He died looking up into the moonlit sky, the sounds of his breathing harsh, the noise of battle fading from his ears as his vision dimmed.

Madeleine.

As his life ebbed, he’d been given an epiphany. But cruel fate had robbed him of the chance to change, to make things right. His blood had seeped into the wooden deck and he had died with a curse upon his soul.
Gabriel Dampier gazed up at the image of himself, then out the window of the café to the twins below.
He’d been dead over two hundred years.

But was his salvation now upon him?