“For instance,” she went on, but too quickly, her voice too light and too glib, “you could tell me how you and your wife were childhood sweethearts, and she died tragically when she fell overboard on your honeymoon cruise, and that’s why you don’t have any children, and ever since-”

“Nothing so romantic, I’m afraid,” he interrupted dryly. “My wife and I met in college. We’re divorced. Not having kids was a mutual decision-a wise one, as it turned out.”

“Ah,” said Ellie. A dozen new questions were buzzing around in her brain. College? You went to college? Where? How long were you married? Why didn’t you want kids? Was it the divorce that brought you here? Then she remembered. “Is that the true story?” she asked suspiciously. “Or did you make it up?”

“Ah, but that’s the question, isn’t it?” His chuckle was soft and dry as the wind in the bird-of-paradise. “That’s the trouble with lies-after the first one, you can’t ever know what to believe.”

Now it was Ellie who had nothing to say. And suddenly, inexplicably, there were tears welling up in her eyes-where had they come from? Rose Ellen Lanagan was not and never had been a crybaby! But she’d never felt this overwhelming sense of loss and loneliness, either-an intense longing for something she couldn’t even put a name to, but which she knew for certain did not involve lies.

“Your turn,” McCall said softly.

“I beg your pardon?” Ellie mumbled. Had he asked her a question? She’d no idea what.

“Your husband. You told me his name-my name now, I suppose-is Ken.”

“Right,” said Ellie, trying surreptitiously to stop her nose from running without resorting to a telltale sniff. “Ken Burnside.”

“And that the two of you own a pet shop in Portland, Oregon.” There was a pause. “So…if you grew up on a farm in Iowa, how did you two meet?”

“At a ‘Save the Whales’ rally,” Ellie returned instantly-defiantly. Well, it could have been true, dammit!

She heard him mutter, laughing, under his breath. Something that sounded like “Goody Two-Shoes,” and then, “Figures…”

Goody Two-Shoes? Why did he always say that? She sucked in a breath, feeling vaguely insulted and gravely misunderstood. But after holding the breath for a half-dozen or so pulse-pounding beats, she let it out without a sound. What did it matter what he thought of her? The man obviously had no interest in knowing who she really was-even if she’d been free to tell him. She’d bent over backward to be friendly, and he didn’t seem to want to meet her even halfway-which was particularly hard for her to swallow, since she’d always been the kind of person who made friends easily wherever she went. People just naturally liked Ellie Lanagan. Most people. Apparently not this person. Was that why it bothered her so much? Some perversity in her nature, some contrary streak that caused her to be attracted to the one person seemingly immune to her charms?

There. I said it: I am attracted to him. I’m fiercely attracted to a scruffy and somewhat mysterious beach-bum-slash-artist-slash-social-dropout I know only as McCall.

It was almost a relief to admit it. She felt better immediately, though perhaps a little shaky-rather as if she’d finally pulled out a painfully inflamed splinter.

That’s all it is, she thought. Just an attraction. I’ve had them before, though probably never one as dumb as this. Now I can laugh at myself and put it aside. Concentrate on the job ahead of me. Keep my wits about me. Now I can sleep.

“Well,” she said abruptly, “I believe I’ll give that couch another try. Good night, McCall.”

She heard a click, a faint hiss and crackle, and then a soft and ironic, “Good night…Mrs. Burnside.”

After she’d gone back inside, McCall sat for a long time on his bedroom windowsill, smoking and watching the moon rise out of Tropical Storm Paulette’s cloudy veil, contemplating the nature of lust and sin. And, like most people confronted with their own guilt, trying as hard as he could to rationalize it.

Well, hell, he told himself, how was he supposed to remember she was a married woman when she kept forgetting to act like one? Not that she’d openly flirted with him, or done anything overtly improper-besides kissing him, of course, and there’d been extenuating circumstances for that. No, it wasn’t so much what she’d done, as what she didn’t do. She didn’t talk about her husband, for one thing. Every married woman he’d ever met, happy or unhappy, it seemed like they couldn’t seem to get a complete sentence out without mentioning hubby one way or another. It was, “my husband says this,” or “my husband does that.” This woman almost never brought up her husband’s name, unless McCall did so first, and when he did, she’d blush. And that was another thing. It was true that, in McCall’s experience at least, women in love generally tended to light up when speaking of their beloved. But with sort of a happy glow, not going all flustered like this woman did, as if she were embarrassed by even the suggestion of such intimacy.

No, he thought, there was definitely something not quite right with the Burnsides.

Not that it was any of McCall’s business. Happy or unhappy, right or not right, he didn’t get involved with married women. End of story.

Which brought him back to his internal debate on the nature of lust and of sin. For various reasons, McCall wasn’t big on religion, but he did believe wholeheartedly in the concept of sin. Hey, there was right, and there was wrong, no getting around that. And no matter how hard a man might try to get around it, in his heart he mostly always knew the difference. Which was why, at the moment, he was having a little argument with himself over whether lusting after a married woman in his heart was actually a sin. Oh, sure, according to the gospel and Jimmy Carter, thinking was supposed to be the same as doing, but given the nature of human beings, McCall was pretty sure there’d be quite a bit of slack involved there. He figured a man was in the clear as long as he didn’t do anything about his thoughts. Okay, there was that commandment-he couldn’t remember which number-the one about not coveting thy neighbor’s wife. But he felt certain he was okay on that score, too, because the way he understood it, covet meant wanting to have for himself, and the last thing McCall wanted was to have any woman for himself-married or otherwise.

For the past seven years he’d been careful to keep his liaisons with women uncomplicated and hassle-free- “safe sex” being a concept he took very seriously, in more ways than one. And if there was anything he was certain of right now it was that this woman-whether she went by Ellie Lanagan, Mrs. Ken Burnside or Cinnamon, as she would always be to McCall-could complicate his life in ways he hadn’t even thought of yet.

He tossed away his cigarette, but instead of reaching immediately for another, sat very still for a while, listening to the sounds of the night: the singing of insects and of frogs, wind rustling through palm trees, the disconcerting crunching noises Inky was making somewhere in the dark bedroom behind him. The small voice inside him that kept saying, Fool, she’s already complicated your life, don’t you know that?

Oh, yeah. Forget about the perky little breasts, smooth, tan legs, cinnamon freckles, ratchety voice and killer smile. There was still the small fact that, as of this moment, he was guilty of aiding and abetting her in the commission of a felony. What was he going to do about that?

He had until tomorrow to think of something.

From the crossroads town of Tulum, the highway left the coast and angled abruptly inland. Ellie, who’d been dividing her attention between the view from the VW’s windows and the map spread across her lap, rubbernecked so avidly when they passed the marked turnoffs to the Mayan ruins at Coba on the right, and the Punta Allen peninsula on the left, that McCall asked her about it.

“Oh, nothing,” she said, but with a wistful sigh. “I was just wishing-”

“Say the word,” he said roughly. “If you want to change your mind about going through with this-”

“No, no-I’d just like to see the Sian Ka’an Biosphere Reserve someday, that’s all.”

McCall gave her a quick, hard look. “Not the ruins? That’s where most tourists wind up-unless you’re into reef diving.”

Ellie shrugged. “I’m not much into ruins. It’s the wildlife that interests me-you know, the birds, the animals.”

“Ah,” said McCall. “Of course.” From Ellie’s angle his smile looked wry, and without much humor.

“Well, have you ever been there?”

He threw her a glance. “To the Reserve? Nah-been down the peninsula, though, many times. Diving.”

“What’s it like?”

He gave her the same crooked smile, but it seemed easier, now. She could see the creases at the corner of his eye. “It’s a great place to go if you want to get away from the world. And don’t mind a few inconveniences.”

“Well,” said Ellie dryly, “I can see why you’d love it.” And she was pleased beyond proportion when he laughed.

It didn’t take much encouragement, then, for him to tell her about his travels on the peninsula, and his adventures diving the reefs along the coast there. She listened to him talk, shivering with a strange happiness, marveling at how articulate he was, how comfortable with himself and with words when the subject wasn’t his personal or past life. Questions rushed into her mind like an unexpected gust of wind, leaving her breathless, unsettled, off-balance.

What must he have been in his former life-a lawyer? Teacher? Used-car salesman? CEO? He was good with people, once. He had a wife. Money, too-he said so. What could have happened, to make him give it all up? What was it that brought him here?