pamela burford

"Everything from dangerous passions to deadly chills. Take heart, Intrigue fans, Pamela Burford has arrived."



"Talk about a trip into the Twilight Zone! And you will love every minute of this chilling story of a fear-love relationship that walks the finest edge of danger."



"A splashy debut! An imaginative tale of reincarnation that will leave you anxious for future works from this talented newcomer."

Bryan parked in front of Noah’s sprawling home and hopped out of the truck. She watched the front door open and Noah saunter out, with a smile for his young friend. He hadn’t noticed her yet.

“She’s hurt,” Bryan said, circling around to the passenger door.

Noah froze, his gaze zeroing in on her. Then Bryan’s words seemed to register and she saw his eyes widen. He sprinted to the truck just as Bryan got the door open.

Kit forced her eyes away from Noah’s concerned gaze and said lightly, “I told him to take me to the hospital in Wescott.”

“I’m sure you did.”

She felt him pry her hand from her leg, then he gently lifted the blood-soaked bandanna. She sucked in a breath as it pulled away from the torn flesh. He ripped her jeans a little more to get a better look. “What happened?”

Bryan gave a succinct account of the accident while they helped her out of the truck. Noah let her lean on Bryan as she hobbled into the house, a concession to his cracked ribs, no doubt. He led her into an examination room and helped her onto the paper-draped table, then dismissed Bryan with a good-natured “Beat it.”

“I want him to stay,” Kit said.

Both men stared at her. Noah’s expression was frigid, Bryan’s bemused. “Fine with me,” Noah said. “Let’s get those pants off.” He reached for her fly, with its row of buttons.

“Uh…” She stayed his hand, her face growing warm. “Can’t you just cut the fabric around the—”

“No.” He started working on the buttons.

Bryan leaned against the wall, arms folded, a hateful grin plastered on his face. “Buttons are, like, so much sexier than zippers, don’t you think? Need some help with that?”

Noah urged her to lie flat and eased the garment over her hips, his demeanor strictly professional. She’d assumed Bryan would do the gentlemanly thing and turn his back, but she should have known better. He stared avidly as her panties came into view—a skimpy string bikini. Not much more than a strategically placed triangle of ice blue lace through which the dusky wedge of hair was clearly visible. And the cropped T-shirt didn’t even reach her navel!

Still, she thought she could handle the boy’s presence, till he said, “Lace. Yum.”

Her face scalding, she jerked the waistband away from Noah and yanked it back up. ”Out!” she barked at Bryan. “Get out of here!”

“I thought you wanted me to—”

”Go!”

He shrugged. “I’ll go play with the Legos in the waiting room.” He ambled out, and Noah closed the door after him. Bryan would probably come up with a Lego flamethrower, she mused.

“Was he supposed to protect you?” Noah asked, resuming his task.

Anything she said would only make the situation worse, so she said nothing. She lifted her hips to help him slide the jeans down, and even though he took care, when the denim scraped her wound, her entire body snapped taut.

“Sorry,” he murmured, tossing the jeans onto a chair. His gaze landed on her left thigh, the intact one. Without looking, she knew what had snagged his attention.

“What happened here?” he asked, sliding his fingertips over the purple bruises. The instant the words were out of his mouth, he knew what he was looking at. She could tell. The question was, did he remember doing that to her? His hand slid down to cover the fading finger marks.

He looked straight into her eyes, and for the first time that day she saw more than a briskly efficient family practitioner. There was an echo of the anguish and regret she’d seen four days ago by the light of the fireworks.

“He did hurt you.”

“You hurt me.”

He didn’t argue the point. “Where else?” He quickly looked her over, and found the marks on her wrists. He lifted them both and turned them over…rubbed his thumbs over the discolored flesh in a healing gesture. His eyes were sad but sharp when they spotted the edge of another bruise at the rolled-up sleeve of her T-shirt where his own fingers had bitten into her shoulder four days earlier. He pulled up the sleeve and examined it, too.

She yanked the sleeve back down. “They’re only bruises,” she said harshly. “That’s not what I’m here for.”

Resuming his doctorly air seemed to take an effort, as if he had to force himself to turn from her and ready the supplies he’d need. He opened cabinets and pulled out items she couldn’t see. All she could see was his back, clad in a faded indigo polo shirt. “Was the hammer dirty?” he asked.

She heard the muted click of instruments being laid out on a clean towel, the sound of paper tearing, assorted ominous rustlings…She swallowed hard and affected a light tone. “Yeah, and rusty.” She leaned up enough to squint down at her leg. The sight of her state of dishabille was more disconcerting than the bloody gash on the outside of her right thigh. She let her head flop back and drilled her gaze into the ceiling.

He crossed to the sink and scrubbed his hands, then donned latex gloves. At last he returned to her side with a small plastic basin, some gauze pads, a bottle of Betadine and what appeared to be a turkey baster.

“Heh, heh, where’s the cranberry sauce?” she asked in a reedy voice.

He raised her knee and set the basin under her thigh. “Don’t be nervous, Kit.”

“I’m not nervous.” Hell, no, I always squeak like this.

Not knowing what to do with her hands, she folded them primly at her waist. It took all her willpower not to clap them over her crotch. Especially with Noah standing right over her, scrutinizing her, breathing on her, blotting her wound with gauze pads. Getting ready to do God knows what with his stupid turkey baster.

A memory assailed her then, of Noah at the cemetery—the real Noah—sliding his fingers up her thigh and higher…dragging the back of his hand slowly between her legs, marking her with a burst of tingling heat everywhere he touched. Now, as then, her body’s response was swift and merciless. Kit pulled in a long, slow breath, restraining a moan as scalding heat crawled up her neck and face. She felt suddenly aching and engorged, unbearably exposed under the unforgiving fluorescent light and her inadequate shield of blue lace, her body swelling and blossoming and growing slick with need. Could he see it, sense it? Oh, God. Did he know? If so, his authoritative voice gave no indication.

“This is an irrigation syringe. It’s filled with saline solution,” he said. “I’m gonna flush out the dirt first.” He squirted the salt water right onto the gash. It burned, and she screwed up her face, clenched her fingers together. But she didn’t move a muscle.

He flicked a glance at her face, as if to ensure that she’d handled it okay, while he wet a gauze pad with the brown Betadine antiseptic. He began cleaning the wound and the skin around it, his touch gentle, his manner once more businesslike. He seemed oblivious to her near nakedness, as if he hadn’t even noticed the screamingly naughty little why-bother scrap of lace and satin that Jo had dared her to buy, so she’d had to get two of every color just to show her.

Guess I showed her, huh?

He removed the basin and lowered her knee, then turned to the counter once more. “Now for the fun part.” Kit strained to see what he was doing. She didn’t trust a doctor’s version of “fun.” When he turned back, he was holding a hypodermic needle.

The primitive part of her brain, the part charged with self-preservation, knew right away that something was wrong with this picture, but it took her conscious mind a couple of heartbeats to figure it out.

Look who’s about to give you a shot, dummy.

She swallowed a big, dry wad of apprehension and said, “What’s that?”

“Novocaine.” He studied the wound as if deciding where to stick the needle. “You need stitches, in case you hadn’t figured that one out.”

“Well, uh…wait a minute.” She leaned up on her elbows, her wary eyes on the needle. “Don’t they use those butterfly things nowadays? those little bandages?”

“Not for something like this. It’s gonna take twelve, fifteen stitches easy. Come on.” With a hand on her shoulder he urged her to lie flat again, but she wouldn’t budge. “You won’t feel a—”

“I don’t want novocaine.”

“What!”

Now that she’d said it, she thought about it. How bad could it be, really? She’d read more than one historical novel in which some macho character got sewn up without benefit of novocaine. People used to do it all the time; they had no choice.

An image loomed in her imagination with sickening clarity: Anita David gasping for air, anxiously waiting for the man she trusted—her lover—to administer the shot of epinephrine that would end her suffering. And while Kit knew that Noah couldn’t possibly have been responsible for that first poisoning three decades ago, the horrifying fact was, he was the closest thing she had as a suspect in Jo’s murder. And it was a matter of public record that, self-defense or not, he’d killed at least once.

“You heard me.” She tried to put starch in her words. “I don’t want novocaine.”