I drew a quivering breath.

Devlin.

The haunted police detective I couldn’t get out of my mind or my heart. The mere thought of him was like a dark caress, a forbidden kiss. Every time I closed my eyes, I could hear the whisper of his aristocratic drawl, that slow, seductive cadence. With very little effort, I could conjure the scorching demand of his perfect mouth on mine…the honeyed trail of his tongue…those graceful, questing hands… .

Returning my focus to the street, I glanced over my shoulder. Whatever stalked me had fallen back or disappeared, and my fear eased as it always did when I neared hallowed ground.

Then, a bird called from somewhere in the high branches, the sound so startling I stopped in my tracks to listen. I’d heard that trill once before in the evening shadows of a courtyard in Paris. The serenade was like no other. Gentle and dreamy. Like floating in a warm, candlelit bath. I would have thought it a nightingale, but they were indigenous to Europe and by now would have made the three-thousand mile trek to Africa for the winter.

In the wake of the songbird, a fragrance floated down to me, something lush and exotic. Neither sound nor scent belonged to this city—perhaps even to this world—and a warning prickled my scalp.

I heard a whisper and turned, almost expecting to see Devlin emerge from the shadows the way he’d appeared to me from the mist on the night we met. I could still see him as he was then—an enigmatic stranger, one so darkly handsome and brooding he might have stepped straight from my adolescent fantasies.

But Devlin wasn’t behind me. At this hour, he was probably still at police headquarters. I’d heard nothing more than the rustle of leaves, I told myself. The phantom whisper of my own longing.