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  “Look,” she said, scooting back to put some distance between them. “I just remembered I have an appointment so I really need to get going.”

  To her relief, he didn’t push.

  “Sure, I understand.” He rose easily and waited for her to stand as well.

  Harper did, gathering her beach bag under her arm and shaking the sand off her towel which she folded hastily over her other arm.

  “Well…goodbye. Nice meeting you and Happy New Year,” she said lamely.

  “Nice to meet you too.” He scratched the back of his neck and turned away. When he did, Harper saw a raised red welt just under his hairline, like the one on her own arm.

  She wondered uneasily if he’d been stung by a wasp like she had. The image of the bright, metallic green and gold insect flickered across her mind and then was gone in an instant.

  “Oh wait,” lifeguard guy said, turning back. He held out the shiny purple stone, as if it was an afterthought. “Don’t forget this. It might bring you luck for the New Year.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t,” Harper protested but he made as if to drop it into her hand and she was already reaching out reflexively to catch it when a hoarse voice shattered the peace of the quiet beach.

  “Don’t touch it, Harper!”

  Harper’s head jerked up and she saw a man running across the sand dunes toward her. He was big—bigger than big, huge—and he had the blackest hair she’d ever seen. It was made blacker by the paleness of his skin—he looked like he’d never been outside in the sunlight before that moment. There was something strange about his eyes too, but Harper couldn’t tell what it was—she was more distracted by the fact that the wild-looking stranger was not only some kind of giant but also completely naked.

  “Don’t touch it!” he shouted again, his deep voice rising over the sound of the rushing surf. “It’s death to touch it. Fucking death!”

  “Take it. You have to take it!”

  Suddenly lifeguard guy had her by the wrist. There was an intensely focused look on his face, but his eyes were strangely blank. He had a frighteningly strong grip on her arm and he was trying to force her to take the shiny purple stone.

  Harper drew back instinctively, attempting to get free. What the hell was going on here?

  “Let me go!” she demanded, yanking at her trapped wrist. “Let me go, Goddamnit!”

  “Touch it,” lifeguard guy insisted. “Just touch it!”

  “No, I don’t want to!”

  “You heard the lady.” Suddenly the huge naked stranger with black hair and blazing eyes was upon them. He seemed to have covered the last few feet of sand at an almost inhuman pace. Balling up a fist that looked to Harper to be as big as her head, he punched lifeguard guy hard in the face.

  The grip on her wrist loosened abruptly as the formerly nice-looking lifeguard went down in a boneless heap, sprawling at their feet. His other hand loosened too and the shiny purple M&M stone skittered across the sand.

  Without missing a beat, the naked stranger scooped up the stone along with a handful of sand and threw it as hard as he could. Harper saw it sparkle in the sunlight and then it plopped into the ocean, far enough out to make her gape. Wow, with a pitching arm like that he could be a major league player! Not that she followed sports much but they were pretty much all her younger brothers could talk about and she’d seen more than of her share of Rays games.

  Then her eyes drifted lower. Wow, this guy was huge everywhere.

  Looks like he’s packing a bat and balls to match that pitching arm, whispered the little voice in her head and a semi-hysterical giggle rose in her throat.

  Harper swallowed it back down.

  “Who—?” she began, backing away from the stranger.

  “Give me your towel,” he demanded.

  “What?” She clutched the blue and white striped beach towel to her chest protectively.

  “Give me your towel,” he said impatiently. “It makes you nervous that I’m naked. Let me cover up while we talk.”

  “Who said I want to talk to you?” Harper demanded but she was already handing over the towel. There was an air of authority about this huge man that was impossible to ignore.

  He wrapped the towel around his waist, hiding his considerable endowments and looked at her intently. His eyes were white, Harper saw—not just plain chalk-white though—they were a shifting, opalescent hue that seemed to be every color and no color at once. A thin ring of black around the outer irises accounted for the strange piercing quality of his gaze. She’d never seen such eyes in her life—they made her uneasy, as though the stranger could see right through her.

  “Listen to me—we don’t have much time,” he said in a low, clipped voice. “I’m Shadow, a warrior of the Kindred, but most who know me call me Shad.”

  A Kindred—of course! Should have known. There was no way he could be human—he was at least seven feet tall, literally hung like a horse, and extremely muscular. Not to mention those eyes…It made sense that he was one of the alien warriors who guarded the Earth and occasionally called human brides to live in their huge Mother Ship orbiting the moon.

  Harper had a sudden thought and her stomach dropped—she’d just gone down to the Tampa HKR office last week to register herself for the bride draft, as was required of all unmarried Earth females, according to the treaty the Kindred had with the leaders of Earth. She hadn’t thought anything of it at the time—statistically not that many women were called as brides. In fact, she’d made a little celebration of it. It was just another sign that she was no longer tied to the good-for-nothing Jareth—that she’d broken her last tie with her former fiancé and had no intention of going back.

  “Did…did you come to call me as your bride?” she asked anxiously. “Because I’m not…I never…”

  “No,” he said harshly and barked a laugh. “Gods, you always ask me that. No, I’m here to save your life—and with it, the life of everyone on the Mother Ship and many on Earth. But in order to do that, you have to listen to me.”

  “No, I don’t think so. This all sounds too crazy for me.” Harper took a wary step back from him. She’d never heard of the Kindred having any kind of psychosis or doing mind altering drugs but this guy was definitely high on something. Saying he was here to save her life? Save it from what? The still unconscious lifeguard guy and his threatening purple M&M?

  Nope, whispered the skeptical little voice in her head. I don’t think so.

  But the huge Kindred wasn’t taking no for an answer.

  “Listen to me,” he repeated in that low, intense voice of his. “Your name is Harper Lee Wilde. You were named so because To Kill a Mockingbird is your mother’s favorite book. You like to joke it’s lucky she didn’t name you ‘Scout’ or ‘Boo Radley.’”

  Harper stopped in her tracks. That was something she sometimes said when people remarked on her name. But he might have overheard it somewhere—maybe at a party she’d attended when she was meeting new people. Her mother had dragged her to a fair number of Christmas parties that year and she was certain she’d made plenty of introductions.

  But don’t you think you would have noticed a seven-foot-tall white guy with blazing white eyes staring at you if he was anywhere in the room? whispered the little voice in her head.

  Still, though—it was too weird. She took another step, putting distance between them. But Shadow—Shad—wasn’t done yet.

  “You had a stuffed rabbit when you were younger—given to you by your father. You named him Mr. Bun. He was lost when you took him to the amusement park—the Gardens of Busch, I think. You believed in the tooth fairy until you were ten and you woke up and saw your mother putting a dollar under your pillow one night.”

  “Hey…” Harper felt all the blood drain from her face. “How…how can you possibly know all that about me?”

  He looked at her intently.

  “Because you told me, Harper. You told me all of it before.”

  “But I’ve never met you before in