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especially because she was on the edge of condemning herself to an indeterminate sentence in very civilized Europe.
    Other than the fact of the bequest, Rosen’s information had been sketchy. When he’d gotten tired of her questions, he’d told her that Cole Blackburn, the courier who was delivering Abelard Windsor’s will, would answer all her questions.
    Idly Erin scanned the crowd again, wondering what Cole would look like. All Rosen knew about Cole was that he was a geologist who represented the law firm involved in the administration of the Windsor estate. The law firm was well known in Australia and in Hong Kong. When pressed, Rosen admitted that the situation was unusual but hardly a cause for alarm. The law firm had excellent credentials.
    Even so, Erin had chosen a vantage point screened by the crowds in the lobby so that she might be able to pick Cole out before he spotted her. Her decision wasn’t entirely conscious. She always arranged encounters with male strangers, so that she wasn’t taken by surprise. Part of the reason was her natural reserve. Part was a caution learned at the slicing edge of a knife.
    The lobby was full of travelers with luggage and business types with expensive leather briefcases. Many of the men were tanned and appeared wealthy, but none of them stood around looking from face to passing face, hoping to find someone they had never met in the hotel lobby.
    For a moment Erin thought the casually dressed, longhaired blond male with the oversized leather rucksack might be Cole. The man had the tanned, outdoorsy look that field geologists in Alaska had. He was handsome, with fine features and a gentle smile, and it all added up to a quiet modern male who understated his masculinity. He was the sort of man Erin found herself with much of the time when she was in the world of NewYork and Europe.
    The young man had been standing near the reception desk for a few minutes, scanning the crowd, waiting for someone. Erin was about to leave her blind and introduce herself when a dazzling middle-aged woman in evening clothes threw herself into the young man’s arms. Erin saw little television in Alaska, but she immediately recognized the woman as the bitch star of an enormously popular weekly series. In person, she looked at least a decade older than her escort.
    The couple chatted for a moment, then walked arm in arm toward the lobby bar where a party was already under way. Erin thought the actress clung to the young man in a peculiarly possessive way, displaying him like a woman leading a small dog in a show. If the young man disliked it, he kept it under wraps.
    Lapdogs aren’t noted for their teeth.
    Erin’s wry thought didn’t show on her face. As the couple passed, she realized that the young man’s tan was salon perfect, not a squint line on his whole smooth face. The leather rucksack was also an affectation. No bulges or scuffs marred its expensive lines. He walked like a man used to getting in and out of taxis.
    As soon as the couple vanished, Erin’s eye was caught by a striking slash of darkness in the midst of all the glitter and gilt—a black-haired man in a black silk jacket and open-collared white shirt. His skin had been changed by sun and weather rather than by carefully applied artificial light. He walked with the unconscious grace of a healthy animal. A black leather case was handcuffed to his wrist.
    He was looking right at her.
    For an instant Erin’s pulse accelerated with a purely female response. Then her elemental awareness gave way to an irritation that was close to anger and even closer to fear. This easy-walking man with his knowing eyes and his powerful body was exactly the sort of man she’d learned at such cost not to trust. He was a predator. Like her father. Like her brother.
    Like Hans.
    Because she knew she was reacting irrationally, Erin fought to cover her response to the tall stranger. The man was nothing more to her than a business appointment, a