Joy and Anger

Chapter One

The swamp was not a friendly place, especially as evening faded into night. There was a primeval quality in the dank darkness under the towering old cypress trees surrounded by their humped roots known as cypress knees, in the rotting logs, dark green palmetto palms, and mangrove trees that crowded the water's edge. The rampant growth of vines and mats of fern that entwined the tree limbs, the singing, stinging insects, and night creatures that watched with eyes glowing red in the lantern light made it seem impossibly wild, incredibly far from civilization. The silent gliding of the pirogue through the mist rising from the river was like a journey into another time.

Great. It was going to be great.

Julie Bullard grinned a little to herself. Imagination was not a bad thing in a movie director; she was already picturing the images she wanted to put on film. The locations for the scenes she needed, most in daylight but also one at night, were just around the next bend, she knew it. This trip in the old-fashioned wooden boat was going to be a worthwhile excursion, a most profitable evening.

The narrow pirogue rocked, swinging to the right as it surged forward to skirt a loglike shape in the water near the bank. Julie tightened her grip on the plank seat as she looked back at her guide. He was standing in the rear of the boat, lifting his long pole with a muddy swirl as he used it to propel the shallow craft along the winding river's course. The bowlegged Cajun, his face a network of wrinkles as intricate as the waterways through the Louisiana swampland, his eyes gleaming in the faint light of the camper's lantern in the prow, nodded toward the long shape in the water. "That old 'gator, he comin' to see what we want, that's all."

Julie glanced at the alligator in mock nervousness. "You're absolutely certain alligators don't eat people?"

He gave her a toothless smile. "I guarantee! Not live people, any rate. Might turn the boat over, just curious like. Best go 'round him."

"Right," Julie said, her tone dry as she faced forward again.

Her guide chuckled.

Julie wasn't really afraid of the night or anything in it. She believed the old Cajun when he said alligators seldom killed anything larger than the stray raccoon or opossum, and that the poisonous water snakes with picturesque names like cottonmouth and copperhead moccasin that made arrow-shaped wakes in the water were more afraid of her than she was of them. Though she hid it well, she was thrilled to sense the swamp around her, moved by its primitive magic. If she could feel these things, surely she could make moviegoers feel them, too.

She had also been right to take her film on location instead of trying to do it on a bunch of sets made out of plastic and papier-mâché. Keeping the cost down was important; she knew that without having darling Allen striding up and down in his silk pajamas making noises like a producer. She was well aware, too, that she had to bring this movie in on time in order to prove herself as one of the few women directors of note in L.A. Still, there was something else just as important, and that was the integrity of the movie she was making.

It was she who had developed this property, writing the screenplay herself after putting up her own money to option the book by a new young Louisiana author. Swamp Kingdom was a tale of a young girl's coming-of-age, one celebrating the triumph of cultural background and tradition over wealth and its privileges. There was drama in it, provided by the custody battle between a Cajun man and his New Orleans socialite wife over their adolescent daughter, and plenty of action as the Cajun kidnaps his daughter from his wife's new town-house apartment and takes her into the swamps, then has to fight the goons sent by his wife to bring the girl back. It had humor, sex, pathos--everything, in fact, including a good if not spectacular cast. There were no huge stars; Julie couldn't afford them. Regardless, she didn't see how it could fail to do well at the box office so long as she could transfer the story to the screen as she saw it in her mind.

Her father had told her she was foolish to try. The great William Bullard, winner of two Academy Awards for Best Director on the strength of his innovative approach to film, had advised her not to take chances. She should, he said, stick to the low-budget surfing movies and women's pictures with which she had made her mark.

That had hurt, her father's lack of faith. It had hurt that he couldn't see how much she had absorbed from watching him all these years, that he failed to recognize that she was capable of putting broader stories, larger themes, on film. It wasn't experience she was lacking; she had made her first grainy 16mm short feature more than fifteen years ago, when she was still at UCLA. She had been a surfing freak then, one of those tall, tan, blond California girls who haunt the beaches and talk the jargon of tunnels and rips like some second language. That first film had been made out of love of the ocean and fascination with the young men and women who challenged the waves. It had been crowned with the luck that comes to those who approach their subject with respect and confidence; she had caught something essential about the sport of surfing and the nomads it spawned. The film, blown up to 35mm, had been selected for showing in the Directors' Fortnight at Cannes, and she had not stopped making movies since.

There could be only one reason her father doubted her ability, and that was because she was a woman. She shouldn't have been surprised; he had always made it plain he expected his daughter to be ornamental and suitably adoring until she married and transferred her affections to her husband. He was an unrepentant chauvinist who thought a woman's place was in the kitchen and in bed, in alternating sequence. The strange thing was that Julie's mother had more or less conformed to that image, and he still had not been satisfied. He needed the excitement of other women, or of being out with the boys, sailing, fishing, hunting, bullfighting, stock-car racing--anything that risked life and limb and kept him away from home. He needed freedom, or its illusion. After a while, Julie's mother had given him all the freedom he wanted. Bull, as her father was known to his friends and even to Julie herself, had not been happy with that, either.

Following the divorce, Julie's mother had retreated to her hometown in the central portion of Louisiana, taking Julie with her, refusing to have anything more to do with the ersatz glamour of L.A.

Fake places had little appeal for Julie, either. That was why it was so important that she have the real thing to film, real New Orleans streets, real jazz, real swampland. She was glad to be shooting in her mother's part of the country since it gave her the opportunity to spend time where she had lived until she was a teenager, until her mother died, but that consideration was secondary.

Julie had been filming in New Orleans for the best part of a month. Now she had at least another four weeks of work here in the swampland northwest of the city before she could wrap up Swamp Kingdom. She thought she was going to make it on time and under budget, in spite of a rash of minor accidents on the set and petty problems with absenteeism and the theft of supplies. She would be both glad and sorry when it was done, glad because of the unexpected strain of trying to fulfill the promise of the story and portray the Cajun life-style and the beauty of the swamp exactly right, and sorry because she would be ending a project that gave her an unusual sense of achievement.

She was creating a solid piece of work here with her crew. She had to keep telling herself that, regardless of what anyone else thought or said. Sometimes, she actually believed it for whole hours at a time.

The pirogue glided along near the bank of the river, the Blind River, it was called. The waterway, in ancient times a channel of the Mississippi before the great river had made one of its many changes of course, was looping but well defined. So old it was no longer connected in any way to the Mississippi, it had no discernible current, though it meandered in a general southeasterly direction. It had once been called Bayou Acadian, Julie had learned. That was until the thirties when English-speaking logging crews came into the swamps to clear the virgin cypress. It had gained its new name then because the loggers found the old one hard to say, and because the dark color of the water caused by the acid from constantly dripping tree sap made the water opaque little could be seen below the surface.

There was no moon tonight in the dense blue-black arch of the sky overhead. The pale stars in the Milky Way seemed to be tangled in a great gauze veil that reached down on each side to near treetop level. A mellow fall breeze, damp and smelling of fish yet fresh with a hint of salt from the distant Gulf, stirred Julie's hair against the tops of her shoulders. A leaf, one of the few beginning to turn though it was already October, drifted down to swirl in the wake of the pirogue's passing. The only sounds were the dipping of the guide's pole and the chorus of the peeper frogs, with the occasional whine of a mosquito, the call of a hunting owl, or bellow of an alligator.

Julie breathed deep, and let the air escape from her lungs on a slow sigh. It was so peaceful, floating through the night in the dim glow of the lantern. Her guide, Joseph, had wanted to take her out in his skiff with the outboard motor attached, and she had let him make the first ten miles or so of the river in it for the sake of speed. Then she had insisted on transferring to the pirogue they had towed behind them. One reason was that she wanted to see how one of the shallow-draft boats handled, but she also craved the slower ride and the quiet so she could think.

It had been a good choice. Once past the big canals, the fishing and hunting camps, the drinking places, and the small wooden chapel on the upper reaches, she had had time to really see the river. She had had time to notice the different trees and plants and animals, time to see the various canals, bayous, sloughs, and narrow, almost hidden runs leading into the river as the guide pointed them out before the light began to fail. There was definitely something to be said for doing things the old way, for slowing down, taking it easy. She had been too involved with the problems of her movie lately, too anxious about it.

She should try to take everything at a less hectic pace, and she would, too, as soon as Swamp Kingdom was in the can. If Allen wasn't too busy, maybe she could talk him into flying down to the islands or to Belize, maybe renting a beach cottage and playing castaways for a few weeks. It was unlikely, but she could try.

Ahead of the boat, the river channel widened. A stretch of water appeared that opened out into an area the size of two football fields. It was edged by patches of cattails and the tall water weeds known as cut grass, and had several stands of cypress trees spotted here and there, lifting branches festooned with lacelike leaves and draperies of gray Spanish moss toward the night sky. Julie leaned forward to see better, at the same time catching the full skirt of her white cotton dress and wrapping it around her knees to keep it out of the dampness in the bottom of the pirogue. This could be the first of the two sites she was looking for, a spot wide enough for boats to maneuver. There were no houses in sight, no camps, no moored houseboats, no distracting power lines or boat ramps, only a natural and private lagoonlike stretch in the river. It was wonderful, almost too good to be true.

A low humming sound, almost like a giant insect, caught Julie's attention. It throbbed in the night, rising and falling, growing ever louder. Just in front of the pirogue there was a splash, as if some animal disturbed by either the low-pitched roaring noise or the pirogue's approach had launched itself from the riverbank into the water.

"What's that?" Julie asked. At the same instant, she caught the ripple of a small wave at the edge of the lantern's glow, saw the head and upper body of a fur-bearing creature she thought she recognized as a nutria.

Joseph gave a chuckle. "Why, I think, me, that's the Swamp Rat!"

Julie turned to look back over her shoulder at him. "You mean that thing's a big rat?"

"Mais non, chère," the old man replied, dismissing the swimming nutria with a shrug as he listened with his eyes half-closed and his head tipped to one side. "I speak of the man in the air boat."

Either her guide wasn't understanding her, or she wasn't understanding him, Julie thought. Before she could decide which, a double shaft of light striking through the trees on the far side of the open water turned her attention in that direction. The yellow beams swept this way and that, hobbling, turning, splintering through the branches and hanging vines, gilding the tatters of swaying moss. At the same time, the droning roar, accompanied by a hissing rush, grew louder.

Abruptly Julie understood. An air boat. She had seen pictures of one, a craft propelled by an engine sitting up high in the back with blades like a fan, one that maneuvered at high speed on a cushion of air. Developed for the kind of watery terrain that could go from forty feet deep to only four inches in seconds, it could travel over little more than a heavy dew. This one was certainly moving fast, taking the curves of the winding river channel that lay on the far side of the open area at a breakneck pace.

It was odd, but there seemed to be an echo of the air boat engine's muted roar. An instant later, Julie realized that echo was coming from overhead. There was a plane approaching, a seaplane, awkward looking with its big pontoons. It was descending as it drew nearer, as if the pilot meant to land, though Julie knew from the location scouting reports that there was no airport nearer than New Orleans International more than forty miles away.

She wondered if the plane was in trouble, though there was no sign of it. As she watched, the plane's headlights came on, stabbing into the treetops. Its motor slowed to just above stalling, almost as if it were going into a glide.

Behind her, the old guide muttered something in Cajun French patois. He stood frowning with his pole held out of the water, dripping, while the pirogue drifted from the narrow, tree-lined river channel out onto the open area of water under its own momentum.

The air boat rounded a curve in the far reaches of the river, broke into a tree-lined straightaway much like the one Julie and her guide had just left, and came speeding toward them, trailing a comet's tail of boiling spume. It hurtled from among the trees and out onto the open water. The man at the controls was a shadowy figure behind the glare of the air boat's headlights. His shoulders were broad, his grasp on the controls steady. The wind ruffled his hair into close waves against his scalp. He was watching the plane with his head tilted back in a way that was taut and intent. He did not slacken his speed.

The plane came on, dropping lower, skimming the tops of the trees. It swept out over the open space, setting the tree branches to waving. Its lights made a moving white glare on the water, mingling with the yellow beams from the air boat. The paths of the plane and the air boat came nearer, converging.

They crossed in a rushing roar. An instant later, they divided again as the plane swooped on past.

The man in the air boat swung his head to follow the flight of the plane. He held his craft steady.

The muttering of Julie's guide grew louder. He shouted a warning as he lifted his pole and swung it above Julie's head.

The air boat was coming straight at the pirogue on a direct course with the tunnellike river channel with its arch-way of trees that the wooden boat had just left. The air boat's driver had not seen the other craft, hadn't even looked. In seconds, the air boat would be upon them. There was no way to stop it, no way to avoid a collision. Julie gripped the side of the pirogue, ready to jump.

Then the air boat's driver turned his head, saw them. He swung his control bars hard, flinging his weight to the same side. The engine whined as the craft skimmed past on one pontoon in a hurricane sweep of wind and water.

Julie lurched away from the bright glare of lights, the roar, the hurtling shape. The unstable wooden boat pitched violently as the air boat's wind blast and shallow wake caught it. She heard the guide yell, saw him fling himself to the opposite side to counteract the roll. It was too late. Julie was thrown over the gunwale, tumbling in space.

The murky water rose up to take her, closing over her head, drawing her down. It was black and cold and thick, pressing in upon her. Her breath burned in her chest. She turned in slow motion with the skirt of her dress wrapping around her upper body, confining her arms. Something touched her leg, scratchy yet slimy, a sinker as it was called, or old submerged cypress log. Revulsion sent energy surging along her veins, and she thrust upward with a hard kick that tore the sandals from her feet. She batted her skirt away from her chest, pulling for the surface with reaching arms. She broke the top of the water with a gasp that hurt her throat.

There was the rumbling purr of an idling engine just behind her, almost on top of her. A deep voice spoke from above her head, the words short. "Here, take my hand. I was beginning to think I was going to have to come in after you."

Julie thrashed around in the water to see the air boat with its driver kneeling, leaning over the rubberized pontoons as he reached down to her. There was a frown between his dark brows, and his firmly molded lips were set in lines of irritation.

Julie felt the warm rise of her own anger. Treading water, she glanced around her for her guide and the pirogue. She saw the smaller boat several feet away, with the Cajun guide swimming strongly toward it. She looked back at the air boat driver.

"Thank you," she said, her tone sharp, "but I wouldn't want to put you to any trouble."

The man settled back, resting his arm on his bent knee. His expression eased into something approaching amusement. "Meaning that I've already caused you a great deal?"

"Meaning you ran us down because you weren't looking where you were going!"

"I had other things on my mind. Besides, old Joseph has been told a thousand times to keep his lantern clean and in plain sight instead of half-hidden on his forward seat."

"And on top of that, he was poling his pirogue much too fast," she agreed with scathing promptness. "In fact, Joseph is entirely to blame. None of it was your fault!"

The driver's face creased into a slow smile that rose to gleam in his eyes. "I didn't say that. If I admit I wasn't watching where I was going, will you get in the boat?"

Julie made no answer, turning instead to look toward her guide once more. Joseph had flipped the pirogue right side up and was hoisting himself aboard. She plunged away from the other man, swimming toward the pirogue with a fast and strong crawl learned in Pacific breakers.

The air boat motor grumbled, then took on a slightly faster tempo. A moment later, the craft glided between Julie and her objective.

She changed directions.

The boat kept pace, idling close alongside. She changed again, throwing the driver a glare over her shoulder. The boat motor was gunned, then dropped to an even lower idle. Julie turned her head on a hard stroke to see the driver leaning over the side once more, just above her.

She dodged, but a strong hand fastened on her arm, dragging her to a swirling halt. Before she could react, before she could accept what was happening, her waist was clamped by an arm like a vise and she was hoisted aboard the air boat. She tumbled over the rubber and fiberglass side, landing in the bottom. The driver shouted something she didn't catch at her guide, a confident spate of Cajun French that was answered by a laugh and a wave. At the same time, her abductor threw himself into the left-hand side of a pair of seats in the front of the boat. The air boat rumbled into a dull roar, then lifted and zoomed away.

Disbelief and the effort to gain and keep her balance held Julie where she was for an instant, then she dragged herself toward the front of the boat. Dripping water, with her dress sticking clammily to her skin, she staggered to her feet and lurched into the seat beside the driver. There was fear and rage boiling inside her as she leaned to grab a handful of his shirt in her fist. She jerked at him, once, twice. With the wind of their passage whipping the words from her mouth and the engine's growl half drowning them, she yelled, "Where are you taking me?"

He was broad and hard-muscled and completely immovable in her grasp. He turned his head to look at her with laughter crowding into his eyes. "Home," he said.

The answer along with the provocative expression on his face took her breath almost as much as the cool rush of the wind. "That," she said, her gaze steady, "is what you think!"

She swung to look over the side, half rising in her seat. He reached out to clamp an arm on her wrist, dragging her down again.

He removed his glance from the dark, tree-crowded river channel they had entered once more to look at her. "Let me clarify that. I didn't mean to my home. The movie location is where I had in mind--unless you would prefer otherwise."

"Not likely," she said through her teeth.

He lifted a shoulder with a faint grin. "I was afraid of that."

She subsided back into the other seat, uncertain whether to believe him or not. His grasp was warm and firm, but not hurtful. There was a strand of wet hair fluttering between her eyes. Lifting her free hand in distraction, she pushed it back, then ran her fingers through the sopping, tangled curls, loosening them where they were plastered to her head. Finally, she raised her voice to ask, "You know who I am?"

"It wasn't hard to guess." He released her as he answered. "You're not local or I would either know you or have heard of you long ago. You have both the charm and the cash to persuade old Joseph to come out on the bayou at night, no easy thing to do. The flimsy white dress you have on practically shouts California--besides which, even the tourists usually go for jeans or pants in a boat on the river. It follows that you must be with the movie company. You're too young for the part of the wife in the film, and too old for the daughter. My guess is you're the lady director."

"Brilliant," she said in acid tones.

He gave her a smiling look, but made no answer.

"Do you treat everyone like this, or did I say something to make you think I wanted to be abducted?"

He slackened speed a fraction, and the noise of the engine lowered. "The season here is fall, in case you haven't noticed. This may be south Louisiana and it may not seem cold, but it's still possible to catch a chill."

"To what?"

Annoyance crossed his face, then was gone. "If I sound quaint, it's a hazard around here. Cajuns also catch a heart attack or catch cancer, not to mention la grippe--that's the flu to you."

"I wasn't making fun of you."

"So I'm being too sensitive, in your view, of course. That's another hazard. But you're in my swamp now; you'll have to get used to it."

"Your swamp?" Julie did her best to keep anything other than neutral curiosity from her voice.

He looked at her in the glow of the dash light, narrowing his lashes against the wind in their faces. His voice quietly implacable, he repeated, "Mine."

"Why do you say that?"

"Because I know it, the backwater where the fish spawn and the alligators mate, the marshlands where the geese and ducks come winging in clouds in the winter, the chenières--oak-covered hills of seashells left by ancient Indians down below New Orleans--the logging and highway canals, the winding rivulets and bayous that lead in their own good time to Lake Maurepas and through Pass Manchac to Lake Pontchartrain and into the Gulf. I've known it since I was ten, when I got lost in it my first and last time. It's mine because I made it mine."

"The Swamp Rat," she murmured, suddenly recalling the words the old Cajun guide had said.

"Some call me that. I don't claim it."

He was a good-looking man in a dark and rough-hewn fashion, of her own age at least and possibly four or five years older. His brows were thick, his nose high-bridged and straight between prominent cheekbones. His deep-set eyes, bracketed by radiating lines of laughter and framed in lashes long enough to tangle, appeared to be coffee brown. His hands on the controls of the boat were strong and well made, with more than one scar showing white against the deep tan. His shoulders were padded with muscles under his worn khaki shirt, and he sat with the relaxed ease of fine physical condition. Like the swamp he claimed, he was not quite tame, more than a little alien.

There were damp patches on the front of his shirt and down the legs of his jeans where he had held her against him. Remembering the moment when this man had caught her in his arms and dragged her aboard, Julie felt a tightening in the muscles of her abdomen and a faint shivery sensation across the back of her neck. She didn't like it, she didn't like it one bit.

"What do you do?" she asked. It was an innocuous gambit, a cocktail-party question useful in establishing a polite basis for conversation. At the same time, Julie wanted an answer for the sake of an idea that was slowly gathering in the back of her mind.

"Do? Nothing much."

The reply was not helpful. She had the feeling it was not meant to be. She persisted. "Do you work at one of the chemical plants around here, or a sugar refinery? Do you work offshore on the oil rigs? Fish commercially? What?"

"Nothing like that. You might say I'm retired."

"How nice for you--but aren't you a little young?"

His gaze on the river ahead, he said, "No."

It was possible that the man was right about the fall weather, especially when combined with a wet dress and a windy ride. There was gooseflesh rising along Julie's arms and legs, and her jaw had a tendency to quiver. She clasped her hands upon her arms, rubbing the chilled skin.

"Could--could you go just a little slower? I'm freezing."

"Faster is what you need," he said, and the air boat engine whined as the boat shot forward once more, planing over the water.

Julie set her teeth while shudders shook her that seemed to time themselves with the vibrations of the boat. The wind tore at her hair, drying it, while tears gathered in her eyes and streamed back across her temples. She ducked her head, enduring.

"We're almost there," her driver shouted.

It was true. She could see the pinkish glow of the extra mercury lamps on poles that the utility company had set to light up the location at night. Just visible through the trees was the metallic sheen of the trailer offices and motor homes in their staggered line, and also the bulk of the metal building that housed the St. James Parish Boat Club, which was allowing Excel Films to use its parking area and river access. In a moment she would have dry clothes and something hot to drink. And she would, she supposed, have to thank the Swamp Rat for bringing her home.

"I've just realized," she said as he cut the engine, letting the boat glide toward the boat pier built out into the water, "that I don't know your name."

A corner of his mouth lifted. "I thought you had one for me.

"It isn't very useful. For instance, I'm hardly likely to find it in the telephone book."

"Rey," he answered, "Rey Tabary."

"Cajun, I suppose?"

"French-Spanish Creole mixed with Cajun, if you know what that means."

"Of French and Spanish blood but born on foreign soil, in this case American, and mixed with the blood lines of a French family ousted from Nova Scotia by the British more than two hundred years ago."

His glance held surprise. "You've been studying state history."

"Actually, I was born here myself, though my ancestors are just plain English, Irish, and Welsh."

"Hardly plain," he said.

His smile as he spoke was so wry that it was difficult to tell if he meant to pay her a compliment. Not that she cared, one way or the other.

Tabary gunned the engine as they neared the bank so the boat skirted the wooden pier where the movie company's two cabin cruisers were tied up and angled toward the bank. There were a few people moving about, knocking together a wooden platform for the next day's shooting, talking in low voices, cooking something in a great aluminum pot over a gas burner. They looked toward the air boat with quick interest. It was unlikely that she would be able to get to her motor home without having to answer questions.

The air boat pushed through a stand of cut grass to ground itself on the muddy shoreline. With determined hospitality, Julie said, "I can offer you a drink, if you would care to stay and meet everyone."

"Another time, thanks. I have to be going." He didn't turn off the boat's motor as he stepped out. Wrapping a bowline around his palm to hold the boat steady, he gave Julie his other hand to help her over the side.

She jumped down, spraying his boots with the water dripping from her skirt. The words of appreciation she spoke were brief and to the point. She would have stepped away from him then, except that he did not release her hand.

She glanced back at him, pausing in her uncertainty. He was watching her, an arrested look in his eyes as he studied her in the light from the mercury vapor lamps on their poles. His clasp was light and warm, yet firm.

"Yes?" she said, with the slight lift of a brow.

He made no answer. Deliberately, he dropped the boat line he held, then reached to take her other hand, spreading her arms wide. He glanced over their slender lengths exposed by her short sleeves, first the fronts and then the backs. As she tried to pull away he smoothed his hands quickly upward to her shoulders, then pushed his fingers under her hair, brushing over the smooth skin of her neck.

"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice tight in the return of annoyance caused in no small part by the faint quiver in her voice.

He lowered his hands, trailing them down her arms again, where he retained possession of her wrists. He said softly, "Lift your skirts."

"You must be crazy."

"Not exactly," he answered, a glint of something very near mischief in his eyes. "But the only design I have on you is to inspect you for leeches."

"Leeches!"

"A definite possibility."

"You don't mean it."

"Of course, if you would rather let them suck your blood than show me your legs, that's your choice. But I warn you, they won't drop off until they're ten times their size, and the marks they leave can become scars."

"Let me go, and I'll look," she snapped.

"You can't see everything that needs to be seen."

His choice of words were suspect, but her skin was crawling with something more than wet and cold. Somehow, he had managed to step between her and the audience of crew and boat-club members, screening her from their view. The look in his eyes seemed watchful and tinged with audacity, so it was difficult to predict what he might do if she refused. Though his hold was light, she thought it might easily become unbreakable.

"Oh, for God's sake," she cried in exasperation. She jerked free, then picked up her dripping skirts, bunching them in her hands as she held them at midthigh.

He glanced down, then spun her around, his touch brief, impersonal. The moment of appraisal in that position seemed endless before he spoke again. "It's all right. You're clean."

"Thank you very much," she said in tight tones. She whirled back to face him.

"My pleasure." He hesitated, looking down at her with the amusement fading from his face. Then he gave a slow nod and stepped back. "And my apologies."

His apologies for what? For dumping her in the river, or for taking his time over the leeches? There was no chance to ask him.

He swung back to his air boat, leaping lightly over the side. The motor thundered as he backed it. He was gone, then, returning the way he had come in a rumbling rush and a head-high rooster tail of blown spray.

Julie stared after the boat until it swept around a bend, then looked down at herself, at her stained and bedraggled dress, at the mud oozing between her toes. Her hair was a mess, and her makeup, if she still had any, was probably running. More than that, she had spoken to the man who had pulled her out of the bayou like some kind of witch, or else like a bashful virgin. How she had come to behave with so little composure, so little sophistication, she didn't know.

A moment later, she shook her head with a tight laugh. What did she care what she looked like or what a man with a name like Swamp Rat thought about it?

Rey Tabary was, in fact, exactly the kind of man she liked least and mistrusted most, a take-charge macho male who seemed to think that strength was the proper response to any disagreement, the kind who thought women were amusing playthings and had a smart answer for everything. The exact opposite in every way possible of Allen Gravesend, Rey Tabary could never equal the man who was her fiance as well as the producer of her movie.

More than that, Julie would swear there was something secretive about the Cajun. His answers to her questions had been deliberately evasive, and she knew he was shielding a portion of his thoughts behind those ridiculously long lashes.

Imagination again. The mystery, if there was one, was probably just that he was married. The man was nothing more than an arrogant know-it-all. Just like her father.

He was also the man she needed.

She needed him for her movie. For that, and nothing more. Nothing more at all.

The idea had come to her as the man talked about his swamp and his Cajun background. She wanted so much to show those things as they really were, to catch their spirit and their flavor without exploiting either. Both were so important to the true-to-life values of her movie, to the mechanics of it and also its heart. She had been worried from the beginning about this section that took place in the swamp, worried about the accents of the Cajun characters, about their customs and the outlook of the male lead, about the scenes showing fishing and high-speed boating on the winding waterways. She needed desperately to get the details right.

Rey Tabary was the man who could help her do that. All she had to do was convince him of it.