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it, but it had been worth a shot.

'Let's assume for the moment that you know all you think you need to know about me,' he said, ignoring the subtle dig about unpublicized talents. 'What about you?'

She froze. Elvis, sensing her distress, left his coffee and skittered across the desk. He jumped down onto her knee and then bounded up her arm to sit on her shoulder. She reached up and touched him in a reassuring manner.

Fontana could not possibly know about her own talent, she told herself. He was fishing in the dark, trying to provoke her the same way she had tried to prod him. They were after each other's secrets.

'I'm a reporter, Mr. Fontana,' she said coldly. 'Whatever talents I have are in the realm of journalism.'

He gave her a slow, knowing, shatteringly intimate smile. 'I'm not buying that, not for a minute. I know power when I sense it, Miss McIntyre.'

'I did not come here to talk about myself. This was supposed to be an interview with you.' She closed her notebook and slipped it into her purse. 'But it appears that isn't going to happen, so I might as well be on my way.'

'You surprise me. I didn't think you'd give up so easily.'

She got to her feet. 'I don't mind wasting your time, but I'm not real keen on wasting my own.'

'Sit down, Miss McIntyre.'

'Why?'

'Because I am, as the old saying goes, about to make you an offer you can't refuse.'

'Are you threatening me?'

'I hope you won't take it that way.'

'And if I refuse?'

He smiled. 'You won't.'

'Why won't I?'

'Because I'm going to give you a shot at a real exclusive, the biggest story of your career.'

'Sure.'

'You don't trust me, do you?'

'No farther than I could throw you.'

He watched her with a steady, unwavering look. 'I'm dead serious.'

It was the word dead that aroused all her new journalistic instincts. Okay, maybe he was serious.

'This would be a Guild story?' she asked warily.

'Yes.'

'What, exactly, do I have to do to get this hot exclusive?'

'Marry me.'

Chapter 2

SHE SAT DOWN AGAIN. HARD. SO HARD THAT THE DUST bunny on her shoulder bounced a little and had to scramble to hang on to his perch.

The stunned, vaguely horrified expression on Sierra's face would have been a lot more satisfying if it had not been elicited by the prospect of marrying him, Fontana thought. So what if they had only met forty-five—he glanced at his watch—make that forty-seven minutes ago? So what if she had made it crystal clear that she considered Guild bosses, as a class, to be legalized mobsters? The fact that she was literally shocked speechless by the notion of marrying him was proving a little hard on the ego, probably because when she had walked through his door forty-seven minutes ago, he'd been nearly floored by the rush.

It had taken a great deal of willpower just to make normal conversation. He'd experienced his share of fast-acting attractions in the past. Hell, he liked women. But this all-consuming fascination with Sierra McIntyre was startlingly, disturbingly, intriguingly different.

The effect had struck full force on both the normal and the paranormal plane, shaking him to the core. His psychic senses were as dazzled as his physical senses, and that was nothing short of unique in his experience. Always, always, he had been able to separate the two realms when it came to his relationships with women. But this time it was as if something deep inside him had instantly recognized and responded to Sierra McIntyre, as if he'd been waiting for her without having been consciously aware of it.

It wasn't just her looks. He'd seen any number of more beautiful women in his life. Which wasn't to say that Sierra was not attractive, he thought. The appeal, however, was unconventional and wholly unexpected, at least for him. He usually went for the polished, sleek, sophisticated type, the kind of women who knew how to play the sexual game. He liked them tall. Sierra McIntyre was on the short side, even in her high-heeled pumps. He liked them willowy. Sierra had a definite tendency toward roundness. He liked blondes who wore their long hair in dramatic upswept styles.

Sierra's hair was the color of fall leaves. Wildly curly, it looked as if she had lost control somewhere along the line and had simply given up trying to tame it. Her face was intelligent. Her eyes were the alluring blue green of a tropical lagoon, very big and very knowing. They were framed by a pair of serious-looking glasses.

Although this was the first time they had met in person, he knew a lot about Sierra McIntyre. As was his custom, he'd done his research before he'd plotted his strategy.

It was Sierra's gutsy determination that had first drawn his attention. There weren't many people in Crystal, male or female, who were willing to criticize the Guild and its policies, let alone go after Brock Jenner. Two possible explanations had come to mind. Either Sierra's obsession with exposing Guild secrets was driven by a personal vendetta or else she was one of those irritating, naive do-gooders bent on righting wrongs and speaking out for those who had no voice.

Now that he had met her, he knew for certain that the latter was the answer. No wonder Jenner had been so annoyed with her. It was hard to crush do-gooders. You couldn't buy them off, and overt threats were risky, especially for a man in Jenner's position. It would not have looked good for a Guild boss to send a couple of goons to a lady journalist's door, especially when it was a given that the journalist in question would go straight to the cops and then splash the story across the front page of a tabloid.

Sierra finally got her mouth closed. 'What did you say about marriage?' she asked very carefully.

'This is going to take a little explaining,' he said.

Her dark brows scrunched together above the frames of her serious glasses. 'I think so, yes.'

He went to stand at the window and looked out at the towering green wall that enclosed the ancient alien ruins of the Dead City. Traces of ambient energy whispered everywhere throughout the Old Quarter. He could feel them here in his office, and he knew that Sierra sensed them, too.

Not that you had to be a high-level para-rez to respond to the stuff. Even those with average sensitivity picked up on the currents that leaked from the ruins and the tunnels below. Almost everyone got a little buzz from alien psi. For that reason the seedy Old Quarters in all of the city-states were popular with tourists and the nightclub crowd.

Two hundred years earlier the colonists from Earth had established their first towns in the shadows of the ruins of the four Dead Cities that had been discovered on Harmony. Crystal was no exception. The two-hundred- year-old structures built by the humans appeared stolid and grimly functional compared to the ethereal spires and the fantastical domes that the aliens had left behind.

But unlike the aliens, the colonists from Earth had been at home on Harmony right from the start. Even after the energy Curtain that had made travel between Earth and Harmony possible mysteriously closed, the settlers had not only survived but thrived.

Things had evidently been much different for the aliens. The experts had come to the conclusion that something about the very atmosphere of the planet had been poisonous to the ancients. The long-vanished people had been forced to enclose their cities within towering green quartz walls that gave off the psi they must have needed to survive. Eventually they had retreated underground. In the end they had either abandoned the planet altogether or simply died out. No one knew for certain what had become of the Others. It was one of the many