Accidentally…Evil? (Accidentally Yours #3.5)
Author: Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

Chapter 1

Bacalar, Mexico. November 1, 1934

Why is that man… naked?

Dazed and flat on her back, twenty-one year old Margaret O’Hare observed the man’s bare backside as he stood on a nearby weather-beaten dock, toweling off. Her vision, at first a groggy mess, focused to a machete-sharp point, the pain in her forehead equally knifelike.

Yes. Naked. Really. Really. Naked. She’d never seen such a large, well-built man or such a perfect backside—hard, deeply tanned, and worthy of a marble sculpture. Maybe two. Or five. Too bad she was a painter.

Hold on. Where the ham sandwich am I? Margaret’s eyes, the only body part she could move without experiencing pain, whipsawed from side to side. Jungle. Dirt. Lake. Okay. I’m lying near the lake. Yes, this was good. She recognized the place. Sort of.

Am I near the village dock?

Her peripheral vision said no; this dock had a tiny palapa for shade at the very end.

Then where?

She made a feeble attempt to lift her throbbing head, but her body rewarded her with a spear to the temple.

Ow. Ow. Ow. She took a slow breath to allow the skull-shattering jab to dissipate. All right. Relax and think. What happened? What happened? What happened? And who is Mr. Perfectbottom over there?

A sticky blanket of gray coated her thoughts, but she did recall swimming that morning. Maybe she’d slipped on the village dock and fell into the lake. Maybe Mr. Perfectbottom had been bathing down at the shore and rescued her.

Or not.

Her clothes were bone-dry except for the sweaty parts. Come to think of it, she felt like a mud pie, soggy underneath and dry on top, baking in the sun. It didn’t help that someone—maybe the man?—had placed a warm fur under her head and neck. God, it was itchy.

She willed her hand to make the painful journey behind her ear to give it a good scratch. Her fingers brushed the soft, silky hairs of the makeshift pillow.

How odd. People in these parts don’t wear mink.

The mink coat purred.

Maggie sprang from the moist grass and scrambled back a few feet against a thick tree trunk. “Ja-ja-jaguar!”

The glossy black coat didn’t budge a paw. It simply stared, its eyes reminding her of two big limes—wide, round, and green. Then the damned thing smiled right at her like some real life Cheshire cat. God damned disturbing.

“You! Cat!” The man barreled down the dock, each heavy step thundering across the creaky wooden planks. “Leave! Do not return until I call you.”

Maggie should have been frightened by the boom of the man’s tone, but instead, his rich masculine timbre soothed her aching head.

“Raarrr?” the cat…

… responded? I must be hearing things, she thought, her eyes toggling back and forth between man and beast.

“Do as you are told,” he said to the animal, “or the deal is off.”

The black cat hissed, whipped its shiny black tail through the air, and dissolved into the shadows of the lush vegetation surrounding the small lakeside clearing.

This is too bizarre; I need to get out of here. Maggie turned her wobbling body to seek shelter in another dream.

“Where the hell do you think you’re going?” said that deep, rich voice that wrapped her mind in ribbons of warm dark caramel and exotic spices.

Before she could mutter a word, her head cartwheeled and her body tipped. Two firm hands gripped her shoulders and propped her against the tree. “Close your eyes. Breathe.”

She suddenly wanted to do just that. And only that. The man’s voice was… compelling.

As she sucked in the dank, thick, tropical air, her mind slotted missing memories back into place.

How had she gotten there?

She recalled searching for the path to the ruin where her father spent his days. Little Kinichna’—or Little House of the Sun—as he called it, was the biggest find of his career, the one that would put his name on the archeologist’s map. Ironically, this dilapidated and historically uninteresting pile of rubble had been known about for years, but when her father’s colleague asked that he decipher etchings from a rare black jade tablet found not too far away, he’d realized they were directions, an ancient Mayan treasure map. Said map led to a hidden chamber right underneath Little Kinichna’.

“You are now well. Open your eyes,” the man’s husky voice commanded.

She took a moment to survey her body.

Miraculous. Her pain was gone. In fact, she felt downright euphoric and tingly. Especially in the spots where he touched her. Maybe in a few other spots, too. Margaret O’Hare! You dirty trollop!

She slid open her lids. Two icy turquoise eyes, just an inch from her face, sliced right through her, their raw, unfathomable depths filled with stark, primal desire.

Applesauce! She jerked her head back and knocked it on the tree. “Ouch!” Great. Now I have a lump on the back to match the front.

The colossal man straightened his powerful frame and towered over her like a giant oak, but he didn’t release her from his fierce gaze.

Well at least he’d put a socially acceptable distance between their heads. The same could not be said for their bodies; the heat from his heaving chest seeped right through her. And thankfully—or was it regrettably?—or perhaps magically, since she didn’t know how he’d had the time?—he now wore a pair of simple white linen trousers. No. It was a definite “thankful.” The moment was awkward and unsettling enough without the man being na**d and staring. Which he was. Still staring, that is. Silent. Suspicious. Studying her with his beautiful turquoise eyes dressed in a thick row of incredibly black lashes.

Why the deviled egg is he looking at me like that?

Maybe he thinks that giant lump on your forehead is about to give birth to an extra head.

“What happened?” she finally asked.

“I’ll ask the questions,” he said. “Who are you, woman?”

Not the response she’d expected. “Ducky. I’m lost in the jungle with a half-naked rake.”

“Rake?” Dark brows arching with irritation, he planted his arms—silky milk chocolate poured over bulging, never-ending ropes of taut muscle—across the hard slopes of his bare chest. Maggie meticulously cataloged the man’s every divine detail, like she would for each precious artifact from her father’s dig, from his long, damp reams of shimmering midnight hair falling over his menacingly broad shoulders; the cords of muscles galloping down his bronzed neck into said broad shoulders; and his sinfully sculpted abdomen tightly divided into rounded little rectangles which reminded her of an ice cube tray—a fancy new invention. God, I miss ice cubes.