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responsibilities”—liquid darkness shimmered in the depths of her eyes as she gazed up at Owen—“and badness.”
    His eyes opened fractionally in surprise as total pandemonium broke out. Someone had finally succeeded in breaking open the pinata. Brightly colored plastic-wrapped candies and small, inexpensive children’s toys flew in every direction from the wildly swinging donkey. The adults cheered as the kids dived for the goodies. Badness! Nadia had said she was made up of badness. What in the hell did that mean?
    Nadia bent down and picked up a couple pieces of candy and a plastic-beaded necklace and handed them to her three-year-old cousin, who was having trouble getting around some of the older kids. “Here you go, sweetie.” She pointed to some candy that had landed farther out, which none of the other children had seen. The little girl grinned and toddled off. Nadia slowly stood back up and faced Owen.
    He had followed her every motion with the child. If there was an ounce of badness in Nadia, he was Jack the Ripper. A smile teased the outside corner of his mouth. “That was a heartless thing to do, Nadia.”
    He forced the smile down. “Helping a poor innocent child get some candy. Shame on you.”
    “I didn’t say I was heartless.”
    “Just bad, right?”
    A touch of red darkened her face. “Right.”
    Owen couldn’t help himself. He burst out laughing. “You couldn’t be bad if someone drew you a diagram and showed you how.” He admitted that he really didn’t know Nadia very well, but his instincts had never failed him yet. Nadia looked three-fourths angel, one-fourth temptress.
    “You have no idea what you are talking about.” She quickly turned away, only to bump directly into her father.
    Milosh steadied his daughter and grinned at Owen. “Hello, my new friend named Owen.”
    Owen smiled and forced his gaze away from the lovely black-and-blue eye Milosh was sporting. A shiner he had given the man. “Hello, my new friend named Milosh.”
    Milosh slapped him on the back. “You stay for dinner. We have much food.”
    His smile turned into a full-blown grin as he saw Nadia stiffen. He had won over her family with the pinata, but for some reason she was trying to scare him away with a ridiculous story about badness. Hadn’t she realized that instead of scaring him she had made him more curious? His gaze locked directly with Nadia’s. “I will be honored to join you and the rest of the family, Milosh.”

     
     
     
     

Chapter Three
     
    Nadia glanced from beneath lowered lashes at the man silently walking beside her in the growing dusk. Owen was a paradox. He was a man of great wealth, obviously used to eating from tables draped in fine linen tablecloths and sporting expensive china and matching silverware. Yet tonight he had sat at a rough wooden table on crude wooden benches and fit right in with the rest of her family. He had cleared his plate twice, much to the delight of her mother and aunts, and had complimented them outrageously. Owen Prescott couldn’t have better won over her family if the heavens had opened up and deposited him smack in the middle of their camp.
    She had expected him to be offended by the sight of the Kandratavich camp. Material possessions never dominated a Gypsy’s life. Her family enjoyed the freedom of their old life and saw no reason to change when they started over in America. Nadia had spent a small fortune to have the family’s four vardos shipped across the Atlantic and freighted to North Carolina. The brightly painted horse-drawn wagons now stood under giant oaks in a picturesque valley on the ranch. They were the center of the camp. She had also persuaded her family to allow her to purchase two secondhand mobile homes that provided them with heat, running water, and bathrooms. Life in the Kandratavich camp would be considered hard, if not primitive, by most people’s standards, but her family felt they were living in the lap of