Midnight in Ruby Bayou by Elizabeth Lowell

From the Publisher

Since the breakup of a disappointing love affair, Faith Donovan has poured her heart and soul into making the exquisite artistic jewelry favored by the rich and famous. She needs rubies of the finest quality and to get them, she needs Owen Walker, a man with an intimate knowledge of the ruby trade. The idea of working with Faith makes Owen nervous. He suspects that protecting her and the fabulous wedding necklace commissioned by the Montegeaus, a family descended from smuggles and pirates, will be more dangerous than smuggling rubies out of Afghanistan.

Soon the two are drawn into a terrifying web of greed, corruption, and betrayal, as they discover shameful secrets of generations of Montegeaus—a discovery that has them racing for their lives across the black waters of the salt marshes, pursued by greedy men and a deadly past.

About the Author:

Elizabeth Lowell is the New York Times bestselling a;uthor of numerous historical and contemporary novels, including Amber Beach, Jade Island, and Pearl Cove, the first three books in the popular Donovan series. She lives in Washington State.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Romantic suspense is her true forte.

Charlotte News & Observer

Elizabeth Lowell's keen ear for dialogue and intuitive characterizations consistently place her a cut above most writers in this genre.

Charlotte News & Observer

Elizabeth Lowell's keen ear for dialogue and intuitive characterizations consistently place her a cut above most writers in this genre.

Minneapolis Star-TrIbune

Romantic suspense is her true forte.

Raleigh News & Observer

Elizabeth Lowell's keen ear for dialogue and intuitive characterizations consistently place her a cut above most writers in this...genre.

Minneapolis Star-Tribune

Romantic suspense is her true forte.

Jayne Ann Krentz

I'll buy any book with Elizabeth Lowell's name on it.

Romantic Times - Jill M. Smith

When it comes to delivering epic romance and suspense, Ms. Lowell is in a class by herself.

Publishers Weekly

A close-knit family in the jewelry business, a clan of Southern aristocrats descended from smugglers, the FBI and a Russian assassin clash in this juicy final episode in Lowell's Donovan series (Pearl Cove, etc.). When Seattle-based jewelry designer Faith Donovan is commissioned by Davis Montegeau--her best friend Mel's future father-in-law--to design a necklace using 13 priceless rubies of uncertain origin, she becomes the target of an assassin trying to recover jewels stolen from the fabled Hermitage in Leningrad. To protect Faith, her brothers assign Owen Walker, dashing troubleshooter and gem expert, to accompany her and the necklace to a jewelry show in Savannah and then on to the wedding on Hilton Head Island. From the moment Faith and Walker start out, the fate of the rubies becomes entwined with their budding romance. As Faith and Walker learn when they come to stay at Ruby Bayou, the Montegeau family's crumbling old plantation on Hilton Head, the alcoholic Davis has mortgaged the place to keep a failed land deal afloat, and as a result he's now mixed up with a New Jersey crime family. Davis's sister, Tiga, hasn't been right in the head for years, ever since her father, who had forced her into incest, was blasted with a shotgun by parties unknown. That same night, the Blessing Chest, filled with all the family gems, disappeared, and only Tiga knows where it might be. Though constantly shifting points of view and a few gratuitous sex scenes--even by genre standards--detract from the tale, Lowell wraps things up neatly as all parties converge on the Bayou, and Faith and Walker contrive to save the day. (July) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Kirkus Reviews

The last volume in romancer Lowell's gem tetralogy (Pearl Cove, 1999, etc.) recycles pretty much the same successful story for the fourth time. Faith Donovan, jewelry-designing sister of Seattle's gem-trading Donovan clan, has been commissioned to turn 13 rare Burmese rubies newly come into her inventory into a necklace that will become her best friend's wedding present after she takes it to Savannah to crown her booth at a jewelry expo. Little do Faith and her overly protective big brothers know that the rubies have been stolen from a necklace at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg—along with a 20-carat carved ruby called the Heart of Midnight. That's the one being sought by Russian thugs who would be pleased to torture and murder Faith to get it back—if only she had it. Archer, her eldest brother, agrees to insure the necklace if she'll agree to have Owen Walker guard her "like a second skin" until she delivers it to the Montegeaus. Walker, a tough old country boy with hot lapis-lazuli eyes who's just lost his younger brother on a ruby-hunting jaunt to Afghanistan, is afraid that he's doomed to fail anyone who loves and depends on him. For her part, Faith has just dumped her loser boyfriend Tony, who's convinced her that she's sexually unresponsive. While Lowell ladles on the full southern gothic treatment—gators, ghosts, alcohol, incest—Walker follows Faith to Savannah and then to Ruby Bayou in South Carolina, where he was born, carrying the necklace in a pocket jostling his own family jewels, and eventually proving Tony sumptuously wrong as he recovers the Heart of Midnight, slays the Russian dragons on Faith's tail,andhelps to uncover a Montegeau family secret. As in earlier entries, Lowell lards her yarn with jewelry lore. Series alumnae will feel as comfortable around Harry Winston as they do in the bedroom.

What People Are Saying

Johanna Lindsey
Lowell is great.

Amanda Quick
A law unto herself in the world of romance.

Product Details

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Table of Contents

Read an Excerpt

Midnight in Ruby Bayou

Chapter One

Seattle

February

Owen Walker lived in a bare-bones efficiency apartment overlooking Pioneer Square, one of Seattle′s less upscale tourist attractions. The front door was unimpressive, no happy barks or impatient kitty yowls greeted Walker′s approaching footsteps. The closest thing he had to a pet was the refrigerator mould that grew while he was overseas on assignment for Donovan International. Lately that had been most of the time.

Other than installing a new, stronger dead bolt when he took over the apartment, Walker had spent little effort making the place into an urban cocoon. The bed was big enough for his six-foot frame. It also served as a couch to stretch out on and watch TV if he was home long enough to get involved in the misfortunes of the Seahawks or the Mariners or the Sonics.

Recently he had been lucky to keep up with his own problems, much less those of the teams whose members were traded around faster than hot gossip. Today hadn′t been any different. Even the problems had problems. The latest one was the assignment Archer Donovan had dropped on him this afternoon.See if the rubies Davis Montegeau sent Faith match any on the international hot list. I don′t want my sister′s reputation as a designer ruined by using stolen goods. Montegeau sent what she described as fourteen superior rubies, between one and four carats. They′re loose now, but could have been part of a single piece of jewellery.

Since Archer didn′t want his little sister to know that he was sticking his nose in her business without herinvitation, Walker didn′t have the actual rubies to work with. All he had was a verbal description.

Walker had spent the past four hours on Donovan International′s phones with various global cops. He hadn′t accomplished anything but to make his injured leg stiffen up. So far the rubies had come clean. He had the callused ear to prove it. Tonight he would check them out on the Internet.

But first, food.

Automatically he threw the locks on the door behind him, hung his cane over the doorknob, and limped to the refrigerator to see if anything looked like a late lunch or an early dinner. Whichever.

His body still wasn′t certain which continent it was on. Despite the clean black slacks, crisp dark blue shirt that matched his eyes, and close-cut black beard, he felt like something the cat had dragged in and the rat refused to cat. Jet lag -- or the beating that some eager Afghani bandits had given him last week - made him feel every one of his thirty-odd years like a separate insult.

Thoughts of the near disastrous Afghanistan trip fled when the smell of garlic sausage from last night′s take-out Italian hit him in a wave. After the second breath he decided that the sausage wasn′t from last night. More like three nights ago. Or four. Maybe five. He′d had a real craving for Italian when he returned from Afghanistan, but he hadn′t wanted to gimp through Pike Place Market looking for fresh ingredients. Instead he had eaten way too much take-out food since he had climbed stiffly down the steps from the company plane into the Pacific Northwest′s February gloom.

Cautiously he opened the lid of the nearest leftover box. Nothing looked green, and there probably wasn′t enough left to poison him anyway. With a mental shrug he put the sagging box in the microwave and nuked it. While invisible energy tried to breathe new life into old takeout, he decided to call the meal an early supper. For that, he could open one of the long-necked beer bottles that had waited patiently during his absence.

By the time the microwave cheeped, he was on the Internet, requesting a global search for stolen loose rubies bigger than one carat or for stolen jewellery that contained fourteen rubies of more than a carat. While the computer chewed on his request, he walked back to his pocket-sized kitchen, opened the microwave, and grabbed a fork from a nearby drawer.

He took his first bite of lukewarm supper on the way to the computer. The pasta had the texture and taste of rubber bands, but the sausage was still spicy enough to make his mouth tingle. He had eaten much worse food and been glad to get it, both as a boy and more recently, when he had shared campfires and rations with Afghani miners.

Between bites, he scrolled through a list of stolen rubies that had been posted by everyone from maiden aunts to Interpol. Some offered rewards, no questions asked. Others offered a finder′s fee, also no questions asked. Law enforcement organisations of various kinds offered telephone numbers and the opportunity to be a good citizen.

Smaller rubies were missing, but most of them were described as having a modern cut. Some were said to be family heirlooms, but in Walker′s experience that could mean anything from 1550 to 1950. It was possible that the Montegeau rubies Faith Donovan was designing into a necklace had come from one or more of the long, long list of stolen heirlooms, but he doubted it. The dates on the postings went from last week to thirty years ago, and originated from twenty-three separate countries. None of the lists mentioned fourteen superior rubies -- set or loose - that ranged upward from one carat.

So much for work. on to private pleasures.

Walker scraped the last of the pungent sauce from the carton, took a drink of beer, and went to another web site, one he often visited. This one was an international clearinghouse for sales of gems and jewellery of all kinds. As he did every night that he was near a computer, he entered a request for rubies that were carved or inscribed in some way.