THE BAYOU BRED DANGER - Those who lived on the bayou were wily as gators. Those who died on the bayou took their secrets with them. It was Tess Beaumont's bad luck to be in deep with both the living and the dead. - The drowning in Savannah Bayou was no more than a grim headline to Tess until she attempted to interview the victim's brother. Vance Gautreau was hard-bitten, dangerous, a man whose keen mind wouldn't settle for easy answers -- and whose savage heart would settle for nothing less than a love as fierce as his own. But Tess was a stranger to the society that lived by its own rules -- and died by them. For in the bayou, passion was deadlier than hate.