For the First Time

Being a father shouldn’t feel this risky!

There’s not a lot former CIA agent Mark Sharpe hasn’t done. Yet suddenly he’s in a world of firsts—first time being a father, first time being self-employed…and first time being attracted to his employee. JoJo Hatcher, with her attitude, her tattoos and her investigative talents, tempts him in ways he can’t explain. With each day she becomes more irresistible. How is he supposed to function in this messed-up situation?

Then his teenage daughter, Sophie, is threatened. There’s only one person he trusts to help him: JoJo. As they work to untangle the mystery, Mark imagines a future together that includes another first—family.

“I can walk right in front of you and you’ll never recognize me.”

Mark scoffed at JoJo’s boast. “JoJo, you do realize I was a CIA black-ops analyst in the field for years.”

“And years and years…” His daughter rolled her eyes.

Okay, maybe he wasn’t going to impress Sophie.

“Observation is what I do,” he continued as though Sophie hadn’t interrupted. “It’s how I survived. You can’t get past me. Especially not with the tattoos.”

JoJo held out her hand. “It’s a bet, then. I do this. I get the job. You win. You get to show off your observation skills to your daughter. The only thing you’re out is a half hour of your time.”

“We were going to go eat….”

“Are you kidding me? I’m not leaving,” Sophie said. “I want to see this.”

JoJo winked at Sophie and his daughter smiled back. Great, he thought. She’d known this woman for minutes and they had bonded more tightly than he had with his daughter in months.

Still, he’d play out this little wager. What did he have to lose? It wasn’t like JoJo would ever get past him.

Dear Reader,

This is my third story set in the Tyler Group world (One Final Step, October 2012, and An Act of Persuasion, March 2013) and while an author never plays favorites with her books, I have to say this was one of the most satisfying books I have ever written. I fell in love with Mark and Sophie, an absent father and his daughter, who reunited in An Act of Persuasion. When I thought about Mark’s story and giving him his happy-ever-after, I really couldn’t think about him alone.

It had to be Mark and Sophie and their happy-ever-after. That meant I needed the type of heroine I thought would suit them both. That’s when JoJo walked on to the scene.

She’s not exactly conventional and she comes with a lot of baggage. But somehow the three of them make this story work. So this isn’t a story about Mark and JoJo. This is a story about Mark and JoJo and Sophie and how together they become a family.

I love to hear from readers—the good, the bad and the ugly—so check out my website, www.stephaniedoyle.net.

Happy reading!

Stephanie Doyle

For the First Time

Stephanie Doyle

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephanie Doyle, a dedicated romance reader, began to pen her own romantic adventures at age sixteen. She began submitting to Mills & Boon at age eighteen and by twenty-six her first book was published. Fifteen years later, she still loves what she does, as each book is a new adventure. She lives in South Jersey with her cat, Lex, and her two kittens, who have taken over everything. When she isn’t thinking about escaping to the beach, she’s working on her next idea.

For Wanda

Because when I said I could never, ever write Mills & Boon Superromance books, she said let’s not say ever.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Epilogue

Excerpt

PROLOGUE

“I NEED YOU to focus, Josephine.”

She was focusing. She was focusing very hard. She knew that the man in front of her was a police detective. He had brown hair with gray mixed in on the sides. He wore brown leather shoes and khaki pants that were fraying a little around the hem. His badge number was 79134.

She’d made herself memorize it—79134.

“Tell me again everything that you saw.”

Why? She’d said it all already. It wasn’t going to change.

“Do it, JoJo. Tell him again.” Her father paced in the living room, stopping every once in a while at the chair where her mom sat so he could put his hand on her shoulder. It only made her mom cry harder.

“We were at the mall.”

“The strip mall on Springfield,” her mother interjected. “It’s where I dropped them off. They were supposed to go shopping, then call me to pick them up. They were supposed to stay there.”

The detective nodded, and turned to JoJo. “But you decided to leave the mall instead.”

“We wanted to see a movie. Two boys from our class were supposed to meet us there.” JoJo winced at the sound of her father hissing. “It wasn’t like a date or anything, Dad. They were just friends.”

JoJo and Julia were only fourteen. They had already been told by their parents over and over that they weren’t allowed to date until sixteen. Which was so stupid. All the freshman girls in high school already had boyfriends. They were, like, the only single girls in the class.

“Don’t worry about that,” the detective said. “Focus on what happened. You left the mall.”

“The theater was just up the street a few blocks. The movie was at three forty-five.” She remembered that stupid detail.

Three forty-five p.m. Why only that one?

“She was walking too slow. She always walked so slow. Then she stopped because her shoelace came undone.”

JoJo could see it clearly. She was nearly half a block ahead. Julia bent down on one knee tying her shoe as if they had all the time in the world. Which, of course, they didn’t because it was already three-forty. What if the movie had started when they got there? What if they couldn’t find Peter and Jake? Then the whole point of doing this would be for nothing.

JoJo shouted to her to hurry. But Julia flipped her the bird instead. It actually made JoJo smile.

“Then a car pulled up along the side of the road. It was silver. A minivan. The kind where the side door slides over.”

“Can you tell me the make? Was it a Toyota or a Ford?”

JoJo shook her head. She only knew the makes of cars she liked. MINI Coopers and Volkswagen bugs because they were cool. She knew the Subaru her mother drove and the Toyota her dad had driven for years. But they weren’t minivans. It didn’t help. Nothing she knew was helping.

“Then what happened?”

“The side door opened and this guy jumped out. It happened so fast. He just grabbed her from behind. Then she was screaming and he put her in the van.”

The tears that had been falling since she had watched her twin sister be dragged into that van came faster, but they wouldn’t help, either. She had to pull it together so she could tell the detective everything. It was the only way they would find her. Just like she’d told the people at the theater, and the first police officers who arrived at the scene and then her parents.

“He wore jeans. His hair was dark. I think he had a hoodie on, but I can’t be sure.”

“How could you tell what his hair color was if he was wearing a hoodie?”

“It wasn’t on his head. The hood was down. It was gray. I’m sure it was gray. You know, like a workout sweatshirt.” She just remembered that, which meant maybe there were other things she would remember. Something important that would bring Julia back.

“Then the van sped away. It made a U-turn in the middle of the street and was gone.”

“Did you see the driver?”

JoJo closed her eyes. “It was just a guy. I couldn’t really see. A shape behind the wheel, that’s it.”

“But you know that the person who grabbed your sister wasn’t driving the van.”

“Yes. It happened too fast. He grabbed her and the door was sliding closed and the car was moving.”

“Okay, Josephine...or can I call you JoJo?”

She shrugged. Whatever. She hated to be called Josephine. Julia sometimes did it to piss her off.

“I need you to really think. When the car drove away did you see the license plate?”

Everyone wanted to know that. They kept pushing her over and over again to think about it, visualize what the numbers and letters might have looked like. If she could just remember those numbers, then they could find Julia and everything would be all right.

Only she couldn’t.

“Think, JoJo!” her father shouted as he moved between her and the detective. “This is important. You have to think about what you saw and tell them the license. It’s her only hope.”

She lifted her face to her father. “I can’t remember. I didn’t see it. I don’t think... Maybe it didn’t have a front plate. It was fast and I was running to get her.”

“That’s not good enough!” he roared. “This is your sister’s life! Now think!” The blow to the side of her head knocked her off the couch.

“Jonathan!”

“No,” he barked at her mother. “She has to do this. You have to do this!”

“Sir, I know what you’re going through right now. But this isn’t the answer,” the detective said, purposefully keeping his voice even and steady.

JoJo lifted herself onto the couch with a ringing in her head. That was the first time her father had ever hit her. It was so weird.

“Tell them the license plate numbers. Tell them. If you can’t do this, it’s your fault what happens to her. Do you hear me?”

Her fault? Of course it was her fault. She’d wanted to go to the movies. She had a crush on Peter. Julia knew it, too. It was probably why she was being slow. She knew it would make JoJo crazy and Julia lived to make JoJo crazy.

It was what twins did.

JoJo closed her eyes and struggled to think about what happened. The sound of the tires screeching. The vague shape of the body behind the wheel. The back of the van moving away from her as she screamed and screamed and ran so hard after them.

She couldn’t remember one stupid letter of the license plate. She didn’t think she even looked at it.

CHAPTER ONE

MARK SHARPE LOOKED across his desk at the latest job candidate. Her hair was slicked into a tight ponytail, with a straight heavy band of dark hair falling down her back. The nose stud she obviously sported had been removed for the interview. She wore a black turtleneck blouse that looked as if it was strangling the life out of her under her suit jacket.

Occasionally, when she fidgeted with the collar, he could see the hint of ink peeking out.

A nose stud and a neck tattoo. Who knew what else she was hiding?

“I wanted to let you know how impressed I was with your work on the Anderson case,” she said.

Josephine Hatcher was the second investigator he’d interviewed. The previous one had wanted to talk about the Anderson case, too. Interviewing 101, he supposed—compliment the boss on his work. Some days, though, that case didn’t feel like an accomplishment. It felt like a family ripped to shreds starting with the murder of a daughter by her own father.

“First getting the coroner’s ruling of suicide overturned and then learning her father was behind the poisoning had to be shocking. He’d been free for thirteen years until you uncovered the truth.”

The other candidate had said almost the same thing. Mark was a genius, a detecting marvel, a hero for justice. Blah, blah, blah...

“It took you a little long, though.”

“Excuse me?” The other candidate hadn’t said that.

“After you exhumed the body and were able to confirm the girl had been poisoned, the number of suspects was limited to her family and her boyfriend. Few others would have had sufficient access to her over the prolonged period of time it took to her kill her. Once you knew the method, how hard was it to eliminate suspects?”

“Not hard.”

Her lips twitched. “Just saying. Can I ask why you opened the case?”

“Anonymous tip.”

“Probably someone who knew her, knew the family dynamic.”

“Probably,” he grumbled. Who the hell was interviewing whom?

“Did you find the source of the tip?”

“No.”

“Did you look?”

Yes, but he wasn’t about to admit that to her. Anonymous tips were tricky. Sometimes they panned out. Sometimes they didn’t. Mark always preferred identifying the source of an anonymous tip as a way of evaluating the reliability of the information. But he hadn’t been able to locate the person who had sent him the copy of the coroner’s report along with the plainly typed note that simply read, She didn’t do it.

It had been enough to pique his interest. Especially when he read the report and the police file. Suicide had been a stretch, he thought. When people chose to kill themselves they wanted it done immediately.

This girl had been dying for months.

“That doesn’t matter now—the case is closed. So, I should tell you I’m looking for someone with several years’ experience.” It was a prelude, he thought. A way to cushion the blow he was preparing to deliver.

“I’ve been working in the field independently for four years, and apprenticed with another investigator two years before that while earning my master’s in criminology.”

He sighed. He should have figured she would be the type to put up a fight. Couldn’t she pick up on all the subtle no signs he was throwing out? It wasn’t that she wasn’t qualified—of course she was qualified or she wouldn’t have gotten as far as this interview.

The problem was her. There was something about her that made him want to squirm in his chair. It was completely irrational. He had no idea why he felt this way. But he was a man who relied on his gut. His gut said no. His gut said she was trouble.

Mark really hoped that gut feeling wasn’t based on the fact that when he looked her in the eyes, he had a suspicion she was smarter than he was. Because that would probably make him an ass.

“I’m targeting a certain type of clientele.” Hell, that made him sound like a snob. Now he was a snob and an ass.

“I imagine paying ones.”

There was no point in prolonging the inevitable. He’d made his decision almost instantly. The moment he’d shaken her hand and it fit so securely in his. A knee-jerk reaction that told him to run.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Hatcher, but I’m not sure you’re the right fit.”

He watched her shoulders slump. Only for a second, though, then she straightened. “Can I ask why? You have my résumé. You know I’m more than capable.”

It was a ridiculously impressive résumé. A bachelor’s in psychology from New York University, and that master’s of criminology from Columbia—graduated top of her class in both. She’d worked for a medium-size private investigator firm for the six years since. She was changing jobs only because the firm’s owner had decided to retire and she wasn’t happy with the new ownership. Her former boss, Tom Reid, happened to know Ben Tyler—Mark’s former boss and adversary from their days in the CIA together.

That Tom knew Ben wasn’t a surprise. It seemed everybody, at some point in their life, knew Ben Tyler, who headed up the Tyler Group—a small troubleshooting firm located in Philadelphia. Ben employed a few detectives so Reid had forwarded him Josephine’s résumé. Ben—recognizing that he had deprived Mark of his assistant, Anna, by knocking her up and marrying her—had sent Josephine’s résumé to Mark instead.

On paper, she was exactly what he was looking for. He’d already found someone to replace Anna’s duties from an administrative aspect, but his business was gaining a solid reputation and with that came more cases. Trying to make his schedule work with his daughter’s was becoming a challenge. Adding a trained, licensed investigator—one recommended by someone Ben trusted—was like a godsend.

But she wasn’t going to fit. Her eyes were too blue. A deep color that made him think they could see through anything—probably a great quality in an investigator but not such a great quality in a colleague.

“Can I ask you a question?” It was probably unfair to drag out the interview, especially since he’d decided not to hire her. He was curious and wanted to confirm his suspicions that she was, in fact, trouble.

“I think that’s what I’m here for.” She half smiled and again fiddled with the cloth around her neck.

“You’ve got a really impressive résumé. Did you ever consider applying for the FBI?”

“Not really my thing.”

“What about your local police force?”

“Also not my thing.”

Right. Trouble. Just like he suspected.

“Yet according to your list of special skills, you’ve spent months at several law enforcement training camps specializing in firearms and hand-to-hand combat. I guess I’m curious why you wanted to train like an agent, but didn’t want to be an agent.”

He watched her crack her neck as she seemed to search for an answer that was accurate, honest and didn’t cost her the job—even though it was already too late.

Almost too late.

“While law enforcement—either as a police officer or a federal agent—is an honorable career path for many, I was concerned that the confines of the hierarchal structure would be too limiting. Especially for someone in the minority sex.”

She didn’t like authority or sexist pigs.

The sexist pigs he could get behind because she was right. While many of the government investigative agencies from the FBI to NCIS were opening their doors to more women, it was still a man’s world.

But it was the authority part of her explanation he had a problem with. Since, if he employed her, he would be the authority she had a problem with.

“Can I see the tattoo?” That was for his curiosity again.

“Excuse me?”

“The tattoo. Can I see it?”

She smirked. “I have a few. In some rather interesting places so you’ll have to be more specific.”

“Specifically...the one on your neck.”

She lifted her eyes to the ceiling, a move that reminded him vividly of his teenage daughter, then she pulled down the collar.

Black ink barbed wire. With spikes. Covering both the right and left sides of her neck. Not completely circling her skin the wires trailed off as they neared her larynx. Still, a signal to the world to back off.

“Yes, I can see where you might struggle within a—how did you phrase it?—a hierarchal structure.”

“I’m a good investigator. No, check that. I’m a great investigator. I prefer to work on my own, but I never fail to get results. I don’t see why a tattoo should be a problem in getting a job.”

“Except that you know it is or you wouldn’t have covered it up with the turtleneck.”

“Some people are more conservative than others.”

As a rule, Mark was not. In fact, a couple of months ago he wouldn’t have given a rat’s ass about a tattoo. But that was before the mother of his estranged daughter died in a car accident. Before he left the CIA to return to the States. Before he started the process of building a relationship with said estranged daughter...

And failed at it miserably.

Now he was trying to do everything right. He wanted the right type of company. The right type of people around his daughter. The right everything.

Nose-stud, barbed-wire-tattoo chick was not it.

He glanced at her résumé again. She’d included a list of high-profile cases she’d worked on. Some very high-profile cases. What had she said? She was a great investigator. That was probably true, damn it.

“Why the move to Philadelphia?”

“To get away from New York.” She quickly added, “Not that there was anything bad there. Tom’s brother Tim is assuming the role of president of the firm. Tim and I don’t see eye to eye on a lot of things and we both knew when he took over I wouldn’t stay. Tim will never make me a partner. So I figured this might be a good chance to leave the craziness of the city behind. Stop pouring all my money into rent on a studio apartment not much bigger than a closet. I considered Boston, Philadelphia and D.C. but then when Tom brought up Ben Tyler’s name... Well, everyone knows his reputation. Even in New York. I came here for him, but he sent me to you. Now you’re sending me away because you don’t like tattoos. Is that on all people? Or on women in particular?”

Mark gritted his teeth. He would not be backed into a corner on this. “You and I both know you have problems with authority. It’s why you chose private investigation and probably why you couldn’t work with Tim Reid. He’s former FBI as I understand.”

“He might be former FBI but he’s a current ass.” She winced, probably knowing that calling her former boss an ass was not helping her case. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. For the record, I didn’t have a problem with him, or his authority. He, however, had a problem with me and the fact that I have breasts. He’s not a big believer in women in the workforce in general. He’s an old-school, barefoot-and-pregnant kind of a guy.”

“They still exist?”

“He does. Which is how I knew I would never be partner.”

“Is that what you want?” Mark hadn’t thought that far ahead. When he came back after Helen’s death his objectives had been pretty clear. Find a way to reconnect with Sophie and find a way to make a living out of doing what he did best: gathering information. He hadn’t seen much beyond that.

Everything changed so quickly when he realized that it made the most sense to have Sophie live with him. Now she was his first thought every day. Then came the business. Strange that, despite his priorities, progress on his first objective was, to date, rather abysmal, while his second objective was prospering beyond his imagination. Hence the need for help.

“Yes, I want to be a partner. I want a piece of what I create. Eventually. I’m willing to earn it over time.”

“Why not start your own business? Then nobody can tell you what to do.”

“That’s not practical at this point. I don’t have the savings I would need for a proposition like that and, well, health care. It’s a bitch. Got to have it in case one of my tattoos gets infected.”

See, he thought. She was snarky. Nearly unprofessional. She’d referred to her former boss as an ass, for Pete’s sake. She had penetrating deep blue eyes and she was too damn smart. All of that spelled trouble, just like he’d thought.

He was trying to establish something different in his life. Something solid and conservative. Something...that was the opposite of whatever he had been in his former life.

Because being daring to the point of recklessness wasn’t something a stable father should be.

“I’m sorry.”

She nodded and stood. Then she pulled out a card case from the black purse she carried—a purse he highly suspected saw the light of day only when she was interviewing—and handed a card to him.

“I’m staying downtown at the Marriott for the next few days. I figure I’ll take in the city, do the tourist thing before I head to D.C. I have an interview at a firm next week. If you change your mind, you know where to reach me.”