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www.millsandboon.co.uk
JEANIE LONDON has always loved to read and write. School years were spent sneaking romance novels into school when she should have been learning algebra and biology. College years were spent taking electives such as journalism and creative writing classes when she should have been taking algebra and biology.
Nowadays, she’s still reading and writing. She writes romances because she believes in happily-ever-afters. Not the “love conquers all” kind, but the “two people love each other, so they can conquer anything” kind. The commitment and monogamy of romance are strong values she’s passing along to her daughters, who’ll search for their own heroes someday.
For my very dear friend Judith Pich. This one is significant. It’s number six, which means I’m—gasp!—real.
Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
About the Author
Dedication
Acknowledgments
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
Epilogue
Copyright
Special thanks to Cyber-Aunt Karen, DianaP, Andee, Queen April, Cheryl the Angel, Marcy, Nammy, Esjai, Krazkim55, MeriG, Latesha, Jerry, Riza, Aurelene, JenO, Audrey, Dee and all the visitors to my message board at millsandboon.co.uk. Your professional expertise, creative input and love of happily-ever-after inspired the Princess of Paperback while she wrote this story.
Prologue
The kiss—ten years ago
THE WOMAN moved as if she were making love, slim curves gathering and unfolding in a sinuous display as she descended a rope using nothing more than the strength of her upper body to lower her, long sleek legs to anchor her. She wore all black, from the top of her ski-mask-covered head to the tips of her soft-soled boots.
Jake Trinity stopped short in the doorway leading from the offices to the warehouse, the two sides of his brain colliding at the impossibility of the sight. One side absorbed her smooth descent as she shimmied down and dropped to her feet without a sound, her body absorbing the impact with an effortless motion that brought to mind a cat landing on all fours.
This had to be the testosterone-filled half of his brain. The more rational half observed that she’d landed neatly out of reach of the infrared sensor beams zigzagging across the opening of the warehouse doors.
No one should have been in the building.
The night watchman who’d let him in earlier must have gone to sleep on the job because Innovative Engineering had a state-of-the-art security system, barbed-wire fences and steel-reinforced doors and windows to avoid exactly this occurrence.
Jake knew this for certain. For the past two years he’d been conducting his internship with Innovative, the largest electrical engineering firm on the eastern seaboard. He’d made it his business to learn everything about the company he was establishing a career with while earning his degrees.
He’d only stopped by this late on a Saturday night to retrieve some account data so he could continue work on a project for his newest boss, the company president.
He remembered his father’s parting words as he’d left home earlier. College students should spend their weekends dating, playing golf and watching football games, in that order.
Had Jake put any stock in his father’s opinion, he wouldn’t be standing inside a building watching a burglary in progress.
Not that this particular thief would present much of a problem. She wouldn’t, but Jake didn’t believe for one second that this woman was alone. No way.
He stood shadowed in the doorway as she raised her hand to punch numbers onto a keypad, presumably to disable the beam sensor. He searched for any identifying features to report to the police—if he survived the meeting with her accomplices.
Five feet four inches, maybe five-five, most of which comprised long, long legs…
A body that was all slim lines and sleek curves…
Liquid movements that reminded him of…sex.
Something about her, and Jake wasn’t sure what, struck him as young. Around his age maybe. Not quite twenty. With effort, he shrugged off the thought as plain stupid. Why would any young woman be breaking into a commercial warehouse that stored millions of dollars of electrical equipment, not to mention a high-security vault that housed several invaluable prototypes?
Jake didn’t have a chance to consider the possible answers because the mystery woman suddenly spun and looked directly at him. She could have only sensed his presence. Her back had been to him and he hadn’t moved, had barely breathed.
The black mask covered her face and neck. He couldn’t make out her eyes but got the impression they were light, that she must be Caucasian, although he couldn’t see even a sliver of skin to support the impression. Something about her suggested she was as surprised to find him as he’d been to come across her. Something about the way she squared her shoulders and raised her chin…
He stepped into the foyer that connected the offices with the warehouse, expecting her to run. He’d catch her and deal with her accomplices later.
But his mystery woman didn’t run. She only lifted a gloved finger to her mouth and gestured him to silence as she approached. She clearly wasn’t worried that he’d hurt her, and Jake thought that said a lot about her confidence in her abilities. Though she couldn’t know he’d wrestled through high school and still made time for the sport in college, he was a full head taller and outweighed her by at least eighty pounds.
But her hands were free. If she was armed, she hadn’t gone for a weapon.
He stopped and waited, the more impulsive side of his brain noticing how she even walked as if she were making love, all toned muscle and sleek grace. There was no panic about her, or violence. He had the feeling she was challenging him. As if she dared him to play a dangerous game.
So what was his next move?
Jake wasn’t sure about anything except there were other burglars around somewhere, and he wanted very much to see what this woman’s next move would be.
The eye slits in the ski mask were wider than he’d realized, but she’d blackened the skin below, like a television cat burglar. He could see two pale-green eyes, so clear a green they seemed to laser through the darkness.
She didn’t utter a sound, though he half expected her to say something. The occasion seemed to warrant a verbal exchange, but she only assessed him with a challenge in those eyes.
Jake assessed her as carefully, calculated that she stood just out of his reach. A few inches closer and he could’ve taken her down with a leg drop that she wouldn’t have seen coming. He still could, but he’d have to spring on her to cover those extra few inches.
Holding her gaze, he tensed for action….
In one sleek burst of motion, she pounced, covering the distance between them while dragging up the edge of her mask. A glimpse of clear ivory skin, a daintily pointed chin and a kissable red mouth stopped him short.
He could see enough of her face to shoot sparks through him even as the rational half of his brain recognized that she hadn’t revealed enough for him to identify her to the police.
That was his last thought before she slipped leather-clad fingers around his neck, raised up on tiptoes…
And kissed him.
Her moist mouth slanted across his and parted enough so their breaths literally collided.
Jake gasped, but she only laughed, a sultry sound that gusted against his lips, a sound that annihilated reason beneath a blast of testosterone that made his bones melt and his glasses fog.
He should take her down and restrain her for the police.
But that thought dissolved the instant she swept her warm silk tongue into his mouth, prowling inside boldly, engaging him in a kiss so hot that she shut down the rational half of his brain as if it had never existed.
Her fingers anchored his face close. She thrust her body against his, a sleek motion that caught him in all the right spots…firm breasts against his chest, her stomach cradling a hard-on that shouldn’t be happening given their situation. Everything about her was daring him to take what she offered.
Jake practically vibrated with his reaction, a hunger unlike anything he’d ever felt. Instinctively, he lifted his hands, slipped his fingers along the ski mask and forced her to tilt her face back so he could drive his tongue into her mouth.
The hot taste of passion chased away any worries, any reasonable thoughts…including all awareness of the surveillance camera that was angled at them, recording every second of that incredible kiss.
1
MALLORY HUNT wanted a piece of Jake Trinity’s ass.
Literally.
The way she saw it, the man owed her for some very good reasons. For one, he’d sent her dad on a four-year stint in prison. For another, he’d sent her on a six-month stint in foster care. And forced her dad’s burglary crew into retirement.
All because of one lousy kiss.
Well, the kiss hadn’t exactly been lousy. If it had been, she might have forgotten it after ten years. She hadn’t.
Of course she wouldn’t admit that to her dad, so she simply said, “You heard right. Jake Trinity contacted me about a job.”
An understatement if ever there was one. The man had blasted back into her life with the force of a gunshot, insisting she drop everything to consult with him.
And Mallory intended to consult…oh, yeah, she intended to do a lot more, too, but she wouldn’t tell her dad that, either. She didn’t want to invite any questions when she knew for a fact that her dad didn’t know Jake Trinity had been the informant who’d gotten him busted on the Innovative Engineering job all those years ago.
As far as Mallory was concerned, if her dad had survived the past decade in the dark, dredging up memories of that painful time in their lives would serve no good purpose.
She’d handle Jake Trinity herself. And she had some very specific plans to pay the man back for his interference in their lives. Very specific. She’d make him regret the day he’d taken the moral high road by triggering the silent alarm that had changed the lives of everyone she cared about forever.
She’d make him pay for being the reason that her dad had lied to her for the first and only time in her life.
Yes, Mallory had it all under control…but she didn’t want her dad around to interfere with her plans, or to get any wrong ideas. He’d been dropping way too many hints about her finding a husband lately. He wanted her to settle down in a house with a white picket fence, and the last thing she needed was for him to decide Jake Trinity might make an acceptable candidate to share her happily ever after.
No, her dad didn’t need to know this job was anything more than a normal troubleshooting gig.
Which meant she wasn’t answering any more questions.
As a diversionary tactic she glanced to where he was perched precariously on the wall beside her, and asked, “Are you doing okay? How are you holding up? This is a long climb.”
Her dad peered down the sixty feet of man-made rockclimbing wall separating them from their belay partners below. “I’m going all the way today, babe. How about you?”
“If there’s no challenge, I don’t see the point.”
Today’s rock-climbing challenge had limits. She and her dad both were harnessed and roped with their belay partners clinging to their lines, ready to control the descent if either one fell. As she barely tipped the scales at one hundred and ten, a fall wouldn’t be much of a challenge for her belay partner, either.
Following her dad’s gaze down to the high-tech foam floor far below, she experienced a rush of vertigo that made her tighten her grip on the handholds and suck in a tight breath to chase the thrill that coursed through her.
She smiled.
While indoor rock climbing might not be the greatest of challenges, it was a great workout.
“That’s my girl,” her dad said. “No guts, no glory.”
“No risk, no reward,” she agreed.
“No pain, no gain.”
That comment made Mallory slant her gaze his way again. Her dad winked, alleviating any cause for worry with one charming glance.
Although Duke Hunt had been scaling man-made walls with her three times a week ever since the Vertical Playground rock-climbing gym had opened in their hometown of Atlanta, the fact still remained that he was a man on approach to his sixtieth birthday. Like her dad, she wasn’t one to dwell on impending maturity, but Mallory did have to face the occasional reminder that he was getting older. With a lifestyle as active as theirs, it would have been impossible to ignore the fact.
Though her dad was just as healthy and attractive as he’d always been—a man who women routinely went to pieces over—the passage of time had marked him physically. Distinguished silver shot his black hair at the temples. Laugh lines around his mouth and eyes scored his olive skin more deeply than ever.
But despite this evidence of age, Mallory only saw her dad, a timeless, larger-than-life man who laughed easily, lived life on the edge and loved her more than anything else in his world.
“No risk of failure, no fun.” She contributed a new addition to their collection of motivational sayings.
Lifting her gaze to the remaining thirty feet of wall shooting above her head, she reached for her next handhold.
Each time she planted a booted foot on a hold, she shifted her weight and thrust her body upward. Her muscles strained, and she forced herself to concentrate so she didn’t misstep.
As a sport, rock climbing was half technique and half muscle. Though she was barely of average height, the muscle part of the equation wasn’t an issue. The more Mallory practiced her technique, the more strength she built.
Which didn’t mean squat at seventy feet.
The muscles in her thighs had rebelled a good while ago. Of course, she’d arrived at the Vertical Playground earlier than her dad to warm up by bouldering—challenging climbs that she made without the benefit of protection or aids. She relied solely on her technique and strength to get her to the top and down again.
The top in that instance had only been twelve feet, but the activity had contributed to the sweat now soaking through her shorts and ribbed T-shirt.
“Well, tell me what Trinity said.” Her dad steered the conversation right back around to the one subject she didn’t want to discuss.
“I haven’t talked to him yet. We’re consulting after I’m done in the gym.” She didn’t sound much less winded than her dad, each word coming out as sort of a breathy grunt.
“Did he detail what he’s looking for in his proposal?”
“He wants me to pinpoint the holes in the prototype of a new security system he’s designed.”
“How does his new system look? Anything interesting?”
Interesting meant cutting edge. Staying on top of the latest security developments was a crucial aspect not only of Mallory’s security consulting business, but of her dad’s.
They were two sides of the same coin. Both their business cards read Hunt Security Specialists. Both their business cards had a phone number. Anything more would have been overkill since their reputations grew each year, a tribute to the power of client satisfaction and word-ofmouth referrals.
But that was where the similarities ended.
Mallory handled only legitimate jobs, so she didn’t have bars looming in her future. She consulted about security for commercial businesses and worked as a troubleshooter for the engineers who designed the systems. She’d also been working with several law-enforcement agencies recently, projecting how professional burglars might have entered various properties to carry out crimes.
Irony at its finest.
Her dad…well, for Duke Hunt, old habits died hard. Like Mallory, he consulted about security, but he consulted for professional burglars while they planned their heists.
On the fringes of the law, but not prosecutable. And there was no denying that her dad’s consulting business was a natural fit. Before his forced retirement, he’d spent his adult life working as a professional burglar, specializing in infiltrating commercial properties and cracking safes.
He’d trained Mallory at his knee from as far back as she could remember. By age thirteen, she’d taken her place as a member of his crew, starting off by scouting egress routes and disabling telephone lines. Eventually she’d graduated to disarming motion and heat sensors and had been training to monitor video stations when they’d been busted.
As Duke Hunt’s only child, she’d had an unconventional upbringing that she wouldn’t have traded away one second of—except for the four years her dad had spent in prison.
All because of her run-in with Jake Trinity.
“How’d Trinity hear about you?” her dad asked.
“From the work I did with Triple Safe.”
Duke shot her a smile that epitomized a pride in her abilities that far surpassed normal parental standards. “You were prime on that job, babe.”
She returned the smile. She had been prime on the Triple Safe job. The company had lucked into a chance to bid on a large account here in Atlanta. They’d contracted her to consult, and she’d blown meteor-sized craters in their proposal and helped them redesign their entire system. They’d won the account, established themselves in the industry and generously added to her portfolio and reputation in the process.
“Trinity’s prototype has a few new features. Of course I won’t have a bead on how new until I see the specs,” she said, hoping a minimum of information would satisfy his curiosity. “I did notice in his proposal that he was minimizing the risk of false alarms by using passive infrared and active microwave sensors together in the same units.”
“Sounds good. Nothing worse than a twitchy alarm.”
“You’re right about that.” Twitchy sensors could activate an alarm at the most inopportune times—a major inconvenience.
“Think you’ll accept the job?”
“Don’t know until I talk to the man.” The lie tumbled off her lips easily, considering she didn’t usually lie to her dad.
“Well, here’s hoping he offers you a challenge, then. No doubt you’d love the chance to blast holes in his new system.”
No doubt. And while Mallory appreciated her dad’s vote of confidence in her abilities, the simple truth was there was no such thing as a fail-safe security system. People designed the systems, and people weren’t fail-safe. Clever burglars—and accomplished security specialists like herself and her dad—could always find ways around new precautions.
Jake Trinity, CEO and founder of Trinity Security Services, known throughout the industry as TSS, might be Atlanta’s golden boy in the security industry, but he wasn’t any more fail-safe than his systems.
Mallory intended to prove just how fail-safe he wasn’t.
“Did Lance ever make it home last night?” she asked to divert her dad from his interrogation.
“How’d you hear?”
“Polish Paul called me on my cell. He wanted to know if Lance had contacted me.”
“Had he?”
“No.”
Duke frowned, and Mallory knew he was worried about their friend’s seventeen-year-old son. Polish Paul had been part of her dad’s crew since long before Mallory had been born, and he’d crossed the line to become family-by-love somewhere along the way. He’d stuck by her dad’s side through thick and thin, through flush years and lean, and was still sticking around ten years after Duke had retired from burglary.
Mallory wished Lance had contacted her. Once upon a time, they’d been close, too. Or as close as a young boy could be to an older almost-sister. While they weren’t related, they had lived together for a few years after Polish Paul had sprung Mallory from foster care during her dad’s incarceration.
“Well, don’t worry, babe. Paul promised to call as soon as Lance shows up.” He exhaled heavily. “Damned kid is going to be the death of him yet.”
Mallory wished she had some reassurance to offer, but she didn’t. Lance had grown into an angry teen who was determined to buck his father at every turn. He’d shut out all the people who cared for him, all of Duke’s crew and her, too. Once upon a time, they’d all been one big happy family—the only family she and Lance had ever known. But time and circumstance seemed to be pulling them all in different directions.
“Just call me when he shows up, okay?” she said.
“And you let me know if you accept Trinity’s offer. Working with TSS will look good on your résumé.”
“You think?” She swallowed back a sigh. They were back here again. “I kind of thought my endorsement on Trinity’s new system would look good on his résumé.”
Her dad gave a hearty laugh, tossing his head back in a gesture that would have knocked most climbers off their center and sent them gliding toward the floor.
Her dad wasn’t most climbers.
“Opal was right. You’re getting cocky.”
“And that surprises you? I’m your daughter.” Mallory didn’t care for the word cocky, but she’d earned the right to be satisfied with her work, as both her dad and Opal knew.
“Watch out, babe. Arrogance has been the downfall of too many good men.”
“And women?”
“Job hazard,” he said, a little too seriously.
“Is that why you’ve sicced Opal on me? Are you worried I’m heading for a fall?”
Opal was another of her dad’s crew who’d been around for longer than time—although Mallory would never have dared to phrase it that way to Opal. On the down side of fifty-five, Opal liberally contributed to her plastic surgeon’s portfolio in an effort not to look older than forty.
So far she was succeeding admirably.
But even more importantly, Opal was the closest thing that Mallory had ever had to a mother. Not that she would have ever said that to Opal’s face, either. The term connoted an age difference that simply wasn’t part of Opal’s vocabulary.
Nevertheless, she’d graciously played the role through the years, stepping in whenever Mallory had needed some motherly advice that Duke’s never-ending, constantlychanging stream of girlfriends couldn’t provide.
Mallory’s own mother had abandoned her husband and infant daughter for an opportunity to perform in a Las Vegas show—her first stop on the road to stardom. Unfortunately, life hadn’t cooperated, and she’d wound up dead in a car accident before leaving Vegas for Hollywood.
“I’m not worried you’ll take a fall,” her dad said. “And I haven’t sicced Opal on you, as you so eloquently put it. She’s just helping you out with your administrative tasks.”
“And keeping you informed about the clients I take.”