Bronte found herself facing a clearly hungry Connor…

Standing directly in the last remaining beams of the setting sun, Bronte watched Connor’s eyes darken. “This is crazy,” he muttered, just before burying his hands in her hair and slanting his mouth against hers, the hot wetness of his tongue begging for entrance.

Bronte’s knees went weak and she melted against him for support. She suddenly realized Connor’s arousal pulsed against her stomach. She drew a sharp breath, trying to clear her head. Connor groaned something, then launched a renewed attack on her mouth.

Helpless to resist him, and not sure she wanted to anyway, Bronte arched her back in invitation. An invitation he obviously accepted, Bronte decided, when he backed her up against the rough bark of the tree, well out of sight of any onlookers. The low-hanging branches created a fragrant cocoon around them. The sun finally slipped over the horizon, leaving them in deep, secretive shadows.

Bronte shuddered as Connor’s hand seared her flesh through her dress. Then he dipped his finger inside the low neckline and his hot skin made contact with hers. Desire pooled between her thighs, making Bronte whimper.

Who would have guessed that serious, brooding Connor McCoy could bring a woman to the brink with just a kiss?

Dear Reader,

We can’t tell you how much we’ve enjoyed writing THE MAGNIFICENT MCCOY MEN miniseries. All the McCoys feel like family, and it’s really tough letting them go. Especially Connor. As the eldest of the five McCoys and fill-in dad to his four rough-and-tumble brothers, his story touched us on the deepest level. So it made sense for us to find Connor a very special woman.

In Never Say Never Again, U.S. Marshal Connor McCoy meets up with savvy junior U.S. Attorney Bronte O’Brien. Bronte is everything Connor’s always avoided in a woman—she’s strong, she’s smart and she’s very, very sexy. But when Connor finds himself framed for a crime he didn’t commit, she’s exactly the woman he needs—on his side and in his bed.

We hope you enjoy watching the last Magnificent McCoy bachelor fall. We’d love to know what you think. Write to us at: P.O. Box 12271, Toledo, OH 43612, or visit us at www.toricarrington.com for fun drawings. And be sure to keep your eyes peeled for our first book in Harlequin’s new BLAZE series, YOU SEXY THING!.

Here’s wishing you love, romance and a happy ending,

Lori & Tony Karayianni

aka Tori Carrington

Never Say Never Again
Tori Carrington

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To our editor, Brenda Chin,

who took one look at License To Thrill and saw

The Magnificent McCoy Men miniseries.

This one’s for you!

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Epilogue

1

CONNOR MCCOY CAUGHT A glimpse of himself in the mirror and nearly choked. Yes, he recalled agreeing to be his youngest brother David’s best man, though he still couldn’t quite figure that one out. Yes, he remembered putting the tuxedo on, every agonizing moment of the ordeal, from fastening the cummerbund to nearly strangling himself with the bow tie. But as he walked through David’s bedroom to get his brother’s wallet, he was startled by his own reflection in the mirror above the dresser.

The guy looking back at him was a stranger, as was just about everyone in his life right now. He puffed his chest out, and turned his head slightly, considering the dark-haired guy in his late thirties looking back at him. Not bad, if he did say so himself. He never spent much time grooming, which explained his startled reaction to spotting his own reflection. He made a monthly visit to the Manchester barber for a trim to the close-cropped cut he’d taken to back at the U.S. Marshal’s Service Training Academy in Glynco, Georgia, over a decade ago. A supply of good, ol’ Ivory soap, deodorant, shaving cream, a straight edge razor and a bottle of aspirin were the total contents of his medicine cabinet at his apartment. Completely low maintenance. Unlike some people he could name but wouldn’t. His gaze dropped to the dresser in front of him and he frowned, eyeing the variety of colognes there. He picked one up. Sex Bomb?

“What’s the holdup?” David asked, popping his head in the doorway.

Connor held up the bottle. “Do you really wear this stuff?”

His younger brother entered the room then leaned against the doorjamb. “Every chance I get. Drives the women crazy.” He winked.

Connor put the bottle down, nearly knocking the rest of them over as he did so. “I think I’ll pass.”

David collected his wallet from the night table on the other side of the bed. Connor watched him, trying to pinpoint some sort of visible difference. Aside from the monkey suit he wore, he looked the same. His hair was a little neater, maybe, but that was about it. For all intents and purposes, David McCoy was the same smart-ass kid he’d always been.

Why, then, the sudden need to get married?

Connor cleared his throat. “Are you nervous?”

“Who? Me?” David said, jabbing his thumb into his chest. “Hell, yeah, I’m nervous.”

Connor relaxed. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to talk his brother out of making the biggest mistake of his life. Where there were nerves, there were good, solid reasons.

David slipped his wallet into his back pocket, then straightened his tuxedo jacket. “After all, it’s not every day a man has to stand in front of half the D.C. law enforcement community and profess his love for a fellow police officer.” He grinned.

Connor grimaced.

His brother whacked him in the stomach. “What’s the matter, Con? You’re looking a little green there. Don’t tell me you’re nervous?”

“Me? Hell, no.” He stiffened. “I just want to make sure that…you know, that you’re doing the right thing here.”

“Are you kidding? Oh, I’m definitely doing the right thing. Marrying Kelli Hatfield’s the smartest thing I’ll have done in my life up ’til this point.” He smoothed down the front of his shirt, his expression slanting toward the serious. He slowly shook his head. “You know, I thought I had it all figured out before. Life. Career. Love. Then came Kelli and she…well, she proved I didn’t know diddly.”

This wasn’t going anything like the way Connor had planned. He took a deep breath and fought the urge to shake his own head in disbelief and pity for the youngest of the McCoy clan.

“Do you know what that’s like?”

Connor snapped his head up. “What?”

“You know…loving someone. Falling in love with someone. Meeting that one person who makes the whole world look different. Like opening your eyes for the first time.”

Oh, boy, was his brother really in sorry shape. “I like the way the world looks right now.”

David laughed. “I knew you’d say that.” He slapped his hand across Connor’s shoulders, meeting his gaze in the mirror. “I hope I’m around when it happens to you, big bro. Now that’s going to be something to sell tickets to.”

“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t go reserving a forum just yet, David. Because you’d lose every stinking cent you’d put down.”

David waggled a finger at him. “You just watch and see if it doesn’t happen to you.”

“Never.” He checked each of his cuff links and sighed, realizing he wasn’t going to get anywhere talking to his brother now. And if they didn’t get out of there soon, he was afraid David would put on a teapot to boil and suggest they reminisce about old times. “You ready?”

“For the past thirty years of my life.”

Connor cringed, thinking that out of the four weddings he’d attended in the past year, this one was going to be the most nauseating yet.

SIX HOURS LATER, OUTSIDE the swanky downtown D.C. hotel, the warm spring sun was setting, birds were singing, cherry blossoms were blossoming. Inside, in a lavishly laid-out ballroom, under artfully painted ceilings and curving archways, a dark cloud hunched around Connor McCoy’s shoulders, threatening to unleash a storm he wasn’t sure he knew how to deal with.

He leaned against the bar and eyed the happy couple across the hall as they engaged in the traditional first dance of the night. David’s blond head angled closer to his bride’s ear, murmuring something that made Kelli blush then turn into his kiss. The sight was so intimate, so private, Connor couldn’t help but feel like he was somehow intruding on the moment, despite the very public display, even though two hundred others looked on with him.

He swore under his breath then turned away.

Who’d have thought that one year could make so much of a difference? Twelve months? Three-hundred-and-sixty-five days? He sure wouldn’t have guessed at the same time last year that he would be standing at David’s wedding reception, the only McCoy male still single.

“You look like an accident waiting to happen,” Sean said coming to stand next to him.

Connor’s grimace deepened. Well, okay, he was the second single McCoy male left. Pops was the first. Though he’d never really considered Pops just a male. He was a widower. His father. Not exactly prime bachelor meat up for grabs to the first bidder.

He looked down at his suit. “This is the fourth time I’ve had to rent a tux in a year. The rental-shop girl asked if maybe I wanted to buy the sucker. How do you expect me to look?” He tugged on the sleeves of the jacket, feeling as if the material had somehow grown snugger since he’d had it on earlier that day. Leave it to David to schedule his wedding ceremony at noon, his reception at seven, making him have to wear the suit not once, but twice in the same day.

Sean ordered a brew, then straightened the lapels of his own tailored suit. With his white hair neatly combed, his shoulders wide, he was, in fact, looking very much like an older bachelor up for auction. He said, “Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I was expecting you to look happy for your brothers, maybe? Proud?”

Connor nearly choked on his own beer. “Proud?”

Pops grinned, though his gray eyes were watchful. “Yeah. I know I’m biased, but I think our boys have picked themselves a great bunch of women. Don’t you think?”

Connor glanced away. There was something about the way his father had said “our boys” that made his stomach twist tighter than it already was. On the dance floor petite Michelle was pulling gangly Jake onto the parquet floor next to Mel and Marc, who were dancing as if they were the newlyweds instead of new parents.

Speaking of which…

Connor scanned the surrounding tables where draped linens and colorful flower arrangements competed with guests’ apparel. There. There she was. He spotted Melanie’s mother Wilhemenia. She wore a navy-blue dress that reached up to her neck and down to midcalf. But despite the severe clothing, her face was softer than he’d ever seen it as she held up little Sean Jonathon McCoy, named for Sean, and Mel’s late father, Jonathon. Wilhemenia’s lips moved as she said something to the infant, then she pressed her mouth against his temple.

Connor’s gaze moved to his nephew. Three months old. He could still remember when David was that age. And now David was married.

Where did the time go? And why did he have the unsettling feeling that it was passing him by?

Sean cleared his throat. “Certainly you didn’t expect your brothers to stay single, did you?”

Connor blinked at him. It took him a moment to register what his father had said. He shrugged. “Sure, why not? What’s wrong with being single?”

“Nothing. But I think the applicable question here is what’s the matter with being married?”

Connor narrowed his eyes, his gaze again trailing to Wilhemenia Weber. “Are we talking about you here, Pops? Because if we are—”

“No, we’re not talking about me, here. We’re talking about your brothers.” He drew in a deep breath then slowly let it out. “You…well, you’ve made it quite clear on where you stand on my being involved with a woman, so I’m not interested in revisiting that topic—especially since this is the first time you’ve done more than grunt at me in months.”

“I don’t grunt.”

“Whatever you say.” His father’s grin caught him off guard. Connor found himself grinning back.

“Yes, well, I learned it from the best.”

“That you have. And one of these days you and I are going to have a long talk about that.”

“Pardon me. Connor?”

At the sound of the female voice, Connor swung around so fast, his beer nearly sloshed over the side of his glass. He found himself staring at one of the purple-clad bridesmaids. The cute one with the blond hair and the impish smile that looked all of twelve. And came to about his navel standing on the tip of her toes.

“Would you care to dance?” she asked.

Dance? Him? He’d never even set foot on a dance floor, much less danced on one. And he had no intention of starting now. “No.”

The young woman darted away without so much as another peep.

Pops cringed next to him. “You were a bit abrupt, don’t you think?”

Maybe he had been, but he wasn’t about to admit that to his father. “Nope. I’ve found it’s the only way to be. Try being nice and women think you’re playing hard to get. Put them off, hoping they’ll take the hint, and they come back.” He watched the pretty young blonde hurry to rejoin the rest of the wedding party, then shrugged. “Give her five minutes. She’ll get over it.”

Pops stared at him in a way Connor couldn’t decipher and didn’t particularly like. “What?” he finally asked, inexplicably irritated.

Sean shook his head. “Oh, nothing.” He gestured with his glass toward the dance floor. “You know, for David’s sake, you could maybe pretend that you’re having a good time.”

“I’ve never been very good at pretending.”

“No, that you haven’t.” He put his glass down. “You don’t mind if I have a little fun for the both of us then, do you?”

Before Connor could answer, he watched his father head toward the dance floor and cut in on the bride and groom. Kelli laughed as he said something to her, then he swept her away from David like Fred Astaire on a bad dance day.

Connor turned back toward the bar. For a minute there he’d been afraid Pops meant to ask Mel’s mom, Wilhemenia, to dance. He was curious at the mixture of relief and disappointment that his father hadn’t.

Someone put a full wineglass on the bar next to him. “I’d like to exchange this for a glass of beer, please.”

He glanced over to find Kelli’s friend—what was her name?—standing beside him. He drew a complete and utter blank on her first name as he noticed the way the light from the chandeliers set her short, red hair on fire.

She thanked the tender for the beer then leaned against the bar next to him. “Looks like you’re having about as good a time as I am.”

Connor forced himself to take a sip from his glass. Bronte. That was her name. For the life of him he couldn’t figure out why he had momentarily forgotten it. It wasn’t like he hadn’t seen her enough times in the past few months, what with her being Kelli’s best friend and all.

He shifted from one booted foot to the other. Who was he kidding? His memory of her and her name went back farther than that cop bar where David and Kelli had first met. A lot farther. He remembered Bronte O’Brien from George Washington University, second year.

One recollection in particular sprung forth. Although he’d noticed her in the lecture hall before, on this day she’d taken the seat in front of him. It had been exam time, just after spring break. He hadn’t had much time to study because he’d spent his vacation looking after David, who had come down with a nasty virus. The night before his brother had been sicker than a dog. Connor had spent hours holding a bucket up at the side of his bed and keeping a cool rag on his head. Still, he’d fully intended to pass the exam. He’d been twenty-five and it had taken him longer than most to make it to college, and that had made him determined to make each moment count. He had passed the exam—just barely. He’d been so obsessed with the way the ends of Bronte O’Brien’s short hair curled against the back of her freckled neck that he’d been marked wrong on questions he could have answered in his sleep.

He took a long pull from his glass, moving past the memory and to the present. So long as she was standing next to him, and wasn’t making a pest out of herself, he supposed some sort of small talk was warranted, something he’d never been particularly good at. But at least in their case they had shared interests. More specifically, the witness she’d placed into the witness protection program two months ago. A witness that was giving Connor his fair share of sleepless nights with her ceaseless demands for expensive items not included in the program’s limited budget.

He cleared his throat. “Congratulations on convincing Melissa Robbins to testify.”

Bronte appeared not to hear him at first. She twisted her lips, then glanced away. “I’m not sure if I’m deserving of congratulations yet. She’s a reluctant witness at best. And her ex-boyfriend, Leonid Pryka, is a formidable target.” She looked him full in the face. “Does that mean you’re in charge of her protection?”

“Yeah.”

Connor supposed that, on the surface, you couldn’t find two people more different from each other. Where Bronte appeared at home in her sophisticated clothes and surroundings, he was counting the minutes until he could get out of there and out of his monkey suit.

But they did share something in common: their involvement in the justice system, though he found it ironic that even in that regard their roles were completely different.

As an attorney in the Transnational/Major Crimes Section of the U.S. attorney’s office, Bronte O’Brien put together cases against criminals to take to trial, which sometimes required protection for key witnesses she unearthed. And as a deputy U.S. marshal in Witness Security and Protection, also known as WitSec, that’s where he came in. He made sure those witnesses were kept safe and sound and delivered in time for trial.

In this particular case, Bronte had convinced Melissa Robbins to testify against her ex-boyfriend, Leonid Pryka, a once small-time importer who had become big time with noted speed, making local and federal law enforcement very interested in just how, exactly, he had come by his seemingly instant wealth. They suspected that illegal arms and possibly weapons of mass destruction might be the import of choice. And apparently the U.S. attorney’s office felt that Pryka’s spurned girlfriend was the witness that could help them finally prove it.

Connor’s current assignment was to keep Melissa Robbins safe. Well, at least from outsiders. Protecting himself and the other marshals from her incessant, aggravating, irrational demands was something else entirely.

He squinted at Bronte, wondering if she knew exactly how…impossible her witness was. It wasn’t that he doubted Bronte’s capabilities. He made a point of knowing what was going on in the U.S. attorney’s office. You couldn’t fully protect a witness unless you knew who and what you were protecting her from. And he’d long since become aware that Bronte’s conviction rate was high. If she thought Robbins could deliver the goods on Pryka, then she could. It was as simple as that.

But as far as witnesses went, high-maintenance Melissa Robbins was one of the most difficult targets he’d had to protect in all his years with WitSec—second only to a schizophrenic mob accountant who had convinced himself that the marshals protecting him had been bought. Norman Becknal had escaped their custody no fewer than four times.

Connor would count himself lucky if Melissa Robbins tried to do the same.

“I suppose I can be thankful for that,” Bronte finally said. “I mean, your being in charge of Robbins’s protection. At least I can be reasonably assured that she’ll be…available when the case comes up for trial next month.”

Connor grimaced. That was if he and his men didn’t end up whacking the woman themselves.

Bronte fingered a simple silver earring on her left lobe. Connor watched the absent movement, inexplicably fascinated.

It wasn’t the overt things about women that got to him. Height, hair color, breast size—none of that made one iota of difference to him. It was the small things that threatened to do him in. The way they wrinkled their noses when they talked. How they told a story, including details he’d overlook but ultimately made the tale more interesting. The way they toyed with tiny, shimmering earrings….

“What?” Bronte made a funny face. “Don’t tell me. I have rice or something stuck in my eyebrow.”

Connor couldn’t help a smile. “No. Your…eyebrows are just fine.” As was everything else about the outgoing college student turned savvy junior U.S. attorney.

He snapped upright, moving from his startlingly relaxed position.

He’d be well-served to remember what else he knew about Bronte O’Brien. Particularly that she went through men faster than a shopaholic could max out a new credit card. He narrowed his eyes. Funny, he hadn’t seen her with anyone lately, though. Not at the bar when he’d first crossed paths with her again outside the district courthouse. Not during her occasional visits out to the McCoy place with Kelli.

Not that he’d been paying close attention, mind you. The last thing on his mind was women.

Bronte pushed from the bar and visibly straightened her shoulders, jolting him from his thoughts and making him realize he’d been staring. “Okay, after that thorough inspection, I know something is wrong. It’s my makeup, isn’t it? I forgot to put mascara on one eye. No, wait. My blush doesn’t match my lipstick.”

Connor looked down at his glass, fighting a half smile. “I’d be the last person to notice either thing.”

She considered him warily. “Then why are you staring at me?”

He shrugged. Why was he staring at her? He already knew that such steady attention only garnered unwanted interest. And while he wasn’t opposed to bedding the occasional female every now and again, Bronte wasn’t going to be one of them. “Just thinking.”

“Uh-huh…you were just…thinking.”

He put his glass on the bar. “Something wrong with that?”

“I don’t know. Depends on what you were thinking.”

He fastened his gaze on her face. But rather than the flirtatious look he expected, he instead found she wore a guardedly curious expression. Was that because she wasn’t attracted to him? Found his company…wanting?

He frowned. What was he thinking? He didn’t want her to be attracted to him any more than he wanted to be attracted to her. And he wasn’t. He was merely appreciating her beauty, that’s all. He wasn’t any more attracted to her than he was to any of his sisters-in-law. So what if he noticed the way her breasts pressed against the thin fabric of her dress? How the slit up the side of her ankle-length skirt flashed glimpses of her long legs when she walked? How pale freckles peppered every visible inch of her skin? He’d notice the same thing about any other female within the vicinity. He was a man, after all. It didn’t necessarily mean he was attracted to her.

“I was just thinking,” he began, searching for an explanation that would keep him safely out of reach, yet make some sort of sense. “You went to G.W.U., didn’t you?”

Her instant answering smile yanked on something inside his chest. He told himself it was relief. “I’m surprised you remember.”

His brows budged upward. Her response indicated she had some memory of him being there as well. “I have to say I’m surprised you do too.”

She looked down at her glass. “Yeah, well, it’s hard to forget a guy who would be taller than me even when I’m in high heels. There aren’t many out there.”

“I remember noticing your height too—and that red hair,” he said.

She leaned back against the bar. “I have to give you credit. You’re the first guy I’ve met who hasn’t asked me inside of a minute if I’ve ever modeled.”

“That’s because I know you’re with the U.S. attorney’s office.”

Her laugh was mature, deep and throaty.

“I could say that you’re the first woman at this wedding who hasn’t asked me to dance inside of a minute.”

Bronte O’Brien looked at strapping Connor McCoy from beneath her lashes, trying to figure out if he was trying to make small talk, or if he was just plain conceited. Oh, she could imagine that lots of women asked him to dance. That wasn’t the problem. In a room full of men dressed to the nines, he was the one who stuck out, tempted women’s attention with that clean-shaven, good-guy look and brooding expression. He was the type of guy a woman spotted and instantly a flashing alarm went off: Grade-A heartbreak ahead.

Well, at least that’s how she saw him. Other women might be inclined to try to tempt him from his commitment-phobic ways. Of course she’d passed that masochistic phase years ago, thank God. The simple truth was, no woman could change a man like Connor. The more she’d try, the more he would resist. Until finally she’d be forced to walk away—or worse, he would send her packing and she’d be left to make fast friends with a carton of tissues.

Anyway, her problem wasn’t being attracted to commitment-phobic guys. In fact, it was the complete opposite. She’d settle for one who wasn’t already married.

She frowned into her beer, forgetting for a moment why Connor was staring at her. The she realized he was waiting for some sort of response. “Did it cross your mind that I didn’t ask you to dance because I’m not interested in dancing with you?” Her smile took some of the bite out of her words, then grew genuine when he smiled back. “Okay, that’s not really the reason. I didn’t ask you to dance because I don’t dance.” She shrugged, wondering why she’d volunteered that little piece of trivia from the life and times of Bronte O’Brien. Still, no matter how many years went by, or how many men she dated, the memories from her wallflower days tagged along on her heels like a long piece of unnoticed toilet paper. Until events like these reminded her. Speaking of which… She looked down at her shoes just to make sure she wasn’t trailing any t.p. The way today was going, she wouldn’t be surprised to find an entire roll hanging on. “I don’t know. I guess it’s one of the drawbacks of having a foot on the guys in school. For some reason, they never ask girls taller than they are to dance.”

His eyes darkened with something shared and elemental, throwing her for a second. “I bet they regret their actions now.”

She laughed. “I doubt it.”

She caught herself staring into those same eyes, now tinted with enigmatic shadows. She’d come across Connor several times in the past few months and he’d never given her the time of day, much less made an effort to talk to her. There was something different about him tonight, though. Something almost…human.

She forced herself to turn and watch the people on the dance floor, realizing she probably sounded like she was looking for a pity dance. She slanted him a covert look, relieved to find he was staring out on the dance floor much as she was. She let out a quiet, shaky breath. She should have known better. Through Kelli’s dealings with the McCoy family of rebels-without-a-clue, she’d learned that while they had to be the best-looking bunch of men on the eastern seaboard, they weren’t exactly the brightest when it came to women. Kelli, herself, had nearly halted her wedding plans at least three times because of some stupid stunt or other that David had pulled both on and off the job.

Her gaze was drawn to the good-looking couple, swaying to a slow, sultry song about lost loves, and her own heart gave a gentle squeeze.

This whole night had been harder on her than she would have ever imagined it would be. It was more than the loss of her heel before the ceremony that an application of Wilhemenia Weber’s quick glue had fixed; the spot of brisket drippings on her dark dress she hid with the strategic placement of her gauzy wrap; the fact that, aside from Kelli and Connor, she didn’t know anyone in the large room. No, what really bothered her was that she’d caught herself looking at the happy couple in a way that could be nothing but envious. Wishing it were her on that dance floor leading off the celebration with Thomas Jenkins, the man she had planned to marry. The only man who had tempted her to glimpse past her dedication to her career, made her think that maybe there was something else out there, perhaps even a white picket fence and two-point-two children. Enough to become engaged to him. At least until nine months ago, when she’d discovered he’d never had any intention of marrying her. Because he was already married.

A mixture of sadness, regret and guilt gathered in her chest, making it almost impossible to breathe as she caught herself looking at her left hand for the engagement ring that used to be there.

She tried to shake off the unwanted feelings and focus her thoughts on the man next to her, warning herself not to focus too intently. Taking on another man to get over the one before was the mode of operation the old Bronte would have employed—a mode she’d long ago chucked out the window.

“They make a cute couple, don’t they?” she quietly asked Connor.

David dipped his new wife then took a whack in the arm for his efforts once Kelli had her feet back under her. “I guess.”

She wondered at the tension that suddenly emanated from Connor. Did he object to Kelli’s marrying his youngest brother? She found it impossible to believe that anyone would object, but she knew only too well that what she believed and what was really the truth often were two completely different things. “She loves him, you know,” she felt the need to point out.

He nodded slowly. “I know.”

“And he loves her.”

“I know.” He squinted at her, as if trying to figure out her motives.

“Then why the long face?”

He appeared suddenly uncomfortable, an emotion she would never have attributed to him. Ever. She knew her reasons for not wanting to be here, in this hall, watching two people so obviously in love with each other, but what were his?

“Would you believe me if I said I hate these things?” he asked, putting his beer bottle on the bar.

Now that she could understand. “Yes, I would.”

“Then I hate these things.”

She tilted her head to the side, considering him. “I guess that’ll do. For now.” She placed her beer next to his, then straightened the swath of gauzy material that had been resting in the curve of her elbows. “What’s say we blow this joint for a while? Take a walk or something? I could do with some fresh air.”

She slowly turned and began walking toward the doorway. She didn’t know what she expected, but she was surprised when she glanced over her shoulder to find Connor following her.

CONNOR WASN’T CERTAIN WHY he’d instantly accepted Bronte’s offer of a walk. Maybe it was the straightforward way she’d made the suggestion. Perhaps because she hadn’t tucked her hand in his elbow in a possessive manner that some women thought brooked no argument. But the moment they stepped outside the stuffy, overdecorated hotel, he was glad he had listened to the voice that had prodded him to follow her. Almost instantly, he felt the cloud squeezing his shoulders dissipate. Immediately, his muscles relaxed. He no longer had to be the proud big brother. Pretend he was happy with events when he clearly wasn’t.

Over the U.S. Treasury building across the way, the sun was setting. He realized Bronte had continued walking and followed again—this time across the street and into the park there. He hung back slightly as she leaned against a bench and slipped off first one, then the other, of her shoes. Her feet, like the rest of her, were long, slender and well-shaped, her toenails painted bright, scarlet red, contrasting against the dark navy-blue of her dress. The low-heeled pumps swinging from her fingers, she continued on, deeper into the park, away from the traffic on the street. Away from the hotel and the celebrating people inside.

She took a deep breath. He found his gaze drawn to the scooped neckline of her bridesmaid’s dress. The gentle curve of flesh there expanded, revealing a few more freckles he felt the desire to explore with his fingertips. “I can’t tell you how great it is to take a breath and not have your senses overwhelmed by somebody else’s perfume,” she said.

“Hmm?” Connor tore his gaze away from the top of her breasts. It was then he realized that he didn’t detect any immediately recognizable perfume coming from her. At least not of the store-bought variety. She smelled vaguely of something soft, somewhat like a white flower he’d picked once and taken home to his mother, who had been pregnant with David at the time. Just a couple years or so before she died.

“Connor McCoy, are you staring at my breasts?”

He grinned and slowly budged his gaze up to her face, half hidden in shadow. “Yes, I guess I am.” He cleared his throat and noticed the small orbs pressing against the shiny fabric. “And either you’re suddenly cold, or they’re staring back at me.”

Her burst of laughter surprised him and when he looked up he found the same startled expression on her face. “Well, that’s the first time I’ve heard that.”

“Good. Because it’s the first time I’ve said it.”

His gaze locked with hers. A strong undercurrent of exactly what he’d been trying to ignore flowed between them like a tangling web. Attraction. Full, strong, elemental attraction. He followed the line of her cheek down to her lips, finding the top one fuller than the bottom, unpainted, the natural dusky shade unbearably appealing.

“What would you say if I told you I wanted to grab you and kiss you?” he asked.

2

WHAT WOULD SHE SAY IF HE what?

Bronte stared at Connor, wide-eyed, wondering where exactly she had left her good sense, and how she could snatch it back…quickly. She rested her hand against the rough bark of a cherry tree in full bloom, balancing herself before she actually fell over.

The last thing she’d had on her mind when she suggested a walk was kissing Connor McCoy. She’d simply wanted to escape the claustrophobic hotel. Gulp some fresh air. Take time to convince herself that no one noticed the envious way she eyed Kelli’s dress. The way she breathed in the intoxicating scent from her tiny bouquet. The way she had clasped her hands together a little too tightly when the bride and groom had exchanged vows.

If Kelli wasn’t her best friend, she would never have agreed to come to the wedding reception, much less taken on the role of her maid of honor. The whole concept of weddings made her think of things better off forgotten.

She briefly closed her eyes. She had just gotten to the point where she woke up in the morning and didn’t immediately crush the empty pillow next to her to her chest and squeeze it between her aching thighs. She no longer jumped every time the phone rang. She’d even stuck his photograph into a box in her attic and had dived headfirst into a complete remodeling of her house to erase all evidence of his presence.

Then Thomas had left a message on her answering machine a couple of weeks ago. Then again last week. And yet again this morning.

It was bad enough her emotions were in disarray as a result. Now she was facing a clearly hungry Connor McCoy…and wanting him.

“What did you say?” she asked, finding her voice curiously breathless, her breasts tingling under the fine fabric of her dress.

Standing directly in the last remaining beams of the setting sun, she watched Connor’s eyes darken. “The hell with the question. I’m going to kiss you.”

“Kiss—”

Just that suddenly, Connor’s hands were in her short hair, his mouth was slanted against hers, and the hot wetness of his tongue was begging for entrance to her mouth by way of her startled, closed lips.

Connor McCoy’s kissing me. Bronte couldn’t seem to wrap her mind around the possibility even as it was happening. She’d have bet anyone her life savings that he’d never even noticed her in college, much less held an interest in her. And his demeanor toward her ever since Kelli had met David at the bar could only be described as civilly chilly.

Yet here he was, coaxing her lips open and delving into her mouth like a man seeking the sweet waters of the fountain of youth.

Bronte’s knees went weak and she melted against him for support. It felt so very, very good to kiss a man taller than her. To feel all her body parts nicely aligned against his without her needing to crouch skillfully lower. Thomas… She forcefully ousted the name, not wanting to think about him now. Needing to feel alive. Wanted. Desired. And desire-full.

She slowly realized Connor’s erection pulsed against her belly. She drew in a sharp breath. He groaned something, then launched a renewed attack on her mouth.

She sighed and collapsed against him again even as he backed her against the rough bark of the tree, well out of sight of any onlookers. The low-hanging branches creating a fragrant cocoon around them. The sun finally slipping over the horizon, leaving them in deep, secretive shadows.

Bronte felt a whimper gather at the back of her throat. Who knew quiet, brooding Connor McCoy could kiss so well? And who knew that she had it in her to respond so physically to another man so soon after her last relationship had failed so miserably?

She was aware of strong fingers against her rib cage, a prelude to a more intimate, probing touch. A man’s way of letting a woman know what he had in mind. A warning that if she wanted to prevent the progression, now was the time to act.

And Bronte knew she should do just that. This kiss was so totally unexpected. But she didn’t. Instead she found herself hungrily arching her back away from the tree trunk, telling him in her own feminine way that she wanted his touch as much as he wanted to touch her.

Then he did.

Bronte shuddered as his hand seared her flesh through her dress. His fingers expertly found and lightly plucked at her protruding nipple, causing desire to pool between her thighs and her breath to freeze in her lungs. Then he dipped his finger inside the low neckline and his hot skin made contact with hers. Amazingly, she found herself on the verge of climax, and they hadn’t even done anything yet.

Yet.

The word caught and held in her mind even as she pressed her breast into his touch, straining for a more complete contact.

Yet.

No, they hadn’t really done anything…yet. But if he didn’t stop—

Connor widened his stance and pulled her into the cradle of his thighs with his other hand. The hard, solid feel of his erection against her belly nearly sent her reeling.

Just one touch, she told herself. She just wanted to see if he was as turned on as he seemed to be. Needed to verify that he was indeed as large as she suspected.

She thrust her hand down shamelessly between them, cupping the long, thick ridge in her palm. Oh, dear Lord. He was everything and more than she expected.

Connor dragged his mouth from hers, leaving her panting for air against his neck. Then she fell back against the tree, desperately clamping her hands behind her, finding support in the solidness of the trunk.

“Whoa,” Connor murmured under his breath, pacing a short ways away, then returning. She couldn’t make out his eyes in the darkness, but she didn’t doubt that they held the same shock she felt from head to heel.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” she said, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “I mean, I’m not really sure what just happened, but…”

The sound of the grass crushing under Connor’s footsteps was all she could hear over the thundering of her heart.

“But what?” he asked, startling her.

Her eyes flew open. He was standing closer than she expected. If she put her hand out, she would touch the hard wall of his chest. The same chest she’d been flush up against mere moments ago.

“But…this doesn’t make any sense.”

He made a sound similar to a quiet laugh. “You said that already.”

“Yes, well, I’m going to say it again, so prepare yourself.” She laid her head back against the uneven bark of the tree and took a deep, calming breath. Only it didn’t go very deep and it wasn’t calming. “Well, since I’m momentarily incapable of describing what happened just now, maybe you’d like a go at it.”

A nearby lamp flickered to life, illuminating the path some twenty feet away, and throwing Connor’s features into relief. “I think I’ll pass if it’s all the same to you.”

She smiled shakily. “Well, if it’s all the same to you, it isn’t all the same to me.”

The way he wiped at the side of his mouth with his thumb made her knees go weak all over again. “Are you involved with anyone?”

She shook her head. “No. You?”

He grimaced. “No. And I don’t want to be either.”

“Good, because neither do I.”

What was the matter with her? She swore after the last time that she wouldn’t leap into another intimate relationship without looking first. And she certainly hadn’t seen this coming.

So what did she do? Suggest they pretend their kiss hadn’t happened? Dumb, dumb, dumb. She’d never been one to play coy after a good, riling bout of tongue tangling. She wasn’t about to start now.

A low-frequency beep pierced her ears, followed quickly by another. She reached for her purse, then realized she’d turned her cell phone to vibrate. Nothing more irritating than someone’s phone ringing in the middle of a wedding ceremony.

Connor’s movements as he slipped his hand inside his tux jacket told her the ringing had come from his portable. He pulled it out and punched a button.

“McCoy here,” he said, turning to walk away slightly.

She appreciated the long line of his back, the way his hair lay neat against his head, exposing his neck as he bent forward. It took her a moment to realize that her purse had begun vibrating. She scrambled to take her cell phone out and prayed her voice sounded normal as she answered.

Connor swung to face her, his gaze snagging hers even as she understood that they were being contacted about the same thing. Her witness, Melissa Robbins, had just been found dead. And one Deputy U.S. Marshal Connor McCoy, the man she had just nearly devoured, was the prime suspect.

TWO DAYS LATER BRONTE wasn’t any clearer on what had happened between her and Connor McCoy than she’d been the night of Kelli and David’s wedding. Not that it mattered. She hadn’t seen him since, and likely wouldn’t for a while, what with David and Kelli being off on their honeymoon in the Poconos for the next two weeks.

And not with Connor being implicated in the death of Melissa Robbins.

Tightening the sash on her white silk kimono, she opened the door and scooped up the eight newspapers stacked haphazardly on the cement steps of her Georgetown town house. The spring morning was warm and clear. She hugged the papers to her chest and tilted her face toward the sun dappling the steps through the trees.

“Good morning, Miss Bronte.”

She opened her eyes and smiled at the elderly woman that lived two doors up. Seven o’clock and already she was digging through the spring flowers flowing from artfully placed baskets in her front window, bright yellow cloth gloves protecting her aging hands. “Morning, Miss Adele.”

The neighborhood was comprised mostly of young professionals or tenured academics and budding politicians, but Miss Adele added a little bit of the something Bronte had been looking for when she first moved to D.C.—a kind of old-world, southern charm she was coming to cherish. “Your geraniums are looking good.”

Miss Adele smiled. “Nothing like a few coffee grounds mixed into the soil to perk them right up, I always say. A little trick my grandmother taught me.”

Bronte waved, then headed back inside her town house. Padding into the kitchen, she slid the newspapers one after another onto the thick oak tabletop. She sighed, Miss Adele and her geraniums quickly forgotten. If the story about her witness and Connor McCoy’s alleged involvement in her death wasn’t on the front page, a teaser leading to it was.

When she’d first arrived on the scene at the safe house, still decked out in full maid of honor wedding regalia, she’d brushed away any possibility of Connor’s involvement in Melissa Robbins’s death. After all, hadn’t she just spent the better part of that day salivating after him, first in the church during Kelli and David’s nuptials, then later at the reception?

Then it slowly dawned on her that a good six hours had stretched between the ceremony and the reception. And it was smack dab in the middle of those six hours that Melissa’s death had been approximated.

Still, she’d been unwilling even to consider that a man so obviously a steadfast believer in the law would break it so acutely. Then little circumstantial pieces of evidence began to pile up. The fact that there was a strong history of conflict between Connor and Robbins while she was in his custody; there were several minor complaints littering her file from Robbins over the past couple months claiming Marshal McCoy had been physical with her. At the time she’d written those complaints off, simply because she’d had a difficult time dealing with the demanding woman herself. And follow-ups to the complaints had proven that the physical incidents Robbins had cited were minor events brought on by her stepping outside the boundaries set for her protection, and were completely warranted. Such as the time when Connor took the phone from Robbins’s hand and pulled the cord from the wall when she was going to order in from a swanky D.C. restaurant where she was well known. Or when she’d tried to ditch her protection during a visit to Bronte’s D.C. office so she could squeeze in a visit to a spa that had been deemed prohibited by the marshal’s office.

Separately, the occurrences could be explained away. But when combined, and coupled with no apparent outside breach of security…well, Bronte’s arguments for Connor’s innocence had lost a bit of punch.

Of course, it didn’t help that his alibi of target practice out in an abandoned stretch of countryside during the window of opportunity couldn’t be verified.

None of the circumstantial evidence was enough to issue a warrant for his arrest. But given the air around the U.S. attorney’s office, the possibility was growing more likely with each passing hour.

Bronte stuck her thumbnail between her teeth and sighed. Boy, she really knew how to pick them, didn’t she? Wasn’t it bad enough she’d gone through what she had with Thomas? Did fate have to toss one hottie in the shape of Connor McCoy into her path so soon afterward? An alleged murderer, at that?

She snatched her hand away from her mouth, then slid into a chair. “It was just a kiss, for God’s sake.”

Clasping her rose-etched antique cup of Earl Grey between both hands, she took a long sip. She grimaced at the cool liquid, then glanced toward the unplugged microwave and the television tuned in to the local news next to it. She couldn’t run both the microwave and the TV at the same time in the old town house, a wiring challenge she hoped to remedy with her plans to renovate the place. Plans she could put into motion just as soon as she settled on a design.

She jerkily opened the first newspaper and carefully spread it out on the table in front of her. Just a kiss. Yeah, right, and the Concorde was just a plane. First kisses didn’t even remotely resemble what had passed between her and Connor in the park the other night. There had been something…explosive about the meeting of their lips. Something undeniably sexy. She’d felt the amazing urge to push her dress up and cradle him between her thighs with no thought about tomorrow. No qualms about how well she didn’t know him. Absolutely no thoughts of why they shouldn’t be indulging in such decadent behavior in the middle of a park in the heart of the nation’s capital.

She propped her head in her hand. Who was she kidding? It wasn’t so long ago that she had entertained ideas of indulging in such behavior solely because it was the nation’s capital. While she didn’t claim to be an exhibitionist, there was something decidedly erotic and intense about the idea of having sex a mere stone’s throw away from the White House.

The city itself had proved an incredible aphrodisiac when she’d first started attending G.W.U. Or could it perhaps have been that D.C. wasn’t the small town of Prospect, New Hampshire? She still couldn’t be sure. But leaving the place where she’d grown up as the youngest of three daughters of the high-school math teacher had been wonderfully freeing. Not once had she been taunted for her height. Nor had she felt hemmed in by her lack of career choices. The sky was the limit as far as her future was concerned. And when she discovered that men were attracted to her…well, she’d taken to them like chocolate, in some odd way trying to make up for every guy who had shunned her in high school, every kid who had teased her, made her feel like a towering tree with absolutely no grace. In essence, she’d become a serial dater.

She supposed the reasons were far more complicated than that. Still, while her personal life was littered with debris from failed relationships, she had excelled in her studies and career. Affirmative action may have made it easier for her to obtain certain positions, like clerking under an esteemed superior court judge, followed by a stint in the local prosecutor’s office, then a gratifying round with a citizens’ action group, but it was her unabashed ambition and singleminded purpose that had landed her in the U.S. attorney’s office four years ago.

Then came Thomas.

She shook the paper vigorously, hoping the action itself would snap her from her reverie. She didn’t want to think about him now. Didn’t want to think about Connor either. After Thomas…well, she’d vowed to spend uninterrupted quality time with herself. And that didn’t include one U.S. Marshal Connor McCoy. Especially given the cloud of suspicion now hanging over him.

The wall phone rang. Bronte slanted a look at the clock, then continued reading. Too early for her mother. Besides, she’d spoken to her the day before yesterday, so it would probably be next week before she spoke to her again, unless something important popped up. And if it was something important, she didn’t think she could deal with it right now. She turned the page and continued to pretend to read the story.

Her gaze was again drawn to the phone.

The caller could be someone from work. With this Robbins witness case, everything at the U.S. attorney’s office was in upheaval. While it might be good to let whoever it was think she was already on her way downtown, that call could be important, too.

She bit on her bottom lip and slowly lowered the newspaper to the table. Four rings.

She picked it up on the fifth. “Hello?”

“Bronte?”

She absently rubbed her forehead, thinking she should have let the answering machine pick it up.

“Bronte? Are you there?”

She closed her eyes and drew in a steadying breath. “Yes, Thomas, I’m here.” Though she wished for all the world that she wasn’t. Just five minutes later she would have been in the shower and would have missed the call. Just a half hour later, she would already have left the town house for work. But no, Thomas had to call now when he knew she would probably pick up.

“You haven’t returned my calls.”

She leaned against the wall. “No, I haven’t.”

“You mind telling me why?”

He sounded too calm, too rational, and far too familiar. “Maybe because I don’t have anything to say to you?”

There was a pregnant pause, then he said quietly, “I’ve left Jessica, Bronte.”

The words swirled in Bronte’s mind. “And that affects me…how, exactly?”

“I guess that’s for you to decide.”

“Funny, I thought I made my decision.”

“Things change, Bronte.”

Her gaze caught on a grainy black-and-white photo of Connor McCoy on the front page of one of the newspapers. She rubbed her forehead. “Yeah, and the more they do, the more they stay the same.” She sighed. “Look, Thomas, I’d really appreciate it if you wouldn’t call me anymore.”

“Okay. I can respect that.”

She began to pull the receiver away from her ear, but his quiet voice stopped her, drawing her back like a dog who had either been kicked too much, or not enough. He said, “But that doesn’t mean you can’t call me. I’m at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel, room 21104. And, of course, you still have my work number. Call me anytime, Bronte.”

“Goodbye, Thomas.”

She hung up the receiver with both hands, then stood staring it at for a long, long moment.

What was it with men? Months pass without a word, time in which you learn to pull yourself together. Then bam. One phone call and they expect you to come running. Forget that he had virtually ripped her heart out. This, after steadily dating for three months. Long after she’d fallen head over heels in love with him.

She leaned against the wall again, burying her face in her hands. Weren’t women supposed to have a sixth sense about married, lying, cheating, heart-stealing creeps? Some sort of alarm that went off, saying “warning, warning, pond scum at twelve o’clock”? She’d never figured herself to be the gullible type. The exact opposite, if truth be known. On the rare occasion when she took a sick day and spent it listing around in bed knocking back Chinese chicken soup and ogling day-time television that featured shows with themes like, “She slept with my brother, emptied my bank account, killed my dog, but I still want her back,” she’d harshly judged the other women as no-good home wreckers who’d known the men they were seeing were married and continued the relationship anyway.

It was shocking to have to aim her biting judgment of them at herself.

She dropped her hands to her sides. To this day, she still couldn’t figure out the logistics of how Thomas had managed to keep his wife a secret from her. Or her a secret from his wife. After she’d found out, he’d explained his wife was a surgeon who chose second shift hours because she felt she worked better then. But what about the apartment he’d taken her to? The nights he’d slept over at her place?

“Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

The plain truth of it was that once she’d found out, there was no going back. She’d quickly called a halt to whatever…strange relationship they’d had. Thrown away the clippings of wedding dresses she’d begun to collect. Burned the few belongings he’d left at her place. Mangled his engagement ring in the trash compactor. And sworn off men until an unspecified time in the future when she could think about what happened with Thomas and not feel…dirty. Could look at herself in the mirror and like herself again.

That certainly wasn’t going to happen if she took up with him again, wife or no wife.

And indulging in heated thoughts of Connor McCoy wasn’t going to make that happen either. Moving from a man who was too committed to women, to a man who wanted no commitment and was a suspected murderer, was not progress.

Gathering up the newspapers, she used her foot to open the cupboard under the sink, then stuffed them inside the wastebasket. The recycling patrol would have to forgive her this once. She kicked the door closed with her bare foot, brushed her hands together, then kicked the door again for good measure.

Of course it was only par for the course that she stubbed her big toe and had to hobble around to get ready for work. She couldn’t wait to find out what else this wonderful day had in store for her.

3

THERE WERE BLASTED story-twisting, scandal-hungry reporters hiding out everywhere. When Connor went home to his D.C. apartment, they sprung from behind the bushes, camera lights blinding him, microphones hitting him in the chin. When he checked in at work, they were in the hall outside his office; he’d even found one hiding in one of the men’s room stalls. He grimaced. Not that there was much reason for him to go to work nowadays. He’d been suspended with pay the instant Melissa Robbins’s body had been found…and he’d been named as suspect number one.

Two days and it hadn’t sunk in yet. He was good at his job. Damn good. He’d never done one single thing in his entire career to cast him in a suspicious light. He prided himself on being the one they called in for special ops, and carefully cultivated his reputation for getting the job done. He’d never lost a witness. It was only natural then that he’d fully expected his boss to stand behind him.

Not exactly the way things had gone down. Before he could get two words in, old Newton had asked for his badge and his firearm and told him he was on indefinite suspension until the outcome of the case was decided.

Politics. He knew the drill. The higher-ups in the department had to distance themselves, or at least appear like they were distancing themselves, from him in order to cover their asses. Not merely because of potential lawsuits from the victim’s family. But because Washington bigwigs loved to throw their weight around when it came to high-profile cases like this one. The perfect PR opportunity to make it look like they were doing something for the constituents back home. Unfortunately, their power plays ultimately hurt the ones least responsible for the trouble. Men like his boss, Newton.

Men like him.

He hadn’t been able to get a full accounting of exactly what implausible evidence linked him to Robbins’s murder. But sources did tell him that an arrest was probably imminent. It was his job to make sure that arrest never took place.

Tightening his hands on the steering wheel of his silver SUV, Connor pulled up into the gravel drive of the McCoy place in Manchester, Virginia. Pops’s car wasn’t there. Good. And at this time of the morning, Liz and Mitch would be busy in the ranch office. Even better. His mind had been so busy whizzing through all the details of his predicament in the past two days, he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep. It wasn’t until he’d accidentally poured salt into his coffee instead of sugar at a D.C. diner that morning that he realized he needed a few hours to himself to get some major shut-eye. And the old McCoy house was just the place to do that.

He distractedly eyed the pen that paralleled the parking area. Kelli’s mutt, Kojak, was sitting inside with Mitch’s behemoth Goliath.

Clutching the keys to the McCoy place, and to his car, he climbed out then crossed over to the pen and crouched down. Kojak ignored him, but Goliath ambled over and stuck his wet nose through the fence. He absently stroked him. “What is it, boy? Feeling a little put out?”

Could he ever relate to that feeling. For the past thirty-six hours, he’d launched an all out attack to find out why he was under suspicion for Melissa Robbins’s murder. He’d come up with little more than nothing. He’d finally had to admit he needed access to inside info. Needed to find out exactly what the U.S. attorney’s office had on him before he could go any further.

Goliath nudged his other hand, causing him to lose his grip on his keys. Grimacing, he bent down to pick them up, then stood up slowly as Goliath sprinted away from the fence.

Giving the quiet grounds a once-over, Connor turned from the dog, then he walked toward the house and let himself in. The door was open, which wasn’t surprising. The crime rate in Manchester was basically nil. And what criminals might be lurking about certainly wouldn’t think of coming all the way out here.

He stepped into the kitchen. The telltale acrid smell of something having been burned permeated the room. He was growing used to that. It was the utter silence of the place he found unsettling. In his overtired state, he found it all too easy to imagine Jake sitting in his room studying the latest in international law; Marc camped out in front of the television, soaking in whatever happened to be playing that time of the day; Mitch repairing something or other upstairs; David tossing a baseball against the side of the house, the clunk, clunk each time the ball made contact irritating yet reassuring.

David….

It was impossible to believe the kid was married. Married, for cripe’s sake.

What was he talking about? He couldn’t believe he was the only one of the five of them unmarried.

He climbed the steps two at a time, then crossed the second-floor hall to the room that had always been his, even after moving out and getting his own apartment in D.C. over a decade earlier. He started pulling off his shirt even as he opened the door. At least the reporters hadn’t found out about this place yet. He could use it as home base until he figured out just how, exactly, he’d ended up in the mess he was in. And who had set him up to take a fall he hadn’t earned.

He drew to an abrupt stop in the middle of his room. Only a quick, startled glance told him it was no longer his room. He backed up into the hall, looked around, then stared at the door that still held the words he’d carved when he was ten. “Private. Keep Out.” He peered back inside.

It was his room, all right. Only it wasn’t. A wood, spindle cradle sat in the middle, stuffed full of tiny, brightly colored toy animals. A rocking chair was angled where his twin bed used to be. And someone had painted the walls white and decorated them with…was that Winnie the Pooh?

He grimaced. Where were all his sports posters? The collection of football cards he’d kept piled up in the corner? The photograph of his mother he kept on a nightstand that was no longer there?

“Aw, hell.” He realized that while he’d visited in the past three months, he’d never actually gone up to his old room. His new sisters-in-law must have turned it into a nursery for his nephew while he wasn’t looking, to use whenever Marc and Mel came for visits. Which was too often for his liking.

Connor scratched his head. Shouldn’t someone have asked him before doing something so drastic? And what about the other rooms? Why hadn’t they chosen one of those?

He strode down the hall, throwing open doors as he went. Pops’s room looked the same. So did Marc’s. Jake had added a double bed to his, and his old twin now sported a pink, frilly spread, more likely than not compliments of Lili, but it was still the same. Mitch’s was hardly recognizable now that his wife, Liz, had moved in, but there was no mistaking that it was still his room.

His was the only one they had screwed with.

He rubbed his hand over his numb face, feeling ridiculously like he’d woken up that morning to find he’d been evicted from his life.

He backtracked to Marc’s room, stalked to the bed, then sank down on the new mattress, curious as to why Marc and Mel hadn’t traded the twin for a double, or why they hadn’t put the damn crib in here—but he wasn’t up to dealing with the answer right now. He tossed his shirt to the corner, kicked his boots off, then stretched out, staring at the ceiling without seeing it, his feet dangling from the end of the too-short bed.

Almost immediately an image of Bronte O’Brien filled his mind.

Figured. The first free moment he had to himself and a woman intruded.

He supposed he should be used to it by now, given all the females that had taken over the McCoy place, but this was different, somehow. Bronte was different.

He closed his eyes and crossed his arms over them. Oh, he’d had his share of women in his lifetime. Mostly short-lived relationships that ended almost as quickly as they began. He’d meet someone somewhere, take her out a couple times, go to bed with her, then walk out when she started talking about something more serious.

He found it a little strange that he had never asked Bronte out. Not only now, but back in college. It wasn’t as if she had a sign around her neck that read, “Interested in marriage, only.” On the contrary, if she wore a sign it would probably say, “Mention of the word marriage is punishable by death.”

Normally his kind of girl.

It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been attracted to her. She’d always commanded his attention the moment she walked into the room. And that certainly hadn’t changed.

There. That was it. His epiphany of the day. He was attracted to Bronte. If kissing her the other night hadn’t proven that, then certainly his inability to stop thinking about her now did.

He jerkily rolled over, compensating when the move nearly threw him over the side of the narrow bed. Her wanton reaction to him hinted that she was as drawn to him as he was to her. By all rights, he ought to just sleep with her and get it over with.

He remembered the way she’d pressed her breast into his touch. How she’d boldly reached down to cup his erection in her hand. Recalled her surprised gasp when she ran her fingers down and around the length and breadth of him.

Connor’s stomach tightened and he turned his head the other way on the pillow. He’d never…wanted a woman the way he wanted Bronte O’Brien. He wanted to kiss her senseless. Watch her lick that full upper lip of hers right before she fastened her mouth around his erection. Grind into her like nobody’s business. Tug her hair until her head fell back, giving him free access to her long neck and breasts. He wanted to possess her inside and out.

The mere thought of being between her thighs made him hard. And the feel of the mattress beneath him wasn’t helping matters much.

He roughly turned back over, determined to ignore his physical reaction, though his mind kept rushing down the same path, a steam locomotive that wouldn’t stop until it reached an unknown destination.

He supposed part of the reason for his different attraction to Bronte was that she’d been a secret fantasy of his for so long. For whatever reason, from the start, he’d put her aside, above other women he dated. Purposely made her unobtainable, out of bounds. He’d immediately sensed in her a…sameness. Glimpsed in her eyes a shared understanding that had nearly knocked him straight out of his shoes the instant he saw it.

Outside he heard distant sounds. Probably Mitch in the later stages of breaking one of his new fillies. He fought to concentrate on the normal sound, to stop thinking about the woman he shouldn’t be thinking of, get some sleep, then get up to figure out exactly who was trying to set him up for Robbins’s murder and why. His sandpapery eyelids blessedly began drifting closed.

Still, the nameless something that existed between him and Bronte tempted his attention. He’d never experienced the same thing with another woman before or since.

And that’s exactly the reason he’d kept his distance—and should continue to keep his distance.

But when he finally fell into a deep, exhausted slumber, there existed absolutely no distance whatsoever between him and Bronte O’Brien.

BRONTE FIGURED SHE REALLY needed to find something more interesting to do with her down time—like defrosting the freezer.

After ten grueling hours of chaos spent juggling ongoing cases while trying to get a handle on the Pryka/Robbins development, she needed something that would take her mind off the office, allow her to take an all-important step back and look at the details with a fresh perspective.

Sitting alone at her kitchen table, Bronte finished pushing the remains of her gourmet microwave dinner around in its plastic container, then leaned back in her chair. Gourmet. Right. More like airplane food for the patently time-impaired single person. She looked around the too-quiet kitchen. The television was turned low in the corner of the counter behind her, but talking heads didn’t quite do it for her tonight.

Neither did the array of interior design magazines and fabric swatches lying on the corner of the table. She reached out and leafed through the top magazine, stopping when she came to a photo of a high-tech nursery, complete with a three-camera-angle monitoring system and automatic diaper dispenser. Absently, she bent the corner of the page back and forth. There was a point when she’d believed motherhood wasn’t a part of her future. A time when she’d seen herself as a lifelong career woman, being completely content, deliriously happy even, building a name for herself in the U.S. attorney’s office. Then came Thomas. She not only began hearing wedding bells, she found herself slowing her step near the children’s section of Saks. Began reading articles on the future cost of higher education in magazines that she usually skipped. Had idly debated cloth versus disposable and began wondering if day care was tax deductible.

Of course all those thoughts went right out the door along with Thomas.

Then why was she wondering what the nursery in the magazine would look like with a different color scheme?

She sighed and pushed the periodical aside. Maybe she should get an animal that wasn’t of the human male variety. Now that would be a switch. Kelli’s criminally ugly dog Kojak seemed to supply her with constant companionship. She twisted her lips. Then again, she’d balked so badly—obsessed with all the possible stains that could show up on her Persian rug—when Kelli had asked her to watch her prized pet, her best friend had finally taken the pooch out to the McCoy ranch in Virginia while she was on her honeymoon.

No, a dog was definitely out. And the thought of being single with a cat…well, she wasn’t even going to go there.

She heard herself sigh again, then pushed her tray aside and pulled the first of the evening edition newspapers in front of her.

Today, especially, had been grueling. The buzz around the U.S. attorney’s office was that there was little question as to Connor McCoy’s guilt in the Melissa Robbins case. A case that rightly should have been hers as head of the Pryka case, but notably wasn’t. Word even had it that Bernie Leighton himself, the senior attorney, her superior, was working up a case against him. While running back and forth to district court juggling two other cases, one an appearance for an evidentiary hearing, the other to sit co-counsel for a rotating attorney during his first preliminary hearing, Bronte had left at least five messages for Bernie. On last check, he’d returned none of them.

Bronte fingered the grainy black-and-white photo of Connor on the front page of the Washington Times-Herald. He was wearing a dark bulletproof vest with U.S. Marshal printed across the chest, holding a sniper’s rifle at attention. Given the handcuffed and shackled men in institution dress behind him, the picture had likely been shot while transporting federal prisoners. The expression on his face… She caught herself almost caressing that inanimate face and snatched her hand back. The expression on his face was nothing if not arrogant.

“Oh, yes? Then why did you piss off Dennis Burns today by defending McCoy? Why don’t you just hand dimwit Dennis your job and be done with it?” she asked herself aloud.

She opened the paper to page four, where the meat of the story lay, and folded it back to the piece. Okay, so maybe she took a little too much pleasure in honking off a certain rotating junior attorney, aka pissant Dennis Burns, whenever the opportunity arose—which was often, given his interest in her permanent position in the Transnational/Major Crimes Section. It was an interest he’d made no secret of when he requested to assist her on the Pryka case—a request Bernie had immediately granted, putting her in nearly daily contact with the guy. Dennis had been with the section for four months and she’d caught him practically salivating outside her office no fewer than five times. And that wasn’t saying anything about his overt attempts to win the senior U.S. attorney’s affection by eavesdropping on her conversations and—she suspected but had yet to prove—going through her mail and beating her to the punch at status meetings whenever she got a snippet of interesting information.

If she were a man, she probably would have taken him out back and settled things with him months ago.

But she wasn’t a man, and her only effective means of ammo was working her butt off to prove herself the better person for her job. The key word being “her.”

She skimmed the news story. These guys really should get themselves some new sources. Most of the time they were so far off the mark—

Her eye caught on something and she traced her finger back up to the top of the section.

“This afternoon Senior U.S. Attorney Bernard Leighton has named junior attorney D.C. Dennis Burns to head up the investigation…”

Bronte leapt up so quickly, she nearly knocked over her chair.

No…it couldn’t be. Pryka was her case. She’d been the one Robbins had come to wanting to testify against her Serbian-by-birth ex-boyfriend for myriad criminal activities, not limited to but including the smuggling of illegal explosives into the country, purportedly for a third-party terrorist organization. She’d been the one who had nervously made her case before the attorney general to get Robbins accepted into the witness protection program. She had even begun doing some fancy footwork on how best to shore up the hole left by Melissa Robbins’s death—first and foremost, by putting a call into the FBI agents who had been working the case much longer than she had, trying to finger Pryka as being behind the murder of his ex-girlfriend, if not directly, then indirectly.

Of course, she’d have never guessed in a million years that Connor McCoy would be the one ultimately under suspicion.

Still wearing her gray skirt suit and hose, she padded to the front of the town house and yanked open the door. On the step lay the last of the day’s print news offerings. She snatched the paper up and quickly turned to the section on the case. There, in black and white, the information from the other piece was confirmed. According to two sources, Burns had succeeded in taking the case from her.

“Why that no good, scheming, conniving little son-of-a-bitch,” she murmured under her breath.

The sound of a passing car caught her attention. She looked up and distantly followed its passage. For a moment, she forgot that it was after eight o’clock. The deep shadows confirmed that it, indeed, was. Policewoman-to-the-core Kelli had once warned her that she should be a little more careful when opening her front door. That her daily routines were anal and predictable and, thus, made her more of a target for crime. Bronte told her friend that the only concession she would make was she’d vary the times she picked up her much-loved newspapers by five minutes.

She shook her head then turned to go back inside.

“Wait.”

Bronte nearly jumped clear out of her hose. She swiveled at the sound of the masculine voice coming from over the stoop, then continued toward her now more urgent goal to go back inside the house.

“For God’s sake, Bronte, it’s me.”

Her heart hammering against her rib cage, she stopped herself from closing the door all the way. She craned her head through the opening. “Connor?”

The instant she said the name, she wanted to kick herself. Admitting that she recognized his voice from the darkness and with very little to go on was far too telling in her book—both to him and to herself.

“Are you alone?”

She considered telling him no, then thought better of it. He probably already knew if she was alone or not and lying would only make her look sorrier than she already was. “Yes.”

All too quickly, he stood just on the other side of the door. She had to look up to see into his face. An involuntary shiver skittered down her spine—a shiver that had nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the man eyeing her in much the same way she was him.

“So are you going to invite me in or what?”

Bronte tightened her fingers on the door. “After the scare you just gave me, I’m more in the ‘or what’ frame of mind.”

She made out his frown in the porch light from a neighboring town house.

“Oh, all right,” she said and swung the door inward.

As soon as he was inside, she peeked back out, making sure no one had seen him come in. Though why she was so concerned, she couldn’t say. Maybe because this was Georgetown. And for some reason it mattered to her that her neighbors not think she was in cahoots with the person whose face was splattered all over the front page of the very newspaper she still clutched to her chest.

She closed the door and turned to face him. “An apology for scaring me out of my wits would be nice.”

“Sorry.”

“Gee, Connor, somehow that one just didn’t hit the mark.” Despite, or perhaps because of, the shiver that continued to skitter across her skin, she branded her wise-cracking for exactly what it was: her need to cover her thrill at seeing him again.

But that didn’t change that she was minus one lead witness, or that the man in front of her was accused of subtracting her.

She eyed him closely. “What are you doing here, Connor?”

He stood still as stone for several heartbeats. When he finally did shrug, he looked anything but casual. “Would you believe me if I said I was in the neighborhood and decided to drop in for a visit?”

She found herself smiling at him. “Not a chance.”

“Okay, then. How about I say I wanted to talk to you.”

She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, trying not to notice the fresh, crisp smell of his leather jacket, or the way the snug black T-shirt she could see between the flaps hugged his abdomen to perfection. “I’d buy that.”

“Good,” he said, grinning. “Then I want to talk to you.”

Bronte nearly took a step back. Boy, when he grinned, he was devastating. She’d have to remember not to make him grin.

“So…let’s talk.”

She led the way back into the kitchen, the only room downstairs that still showed significant signs that someone lived there. She plopped the paper down on top of the others, then moved to close the curtains on the back door and the window. For good measure, she switched off the television as well.

When she faced Connor once again, she found his leather jacket hanging on the back of a chair, and him standing with his arms crossed over his cotton-clad chest, his expression as dark as the one she’d seen in the picture. Only now the smart-ass description refused to spring forth. Rather words like competent, sharp and irresistibly sexy came to mind.

“What’s with the clandestine stuff?” he asked, cocking a brow.

She made a face at him. “You tell me. You’re the one hiding out in my bushes and scaring the bejesus out of me.” You’re the one suspected of murder.

He openly eyed the small stack of papers on her table. Right next to her half-eaten sorry excuse for dinner and the designing schemes she’d been considering. His expression darkened. She looked to find him staring at the picture of the nursery.

She rushed to clean up the place. “A little late for a casual drop-in visit, wouldn’t you say?”

He didn’t say.

“You could have called first. You know, given me fair warning so I could tidy up.”

“I didn’t have your number.”

No, he wouldn’t have. With Kelli away, there was no other way he could get it. Given her high-profile career, it wasn’t wise for her to list her number in the book. And any unofficial channels he might have employed were no longer accessible to him. It was normal operating procedure that a government employee be indefinitely suspended when suspected of a serious crime, especially when said crime didn’t reflect well on same government.

She slowly wiped her hands on a tea towel, thinking Connor had to possess a good memory to have remembered her address. It must have been at least two months ago when Kelli and David dropped her off at home after a quick dinner, Connor a silent presence in the back of the car as they did so. “I’m sorry to hear about your suspension.”

Oh, but that was obtuse. Why not just come out and ask if he did the evil deed, Bronte?

“You got some coffee?”

She stared at him, surprised. “Um…as a matter of fact, no. I don’t drink coffee. I have tea.”

His grimace served as his answer.

She tossed the towel to the counter then opened the refrigerator. “Sorry, I drank the last beer last night. I have some vodka in the freezer.”

“Do you have orange juice?”

She tossed another surprised glance over her shoulder. “Sure. With or without the vodka?”

“Without.”

She grabbed the juice container, then retrieved a glass from one of the cupboards. She noticed the slight trembling of her hands as she poured the liquid and wondered just what he was doing there. And what, exactly, his overtly sexual presence in her last sanctuary would mean to her vow to stay away from him.

THE JUICE WAS ALMOST GONE

Connor’s fingers tensed against the cool glass. He slid a glance toward where Bronte sat at the table across from him, her gaze probing, her stance curiously standoffish.

He didn’t quite know what he’d expected when he decided to show up on her doorstep to ask for help, but it certainly wasn’t the blouse-buttoned-up-to-her-chin, suit-clad, tight-lipped woman across from him.

She got up for the third time in as many minutes. He watched her move to get something out from under the counter, the gray material of her skirt pulling nicely across her rounded bottom. He swallowed hard and purposely forced himself to look around the kitchen. He hadn’t seen much of the rest of the shadowy town house, but this room was nice. Airy. The rough-hewn pine table was obviously the centerpiece. It was easy to picture ten people seated around it, chatting after a large meal.

“I was just about to fix myself some dinner. Have you eaten?”

Connor’s gaze snapped to where she was angling a huge pot out, then putting it on the stove. He could have sworn he spotted one of those TV type dinners on the table when he came in. He knew them all too well. “No. But I’m not hungry.”

She turned and leaned against the stove, jumping when a burner switch must have goosed her. She moved over to lean against the counter instead. She crossed her arms under her breasts, bringing them into prominent relief despite the severe cut of her jacket. “Look, Connor, I don’t know what you had in mind, but you’d better be out with it pretty quick. You say you came here to talk, but you’re not talking. And I know you’re not here for orange juice. And since you’re not hungry, you didn’t come all this way hoping to mooch a meal.”

“I only live a few blocks away.”

“Oh.” She uncrossed her arms, then toyed with the spiky red bangs brushing her brows. “Then tell me, what are you doing here?”

Connor stared at the little that remained in his glass, then slowly drank it. Coming here was one of the most difficult things he’d ever had to do in his life. And now that he was here, he couldn’t seem to bring himself to take the next step. He had to know what the U.S. attorney’s office had on him, or else he wouldn’t be going anywhere, period.

Every muscle in his body grew taut, his reaction having just as much to do with the physical tension that infused the room than his reason for being there. But he hadn’t come for the physical part, no matter how enticing she looked and how much he’d like to sample that tart mouth of hers, to see if it tasted as good as he remembered.

Hell, he was the one who was supposed to help people. It was a role he had played well almost his entire life. First, when his mother died and Pops had disappeared into a whiskey bottle. Then, as a U.S. marshall in WitSec, where witnesses depended on him to see them to safety and make sure they stayed safe.

It was so foreign to now be in a position of asking for help, especially from Bronte O’Brien.

“I…um…”

“Wait a minute here.” She held up her hands to halt him. He stared at her unblinkingly. “If you’re here for the reason I think you are, you can just forget it, Connor. I mean, I enjoyed the other night as much as you did. But the other night was the other night. And today is today. You get my drift?”

He squinted at her. “What are you talking about?”

She gestured with her hands. “I’m talking about my just coming off a really bad relationship and not needing to get involved in another.”

He got quickly to his feet. “Relationship?”

Her frown would have been amusing had the situation not been so serious. “Oh, wait. I get it. You’re not interested in a relationship, are you?” She slapped her forehead then stared at the ceiling. “No. Of course, you’re not. You were alone. I was alone. And you thought that maybe we could be alone together.”

He widened his stance and planted his hands on his hips. “Are you done yet?”

She looked at him. “Yes. I think I pretty much got my point across.”

“Good.” He began to shake his head, then dragged his hand over his face instead. “Don’t get me wrong. You’re an attractive woman. Any man in his right mind would want to do…well, what you’re implying I came here for.”

Her eyes narrowed and she chewed on her bottom lip, making her upper lip look all the more plump…and kissable.

“I’m not here to sleep with you, Bronte.”

Her eyes narrowed even further. “Oh.” Suddenly they opened wide. “Oh!” She turned, fussed with the pot some more, then quickly faced him again. “Then why are you here?”

Say it, McCoy. Just open your damn mouth and ask her. “Because I need your help, Bronte. I need you to help me figure out how to get out of the mess I’m in.”

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