Mary Sullivan - No Ordinary Home

Title Page No Ordinary Home Mary Sullivan www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR ABOUT THE AUTHOR ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dedication 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 EXTRACT Copyright Mary started her life living in a large city, and she loved it. Her early career was as a darkroom printer—a career ideally suited to her temperament. She left both the city and the job to start her family. Along the way, darkrooms became obsolete when computers took over. Searching for a creative alternative, she found writing. In particular, writing romance novels, which she enjoys thoroughly. She moved to smaller cities and then the country and then back to a big city, and the novel writing has followed her everywhere! These days she strives for a balance between her public life as an author and her private life, but she always loves to hear from readers. Don’t hesitate to contact her through her website, www.marysullivanbooks.com .

Dedication Thank you to all of the staff at Harlequin, who are unfailingly polite and lovely. Thank you to every copy editor, line editor and proofreader who fixes my mistakes for me. Thank you to every member of the art department for giving me stellar covers time and time again. Thank you to Megan Long for helping me to make this the best book it could be!

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

EXTRACT

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

AUSTIN TRUMBALL STOOD under the sickly green fluorescent lighting of a Wyoming truck-stop diner waiting for a table, with the devil eating a hole through his belly. He shouldn’t have waited so long to stop for lunch.

The smell of charbroiled burgers and greasy fries seeped into his hair and clothes. Short-order cooks called for servers to pick up orders. Waitresses yelled back, “Hold your horses,” or “Coming!” Not-so-nimble fingers slid into Austin’s back pocket and lifted his wallet.

The brazen act carried out so clumsily startled a laugh out of him.

Not only did the pathetic amateur lack skills, he had no idea he’d just robbed a cop.

Austin walked like one, talked like one, scoped out his surroundings like one, but the thief had failed to scope him out. Big mistake.

Leaning forward, he murmured to his buddy Finn, “Be right back,” and spun around just as a boy ran out the front door. Austin followed without calling. The biggest mistake people made was screaming they’d been robbed or yelling to the thief to stop. What sense was there in warning a criminal you were coming after him?

Outside, a flash of dark clothing rounded the far corner of the building.

Light-footed, Austin followed around to the back.

The boy stood beside a Dumpster that reeked of garbage left sitting too long in the sun. He stuffed Austin’s credit cards into his pockets and tossed the wallet into the bin. It hit the side and bounced onto the asphalt. Good thing, or Austin would be tossing the boy into the trash to fish it out.

The kid wasn’t even smart enough to watch his back, but actually stood and counted the money instead of hightailing it out of there. No shortage of stupid here.

Using the stealth he’d learned on the job, Austin snuck up right behind the boy just as he breathed, “Two hundred dollars,” as though he’d won the lottery. The boy was young; his voice hadn’t even dropped yet. Austin shook his head, disgusted with today’s youth. Or with their parents. What would drive someone so young out of his home, onto the road and into a life of crime?

The boy’s skinny neck peeked out from beneath a dusty baseball cap, narrow enough that Austin would have sworn he could circle it with his hands. The thought made him realize just how vulnerable this kid actually was.

Didn’t matter. The boy had robbed him. He was going to jail.

Austin grabbed the back of the kid’s hoodie. The thief let out a high-pitched yelp. “Who—?”

“That’s my hard-earned cash you’re counting.” Austin shook the boy.

“Crap on a broomstick.” Kid couldn’t even swear properly yet. Truly pathetic.

Austin spun him around then dropped his hand from the shirt. His jaw dropped, too. This was no green kid, definitely not a thirteen-or fourteen-year-old boy, but a twenty-something woman.

A woman?

After that observation came another one more interesting, considering she was such a poor thief. This woman had been around; she was pretty, but in a hard-knocks seen-too-much kind of way, skin baked by the sun, jaw defiant. Certainly no pushover.

The bill of her baseball cap shaded her eyes. A person’s eyes, Austin had learned, said everything about them. He needed to see hers. He knocked the hat from her head. Startled pale blue eyes shadowed with darkness dominated a hungry face.

“Hey,” she yelled and caught the cap before it hit the ground.

He had time only for impressions—high cheekbones, full lips, roughly shorn black hair to match coal-black eyebrows arched like birds’ wings ready to take flight—before she came to life, exploding like a Thoroughbred out of the gate.

She was fast. He was faster, and snagged her sleeve before she got far. The fabric tore in his hand, but he managed to grasp her arm.

“Noooo.” Desperation rode shotgun with terror in her scream. “Let me go. I won’t do it again.”

“Damn right you won’t, lady. You’re going to jail.”

The second she realized she wouldn’t get far—he was six-one, after all, and she all of five-five, if that—those big hollow eyes filled with more panic than Austin could remember seeing in anyone. In his hometown of Ordinary, Montana, they had homeless people, those who were needy, but this level of despair was something else altogether.

She bared her teeth like an animal, came alive in his arms and fought like a keening cyclone, elbows and knees everywhere at once.

“You aren’t going anywhere,” he said, calm because he had control. “I can read you like a book.” An autobiography. By the time Austin had turned twelve, he’d perfected the fight-or-flight response to a fine art, until one good man had tamed him, and another had given him a stable home, even if only briefly.

The woman cast her eyes about, looking for escape. There was none. He’d backed her in between the wall and the Dumpster. She growled and clawed his face.

“Enough!” he shouted, grasping her forearms and spinning her around so her back was against his torso, her wrists locked in one of his hands. He’d been gentle so far because he hadn’t wanted to risk cracking one of her bird bones, but nobody scratched him and got away with it.

He swiped his stinging cheek. Blood dotted his palm. That was a piss-off.

“Listen, stop fighting me. I’m bigger and stronger and this is going my way.”

“I won’t go to jail.” The raw anguish in her voice struck a chord with him—panic used to be both his best friend and his worst enemy—but he ignored it. This thief was getting what she deserved.

“How much would you have charged on my credit cards if I hadn’t felt you taking my wallet?”

“Nothing. I needed cash for food.”

“Then why didn’t you throw them away with the wallet?”

“What?” She sounded surprised. “You actually want some other stranger picking them up and using them?”

“You trying to tell me you pocketed my cards so no one else would use them?” How naive did she think he was?