Amanda Stevens: Unauthorized Passion

UNAUTHORIZED PASSION

Jack Fury has been watching Celeste Fortune, waiting for the right moment to coincidentally meet her…and save her. But he doesn’t know the sexy Celeste is an impostor! Cassie Boudreaux has been impersonating her cousin and doesn’t bargain on a protector like Jack or a killer in pursuit. Now she’ll need Celeste’s entire feminine arsenal to outsmart one man and seduce another.

INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE

Penelope Moon can’t believe her eyes when she sees her coma-stricken fiancé, Simon Decker, on board a passing yacht. But this Simon isn’t the accountant she fell in love with. This man is tougher, stronger—sexier. Soon she’s drawn into a deadly conspiracy. But will her heart end up as collateral damage…?

Unauthorized Passion & Intimate Knowledge

Amanda Stevens

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Contents

UNAUTHORIZED PASSION UNAUTHORIZED PASSION

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

INTIMATE KNOWLEDGE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

UNAUTHORIZED PASSION

CHAPTER ONE

JACK FURY CONSIDERED Dumpster-diving a metaphor for life—it could be unpredictable, messy and sometimes you just couldn’t get the stink off no matter how hard you tried.

But he figured it was a necessary evil, kind of like sushi and cheap beer. You held your nose, dug in, and prayed to the real God that you wouldn’t spend the rest of the night praying to the porcelain god.

He’d worshipped at that altar more times than he cared to remember, but considering the day he’d had—no, make that year—puking his guts out would be a fitting way to end it.

He stomped his feet in the rubber boots he’d pulled on, then surveyed the area once more before taking the plunge. It was a quiet Thursday night. He could hear traffic a few blocks over on Main Street, but in the alley behind the exclusive Mirabelle Hotel in Houston’s Museum District, not a creature stirred.

Unless, of course, you counted the mosquitoes and the giant flying cockroaches for which the Bayou City was famous. There were rats around, too, Jack suspected. Big, fat, urban-dwelling rodents that didn’t skitter away at the sight of a human, but stared you right in the face and dared you, dared you, to enter their private domain.

Spraying himself down with heavy-duty insect repellent, he tossed the can back in his bag. Sweat trickled down his temples as he approached the dark blue trash bins. Even after dark, the temperature hovered around ninety and the humidity had a life of its own. There was no breeze to speak of, either. Some people considered August in Houston a little like hell on earth, but they were wrong. August in Houston was hell on earth to the third power. It was what the fiery depths of Hades only wished it could be.

This was Jack’s city and he loved it.

The aroma wafting from the Dumpsters? Not so much. If there was anything he’d learned from his nearly ten years as a Houston cop it was that rich people’s trash did, indeed, stink.

Smelled to high heaven, he thought as he bent over the first bin and began poking around with a stick. River Oaks, the Fourth Ward…didn’t matter. Garbage was garbage. He hadn’t minded the task so much when he’d still been a cop. Back then he would have happily crawled through a mountain of refuse to find evidence that would put away a killer or a clue that might help find a missing child. There’d been times when he’d been so intent on the job at hand that he hadn’t even noticed the smell.

Things were different now. Looking for receipts, letters, ticket stubs, anything that would give some rich techno geek the inside track on the hot babe he’d set his sights on was not exactly fulfilling work. It was downright distasteful, in fact. Little more than legal stalking, and as he sorted through the trash, Jack asked himself once more if he was really that desperate.

Overdrawn bank account? Check.

Final eviction notice? Check.

Furniture sold, car repossessed, stereo and TV pawned? Check, check and check.

Yep, he was that desperate.

His laptop was the only thing of value he had left, and he wasn’t about to put that in hock. Without a computer he wouldn’t be able to track the progress of the Casanova case, but then, if he didn’t come up with something soon, there wasn’t going to be any progress. As far as HPD was concerned, the case was closed. A suspect had been tried, convicted and was now serving consecutive life sentences in Huntsville for the brutal slaying of five women.

Jack had been one of the first detectives assigned to the task force tracking Casanova—a slick psycho who seduced his victims before killing them—and he’d been on the scene when the arrest had gone down. At first, he was as ecstatic as everyone else, but then certain things had started to bother him. Not all the loose ends had been tied up by the arrest, and when word got out that he was still asking questions, he’d been kicked off the force for conducting an unauthorized investigation.

Just like that. No suspension, no review board, nothing. After ten years, he was out. Even the union had refused to help him because politics was politics. The mayor had agreed to back the union’s demands in exchange for the police department’s support of his Houston First initiative, an aggressive campaign strategy to give the city a higher profile. With an Olympic site committee coming to town, a serial killer on the loose didn’t exactly fit with the image His Honor wanted to project.

Besides, the terror had finally come to an end, things were returning to normal and no one at city hall or HPD headquarters wanted a rogue cop stirring up trouble. So Jack was out.

But he wasn’t finished with Casanova. Not by a long shot. He had a score to settle with a killer, and if in the meantime his own survival depended on getting the goods on some spoiled Hollywood starlet, then so be it.

“Her name is Celeste Fortune,” his ex-partner, Max Tripp, had told him that first day when Jack had agreed to an interview. Max had left the police department five years earlier to open his own P.I. firm. He and Jack had eventually lost touch. Then out of the blue, Max had called shortly after Jack had been fired. Max swore it was a coincidence, but Jack suspected that his ex-partner was still wired into the department, which was another reason he’d taken the job. If Max had contacts on the inside, Jack wanted them.

He’d also, by that time, spent so much of his own money on the Casanova investigation that he’d pretty much run out of options. Still, as Max had described the nature of his business that day, Jack had grown more and more uneasy.