Karen Anders - Special Ops Rendezvous

As The Adair Legacy continues, a beautiful P.I. and a damaged warrior race to prevent an assassination

He can’t remember what they did to him while he’d been held captive. But the blackouts and memory loss Sam Winston suffers since returning home scare the decorated soldier more than combat. Most of all, he fears placing those he cares about in danger…especially Olivia Owens.

Despite the risks, the gorgeous investigator is determined to help Sam remember the terrible secrets locked inside his head. Olivia is convinced he’s the key to a terrifying conspiracy. Working closely together, Olivia hopes that Sam makes progress with uncovering the past, and that the walls around his long-guarded heart fall down….

She pressed harder into him and he groaned softly. “It will feel better in a minute,” she promised.

“No pain, no gain?”

“Something like that.”

He closed his eyes and sighed. “That feels great,” he said. “You might not do this for a living, but you’re good at it.”

She shifted and he tensed. “Don’t move,” she said as she slipped out from behind him, leaving him to recline against the cushions. “Let me work it from the front.”

She dug in again and her hands trembled. She braced her hand beside his head, intending to use her elbow to get at the muscle in his joint, but she lost her focus. Instead of continuing with the massage, she leaned all the way down, bracing her hand on the other side of his head. Fleetingly, she thought this was such a bad idea for so many reasons. But the impulse came over her and she couldn’t help herself. He seemed so alone, so isolated; she wanted to comfort him in a more intimate way. She brushed her lips across his.

Dear Reader,

Special Ops Rendezvous brings together U.S. army ranger Sam Winston and P.I. Olivia Owens and is the third book in The Adair Legacy continuity. Olivia’s psychologist brother had asked her to look out for Sam, one of his patients. He was worried Sam was in trouble. Then her brother is murdered and Olivia tries to get close to Sam to not only protect him, but get to the bottom of her brother’s death. Thrown together, a chemistry that is volatile, Olivia and Sam fight their attraction as hard as they fight each other. Sam likes to give orders, but finds that tough-as-nails Olivia has a mind of her own. She discovers Sam is a loner and a sexy, alpha male. Her brother was right. Sam is being followed and is mixed up in a deadly conspiracy, and it seems that Sam is the linchpin. This wounded hero, who’s experiencing blackouts and memory loss and is tortured by nightmares, has the answers locked up in his mind. Desperately they search for answers in a deadly game that could cost Sam and Olivia everything.

I was thrilled to be asked to write this compelling and sexy U.S. army ranger for the continuity. Don’t miss the heart-pounding conclusion to The Adair Legacy, Secret Service Rescue by Elle James!

Best,

Karen

Special Ops Rendezvous

Karen Anders

www.millsandboon.co.uk

KAREN ANDERS

is a three-time National Readers’ Choice Award finalist and RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award finalist and has won a prestigious Holt Medallion. Two of her novels made the Waldenbooks bestseller list in 2003. Published since 1997, she currently writes romantic suspense for Mills & Boon. To contact the author, please write to her in care of Mills & Boon Books, 233 Broadway Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279, or visit www.karenanders.com.

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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

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Epilogue

Extract

Chapter 1

“Dr. Owens?” Sergeant Sam Winston called out into the empty outer office of Dr. John Owens, a well-respected Raleigh, North Carolina, psychologist in private practice. To keep Sam’s visits as private as possible, Dr. Owens had agreed to meet Sam before his receptionist arrived at 9:00 a.m. Sam looked at his watch. Normally Dr. Owens was waiting for him the minute he walked into his office at seven o’clock sharp.

As a Ranger in the Seventh Ranger Regiment of the United States Army Special Forces, Sam was used to rising early and getting very little sleep. He’d already been up for two hours doing some PT stress relief. Even six months later, his shoulders and hip still provided a challenge to getting back into fighting shape after he’d been captured and tortured for three months.

Also, the recent assassination attempt on his mother’s life and the fact the would-be assassin was one of his buddies from his unit, captured and tortured at the same time as Sam, not only pushed him to seek out a therapist, but had shaken his very foundation. How could Mike have gone from a decorated Ranger to an assassin? That image didn’t fit with the man Sam had known. Dedicated and tough-as-nails Mike. A hard, hollow ball of pain and regret mixed with a healthy dose of anger constricted his chest.

That incident made Sam question everything but gave him no answers. He was blacking out, losing time and having horrific nightmares that he couldn’t understand or even sometimes remember. He would just wake up standing in his room screaming at the top of his lungs.

If Mike could somehow be coerced to kill his mother, Sam had to wonder how he had been compromised. Mike was one of the toughest men Sam had known.

Thank God his mother was tough, too. She was a formidable woman, formerly a very popular vice president of the United States and, later, an ambassador to France. The thought of losing her unhinged him. He would have been devastated, and although his mother was a cagey politician, she was still his mother. The fact that she was mulling over running for president wasn’t something Sam exactly hoped for. Along with the prestige and honor, there were a lot of complications and sacrifice. He would be proud of her, but shining the limelight on him and his work with the U.S. Army wasn’t exactly something he wanted.

Mike’s betrayal and implications that Sam himself might be compromised prompted him to leave his family estate and rent a modest house in north Raleigh. In the back of his mind, he didn’t want to be in too close proximity to his family. He didn’t want to think too hard about his motivation. A terrible sense of looming disaster hung over him.

He stopped dead only steps from the door to Dr. Owens’s office. An icy feeling of dread came over him when he saw the half-open door.

“Dr. Owens?” he called again, just in case he hadn’t heard him the first time, but deep down, Sam knew he wouldn’t get an answer. After being in Special Forces for a decade, Sam had a sixth sense about violence. He could almost smell it in the air.

He pushed the door open, braced for the worst. Dr. Owens’s office was trashed. Papers and files were strewn everywhere and amid the chaos was Dr. Owens lying near a smashed computer monitor, his eyes open and a pool of blood beneath his head.