Cara Summers - Tailspin

Twelve military heroes.

Twelve indomitable heroines.

One UNIFORMLY HOT! miniseries.

Don’t miss a story in Harlequin Blaze’s

12-book continuity series, featuring irresistible

soldiers from all branches of the armed forces.

Now serving—

those reckless and wild flyboys in the U.S. Air Force…

TAILSPIN

by Cara Summers

July 2011

HOT SHOT

by Jo Leigh

August 2011

NIGHT MANEUVERS

by Jillian Burns

September 2011

Uniformly Hot!—

The Few. The Proud. The Sexy as Hell!

Dear Reader,

I thoroughly enjoyed writing Tailspin, my second contribution to Harlequin Blaze’s Uniformly Hot! miniseries. There’s something irresistible about a man in uniform… And my Air Force fighter pilot, Captain Nash Fortune, is a prime example….

When Nash Fortune was nineteen and a cadet at the air force academy, he fell in love with seventeen-year-old Bianca Quinn. It was the kind of reckless love that defies reason. But she backed out of their plans to elope. Worse, she accepted a bribe from his grandmother to disappear from his life.

Eleven years have passed, and Bianca—now a successful writer—is back in Nash’s life and asking for his help on a story that involves a missing cadet, a former classmate of his. The problem is that he wants her just as intensely as he always did. Once again, she’s sending him into a tailspin, and it will take all of his skills to pull out of it safely. That is, if he wants to….

I believe in second chances. They’re always riskier than the first ones. I hope you’ll enjoy Bianca’s and Nash’s story as much as I enjoyed writing it, and that you’ll look for Nash’s friend Jonah’s story in December.

Happy endings always!

Cara Summers

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Was Cara Summers born with the dream of becoming a published romance novelist? No. But now that she is, she still feels her dream has come true. She loves writing for the Harlequin Blaze line because it allows her to create strong, determined women and seriously sexy men who will risk everything to achieve their dreams. Cara has written more than thirty-five novels for Harlequin Books, and when she isn’t working on new stories, she teaches in the writing program at Syracuse University and at a community college near her home.

To Lt. Col. Ray “Borg” Bowen,

Commander and Professor of Aerospace Studies

at Syracuse University. Thank you so much for the

time you spent explaining to me what it means

to be in the Air Force and to fly fighter planes.

My story is so much richer because of you, and

I will treasure being an honorary “Airman” forever.

Prologue

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

Epilogue

PERFECT TIMING, Maggie Fortune thought as she climbed out of her red Corvette. The nearly empty parking lot told her that the noon Mass at the Church of St. Francis had ended so she and Father Mike Flynn could meet right away.

That suited her fine. What didn’t suit her was that even the fast ride in her sporty convertible hadn’t quite settled her nerves. Her birthday party started at five, but thanks to her houseman Grady, all the details had been seen to. It was her meeting with Father Mike that was making her nervous.

Ridiculous. She hurried toward the church. She’d known the priest when she’d been plain old Maggie Nash. They’d gone to grade school together. He’d married her to her late husband, Thaddeus Fortune IV, and he’d held her hand at the funerals of her husband and of her sons. And it wasn’t that she was up to anything that was morally wrong. She just wanted to cover all her bases.

So why were her hands damp? Damn it! Damn them!

She started up the long flight of stairs that led to the front door, taking pride in the fact that although she was celebrating her seventy-fifth birthday, she wasn’t short of breath when she reached the top.

Well, not very short of breath. Still, she caught herself taking a few deep ones as she hurried up the center aisle of the church. Dim light filtered through stained glass, but she made out a few people still lingering on the side altar where the statue of St. Francis stood enclosed in a glass case.

As her eyes grew more accustomed to the dimness, she watched the small group turn away and descend the steps. Then she spotted Father Mike still standing in front of the statue. Perfect, she thought again. She’d be in and out of here in fifteen minutes. Tops.

Her talent for timing things well had been helpful throughout her life and especially since her husband’s death twenty years ago when she’d taken over the job of running the Fortune family’s various business interests. In the corporate world, timing could be everything. And it was equally important in personal matters, too.

As she drew closer, Father Mike dropped to his knees to say a prayer. Not wanting to intrude, Maggie halted and let her gaze lift to the statue. It looked as small and unassuming as the first time she’d seen it. Originally, the marble figure had been donated to the Franciscan Capuchin order by an Italian family who’d immigrated to Denver from Assisi, Italy, where the saint had been born. Since that time, the statue of St. Francis had gained an ever increasing reputation for granting petitioners’ prayers. Nothing on the scale of a major miracle or anything like that. But people believed that the statue had some kind of special pull with God.

Back in February, the Denver Post had run an article containing story after story of how a visit to the statue had resulted in prayers being answered and lives being changed. The narratives ran the gamut of lovers being united, babies being conceived to families meeting up with lost loved ones.

Still studying the figure of St. Francis, she let her mind drift back fifteen years to the first time she’d encountered the statue. It had stood in the small garden next to the St. Francis Center for Boys. Father Mike had run afternoon and weekend programs there, and she still credited him with keeping her grandson Nash out of jail. Of course, Father Mike had always passed on any credit to St. Francis.

True, the prayers she’d said to the statue that first time in the prayer garden might have played a role. But Maggie was certain that if Nash hadn’t been able to occupy his after school and weekend hours at the center, and if it hadn’t been for the friends he’d made there, well…she doubted he’d be a captain in the Air Force today. And that had been his goal ever since he’d lost his father in the Gulf War.

That had been a terrible time for them both. Within a year, she’d lost a husband and a son. She’d had to take over the running of Fortune Enterprises and at the same time raise a seven-year-old boy who was a magnet for trouble.