Marie Ferrarella - Private Justice

Was that her being coy? Flirting? Or what she felt passed for flirting, she amended silently. What was going on here?

She was both nervous and excited, even as she warned herself not to be.

“Whenever possible,” he replied to her mocking question, fairly sure she was mocking him. He stole a glance at her now that they were relatively alone and unthreatened by traffic. “Whenever possible,” he repeated.

Instead of feeling a sense of relief at his profession of honorability, her nerves instantly spiked even higher than before, fed by anticipation the magnitude of which she had never encountered before.

Just what did she think she was anticipating here? Cindy asked herself. Women were a dime a dozen for this man. Why would he bother singling her out?

And why did she so desperately want him to?

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the first installment of THE KELLEY LEGACY, a family you first met in the pages of the last The Coltons of Montana mini-series.

We have a United States Senator who allowed his ever-growing ego to lead him into regions a more prudent-thinking man would have gone to great lengths to avoid. The purpose of the society he blundered into will be revealed slowly, but the chilling threat is evident immediately.

To the Senator’s rescue comes his estranged son (one of six siblings), Dylan Kelley, a class A trial lawyer. He joins forces with the Senator’s chief staff assistant, Cindy Jensen, who has secrets of her own. A challenge that will take a bit of work. But Dylan soon finds that Cindy is more than worth the extra effort he needs to put in.

As ever, I thank you for reading and, from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

Marie Ferrarella

MARIE FERRARELLA,a bestselling and award-winning author, has written more than two hundred books for Mills & Boon, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website at www.marieferrarella.com.

Private Justice

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To

Kate Conrad,

a little fighter

if ever there was one.

Keep up the good fight.

They were out there, waiting for him. Waiting to feed on his public humiliation.

Vultures!

The hairs on the back of Henry Thomas Kelley’s neck stood on end as his anxiety grew.

He knew they were there before he even opened the courthouse door and walked out of the venerable building. Before he ever saw them, he sensed them. A gaggle of reporters clutching microphones as if they were weapons to be wielded, deadly weapons that, with the echo of one misplaced word, could kill all of a man’s hopes, all his dreams. Kill everything he had built up over these long years.

Backed up by their cameramen, they were ready, willing and eager to record the downfall of what had been, just days before, a fairy-tale life—complete with a breathtaking, meteoric rise in the world of politics.

He’d been king of the world with no limit in sight. And now, now that he’d crossed the wrong people, expressed a hesitation where none had been anticipated or would be tolerated, the king, it appeared, was dead—and everyone wanted their chance to kick the corpse before it was dumped into an unmarked grave.

Hubris was a terrible thing, born of adulation and coming in on the backs of fawning lackeys. And Hank Kelley knew, to his shame, that he had been guilty of it. Been seduced by it. Everyone had wanted to be seen with him, be in his limelight. Use him.

And now, those same people were ready to rend his body into tiny, indistinguishable pieces.

Joyfully.

He had been married to one of the richest women in the world, an attractive woman who had loved him, giving him five sons and a daughter. He and Sarah had been the absolutely perfect couple with the perfect family.

Had been .

And he had let it all go to his head.

He had stopped deflecting the flattering attentions of all those beautiful women who seemingly wanted nothing more than to be with him. To love him.

Vain, flattered, he’d stopped resisting, and the trap, he now realized, had been set. A trap to be used against him whenever it was deemed necessary by the people he’d so naively trusted.

Apparently, now it was necessary.

Now, not one, not two, but six of the women he’d been involved with—calling themselves mistresses when that title hardly fitted—all tall, all willowy, all blondes, had stepped forward to point an accusing finger at the man they were all claiming had seduced them.

It had been the other way around. It was always the other way around. But the end result was the same. He had cheated. Cheated on the wife who had loved him, cheated on the public who had trusted him, and that was all the public cared about.

That and watching his public humiliation, his public fall from grace.

It made for a great show.

Taking in one long breath, Hank braced himself and pushed open the door. He would have lowered his head to avoid looking at them, but it would have been taken as an act of cowardice, and he might be many things, but a coward was not one of them.

With determined steps he began to make his way to his waiting vehicle, enduring a hail of questions that swelled into a storm of noise.

“Senator, Senator! Look this way!”

“This way!”

“Are you the father of that woman’s baby?” Someone shouted the soul-scraping question louder than her fellow reporters.

His mouth, so often seen with a radiant smile, was grim. He kept his eyes on his target, the car, and avoided making any eye contact with the swarm around him, no matter how tightly they closed in around him.

He pushed forward.

“No comment,” he finally bit off as the questions grew and multiplied, choking the very air around him. He was beginning to doubt he was going to make it to his car in one piece. It couldn’t end like this. Not here. Not before he found a way to apologize to Sarah for the grief he had caused her. He had never meant to hurt her. He just didn’t think.

He kept plowing his way through the human throng, making progress by inches. He needed not only to get away, but to find somewhere he could go and think. What was happening was not a coincidence.

But why now? Why this?

He needed answers.

After what felt like an eternity embroiled in an endless journey, he finally made it to his car. The driver, Joseph, was standing holding the rear door open for him, waiting. He was quickly ushered in, his useless lawyer diving in right behind him, and the door was secured.

Exhausted, relieved, he leaned back and exhaled a sigh filled with anxiety.