Stephanie Doyle - Her Secret Service Agent

She wants her Secret Service agent back...

She was the president’s only daughter. And like a bad movie cliché, Vivian Bennett fell in love with her Secret Service agent, Joe Hunt. Except the night she chose to confess her feelings, the night he rebuked her embarrassing advance, was the night her stalker kidnapped her.

That was ten years ago. Joe, of course, had rescued her. But that didn’t stop her father from firing him, and her juvenile mistake cost Viv her best friend. Well, she’s back in Washington and, even though her dad’s no longer in office, she’s started to get threatening letters. She needs—wants—the only man she’s ever trusted to protect her a second time.

“You want me, of all people, to protect you?”

Vivian took a deep breath. She’d known coming here wouldn’t be easy, but Joe was her best option and her first choice.

“I’m no longer entitled to Secret Service protection and I wouldn’t want that anyway. I could hire another investigator but that person wouldn’t know me and wouldn’t really understand the situation like you do.”

And the last time in her life she had felt truly safe was when Joe had been watching over her. She wanted that again. She was willing to sacrifice her pride to get it. Hers had been a foolish stunt by a twenty-year-old girl who thought she was madly in love...

You were madly in love.

Regardless, she thought, her feelings had cost him his job, his future and his relationship with his father. Not to mention what that did to the rest of his family. Vivian had considered what might happen when she saw him again—that he might yell or, worse, tell her to get lost in that scary soft tone he always used when he was super angry.

His laughter was unexpected.

Then suddenly he stopped. “You do recall what happened the last time you were under my protection?”

Dear Reader,

Her Secret Service Agent is kind of a crazy story. I actually wrote this book many, many years ago. And I always loved the idea of it. However, after taking it out of the drawer, I realized how much I had changed as a writer in the years since and knew that I was going to write the whole book over again.

It was great rediscovering my old self while at the same time realizing how far I had come in my twenty-plus years writing for Harlequin.

Joe was then and is now one of my most favorite heroes, and Vivian is the heroine I most respect for being afraid about a lot of things but always standing up to those fears. I really hope you enjoy their story! If you like Her Secret Service Agent, you can follow me on Amazon, find me at www.stephaniedoyle.net, on Facebook at Stephanie Doyle Books, or on Twitter, @stephdoylerw. Phew! That’s a lot of places.

Stephanie

Her Secret Service Agent

Stephanie Doyle

www.millsandboon.co.uk

STEPHANIE DOYLE, a dedicated romance reader, began to pen her own romantic adventures at age sixteen. She began submitting to Harlequin at age eighteen and by twenty-six her first book was published. Fifteen years later, she still loves what she does, as each book is a new adventure. She lives in South Jersey with her cat, Hermione, the designated princess of the house. When Stephanie’s not reading or writing, in the summer she is most likely watching a baseball game and eating a hot dog.

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

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

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

Ten Years Ago

“VIV, WHERE ARE we going?”

“Just follow me,” Vivian said, taking Joe by the hand and leading him through the crowded house party a couple of blocks off the Georgetown campus. She needed privacy, something she’d thought would be easy to find at a college party. Everyone had stories about secret hookups at parties like this. The reality, however, was there were more people than space in the brownstone and the hooking-up seemed to happen openly.

Something she might have known if she actually did the college party scene more often. She didn’t usually come to these types of events. Not the most social person, she preferred spending her nights quietly with a small circle of friends. Friends she could trust.

For that matter so did Joe Hunt, who was her Secret Service point man.

Tonight had been his night off, but Vivian had convinced him to switch shifts with Cindy, who mostly handled nights and weekends. Joe had a hard time denying Vivian anything, so it wasn’t a surprise he’d agreed to the request. Now she had to work up the courage to go through with the rest of her plan.

Vivian thought that if she could have him to herself at a casual event, and they could really talk, then he might understand what she was feeling. He might also be more willing to admit what she was pretty sure he was feeling, too.

“Seriously, Viv, if this is about you thinking I’m going to let you drink, forget it. You’ve got six months to go before you’re twenty-one, and I’m not bending on a single hour. Your father would have my ass.”

Vivian didn’t bother to answer. As if drinking beer was even close to what she was getting ready to tell him. She’d been waiting for this night for weeks, and the last person she wanted to think about now was Daddy.

As president of the United States, leader of the free world, he was known to be an overbearing hard-liner. As a single father to his only daughter, he was even stricter. He would definitely not approve of what Vivian was about to do.

Despairing of finding an empty bedroom, she decided her second-best option was a room she knew would allow them privacy and had a lock on the door. She found an upstairs bathroom off the master bedroom. While there were people milling about in the bedroom, talking and drinking, the bathroom was fortunately unoccupied.

It would have to do.

She pulled Joe in behind her, shut the door and locked it for good measure. Phase One was complete.

Then she turned to face him, and all the words got stuck in her throat. He was dressed casually, albeit professionally, to help blend in at the event. As point man, his job was to stay with her at all times while Carl Mather, his backup, secured the entrance and exit points and patrolled the perimeter of the house.

With his hair, slightly longer than standard for a federal agent, and his slacks and button-down, along with a blazer she knew covered his shoulder holster, he might have passed for college age. A preppy Georgetown law school student, perhaps.

It was a point of contention for him because she knew his buddies in the service called him Baby Face Hunt. Any time someone said it to him he scowled, which usually made her smile. She took enough grief from him on a daily basis that she loved it when he got a taste of payback.