Ingrid Weaver - Loving The Lone Wolf

Dear Reader,

June brings you six high-octane reads from Silhouette Intimate Moments, just in time for summer. First up, Ingrid Weaver enthralls readers with Loving the Lone Wolf (#1369), which is part of her revenge-ridden PAYBACK miniseries, Here, a street thug turned multimillionaire on a mission falls for the enemy’s girlfriend and learns that looks can be deceiving! Crank up your air-conditioning as Debra Cowan’s miniseries THE HOT ZONE will definitely raise temperatures with its firefighter characters. The second book, Melting Point (#1370), has a detective heroine and firefighting hero discovering more than one way to put out a fire as they track a serial killer.

Caridad Piñeiro lures us back to her haunting miniseries, THE CALLING. In Danger Calls (#1371), a beautiful doctor loses herself in her work, until a heady passion creates delicious chaos while throwing her onto a dangerous path. You’ll want to curl up with Linda Winstead Jones’s latest book, One Major Distraction (#1372), from her miniseries LAST CHANCE HEROES, in which a marine poses as a teacher to find a killer and falls for none other than the fetching school cook…who hides one whopper of a secret.

When a SWAT hero butts heads with a plucky reporter, a passionate interlude is sure to follow in Diana Duncan’s Truth or Consequences (#1373), the next book in her fast-paced miniseries FOREVER IN A DAY. In Deadly Reunion (#1374), by Lauren Nichols, our heroine thinks her life is comfortable. But of course, mayhem ensues as her ex-husband—a man she’s never stopped loving—returns to solve a murder and clear his name…and she’s going to help him.

This month is all about finding love against the odds and those adventures lurking around the corner. So as you lounge in your favorite chair, lose yourself in one of these gems from Silhouette Intimate Moments!

Sincerely,

Patience Smith

Associate Senior Editor

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ISBN: 9781408946480

Loving the Lone Wolf

© Ingrid Caris 2005

First Published in Great Britain in 2005

Harlequin (UK) Limited

Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, including without limitation xerography, photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.

This ebook is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated, without the prior consent of the publisher, in any form or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

All characters in this work have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises II B.V./S.á.r.l.

® and TM are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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

Epilogue

COMING NEXT MONTH

INGRID WEAVER

admits to being a sucker for old movies and books that can make her cry. “I write because life is an adventure,” Ingrid says. “And the greatest adventure of all is falling in love.” Since the publication of her first book in 1994, she has won the Romance Writers of America RITA ®Award for Romantic Suspense, as well as the Romantic Times Career Achievement Award for Series Romantic Suspense. Ingrid lives with her husband and son and an assortment of shamefully spoiled pets in a pocket of country paradise an afternoon’s drive from Toronto. She invites you to visit her Web site at www.ingridweaver.com.

“Mommy, look at this!”

The scene unfolded with the slow-motion horror of a nightmare. At first, Kelly couldn’t accept what she was seeing. This was Jamie’s playroom, part of their sanctuary, an island of sanity where her son could be just a kid and she could be simply a mom. Toy cars littered the carpet, crayons and paper covered the child-size desk and the cushions from the biggest couch had been propped into a pile on the floor to make a garage.

But Jamie wasn’t holding a crayon or a car or the favorite threadbare stuffed rabbit that he had crawled into his couch-cushion garage to find.

He was holding a gun.

No. Oh, God, no!

The nightmare image continued to expand, melding the ordinary with the obscene. Under the eerily unblinking gaze of the toys that lined the shelves, sunlight glinted from the silver pistol, the same sunlight that sifted through Jamie’s strawberry-blond hair and gilded the freckles on his cherub cheeks with gold.

Kelly fought to stay calm, despite the scream that swelled in her throat. She couldn’t risk startling him. She unfolded her legs from where she had been sitting cross-legged on the floor. Holding out her hand, she knee-walked across the carpet. She was only two yards away. It seemed like two miles. “Jamie, please put that down.”

The gun was a 9mm clip-loading semiautomatic, the kind the guards who patrolled the estate carried. It was too large for a three-year-old’s tiny hands, so Jamie gripped the pistol by its barrel the same way he would normally grip the handle of the plastic hammer that had come with his toy tool bench. Oblivious to the danger, he sat back on his heels and tilted his head to investigate his new find. “Pow, pow!”

“Now, baby.” Kelly halted in front of him, reached for the weapon and eased it from his hands. “Give it to Mommy.”

“I want to play with it!”

The moment the gun was securely in Kelly’s grip, her breath rushed out. Her pulse was pounding so hard, her chest ached. The urge to scream was getting stronger. It was almost as powerful as the urge to run.

Yes, run. Take her baby and keep going until her feet bled and her legs collapsed and there was no more air in her lungs. End the madness, leave the nightmare behind and find somewhere free and safe and normal where love wasn’t a tool, armed men didn’t patrol the halls and guns didn’t end up between couch cushions like stray pocket change.

Her fingers trembled as she unloaded the gun and put it on the floor behind her. How it had gotten here, who had left it, were questions she would deal with later. She leaned over to pull her son into a hard embrace. Pressing her nose to his hair, she drew in his scent, that sweet mixture of baby shampoo and warm child, the familiar anchor for her senses when the world spun out of control.…