Janice Johnson - Cop by Her Side

Does she put her trust in him…again?

Lieutenant Jane Vahalik is done with Sergeant Clay Renner. He messed up their romance when he dished out too much male swagger. She gets enough of that on the job to put up with it in her personal life—regardless of how hot Clay may be.

Then her niece is kidnapped, and suddenly he is the only cop Jane trusts to lead the search. The rush of attraction sizzling between them surprises her. So does his determination to prove she’s wrong about him. It could be just the tense situation—or it could be Clay—but Jane’s feelings for him are growing. Maybe they deserve a second chance….

“If you trust me, Jane, you’ve got to help me find the answers I need.”

Clay paused, watching her closely, not wanting to give her another reason to despise him. But the case took priority over their personal situation, so he said the hard thing anyway. “Don’t let your sympathy for your brother-in-law blind you.”

Her expression changed, and he felt like a ruthless bastard. He didn’t take back what he’d said, though. His first priority had to be that missing little girl. In the absence of cooperation from her father, Drew Wilson, Clay needed Jane’s. It was that simple. This wasn’t some kind of competition, with him needing to prove she was on his side.

He didn’t like that he had to wonder if he was lying to himself.

He softened his tone. “Help me, Jane.”

She took what seemed to be an angry swipe at her eyes, and after a moment gave a nod. “For my niece,” she said tightly. “What is it you want to know?”

Was it that easy? Was she surrendering because she really did trust him—or because her loyalty to her niece was more powerful than her also steadfast loyalty to her brother-in-law? Clay suddenly wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer to that.

Dear Reader Contents Dear Reader 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 EPILOGUE EXTRACT ,

I really, truly never meant to make The Mysteries of Angel Butte series more than a trilogy. But I was grabbed by a character who didn’t stay in her secondary role. Jane Vahalik intrigued me from her appearance in the first book (Bringing Maddie Home, November 2013)—a woman succeeding in a primarily male field, and, at that, a woman whose very womanly appearance contradicts her seeming toughness. What made her the woman she became? Is she really as confident as she appears? And what kind of man would have enough confidence himself to love a woman who handles a gun as well as he does, participates in dangerous raids and supervises police detectives?

I’ve found in the past that, in most books, the focus is sharpest on hero or heroine, but not both. Partly, it’s tough to balance two people trying to overcome significant emotional or life challenges—especially if, as in many of my books, there’s a suspense subplot as well. I think when I started this book, I expected Jane to be at the center. I fell in love with Clay Renner right away, though. This is a guy who fell in love, head over heels, for the first time in his life when he met Jane. But he was raised to believe in quite differing male/female roles, and assuming that he’d love a woman who was content to support him and stay home to raise their children. Only a few dates into their relationship, he blows it badly and loses Jane.

When this book opens, months later, the two of them are participating in a police raid. Jane will be one of the first officers to go in, and Clay can’t deal with it. And yet...he aches to become a man worthy of her love and trust. He has a heck of a dilemma! Meantime, I’ve undermined all Jane’s hard-won confidence by endangering her family, exposing her vulnerability when she most wants to be strong.

I hope you love these two people as much as I came to. And to understand why, well, I’m writing yet one more book set in Angel Butte, Oregon. That under-the-radar runaway-youth shelter kept calling my name. I imagined an alum whose life was saved by the shelter—a deeply wounded boy grown up to be a very controlled man who has returned to Angel Butte to protect the shelter and the people running it. Look for that to come out later in 2014.

That will be the last book! I swear. I’m pretty sure.... Really.

Good reading,

Janice Kay Johnson

Cop by Her Side

Janice Kay Johnson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

The author of more than eighty books for children and adults, Janice Kay Johnson is especially well-known for her Mills & Boon Superromance novels about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel Snowbound won a RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington. She loves to read and is an active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter.

For Pat (aka Alexis Morgan), the best of friends and a fantastic plotting partner

Contents

Dear Reader

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

EPILOGUE

EXTRACT

CHAPTER ONE

LIEUTENANT JANE VAHALIK’S skin prickled from her awareness that she was being watched. She didn’t have to look around to know who had his eyes on her.

It seemed an excellent time to fade away into the early-evening darkness, circling behind her big black SUV to change clothes in preparation for tonight’s assault. Others had been taking turns to do the same; earlier, two designated officers had returned to town to collect the additional weaponry the group would need, as well as body armor and black clothing. Much as Jane had hated the idea of a fellow law enforcement officer—male, of course—letting himself into her apartment and pawing through her drawers, there hadn’t seemed to be a good alternative. Her GMC Yukon was one of the more conspicuous vehicles collected out here, and going and returning unnoticed was essential. Besides, any of the guys might have hated having her in his home as much as she did the other way around. And did she want to know that a detective under her command had an impressive porn collection or decorated his living room with a beer-can pyramid or had a kitchen or bathroom so filthy it would turn her stomach? Really, really, no. At least her place was clean.

The Yukon was currently backed into a dirt turnaround, shielded from the main road by a thicket of scrubby trees and blackberries. Rusting barbed wire, only a few feet away, marked the beginning of a pasture holding a couple of horses, one obviously elderly and swaybacked, and, of all things, a donkey. Now she heard a few far-off rustles, followed by a whuffle from the darkness. Animals. They would be supremely uninterested in seeing her seminaked.

Knowing how brief her privacy might be and listening for human footsteps, Jane hastily shed the clothes she had been wearing for two days now, since she’d learned that police chief Raynor’s nephew was being held hostage. Her nose wrinkled in distaste as she bundled them up. She’d managed a shower this morning at Raynor’s house, but had had to put the same clothes back on. Even if she’d been comfortable asking, she couldn’t have borrowed from Julia Raynor, the police chief’s sister-in-law and the boy’s mother; Julia had a slender dancer’s body, while Jane...did not.