Carrie Alexander - The Maverick

But what if he’d been wrong about her? What if he’d been wrong to believe in secondhand gossip instead of the heart-and-guts proof of their actual relationship?

No. There was evidence, the kind she couldn’t hide.

Luke coughed. “I hear you’ve got a kid.”

The car shot dangerously fast around one of the switchback curves. She slammed her foot on the brake, sending the back end fishtailing into the soft shoulder.

“Take it easy,” Luke said just before he was flung across the seat. By the time he’d awkwardly righted himself, pushing up with hands cuffed behind his back, she’d gotten the car under control and was proceeding as if he hadn’t spoken.

“A boy,” he said.

Her fingers clenched on the wheel. “Let’s keep this strictly business.”

“Not possible. You and I will never be strictly business.”

“Fourteen years without contact certainly indicates otherwise.”

“Fourteen years without contact only means that we both went cold turkey. Now that I’m back…”

Dear Reader,

After writing thirteen books for Harlequin, I’m thrilled to be making my Superromance debut this month with The Maverick. It’s a reunion story, it’s a bad boy (and girl!) story, it’s even a secret baby story…although this time the “baby” happens to be a moody thirteen-year-old named Joe. Telling Luke and Sophie’s story was, by turns, a fun, emotional, exciting and even wrenching experience.

Thanks must go to The TIBS and John, my online buddy group, who provided support, sharpened my wits, listened to my gripes, answered my stupid questions at 2:00 a.m. and made me laugh every single day. And especially to you, the reader, for welcoming me to the wonderful world of Superromance by reading this book.

Please let me know how you like it! You may write to me in care of Harlequin, or via e-mail by going to www.eHarlequin.com or www.superauthors.com.

Cheers,

Carrie Alexander

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For the scholar and the woodsman, my mom and dad, who

taught me the love of books and the benefits of hard work.

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

THE SILVER-AND-BLACK MOTORCYCLE zipped through downtown Treetop, Wyoming, at fifteen miles above the speed limit. Deputy Sophie Ryan was so startled she flinched, spilling her coffee and dropping her car keys. From Sophie’s vantage point in the parking lot of the True Brew coffeehouse, she shouldn’t have been able to recognize the driver.

Yet she was afraid that she had.

Maverick. The name flashed through her like lightning—as shocking and electric as the man himself.

The presence of Luke Salinger in Treetop—after fourteen years!—was too much to accept all at once. Sophie didn’t want him here. She truly didn’t. But there was no denying that she was transfixed by the possibility. Steaming latte soaked the front of her police uniform, and she was too stunned to feel it.

Squeezing the half-empty foam cup, she stared blankly after the speeding motorcycle. Even though Range Street had returned to its usual early-morning tranquility, the air seemed to reverberate with the bike’s annoying buzz and hot blue exhaust fumes. Sophie shuddered. Every self-protective sense that she’d honed in the years since Luke’s departure went on red alert.

Her mind raced. Try as she might, she couldn’t convince herself that some other member of the defunct Mustangs motorcycle gang had chosen to take a joyride through town for old time’s sake.

For one thing, it was only quarter to eight. That let out the likeliest candidate, Damon “Demon” Bradshaw, who rarely rolled out of bed to open his run-down bike shop before noon.

The motorcycle in question had been black and chrome, sleek, stylish, fast. Snake Carson’s bike was a big, ugly chopper that sounded like a dump truck. And ever since Skooch Haas had found religion he’d sooner wear a dress to bible school than break the speed limit.

While the driver had been little more than a blur, Sophie’s observation of details was keen. She’d seen enough to identify dark wavy hair, whipped by the wind since it was a little too long to be reputable, a possible Mustangs tattoo on the left biceps, and a long, lean body clad in denim and brown leather. Which meant she could also eliminate Punch Fiorelli, who’d gained fifty pounds in the past decade, and Bronc Lemmons, who was in the hospital, sick and bald as a colicky baby from his second round of chemotherapy.

Sophie took a shaky breath. Other than the deceased and the incarcerated, that left one member of the Mustangs unaccounted for. And he happened to be the only man on earth for whom she’d never been able to rationalize—or completely stifle—her tangled, tumultuous feelings.

“Maverick,” she said through her teeth, remembering with a spurt of pain a time when he’d left her scared, alone and, as she’d soon learned, pregnant. She clenched her fist. The last of the coffee gushed from the cup in a hot brown waterfall.

Luke Salinger was back in Treetop, and the town would likely be the worse for it.

There was no question that Sophie’s stable life had just been turned upside down.

It was a minute before she came back to herself with a snap. Briskly she brushed at her stained uniform shirt, disgusted with her stricken reaction. One glimpse of Luke “Maverick” Salinger and her composure had cracked like the flimsy foam cup, releasing such a torrent of memory she’d been rendered mute and motionless. She would have to do better than that if she hoped to protect her family and hard-won reputation from the resurrection of the old scandal.

Nor could she continue to stand idly by while Luke flouted the speed limit. She was the only sheriff’s deputy on patrol this morning, and, speeding ticket aside, there were those fourteen-year-old charges of arson, vandalism and B & E still lingering on the books….

It was up to Sophie to apprehend Luke Salinger. She reached for her fallen keys. How ironic.

Kelsey Carson stepped out of the side door of the True Brew, her cheeks pink and glossy from the steam of the espresso machine. “Whoa. That was so cool,” she said. Her butter-blond ponytail swung as she scanned the empty street. “Who was he? I saw him zoom by from the kitchen window. Sweeet!”

Sophie straightened, keys in hand. Her law enforcement training demanded she give an impromptu lecture reminding the teenager that breaking the speed limit was dangerous, not cool. As she spoke, she couldn’t help remembering the days when she’d been as pretend-tough, rebellious and impressionable as sixteen-year-old Kelsey. She’d thought that Luke was as sweet as apple pie à la mode, and ten times as cool.

Kelsey wasn’t listening anyway. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. But who is that guy?”

Sophie grimaced. “I’m not sure, but I do know that he just broke the law.”

“Hmm.” Kelsey slid her hands into the pockets of her droopy camouflage pants and turned a measuring stare on Sophie. The gold ring that pierced her eyebrow winked in the sunshine. “He seemed familiar. Made me think of the photos of you and my dad and the rest of the Mustangs. From the old days.”