Lindsay McKenna - Woman Of Innocence

“Matt, come in,” Morgan called to him. “It’s time you were properly introduced to your new partner.”

Matt moved silently into the room.

Jenny held her breath. Matt Davis. The famous Matt Davis. He was one of Morgan’s best mercenaries. She knew his résumé by heart. Now as she studied his eyes, which glittered with a hard intelligence, her nerves skittered and her pulse raced. With his wide, oval face and jutting jaw, that strong nose and mouth, he was one of the most handsome men she’d ever seen! And he was being assigned to work with her!

Jenny did everything possible to hide her feelings and not stare at him like some lovelorn teenybopper. But how could she help herself? She was going on her first mercenary mission with Matt Davis.

It was more than she ever dreamed of….

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Gonzalo E. Abelenda and Ezequiel Caviglia

of Buenos Aires, Argentina. Two young,

handsome white knights who rescued us from

Agua Caliente, Peru, and got us train tickets back to Cuzco.

Thank you! Chivalry, good manners and kindness between

North and South America are alive and well.

You are both, truly, romance heroes of the finest kind.

A homeopathic educator, Lindsay teaches at the Desert Institute of Classical Homeopathy in Phoenix, Arizona. When she isn’t teaching alternative medicine, she is writing books about love. She feels love is the single greatest healer in the world and hopes that her books touch her readers on those levels.

Dear Reader,

Having been in the U.S. Navy, I know there are smart, savvy women who can do things just as well as any man—or better! In this brand-new series, MORGAN’S MERCENARIES: DESTINY’S WOMEN, I honor them by telling their stories.

I believe that every woman is capable of heroic action. Just being a woman in today’s world takes courage, in my opinion. Take Jenny Wright, for example, the heroine of Woman of Innocence. So often I hear from women that they wish they could have more adventurous lives. Most of us are tied to a family and career obligations—like Jenny, who is Morgan Trayhern’s personal assistant. Jenny dreams that some day, she, too, will be handed a mercenary assignment by her boss. She idolizes the men and women who work for Morgan, but she doesn’t believe that she has the “right stuff” to do what they do. However, life has a funny way of showing Jenny that perhaps she’s not so unlike the mercenaries who work for Morgan when she gets a chance to undertake a mission and work with the courageous women of the Black Jaguar Squadron, who will be featured in upcoming books in MORGAN’S MERCENARIES: DESTINY’S WOMEN. Not only does Jenny discover she has the strength to stand side by side with these women, but she also realizes, in the arms of mercenary Matt Davis, that she has the courage to love.

I hope you enjoy Jenny’s story, as well as the three books to come in MORGAN’S MERCENARIES: DESTINY’S WOMEN.

Enjoy,

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

“Morgan, are you awake?”

“…Umphh…”

Laura smiled softly as she gazed at her dozing husband. Thin streams of moonlight filtered into their bedroom on the second floor of their log home. She could smell the scent of pine as a breeze gently blew the diaphanous white curtains beside their brass bed. Snuggling up against his back, she moved her hand in a gliding motion around his rib cage. Though the comforts of living had put a few extra pounds on Morgan, he still worked to maintain the strong, athletic build he’d had as a young man.

Placing her palm against his darkly haired chest, she reached up and placed a kiss against his naked shoulder. “Are you awake?” she repeated.

Morgan stirred. He forced his lids open. Feeling Laura’s small hand against his chest, over his heart, he lifted his own hand and pressed it against hers. “I am now.”

She laughed a little breathlessly and kissed him as a reward. “I know you had a hard day. I should have talked to you about this earlier.”

Morgan liked the feel of Laura’s silky nightgown. The way it flowed against his nakedness made him very aware of her feminine curves. Moving carefully from his side to his back, he brought his wife into his arms. She nestled her blond head into his shoulder, her brow pressed to his jaw. Ever since her kidnapping years ago, the trauma she’d suffered, Laura had changed. Not that Morgan could blame her under the circumstances. He, too, had been changed when he and his wife, as well as their eldest son, Jason, had been victimized during the incident.

“What are you worrying over?” he rumbled as he pressed his lips to her thick soft hair. Inhaling deeply, he savored the sweet scent of kahili ginger that she’d washed her hair with earlier that night, before they went to bed.

Laughing a little, Laura eased away just enough to catch his sleepy looking eyes. Warmed by his sensitivity to her needs, she whispered, “How did you know I was worrying?”

One corner of his mouth moved upward. Her eyes shone with warmth and love—toward him. Squeezing her shoulder gently, he rasped, “Why wouldn’t I know? We’ve been married a long time. We know one another pretty well at this stage, don’t you think?”

“Even at two in the morning you have a sense of humor.” She grinned a little and kissed his jaw. The sandpapery quality made her lips tingle as she sank against him.

Sighing, Morgan said, “Only for you, believe me.” He’d lost count of the times he’d been awakened by a person on duty over at the Perseus headquarters about a mercenary mission. No, he savored a good night’s sleep. Morgan also knew that since the kidnapping, Laura had kept a lot of her emotions in, and had lost some of her childlike spontaneity. Over time, he’d learned how to read her when she internalized things, and he tried to stimulate conversation with her, to find out what was going on inside that intelligent head of hers. Tonight was one of those nights, he realized. Laura rarely woke him up like this. He wondered if she was worried about one of their four children. Jason, their firstborn son, in particular, who was going through a very rough time the last couple of years as a maturing teen.

“What’s bothering you?” he asked quietly. He felt her hand range across his chest, her touch always wonderful. Savoring the feel of her slender, feminine body against his own, he moved his fingers across her shoulder.

Closing her eyes, Laura sighed. “It’s about Jenny.”

His brows drew downward. “Jenny? My assistant?”

“Yes.”

All sleepiness left him as he wondered why Laura needed to discuss the woman who worked for him at Perseus. “What about her?”

“You know how much we both like her,” Laura began.

“Yes…” Where was this leading? Normally, Laura didn’t discuss business at 2:00 a.m. with him. She helped out occasionally on hiring people for Perseus. Otherwise, she had her hands full with their four children, devoting her life and time to them, not Perseus. “She’s become like a fifth child to us,” Morgan agreed.

The fact that Jenny had a lot of Laura’s own traits hadn’t escaped either of them. With her short blond hair and pixie face, Jenny looked more like one of their children than Morgan’s secretarial assistant. Jenny had been abandoned at birth, given up for adoption, and she still didn’t know who her parents were. When Laura had discovered that fact, she’d automatically extended a hand to the young woman of twenty-four, and made her a part of their extended family. Morgan didn’t mind. Jenny was a superb worker, highly intelligent, and had graduated from Bryn Mawr in the top ten percent of her class. She had a degree in psychology, and spoke three foreign languages fluently. Jenny was no ordinary secretary, by a long shot. She was, literally, Morgan’s right-hand person at Perseus. Everything that went on, Jenny knew about. She was reliable, trustworthy and hardworking.