Maggie Price - On Dangerous Ground

“A roommate,” she murmured, dropping her gaze.

With one finger, he nudged her chin up until her eyes met his. “I’ll sleep on the couch, Sky. If, and when, that location changes, you’ll be the one making the decision. I’m not doing this to pressure you. I’m doing this to make sure no one has a chance to hurt you again.”

She took a deep breath. “Grant, about us sleeping together. It’s something I want, I’m just…”

Afraid. She didn’t have to say the word, he could see it in her eyes. He cupped her cheek. “You need to understand something, Milano. I don’t want to sleep with you.”

“Oh.” With color flooding her cheeks, she began to lean away.

He slid his palm to the side of her throat, held her still. “I want to seduce you, very slowly, then make love with you.”

Dear Reader,

It’s time to go wild with Intimate Moments. First, welcome historical star Ruth Langan back to contemporary times as she begins her new family-oriented trilogy. The Wildes of Wyoming—Chance is a slam-bang beginning that will leave you eager for the rest of the books in the miniseries. Then look for Wild Ways, the latest in Naomi Horton’s WILD HEARTS miniseries. The first book, Wild Blood, won a Romance Writers of America RITA Award for this talented author, and this book is every bit as terrific.

Stick around for the rest of our fabulous lineup, too. Merline Lovelace continues MEN OF THE BAR H with Mistaken Identity, full of suspense mixed with passion in that special recipe only Merline seems to know. Margaret Watson returns with Family on the Run, the story of a sham marriage that awakens surprisingly real emotions. Maggie Price’s On Dangerous Ground is a MEN IN BLUE title, and this book has a twist that will leave you breathless. Finally, welcome new author Nina Bruhns, whose dream of becoming a writer comes true this month with the publication of her first book, Catch Me If You Can.

You won’t want to miss a single page of excitement as only Intimate Moments can create it. And, of course, be sure to come back next month, when the passion and adventure continue in Silhouette Intimate Moments, where excitement and romance go hand in hand.

Enjoy!

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This book is dedicated to my mom, Clarissa Neaves, who passed on her

love of books; to my husband, Bill Price, who gives me the time to

create my own books; and to my critique partners, Debbie Cowan and

Merline Lovelace, who help give those books a firm foundation.

I wish to acknowledge and thank Joyce Gilchrist of the Oklahoma City

Police Department for her invaluable and generous assistance.

All liberties taken in the name of fiction are my own.

turned to crime at the age of twenty-two. That’s when she went to work at the Oklahoma City Police Department. As a civilian crime analyst, she evaluated suspects’ methods of operation during the commission of robberies and sex crimes, and developed profiles on those suspects. During her tenure at OCPD, Maggie stood in lineups, snagged special assignments to homicide task forces, established procedures for evidence submittal, even posed as the wife of an undercover officer in the investigation of a fortune-teller.

While at OCPD, Maggie stored up enough tales of intrigue, murder and mayhem to keep her at the keyboard for years. The first of those tales won the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart Award for Romantic Suspense.

Maggie invites her readers to contact her at 5208 W. Reno, Suite 350, Oklahoma City, OK 73127-6317.

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

Three hours ago, Grant Pierce watched his partner’s coffin lower into the sunbaked earth. He figured his day couldn’t get much worse.

Tipping back in a chair that creaked beneath his weight, he raised his glass and downed the first shot of Scotch on the road to getting plastered. Senses jolted; air sucked in through his teeth while the sharp-as-glass whiskey ripped past his lungs, then boiled like molten lava in his gut.

“Damn!” The chair’s front legs thudded against the floor. Blinking hard, he gave a rueful thought to how he’d sullenly told the flirting waitress to bring him the first bottle she grabbed from behind the bar. When he turned the bottle and checked the label, the unfamiliar brand had him raising an eyebrow. Not exactly the twenty-one-year-old blend he kept in his bar at home, but considering his present mood, this near-poison was preferable.

He didn’t want fine-aged Scotch that would ease the pain of Sam’s death into a vague throb. He wanted just what he had—whiskey that had the bite of a ticked-off K-9 and was guaranteed to deaden his misery.

Normally he didn’t drink much, at least not for the sole purpose of getting loaded. But Sam Rogers’s death had hit hard.

Grant forced his gaze to the chair at the other side of the small round table. Sam’s chair. When Grant first arrived, he’d stripped off his black Armani suit coat and tossed it over the chair’s back. He hoped to hell everybody got the message he didn’t want company.

He had considered holding his impromptu wake for Sam at some place where no one knew him. But doing that hadn’t seemed right. What felt right was settling in at the dimly lit bar at the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge. He and his partner had spent uncountable hours hunched over this very table talking through leads, analyzing suspects’ motives, planning strategy. Grant figured the FOP club was the ideal place to toast the man who had taught him that solving a homicide was a lot like a mental chess game. The trick was to use people’s predictability instead of playing pieces. Study someone’s moves, Sam had said, and you could just about figure out where they’d been, and where they were going. Do that, and in no time you’d sniff out the do-wrongs.

Grant poured another shot, held his breath and tossed back the cheap Scotch. It hadn’t been one of the hundreds of bad guys whom Sam had come face-to-face with that had ended his life. He’d gone fishing over the weekend, and keeled over in his bass boat in the middle of the lake.

“Dammit, Sam,” Grant muttered, feeling the sharp blade of regret pierce through him. He knew his partner’s preference for thick cigars, fast food and an abhorrence for exercise had put the older man on the fast track to a heart attack. Not to mention the stress that went arm in arm with working homicides.

Like the one case they had open now. The Peña rape/murder. It was a real mystery, a stranger-to-stranger killing, the kind that almost never got solved. Grant refilled his glass while vowing to Sam that he would nail the vicious bastard who did it, and keep his partner’s enviable clearance record intact.

A bark of laughter sounded from the other side of the club. Turning his head, Grant stared idly through the smoky air. The usual off-duty cops who appeared at the club almost every night were huddled on tall stools at one end of the bar. The mirror behind the bar reflected the bartender’s scurrying movements as he shoveled ice into glasses, poured the beer on tap, made change. Few of the tables that bordered the dance floor were occupied, but it was only seven o’clock—still too early for a good crowd on a Thursday night. The sound of coins clattering down the slot of the jukebox registered in Grant’s brain. Glancing over, he saw C. O. Jones, a curvy patrol cop, punching in a selection. Seconds later, a throaty-voiced singer chided her lover to don’t be stupid.