Deadly Lies (39 page)
But he was.
No, not handsome. Sexy.
Dammit.
Monica cleared her throat. “The past is over, Dante.” They’d been over this before, when he’d made the mistake of tracking
her down.
Serious mistake.
“We’re professionals, we can—”
“Pretend we never had sex? Pretend we didn’t nearly tear each other apart because we were so fucking hungry those nights?”
Her heart thumped hard enough to shake her chest.
He smiled at her, flashing his white teeth. “Don’t know if I’m that good at pretending,
Ice
.”
Her eyes narrowed. She
hated
that nickname. The jerks
she’d been in training with had tagged her with it. No one understood.
Control—
control mattered. But she’d sure lost control with him.
Dante was her one mistake over the years. The one slip that had broken past the walls she’d worked so hard to erect.
Ice.
All the agents had been given names in their class.
Dante had been called Devil. The guy liked to take risks, to push boundaries. A devil who didn’t care about being cautious.
How were you supposed to resist the devil?
His name hadn’t stuck, though. Hers had.
Monica sucked in a hard breath and deliberately relaxed her fingers. “Long time ago, Dante. And I don’t deal in the past.”
Wrong.
She’d spent years running from her past. “I focus on the present.” As much as possible. She held his stare and knew that
her face would be expressionless.
She’d practiced that.
Ice.
So, okay, maybe she’d helped a little bit with that nickname. But being cold kept the others away, and it could be dangerous
when someone got too close.
Straightening her shoulders, she said, “I’m the senior agent here, and I’m not looking to screw around.” Too dangerous. “We’re
on a case. We work together because that’s what we have to do in order to get the job done.” Simple. Flat.
Dante didn’t so much as blink.
“Now, are you going to have a problem with that? Because, if so, it won’t be too hard to send your butt back to Atlanta.”
Total bullshit now. Like she had that kind of power.
Hyde wanted Dante on his team. He’d been adamant about him. He’d even overridden her objections, and the guy usually listened
to her opinions about people. Not this time.
A muscle flexed along Dante’s jaw. Perfectly shaven now, but she’d seen him at dawn, seen the rough stubble that—
“No problem,
ma’am
,” the title was a sardonic taunt. “I can do my job just fine.” A pause.
“Good.”
“Can you?”
Monica ground her teeth together. “Trust me, Dante, it won’t be an issue for me.”
Liar, liar
…
She could still remember all too well what the man looked like naked.
And what he felt like.
She swallowed.
Leaving him before had nearly ripped her apart, but there hadn’t been a choice. The man was a weakness, one she couldn’t afford.
“Prepare for descent.” A male voice broke over the intercom system. “Buckle your safety belts. We’ll be arriving in Jasper…”
Monica caught the belt in her hands as the rest of the pilot’s words washed right past her.
Snap.
If Dante handled his first SSD case right, she’d be working with him, every day and all those nights, for a long time to come.
Shot down.
Luke blew out a slow breath. He could handle it. A case waited. Victims. He could focus and get the job done.
Where authors give you the inside scoop!
From the desk of Hope Ramsay
Dear Reader,
Picture, if you will, a little girl in a polka-dot bathing suit, standing on a rough board jutting out over the waters of
the Edisto River in South Carolina. She’s about six years old, and standing below her in the chest-high, tea-colored water
is a tall man with a deep, deep Southern drawl—the kind that comes right up out of the ground.
“Jump, little gal,” the man says. “I’ll catch you.”
The little girl was me. And the man was my Uncle Ernest. And that memory is one of those touchstone moments that I go back
to again and again. My uncle wanted me to face my fear of jumping into the water, but he was there, big hands outstretched,
steady, sturdy, and sober as a judge. He was the model of a man I could trust.
I screwed up my courage and took that leap of faith. I jumped. He caught me. He taught me to love jumping into the river and
swimming in those dark, mysterious waters, overhung with Spanish moss and sometimes visited by snakes and gators!
I loved Uncle Ernest. He was my favorite uncle. He’s
been gone for quite a while now, but I think of him often, and he lives on in my heart.
There is even a little bit of him in Clay Rhodes, the hero of my debut novel, WELCOME TO LAST CHANCE. Jane, the heroine of
the story, has to learn that Clay is the type of guy she can always trust. A guy she can take a leap of faith with. A guy
who will always be there to catch her, even when she has to face her biggest fears.
And isn’t love all about taking a leap of faith?
I had such fun writing WELCOME TO LAST CHANCE, because it afforded me the opportunity to go back in time and remember what
it was like spending my summers in a little town in South Carolina with folks who were like Uncle Ernest—people who made up
a village where a child could grow up safe and sound and learn what makes a life meaningful.
I hope you enjoy meeting the characters in Last Chance, South Carolina, as much as I enjoyed writing them.
From the desk of Cynthia Eden
Dear Reader,
Have you ever wondered how far you would go to protect someone you loved? What would you do if the person you loved was in
danger?
Love can make people do wild, desperate things… and love can certainly push people to cross the thin line between good and
evil.
When I wrote DEADLY LIES, I created characters who would be forced to blur the lines between good and evil. Desperate times
can call for desperate measures.
The heroine of this book is a familiar face if you’ve read the other DEADLY books. Samantha “Sam” Kennedy was first introduced
in DEADLY FEAR. Sam lived through hell, and she’s now fighting to put her life back on track. She knows what evil looks like,
and she knows that evil can hide behind the most innocent of faces. So when Sam is assigned to work on a serial kidnapping
case, she understands that she has to be on her guard at all times.
But when the kidnapper hits too close to home and her lover’s stepbrother is abducted, the rules of the game change. Soon
Sam fully understands just how “desperate” the victims are feeling, and she vows to do anything in her power to help Max Ridgeway
find his brother.
Anything. Yes, desperation can even push an FBI agent to the edge of the law. Lucky for Sam, she’ll have backup ready to help
her out—all of the other SSD agents are back to help track the kidnappers, and they won’t stop until the case is closed.
I’ve had such a wonderful time revisiting my SSD agents in this book. And I hope you enjoying catching up with the characters
too!
If you’d like to learn more about my books, please visit my website at
www.cynthiaeden.com
.
Happy reading!
From the desk of Robyn DeHart
Dear Reader,
There have always been certain things that fascinate me—the heinous crimes of Jack the Ripper; why cats get up, turn around,
then settle back into the exact position they were just in; people who can eat only one Oreo cookie; and the ancient legend
of the Loch Ness monster. Recorded sightings of the creature date all the way
back to the seventh century, and not all of these sightings have been water-based—there are those who claim to have seen the
monster walking on land.
Regardless of what you believe, it’s interesting to think that there just might be some prehistoric animal hiding in a loch
in the Highlands. It was this interest that compelled me to write TREASURE ME.
Another interesting tidbit about this book is that it was actually the first romance novel I ever wrote. Okay, that’s not
entirely true, but the concept of a couple who fall in love near Loch Ness, centered around adventure and action and danger,
well, that was all in that first book—even the characters’ names stayed the same. But I didn’t keep anything else. When it
came to the third book in my Legend Hunters trilogy, I took my basic concept and started from scratch.
If you’ve read SEDUCE ME and DESIRE ME (the first two books in the series), then you might remember meeting Graeme, the big,
brooding Scotsman who looks and sounds remarkably like Gerard Butler. Graeme has been after the authentic Stone of Destiny
for years, because he believes the one sitting in Westminster is a counterfeit. He’s gone back to his family’s home in the
Highlands to do some research, and meets with trouble in the form of a delectable, self-proclaimed paleontologist named Vanessa.
She’s just run away from her own wedding and is determined to make a name for herself as a legitimate scientist.
Add in a marriage of convenience, a deadly nemesis,
and some buried treasure and you’ve got yourself a rollicking adventure full of intrigue and seduction that will leave you
as breathless as the characters.
Dare to love a Legend Hunter…
Visit my website,
www.RobynDeHart.com
, for contests, excerpts, and more.
Enjoy!
