Scout's Honor (21 page)

Her brow furrowed, and she pulled up the
sheet and tucked it under her arms. “What are you talking about,
Mitch?”

“Money. Lifestyles. St. John told me about
Antonio. Must have been rough, huh?”

“It was a long time ago, Mitch,” she said,
and finally it did seem like a long time ago. The weight of an
ancient grudge had begun to dissipate after the reconciliation with
her father, and Mitch’s love had dispelled the last of her burden.
But she wasn’t at all sure of the direction this conversation was
taking.

“After you left the office today,” Mitch
continued, “your big brother took the opportunity to set me
straight on a few things. He told me you were slumming with me.
That I was some kind of quirky diversion for a rich girl who could
do a lot better with someone in her own class. I can’t change what
I am, Anna. A million dollars isn’t going to fall out of the sky
into my bank account.”

“Well, scout,” She relaxed back into the
pillows and gave the impression of seriously contemplating his
words, but she didn’t let go of his hand. “That might be for the
best. I mean, look at it this way. If the million came down as gold
it would probably wipe out the whole lobby, and if it came down in
bills it’d probably all get lost on the wind or something. Besides,
we’ve already got a million, give or take a few hundred thousand on
any day of the week. And we’ve got the ranch”—she cocked a
delicately arched brow and smiled slyly—“and we’ve got the
Speedster.”

“Anna, I’m trying to be serious.”

“You’re not going to let me drive the
Speedster?”

“Of course you can drive the Speedster,
but—”

“Can you have me on two-hundreds by
Christmas?”

“
Next
Christmas, maybe. If you really
work at it.”

“This Christmas, next Christmas.” She
shrugged and nonchalantly flicked her hand. “Christmas twenty years
from now. We can take all the time we need.”

He shot her a wary glance. Then a slow grin
widened his mouth in the funny way that fought with his nose,
endearing him to her heart. “Are you trying to tell me
something?”

“You catch on fast, boy scout. How long does
ski season last?”

“Five months, give or take a week or two
.”

“Half a year there, half a year here. What
do you think?”

“I think there’s an awful lot of giving and
taking going on here.”

She laid his hand on her hip and snuggled
closer under the sheets. With a gentle sigh she whispered, “Isn’t
that the way it’s supposed to be in a marriage.”

His body stiffened for an instant, and then,
just as quickly, he rolled over on top of her, trapping her beneath
his weight. “You
are
trying to tell me something.”

A cloud floated over the moon, taking the
stream of light from the room, but Anna felt the smile in his voice
and the love shining in his eyes. The brush of his thumbs tracing
the contours of her face filled her with a happiness sweeter than
any she’d ever known. It was always that way with Mitch’s touching.
It went beyond the physical, communicating to her on a level she
hadn’t known existed, until he came into her world.

He lowered his head, and his mouth moved
across hers, lightly, lovingly. “Will you marry me, Anna?” he asked
between kisses.

“Tomorrow . . . tonight . . . yesterday.”
She savored each meeting of their lips. “The answer is yes.”

“I don’t believe in long engagements,” he
said warningly.

“Next week. Miami. We’ll keep it small, but
I want my father to give me away. Do you want your family
there?”

“I’ll fly my mom out, but the rest of them
are on their own. We can have a reception in San Francisco after
the honeymoon. Let’s go to Eleuthera, Robby’s place, okay?”

She brushed a swath of hair off his
forehead, letting her fingers linger while she thought over his
words. “You’re a very nice man, Mitch. I know it will mean a lot to
Robby to have us come to Sandy Bay. He’s a good friend. Thanks for
thinking of him.” She let her hand trail down his face and brushed
her thumb over his mouth, knowing there was one more thing she had
to give him to prove their love would last a lifetime. “When do you
have to be back at work?” she asked.

He didn’t answer at first, taking time to
steal another kiss. Then, with his mouth still on hers, she felt
his laughter shake them and the bed. “You’re really going to be
mine,” he said. “You are really going to be mine.”

“I’ve been yours since you kissed my hand,”
she admitted, her own laughter bubbling up to meet his.

“I knew it, Anna, but I was beginning to
wonder if I could convince you.”

“Believe me, scout, I’m convinced.” And she
was. He was a special man who made her feel like a special woman,
cherished for reasons other than her looks and money. He had seen
something in her that no one else ever had, and that knowledge had
set her free and opened her heart. “So when do we go home?”

“Home.” He drew the word out in a long sigh.
“After my ring is on your finger, after we make love in the
ocean”—his body moved against hers—“after we make love on the beach
in the moonlight, then we’ll go home.”

She pulled his mouth down to hers for a
brief kiss filled with all the love in her heart. “Ah, yes, Mitch.
Then we’ll go home.”

* * * * * * * * *

Thank you for reading
Scout’s
Honor
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Please continue reading for excerpts from
Avenging
Angel
and
Stevie Lee
.

RITA AWARD WINNING NOVEL

The woman. He needed her .
. . desperately. He needed her to drag him up, get him out, and set
him free
.

Dylan drove with nerveless precision,
tearing down the highway, burning up the road and the tires on his
black Mustang. Wind whipped his hair through the open window and
stung his face with the blast-furnace force of a summer gone crazy
with heat. From Chicago, to Lincoln, Nebraska, to Colorado, the
asphalt had shimmered to the horizon like the shadow of a mirage on
the landscape.

Without taking his eyes from the road, he
lifted a Styrofoam cup to his mouth and drained it of coffee. He’d
lost the other two times he’d broken his FBI cover to prevent
disaster. He’d been too late, too slow, in far too deep to surface
in time to save a life. He wouldn’t be too late to save Johanna
Lane. He couldn’t be. He’d come up for good and three was his lucky
number.

A grim line broke across his face, an
expression no one had ever mistaken for a smile. Since when did he
know about luck? He had no luck.

In the darkness ahead, a pickup truck pulled
onto the highway. Dylan hissed an obscenity, his fist crushing the
empty cup before he threw it to the floor. The man had to be blind
not to see the Mustang hurtling toward him. When the driver didn’t
even speed up to the limit, Dylan cursed him again, taking a lot of
names in vain and ending up with half a dozen synonyms of dirty
slang for sex.

The oncoming traffic was heavy on the
two-lane highway outside Boulder, but Dylan had no time and nothing
left to lose except his pulse. Flooring the gas pedal, he roared up
on the truck and at the last moment jerked the wheel, sending the
Mustang slewing into the other other lane, taking a highly
calculated risk and the narrowest of openings in the traffic. Cars
scattered onto the shoulder. The truck skidded off the road.

Hard-won skill, not luck, guided Dylan
through the hundred-mile-an-hour maze he’d made of a van, a station
wagon, and two compacts. Dylan Jones had no luck.

The fact was proved a mile down the road,
less than a minute’s worth of traveling time. The flashing lights
of a police car lit up his back window and rearview mirror like a
Fourth of July parade.

Dylan swore again and pressed harder on the
gas pedal, willing the Mustang to greater speed. The city lights of
Boulder were seconds away. He’d come too far, too fast, too hard to
lose.

He swept through the first stoplight on the
north side of town, ignoring its red color. The Mustang barely held
on to the ninety-degree turn he slammed it through. The tires
squealed and smoked on the hot pavement. The chassis shuddered.
Working the steering wheel one way and then the other, he missed
hitting a car in the eastbound lane and shot between two westbound
vehicles.

The police car behind him missed the turn
and came to a jolting stop in the middle of the intersection, siren
and lights going full bore, snarling traffic even further. Dylan
made the second left-hand turn he saw, then wound through the
streets in a frenzied, seemingly haphazard fashion for more than a
mile. Finally he slowed the Mustang to a stop on a side street,
pulling between two other vehicles, a gray, nondescript sedan and a
midsize truck.

The summer night was quiet except for the
pounding of his own heart. Expensive houses crowded this part of
town. Porch lights were on, smaller, homier versions of the street
lamps, but the interiors of the houses were dark. People were
settled in for the night, safe, sound, and unsuspecting.

He waited for a moment, checking the street
before pulling his duffel bag across the front seat to his lap and
slipping his left arm out of his coat. The bag was heavier than
clothes would have allowed, the weight being made up in firepower
and ordnance. It was the only protection he had, and it felt like
damn little compared with what he was up against.

Sweat trickled down the side of his face. At
the corner of his eye, the moisture found the day-old cut angling
from his temple to his ear. The salty drops slid into the groove,
burning the raw skin. He swiped at the irritation with the back of
his hand, then yanked open the duffel.

He took out a shortened, pump-action
twelve-gauge shotgun and slipped the gun’s strap over his free
shoulder. After angling the shotgun down the side of his torso, he
put his arm back through his coat sleeve. The duffel went over his
other shoulder as he got out of the car. The policeman had been
behind him long enough to call in his plates. The Mustang had to be
ditched. It didn’t matter. If he lost Johanna Lane, he didn’t much
care if he got through the night with his life. He sure as hell
didn’t care if he got out with his car.

He walked to the pickup truck in front of
him and tried the door, his gaze moving constantly, checking
shadows and sounds. The door was locked. The owner of the
late-model gray sedan parked behind him wasn’t nearly as cautious.
He got in and smashed the ignition assembly with the butt of the
shotgun. Then he went to work hot-wiring the car.

Johanna Lane lived at 300 Briarwood Court,
and Dylan knew exactly where 300 Briarwood Court was in relation to
his current position—two blocks west and one half block north.

* * *

Johanna Lane stood on her
third-floor balcony overlooking the street. French doors were open
behind her, allowing the night wind to lift and flutter sheer,
floor-length curtains. Vivaldi’s
Four
Seasons
played on the stereo, the
classical notes crystal clear, floating on the air with all the
purity that the finest digital sound was capable of producing. The
stereo system was an indulgence, one of many in the oak-floored,
art-deco-furnished apartment.

She turned partway to look inside. In the
dining room, an unfinished, candlelit dinner of pasta alfredo and
salad was neatly laid out on one end of an intricately carved,
black lacquer table. A damask napkin was crumpled next to the
still-full crystal wineglass.

She really should eat, she thought, watching
the candle flame dip and bow with the breeze. If she wasn’t going
to run home to Chicago and her father, she should eat, and she’d
decided against running. Running was an admission of guilt, either
of a crime she’d been very careful not to commit, or of an act of
betrayal she’d never considered.

Austin Bridgeman was flying in from Chicago.
To do some follow-up work on a deal that had gone bad in Boulder,
he’d said when he called. He’d suggested going out for drinks or a
late dinner so they could talk about old times—old times when she
had worked for him as his most private legal counsel.

Even the thought of her previous employment
made her head ache and her palms sweat. She’d left her job and
Chicago because of what Austin Bridgeman had become, and she
doubted if the intervening four months had improved his moral
character.