Trust Me on This

Color

Are you a crook?" Dennie asked. Her hands were firm against his chest, and she wasn't playing. "If you're a crook like that slime Bond, I'm not interested."

"Do you think I'm a crook?" Alec smiled his open, honest boyish smile at her.

"I think you could be." Dennie stared back, unsmiling. "I think you'd probably do just about anything if you thought the reason was right. And I haven't known you long enough to know what reasons you think are right."

Alec stared down at her, suddenly serious. "I'm not a crook. I'm one of the good guys. But you're just going to have to take my word for that."

"This is the first time I've seen you serious," she said. "This is really you, isn't it?"

Alec's face changed, and it felt as if he'd moved closer, although that wasn't physically possible. "Yes," he whispered, and kissed her, and this time Dennie felt more than the old, hot physical punch of his kiss. This one hurt deep inside, breaking into a place she'd kept safe before, and she closed her eyes and held him tight and savored the pain because it was so agonizingly wonderful to feel that much about anything, and especially wonderful to feel that much about Alec.

WHAT ARE
LOVESWEPT
ROMANCES?

They are stories of true romance and touching emotion. We believe those two very important ingredients are constants in our highly sensual and very believable stories in the
LOVE-SWEPT
line. Our goal is to give you, the reader, stories of consistently high quality that may sometimes make you laugh, sometimes make you cry, but are always fresh and creative and contain many delightful surprises within their pages
.

Most romance fans read an enormous number of books. Those they truly love, they keep. Others may be traded with friends and soon forgotten. We hope that each
LOVESWEPT
romance will be a treasure
—
a "keeper
."
We will always try to publish

LOVE STORIES YOU'LL NEVER FORGET BY AUTHORS YOU'LL ALWAYS REMEMBER

The Editors

TRUST ME

For Ruth Flinn Smith,

Four Fabulous Days! Three Glorious Nights!

Victoria Prentice found the card as she sorted through her mail and stood transfixed by the tackiness of it. It wasn't the first time she'd been disgusted by academic stupidity in the forty years she'd been teaching college students, but it was the first time she'd been both disgusted and involved. She'd agreed to deliver a paper at this circus so she could spend some time with her friend Janice, but she wouldn't have if she'd known that this was how they were going to publicize it. The card promised everything except live girls and free drinks. Well, there went her reputation as a scholar. What were the idiots thinking of? It was all very well to take a stand against academic rigidity, but shilling a lit conference as if it were Club Med—

She stopped, appalled by the fussiness of her own thoughts. A lifetime of independence and freethinking, and what did she have to show for it? She was sixty-two years old and petrifying as she stood there.
I'm getting old
, she thought.
Old in mind. That's a terrible thing
. She'd spent too much of her life arguing over dead authors and dead literature, playing it safe, and now she was sneering at something lively. Getting smug. Isolated. "Victoria felt a twinge of something like dissatisfaction and shrugged it off.

She was not dissatisfied. She'd worked damn hard to get where she was, and she'd loved every minute of it. No, her life was fine, she just needed a jump start, a change of pace, to be with somebody who would jolt her out of her rut. Janice was all very well, but she was also happily married and stable as the earth. Victoria needed to be with somebody alive, somebody young, somebody like her nephew.

Exactly like her nephew.

Alec wasn't an infant, of course. She counted back. She was twenty-four years older than he was so… good Lord, he was thirty-eight. How had that happened? While she was slowly turning to rock, he'd been aging too. Well, it didn't matter. He was still younger than she was, still able to make her feel alive when she was with him.

I'm not ready to solidify yet
, she thought. Alec would go to the conference with her. He always did whatever she asked since she never asked much, and once there, she could bicker with him over dinner and harass him about settling down before he hit forty, and generally use him to get an attitude adjustment while she watched him dazzle every woman in the place with his aw-shucks charm and farm-boy face. If her life was dull and stuffy and essentially over, at least she still had the energy to interfere in his. She fed the card into the fax machine and punched in his office fax number, and when it went through, she picked up her phone and dialed him.

"I just faxed you an invitation for a month from now," she told him when he picked up the phone. "Accept it or you'll rot in hell for disappointing your favorite relative who gave you the best summers of your life."

"I accept," Alec said. "And hello to you too."

Alec Prentice tossed the fax on his boss's desk. "Three glorious nights, Harry. That's what we both need."

Harry Chase grunted and tossed it back, refusing to move his eyes from his computer.

"No, Harry." Alec put the paper in front of the older man again. "Look at it."

Harry glanced at it. "Great." He stared back into the computer screen.

"That's where I'm going next month. My aunt's speaking at this conference, and I'm going." Alec waited and then said, "Harry, I'm going out of town three weeks from Thursday. Hello?"

"I know." Harry ducked his grizzled head as he clicked a couple of keys. The computer screen flexed and rearranged itself, and Harry growled at it.

"Harry—" Alec tried again.

"I
know
." Harry looked up from the screen. "You're going to hear your aunt give a speech. You told me. I know." His eyes shifted back to die screen.

"It's a literature conference, Harry," Alec said distinctly. "College professors."

Harry's eyes stayed on the screen. "So?"

"I was thinking of that guy who came up on the scan the other day, Brian Bond. He's never pulled his con in Ohio, and he's running out of states."

Harry took his gaze from the screen and narrowed his eyes at Alec.

"Right." Alec relaxed now that he had Harry's attention. "This is a nice convention. According to my aunt, nobody's reputation ever got made or unmade at a pop lit conference. They'll all be rested, optimistic, and probably juiced. It's prime stuff for Bond."

Harry considered it, shrugged, and turned back to the computer. "It's a long shot."

"What's wrong with you?" Alec surveyed the older man with disgust. "You used to be the first one on the trail. I know you've got twenty years on me, but you can't be giving up yet. Two years in front of a computer and all of a sudden you're not interested in actually nailing the bad guys?"

"It's a long shot," Harry repeated. "The database isn't."

"There is more to life than a national database," Alec said.

"Not to my life," Harry said.

"Well, I wouldn't brag about it." Alec retrieved the announcement. "Bond usually works with a woman, right?"

Harry punched a couple of keys, and the screen rescrambled itself. "Right," he said as he read the profile. "A brunette. We don't have much on her. His last hit was in Nashville, three months ago."

"Maybe she'll seduce me," Alec said hopefully. "I'll wear my glasses. It's amazing how many people try to sell me things when I wear my glasses."

Harry snorted again and Alec knew why: It wasn't amazing at all, it was a calculated effect. He thought wistfully of how in the past he'd traded on his open face to perfect a doofus persona that included horn-rimmed glasses, a slightly vacant look in his eyes, and a smile reminiscent of an overeager junior high kid. Con men had rushed to sign him up. He'd bought lakefront property, oceanfront property, exciting stocks, miraculous bonds, and, shortly after that, the con men had gone to jail while Alec smiled blankly at them.

It had been a great job, he thought now with some regret. He'd set his own hours and annoyed the hell out of self-important people who cheated little old ladies for a living. And then, just when he was becoming so well-known that it was getting difficult to convince cons to sell him chewing gum let alone phantom real estate, Harry had plucked him out of the field to work on his pet project, the Federal Fraud Database. It was important work and Alec was dedicated to it, but he missed the thrill of the hunt. He was solidifying behind a computer, turning into Harry Chase before his time. He needed to break out again, pit his wits against somebody agile and evil just one more time before he went back to being Harry's computer heir apparent forever.

And that's how long he was going to be heir apparent because Harry was never going to retire. Alec examined that thought, a little surprised at the impatience behind it. He liked Harry. More than that, he respected him and was grateful to him. Harry had done a hell of a lot for him, pushed him for promotion, made sure he was in the right places at the right times, attached him to the new database project. He was Harry's protege and damn lucky to be so.

He just missed running his own show.

Maybe that was why he missed the field. He didn't miss the endless hotels and the bad food and the lousy people and the lying. He missed calling the shots.

Well, maybe Bond would show up in Riverbend and he'd get to call the shots one more time. He went back to the thrill of pitting his wits again. If the someone agile and evil he was pitting against was also female, attractive, and immoral, so much the better. He'd been working too hard and dating too little. "I need a furlough, Harry," Alec said, and Harry snorted.

"Dream on," he said. "Go baby-sit your aunt. But call me if Bond turns up. I'll need to put it in the computer. And let me know if he's working with that woman too. And get her name. We need the data."

"She's a brunette," Alec said to no one in particular. "I wouldn't mind being seduced by a brunette." He looked down at the fax again. "I could use three glorious nights too. Hell, I'd settle for one glorious night."

Harry snorted again, and Alec ignored him and went back to fantasizing about succumbing to a dark-haired con woman in the line of duty three weeks from Thursday.

Two weeks later and two states away, Dennie Banks shoved her dark curls back from her face so she could glare at her editor unimpeded. "It's just three nights, a week from now, Taylor," she told him as he frowned over the "Four Fabulous Days" announcement card. "It's my weekend. I just need next Friday off."

"What if something happens on Friday?" Taylor's weaselly little eyes squinted up at her.

"Like what? An emergency wedding?" Dennie tried to keep the exasperation out of her voice. "I write for lifestyles and the women's page. There is no late-breaking news on the women's page."

"You never know," Taylor said portentously, and Dennie knew there was absolutely no thought behind the statement. It was Taylor's version of "because I said so." Most of the time, Taylor's brain deadness did not bother her; in fact, it was one of the reasons she'd stayed working for him for twelve years. She knew Taylor, she could handle Taylor, so she stayed with Taylor.

Lately, though, that sameness bothered her, and the bother made her voice firmer than usual. "I'm flying out next Thursday, Taylor. You won't need me."

"All right, Banks," he growled. "But if anything happens, you better get your tail back here."

"You bet," Dennie said, and left the office annoyed and unsettled. She plopped into her desk chair and leaned back, and then her annoyance evaporated and she smiled at the woman who had just arrived in the newsroom. Patience Hollinger was taffy-haired, patrician, and, at the moment, apologetic.

"I'm sorry." Patience tossed her purse on her desk. "I shouldn't have said any of that stuff last night. It was none of my business."

"No, I'm glad you did." Dennie took a deep breath. "I thought about it all night, and you're right. I'm turning into a potted plant here."

"Look, I'm right about
my
life." Patience dropped into her desk chair. "I couldn't take dating those safe boring guys you have twisted around your finger—"

"I know," Dennie said.

"—or reporting on the same damn stuff every day even if you are the best in the world at it—"

"I know," Dennie said.

"—or working for Taylor for twelve years, and how you've stood
that
, I'll never know—"

"Patience, I know," Dennie said. "We had this discussion last night."

"—but you're not living my life," Patience finished. "So who am I to judge?"

"My best friend for my whole life?" Dennie said. "That's somebody to judge. And you're right. I thought about it, and you're right. But I can't change bosses, men, and careers at the same time, so I decided to focus on one."

"Oh, thank God," Patience said, sinking back in her chair. "You're quitting here and leaving Taylor behind."

"Well, no," Dennie said. "I need things like rent and health insurance. I have to stay with Taylor for a while. And I can't handle dating complicated men right now, so I'm just going to give men up entirely until I get the career thing under control. That's where I'm making my change." Dennie leaned forward and Patience did, too, until their heads were as close as the desks between diem would allow. "I have a lead on this story." Dennie glanced over her shoulder, but no one in the room was paying them any attention. "Janice Severs Meredith is speaking at the Popular Literature Conference in Riverbend next weekend."

"Who's Janice Severs Meredith? No, wait." Patience held up her hand. "Janice Meredith. She wrote
The Feminist Marriage
, right? And
Redefining Relationships?
I heard her speak once. She's brilliant."

"She's also getting a divorce," Dennie said, and Patience gaped. "I know. I found out about it last week. It's still very hush-hush, but it's due to break anytime now. And I want the interview."

"How did you find out?"

"I was interviewing this writer who was in town doing a book signing. Twenty, beautiful, but with the brain of a cranberry. She writes about the depth of angst in the twenty-something set." Dennie rolled her eyes. "She wouldn't know angst if it bit her. Anyway, I was getting nowhere with her, so I asked her about the writers who had inspired her, and she said that her future husband was her biggest influence and her biggest admirer. So I said, 'Future husband?' and she said, 'Yes,' and he was very intellectual because he had two books on
The New York Times
bestseller list right now."

"Charles Meredith," Patience said.

"Well, that's what I said, and then she frowned and said that I couldn't say anything because he hadn't told his wife yet."

"Ouch."

Dennie nodded. "Like I said, the brains of a cranberry. And evidently the morals of a mink. So now all I have to do is track Janice Meredith down."

"And drop this bomb on her?" Patience looked horrified. "You wouldn't."

"No, of course I wouldn't," Dennie said. "He must have told her by now, especially since Tallie dropped the bomb on me."

"Tallie?"

"The future Mrs. Meredith. I promise, I'll be careful not to hurt her. But"—Dennie swallowed—"I'm going to get this story. You were right. I've been stagnating, only writing inconsequential stories because I didn't have to go after them, because I was afraid I'd fail. This one is important, and it's going to be tough, but I'm getting it."