Then food completely disappeared from his mind.
A lovely voice rang out, clear and pure, singing a Christmas carol he’d heard in a shopping mall once while he helped his dad panhandle. Something about a shepherd boy.
It was Caroline’s voice. He’d recognize it anywhere.
A frigid gust of wind buffeted the garden, raking his face with sleet. He didn’t even feel it as he edged his head farther up over the windowsill.
There she was! As always, his breath caught when he saw her.
She was so beautiful, it sometimes hurt him to look at her. When she visited him in the shelter, he’d refuse to look at her for the first few minutes. It was like looking into the sun.
He watched her hungrily, committing each second to memory. He remembered every word she’d ever spoken to him, he’d read and reread every book she’d ever brought him, he remembered every item of clothing he’d ever seen her in.
She was at the piano, playing. He’d never seen anyone actually play the piano, and it seemed like magic to him. Her fingers moved gracefully over the black and white keys, and music poured out like water in a stream. His head filled with the wonder of it.
She was in profile. Her eyes were closed as she played, a slight smile on her face, as if she and the music shared a secret understanding. She was singing another song even he recognized. “Silent Night.” Her voice rose, pure and light.
The piano was tall and black, with lit candles held in shiny brass holders along the sides.
Though the entire room was filled with candles, Caroline glowed more brightly than any of them. She was lit with light, her pale skin gleaming in the glowing candlelight as she sang and played.
The song came to an end, and her hands dropped to her lap. She looked up, smiling, at the applause, then started another carol, her voice rising pure and high.
The whole family was there. Mr. Lake, a big-shot businessman, tall, blond, looking like the king of the world. Mrs. Lake, impossibly beautiful and elegant. Toby, Caroline’s seven-year-old brother. There was another person in the room, a handsome young man. He was elegantly dressed, his dark blond hair combed straight back. His fingers were beating time with the carol on the piano top. When Caroline stopped playing, he leaned down and gave her a kiss on the mouth.
Caroline’s parents laughed, and Toby did a somersault on the big rug.
Caroline smiled up at the handsome young man and said something that made him laugh. He bent to kiss her hair.
Ben watched, his heart nearly stopping.
This was Caroline’s boyfriend. Of course. They shared a look—blond, poised, privileged. Good-looking, rich, educated. They belonged to the same species. They were meant to be together, it was so clear.
His heart slowed in his chest. For the first time, he felt the danger from the cold. He felt its icy fingers reaching out to him to drag him down to where his father had gone.
Maybe he should just let it take him.
There was nothing for him here, in this lovely candlelit room. He would never be a part of this world. He belonged to the darkness and the cold.
Ben dropped back down on his heels, backing slowly away from the house until the yellow light of the window was lost in the sleet and mist. He was shaking with the cold as he trudged back down the driveway, the wet snow seeping through the holes in his shoes to soak his feet.
Half an hour later, he came to the interstate junction and stopped, swaying on his feet.
The human in him wanted to sink to the ground, curl up in a ball, and wait for despair and then death to take him, as they had taken his father. It wouldn’t take long.
But the animal in him was strong and wanted, fiercely, to live.
To the right, the road stretched northward, right up into Canada. To the left, it went south.
If he went north, he would die. It was as simple as that.
Turning left, Ben shuffled forward, head low, into the icy wind.
D ANGEROUS SECRETS
Parker’s Ridge
“Read any good books lately?”
The pretty young woman stacking books and sorting papers in the Parker’s Ridge County Library turned around in surprise. It was closing time and the library wasn’t overwhelmed with people at the best of times. By closing time it was always deserted. Nick Ireland should know. He’d been staking it out for a week.
“Oh! Hello, Mr. Ames.” Her cheeks pinked with pleasure at seeing him. “Did you need something else?” She checked the big old-fashioned clock on the wall. “We’re closing up, but I can stay on for another quarter of an hour if you need anything.”
He’d been in that morning and she’d been charmingly helpful to him. Or, rather, to Nicholas Ames, stockbroker, retired from the Wall Street rat race after several years of very lucky investments paid off big, now looking to start his own investment firm. Son of Keith and Amanda Ames, investment banker and family lawyer, respectively, both tragically dead at a young age. Nicholas Ames was thirty-four years old, a Capricorn, divorced after a short-lived starter marriage in his twenties, collector of vintage wines, affable, harmless, all-round good guy.
Not a word of that was true. Not one word.
They were alone in the library, which pleased him and annoyed him at the same time. It pleased him because he’d have Charity Prewitt’s undivided attention. It annoyed him because . . . because.
Because through the huge library windows she looked like a lovely little lamb staked out for the predators. It had been dark for an hour up here in this frozen northern state. In the well-lit library, Charity Prewitt had been showcased against the darkness of the evening. One very pretty young woman all alone in an enclosed space. It screamed out to any passing scumbag— come and get me!
Nothing scumbags liked better than to eat up lovely young women. If there was one thing Nick knew with every fiber of his being, it was that the world was full of scumbags. He’d been fighting them all his life.
She was smiling up at him, much, muchprettier than the photographs in the file he’d studied.
“No, thank you, Miss Prewitt,” he answered, keeping his deep, naturally rough voice gentle. “I don’t need to do any more research. You were very helpful this morning.”
Her head tilted, the soft dark-blond hair brushing her right shoulder. “Did you have a good day, then?”
“Yes, I did, a very good day. Thank you for asking. I saw three factories, a promising new Web design start-up, and an old-economy sawmill that has some very innovative ideas about using recycled wood chips. All in all, very satisfactory.”
Actually, it had been a shitty day, just one of many shitty days on this mission. A total waste of time spent in the surveillance van with two smelly men and jack shit to show for it except for one cryptic call to Worontzoff about a friend staying safe.
Nick smiled the satisfaction he didn’t feel. “So. It’s closing time now, isn’t it?”
She smiled back. “Why, yes. We close at six. But as I said, if you need something—”
“Well, to tell you the truth . . .” Nick looked down at his shoes shyly, as if working up the courage to ask. Man, he loved looking down at those shoes. They were three-hundred-dollar Italian imports, worlds away from his usual comfortable but battered combat boots that dated back to his army days.
Being Nicholas Ames, very successful businessman, was great because he got to dress the part and Uncle Sam had to foot the bill. He had an entire wardrobe to fit those magnificent shoes. Who knew if he’d get to keep any of it? Maybe the two Armanis that had been specially tailored for his broad shoulders.
And even better was dealing with this librarian, Charity Prewitt, one of the prettiest women he’d ever seen. Small, curvy, classy with large eyes the color of the sea at dawn.
Nick looked up from contemplating his black shiny wingtips and smiled into her beautiful gray eyes. “Actually, I was hoping that I could invite you out to dinner to thank you for your help. If I hadn’t done this preliminary research here, with your
able help, my day wouldn’t have been half as productive. Asking you out to dinner is the least I can do to show you my appreciation.”
She blinked. “Well . . . ,” she began.
“You have nothing to fear from me,” he said hastily. “I’m a solid citizen—just ask my accountant and my physician. And I’m perfectly harmless.”
He wasn’t, of course, he was dangerous as hell. Ten years a Delta operator before joining the Unit. He’d spent the past decade in black ops, perfecting the art of killing people.
He was sure harmless to her, though.
Charity Prewitt had the most delicious skin he’d ever seen on a woman—pale ivory with a touch of rose underneath—so delicate it looked like it would bruise if he so much as breathed on it. That was skin meant for touching and stroking, not hurting.
“Ms. Prewitt?” She hadn’t answered his question about going out. She simply stood there, head tilted to one side, watching him as if he were some kind of problem to be sorted out, but she needed more information before she could solve it.
In a way, he liked that. She didn’t jump at the invitation, which was a welcome relief from his last date—well, last fuck. Five minutes after “hello” in a bar, she’d had his dick in her hand. At least she hadn’t been into pain like Consuelo. God.
Charity Prewitt was assessing him quietly and he let her do it, understanding that smooth words weren’t going to do the trick. Stillness would, so he stood still. Special Forces soldiers have the gift of stillness. The ones who don’t, die young and badly.
Nick was engaging in a little assessment himself. This morning he’d been bowled over by little Miss Charity Prewitt. Christ, with a name like that, with her job as chief librarian of the library of a one-traffic-light town, single at twenty-eight, he’d been expecting a dried-up prune.
The photographs of her in his file had been fuzzy, taken with a telescopic lens, and just showed the generics—hair and skin color, general size and shape. A perfectly normal woman. A little on the small side, but other than that, ordinary.
But up close and personal, Jesus, she’d turned out to be a knockout. A quiet knockout. You had to look twice for the full impact of large light-gray eyes, porcelain skin, shiny dark-blond hair and a curvy slender figure to make itself felt. Coupled with a natural elegance and a soft, attractive voice—well.
Nick was used to being undercover, but most of his jobs involved scumbags, not beautiful young women.
Actually, this one did, too—a major scumbag called Vassily Worontzoff everyone on earth but the operatives in the Unit revered for being a great writer. Even nominated for the friggin’ Nobel, though, as the Unit knew well but couldn’t yet prove, the sick fuck was the head of a huge international OC syndicate. Nick was intent on bringing him down.
So on this op he was dealing with scumbags, yeah, but the mission also involved romancing this pretty woman—and on Uncle Sam’s dime, to boot.
Didn’t get much better than that.
“All right,” Charity said suddenly. Whatever her doubts had been, apparently they were now cleared up. “What time do you want to pick me up?”
Yes!Nick felt a surge of energy that had nothing to do with the mission and everything to do with the woman in front of him.
“Well . . .” Nick smiled, all affable, utterly safe, utterly reliable businessman, “I was wondering whether you wouldn’t mind going now. I found this fabulous Italian place near Rockville. It has a really nice bar area and I thought we might talk over a drink while waiting for our dinner.”
“Da Emilio’s,” Charity said. “It’s a very nice place and the food is excellent.” She looked down at herself, frowning. “But I’m not dressed for a dinner out. I should go home and change.”
She was wearing a light blue-gray sweater that exactly matched the color of her eyes and hugged round breasts and a narrow waist, a slim black skirt, shiny black stockings, and pretty ankle boots. Pearl necklace and pearl earrings. She was the classiest-looking dame he’d seen in a long while, even in her work clothes.
“You look—” Perfect. Sexy as hell. He bit his jaws closed on the words. Ireland, roughneck soldier that he was, could say something like that, but Ames, sophisticated businessman, sure as hell couldn’t. Even if it was God’s own truth. “Fine. You look just fine. You could go to dinner at the White House dressed like that.”
It made her smile, which was what he wanted. Her smile was like a secret weapon. She sighed. “Okay. I’ll just need to lock up here.”
Locking up entailed pulling the library door closed and turning a key once in the lock.
Nick waited. Charity looked up at him, a tiny frown between her brows when she saw his scowl. “Is something wrong?”
“That’s it? That’s locking up? Turning the key once in the lock?”
She smiled gently. “This isn’t the big bad city, Mr. Ames.”
“My friends call me Nick.”
“Okay, Nick. I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to walk around town. This isn’t New York or even Burlington. The library, in case you haven’t noticed, is full of books and not much else besides some scuffed tables. What would there be to steal? And anyway, I don’t remember the last time a crime was committed in Parker’s Ridge.”
The elation Nick felt at the thought of an evening with Charity Prewitt dissipated.
Parker’s Ridge housed one of the world’s most dangerous criminals. An evil man. A man directly responsible for hundreds of lives lost, for untold misery and suffering.
And he was Charity Prewitt’s best friend.
A BOUT THEA UTHOR
L ISAM ARIER ICEis eternally 30 years old and will never age. She is tall and willowy and beautiful. Men drop at her feet like ripe pears. She has won every major book prize in the world. She is a black belt with advanced degrees in archeology, nuclear physics and Tibetan literature. She is a concert pianist. Did I mention the Nobel? Of course, Lisa Marie Rice is a virtual woman and exists only at the keyboard when writing erotic romance. She disappears when the monitor winks off.
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A LSO BYL ISAM ARIER ICE
T HEP ROTECTORST RILOGY
COMING SOON: Nightfire
Hotter Than Wildfire
Into the Crossfire
T HED ANGEROUST RILOGY
Dangerous Passion
Dangerous Secrets
Dangerous Lover
Be Impulsive!
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C OPYRIGHT
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Reckless Night copyright 2011 by Lisa Marie Rice; Excerpt from Dangerous Passion Copyright © 2009 Lisa Marie Rice; Excerpt from Dangerous Lover Copyright © 2007 Lisa Marie Rice; Excerpt from Dangerous Secrets Copyright © 2008. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition December 2011 ISBN: 9780062115218
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