Assignment: Marriage

by Jackie Merritt

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Excerpt

  Dear Reader

  Title Page

  Books by Jackie Merritt

  About the Author

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Epilogue

  Copyright

  “Everything’s Going To Be All Right,”

  Tuck said, stroking her hair.

  “Hold me, Tuck. Please hold me,” Nicole whispered.

  He turned slightly to bring her closer, and when he did, her hands slid up his chest to the back of his neck. She pressed tightly against him.

  His heart started hammering. He’d only intended to offer comfort, but their embrace was becoming sexual. Even knowing he should stop it here and now, he didn’t. The woman in his arms felt like no other he’d ever held. Her scent was unique, as was the texture of her hair and skin.

  She lifted her chin to look at him, and he saw the glaze of emotions gone wild in her beautiful blue eyes. In the back of his mind was a suspicion that she was not fully aware of what she was doing. But her upturned lips and beseeching expression couldn’t be ignored. Nor could he be so cruel as to turn his back on her when she needed him most.

  If that need had evolved into desire, so be it.

  Dear Reader,

  We all know that Valentine’s Day is the most romantic holiday of the year. It’s the day you show that special someone in your life—husband, fiancé…even your mom!—just how much you care by giving them special gifts of love.

  And our special Valentine’s gift to you is a book from a writer many of you have said is one of your favorites, Annette Broadrick. Megan’s Marriage isn’t just February’s MAN OF THE MONTH, it’s also the first book of Annette’s brand-new DAUGHTERS OF TEXAS series. This passionate love story is just right for Valentine’s Day.

  February also marks the continuation of SONS AND LOVERS, a bold miniseries about three men who discover that love and family are the most important things in life. In Reese: The Untamed by Susan Connell, a dashing bachelor meets his match and begins to think that being married might be more pleasurable than he’d ever dreamed. The series continues in March with Ridge: The Avenger by Leanne Banks.

  This month is completed with four more scintillating love stories: Assignment: Marriage by Jackie Merritt, Daddy’s Choice by Doreen Owens Malek, This Is My Child by Lucy Gordon and Husband Material by Rita Rainville. Don’t miss any of them!

  So Happy Valentine’s Day and Happy Reading!

  Lucia Macro

  Senior Editor

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  Assignment: Marriage

  Jackie Merritt

  Books by Jackie Merritt

  Silhouette Desire

  Big Sky Country #466

  Heartbreak Hotel #551

  Babe in the Woods #566

  Maggie’s Man #587

  Ramblin’ Man #605

  Maverick Heart #622

  Sweet on Jessie #642

  Mustang Valley #664

  The Lady and the Lumberjack #683

  Boss Lady #705

  Shipwrecked! #721

  Black Creek Ranch #740

  A Man Like Michael #757

  Tennessee Waltz #774

  Montana Sky #790

  Imitation Love #813

  *Wrangler’s Lady #841

  *Mystery Lady #849

  *Persistent Lady #854

  Nevada Drifter #866

  Accidental Bride #914

  Hesitant Husband #935

  Rebel Love #965

  Assignment: Marriage #980

  Silhouette Special Edition

  A Man and a Million #988

  Silhouette Books

  Summer Sizzlers 1994

  “Stranded”

  Montana Mavericks

  The Widow and the Rodeo Man #2

  The Rancher Takes a Wife #5

  *Saxon Brothers series

  JACKIE MERRITT

  and her husband live just outside of Las Vegas, Nevada. An accountant for many years, Jackie has happily traded numbers for words. Next to family, books are her greatest joy. She started writing in 1987 and her efforts paid off in 1988 with the publication of her first novel. When she’s not writing or enjoying a good book, Jackie dabbles in watercolor painting and likes playing the piano in her spare time.

  Prologue

  The streets were close to empty. Even in Las Vegas most people were home in bed at three in the morning. Of course, if night owls wanted action, they could find it in Vegas at any hour.

  Sergeant Tuck Hannigan, who had eleven years under his belt with the Metropolitan Police Department, was finally ready to call it a day. It had been a hell of a fifteen-hour stretch for him. Normal shifts ran ten hours, but there were some that never seemed to end.

  Tuck made a right turn and spotted an around-the-clock convenience store. Remembering that he’d used the last grounds in the coffee can in his kitchen about eighteen hours ago, he pulled into the store’s brightly lighted parking lot. One other car occupied a space, a battered old blue sedan. Tuck parked beside it.

  He was wearing civvies—jeans, a black T-shirt, a lightweight jacket and sneakers. His present duty required the standard police officer’s uniform, but he’d changed at the station before leaving. He was beat, getting a little bleary-eyed, but he knew he’d want coffee when he got up in the morning.

  Switching off the ignition, he swung out of the car and started for the convenience store’s front door. Only a few steps from his car he realized that he couldn’t see anyone inside. The building was almost garish with lights. There were windows all along the front of it, and inside there wasn’t a person in sight.

  Tuck glanced back to the old sedan and felt a spurt of adrenaline. Something was wrong. Convenience stores were notorious targets for robberies and this setup looked suspicious. He eased back toward his car and then ducked around it, intending to go to the pay phone at the side of the building. In two minutes he could run the sedan’s license plate and receive information on its owner.

  All hell suddenly broke loose. The sharp pop of gunshots and a woman’s scream came from within the store. Tuck drew the weapon from the holster in the small of his back and raced for the entrance of the store. He hit the swinging door at a dead run. Two men burst from the back room, guns blazing. Tuck threw himself on the floor and fired at the same time. The men went down.

  It was over in seconds. Tuck’s heart felt like it was trying to bust through the wall of his chest. He lay there, breathing hard, sweating. A woman teetered from the back room, holding her hand to her left shoulder, which was wet with blood.

  Tuck struggled to his feet. The woman looked dazed. “You shot them,” she said in a hoarse, cracking voice.

  He looked at the men on the floor, went over to them and checked each for a pulse. They were young, probably under twenty. One was bearded, one’s head was shaved. He sensed the woman sinking and rushed to help her. He sat her on a box and went to the phone and dialed a number.

  “This is Sergeant Tuck Hannigan. Send an ambulance to…” He recited the particulars. “There are two dead and one injured. I killed two men.”

  He put the phone down and realized there was blood on the front of his clothes. He looked down at it and felt
the onslaught of pain. He’d been hit.

  The glaring lights in the store began to blur. He sank to the floor. The last thing he remembered was the wail of sirens and the sight of the two young men, dead, lying in their own blood next to a candy display.

  One

  The convenience store shootings made the headlines. Tuck was questioned until he was sick of telling the story. For three days he’d been unaware of the hoopla as he’d been in and out of consciousness in the Intensive Care Unit of Las Vegas’s Humana Hospital. But the day he was moved to the surgical recovery wing, the questions started.

  Then there was the hearing. Anytime a police officer was involved in a shooting, he was put on suspension and a hearing was held so the community could assess the situation. Tuck was completely exonerated of any wrongdoing or errors in judgment. The case was clear: he had fired his weapon to protect himself and the female clerk, who’d obviously already been injured.

  He had made no mistakes. Everyone told him so and he knew it himself. But it was the first time he’d had to use his service revolver against another human being, and two men had died. Two very young men.

  Never mind that they had a record a mile long. Never mind that they had shot the thirty-two-year-old clerk, who had three children, a husband and a mother and father who loved and needed her. The woman was all right, thank God. She, too, had had to endure a stay in the hospital, and physically she was recovering. But she would probably never feel safe again. Tuck worked with victims organizations on occasion, and most people had a hard time getting over the trauma of physical and mental maltreatment.

  Regardless that the woman was going to make it and Tuck wasn’t blamed for the shootings, he couldn’t get past the horrifying incident. He had killed two people, two men who weren’t even old enough to vote.

  As was strict policy, he had to attend scheduled sessions with one of the department’s psychologists, a Laura Keaton.

  Laura was a levelheaded woman, around forty-five, Tuck estimated. He liked her voice, which was low and pleasantly modulated. She talked common sense, too, none of that medical gibberish that he only just barely understood.

  This was his second visit to Dr. Keaton’s office. The first had been brief; a handshake, over which she had told him to call her “Laura” and a low-key discussion of departmental routines that had put Tuck at ease.

  Today was going to be different he realized when Laura said, “You were married once, Tuck. What happened?”

  They were seated on comfortable furniture in a corner of her office, he on the sofa, Laura on a chair. Her brown eyes behind stylish glasses reflected nothing other than a professional interest, both in her question and whatever answer he might give her.

  But he couldn’t see what his failed marriage had to do with the present situation. “That was a long time ago, Doc.”

  “How long?”

  He withheld a rising impatience. “I was twenty-three when I got married. It lasted three years. I’m now thirty-four.”

  Laura tented her fingers and regarded the ruggedly handsome man sitting so rigidly before her. Thick dark hair. Somber gray eyes. “You were married the year you joined the force?”

  She had her dates down pat. “Yes.”

  Laura consulted the folder on her lap. “No children?”

  The muscles in Tuck’s jaw clenched. “There was one, a boy. He died at three months of age.”

  Laura raised her eyes and drew a slow breath. “I’m sorry. Tell me about it, Tuck.”

  He looked away, letting his gaze drift to three filled bookcases, to a painting on the wall that depicted a harbor and a fleet of fishing boats, and finally to her desk. A framed photograph caught his attention. It was of Laura, a smiling, dark-haired man and two teenage boys; her family, obviously.

  His eyes returned to Dr. Keaton. “May I smoke?”

  She smiled. “I’m not going to lecture you on how bad smoking is for your cardiovascular system, Tuck. Smoke if you’d like.”

  “Thanks.” He grinned slightly. “For permission and for not lecturing.”

  Laura got up for an ashtray she kept in a desk drawer. She had long ago realized that some people couldn’t speak at all without smoking, and a nervous, incoherent patient was a waste of her time and his. “Are you a heavy smoker?” She sat down again.

  “At times.”

  “Lately?”

  Tuck inhaled the first puff from his cigarette. “Yeah.” He blew out the smoke. “Timmy…that was his name…died of pneumonia. That’s what the doctors said, anyway. What he really died from was neglect.” Tuck looked at the tip of his cigarette intently. “Jeanie, my wife, wasn’t much of a mother. I was still relatively new to the department, working crazy hours, taking on any extra duty I could nail down. I didn’t even know he was sick. I went to work one day…he seemed fine…and they called me from the hospital before my shift was over. He died the next day.”

  “It must have been a particularly virulent strain of pneumonia, Tuck,” Laura said softly.

  “So they said, and the antibiotics they gave him made him go into convulsions. There wasn’t anything they could do.”

  “But you blamed your wife.”

  Tuck’s hard eyes met hers. “I still do. She left him that day with a thirteen-year-old girl from the neighborhood. She knew he was sick and she left him with a kid. At least the girl was smart enough to know she had a sick baby on her hands, ‘cause she called 9-1-1. I finally found Jeanie that night in a bar, half drunk and giggling with some joker she’d picked up.”

  “And that was the end of your marriage.”

  Tuck grinned cynically. “Not a pretty story, is it?”

  “I’ve heard worse. What about family? Parents? Brothers and sisters?”

  “My dad died when I was fifteen. My mother lives in Phoenix. She came while I was in the hospital, but she’s not very well. No brothers. One sister, who lives back east. We talk on the phone once in a while.”

  “Friends? Let me rephrase that. Do you have friends outside of the department?”

  “A few.”

  “Anyone important?”

  “If you’re fishing to find out if there’s a woman in my life, Doc, it’s been a long, dry spell.”

  “Never been tempted to remarry?”

  “Never,” Tuck replied emphatically.

  Laura paused, then smiled. “You’re beginning to look fit, but how are you feeling physically?”

  “The wounds are healing.” He’d taken two bullets, one in the chest, one in the right thigh.

  “Can we talk about that night?”

  Tuck snuffed out his cigarette in the ashtray. “You’re the doctor. What do you want to know?”

  “How you felt during the incident.”

  Tuck laughed shortly. “I didn’t have time to feel anything.”

  “All right, after it was over then. You were lucid enough to phone in and report what had happened. What were you feeling?”

  “Sick.”

  “In pain?”

  “Not at first. All I could see were those two bodies on the floor.”

  “Did you feel justified in shooting those men?”

  “Justified? No, that never entered my mind.”

  “What did? Think about it, Tuck. What did enter your mind?”

  He swallowed the rising gorge in his throat, and when he spoke, his voice cracked. “I…don’t remember.”

  Nicole Currie couldn’t sit still. The two men in her living room wore dark suits and expressions almost as dark. Nicole stopped pacing and threw up her hands. “How can you ask me to do such a thing? I have a life, a job, this house, friends. I can’t just disappear!”

  John Harper and Scott Paulsen, both police officers, exchanged glances. John, who was the older by a good fifteen years, stood. “You can’t stay here, Nicole.” He’d spent enough time in Nicole’s company during the past four days to call her by her first name. “The prosecuting attorney needs time to prepare a solid case against Lowicki and Spencer.
You’re our only witness.”

  “I wouldn’t be your witness if I’d thought it through before reporting what I saw,” Nicole said sharply. It had seemed so cut-and-dried at the time. Two men leaving a building and getting into a car, a simple act. But the next morning she’d read in the paper about the double murder in that building, in apartment 17A. She’d gotten a good look at the men, particularly the one with the jagged scar that crimped his left cheek. The murders, the newspaper article recited, quoting Detective John Harper, had taken place at approximately 1:00 a.m. Any person with information regarding this crime should contact Detective Harper at Metro headquarters.

  It was all by accident, of course. Normally, Nicole wasn’t even in that part of town, and certainly not at the ungodly hour of 1:00 a.m. But she’d attended a bridal shower for a co-worker. Nicole was the purchasing agent for the Monte Carlo Hotel and Casino, a massive operation that kept her and three assistants on their toes. On her way home from the shower, which had turned out to be a gala affair and had lasted much longer than anticipated, her car had acted up. With the motor coughing and sputtering, she had managed to pull it to the curb.

  Then she’d sat there and looked at the dark street and felt fear developing. Hers was the only car on the block. To her right was vacant land, black as ink and all but invisible. The nearest streetlight was some distance away, the nearest lighted building even farther. She’d forced herself out of the car and down the sidewalk toward the building. It was an apartment house, she realized, a rather nice one, which made her feel better.

  She was in the shadow of an immense bank of oleander bushes when two men came walking out the front door. It was herself she was thinking of when she sank deeper into the shadows. It simply wasn’t smart for a woman alone to show herself to two strange men at one in the morning.