The Honeymoon Assignment

by Cathryn Clare

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Excerpt

  Dear Reader

  Title Page

  Books by Cathryn Clare

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Copyright

  “It’s not enough, is it?”

  Kelley’s voice was quiet. “You work and work, and there’s still something…hollow about it.”

  “No, damn it. It isn’t enough,” Sam said. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

  Suddenly he seemed to forget what they were speaking about and pulled her onto his lap.

  Sam Cotter kept the world at arm’s length most of the time by making it clear—with his slouch, his blunt speech, his flint-hard glare—that he didn’t give a damn what anybody might think or say about him. Even when he smiled, his expression hovered halfway between warning and mockery.

  But Sam had another smile, one he rarely used. It was slow, surprised looking. Tender. And infinitely sexy, because it was a window into the real Sam Cotter, with none of the usual barriers and barbed wire in the way.

  It was one of the most beautiful things Kelley had ever seen.

  And against all expectations, she was seeing it now.

  Dear Reader,

  Wow! What a month we’ve got for you. Take Maddy Lawrence’s Big Adventure, Linda Turner’s newest. Like most of us, Maddy’s lived a pretty calm life, maybe even too calm. But all that’s about to change, because now Ace Mackenzie is on the job. Don’t miss this wonderful book.

  We’ve got some great miniseries this month, too. The One Worth Waiting For is the latest of Alicia Scott’s THE GUINESS GANG, while Cathryn Clare continues ASSIGNMENT: ROMANCE with The Honeymoon Assignment. Plus Sandy Steen is back with the suspenseful—and sexy—Hunting Houston. Then there’s Beverly Bird’s Undercover Cowboy, which successfully mixes romance and danger for a powerhouse read. Finally, try Lee Karr’s Child of the Night if you enjoy a book where things are never quite what they seem.

  Then come back again next month, because you won’t want to miss some of the best romantic reading around— only in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

  Enjoy!

  Leslie Wainger

  Senior Editor and Editorial Coordinator

  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

  The Honeymoon Assignment

  Cathryn Clare

  Books by Cathryn Clare

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Chasing Destiny #503

  Sun and Shadow #558

  The Angel and the Renegade #599

  Gunslinger’s Child #629

  *The Wedding Assignment #702

  *The Honeymoon Assignment #714

  Silhouette Desire

  To the Highest Bidder #399

  Blind Justice #508

  Lock, Stock and Barrel #550

  Five by Ten #591

  The Midas Touch #663

  Hot Stuff #688

  *Assignment: Romance

  CATHRYN CLARE

  is a transplanted Canadian who followed true love south of the border when she married an American. She says, “I was one of those annoying children who always knew exactly what they were going to be when they grew up,” and she has proved herself right with a full-time career as a writer since 1987.

  “Being a writer has its hazards. So many things that I see—a car at the side of the road, two people having an argument, a hat someone left in a restaurant—make me want to sit down and finish the stories suggested to me. It can be very hard to concentrate on real life sometimes! But the good part of being a writer is that every story, no matter how it starts out, can be a way to show the incredible power that love has in our lives.”

  For Deborah Voss,

  with love.

  Prologue

  Everything was going just right. Sam Cotter squinted into the sudden glare of the warehouse lights and watched the night guard push the button that would open the big loading door.

  “You know what you’re going to do, right?” He barely whispered the words to the woman at his side. Kelley Landis was tall—five-nine to Sam’s six foot one. He didn’t even have to lean over to say the soft words at her ear.

  She nodded, her concentration fixed on the guard they had been hired to watch. “Keep the camcorder rolling while the driver pays off the guard,” she whispered back. Sam could see the video camera’s strap already looped around Kelley’s slender wrist.

  “Good.” He squeezed her shoulder, and immediately drew his hand back again. Even that brief touch was enough to send his senses spinning. He thought about waking up next to Kelley this morning, about putting his hand on her warm, still-flat stomach, trying to believe it was really true that there was a new life growing there who was partly his doing.

  It still seemed impossible that in three more days he would be married to Kelley Landis, and that a few months after that he would be the father of a child. It was enough to make a man believe in fairy tales and happy endings.

  It was also enough to distract him powerfully from the job he was supposed to be doing, he told himself.

  What he was supposed to be doing was straightforward enough. The case had been tricky at first, but Sam’s hunch about the truck driver—about the guy’s pent-up look and the defensive way he talked to people—had finally cracked it open. It had been a good illustration of one of the rules Sam was drumming into Kelley as he taught her the ropes of the investigation business: a good detective listens to instinct, as well as to fact.

  Unfortunately his instincts kept drawing him closer to Kelley now. And it was an undeniable fact that he kept finding himself fantasizing about getting her back to his apartment later tonight and undressing her piece by piece, kissing every silken inch of her that he uncovered….

  He shook his head and stepped slightly away from his bride-to-be. “There’s the truck,” he said, keeping his rough whisper as low as he could. “Let’s get to work, sweetheart.”

  The quiet whir of the camcorder and the click of the shutter on Sam’s camera were masked by the engine of the big truck backing slowly into the warehouse. They’d picked a spot where the overhead lights wouldn’t reflect off their lenses, and they’d already verified that the bales on the loading dock were full of VCRs whose serial numbers had mysteriously been sanded off. A few clear shots of the truck driver paying off the night guard would wrap up another successful case for Cotter Investigations.

  “This is a cream puff,” Sam murmured.

  And then, suddenly, it wasn’t.

  “Looks like they’re arguing.” Kelley still had the camcorder to her eye. Sam couldn’t tell if she was talking to him or just putting the comment onto the tape, for the record.

  The voices of the two men were raised, but Sam and Kelley were too far away to hear what they were saying. “Keep filming,” he whispered. “I’m going to get closer, see if I can figure out what’s going on.”

  He edged along the warehouse wall, keeping to the shadows. He wished he didn’t feel so uneasy about leaving Kelley on her own. You’re just out of shape for working with partners, he told himself. Hell, you’ve never really been in shape. Sam Cotter
had roamed the world strictly on his own for a lot of years, and he still hadn’t gotten used to the idea that he wasn’t alone anymore.

  He could hear words from the argument between the guard and the driver now. The driver was saying something about being double-crossed. That didn’t bode well. Sam moved through the darkness at the end of the warehouse as quickly as he could. If the situation blew up, taking Cotter Investigations’ case with it, he wanted to know why.

  “…been double-dipping on the side….”

  “Hey, man, if you’d pay me what they’re worth…”

  The two men were shouting now. And Sam was close enough to hear the driver’s fist connecting with the guard’s chin as the bigger man landed a solid punch. The guard went down in a heap, but got back up almost immediately, fists flying.

  Sam glanced back to where Kelley stood. She was lost in the shadows, and he couldn’t see her face. But he sent her a silent message: Keep filming. Don’t let this get to you. And he hoped like hell she would have the sense to realize that this wasn’t a situation where her peacemaking skills could do any good.

  She’d grown up in a family of four brothers, stuck in the middle between two older hellions and a pair of rowdy twins. She’d become a diplomat early on, not afraid to wade into a fight, never giving up until she’d effected a truce.

  And she was good at it. On the very first case Sam had taken her out on, he’d watched in amazement as she’d coaxed a sulky runaway into sitting down and listening to her parents. It had been Sam’s expertise that had traced the girl in the first place, but it had taken Kelley’s quiet skill to get the two sides talking.

  There were times, though, when diplomacy wasn’t what was needed. And this was shaping up to be one of them.

  “Stay put, damn it,” Sam muttered. He looked back at the struggling men. There was blood on the guard’s face now, and he seemed to be regretting getting into the fight. He kept trying to shield his head, but the driver—bigger, stronger and clearly out of control—was managing to land blow after blow.

  Sam caught a sudden glint from where Kelley stood. She’d lowered the camcorder, he thought. He could almost hear her trying to figure out if there was anything she could do to help.

  “There’s nothing you can do.” He said the words through clenched teeth. He knew he should be capturing what he could of the fight on film, but he was too concerned for Kelley—for her generous heart, her inexperience in this often harsh business, her belief that she could fix things when they went wrong.

  He could hear the guard begging the driver to stop now. The desperate cries touched even Sam’s toughened-up heart. He could just imagine what they were doing to Kelley’s.

  He had to get back to her. She didn’t know this business nearly well enough to handle what might happen if she barged into this. Sam growled a curse as he slung the camera over his shoulder and started back toward the woman he loved.

  He didn’t get there in time. He saw her shadowy figure stooping—putting the camcorder down, he thought—and watched with a terrible sinking sensation as she strode out into the light, long-legged, determined.

  “Damn it, Kelly—”

  He didn’t care that his shout attracted the attention of the two fighting men. He and Kelley could still make their escape through the back warehouse door they’d left open, if only—

  She wasn’t going to give them the chance. He watched her pull her private investigator’s license out of the back pocket of her jeans, holding it up, putting all the authority she could into her voice.

  “Hold it!” she called, moving quickly now. “You’re both in deep trouble, and killing each other isn’t going to help.”

  Sam groaned and reached for his revolver. There was no good way out of this now. He sprinted back through the shadows, hoping at least for the element of surprise, and tried not to groan again when he saw what he’d been most afraid of: the metallic glint of light off the barrel of the gun in the driver’s shaky hand.

  Suddenly everything was going very, very wrong.

  Chapter 1

  Three years later

  “That’s everything but the last case.” Wiley Cotter paused and looked down at the single file folder remaining on his desk. “Want to go across the street and get a beer while we talk about this one?”

  Sam and Wiley had been at this for hours, reviewing all the current cases being handled by Cotter Investigations. Until just this moment, Wiley had been his usual thorough, no-nonsense self. He’d thrown dates and figures at Sam with the relentless accuracy of a machine gun, summing up everything Sam would need to know to take over the organization his brother had started.

  But now Wiley’s manner had changed. And Sam didn’t like it.

  “No, I don’t want to go across the street and get a beer,” he said. “What have you got up your sleeve?”

  Wiley didn’t answer right away. It wasn’t like him to hesitate like this, even with one of his brothers. Usually he kept his thoughts to himself as well as any high-stakes poker player. But it was clear now that he was trying to find the right words for whatever he wanted to say, and his uncharacteristic pause was starting to make Sam uneasy.

  Wiley had done a lot of uncharacteristic things lately. He’d fallen in love, for one thing—or rather, he’d fallen back in love with a woman he’d lost a long time ago. Sam still wasn’t used to the new light in Wiley’s dark eyes, or the new openness in his style. He wasn’t used to the idea that Wiley was leaving the investigation business, turning the agency over to Sam and riding off into the sunset to be with the lady he loved.

  Actually, Wiley was only riding as far as the restaurant across the street. He and Rae-Anne had bought the little barbecue joint and were in the process of renovating it so that it would be ready to run when Wiley left Cotter Investigations next month.

  In the midst of all the sudden changes in the Cotter brothers’ routines, Sam was glad his big brother was sticking close to home. He liked having Wiley around. He liked Rae-Anne. And he liked barbecue. Having his brother and sister-in-law serving up good food right across the street was definitely an attractive idea.

  But he didn’t like the way Wiley was looking across the desk at him now. There was concern in those intelligent dark eyes, as if Wiley had bad news to break.

  “Come on, Wiley,” Sam said impatiently. “Cough it up.”

  “All right.” Wiley finally opened the file folder in front of him. “But I think you’re going to wish you’d taken me up on that offer of beer.”

  At first Sam couldn’t see any reason for his brother’s warning. The case seemed straightforward, if a little ticklish.

  Counterfeit bills had been turning up in a Gulf Coast resort town, and the millionaire developer who was trying to sell vacation homes in the community wanted it investigated before any adverse publicity could affect the place’s reputation.

  Cotter Investigations had handled similar cases with success in the past. The only real mystery to Sam was why Wiley hadn’t called him in in the first place, since Sam was the agency’s expert in financial crime.

  And then Wiley hit him with it.

  “The only problem,” he said, “is that the place is designed for couples, not singles. The client is insisting we send a pair of agents, so nobody gets suspicious.”

  “So send Sherrill to pose as my wife, or girlfriend, or whatever.”

  Sam didn’t have a wife, or a girlfriend, or whatever. And Wiley knew perfectly well why that was.

  “Sherrill’s going on vacation.”

  “Vacation?” Sam snorted. “Sherrill never takes vacations.”

  “That’s what she pointed out to me. She said she figured it was time she tried one, just to see what all the fuss was about.”

  Sherrill Goldwin, the younger of Cotter Investigations’ two female employees, was smart, savvy and as tough as boot leather. She and Sam got along well, in a light-handed, bantering way.

  It was more than he could say for his relationship with Cot
ter Investigations’ other female employee.

  “She’ll probably hate it,” he said. “She’ll be bored as hell. Call her up. Maybe she’ll be willing to—”

  “She’s already gone. She’s in Costa Rica.” Wiley was looking more and more apologetic. “And I couldn’t call her up even if I wanted to. She didn’t leave a number.”

  “Then we can wait till she gets back.”

  Wiley shook his head. “Nope,” he said, “we can’t. Our client was only able to stall his bank for a week. Normally the procedure is to hand over all counterfeit money to the Treasury Department, as you know perfectly well. This guy’s got a lot of clout in the town of Cairo, so his bank manager cut him some slack. But we’ve only got a week to get in there, wrap things up and get out again. And that means—”

  Sam had seen it coming now.

  “No,” he said bluntly. “Don’t even suggest it.”

  “Sam—”

  “Forget it. I am not spending a week in some resort cabin with Kelley Landis. Are you out of your mind, Wiley?”

  He could feel the tension rising in his voice as he spoke. It was crowding into other parts of him, too, making his long legs suddenly feel restless and confined in the small space of Wiley’s private office.

  He shoved his chair back and got to his feet, glaring down at his older brother. It wasn’t easy to meet Wiley’s steady, sympathetic gaze, but it was a hell of a lot easier than letting his mind wander to images of Kelley’s face, her eyes, her tall, graceful form.

  It was bad enough that he occasionally had to encounter her here at work. It was worse yet that he’d never been able to banish her from his dreams, and from his waking thoughts on the nights when he couldn’t sleep, couldn’t dream, couldn’t do anything but relive their brief shared past uselessly, endlessly.