by Julia Harper
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by Nancy M. Finney
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Cover design by Melody Cassen
Forever
Hachette Book Group
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New York, NY 10017
Visit our Web site at www.HachetteBookGroup.com
Forever is an imprint of Grand Central Publishing. The Forever name and logo is a trademark of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
First eBook Edition: January 2009
ISBN: 978-0-446-54355-2
Contents
Acknowledgments
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Chapter Twenty-nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-one
Chapter Thirty-two
Chapter Thirty-three
Chapter Thirty-four
Chapter Thirty-five
Chapter Thirty-six
Chapter Thirty-seven
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chapter Thirty-nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-one
Chapter Forty-two
Chapter Forty-three
Chapter Forty-four
Chapter Forty-five
Chapter Forty-six
Chapter Forty-seven
Chapter Forty-eight
Chapter Forty-nine
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Chapter Fifty-six
Chapter Fifty-seven
Chapter Fifty-eight
Chapter Fifty-nine
Chapter Sixty
Chapter Sixty-one
Chapter Sixty-two
Chapter Sixty-three
Chapter Sixty-four
Chapter Sixty-five
“No one’s looking for Pete.”
“We’re looking,” Dante said quietly.
Zoey bit her lip and dropped her gaze to her hands as if she couldn’t meet his eyes. “Are we? You’re not going to give up, then?”
He caught one of her hands and tugged gently until she looked up again. “I’m going to keep looking for Pete until we find her and bring her home.”
He watched those blue eyes search his own. Zoey must’ve found whatever she was looking for in his face. For a moment, she closed her eyes. “Thank you.”
He tugged at her hand, gently, so she could pull away if she wanted to. But she didn’t. Instead, she opened her eyes and leaned toward him. He watched her blue eyes come closer and then he closed his own eyes.
Kissing Zoey was a revelation. She kissed him open-mouthed, no hesitation, her lips soft and warm . . .
JULIA HARPER IS JUST TOO HOT TO HANDLE
“A refreshing, funny, tug-your-heartstrings read that deserves a Perfect 10 . . . If you like HOT stories, this is just the book you need.”
—RomRevToday.com
“[A] delightful crime caper . . . the story line is fast-paced and jocular . . . Filled with terrific twists, fans will appreciate Julia Harper’s HOT thriller.”
—Midwest Book Review
“A fantastically written story filled with suspense, adventure, and—as the title suggests—steamy scenes. Julia Harper . . . has a flair for creating lovable and interesting characters who are hard to forget.”
—Bookloons.com
“One of those books that is so good that it, unfortunately, is over long before the reader wants it to be . . . with unforgettable characters, slick dialogue, and a story that is both romantic and suspenseful. Julia Harper writes hot, sexy characters in fast-moving situations with searing realism.”
—RomanceReaderatHeart.com
“A fabulous story! A truly exciting and intriguing book, this was one that could not be put down until the end.”
—TheRomanceReadersConnection.com
“A rousing romantic adventure that is certain to bring Julia Harper a large fan base. Wonderfully witty dialogue, vivid sense of time and place, a hero and heroine like no other; all of these add up to a stellar debut.”
—SingleTitles.com
“A funny, romantic comedy with a bit of action-adventure thrown in . . . will appeal to fans of Janet Evanovich.”
—Parkersburg News and Sentinel (WV)
“This one is cute with a likeable heroine.”
—BellaOnline
“A creative and even suspenseful story and a cast of quirky, small-town characters, HOT makes for a light and entertaining read.”
—NightsandWeekends.com
ALSO BY JULIA HARPER
Hot
For DOROTHY SINHA, librarian extraordinaire, talented baker of lamby cakes, and the very best of friends.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Mili Priyanka for her help with Indian culture and cooking—any mistakes are my own—to Susannah Taylor, the most patient of agents, to Melanie Murray and Amy Pierpont, wonderful and wise editors, to Anne Twomey and Claire Brown in the Grand Central Publishing art department for a lovely cover, to Tanisha Christie and Melissa Bullock for their outstanding publicity efforts, and, last but not least, to my copyeditor, Angela Buckley, for making me look good.
Thank you.
Prologue
Had Charlie Hessler known the chain of events his stroke would set off, he would never have run that last lap around the Quantico track. If nothing else, stroking out was counter-productive to what he’d hoped to achieve by hauling his sorry middle-aged ass out every night at seven p.m. But Charlie had no knowledge of future events. As he closed in on the final mile a blood clot hit his brain with catastrophic effect and Charlie collapsed to the grass beside the track.
He wouldn’t be found for another fifteen minutes.
Halfway across the country and fourteen hours later, an email was opened on a government computer. The email said that Charlie Hessler was down. The recipient stared for a minute at his lit screen, slowly tapping a finger on his desk. Then a slight smile curved one side of his face and he hit the delete button. If Hessler was out of action, then Dante Torelli was without backup and wide open.
Time to take him out.
Chapter One
Thursday, 4:16 p.m.
Things finally came to a head between Zoey Addler and Lips of Sin the afternoon he tried to steal her parking space.
Okay, technically, her u
pstairs neighbor’s name wasn’t really Lips of Sin. She knew the guy’s occupation but not his name. Since the man was drop-dead gorgeous, Zoey had taken to calling him “Lips of Sin” in her mind. And yes, technically, the parking spot in question might not legally have been hers—she hadn’t paid for it or anything—but she had shoveled it. This was January in Chicago. In Chicago in winter, shoveling out a parking spot made it yours. Everyone knew that.
Everyone but Lips of Sin, that is.
“What the hell are you doing?” Zoey screamed at him. She body slammed the hood of his black Beemer convertible, which was sitting in her stolen parking spot.
Lips of Sin, behind the wheel of said Beemer, mouthed something she couldn’t hear. He rolled down his window. “Are you insane? I could’ve hit you. Never get in front of a moving vehicle.”
Oh, like he had the right to lecture her. Zoey straightened, planted both Sorel-booted feet firmly, and crossed her arms. “I shoveled this parking spot. This is my parking spot. You can’t take it.”
Her words emerged in white puffs into the frosty late-afternoon air. They’d already had eight inches of snow the night before, and it looked like it might very well snow again. All the more reason to keep this spot.
The Beemer was at an angle, half in, half out of the parking place, which was almost directly in front of their apartment building. Every other parking space on the block was filled. There was a yellow Humvee, hulking in front of the Beemer, and a red Jeep to the back. Her own little blue Prius was double-parked next to the red Jeep. It was a sweet parking spot. Zoey had gotten up at five freaking a.m. to shovel it before she went to work at the co-op grocery. She’d marked the spot with two lawn chairs and a broken plastic milk crate in time-honored Chicago tradition. Now, returning after a long day of work, it was too much to find Lips in the act of stealing her space.
“Jesus,” Lips said. “Look, I’m running a little late here. I promise to shovel you another parking place tonight. Just get out of my way. Please?”
Obviously he wasn’t used to begging. Gorgeous guys didn’t beg. He had smooth, tea-with-milk brown skin, curly black hair, and bitter-chocolate eyes, framed by lush girly eyelashes. Except the girly eyelashes helped emphasize the hard masculine edges of his face. In fact, the only soft things on his face were the eyelashes and his lips of sin. Deep lines bracketed those lips, framing the cynical corners and the little indent on the bottom lip that made a woman wonder what, exactly, the man could do with that mouth.
Perfect.
He was perfectly perfect in his masculine beauty, and Zoey had hated him on sight. Gorgeous guys were always so damn full of themselves. They strutted around like they were God’s gift to women. Please. Add to that the fact that the man was always dressed for corporate raiding in suit and tie and black leather trench coat, and he just was not her type.
Lips was getting out of the car now, looking pretty pissed, his black trench coat swirling dramatically around his legs.
Zoey leaned forward, about to give him what-for, when the front doors to their apartment building burst open and a middle-aged guy in a red puffy jacket came running out. He had a baby under his left arm like a football. Zoey froze, her heart paralyzed at the sight. In his right fist was a gun. His bald head swiveled as he caught sight of them, and his gun hand swiveled with it. Zoey’s eyes widened, and then a ton of bricks hit her from the side. She went down into the frozen gray slush on the street, and the ton of bricks landed on top of her. An expensive black leather sleeve shielded her face.
BANG!
The shot sounded like it was right in her ear. Zoey contracted her body in animal reaction, trying to make herself smaller beneath the heavy bulk of the man on top of her.
“Get behind the car,” Lips breathed in her ear, and she had the incongruous thought that his breath smelled like fresh mint.
Then a flurry of shots rang out, one right after the other, in a wall of sound that scared her witless. The weight lifted from her body, and she felt Lips grab the back of her jacket and haul. She was on hands and knees, but she barely touched the ground before she was behind the Beemer on the driver’s side. She looked up and saw Lips crouched over her, a black gun in his hand.
“Don’t shoot,” she gasped. “He’s got the baby!”
“I know.” His gaze was fixed over the roof of the car. “Shit.”
The word was drowned out by the sound of a revving engine. Zoey looked around in time to see the yellow Hummer accelerate away from the curb, the bald man at the wheel.
“Come on!” She grabbed the door handle of the Beemer and pulled, scrambling ungracefully inside. There was a moment when she thought she might be seriously tangled in the console between the seats, and then she was on the other side, pulling out the passenger-side seat belt. She looked back, and Lips was still standing outside the car, staring at her. “What’re you waiting for? We’ll lose him.”
He narrowed his eyes at her but thankfully didn’t argue. Instead he threw back his coat and suit jacket, holstered his gun in a graceful movement Jack Bauer would’ve envied, and got in the car. He released the emergency brake and shifted into first.
He glanced at her once assessingly and said, “Hold on.”
The force of his acceleration slammed her against the Beemer’s lush leather seat. Then they were flying, the car eerily quiet as they sped through Evanston.
“Do you think he’s a pedophile?” She clutched at the car armrest anxiously.
“No.”
The yellow Hummer had turned at the corner onto a medium-sized boulevard lined with small businesses and shops. Zoey was afraid they would’ve already lost him by now, but two stoplights ahead, the Hummer idled at a red light.
She leaned forward. “There he is. Up ahead at the stoplight.”
“I see him.” The words were quiet, but they had an edge.
Well, too bad. “Can’t you go any faster?”
He sped past a forest green minivan.
“The light changed. He’s moving again.” Zoey bit her lip, trying to still the panic in her chest. “We can’t lose him. We just can’t. You need to go faster.”
Lips glanced at her. He didn’t say anything, but Zoey heard a kind of scraping sound, like he was grinding his teeth. She rolled her eyes. Men had such delicate egos. She hauled her cell out of her jacket pocket and began punching numbers.
“What’re you doing?” he asked. The Beemer swerved around a Volkswagen Beetle in the left lane, briefly jumping the concrete divider before thumping down again in front of the Beetle.
Zoey righted herself from where she’d slid against the passenger door. “Calling 911.”
He grunted, and she wasn’t sure whether that was an approving sound or not. Not that it mattered.
There was a click in her ear and a bored voice said, “911. What is the nature of your emergency?”
The Hummer had turned right at the light onto Dempster. Lips steered the Beemer into the turn going maybe forty mph. The Beemer’s tires screeched but didn’t skid. Points to BMW engineering.
“A baby’s been kidnapped,” Zoey said to the 911 operator. “We’re chasing the kidnapper.”
The operator’s voice perked up. “Where are you now?”
“On Dempster, near uh . . .” She craned her neck just as Lips swerved again, nearly sending her nose into the passenger-side window. “Shit.”
“I beg your pardon,” the operator said, sounding offended.
“Not you. I know we’ve passed Skokie Boulevard—”
“We’re on Dempster and Le Claire,” Lips said tightly.
Zoey repeated the information.
“Tell 911 that it’s a yellow Hummer,” Lips said as he accelerated around a postal truck, imperiling the paint on the Beemer’s side. “The license plate’s obscured by mud, but there’s a dent in the back left panel over the wheel.”
The Hummer suddenly swerved into the right lane and took a ramp onto the Edens Expressway.
Zoey gasped in the
middle of her recitation. “He’s gotten onto the Edens going north.”
The Beemer barreled up the ramp and abruptly slowed. In either direction on the freeway, as far as the eye could see, was a four-lane-wide trail of cars.
“Shit,” Zoey muttered.
“I beg your pardon,” the operator said again. Must get sworn at a lot in her job.
“Not you,” Zoey replied and then said to no one in particular, “This is why I never take the Edens after three. They’ve been doing road construction for, like, ten years here.”
“I’ll be sure and tell the guy that when we catch up with him,” Lips ground out.
If they caught up with him, Zoey thought and bit her bottom lip. The Hummer was already several cars ahead and moving, whereas their part of the traffic jam was stopped dead. There was a good possibility that they’d lose the Hummer in the traffic. She kept her eyes firmly fixed on the massive lump of yellow steel. She wasn’t letting it out of her sight. That truck contained a kidnapper with a gun and a very important little piece of humanity. ’Cause the kidnapper hadn’t taken just any baby.
He’d taken Pete.
Chapter Two
Thursday, 4:48 p.m.
FBI Special Agent Dante Torelli kept his eyes fixed on the UNSUB in the yellow Hummer, but he was aware all the time of the woman sitting beside him. She strained forward against her seat belt as she talked on her cell, as if she could make the cars ahead move by sheer force of will. And maybe she could. So far she’d appropriated his car, invited herself along on a high-speed chase, and seemed quite comfortable telling him how to do his job.
Dante eased up on the clutch and tapped the accelerator, rolling his nearly new BMW 650i convertible forward a few feet before braking again. He’d been briefed when she moved into the apartment building a couple weeks before, but for the life of him, he couldn’t remember her name now. She lived on the second floor, he knew. His place was on the third, next to the couple he was helping guard.
Except it really wasn’t his place at all. It was an apartment shared by four FBI agents in twelve-hour shifts of two. He was undercover as a regular city guy, working nine to five during the day and coming home at night to a midpriced apartment. His real job was working the night shift, keeping an eye on a guy named Ricky Spinoza, his girlfriend, Nikki Hernandez, and their toddler daughter. Ricky just happened to be the key witness in a federal trial. Dante and his partner, Jill Petrov, played the part of a boring, happily married yuppie couple. The day shift were a couple of guys young enough to pass as computer geeks working out of their apartment.
