Red Hot Lovers: 18 Contemporary Romance Books of Love, Passion, and Sexy Heroes by Your Favorite Top-Selling Authors

by Milly Taiden

  Brennan had always been the love of Hope’s life, but he never wanted to be. She knows she cannot depend on him for long. However, as each day passes, it becomes painfully obvious that she is in way over her head. She goes with him, intending to keep him always an arm’s length away to protect her heart. But being on the run together sparks the old flames that once burned between Brennan and Hope.

  Families, friends, and lovers must band together to save an innocent baby and a daring woman or both of their lives will be destroyed.

  Together, they’ll do it All for Hope. . .

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Are you alone?”

  “Good Lord, Hope, it's three o'clock in the morning,” Mark Terrance mumbled at the nervous woman standing in his doorway. Her hair was whipped by a fierce wind as she waited.

  “Are you alone?” she pleaded with urgent eyes.

  “Yes.”

  Hope Sheffield shoved past him and pulled him out of the entryway as she closed the door. With her arms crossed in front of her, she squeezed herself to draw out the chill, then looked up into the man's confused eyes as she stomped the wet off her shoes onto the doormat.

  “Mark, I need your help.”

  “Somehow, I figured that.”

  Hope clenched her eyes closed for a moment and sighed. “This is serious, Mark.”

  His smile was meant to reassure her, but instead she was tempted to bolt out of the house. She shouldn't be involving him in this. It wasn't fair to him or his wife, but she didn't have anywhere else to turn,

  “I need some money.”

  He looked at her as if she was a confused two-year old and shook his head. “What are you talking about?”

  “Mark, listen, I'm in trouble. I can't give you all of the details, but you have to trust me. A friend of mine is in trouble and she needs me to do something very important for her. I–”

  “What is it that’s so important?”

  “I can't tell you. You'll know about it soon enough, but now I have to hurry.”

  “What makes you think I have a lot of money here—”

  She smiled for the first time. “I know everything about you, Mark. You keep at least three thousand in that safe of yours.”

  Mark Terrance studied her face closely. Hope had been a dear friend to him for years, and she did know everything about him. She figured he could tell just by looking in her eyes that whatever she was involved in was serious.

  “Are you sure you know what you're doing?” He grabbed a key ring from the fob just inside the hall closet and moved to the office where his small fireproof safe was hidden.

  “No,” Hope admitted as she reached over and deliberately slid her hands over his desk. “But I have no other choice.”

  “Here you go,” he said and tried to close the door to the safe. Her hands stopped him. “Now what are you doing?”

  She touched everything in the safe and began to give him instructions. “I want you to call the police tomorrow afternoon and tell them that this money was taken from your safe. Show them this.” She handed him a letter in exchange for the wad of money. “Tell them you found it on your desk. The prints will verify that I was here.”

  “I will not say you stole this!”

  “You have to do it,” she ordered. “By then I'll be long gone so don't worry, but you have to protect yourself and your family. This letter explains my plans.”

  She watched the emotions and questions pass one by one in his expression, until finally he sighed with a nod. “There's over seven thousand dollars in there.”

  “Mark, I can't take this much.” She started to pass the bills back to him.

  “Yes, you can. You wouldn't approve of what I was saving it for anyway.”

  “What?”

  He shrugged. “A motorcycle.”

  Hope laughed aloud. “Then I will take it. Cindy would probably thank me for it,” she joked, referring to his wife. Her face then turned grim. “Do just what I said. I'll find some way to let you know I'm all right.”

  “You’d better.”

  “No matter what you hear, no matter what the authorities or the news say, believe that I’m all right, okay?” She waited for him to inflect his head in the affirmative. “Bye, now.”

  She hurried to open the front door, being sure to touch the knob to the hall closet on her way through.

  “Hope,” he called, following her. “What would you have done if Cindy had been here?”

  “I knew you'd be the one to open the door. Plus I was pretty sure she had decided to go to see her parents this weekend; she always answers the phone.”

  It took him a moment to realize what she meant. “You were the caller who kept hanging up a couple of minutes ago?”

  “Yes. I had to make sure you would be awake when I got here. It wouldn’t do for someone to catch me banging down your door.”

  She turned to go, and he called out to her again. He didn’t seem to know what to say. “Where's your car?” he asked lamely.

  “Several blocks down.”

  Motioning to her dark clothing, perfect for sneaking in and out of the shadows, he smiled. “You're full of tricks.”

  “Let's hope I'm full of a few more.” Before she could help herself, she approached him and took his hands. “I love you.”

  Mark reached up and pinched a lock of her hair between his fingers. “Red?” he questioned, inspecting the strands that used to be mahogany brown.

  “I used to always want red hair.”

  There was about a minute of silence between them, and she worried he was going to try to talk her into giving up her secrets.

  “I love you, too, Hope. Just remember there will always be a person here who knows who you are.”

  She nodded, drawing strength from that. She reached up and kissed him gently on the cheek.

  “Bye,” she whispered and dissolved into the darkness.

  ***

  CHAPTER TWO

  “No, Bren,” Jennifer Green scolded and snatched several bars of chocolate from her boyfriend’s unwilling hand. “All you've eaten is junk food for the past five days.”

  He jerked himself up from his stooped position and sighed in agitation. “I'm hungry,” he whined.

  “We have protein bars in the car. Would you mind grabbing me a bottle of water?” She smiled sweetly to him, then continued to study a shelf of magazines.

  “Sure.” His clipped reply was to her back as he grabbed four candy bars in defiance.

  He dropped everything onto the counter, including the magazine Jennifer had given him as she exited the store. The door chime rang as he handed the clerk several bills and he glanced up momentarily, expecting to see Jennifer. Instead it was a woman with a baby in her arms.

  Reaching out to take his change, he frowned, feeling a tickle of remembrance at the base of his neck. The door chime rang out again, and Brennan's head popped up in that moment of recognition. He grabbed his bag and rushed out after the woman.

  “Hope!” he called, hurrying after her. “Hope, is that you?”

  The woman began to run, and the baby on her shoulder let out a wail. He caught up with her just as she reached the cross street intersection. Cars were zooming in either direction so she couldn’t get to the other side, but Brennan still grabbed her hand as if intending to hold her there.

  She snatched her fingers from him and turned around.

  “Hello, Brennan.”

  “It is you.” He was glad to find that he wasn’t just imagining things. “My gosh, it’s been years since we've seen each other. What are you doing out here?”

  She took a moment, and he had the impression she was carefully thinking her answer. Sighing, she began to bounce the crying baby in her arms. “Brennan, if you've ever cared about me, you'll just forget you ever saw me here. I'm-- I'm in trouble and I'm begging you not to tell anyone that you saw me here. Not even my family.”

  “I don't understand.”

  The child finally stopped shrieking and she releas
ed a huge sigh of relief. After a moment, Hope looked up and gave him a hard glare.

  “Where have you been? Haven't you read the papers?”

  “Jenny and I've been on a cruise for about a week.”

  “Jenny? She's here?” she whipped around, searching for the woman.

  He nodded and followed her eyes to glimpse behind him. “Yeah, she's waiting for me in the car.”

  “Listen, you'll find out everything when you get home. Just promise me you won't breathe a word of seeing me here.”

  “Tell me what's going on, Hope.”

  She closed her eyes. “I can't. Please, Bren.”

  He was quiet for many moments, staring at her tortured face and feeling somehow that his answer would mean the difference between life and death.

  “I won’t tell anyone I saw you, but you have to tell me where you're going.”

  Her eyes snapped open and she peered at him with intense brown eyes. “I'll be here a day or two, but I don't know where I'll go from there.”

  He accepted that and nodded curtly. “Don't worry, Hope, your secret is safe with me.”

  He watched her walk away, staring until she got to a little gray Toyota Camry. He had the distinct feeling she wasn’t sure whether she could trust him at all because she looked back at him, saw him staring at her and hesitated before opening the door. He didn’t turn away until she’d driven off.

  When Brennan plopped into the driver's side of Jennifer's car, he ignored the vexed look she gave him. He took an enormous bite out of his already half-eaten bar of chocolate and started the engine.

  “Where have you been?” she asked.

  He thought, and not for the first time in the past days, that her voice was very shrill and annoying.

  “I went to the bathroom.” he answered, in an equally nasty tone.

  Jennifer glowered at him a moment, then pulled her magazine from the bag and settled into her seat. “You could have come to tell me, then at least I could have gotten this to pass the time.”

  Bren sped off rapidly, forcing her to reach over and grab the door for balance. “If you weren't so lazy, you could have come and found me yourself instead of sitting here as if I'm at your beck-and-call.”

  “Beck-and-call? What's wrong with you, Brennan?”

  He harrumphed and began to unwrap another bar. “I'm just tired. Why don't you try to get some sleep?”

  “You should stop eating all of that candy. I think that's what makes you so irritable.”

  He did not reply to that, just continued eating his chocolate. Looking at the speedometer, he saw that his speed was well over the legal limit, but at the moment he didn’t care. All he wanted right now was to get away from Jennifer.

  The past week had started out well enough, the two of them caught up in the romance of taking a vacation together. Yet as the days went on, Brennan found that living in close quarters with Jenny was like playing tug-of-war with a selfish child. She wanted things her way, and there was no compromising. Unfortunately, he was just as stubborn as she and he spent the last two and a half days of the holiday either in brooding silence or in a loud argument.

  He glanced over at her sulking face. She looked back at him through icy blue eyes and jerked her seat back, covering her face with her arm. It was at that moment that he decided things were really over between the two of them.

  A short-lived pang of guilt shot through him because at the moment he was more concerned for Hope than he was for the end of his relationship with Jenny. He quickly consoled himself with the thought that she would be more devastated about “being broken up with” than the fact that he was not in love with her. Appearance was everything to her.

  Putting his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend out of his mind, he wondered where Hope was right now and from what it was she was hiding. By the look of her tonight, her situation was critical. His memories of her were of bright brown eyes and a ready smile, but tonight those eyes were red and wore dark circles underneath. She had obviously been terrified by the fact that he had seen her.

  They hadn’t seen each other in years. Her choice, not his. He missed her more often than not. A memory of her could be conjured by the most trivial of things. Over breakfast just a few days ago, he was reminded of how she ate her pancakes by moving them to the top edge of the plate so they wouldn’t get soggy in the syrup. Even now, the thought brought a smile to his face. Long time friend, on and off again girlfriend, and almost lover: Hope was planted in him somewhere, surfacing and then burying herself on whim.

  He couldn’t imagine what she could have gotten herself into, but he had no doubt that the dilemma was not her own. Hope never failed to take on other person's problems, and he had a feeling that the mother of that baby was at the root of things.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Kidnapper Presumed Lost at Sea” read the headline of the Wednesday morning newspaper, and Brennan caught himself nearly laughing at her cleverness.

  Port La Pina — Hope Sheffield, the woman accused of allegedly kidnapping nine month old Michelle Taggart from her grandparent’s home last week, is believed to have drowned last Sunday, along with the missing infant, officials said. Authorities suspect Sheffield stole her uncle’s yacht Friday night. The vessel was discovered adrift off the coast of Louisiana. A search on board uncovered several of Sheffield’s belongings, the infant’s clothing and some cash.

  Michelle Taggart was discovered missing on Saturday morning by her grandparents Harold and Genevieve Taggert. The Taggarts were given custody of their grandchild three weeks ago after her biological mother, Justine Taggart, was sentenced to prison for manslaughter.

  According to sources close to the investigation, Sheffield left a note at the home of Mark Terrance, a finance officer with Flannery and Trump believed to be a close friend of Sheffield’s, detailing her plans to kidnap the infant. She also stole several thousand dollars of cash from his home. In her letter to Terrance, Sheffield made explicit accusations of child abuse against Harold Taggart.

  “Terrance?” Bren asked himself. “Now where do I know him?”

  His telephone suddenly rang, and he tossed the paper aside, glaring at the phone in annoyance. He knew it was most likely Jennifer. He had deposited his soon-to-be ex-girlfriend on her doorstep early that morning, saying very little. She had already called once, but he had put her off because he was in too much of a hurry to get by his office for the past week's newspapers.

  He waited for the phone to stop ringing and the chime indicating a voice mail to sound, and then he grabbed the phone to retrieve the message.

  “Brennan, I know I made you angry last night, but I hope I can make it up to you with dinner tonight. Afterwards, I promise to make you forget that we ever quarreled. I love you. Please call me when you get in.”

  Sighing through his teeth in vexation, he erased the message. It was then that the memory of Mark Terrance surfaced in his mind.

  Hope had been working her way through college when she was a temp in Mark Terrance’s office. Later, she went to work for another firm in the same building as a technical writer. Through the years, he knew she and Terrance had become close; at one time, Brennan had even suspected they were intimate.

  He pulled up his laptop and searched the man’s name. After a few false links, he finally found a residential listing and called the number.

  “Mrs. Terrance?” he asked when a woman answered the phone.

  “If this is another reporter, we're not—”

  “No, I am—was a friend of Hope's. Is Mr. Terrance home?”

  The woman took a moment to answer, and he suspected she was trying to decide whether he was telling the truth or not.

  “He's at work. Can I take a message?”

  “No, uhm, could you give me the number to his office?”

  Another minute of silence. “You had better not be a reporter or some crank caller.”

  He decided to play on her sympathy to get an answer. Trying to sound distraught, he murmured, “Please, Mrs
. Terrance, believe me. I just want to talk to someone who was close to her. Can't you understand that?”

  He heard her sigh long and hard, then sniffle as if she were crying. She spoke so softly when she gave him the telephone number that he almost didn’t hear her.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Terrance.” he told her, before hanging up and to call Terrance’s office.

  “I need to speak to Mr. Terrance.”

  “Who's calling?” the secretary asked suspiciously.

  “Brennan Rawley.”

  “Is he expecting a call from you?” she asked and Bren knew they must be getting many calls from reporters here, too.

  “No, just tell him that I’m a friend of Hope's.”

  While Brennan waited, he said a silent prayer that the man would take his call.

  “This is Mark Terrance.”

  “Mr. Terrance, I'm Brennan, a friend of Hope's.”

  “I know.”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “What would we have to talk about?”

  Brennan thought a moment. “I have some things of hers that I thought you might want. I realize you two were close.”

  Mark took a moment. “Why don't we meet somewhere? Any suggestions?”

  “Why not my house in an hour?”

  “Fine, I know where you live.”

  Brennan was shocked. “How—”

  “Hope checked up on you often. Always feared you'd get yourself into some kind of trouble. I went along with her once.”

  Brennan didn’t say anything else, and seconds later he heard the phone click. Slowly he put it back on the receiver and gave a half-laugh, half-sigh.

  “She checked up on me.” He smiled, leaning back in his chair.

  Hope's expression did not falter when she entered his apartment and saw him, his face bruised and sprinkled with a growth of dark blond hair. She tossed her purse onto the couch, then moved to the kitchen and gathered a wet towel and some ice. Without a word, she grabbed his hand and pulled him to the couch, forcing him to sit.