by Anne Calhoun
Titles by Anne Calhoun
UNCOMMON PLEASURE
UNCOMMON PASSION
THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP
Published by the Penguin Group
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This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.
Copyright © 2013 by Anne Calhoun.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
HEAT and the HEAT design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA).
eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-59551-0
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Calhoun, Anne.
Uncommon passion / by Anne Calhoun.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-425-26290-0
1. Single women—Fiction. 2. Police—Special weapons and tactics units—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3603.A43867U52 2013
813'.6—dc23
2013006079
PUBLISHING HISTORY
Heat trade paperback edition / September 2013
Cover design by Jason Gill.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagition or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
Contents
Titles by Anne Calhoun
Title Page
Copyright
Acknowledgements
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
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I probably could write books without Robin Rotham, but I’m so very, very grateful I don’t have to. I must also thank Jill Shavis, Alison Kent, and Kristin Gabriel (who helped fit the puzzle pieces together after I almost stood her up at Starbucks). Megan Mulry talked me off ledges and shared a fabulous week in the West Village when the book was done.
My editor, Leis Pederson, gave me room to roam. My agent, Laura Bradford, guided me from the very beginning. Thank you both for your continuing support.
This one’s for Robin Rotham.
As always, for Mark.
Chapter One
When a big black pickup truck zoomed up and parked in the fire zone in front of Silent Circle Farm’s educational center, Rachel Hill got to her feet. Latecomers to the silent auction and boutique who feared the downpour threatening to break free of the clouds had been parking in the fire zone all evening. “I’ve got it this time,” she said.
Jess heard her despite the auctioneer’s risqué banter and the audience’s laughter, and nodded. Rachel swiftly bagged a customer’s purchases—produce, baked goods, four felted pot holders, and a jar of the farm’s honey—then left Jess alone at the cashier’s table. She ducked under the edge of the tent, heading toward the truck.
“Excuse me,” she called when the driver’s door opened. “You can’t park there.”
A big, booted foot landed on the gravel as if she hadn’t spoken. Thunder rumbled, ominous and slow, through the cool, dark night. When it faded, she raised her voice, because perhaps he hadn’t heard her. “Sir. You can’t park there.”
Without a word the man slid from the driver’s seat and strode toward her. Lightning from the late spring electrical storm split the sky, sound and fury signifying nothing, as her father used to say. In the midday bright moment, Rachel took in details as he strode across the parking lot. Broad shoulders and long legs. Black lace-up boots. Navy cargo pants. A navy polo stretched over broad shoulders and muscled arms. White circular embroidery on his left pectoral. Gun on his right hip.
Even to Rachel, who’d had exactly zero encounters with police officers or sheriff’s deputies, the details signaled law enforcement.
White teeth flashed in his tanned face as he tapped a badge on his left hip. “Sure I can,” he said when the louder clap of thunder died away.
He glanced into the large, brightly lit tent taking up so much of the parking lot, and then back at her. His gaze skimmed the Silent Circle Farm logo on her shirt.
“You working this party?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes.”
A large crowd had gathered for the Fleeces, Greens, and Bees Organic Boutique and Bachelor Auction benefitting the Gulf Coast Harvest Co-op. The tent held two dozen tables filled with people, eating barbeque made with pork from the Tumbled Stones Farm down the road. Tables along the side wall held baskets brimming with fresh-picked produce. Only the spectacle of the bachelor auction slowed the transfer of produce and goods from the tables to the reusable grocery sacks that held little thank-you gifts for the guests, who’d paid fifty dollars a head to attend the fund-raiser.
It was a party. Rachel wondered if she’d ever find a place where she didn’t feel totally alone in a crowd of people.
“Leanne Gunderson?”
“The auctioneer?” Surprised, Rachel pointed her out, still standing in the spotlight set up to show off the bachelors. “Is there trouble?”
“Depends on how you define trouble. I’m her next piece of meat,” he said.
Rachel blinked. That glinting, edgy smile flashed on, off, then he set one hand on the gun holstered at his waist and shouldered into the crowd, the white block letters spelling POLICE clearly visible on the back of his shirt. Women eddied away from him, like he was the prow of a ship splitting the ocean, then clustered together to whisper in his wake.
At the sight of him in motion, heat smoldered deep in her belly. Drawn back into the light, she followed him into the tent and took up her place behind the cashier’s table. Jess, her roommate in the farm’s bunkhouse, rang up another customer’s purchases and Rachel carefully bagged them, though now her attention was divided. The police officer spoke to Leanne’s assistant, then joined the line of bachelors. He stood straight and tall, legs braced, arms folded across his chest.
“Why would any self-respecting woman buy a date?” Jess said between customers. “That’s the question of the night.”
Rachel could think of lots of reasons. “Are you going to bid?”
“I might,” Jess replied, her gaze fixed on the line.
The auctioneer swiped at her phone, then looked around the crowded t
ent. “Next up, folks, we have Rob Strong, owner of Silent Circle Farm. He provided the location, and the alcohol.”
That got a whoop and a round of applause from the crowd. Rob made his way into the circle of hay bales marking out the stage. Clean-shaven, with his normally shaggy blond hair somewhat tamed, he wore slacks and a button-down shirt, his belt and shoes a gleaming shade of walnut. He looked fundamentally different, something Rachel attributed to the clothes until she realized George the border collie was missing from his side.
“He’s been active in organic and community farming for the last ten years, but don’t worry. He’s not going to put you to work on your date.” The auctioneer paused. “Unless you want him to.”
Another laugh. Jess leaned forward in her seat. Rachel followed her stare and found Rob—who was watching her, not Jess. He winked. Caught off guard, she blinked and then smiled before he returned his attention to the auctioneer. Then her gaze landed on the police officer waiting his turn just outside the ring of bales.
To find him watching her as well. And unlike the little visual game of tag she, Rob, and Jess had just played, he didn’t look away when their gazes met. Rachel’s heart thudded hard against her breastbone, and heat rose in her face. His thick brown hair was closely cropped around his forehead and ears. His eyes, fringed with dark lashes and glinting a brilliant blue in the tent’s bright lights, held an awareness of her as a woman that was similar to the way Rob looked at her . . . yet somehow completely different. More masculine. Rough, with a hint of carelessness in it.
No man had ever looked at her like that, and the intensity of her reaction made her look away first.
When she dared another glance, he’d transferred that searing gaze to the auctioneer, who was in the process of opening bids on Rob. “Mr. Strong’s offering a night out in Houston that includes dinner and box seats at an Astros game. Who wants to start the bidding?”
“Five hundred,” came a voice from the back of the tent, but that figure disappeared in a flurry of bidding. Jess was in the thick of it, until the amount shot into four figures. Then she sat back in her chair and brushed dirt from her jeans as the winner pushed through the crowd to claim her prize, an exultant, victorious smile on her face. There was a whisper of bitterness in Jess’s gaze as it skimmed over the heels, the flirty sundress, the sleek hair and nails, but she congratulated the winner when Rob escorted her back to the cashier’s table.
“All right, ladies, the final bachelor of the night was supposed to be Brian Rogers, brother of our first bachelor, the Lazy R’s owner, Troy. But Brian is a member of the Galveston Police Department, and he had to work tonight so Officer Ben Harris has graciously agreed to stand in for him.”
The audience offered a round of applause that managed to be both appreciative and flirtatious at the same time. Harris walked into the circle of bales and gave the audience that flashing smile and a short nod. Rachel noted the increase in chatter, the energy spiking in the room. The object of this speculation stood in the center of the spotlight, arms folded across his chest, gaze flicking from face to face as he took in the scene.
Then that smile flicked off and on again. Rachel followed his gaze to the back of the crowd, where a dark-haired woman who’d already purchased one bachelor stood, a bottle of hard lemonade held languidly by her shoulder. A feline smile tugged at the corner of her mouth as she considered Officer Harris. Rachel looked back at the cop and saw the merest shadow of a wink flicker in his eyelid.
Rachel leaned over to Jess. “What do you think?” she asked.
Jess matched Rachel’s low tone. “I recognize him. He works security at No Limits, a bar in Galveston, and when he’s not breaking up fights in the parking lot, he’s using the uniform to get laid. Plus he’s got an honest-to-God cleft in his chin,” she said. “He’s bad news.”
So the most overtly masculine slice of humanity she’d ever seen in her life was bad news. That was good news for her.
Like most twentysomethings, Rachel had a What Now? list, but unlike other women her age, her list started with basics like get a driver’s license and get a car. She’d ticked off both items several months earlier. Once she realized how computers and smartphones ran the outside world, get a computer and get a phone had jumped to the top of the list. Find a job and find a place to live still needed some work—she was still farming, still sharing a room.
The list’s biggest items—get transcripts from state and apply to veterinary technician school—were in progress. Okay, so they were stalled. The email sat in her Drafts folder with the application attached and ready to send. Something about taking that particular step scared her. She was getting better at allowing herself to feel, which certainly helped her identify what she felt. Knowing why she felt and how to handle it was something she could only learn through experience.
Jess stood to accept payment from one of the few women in the tent not focused on Officer Harris. An envelope in her back pocket snagged on the back of the folding chair. “Oh, I almost forgot,” Jess said, then handed the envelope to Rachel. “This was in today’s mail.”
Rachel accepted the letter without comment. Yet another letter with RETURN TO SENDER written on the envelope in her father’s neat block printing. Over thirty letters written, one a week since Rachel left Elysian Fields Community of God, the isolated religious commune where she’d lived her entire life. She mailed one every Monday, three or four pages containing details about her new life, humorous anecdotes about her days at Silent Circle Farm. How she felt. Who she was becoming away from the only life she’d ever known. The ending was always the same.
I still love you, Dad. I still want to be your daughter. Please write me back.
Love, Rachel
She didn’t say she was sorry for what she’d done, because she wasn’t. Her unrepentant attitude didn’t matter, because he had yet to read a single letter, let alone write her back. She breathed through the sensation dancing along her nerves until she could name it. Rejection, identifiable by its sting and the way it halted her breathing for a second. Thirty-plus letters into her new life, and she still felt hurt. The emotion was far too familiar, the price she paid for leaving the secure world of Elysian Fields. Nothing assuaged it. She’d tried nearly everything the world had to offer: a variety of ethnic food, rich desserts saturated with sugar and chocolate, movies she’d never seen, music she’d never heard, books she’d never read. While the sensory overload occasionally distracted her, it never quite banished the sorrow of her only surviving parent’s rejection.
You rejected him first.
Rachel sat back and tuned in to the auctioneer’s banter.
“All right, ladies, I know you’re anxious to get to the shopping, but there’s one more man up for sale tonight. Dig deep into those purses to benefit Gulf Coast Harvest Co-op and all the good work they’re doing to promote organic farming in the region. Nothing better than a man in uniform.”
“Sure there is,” Officer Harris said.
Laughter rocked the tent, the switch in energy eddying at Rachel. Her body got it before her brain did. Heat trickled down her spine, then a blush flared in her cheeks. When it came to sexual innuendos, she was usually a step or two behind. She watched Officer Harris scan the women unconsciously pushing closer to the ring of hay bales, his blue eyes dancing with a private amusement, that scythe of a smile pulling at one corner of his mouth. An unbidden thought rose to the surface of her mind.
The list holds one thing the world has to offer that you haven’t tried.
“There you have it, ladies,” Leanne said smoothly. “Who’ll start the bidding for me?”
“Eight hundred,” came from the raven-haired woman in the back.
“Wow,” Jess said. Rachel had to agree. Three of the other ten bachelors had gone for less than that, including the bidder’s first prize.
“What exactly am I bidding on?”
the woman added archly.
Harris’s smile flashed through the laughter. “Does it matter?”
Heads turned, like two hundred people were watching a tennis match. “I’ll let you know afterward,” she said.
“Nine hundred,” came from another woman.
“One thousand.”
“I’ll take that thousand,” Leanne said, “but hold on a minute, ladies. Let’s find out exactly what Officer Harris is offering.”
“I’m just filling in for Troy, so I’ll follow through on whatever he set up,” Harris said. He didn’t have to lean toward the mike. His voice carried effortlessly through the tent.
Leanne glanced at her phone. “Officer Rogers offered dinner for two at Gaido’s and an evening at the Pleasure Pier.”
“Sounds great to me,” Harris said.
“And me,” the black-haired woman said. “Eleven.”
“You’ve already bought one man!” another woman called from the crowd.
“I can handle it,” she said, her gaze never wavering from Harris’s.
“I’m looking forward to it,” he said.
Rachel heard the words as clear as a bell in her head. Him. He’s perfect for what you need.
The bidding war climbed by fifties to fifteen hundred, but when flirtatious bidder upped her offer by two hundred dollars, the other woman shook her head in defeat.
“Going once,” Leanne said.
Rachel’s heart thrummed in her chest. She’d already done the hard part. A date with Officer Harris would be easy, because he’d make it easy, a rakishly charming good time from beginning to end. All she had to do was buy him.
The weight of four pages and a business envelope pressed against her back pocket. When she left, she’d never imagined her father would stay angry with her. She was his only child, the apple of his eye, and while he had every right to be angry, she’d thought after a few weeks, he would relent and at least keep the letters.
There was no going back. Officer Harris caught her eye. The smile he gave her, the smile she’d mentally dubbed his Sure I can smile, flashed at her, part mocking, part amused, part something her brain didn’t recognize but her body sure did. Heat zinged along her nerves, straight through the ball of lead in her abdomen.
