Crazy Sweet
Page 21
She wasn’t sure if she should or not. Neither was she sure she wanted to meet anybody who might be living in such a place, but that was exactly what she’d come to do: to find a man named Quinn Younger and drag him back to Boulder, Colorado.
Quinn Younger was the only lead she had left in her grandfather’s disappearance, and if he knew anything, she was going to make damn sure he told the Boulder Police. The police never had believed that Dr. Wilson McKinney had disappeared. Since his retirement from the University of Colorado in Boulder, he’d made a habit of spending his summers moseying around the badlands of the western United States, and according to the results of their investigation, this year was no different.
But it was different. This year Wilson hadn’t checked in with her from Vernal or Grand Junction, the way he always did, and he hadn’t arrived in Casper, Wyoming, on schedule. She’d checked. It was true he was a bit absentminded, but he’d never gone two weeks without calling home, and he would never, ever have missed his speaking engagement at the Tate Museum in Casper.
Never.
CRAZY COOL
ON SALE NOW
“She’s sizzling hot, he’s icy cool . . . they’re fire and ice, and crazy in love.”
Thirteen years ago Christian Hawkins saved her life—only to spend two years in jail for a crime he didn’t commit. Now it’s déjà vu all over again when he rescues Kat Dekker from an explosion that rips through a Denver art auction. This time Christian plans on keeping a close eye on her until he figures out why somebody wants to kill her.
Kat hasn’t forgotten the passionate summer nights in Christian’s arms before everything went wrong. Now, the bullets are flying again and somehow Christian has become her sexy bodyguard. But staying out of danger is tough for two people who are this hot, crazy, and in love with each other.
“TWENTY BUCKS says the guy in the Armani suit is hired muscle.”
Hired muscle? Katya Dekker looked up from her auction catalogue.
“Where?” She glanced around the outdoor amphitheater, her brow furrowing. She knew what her secretary, Alex Zheng, meant. She knew exactly what he meant, and she could only think of one reason for there to be any “hired muscle” at an art auction: her.
The thought only deepened her scowl.
She followed Alex’s gaze across the delicately lit nighttime grounds of the Denver Botanic Gardens, searching through the crowd and the two dozen canopied tropical huts that had been erected for the dining comfort of the evening’s guests. She found the “hired muscle” on the edge of a group of people next to the caterer’s tent.
He was good, discreet, but she could spot a security detail at a hundred yards—and he had “high-priced bodyguard” written all over him, very high priced.
“What do you think of the suit?” Alex said. “I almost bought that one myself.”
“No way, babe. Too structured. Too conservative,” she told him, her gaze going over the man in the distance. There was nothing particularly remarkable about him, other than his choirboy looks, his shock of silky brown hair, and the alertness of his every move—the dead giveaway. He was quartering the gardens with his gaze, looking for God only knew what. Fund-raising art auctions hosted by the Denver Botanic Gardens were not hotbeds of intrigue.
CRAZY WILD
ON SALE NOW
“Danger this hot will break every rule of engagement.”
With her prim librarian looks, Cordelia “Cody” Stark doesn’t look like a nuclear arms broker or the world’s most dangerous woman, but nabbing her is Special Forces operative Creed Rivera’s latest mission. That is, until a trio of thugs show up and he’s forced to play hero . . .
Armed with secrets that could ignite a global inferno, Cody was already running out of places to hide—now a hotshot government agent has blown her cover. Trusting the hero who just saved her life is not an option, but resisting him is something else entirely. But when the bullets start to fly, a man and a woman running out of time are gearing up for the wildest adventure of their lives . . . .
“TIMING IS going to be everything,” Creed said, watching the two-and-a-half-ton truck grind its way up the switchbacks on the steep mountain road below them.
Next to him, Kid Chaos Chronopolous let out a short, humorless laugh.
Creed lowered the binoculars and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. Behind them, the sun was setting on the high peaks of the Peruvian Andes. A light mist of rain turning to snow filled the air.
That was fine with Creed. He preferred his revenge cold.
They’d been in Peru for three weeks, traveling the desolate backcountry of the Cordillera range, roughing it out of an old army Jeep with no windshield, no doors, and no roof—waiting for Castano and Garcia to make a run for Puerto Blanco, the rebels’ last refuge.
They weren’t going to make it.
Kid reached for the binoculars and set them to his eyes. “Two guys in the cab.”
“Castano riding shotgun,” Creed said, pulling his black stocking cap lower on his head, then reaching around and tying his hair back at the base of his neck.
“Garcia at the wheel,” Kid confirmed. He was unshaven, his skin burned brown by the sun, his dark hair long and shaggy from his months on the trail. He and Creed had chased Castano and Garcia from the jungles of Colombia and across the fetid swamps of the Amazon, like hounds on the scent, down the length of Peru.
But this is where it ended, here in the wild mountains in the wind and the snow.
CRAZY KISSES
ON SALE NOW
“You can’t turn down the heat on a mission this hot.”
Professional soldier Kid Chronopolous moves in stealth and shadow to take out the world’s deadliest threats. After barely surviving a hair-raising mission in South America, Kid comes home to Panama City for some R & R . . . and finds a bikini bottom that can belong to only one woman.
Nikki McKinney has never forgiven Kid for vanishing from her life after the mind-blowing passion they shared. Now he’s back, as she’s rising to the top of the local art scene. But her safe, sheltered world is about to be rocked. There’s a bounty on Kid’s head—and his enemies don’t care if they take him dead or alive. With dangerous people gunning for him, Kid’s got Nikki running for cover . . . and right into his arms. Keeping her safe is his latest mission. Keeping their hands off each other is out of the question . . .
THERE WAS a bikini bottom in his bathroom.
Curious as hell, Kid picked the tiny scrap of green-and-purple cotton up off the towel bar and turned it over in his hand.
It wasn’t unusual for him to come home and find somebody crashing at his place. He’d known the instant he walked in that someone was there. The house in Panama City had belonged to his brother, and J.T. had always had an open-door policy.
But the bikini bottom was unusual.
Combat boots, surfboards, cases of beer—that’s what he usually found. Not outrageously green bikini bottoms with purple palm fronds printed on them.
It was enough to make a guy think.
About sex.
And about death.
He swore softly and put the swimsuit back on the towel bar. J.T. had been the kind of guy who took care of people, a lot of people. Some of them had been women—mostly friends, but a couple of ex-lovers had shown up over the last few months. Kid didn’t think he could face one of them tonight, and have to be the one to tell them J.T. was dead. He still felt about half dead himself.
CRAZY LOVE
ON SALE NOW
“Protect. Defend. Resist. Giving in to temptation has never been more dangerous.”
Government operative Dylan Hart has survived some of the riskiest missions known to man. But no nemesis could have prepared the Special Defense Forces commander for the newest member of his team Skeeter Bang. A street-smart, leather-clad heartbreaker, Skeeter has been recruited to aid Dylan’s latest mission: steal a top-secret file and bury it before all hell breaks loose.
Teaming up with a
man who may be the last bona fide defender of the free world is a risk Skeeter’s ready to take—until a black-tie Washington soiree erupts in a bullet-flying free-for-all. Now Skeeter’s got danger on her trail and Dylan arousing every bad-boy fantasy she ever had. Being in the wrong place at the wrong time is about to plunge one man and woman right into the sizzling line of fire . . . .
PINK.
Sweater.
Short.
Skirt.
Long.
Legs.
Dylan Hart flipped his cell phone shut and rubbed his hand over his forehead, trying not to stare at the girl on the other side of the office. She was out to slay him, his nemesis, the bane of his existence—Skeeter Bang, five feet eight inches of blond bombshell leaning over a computer.
Jail.
Bait.
She knocked a cigarette out of the pack of Mexican Faros on the desk and struck a match off her belt.
“Put that out,” he ordered. She knew there was no smoking in the office.
“Make me,” she said, then stuck the Faro between her lips and inhaled, holding the match to the end of the cigarette. A billow of smoke came out of her mouth when she exhaled.
Make me?
Dylan was the boss of 738 Steele Street in Denver, Colorado, second in command of Special Defense Force, SDF, a group of tough-as-nails black ops shadow warriors who specialized in doing the Department of Defense’s dirty work.
Make me?
“Put out the damn cigarette, Skeeter,” the man working at the last computer said. “And if you bend over that desk one more time, I’m going to paddle you.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
TARA JANZEN lives in Colorado with her husband, children, and two dogs, and is now at work on her next novel. Of the mind that love truly is what makes the world go ’round, she can be contacted at www.tarajanzen.com. Happy reading!
ALSO BY TARA JANZEN
Crazy Hot
Crazy Cool
Crazy Wild
Crazy Kisses
Crazy Love
CRAZY
SWEET
DANGEROUS.
A sheer red silk muscle shirt didn’t leave anything to the imagination, especially not the size, the shape, or the delicacy of the black lace bra she was wearing underneath it.
He bought her a lot of black lace.
Her worn denim jeans had silver studs running down the right leg and were so tight, they should have come with a warning label. A small chamois fanny pack was slung around her waist. Pale ostrich-leather cowboy boots covered her feet. Stacked heels, pointed toes, and worn vamps, they’d seen a lot of long days in a dozen Third World hellholes over the last two years—the two years since Red Dog had created herself from a blank slate and a heart hungry for revenge. She was five feet, five inches of pure, unadulterated, ass-kicking girl, and every day she pushed him. She pushed him hard.
Sometimes he wondered if either of them would survive the trip she was on.
“I’d sure take a piece of that,” the man at the table continued, his voice hoarse in a way Travis understood only too well—which did nothing to improve his mood.
“Forget it,” another guy said. “That one would just as soon gut you as fu—”
Travis reached back, grabbed the last man by the scruff of his collar, and hauled him around until they were face-to-face.
“Don’t,” he said, very clearly, very succinctly, and very . . . very calmly.
Rising from his bar stool, he pulled the guy’s face even closer to his.
“Don’t say it. Don’t think it.”
Fear flashed through the man’s eyes, and Travis understood that, too. It had been a hard two years since the night Red Dog had lost her first life and started on her second, and those two years, on the front line with Special Defense Force, a group of black ops warriors based in Denver, Colorado, had changed him. Only one person ever mistook him for anything close to an angel anymore.
Letting go of the man’s shirt, he started toward the end of the bar and the woman standing there, waiting for him.
Gillian Pentycote—that had been her name before Dr. Souk, a maniacal physician in the employ of a drug lord, had shot her full of an experimental “truth serum” called XT7 and stolen her memories. By the time Travis and his teammate, Skeeter B. Hart, had gotten to her, there had been nothing left but her screams and four images burned into her brain—only four.
His steps faltered for the barest fraction of a second, less than a heartbeat’s worth of pause.
CRAZY SWEET
A Dell Book / November 2006
Published by
Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2006 by Tara Janzen
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Dell is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
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www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-440-33640-2
v3.0