She witnessed a murder. He’s an undercover operative. When fate thrusts them together, falling in love is the key to their survival.
Trapped by her past and victimized by her present…
Adrienne Fuller doesn’t trust the law. But when a fatal wreck dumps a body in front of her, she can’t deny she witnessed a murder. Her only hope is that no one saw her.
He just blew his cover…
Zan Duncan is an undercover mole for the FBI. If he saw her, the human traffickers he works for did too. No one misses a woman with fiery red hair hiding in the bushes. She’s now a material witness and his conscience won’t let him walk away.
He’s a killer, plain and simple…
Zan says he’s an undercover FBI agent, but J. Edgar Hoover was never that hot. Zan is dark, fast and deadly, and he claims he wants to protect her. On the run and dodging bullets, she has to trust him with her safety. She doesn’t have to trust him with her heart.
Two people with issues. A killer determined to destroy them. And only one way out. Zan and Adrienne must open their hearts and trust in their love. Or die.
Excerpt for the Suspense Lovers:
She pulled on shorts and a t-shirt. A racket made her flinch—the wind against the window—but when she shifted the curtain to peer outside, not even the tree branches moved.
Her blood pounded. She was just being paranoid. Her mental fatigue weighed heavy on her and her thought patterns were going way too negative. Tonka hadn’t budged. If Tonka hadn’t heard anything—
The bathroom door crashed open. Tonka bolted.
Adrenaline, thick and heavy, infused her. The man from last night loomed in the doorway. Her knees buckled, but she didn’t allow room for weakness. She dove for the shotgun, stumbled over the dirty clothes pile, and managed to catch herself on the corner of the counter so that she didn’t fall or, worse, hit her head.
He held up his hands as if to ward off blows. Good idea. Find something to throw at him. She reached for her hair straightener. Strong, heavy metal. Maybe it would do some damage. If only it had been plugged in and burning hot.
“Didn’t mean to scare you.”
His voice, a refined edge of rasp, incited horror. Scared was an understatement.
This man had killed someone last night, and now he was here to kill her. Her throat clogged with a silent scream. Black shadows hazed her mind, an orbit of acceptance and denial, accession and refusal, fight and surrender.
She’d fight.
She yanked the straightener from the shelf and aimed it at his face. He shifted to avoid the blow. It thwacked on the wall and slid to the floor. She grabbed a makeup jar to throw at him. Again, he sidestepped her blow. Why had she kept the shotgun too far from reach?
“Please, woman. I’m not going to kill you. Obviously I should have planned this better.”
He’s dead. His voice, so gut-wrenching, ripped out her confidence. Her body trembled. She hurled a lotion bottle at his head. It smacked the wall and fell, spewing its contents all over the floor. Sweat pooled on her forehead, her wet hair channeling water droplets down her shirt.
She clenched the counter behind her as she leaned to reach the gun.
“I’m a cop. Please, I’m not going to hurt you. But I think I was followed, and whoever followed me probably does intend on hurting you. Please don’t attract any more attention.”
The bathroom was too big. Why did it have to be so big? The gun so far away? She hurled a shampoo bottle and was pleased when it hit his chest. Still, he didn’t move. She lunged for the shotgun and managed to aim it at him without dropping it, even if it wasn’t cocked.
He kept his arms up. “Put the weapon away. I’m not going to hurt you, but someone is coming who will.”
Her pulse beat at her temples. Her legs weakened, but she held on, refusing to allow herself to crumble.
“Don’t you hear that?” he asked when the front door slammed and footsteps pounded against the floor, stopping and starting in heavy exploratory drifts. Whoever was in her home was looking for something. Probably her.
But this man was not a cop. And if he was, she definitely couldn’t trust him. Not after what she’d seen last night.
“I’m sure it’s my boyfriend,” she lied. Her voice was a high-pitched whine, and she swallowed. Nervousness was not the way to win this battle.
“You don’t have a boyfriend.”
“Yes. I do. He’s big, and strong. He likes guns. And he has a dog even bigger.”
The man blinked, his sneer not one of amusement. “No, you don’t. Come on, I don’t want to hurt you. Or scare you. But I don’t plan on dying today so as long as you don’t, you need to come with me.”
It sounded like a bulldozer was destroying her home. But she couldn’t go with this killer. She’d seen him. He wasn’t the one who’d been driving, who’d hurled Bill Dane into that tree, but he had been there, in the car following afterward, like a horror movie becoming real.
She remembered that frame, that hair. That walk. Although she hadn’t seen his dark brown eyes, now they were familiar, as if they’d flamed bright out of a blackened night and branded her with only a look.
His jaw clenched. “My God, woman. You’ll kill us both.”
Excerpt for the Romance Lovers:
Zan picked up the brush and brushed her hair. Her scalp tingled, warm and cold. Her spine melted, an ignition switch left on to idle in her blood. Heat pooled in her center, and she curled her nails into her fingers as if to stop from acting on her desire to turn around and kiss him. Tenderness and something oh so much more welled within her as she met his gaze in the mirror. Her lips parted, breath hitched as she sucked down her urges.
Why not turn around and let him take her?
“If you aren’t ready for this, I can run to town myself,” he said. “Maybe we can even find you a wig or something.”
She shook her head. He dropped the brush and stepped away. She closed her eyes and saw explosions. Opened them, grabbed a chunk of her hair, and hacked. A soft cry escaped her lips, and she bit down on the rising agony. The scissors snagged on her hair. Anything would have been better than kitchen shears, but she continued cutting.
As pieces of her hair fell away, pieces of her life fell away. Memories. Hopes. Futures. Nothing good was left anymore.
Finished, she sank to the floor and huddled in the middle of her hair, tears finally escaping in uncontrollable waves. Zan gathered her in his arms.
She cried, uncontrollable tears erupting into sniveling sobs. The heaviness grew deeper, her lungs tightening and siphoning out her breath. For a moment, the despair seemed never to dissipate. She cried for what was, everything lost, and what would never be again.
She hated to cry. Crying was a loss of control, an open wound being ripped apart again, a heartbreak with means of no escape. She’d cried too much in her past.
But the tears eased. She forced control back into her world. If nothing else, she could control those tears. She could focus on what must be done. Focus on what needed to be done.
She sniffled. “I was saving my hair for my niece,” she explained, the blubbering tears agitating her words. “She was diagnosed with cancer when she was six, not long after my mom. She’s now eleven and perfectly healthy, and her hair is longer than mine. Once she got back from France, we were going to go together to get it cut and donate it to Locks of Love.”
Zan patted her back, but his touch did not reassure her. “We can put it in a bag and save it here, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to donate it right now. Just in case the bad guys find out about it.”
She kept her face buried in his shoulder, not ready to face the world or see the remnants of her destruction. If she didn’t have to look, maybe she could convince herself this hadn’t happened.
She missed her friends, her family, Tonka. She desperately wanted to talk to her sister. She felt like she and Zan were the only two people left in the world after an apocalypse and she’d wanted to go into town with him to see that the world was still a decent place to live. But she wasn’t sure if it was worth the debt she had to pay.
Zan pulled away, as if realizing she needed to be alone a moment. “I’ll find some bags in the kitchen.”
She nodded and turned away, scooping up the hair in her hands. He returned with baggies and helped her scoop her hair and zip them up, then went into the bedroom and stored them in her closet. They washed their hands, and Adrienne avoided looking in the mirror.
“It’s pretty,” Zan said. “Even short, you have beautiful hair.”
A choked laugh escaped her lips and her eyes wandered to meet his in the mirror. When she caught a glimpse of her hair, she pivoted around, tightening her lips against the onslaught of grief.
Zan placed his forehead on hers and wrapped his arms around her. She wished he’d hold her like this forever. Maybe then she could get through this grief. He held her for several seconds, minutes, she wasn’t sure how long. His heartbeat quickened against her chest. His body tightened against her. Their lips hovered inches from each other. She drank in his breath, warm against her cheek, and then lifted her lips to await a long sought after kiss.
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