Beverly Bird - In The Line Of Fire

Danny Gates

Former henchman with the Mercado gang, Danny served his time in jail and wants a brand-new life, helping troubled teens avoid a life of crime. But when a beautiful lady cop steals his heart, Danny’s in danger of breaking his parole—and breaking his heart!

Molly French

Assigned to the LSCC bomb task force, ambitious police officer Molly French knew she could crack the case in no time. But that was before she fell head over heels for a bad boy with a smile to die for and a stint in jail! Can Molly separate business and pleasure before it’s too late?

Bobby J.

Danny befriends the sullen juvenile delinquent and convinces him to go straight. But Bobby’s mysterious employers won’t let him leave “the business” and send him to the hospital. Who is Bobby working for? What secrets could he possibly reveal?

Police Chief Benjamin Stone

A month after the Lone Star Country Club bombing, the Mission Creek Police are no closer to finding the culprits. Is someone sabotaging the investigation? Will Chief Stone ever discover the bomber’s identity?

Dear Reader,

They say that March comes in like a lion, and we’ve got six fabulous books to help you start this month off with a bang. Ruth Langan’s popular series, THE LASSITER LAW, continues with Banning’s Woman. This time it’s the Banning sister, a freshman congresswoman, whose life is in danger. And to the rescue…handsome police officer Christopher Banning, who’s vowed to get Mary Bren out of a stalker’s clutches—and into his arms.

ROMANCING THE CROWN continues with Marie Ferrarella’s The Disenchanted Duke, in which a handsome private investigator—with a strangely royal bearing—engages in a spirited battle with a beautiful bounty hunter to locate the missing crown prince. And in Linda Winstead Jones’s Capturing Cleo, a wary detective investigating a murder decides to close in on the prime suspect—the dead man’s sultry and seductive ex-wife—by pursuing her romantically. Only problem is, where does the investigation end and romance begin? Beverly Bird continues our LONE STAR COUNTRY CLUB series with In the Line of Fire, in which a policewoman investigating the country club explosion must team up with an ex-mobster who makes her pulse race in more ways than one. You won’t want to miss RaeAnne Thayne’s second book in her OUTLAW HARTES miniseries, Taming Jesse James, in which reformed bad-boy-turned-sheriff Jesse James Harte puts his life—not to mention his heart—on the line for lovely schoolteacher Sarah MacKenzie. And finally, in Keeping Caroline by Vickie Taylor, a tragedy pushes a man back toward the wife he’d left behind—and the child he never knew he had.

Enjoy all of them! And don’t forget to come back next month when the excitement continues in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

Yours,

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

www.millsandboon.co.uk

has lived in several places in the United States, but she is currently back where her roots began on an island in New Jersey. Her time is devoted to her family and her writing. She is the author of numerous romance novels, both contemporary and historical. Beverly loves to hear from readers. You can write to her at P.O. Box 350, Brigantine, NJ 08203.

For Don, still titling and still inspiring…

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

It was raining hard in Mission Creek, South Texas.

It wasn’t the general, impotent misting that he’d come to accept as a squall during his formative years here, Danny Gates thought, as he stood on the concrete sidewalk of Main Street for the first time in six years. That sort of rain would have been a kind of “welcome home, boy.” This rain was hard and punishing. It slid down the back of his neck, a cold finger trailing memories, most of them of the freedom he’d enjoyed years ago.

He started to pull up the collar of his jacket, then he remembered, too, that he no longer owned one. He’d been dragged off to jail without warning on a blistering hot July afternoon. He’d been denied the bail that would have allowed him a window of time to get his affairs in order. As a result, almost everything he’d owned back then was gone now.

Danny took a step off the curb. A glaring yellow taxi pushed toward him through heavy traffic, and he started to wave it down. He aborted the gesture just in time to shove his hand into his jeans pocket and pull out a few crinkled bills. He had six dollars and some change left of the money that the state of Texas had given him as a parting gift. Not enough for cab fare to his mother’s home out on the poor end of Gulf Road—it wouldn’t have been enough six years ago.

Danny swore aloud. His brown eyes darkened dangerously in the direction of the driver as the car approached. His expression obviously warned the cabbie not to pick that man up after all, because the yellow car sped on.

He’d have to work on that, Danny thought, rubbing a hand over his jaw as though to erase the expression.

He started to walk, turning off Main Street, leaving Lone Star County’s probation offices behind. He didn’t even dare stick his thumb out as he would have done as a kid. Hitchhiking was considered a minor crime in most places, and Danny suspected that Mission Creek was probably one of them. Any ridiculous infraction now could get his parole revoked.

He was an ex-mobster and an ex-con. He accepted responsibility for the first if not the second. He trudged on, toward whatever fate had in store for him in this second chance at life.

On Monday morning Molly French overslept.

Part of that could be blamed on the really good pinot noir she’d uncorked last night after her shift had ended—a sort of quiet celebration here on her bed with an old movie and a bag of tortilla chips. Unfortunately, her shift had ended at midnight, and that celebration had taken her into the wee hours of the morning. The rain that had started at dawn hadn’t wakened her; it had just lulled her into a deeper, dreamless sleep. Thanks to her little party-for-one, she’d forgotten to set her alarm before she’d dozed off.

“Damn it.” She pushed the comforter back and sat up in bed, scraping chocolate-brown corkscrews of hair out of her eyes. The curls tumbled back again as soon as she let them go. Because there was no help for it, she levered her legs over the side of the bed and went in search of a headband.

She found one on the floor where she’d tossed it last night when the stupid heroine in the movie had stood there screaming at the sight of a Martian. Molly distinctly remembered shouting, “Shoot him, shoot him!” and ripping the headband off to throw it at the television in disgust when the bimbo had only stood there with her laser weapon pointed at the floor. “She did not deserve what she got,” Molly muttered, shoving the headband on again. The bimbo had gotten the hero—long, tall and sexy with a fierce glare that could have slain the Martian on its own. It had probably been her large breasts that had won him over, she thought. When a woman had large breasts, it was Molly’s experience that she really didn’t have to actually do much of anything.

She turned on her heel and ended up facing the cheval mirror in one corner of her bedroom. Her curls were fastened back now, but beyond the braided leather headband, they shot straight up from her head as though protesting the confinement. Her favorite oversize sweatshirt—emblazoned with the words TEXAS A & M—stopped high on her thighs. Her legs were good, trim and strong, but her breasts were definitely not large.

“My cross to bear,” she murmured. She picked up the chip bag and the wineglass from her bedside table and carried them into the kitchen, glancing at the clock on the wall.

It was just past eleven. She liked to get to the rec center no later than two o’clock, but she was going to be late today. She’d found out last night that she’d been appointed to the task force that had been organized to investigate the bombing at the Lone Star Country Club last month. That was what she’d been celebrating.

Appointed might be a somewhat inaccurate description of what had actually gone down, Molly admitted, heading into the bathroom. She had badgered the chief of police shamelessly. She’d written him four or five memos and sneaked them into his In box. Okay, maybe the first three had actually resembled memos. Maybe the last couple had been outright pleas. Either way, Chief Stone had finally relented.

She’d had to promise him that she would work the task force on her own time, that it wouldn’t interfere with her regular patrol duties. It was the only way she’d been able to overcome his reluctance to appoint her. But Molly had never had a problem with working hard, and this time she had a plan. She’d been with the Mission Creek Police Department for nearly two years now and it was time to start moving up the ranks. She had the experience. She’d had almost ten years in with the Laredo Police Department before she’d made the jump to Mission Creek. She’d known she would lose her seniority and would have to start back at the bottom of the totem pole here, but two years of wallowing in the trenches was enough.

She wanted her detective’s shield, and she wanted it now. So she figured she’d just crack the case that the rest of the task force had been chasing their tails on for the past month. Then she’d accept the accolades with a small, polite smile. Then Chief Stone would realize what an incredible asset she was to his department, and he would rush at her with hands outstretched, that sweet little shield nestled in his palms.

“Nowhere to go now but up, baby.” Molly took her headband off again and yanked her sweatshirt over her head. She turned on the shower. She considered that she really ought to do something about this habit of talking to herself, but it just wasn’t high on her list of priorities. She stepped over the lip of the tub…and yelped.

Molly lunged for the steaming shower nozzle and turned it aside so she could readjust the water temperature. The task force was the opportunity she’d waited for, but what good would it do her if she scalded the skin off her bones before she even started?

Fifteen minutes later she was aiming the blow dryer at her curls and ruthlessly attacking them with an industrial-size hairbrush. The result was a rich, full sweep of gloriously straight hair that just skimmed her collar bone. This, she knew, would last until she left the rec center. She’d get four hours out of the do, tops…if she didn’t sweat. The bright side was that a scrunchie and her uniform cap would take the edge off the worst of the corkscrews from four o’clock until midnight, her regular patrol shift.

She hesitated at her closet. What did an off-duty cop wear to pop up in a task-force war room and share her brilliance? Jeans, she decided. Nice jeans. And a classic, V-neck white sweater. She’d look casual but ready for anything.

With that decision made, she was out the door in ten minutes. She lived in a ground-floor apartment on the north edge of town. She kept three separate locks on her door. Not that she owned a great deal worth stealing—she’d sold most of what she’d owned when she’d made the move from Laredo. But she’d been harassing Mission Creek’s more unsavory element for the better part of two years now in the line of duty. She’d slapped a few handcuffs on people who would not forget it in a hurry, and it wouldn’t take much effort to discover where she lived alone.