Merline Lovelace - Hot As Ice

Steeling herself, she fought the urge to lift a hand and stroke his cheek. He hadn’t asked for comfort or condolences, and probably wouldn’t appreciate either.

“Why don’t we sit down, Major Stone?”

She took a single step, only to come up short as two palms slapped the wall beside her head. His arms caged her. His body formed an immovable wall.

“I want a few answers first.”

“All right. But just so you know, this type of primitive behavior went the way of the poodle skirt.”

Stone remained silent for so long Diana had to fight the urge to fidget. He was too close and too…too male. To her surprise and considerable annoyance, her skin tingled under her silk long johns, and the queerest sensation gripped her belly.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

spent twenty-three years as an air force officer, serving tours at the Pentagon and at bases all over the world before she began a new career as a novelist.

Be sure to watch for Once a Hero, the next book in the exciting new CODE NAME: DANGER series, feturing Jack Carstairs, code name: Renegade, coming soon in Silhouette Intimate Moments.

Merline enjoys hearing from readers and can be reached by e-mail via Internet through Harlequin’s Web site.

This is for my dad, who flew high and flew proud.

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

“I hear her!”

The figure swathed from head to foot in bright orange Extreme Cold Weather gear whooped with joy. “She’s punching through!”

His companion spun in a circle, searching the endless, unbroken surface of the polar ice cap. A dozen different shades of white dazzled his eye, shielded though they were by protective goggles. The blue white of the ice. The downy, cloud-soft drifts of glistening snow. The hazy, gray white of the sky that merged with the horizon.

“I don’t hear anything!”

“Listen!”

The frustrated listener threw back his hood. He risked losing an ear to biting wind that dropped the outside temperature to almost thirty below but was too eager to care at that moment. Then he, too, gave a shout of glee as a series of sharp cracks rifled through the air.

Suddenly, a scant forty yards away, the ice cap erupted. Huge white slabs pushed upward. Groaning, they rose straight into the air before toppling over with a crash. A moment later, the tip of a black conning tower poked through the crack.

“How do you like that! She’s right on target.”

Both men grinned. Sophisticated navigational equipment had guided the USS Hawkbill from Hawaii, but good old-fashioned muscle power had provided her surfacing site…a large X shoveled in the ice.

The two oceanographers raised their hands and clapped fur-lined mitts in a jubilant high five. After months at the remote laboratory one hundred and sixty-five miles north of Point Barrow, Alaska, they were ready—more than ready!—for a fresh infusion of supplies and outside conversation. Still grinning, they watched as the submarine’s conning tower rose a foot. Two feet. Ten.

The hulking body of the sub appeared, rolling great chunks of ice off its sides. When the hatch atop the conning tower opened and a hooded sailor appeared, the two men rushed forward.

“Boy, are we glad to see you!” the senior scientist shouted. “We’re down to the last battery for the underwater observation buoy.”

“We brought the spares you requested.” Bulky and awkward in his protective gear, the seaman climbed down the iron rungs riveted to the conning tower. “We’ll start unloading immediately.”

“We’ll help. Jack, bring up the snowmobile.”

Eager to get the valuable equipment unloaded and hauled back to the collection of huts connected by air-heated tunnels that formed the United States Arctic Oceanographic Research Station, the lead oceanographer threw an impatient glance over his shoulder.

“Jack! The snowmobile!”

His partner didn’t move. Frozen in place, he gawked at one of the huge slabs of ice tossed up by the sub.

“What’s got into you, man?”

His breath clouding on the frigid air, the senior scientist stomped across the ice. Irritation creased his forehead under his ski mask.

“Why are you just standing there? We’ve got a hundred tasks to get done before we… Oh, my God!”

His eyes bugged. Disbelief rose up in great, choking waves to close his throat, cut off his breath. Stumbling to a halt, he gaped at the helmeted figure staring back at him through five feet of ice.

An early June breeze frisked through the streets of Washington, D.C. Trees decked in bright chartreuse dipped and swayed like synchronized dancers in the afternoon sunshine. The hundred-year-old chestnuts lining a quiet side street just off Massachusetts Avenue, deep in the heart of the capital’s embassy district, whispered the same playful song. Their rustling branches almost obscured the facades of the Federal-style town houses that marched along either side of the brick-paved thoroughfare.

The town house halfway down the block presented a dignified front very similar to its neighbors. Three stories, with tall windows sparkling in the summer sunlight, the elegant one-time residence boasted a discreet bronze plaque beside the front door. The plaque confirmed that the dwelling now served as the offices of the president’s special envoy…a nebulous position created years ago as a reward for a campaign contributor with a yen for a fancy title and a burning desire to rub elbows with the political elite.

Only a handful of Washington insiders were aware that the special envoy also served as the head of OMEGA, an organization so covert that its agents were known within the highest government circles only by their code names. Just as OMEGA represented the last letter of the Greek alphabet, this organization represented the U.S. president’s last resort in a crisis. Its operatives were activated only when other, more conventional agencies like the State Department, the CIA, and the military, couldn’t respond to a crisis for legal or political reasons.

The president himself appointed OMEGA’s director. With great reluctance, he’d recently named a new chief, as the current head had requested an extended leave of absence. After directing the agency through three administrations, Maggie Sinclair had decided to take some time off to complete a ground-breaking book on infant phonetics. She also planned to add a third child to the large, chaotic household she shared with her husband, her two daughters, an overgrown sheepdog and a bug-eyed, blue-and-orange striped iguana with an appetite for paper and plants.

Her husband fully endorsed her decision and had recently resigned his own position as the U.S. ambassador to the World Bank. While Maggie worked on her book, the wealthy, sophisticated Adam Ridgeway had decided to try his hand at full-time fatherhood.

Every agent not currently on assignment or otherwise detailed had gathered in OMEGA’s third floor control center to wish them well. Ignoring the soft chorus of beeps and blips emitted by the electronic communications consoles, they toasted Maggie and Adam as they began the latest phase in their hectic, adventurous marriage.

“The betting is you’ll be back within a month,” a lean, lanky operative with the code name Cowboy predicted. “One or the other of you. Hunting terrorists or illegal arms dealers is a lot easier on the nerves than raising kids.”

“You should know,” Maggie retorted. “Most couples would have the sense to stop after two sets of twins.”

“What can I say?” Nate Sloan grinned. “This ole boy doesn’t shoot blanks.”

Amid the hoots and groans that followed, Elizabeth Wells calmly made the rounds to refill champagne glasses. The gray-haired, grandmotherly woman had served as personal assistant to the director of OMEGA since its inception. She was loved and respected by all for her many talents, not the least of which was her deadly skill with the 9mm SIG Sauer pistol she kept within instant reach at her desk downstairs.

Maggie waited until Elizabeth finished topping off the glasses to step forward. The irreverent grin that had both irritated and inflamed her one-time boss tugged at her lips as she tipped him a quick look.

“I’ll admit I’m looking forward to spending more than two nights in succession in the same city, not to mention the same country, with my husband.”

The answering gleam in Adam’s blue eyes was for Maggie alone. She melted inside, and the muscles low in her belly clenched in delicious anticipation.

“As the president stated when he approved my successor,” she said a little breathlessly, “I’m leaving OMEGA in good hands.”

Her glance shifted to the operative standing quietly to one side.

“Nick is one of our own. Adam and I would trust him with our lives. We have trusted him with our lives.”

Nick Jensen, code name Lightning, strolled forward and lifted Maggie’s hand to his lips with a charm that fluttered every female heart in the room.

“It was my pleasure, Chameleon.”

Straightening, Nick included her husband in his glance. Despite the differences in their ages and backgrounds, the camaraderie between the two men showed clearly in the smiles they exchanged.

“I’ll never forget that breakfast on the veranda of the Carlton Hotel.”

“Nor will I.” Grinning, Adam clapped a hand on the younger man’s shoulder. “I believe the bill for that journey of gastronomic discovery ran to three figures.”

Maggie caught the curious looks the other operatives traded. Only she, Adam, and the couple who’d adopted Nick knew that this cool, imperturbable agent had once roamed the back streets of Cannes.

Surveying him now, Maggie found it hard to believe that a skinny, half-starved pickpocket with the improbable name of Henri Nicolas Everard had once graciously offered to serve as her pimp. Or that the bone-thin street tough kid would grow into such a hunk!

His boyish shock of red hair had softened over the years to a burnished gold. The wide, muscled shoulders covered in whisper-soft gray cashmere could have belonged to a linebacker. In fact, he’d traded his shorts and beat-up soccer shoes for a football uniform when Page and Doc Jensen had brought him to the States.

Fiercely loyal to his adopted country, Nick Jensen had been educated at UCLA and Stanford. After graduation, he’d parlayed his early, ravenous hunger into a string of world-class restaurants that had made him a millionaire many times over. The outrageously expensive watering holes attracted movie stars and princes. They also allowed Nick to roam at will between the glittering world of the superrich and the dark underworld of terror and intrigue.

Which, in Maggie’s rather vocally expressed opinion, made the tall, wickedly handsome operative the perfect choice for acting director of OMEGA. Happy to be leaving her team in such capable hands, she lifted her glass.

“Bonne chance, Nick.”