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Still the One
Debra Cowan
The woman standing in Rafe Blackstock's office was beautiful–unforgettably beautiful–and desperate for his help. But this wasn't just another client who needed a private investigator. This was the only woman he'd ever loved–the one who'd walked away from him without a backward glance, so many years ago….Kit Foley's troubled younger sister was missing, and she was willing to do anything to find her–even turn to the man she'd spent such a long time trying to forget. But their search for answers was proving to be even more dangerous than she'd feared–because it meant facing the truth of a love that had never died….
“Do you really believe we can put the past behind us and work together?” Kit whispered. “Do you really believe we can be friends again?”
Rafe stared into her eyes for a long moment, then lifted a hand and stroked her hair, his palm brushing her cheek. “Yes, I believe it.” But his body tensed, and his eyes darkened. Was she asking too much of him? Could she even do it herself?
“Friends…” he murmured, his gaze devouring her. His hand slipped around her nape, urging her toward him. He was going to kiss her….
But then he stopped, looking dazed. “Bad idea,” he said in a choked voice.
“Yes.” She nodded. “Bad.”
Kit wanted to scream. Friends? Was she kidding herself? Attraction still simmered between them, an attraction she had to fight. She couldn’t get involved with Rafe Blackstock again.
She’d never gotten over him the first time.
Dear Reader,
Happy New Year! And happy reading, too—starting with the wonderful Ruth Langan and Return of the Prodigal Son, the latest in her newest miniseries, THE LASSITER LAW. When this burned-out ex-agent comes home looking for some R and R, what he finds instead is a beautiful widow with irresistible children and a heart ready for love. His love.
This is also the month when we set out on a twelve-book adventure called ROMANCING THE CROWN. Linda Turner starts things off with The Man Who Would Be King. Return with her to the island kingdom of Montebello, where lives—and hearts—are about to be changed forever.
The rest of the month is terrific, too. Kylie Brant’s CHARMED AND DANGEROUS concludes with Hard To Tame, Carla Cassidy continues THE DELANEY HEIRS with To Wed and Protect, Debra Cowan offers a hero who knows the heroine is Still the One, and Monica McLean tells us The Nanny’s Secret. And, of course, we’ll be back next month with six more of the best and most exciting romances around.
Enjoy!
Leslie J. Wainger
Executive Senior Editor
Still the One
Debra Cowan
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
DEBRA COWAN
Like many writers, Debra made up stories in her head as a child. Her B.A. in English was obtained with the intention of following family tradition and becoming a schoolteacher, but after she wrote her first novel, there was no looking back. After years of working another job in addition to writing, she now devotes her full time to penning both historical and contemporary romances. An avid history buff, Debra enjoys traveling. She has visited places as diverse as Europe and Honduras, where she and her husband served as part of a medical mission team. Born in the foothills of the Kiamichi Mountains, Debra still lives in her native Oklahoma with her husband and their two beagles, Maggie and Domino.
Debra invites her readers to contact her at P.O. Box 30123, Coffee Creek Station, Edmund, OK 73003-0003 or via e-mail at her Web site at http://www.oklahoma.net/~debcowan.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My deepest thanks to the following:
Ken and Lisa Gonzales for their help
with Colorado detail; Dr. Lee Warren, M.D.,
Chief Resident, Department of Neurosurgery
(thanks, cuz!); Vickie Taylor for hooking me up
with her brother, a great source of information;
and Captain Scott Spears, USAF.
Contents
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 1
“What the—” Rafe Blackstock stopped cold in the doorway of his private investigations office. “Kit?”
The slender woman turned. Though her thick mink-dark hair was short now, her eyes were still the same unusual slate blue he remembered and deep with the same wariness, the same uncertainty as the last time he’d seen her. “In the flesh.”
“I’ll say.” On this perfect June Sunday, he’d walked right in on his past, and his past looked darn good. Her faint musky scent squeezed his lungs.
His breath jammed somewhere under his ribs, but Rafe walked in and shut the door as if he hadn’t just had the wind knocked out of him. He was disoriented, his head swam, and he had to remind himself where he was. Oklahoma City, not Norman. Not standing ten years deep in yesterdays.
He didn’t know whether to shake her hand or hug her, so he simply stood there, arms hanging limply at his sides.
She gave him an uncertain smile. “Hello.”
“Hey.”
Kit Foley, who’d been his first love, who’d broken his heart and walked away. Kit, whom he’d thought he would never forget. She was here. Ten years older, beautiful in the way a woman becomes when she grows into her skin, her identity. It hurt his chest to look at her.
This case—her case—was the reason his office manager, Nita Howard, had paged him on Lake Arcadia about a missing persons case, why he’d put down that brand-new fiber-glass rod.
Kit’s dark-rimmed eyes paused hungrily on his features. Her voice went soft and shy, the way it did when she was in an uncertain situation. “It’s been a long time.”
No kidding. And Rafe suddenly felt every day of those long years in the wary pull of his muscles, the way her smoke-and-honey voice still stroked up his spine like warm fingers. Resentment, disbelief, unwelcome pleasure fused inside.
Kit. He couldn’t stop his gaze from sliding down her body, the way his hands had done numerous times. “Lookin’ good.”
She blushed. “You, too.”
Her coltish figure had rounded out, the angular edges of her hips now soft, her waist nipped in tightly. Her breasts were fuller, curving beneath the short-sleeved, cotton floral dress she wore. The wavy dark brown hair that had once reached the middle of her back was a shiny wedge that came just below her delicate ears. The style sharpened her cheekbones, highlighted her perfectly straight nose.
She was stunning. Her wide, dark-lashed eyes were bright with unshed tears, he realized, as her troubled gaze sought his.
“I need you—your help.”
I need you. His muscles clenched against those words. In the end, she hadn’t wanted to need him, had wanted to stand on her own. She’d proven that by walking away.
He thought he’d forgotten how shattered he’d been when she refused to marry him the day before his college graduation. Thought he’d forgotten how pain had closed over him with brittle frigidity when she’d stammered that she couldn’t leave her family responsibilities. Couldn’t live with the way he took total control. She wanted a partner, not someone who made decisions without her.
Feeling as off balance as the day the Air Force had permanently grounded him from flying, Rafe walked around her to his desk. He felt a foolish urge to ask Nita to come in, but his office manager had left as soon as he arrived.
Kit’s voice trembled, edgy and staccato. “I’m sure I’m the last person you want to see…. I didn’t know where else to turn.”
She was certainly the last person he’d expected to see. That old familiar awareness throbbed to stilted life. “How did you find me?”
“Um, this.” She pulled a black pocketbook from her purse and slid out a neatly folded piece of newspaper. She handed it to him. “I saw this about three years ago.”
Rafe skimmed it, his gaze going to hers as he realized it was the article the Associated Press had picked up on him. Two weeks after Rafe had left the Air Force, a child belonging to a major in Rafe’s old Air Force detail had been kidnapped by the major’s estranged wife. Rafe had set out on a one-man mission to find the child and succeeded. He’d also testified in the subsequent custody trial. The local paper had done a story, which had been picked up by AP.
Kit had seen the article. And kept it. Not knowing what to think about that, not wanting to think anything, Rafe handed it back to her.
She smiled uncertainly, slid the clipping in her pocket-book. “I called Kevin to see where you were and he told me. I found your phone number in the book.”
He’d spoken to Kevin Strong just yesterday, and his college roommate hadn’t mentioned a thing about Kit. Rafe made a mental note to tell his friend not to be so free with information.
Still not believing she was here, he cleared his throat. “How are you?”
“Fine.” She shoved a thick lock of hair off her forehead, giving a sharp laugh. “Well, not really. That’s why I’m here.”
Rafe tried to dodge the images that crashed over him—the throatiness of her laugh, the sleek feel of her body against his, the tight perfection of his inside her. She’d been his first love. Even if he told himself he’d forgotten her, he hadn’t.
Whatever had happened, he couldn’t take this case. Right now that was the only clear thing in his mind, but still he couldn’t deny a burning curiosity to find out what she’d been doing the last ten years, where she’d been.
“I can pay. Or…I guess I should ask about your fee.”
“We’ll work that out.” Was she married? Divorced? Children?
He didn’t want to ask or even acknowledge the questions ricocheting through his mind, didn’t want to admit to the heat that squeezed his chest at the thought of her with another man. He’d moved on.
He knew their relationship on her side had never been as committed as it had on his. After so long, it shouldn’t make him wince that it had taken him an entire year to get rid of her engagement ring. “What’s happened?”
“It’s Liz.” She hesitated then said, “She’s missing.”
“Again?”
“Don’t start, Rafe. This is serious.”
“With your sister?” He arched a brow. “Since when?”
She gave him a flat stare.
“You’re sure she didn’t hook up with some guy at a bar?”
“I’m sure,” she said tightly. “She’s not like that anymore.”
Rafe couldn’t even imagine such a transformation, but neither could he ignore the panic in Kit’s eyes.
Indicating the straight-backed chair in front of his desk, he eased himself down into his own overstuffed gray leather chair, grateful for the support at his back. “Tell me what happened.”
Instead of sitting, she began to pace. Her soft cotton dress curled around her calves and clung to her lithe body, molding her perfect breasts. Rafe forced his gaze to her face, picked up a pen and pulled a legal-size notepad over to him.
“Can I get you something? Water, a Coke?” He was amazed at how calm he sounded, especially when he wanted to ask a million questions. Do you still live in Tulsa? What have you been doing? Do you ever regret turning me down?
She flashed him a tremulous smile, but her worry was tangible. “No, thanks.”
He’d smelled this same raw desperation before in each of the twenty missing persons cases he’d solved.
“I’m a flight attendant for TransAmerica. Yesterday morning, I returned from a layover in Miami. I had a message, only thirty minutes old, from the hospital on my answering machine. The nurse said Liz had been in a car wreck.” Kit dragged an unsteady hand through her hair. Fatigue and worry drew her features taut, flattened the sweet curve of her full lips. “I raced over, but when I got there, Liz was gone.”
“Did you check at the nurses’ station? Maybe she—”
Kit shot him a look. “Of course. They told me they wanted to keep her overnight for observation, but she’d left with her husband, Tony Valentine.”
“Liz is married?”
“No. Yes. Supposed to be getting a divorce.”
“Ah.”
Kit’s dark glare skewered him.
