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Everywhere She Goes
Janice Kay Johnson
Standing between her…and dangerReturning to her hometown is Cait McAllister’s chance to stand on her own. That means taking a break from men and relationships. Then she meets her new boss, the intriguing Noah Chandler. As the mayor he’s got bold plans for Angel Butte. As a man he’s so tempting Cait’s vow of independence is in jeopardy.The most persuasive part of him, however, could be the way he looks out for her. Because when a threat from her past puts her in danger, Noah is there to protect her. And there’s no way she can resist a man who has so much invested in keeping her safe.
Standing between her…and danger
Returning to her hometown is Cait McAllister’s chance to stand on her own. That means taking a break from men and relationships. Then she meets her new boss, the intriguing Noah Chandler. As the mayor, he’s got bold plans for Angel Butte. As a man, he’s so tempting that Cait’s vow of independence is in jeopardy.
The most persuasive part of him, however, could be the way he looks out for her. Because when a threat from her past puts her in danger, Noah is there to protect her. And there’s no way she can resist a man who has so much invested in keeping her safe.
If he hadn’t decided to follow her out here…
Cait would be dead.
The knowledge slammed into Noah, a kick to the chest that felt as if he’d been shot.
But she was unharmed. Somehow she had escaped being shot at and having her car forced off the road.
When Cait started to struggle to her feet, he reached down to help her. She wasn’t wearing heels, he saw; she had changed to athletic shoes before she headed out on this expedition. The rusty red dirt coated the gray-and-white leather and mesh.
Churning with emotions he had no ability to decipher, Noah couldn’t help himself. He yanked her back into his arms, with no consideration for her fragile state. If she noticed, she didn’t protest. She leaned as if she belonged right there, resting against him. Was that a very distant siren? He didn’t care.
“Cait,” he said hoarsely.
She looked up, her eyes dark, and the power of all that rage and helplessness and tenderness overcame him.
He kissed her.
Things are not as they seem in Angel Butte, Oregon. Read on to find out how Noah Chandler can protect Cait McAllister from the threats escalating against her in this second book of Janice Kay Johnson’s latest series!
Dear Reader,
It’s always been my opinion that women are more self-aware than men.
Of course I know some major exceptions to that rule (well, let’s call it an observation), but still. My guess is that it’s part and parcel of what makes women talk about experiences and emotions, even embarrassing ones, so much more readily than men do. In real life, a guy who never seems to quite get what he’s feeling can be aggravating.
Writing fiction—I love men who blunder along, falling in love and even developing other kinds of relationships without exactly knowing what’s going on, and who are genuinely flabbergasted when they discover they’re in over their heads and haven’t a clue how it happened. Noah Chandler is such a man. He’s really smart, a successful businessman and politician, blunt and even ruthless, but convinced emotional crap is for other people. Leading him along gave me enormous pleasure, I have to tell you. Hmm. If only guys like that could be led along so easily in real life…. Come to think of it, there’s a reason I write fiction!
Truthfully, one of the joys of writing romance is finding the two perfect characters who will both clash and mesh with each other.
Jayne Anne Krentz wrote, some years back, about how, on some level, the hero should also be the villain—i.e., a threat to the heroine. I think it works the other way around, too. Certainly, Cait McAllister is a major threat to the even tenor of Noah’s life, and he is self-aware enough to know that from the very beginning. Meanwhile, he’s the scariest kind of man to her…when he isn’t making her feel safer than she ever has.
I hope you like these two people as much as I do. I’ve discovered some really great men live in Angel Butte, Oregon!
Janice Kay Johnson
Everywhere She Goes
Janice Kay Johnson
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The author of more than eighty books for children and adults, Janice Kay Johnson is especially well-known for her Harlequin Superromance novels about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel Snowbound won a RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington. She loves to read and is an active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter.
Contents
Prologue (#ud6ee2716-4244-54f9-acca-f4ad9b55d93f)
Chapter One (#u2f0eb4b3-562c-5936-a93d-e2dff4358fd0)
Chapter Two (#u519daf1a-c0ec-5d83-8569-a29e1b7dc253)
Chapter Three (#u0ac4bb65-144a-5cfe-8016-ecf74cd39770)
Chapter Four (#uaa8569e0-2c21-53fe-9fe2-ce5403eb3865)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt (#litres_trial_promo)
PROLOGUE
NOAH CHANDLER GLOWERED at the file that lay open on his desk. Failure was unacceptable. He still couldn’t figure out how and why the bunch of fossilized, mule-headed, self-serving jackasses that constituted his city council had shot down his candidate for the job of police chief and chosen someone so ill-qualified—compelling him to make the offer.
By God, he was going to choke on it.
Noah had been trying to tamp down his anger since the vote after last night’s meeting. When he had won the election in November and had taken over the mayor’s office, he had known he would have to deal with a council composed primarily of good ol’ boys incapable of objective, forward thinking. So far he’d succeeded in manipulating them into voting his way whatever their original inclination. What he couldn’t figure out was why the rebellion had come now, and over something so critical.
Corruption ran deep in the Angel Butte Police Department, and this town needed someone fully competent to root it out, not a yeehaw cowboy who knew Southern California gangs and hookers but had next to no administrative experience and probably thought small towns were good only as a place to get off the interstate and fill up the gas tank. Had the city council members been thinking at all? Or were they interested only in thwarting him?
A third option had presented itself, and Noah liked it least of all. What if a couple of those fine citizens serving on the council, influential with their peers, had real personal motivations for ensuring the investigation into drug trafficking and illegal payoffs floundered?
Fuming, he picked up his phone and dialed.
Three rings and a brusque male voice answered, “Raynor.”
Noah unclenched his jaw. “Lieutenant Raynor.” His voice came out as a growl. “This is Mayor Noah Chandler in Angel Butte, Oregon. I’m calling to offer you the position of police chief. You were the final choice of our city council.”
There was a moment of silence that lent him hope. The weather had been bitterly cold when Alec Raynor, a homicide lieutenant with the Los Angeles Police Department, had flown into Angel Butte for the interview. A blizzard had shut down the airport, delaying his departure for a day. Maybe in the past week he’d rethought the whole idea of accepting the job here. For all the line of bull he’d fed them during the interview, his motives for wanting the job were still a mystery to Noah.
“What about you?” Raynor asked unexpectedly. “Was I your choice?”
Noah swiveled in his desk chair to stare out the window at a partial view of Angel Butte, one of the small cinder cones that dotted this volcanic country in central Oregon. A nineteenth-century marble statue of an angel, imported all the way from Italy, crowned the crater rim. Back some years ago, before Noah’s arrival in town, the angel had been given a granite pedestal to hoist her higher, maybe so she could keep a better eye on errant townsfolk.
“No,” he said, blunt as always. “I was in favor of a candidate who had significant administrative experience. The job here doesn’t have much in common with what you do down there in L.A. We don’t have a lot of homicide cases to close. Our problems have to do with recruitment, staffing, training, scheduling, budget and morale.” Keeping our probably too-low-paid cops honest, he thought but didn’t say. “Politicking to bring in the money. Do you know how to do any of that, Lieutenant?”
“On a smaller scale, yes.” There was a pause. “Did you have experience in city government when you won the election, Mayor?”
Noah rubbed the heel of his hand over his breastbone to settle the burning coal beneath it. “I’m a businessman. Running a city isn’t all that different from running a business.”
Raynor didn’t have to say, In other words, no.
“This may not be what you want to hear, Mayor, but I accept your offer.” The steel in Alec Raynor’s voice sounded like a challenge to Noah. “As I indicated, I need to give notice here. Is your acting police chief willing to stay on for another month?”
That was the next call Noah had to make: the one to Colin McAllister, to let him know he wasn’t being offered the permanent position. The news would not go over well. McAllister had every reason to think he had it in the bag.
“We’ll work it out one way or another,” Noah said. “Let us know your arrival date when you can.”
“I will.” Irony threaded the deep, crisp voice. “I’ll look forward to working with you, Chandler.”
Noah didn’t have to manufacture any upbeat remarks; dead air told him the call was over. He grimaced. He’d liked Raynor better during this phone call than he had during the interviews. Noah preferred direct give-and-take, and that’s what he’d gotten.
And, damn, he owed it to McAllister to tell him the decision in person, not over the phone. With a grunt, he pushed back his chair and rose. He’d walk. The route from the historic courthouse that now housed his office to the new public safety building would take him right past Chandler’s Brew Pub. Wouldn’t hurt to stop by, surprise his employees. Since going into politics, he had been forced to trust them more than made him comfortable. He might even have lunch there, he decided. Today was downright balmy for the beginning of March, which was still the dead of winter in central Oregon. He might as well enjoy the deceptively springlike weather. He wouldn’t even have to wear a coat.
Fifteen minutes later, he’d walked into the police chief’s office and said his piece.
Colin McAllister’s face had gone hard the minute Noah had started. He listened in silence, not rising from his chair behind the desk. “I deserve to know why I wasn’t hired.”
Only thirty-four years old, he’d been with the department since he’d started as a rookie right out of college. He had risen fast, making captain—only one rank below chief—two years ago. Noah understood him to be well liked by his officers, although he also had the reputation as a tough son of a bitch when being tough was called for. He was the one who’d uncovered the corruption in the Angel Butte P.D. and brought it to Noah. It was thanks to McAllister that Noah had been able to ask for the former chief’s resignation. McAllister had handled the beginning stages of the investigation into the deeper layers of corruption well, as far as Noah could tell.
“I blocked your hiring,” he said.
A man as tall as Noah if not quite as bulky, McAllister stood now, his hands flat on the desktop. Fury glittered in his steel-gray eyes. “Why?”
“I can’t take the risk that you’re part of whatever crap is infecting this police force,” Noah said bluntly. He held up a hand to silence his acting police chief. “I have to ask myself how could you have worked here this long without seeing that something was wrong. You’re young to make captain, even in a department this size. You’ve been rewarded with promotions a hell of a lot faster than is the norm. I’m making no accusations, but I also can’t ignore the possibility that you got where you are by sharing information or worse. Even a willingness to turn a blind eye to illegal activities might have won you brownie points. I like you. I still had to make the best choice for this town.”
“No accusations?” The gray of those eyes made Noah think of gun barrels now. “Sounds to me like you just made some. Tell me why, if I were dirty, I’d have been stupid enough to open this department to a top-to-bottom investigation.”
“You might have thought you could get rid of Bystrom, step into his office and then block some turns of the investigation.”
“If you’d asked, I would have shared my financials with you.”
“You might be honest enough not to have accepted bribes, but not so honest you weren’t willing to look away when fellow officers did.”
The sound that came out of McAllister’s mouth could have been a snarl. “You know you’ve opened yourself to a lawsuit.”
Noah met that burning stare. “Tell me you wouldn’t have made the same decision if you were in my shoes.”
“So now you want my resignation.”
“No, I don’t. My gut says you’re clean. I want you to stay on as acting chief for the next month and to return to captain of investigative services after that.”
Colin McAllister gave an incredulous laugh. “You’re a son of a bitch. You know that, Chandler?”
Yeah. He could be. Today, a son of a bitch who felt like he was developing an ulcer. “Tell me you wouldn’t have made the same decision,” he repeated.
“I wouldn’t have made the same decision.” Muscles knotted in the other man’s jaw. “Are we done here?”
“Think about what you want to do.”
“Oh, yeah, I’ll be thinking.”
Noah nodded. “Then we’re done.”
He walked out, deciding he might have a beer with lunch, something he never did. He was also thinking he’d just made an enemy—and the new police chief and he weren’t set up to be good friends, either.
Leaving the building and ignoring curious glances, it occurred to him that Colin McAllister and Alec Raynor were unlikely to have a real cordial relationship, either, not when one was taking over the job the other had wanted, and thought he’d earned.
Had earned, Noah admitted, if only to himself.
He paused on the sidewalk to let two lanky boys on skateboards shoot by before he turned back toward downtown.
Half the city council members despised and feared Noah, who despised them in turn and was plotting to get rid of them as soon as he could.
His mouth tilted up at the black humor. Yep, city government, as usual.
This called for two beers with the burger and fries he intended to have for lunch.
CHAPTER ONE
“GOOD WORKOUT,” a woman called from down the row as Cait McAllister slammed her locker door closed and picked up her gym bag.
Smiling her agreement, Cait lifted a hand. “See you Thursday.”
