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An Angel In Stone
Peggy Nicholson
She's equally comfortable in silk and heels or khakis and boots–but it's Raine Ashaway's sheer nerve and gut instinct that have made her a name in the dinosaur hunting world. Her family's famous archaeological firm, Ashaway All, hasn't hurt, either.Until Raine is thrust into a mysterious contest for a priceless opal fossil and the competition seems as intent on destroying her family name as he does beating her to the bones. Raine's not about to let the sexy, deceptive man known as Kincade win this round. But when the game turns deadly, the two rivals might just have to work together or lose everything, including their lives….
A Tyrannosaurus rex tooth made entirely of fire opal?
Opalized fossils were Raine’s professional specialty—and her personal obsession.
“Let’s throw a little light on this.” Cade produced a penlight from an inner pocket and flicked it on.
Coruscating with green and pink flames, then glimmers of coppery gold, the tooth flamed as Cade played the light over it.
Lia held the tooth up, the gently curved fang nearly twice as long as her hand. “Would you like to buy this?”
Cade, Raine’s professional rival, laughed under his breath, then glanced ironically at Raine—and held her gaze.
You against me!
Dear Reader,
June marks the end of the first full year of Silhouette Bombshell, and we’re proud to tell you our lineup is strong, suspenseful and hotter than ever! As the summer takes hold, grab your gear and some Bombshell books and head out for some R & R. Let us entertain you!
Meet Captain Katherine Kane. When she uncovers a weapons cache and a dangerous criminal thought to be behind bars, this intrepid heroine gets the help she needs from an unlikely source, in beloved military-thriller author Vicki Hinze’s riveting new novel in the WAR GAMES miniseries, Double Vision.
Don’t miss the incredible finale to our popular ATHENA FORCE continuity series. A legal attaché is trapped when insurgents take over a foreign capitol building—and she’ll go head to head with the canny rebel leader to rescue hostages, stop the rebel troops and avert disaster, in Checkmate by Doranna Durgin.
Silhouette Intimate Moments author Maggie Price brings her exciting miniseries LINE OF DUTY to Bombshell with Trigger Effect, in which a forensic statement analyst brings criminals down by their words alone—much to the dismay of one know-it-all homicide detective.
And you’ll love author Peggy Nicholson’s feisty heroine, Raine Ashaway, in An Angel in Stone, the first in THE BONE HUNTERS miniseries. Raine’s after a priceless opal dinosaur fossil—and to get it, she’ll have to outwit and outrun not just her sexy competition but a cunning killer!
Enjoy all four fabulous reads and when you’re done, please send your comments to my attention, c/o Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, Ste. 1001, New York, NY 10279.
Best wishes
Natashya Wilson
Associate Senior Editor, Silhouette Bombshell
An Angel in Stone
Peggy Nicholson
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
PEGGY NICHOLSON
grew up in Texas with plans to be an astronaut, a jockey or a wild animal collector. Instead she majored in art at Brown University in Rhode Island then restored and lived aboard a 1920s wooden sailboat for ten years. She has worked as a high school art teacher, a chef to the country’s crankiest nonagenarian millionaire, a waitress in an oyster bar and a full-time author. Her interests include antique rose gardening, Korat cats, ethnic cooking, offshore sailing and—but naturally!—reading romances. She says, “The best thing about writing is that, in the midst of life’s worst pratfalls and disasters, I can always say, ‘Wow, what a story this’ll make!’” You can write to Peggy at P.O. Box 675, Newport, RI 02840.
This one’s for Jimmy, James Grimes, little brother grown big—King of the Dinos back then; King of the Road now. All the hugs in the world!
And with infinite gratitude to Paula Eykelhof, for much wisdom, forbearance as needed and many a smile.
Contents
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
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Epilogue
Prologue
10:00 p.m. September 23
P olice horses ought to come equipped with sirens. Galloping up West 79th Street in Manhattan, Raine found the heavy evening traffic was slowing her down. In the taxi ahead, the passengers turned around to gape and point at the horse and rider. Okay, so she wasn’t wearing much more than a swathe of red silk, a red thong bikini and red wedge-heel sandals. Next time I dress for a black-tie gala, I’ll choose jodhpurs, she promised them grimly. Now will you for Pete’s sake get outta our way? This is an emergency!
They were too busy staring. Now the cabbie had turned, as well. His brake lights stuttered.
“Blasted rubberneckers!” She reined the bay onto the sidewalk and kept going.
Up ahead, an awning stretched from the raised entrance of a swank co-op to the curb. A uniformed doorman ambled down its crimson carpet. “Coming through!” Raine cried, ducking to lay her cheek alongside the bay’s hot neck.
“Hey!” The doorman stumbled backward and sat down hard on the co-op steps. “What the hell d’you think you’re—”
“Call the cops! Over on 80th Street! Need ’em NOW!”
“You better believe I’ll call ’em, blondie! And when they catch up with you—”
But Raine was peering ahead to the next awning. “Look out! Coming through!”
Not exactly the way she’d envisioned this evening. Cocktails, they’d said. Then dinner, after which she’d make a short speech—that was the worst ordeal she’d figured on facing tonight. Then they’d hold the auction, and her half of the bargain would be fulfilled. To celebrate, she’d planned on taking a nice walk home from the museum by moonlight.
As they neared the intersection with Amsterdam, she slowed the horse. “Easy, sweetie.” No sense wiping out, turning the corner.
Hooves clattering on concrete, they wheeled right—and bore down on a woman, who stood, peering intently into a shop window. A leash stretched from her lax hand all the way across the sidewalk to the curb, where a Scottie dog was equally absorbed in anointing a lamppost. “Drop it!” Raine called, waving the pistol she held at the leash. “Drop it now!”
The woman whirled, shrieked, and raised both her hands in surrender.
“What? No, I don’t mean—Oh, never mind! Call the police, would you?” Holding her horse to a controlled canter, Raine swept past the packed tables of a sidewalk café. Forks froze halfway to rounding mouths.
But at last, there ahead lay the crossing of West 80th and Amsterdam. The bay shied violently as a man came staggering around the corner building. “Gun! Gun! He’s gotta gun!”
Well, that sure wasn’t firecrackers she could hear popping now, above the traffic noise. Sidestepping and snorting, the bay danced around the corner as Raine surveyed the scene.
A third of the way down the block, an SUV had been abandoned. Its back bumper was crumpled against the flank of a parked car; its passenger door swung wide.
Then beyond that—she gasped in relief. Trenton was still alive! Kneeling midstreet, the big man swayed with exhaustion, while his captor ranted and raved above him. Spinning to face the curb, the gunman took aim at the nearest parked car—or somebody sheltered behind it?
Bullets flew, smashing glass, punching through sheet metal. She couldn’t see Kincade, but he must be the shooter’s target. So he was still in the game, hanging tough.
“Distract him for me just a minute longer?” Raine prayed, as she tucked her gun into the NYPD saddlebag. No way could she hope to make a precision shot at a full-tilt gallop, and she sure didn’t want to accidentally shoot Trenton.
Raine crouched over the bay’s withers and tapped his ribs with her heels. “Sweetie, let’s take him down.”
Chapter 1
8:30 p.m. September 23
F ramed by the murderous claws of the Allosaurus, the man stood. Looking at her.
Whoa. The hairs stirred at the nape of Raine Ashaway’s neck. Here was something…different. His impeccable black dinner suit fit in with this glitzy Manhattan crowd, but his utter stillness…
“See somebody you know?” inquired Joel Whittaker. An assistant fund-raiser for the Manhattan Museum of Natural History, he’d been assigned to smooth her path through the evening’s gala. It was Joel’s job to see she met the right people and stroked the right egos.
“No-o. But who is that guy? He sure seems to know me.”
Joel scanned the drifting guests on the far side of the museum’s most famous dinosaur exhibit. “Which one, that oh-so-distinguished blond to the left of that fabulous diamond choker?”
“No, no. Mr. Tall, Dark and Forgot-how-to-smile. See the woman with the ruby earrings? Just to her—arrr, he’s turned away.”
Which was just as well. They were neglecting their current prospect. Raine smothered a sigh. God, did she hate fund-raising! But the deal she’d cut with the museum had included her coming to New York to help make this event a success.
Judging by the sapphire necklace that draped Mrs. Lowell’s ample bosom and matched her blue hair, the old girl could afford to bid in the benefit auction tonight. Minimum opening bid was a million dollars.
“Now Raine,” said Mrs. Lowell, waving a plump little hand at the rearing dinosaur skeleton beneath which they stood. “Could a Brontosaurus really stand up on her hind legs like that?”
The MMNH’s most spectacular exhibit featured a five-story-tall mother Barosaurus rearing to defend her baby from the attack of an Allosaurus. The tableau was heart-stoppingly dramatic. It was the first thing a museumgoer saw, after pushing through the big bronze revolving entrance doors and into the echoing rotunda. The fossil castings stood on a knee-high dais that filled the middle of a hall the size of a basketball court. Raine adored the display.
“Well,” she said diplomatically, “if a circus elephant can stand on its hind legs with only a rope of a tail for balance, then why couldn’t she, with a forty-foot caboose for a cantilever?” Raine was more troubled by the fact that the baby dino, huddled behind his defending dam, stood astride her massive tail. In the coming battle, mama would surely whip her tail around, and her horse-size baby would go flying.
“And who do you think won the fight?” Mrs. Lowell worried.
Knowing what she did about Tyrannosaurus rex’s older, nimbler cousin, Raine hadn’t a doubt who’d triumphed. “Hard to say. She’d outweigh him four to one. If she lands a punch…”
“And what are you going to name our new dino, Mrs. Lowell, if you win the bidding tonight?” Joel broke in with a twinkle as he squeezed Raine’s elbow.
Mrs. Lowell chuckled. “I’ll name him Erwin Elwood, of course, after my dear papa. He was the fossil hunter in our family. My sister and I collected ostrich eggs, and my brother…”
Once Joel had eased them off through the crowd, Raine muttered, “Your patrons are bidding tonight for the right to name the specimen—this particular dinosaur that I gave you guys. You’ve got to make sure there’s no confusion.” She nodded at her distant find, the object of tonight’s auction.
In the far corner of the gallery, they’d stacked the six-foot-square wooden crates in which she’d packed the fossil bones, months ago in Patagonia, into a pleasing jumble. A giant child’s fallen tower of building blocks. Out of the top box thrust the massive skull of the beast—all that the museum’s preparators had had time to clean so far. He was as fearsome as his carnivorous cousin across the room, and more exotic with his horns. Couples stood below him, gazing up as they gestured earnestly with their champagne flutes.
