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His Wanted Woman
Linda Turner
Special agent Patrick O'Reilly was determined not to let Mackenzie Sloan's good looks sway him from his task. The woman's innocent persona didn't mean she wasn't involved in illegal activities. And after keeping track of her day–and night–for weeks, he'd almost convinced himself his interest was all part of his job.When the case placed Mackenzie in danger, he could no longer deny his duty had turned to desire. He'd lay down his own life to protect this woman. But laying down his embattled heart might be the truest test of his resolve.
“Don’t.”
She’d meant to sound firm and cool, yet her voice was anything but. Horrified, she ordered herself to put some space between them. Her feet, however, refused to move. And it was all Patrick’s fault. If he would just stop touching her…
Unable to take her eyes from him, she reached blindly for his hand. “I’m fine,” she said huskily.
But instead of pushing him away, she clung to him like a lifeline.
The feel of her fingers wrapped around his caught Patrick off guard. This was crazy. Just that morning, she’d been a suspect, and now all he could think about was the softness of her skin, her mouth…and kissing her.
Dear Reader,
Before I started writing, I worked for the FBI in Washington, D.C., and loved it. So going back to D.C. thirty years later to research this book was almost like going home. A lot has changed since the late ’70s: the street in front of the White House is closed to traffic and the FBI no longer gives tours. When I was working at the Bureau, all you had to do to take a tour of the White House—even a candlelit one at Christmas—was get in line.
Those days are gone, but Washington is still a wonderful city, and steeped in history. My kind of place! That’s why I love Mackenzie and Patrick’s story so much. If I ever had a bookstore, I would want it to look just like Sloan Antiquarian Books and Maps. Enjoy!
Linda Turner
His Wanted Woman
Linda Turner
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
LINDA TURNER
began reading romances in high school and began writing them one night when she had nothing else to read. She’s been writing ever since. Single and living in Texas, she travels every chance she gets, scouting locales for her books.
I owe special thanks to Kelly Maltagliati and Matthew Elliott, who are both special agents with the Office of the Inspector General of the National Archives and Records Administration, and Mitchell Yockelson, an investigative archivist with the Office of the Inspector General. I would also like to thank Harry Husberg with the Ft. Worth Police Department for his advice on police procedures. Thank you all for your expertise and ideas.
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
Epilogue
Prologue
The old tavern was packed with St. Patrick’s Day revelers who were loud, boisterous and in the mood to party. Rushing inside, his black, wavy hair and sharp features glistening with the damp mist that had socked in Washington, D.C., Patrick O’Reilly wasn’t surprised to find his two brothers already seated at their favorite table, right next to the fireplace, where a roaring fire took the chill off the air. They both worked just around the corner from the bar and didn’t even have to move their cars. He, on the other hand, had been working a case across town and had been caught in traffic.
Devin spied him first as he made his way through the crowd and grinned, though there was little amusement in his steel-blue eyes. “It’s about damn time you got here. We started without you,” he said, and raised his Guinness in a salute.
“We ordered you one,” Logan added. “Devin didn’t think you were coming, so he drank it for you.”
“Hey, it was getting warm,” he said, defending himself. “Here. You can have mine.”
“No, thanks.” Patrick chuckled. “I’ll get my own.”
Signaling the waitress for another beer, he sank into the wooden chair between his brothers and lifted a dark brow. “Well? Did you bring them?”
Devin and Logan didn’t have to ask what he was talking about. They both pulled out a single piece of paper and tossed it onto the table, then waited for Patrick to do the same. Reaching into his inner coat pocket, he produced his own document and added it to the two on the table.
“That’s a pretty sorry sight,” Logan retorted as the waitress delivered another round to their table. “Three brothers. Three divorces, all within six months of each other. Who could have guessed?”
“You should have,” Patrick drawled, “at least when it came to yourself. You never believed in marriage anyway. How you let Jan talk you into walking down the aisle, I’ll never know.”
“Yeah,” Devin said. “You always said marriage was unnatural. Then the next thing we know, you’re planning a damn wedding.”
His green eyes twinkling ruefully, Logan shrugged. “What can I say? It was temporary insanity, and I learned my lesson the hard way.”
“You weren’t the only one,” Patrick said grimly. “At least you didn’t fall for a liar.
“I saw that look,” he added when his brothers exchanged speaking glances. “You two are as bad as Mom. Just because I’m never going to get married again doesn’t mean I’m bitter. I’m just not stupid.”
Grinning, Logan held up his hands in surrender. “Hey, you won’t get an argument out of me. Our mama didn’t raise any idiots.”
“Just a bunch of cops who have bad taste in women,” Devin added, chuckling. “I think she’d rather have idiots.”
Patrick laughed. “Too bad. She’s stuck with us.” Raising his beer, he clicked glasses with his brothers.
“To the three stooges,” Devin said with twinkling eyes.
“Speak for yourself,” Logan tossed back. “To the three musketeers.”
“To never getting married again,” Patrick said.
“Amen,” his brothers said.
And without further ceremony, they each picked up their marriage licenses and, on the two-year anniversary of their divorces, tossed them into the fire. Within seconds, the licenses…and the relationships of the past…went up in smoke.
Chapter 1
“Geez, Mac, how do you stand all this?” Stacy Green sniffed, wrinkling her nose at the dust she had stirred as she helped sort stacks of old documents and maps that looked like they hadn’t been touched in years. “I know you said your dad really let the place go over the last couple of years, but it’s going to take you decades to get this all cleaned up.”
In the process of changing the seasonal display in the shop’s bow window from Thanksgiving to Christmas, Mackenzie Sloan said, “Bite your tongue. It’s not that bad.”
“Yeah, right.” Stacy snorted. “And I’m the Queen Mother.”
“I’m making progress,” she insisted, but as she looked around at the antique bookstore her father had left her when he died unexpectedly three months ago, Mackenzie had to admit that Stacy was right. The place was a mess. In spite of the fact that she’d been cleaning and trying to organize the shop since the day after her father’s funeral, it was still little more than barely controlled chaos.
Guilt tugged at her, bringing the sting of tears to her eyes. “I should have come home more often—”
“Don’t you dare blame yourself!” Stacy, her oldest friend and fiercest protector, immediately jumped to her defense. “You were working a crazy schedule and spending every spare moment on your master’s. Not to mention trying to have a life with a man you loved! When would you have come home? Between two and three in the morning? You were in California, for God’s sake, not across the street!”
“I know,” she sighed. “That’s why Dad came to see me instead. And he acted like everything was fine. I didn’t have a clue he was sick.”
“He didn’t want you to know, Mac. You would have quit school and come home and he would have hated that. You were so close to finishing. He didn’t want you to give that up for him.”
“And the irony of it is, Hugh and I broke up and I came home anyway,” she said with a grimace of a smile.
“After you got your master’s,” Stacy pointed out.
“True,” she agreed. But by then, it had been too late for her father. “At least Dad died knowing I was able to finish school.” Shaking off her sadness, she forced a smile. “He was a great dad. And in spite of the condition of the shop, he left me a business I love.”
“I’m just worried you’re working yourself to death,” Stacy said, frowning. “I hardly see you anymore. You’re working night and day. I bet you don’t even remember the last time you had a date.”
“There are plenty of men in my life—”
“Oh, really? Name one.”
“Lincoln…Washington…Stonewall Jackson…”
Stacy gave her a reproving look. “Cute, smarty-pants. This is serious. I’m concerned.”
“I’m fine.”
“You need to let me introduce you to Baxter Townsend. If I wasn’t married and crazy about my lover boy—”
“Not to mention seven months pregnant,” Mackenzie said dryly, grinning as she patted her friend’s extended tummy. “Or are you forgetting about my goddaughter?”
A tender smile curved Stacy’s mouth as she placed a hand over her stomach. “How could I forget her? The little stinker kicks me all night long. I think she’s going to be a soccer player.”
“Then she’ll have to get that gene from John. You haven’t got an athletic bone in your body.”
Grimacing, Stacy grinned. “Too sweaty. But you like sports. You and Baxter would get along great. He played tennis in college.”
“Stace—”
“He’s never been married,” she added, “and makes a ton of money. He’s a—”
“No.”
“At least meet him. You two are perfect for each other.”
Mackenzie rolled her eyes. The last man Stacy had claimed was perfect for her and had actually introduced her to had turned about to be an alcoholic with a temper. “Do I need to remind you of Gus Dole?”
Stacy had the grace to wince. “Ouch! Okay, so I screwed up with Gus. And now that I think about it, you probably wouldn’t be crazy about Baxter—he can be kind of pompous. But you’re fading away in this shop, turning to dust just like your father’s books and old maps. You’ve got to get out of here!”
“I do,” she argued. “I go somewhere nearly every weekend.”
“To memorabilia shows.” Stacy sniffed. “Where you meet dusty old men who are pushing eighty and only interested in one thing—buying something that belonged to Washington or Jefferson or God knows who else. Dammit, Mac, you’re twenty-eight years old! When your father left you the business, he didn’t intend for you to bury yourself in it.”
“Maybe not,” she agreed. “But you said yourself this place is a mess. Can you think of any man you know who would want to take on this and me? He’d have to be crazy.”
“Not crazy,” Stacy retorted, grinning. “Just a confident, good-looking hunk who likes to read about Thomas Jefferson and John Adams instead of girly magazines. How hard can that be to find?”
“Yeah, right.” Mackenzie laughed. “When you find him, let me know.”
The door to the shop opened then, and, as always, a John Philip Sousa march began to softly play throughout the shop and apartment upstairs. As the music grew progressively louder, Mackenzie, as always, laughed. John Philip Sousa had been born in Washington, D.C., but that wasn’t the only reason her father had chosen a Sousa march for the musical alarm he’d installed years ago. He’d had a tendency to get caught up in his work and lose track of what was going on around him and he’d needed something to jar him back to attention when someone walked through the front door. Even now, in her mind’s eye, she could see him jump as the cymbals crashed loudly, reminding him he had a customer.
Beside her, Stacy glanced at the customer who strolled in, only to immediately smile with quick interest. “Oh, goodness, what do we have here? I think I’m in love.”
“Stop that!” Mackenzie hissed as her own eyes roamed over the customer who looked like something out of one of her fantasies. Tall, dark and handsome—there was no other way to describe him. With dimples that framed either side of his mouth and a boyish glint in his green eyes, he had trouble written all over him. Mackenzie took one look at that long, lean body and fantastic face and forgot to breathe.
Stacy, on the other hand, had no such trouble. “Well, hello,” she said with a grin. “Aren’t you the cutest thing? I’ll bet you’re a history major, aren’t you?”
Caught off guard, he laughed. “As a matter of fact, I am.”
“And you’re a Civil War buff.”
“Stacy,” Mackenzie warned.
“I’m just asking,” she said innocently.
“I’ve been known to spend days at Gettysburg studying strategy,” he admitted. “Is that a problem?”
“Not at all,” Stacy said before Mackenzie could say a word. “There’s just something about history majors—”
Shooting her friend a quelling glance, Mackenzie said, “Is there something in particular you were looking for or would you just like to look around?”
