Книга - No Holds Barred

No Holds Barred
Cara Summers


No Holds Barred When defence lawyer Piper MacPherson is targeted by a serial killer, FBI profiler Duncan Sutherland knows the only place she’ll be safe is Castle MacPherson. But will he be able to keep his hands off her?Little does Duncan know that Piper’s always wanted him, too! Years ago, she wrote down her most intimate fantasies about him! Now she wants the real deal…










Nobody can write Forbidden Fantasies like Cara Summers!

Of Led Into Temptation

“Sensationally sensual … this tale of a forbidden, guilt-ridden love is a delight. Brimming with diverse, compelling characters, scorching-hot love scenes, romance and even a ghost, this story is unforgettable.”

—Romancejunkies.com

“This deliciously naughty fantasy takes its time heating up, but it’s worth the wait! …”

—RT Book Reviews

Of Taken Beyond Temptation

“Great characters with explosive chemistry, a fun intrigue-flavored plot and a high degree of sensuality add up to an excellent read!…”

—RT Book Reviews

“Filled with intrigue, mystery, humor, sizzling-hot love scenes, a well-matched couple, a surprise ending and a ghost, this story is unforgettable and definitely a winner.”

—Romancejunkies.com

Of Twice the Temptation

“Well written! … Fans will be delighted to see their favorites return for brief appearances…”

—RT Book Reviews

“Cara Summers has penned two tales in Twice the Temptation which will not be forgotten, but will live on in the reader’s fantasies.” —Cataromance.com




About the Author


Was CARA SUMMERS born with the dream of becoming a published romance novelist? No. But now that she is, she still feels her dream has come true. And she owes it all to her mother, who handed her a romance novel years ago and said, “Try it. You’ll love it.” Mom was right! Cara has written over forty stories for Blaze, and she has won numerous awards including a Lifetime Achievement Award for Series Storyteller of the Year from RT Book Reviews. When she isn’t working on new books, she teaches in the writing program at Syracuse University.




No Holds Barred

Cara Summers







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


To my grandchildren, Marian and Andrew.

All my love for the future.




Prologue


Glen Loch, New York, Summer, 1812

ELEANOR CAMPBELL MACPHERSON stood on the cliffs alone, except for her memories. And there were so many good ones. In a marriage that had lasted over fifty years, she and Angus had come here so often. The caves below in the cliff face had always been one of their secret places. They’d picnicked there often during the early years of their marriage, sometimes climbing up from the lake below and sometimes climbing down. And later, after the children and even the grandchildren had arrived, it had been one of their secret trysting places. Sneaking away to make love here with Angus had always made her feel wicked and wild and very like the young girl who had allowed him to sweep her away all those many years ago.

She missed him so much. How often had they walked together here on mornings just like this one?

The mists swirled over the lake, but the newly risen sun, a bright red ball, would burn them away quickly. To the west on a rocky promontory stood Castle MacPherson, the home that Angus had built for them. There it rose, three stories high, strong and graceful and as enduring as the life they’d built together. Beyond it she saw the gardens that gave her so much pleasure. And at the far edge, nestled at the foot of a sharply rising hillside, she could make out the top of the stone arch that Angus had built for her.

It was a replica of an older arch that had stood in the gardens of her family’s estate in Scotland and it had a legendary power from ancient times—the power to unite true lovers. The story had been passed down for years in the Campbell clan—the man or the woman you kissed beneath the stone arch would be your true love forever. Angus had even stolen some of the stones from the original arch so that this one would carry the same power.

With a smile, Eleanor let her mind drift back to that long ago night when she and Angus had met beneath those powerful stones on the Campbell estate for the last time. Her family had thrown a ball to celebrate her upcoming wedding, and she’d been wearing her future husband’s gift to her—a sapphire necklace and earrings that had been bestowed on his family for service to the Scottish court. Mary Stuart had worn the jewels at her coronation, and Eleanor’s husband-to-be had insisted that she wear them at their betrothal ball as proof of his love for her.

She’d snuck out of the ball to meet with Angus and to tell him that their secret meetings had to end. She’d practiced the speech for days. There was no future for them. Their families had been locked in a blood feud for years. She was promised to another man, a fine man from a prominent family. Then Angus had kissed her the moment she’d arrived—before she could say a word.

And that had been that.

Oh, she’d tried to talk some sense into him, but he wouldn’t listen. Impetuous, impatient, irresistible, Angus hadn’t taken no for an answer. He’d simply promised her everything and carried her away.

Thank God.

Eleanor let her gaze linger on the castle, with its lovely gardens and the stone arch. Angus had delivered on his promise. He’d given her everything. Going with him and settling here was the best decision she’d ever made. She only had one regret. And that was what had brought her to the cliffs this morning.

Slipping her hand into her pocket, she closed it over the leather pouches that held the Stuart Sapphires. Having them had always troubled her conscience. A man who’d loved her had given them to her. Not only had she betrayed that love, she’d also become a thief. Everything had happened so fast the night she’d fled with Angus, and any attempt at sending the jewels back later might have given her family some clue as to what she’d done, where she was. It was better that she just vanish.

But Angus had always known about her feelings. It was why he was visiting her now in her dreams, helping her to make things right. He’d always been so very good at making things right.

The latest dream had come this morning, and it had brought her here to the cliffs. She would tell no one what she was doing. Her sons and her daughters-in-law wouldn’t be pleased. They’d always assumed that the sapphire necklace and earrings she’d worn in her wedding portrait had been her dowry, the gift that her family had given to her when she’d married Angus.

The stone arch had played a part in the first dreams that Angus had sent her. In them she’d seen a young girl with reddish-gold curls finding one of the Stuart earrings in the stones. Angus had said her name was Adair. So Eleanor had hidden the first of the earrings there.

But the girl in her latest dream had long dark hair and she’d found the second earring in one of the inner chambers of the caves. Eleanor tightened her grip on the pouch in her pocket, and as she did, she heard Angus’s voice in her ear.

Her name is Piper. She believes in the power of the stone arch enough to bury her dreams and fantasies beneath them. And she knows about our secret cave. When she finds the second earring, the Stuart Sapphires will continue to find their way home. Trust me, Ellie … just as you did on the night we ran away.

The mists had cleared from the lake. With Angus’s words still clear in her mind, Eleanor began the short climb down the cliff face to the cave, just as she’d done so many times with her lover before. She would leave the second earring for Piper to find, and then she would wait for Angus to send her more dreams.




1


Washington, D.C., Summer, 2012

PIPER SNAPPED AWAKE AT THE first annoying clang of her Donald Duck alarm clock. A long-ago birthday present from her sisters. They knew how she loved keeping her life in order and on schedule. Donald had gotten her to class on time through four years of college and three years at Georgetown Law School. He was still going strong. The clock had no batteries, no power source, and all it required to silence it was a strong, determined whack.

She gave it one. And since Donald provided no snooze option, she sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. Then she ran her hand through her hair and automatically reached for the scrunchy she’d left on her nightstand. Her mind was already clearing and her vision would, too, in a couple of seconds. In the meantime, she tossed off the covers and reached for the gym shorts she always laid out at the foot of the bed. Swinging her legs to the floor, she pulled them on, then groped for the sports bra and T-shirt. By the time she’d managed socks and her running shoes, she could find her way to the bathroom to brush her teeth.

Her next stop was the coffeemaker in her kitchen. Unlike Donald, it required a power source, and thanks to top-of-the-line technology, it had already brewed a pot of strong coffee. The coffeemaker had also been a gift from her sisters. She poured a quarter of a cup and inhaled the fumes while she stretched and then slipped on the wristlet that held her apartment key. Finally, she took her cell phone off its charger and slipped it into her pocket.

Her morning routine never varied. But then variety wasn’t her goal. Order and routine were. Life got messy. Piper had learned at an early age that controlling the parts she could gave her more time to fix up the messy ones.

And lately, her professional life had gotten very messy.

Not yet. Firmly, she blocked the thought while she blew on the coffee and managed two swallows that burned her mouth and nearly cauterized her throat. It was a sacrifice she made each morning to the caffeine goddess.

Then she headed for the door of the flat she leased above a ritzy women’s clothing boutique in Georgetown, shut the door, tested the lock, then hurried down the steps and along the short alley to the sidewalk. At 6:00 a.m., the street was still mostly free of traffic. Mr. Findley who ran the coffee shop down the street was washing his windows, while a customer sat at one of the outside tables reading a paper. The sun was up and the humidity tolerable. The scent of stale beer and fresh bread baking mingled in the still air. Perfect.

She ran because it was an ingrained habit from her high school and college years, when she’d been on cross-country teams. But she also ran because it was the best way she knew to clear her mind and get ready to face the day.

Which promised to be another busy one. Her current job as a research assistant to prominent law professor and celebrity defense attorney Abraham Monticello was one she worked hard at. She’d accepted his offer right out of law school because it would look good on her résumé and because it offered her a unique chance to get a background in criminal law.

It was turning out to be unique, all right, and it was causing her to question her career choice. Her main reason for choosing law as a profession was that she believed in justice and in the power of the legal system to help people find it. But recently….

No. Not yet.

While she took the first block at an easy pace, she used a visualization technique her aunt Vi had taught her when she was very young. First, she pictured all the chaos of her upcoming day and her self-doubts being sucked into a bottle in much the same way Aladdin’s genie had been sucked into the lamp. Then she jammed the cork in with the same energy she’d used to whack Donald.

Whenever things got really bad, she let herself remember the really chaotic time in her life right after her mother died. She’d been three, her older sister Adair four, and Nell had been a baby. They’d been too young to really understand the loss—except that their mother wasn’t there anymore. And neither was their father. He’d hidden away in his studio and used his art to escape from his grief. Then their Aunt Vi had moved into the castle with them, and life had finally taken on some order again. That’s probably when her love of routine had taken root.

As she reached the end of the second block, Piper shifted her focus to the details of her surroundings, taking the opportunity to speed window-shop in the stores that stretched along the street. She saw changes in the displays and made a mental note to take a closer look at a pair of red sandals—when she had the time. And she’d have to make time to call Nell and tell her that her first published children’s book, It’s All Good, was still on display in the window of the bookstore.

When her younger sister had last visited, she’d made a good friend of the owner and now Nell’s story was selling well in Georgetown. Piper had to admit she was impressed. Nell had inherited their father’s creative talent, except she’d chosen writing rather than landscape painting as A. D. MacPherson had.

But she certainly hadn’t inherited their father’s reticence. Currently, Nell was using a federal grant to travel across the country, offering writing classes to children in underprivileged schools, and at the same time, establishing a network for her own writing.

As Piper turned down a residential street, her muscles began to warm and perspiration sheened on her forehead. She settled into a rhythm. If Nell was surprising her, her older sister Adair had truly shocked her.

During the past eight months, Adair and their aunt Vi had turned Castle MacPherson, their family home in the Adirondacks, into what was becoming a very successful wedding destination spot. Adair had always been an idea person, and when they’d been growing up, Piper and Nell had been more than willing to go along with most of her schemes. But whenever Adair’s plans had gone awry, it had always been Piper’s job to do the cleanup, which usually included negotiating with Aunt Vi, and on some occasions, even with their father.

No wonder she’d always been drawn to the practice of law. What did lawyers do except clean up the messes people got themselves into?

Only this time, the mess was of her own making.

Not yet. She was not going there yet.

The biggest surprise from the castle was that her sister and Aunt Vi had discovered one piece of their several-times-great grandmother, Eleanor Campbell MacPherson’s, priceless missing dowry: a sapphire earring that had reputedly been worn by Mary Stuart on the day she’d taken the throne. And during the same weekend, Aunt Vi had gotten engaged to Daryl Garnett, who ran the domestic operations unit of the CIA here in D.C. Even more astounding was that Adair, the practical queen of the five-year plan, had fallen in love, too. With Cam Sutherland, of all people.

Piper ran in place at the corner until the traffic cleared, then found her stride again. She hadn’t seen any of the Sutherland triplets since her father had married their mother seven years ago. The MacPherson sisters and the Sutherland triplets, Reid, Cameron and Duncan, went back a long way to a summer of playdates when the boys had opened up a whole new world of games—bad guys versus good guys, sheriff and posse, pirates and treasure, along with rock-climbing on the cliff face, a place where she and her sisters had been forbidden to play.

Then the Sutherlands had completely disappeared from their lives until they’d returned to the castle on the day their mother, Professor Beth Sutherland, married A. D. MacPherson beneath the stone arch. Since she had an eye for detail, Piper had duly noted that the scruffy, annoying Sutherland boys had morphed into tall, gorgeous and hot young men.

Especially one of them. Duncan. He’d really caught her attention that day with that tall, rangy body, the dark unruly hair and the mesmerizing green eyes. She’d felt those eyes on her during the ceremony when they’d been standing with their parents beneath the stone arch, and she’d felt a kind of tingly awareness that rippled along her nerve endings and heightened all of her other senses.

Intrigued, she’d met his gaze directly, and for a span of time, her vision and her mind had been totally filled with him and nothing else. Only Duncan. Heat had flooded her, melting her, muscle and bone, right to her core. The experience had been so new, so exciting, so terrifying. No one had ever made her feel that way before—or since.

Not that she’d had to worry about it. The triplets had flown in for the wedding and had returned to their respective colleges that night. She and her sisters had done the same the next day. Just as well. A man like Duncan Sutherland would likely wreak havoc on a girl’s life, something she didn’t have time for. She had enough problems to deal with in her work life.

Work. Her mind veered back to the coming day.

No. Not yet.

Increasing her pace, Piper ran full out for the next two blocks—pushing herself into a zone where all she had to do was enjoy the speed and the wind whipping past her face. The next corner marked the halfway point of her run. As she circled to head back, she moved into a slower rhythm and allowed herself to finally uncork the work bottle and face her demons.

Mentally, she made a list, one she’d been making almost every day lately. Good news first. She loved working for Abe Monticello, and up until a few months ago, she’d loved everything about the job. The only irritation she’d had to face was one of her fellow research assistants, Richard Starkweather. He wanted to date her and was having difficulty taking no for an answer. But she could handle that.

And working for Abe Monticello was more than worth a minor hassle with a colleague. He was a larger-than-life man with a larger-than-average talent. At sixty-five, he had the sharpness of mind, the looks and the creative imagination of a man half his age. If he’d been half his age and unmarried, Piper might have fallen in love with him.

Everything had been perfect until Abe had been hired to handle the appeal in a highly publicized case. It involved a man on death row who’d been convicted of murdering a young woman, but suspected of killing several others. Many, including the FBI, believed Patrick Lightman was the serial murderer the press had dubbed the RPK, or the Rose Petal Killer.

Piper had been thrilled when Abe had assigned her to do the research for the appeal and write a brief. She’d worked on Lightman’s case for two straight months. She’d studied the court recordings, read the media coverage and she’d viewed the crime scene photos of Suzanne Macks, the woman he’d been arrested for killing. Her killer had taken the time to arrange a little picnic setting. A white sheet had been spread across the floor of the living room of her apartment. Suzanne had been lying on top of it, her eyes closed, her hands folded across her chest and her long dark hair fanned out from her head. Rose petals, hundreds of them, had been strewn everywhere.

The Rose Petal Killer had left all of his victims exactly that way.

Everyone had believed Lightman guilty. The jury had taken only an hour to bring in a verdict.

But Piper had uncovered exactly what her boss had been hoping for—several procedural errors in the trial. She’d done the job and she’d done it well, but the hardest thing she’d ever done in her life was to hand her findings, along with the brief, over to her boss. Then a month ago, Abe had used what she’d written to successfully argue the case before the appeals court. And Patrick Lightman had been set free.

A man who’d been convicted of viciously murdering a young woman and who might very well have murdered seven others was walking the streets and could possibly kill again. Piper figured it was the biggest mess she’d ever gotten herself into.

For a couple of weeks, the media had created a circus surrounding the release of the Rose Petal Killer. Abe had taken all the heat. He was the one who’d received hate mail.

But she was the one who had the nightmares. In them, she pictured Patrick Lightman out on the streets, following another young girl with long dark hair. If Lightman was the Rose Petal Killer, he could even now be selecting his next victim. And Piper would be responsible.

Abe had taken the time to have a heart-to-heart talk with her. He’d reiterated his belief in the basic right of every citizen to a vigorous defense. The law always had to be applied meticulously and fairly in order to ensure justice. Piper believed that, too. In theory. But she was discovering there was a world of difference between theory and practice. What if Patrick Lightman killed again?

The only answer Abe had on that one was that prosecutors and defense attorneys couldn’t afford to let the job get personal. Then he’d encouraged her to throw herself into the next case, one he was set to argue in court within the next month, and he’d invited her to sit in the second chair. It meant more work, but it would get her mind off Patrick Lightman. Just what Abe had intended it to do.

Time to put it all back in the bottle. Picturing the process once again in her mind, Piper turned the final corner and sprinted for the entrance of her alleyway. At least the reporters had never bugged her at home. Piper took the stairs to her apartment two at a time. If she hadn’t let her mind wander back to work, she might have been more aware of her surroundings. As it was, her feet were both planted on the landing before she fully registered that the door to her apartment was open. In fact, it had been propped open with the ladder-back chair from her kitchen table.

By that time, she’d glanced into the room and what she saw froze her to the spot. Hysteria bubbled into her throat and blocked a scream. Someone had staged the scene perfectly. Her coffee table had been shoved to the side. A white sheet had been thrown across the floor the way a picnic blanket might be spread across a patch of lawn. Strewn across the white cloth were hundreds of rose petals. Enough to appear as if they’d rained out of the sky. And red enough to look like blood.

The only thing that was missing was the body of a young woman with long brown hair, her hands crossed over her chest, the scene she’d pictured several times in her nightmares.

Piper pressed a hand against her chest. She had to think. She had to breathe. And she had to get away from here. Still, she wasn’t sure how long it took her to tear her gaze away from the rose petals and get down the flight of stairs. She ran then, and she didn’t stop to use her cell phone until she’d dashed into the coffee shop down the street.

IT WAS DUNCAN SUTHERLAND’S day off, and to make sure he enjoyed every minute of it, he’d scheduled a 7:00 a.m. tee-off time. Although he preferred a low-key, laid-back approach to life, there were some deadlines that had to be met. And a tee-off time was sacred. Plus, he needed a break from work. Ever since accused serial killer Patrick Lightman had been set free, Duncan had been reviewing the FBI’s files during every minute of his spare time. He’d been the lead profiler on Lightman, and he was determined to put the man back in jail. There had to be something in the files that had been overlooked, some detail or angle that he hadn’t seen yet.

The first phone call came just as he was about to step into the shower.

A quick look at the caller ID told him it was bad news. His brother Cam never called except to report trouble or ask a favor. Either one might interfere with the perfect day he had planned. Cam’s last call had been a favor. Duncan had transported a veterinarian from Montana to upstate New York to reunite him with his ex-wife.

He let the phone ring four times, then gave up and answered. “Trouble or favor?”

Cam laughed.

So it would be a favor. “I’m teeing off in an hour,” Duncan warned. “And what time is it in Scotland anyway?” His brother had taken some time from his job at the CIA to run off to Scotland with Adair MacPherson. They’d recently become unofficially engaged and they were going to deliver the news in person to their respective parents, who were both on a working vacation there.

“Relax. I just wanted to know if you’d given any more thought to going up to Castle MacPherson and poking around in the library?”

“Some.” Cam had been nagging him about that ever since he’d shown him the sapphire earring that Adair and Vi had discovered in the stone arch. His brother believed that someone had been sneaking into Castle MacPherson for nearly six months, and they still had no idea who the intruder was. But the nocturnal visits had started right about the time the New York Times had run a feature article on the castle and those missing jewels that Mary Stuart had reputedly worn at her coronation. Cam’s theory was that the visitations had something to do with the missing jewels. That would have been his own best guess.

“You’re the profiler in the family,” Cam said. “If anybody can get some handle on who the intruder was, it’s you. You always had a knack for getting into people’s heads.”

As the youngest of triplets, Duncan supposed that he’d developed that knack as a survival skill. And it had been part of what had drawn him to the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit. The other part of it had been what had drawn all three of them into some kind of law enforcement—the arrest of their father for embezzlement. They’d been nine when it had happened, and Duncan still carried the image in his mind of the three of them standing in front of their mother as the police handcuffed their father and led him away. Duncan also remembered what he’d felt—a fierce kind of happiness that David Fedderman couldn’t hurt their mother anymore.

“He’s still out there,” Cam continued. “And the rest of Eleanor’s dowry has to be at the castle somewhere. You don’t want to miss out on a chance to find it, do you?”

It was Duncan’s turn to laugh. As the middle triplet, Cam had always felt the need to compete, especially with Reid, the first born. “You should try that ‘miss out on a chance’ tactic with Reid. You could always get him with it when we were kids.”

“I intend to,” Cam said. “But serving on the vice president’s Secret Service detail is keeping him hopping. Besides, the strategy will work more effectively after you find either the necklace or the other earring. Help me out here.”

“Not on your life. My philosophy has always been to not take sides when it comes to the two of you and your competition.” Waiting it out until the dust settled had always worked well for him.

“It was worth a shot. But you can’t tell me that you don’t want to find part of Eleanor’s dowry. You were fascinated by those sapphires when you were a kid.”

A brother, especially one with CIA training, knew what buttons to push. The truth was Duncan had been thinking about visiting the castle. The summer he was ten and they’d had daily playdates with the MacPherson girls, he’d spent hours studying Eleanor’s wedding portrait, and he’d memorized the legendary jewels. Two thumbnail-sized sapphires hung from each earring and one of the jewels on the necklace rivaled the Hope Diamond in size.

There was a story there that hadn’t been told. Tradition held that the jewels had been Eleanor’s dowry, but there was no record of what had happened to them until the first earring had shown up less than a month ago when lightning had struck the stone arch and loosened some stones. Someone had hidden it. Who? And why? Those were the questions that drove all of his investigations.

“So—will you go?” Cam prodded.

Duncan shifted his thoughts back to the conversation and stalled. “I thought that you and Adair had run off to Scotland to see what you could dig up about the sapphires on that end.”

“That’s our plan, but the rest of Eleanor’s dowry is at the castle. And I still think there’s something in that library that holds the key.”

Once again, he had to agree with Cam’s assessment. The security had been beefed up at the castle, and the local sheriff was sending regular patrols now.

“The air is a lot fresher up there than it is in that basement you work in at Quantico,” Cam said. “It’ll be fairly quiet. No wedding is scheduled, just a photo shoot for some fancy architecture magazine. Daryl will be visiting Vi on the weekend. The two of you might be able to get in a game of golf.”

Daryl Garnett was Cam’s boss at the CIA and he’d recently become engaged to Vi. He was also a scratch golfer. Leave it to a brother to know your weaknesses. Duncan glanced at his watch. The minutes to his tee time were slipping away.

“If I tell you I’m planning on going up there this weekend, will you go back to your fiancée and our parents and leave me alone?”

“You’ve got it, bro. My job with you is done,” Cam said, and clicked off.

It wasn’t until Duncan was stepping out of the shower a few minutes later that the second call came. And it meant he’d have to cancel his tee time and perhaps even his trip to the castle. There was a chance that the Rose Petal Killer had selected a new victim.




2


DUNCAN SHOWED HIS BADGE TO THE young uniformed officer standing on the landing of the small apartment then ducked his head to step inside. The space was small—one room where a minimum of furniture had been artfully arranged to separate the eating area from the living space. The floor between the couch and fireplace was completely covered by a white sheet sprinkled liberally with bloodred rose petals very much in the style of the Rose Petal Killer.

He’d get back to that in a moment. For now he took in the other details. A tiny kitchen was tucked into an alcove and a door directly ahead led into a bedroom the size of a closet. No surprise that the place was so crowded, considering all the people in it. Two of the men he didn’t recognize. They were carefully dusting surfaces for prints. The other two he knew on sight. They stood just inside the bedroom. One was Detective Mike Nelson, who’d given him the call when he’d stepped out of the shower. Duncan had consulted on a case of Mike’s the year he’d been hired to work at Quantico and they’d been friends ever since. The other man he recognized as Abe Monticello, whose head, like his own, was nearly brushing the ceiling. He was the reason that Duncan had missed his golf game.

Abe hadn’t called him personally; instead, he’d called his sister, who happened to be Duncan’s boss.

It had been a rough month for Adrienne Monticello. The division she commanded at Quantico had worked on the Rose Petal Killer cases, and her brother had been responsible for setting Patrick Lightman loose. Since she considered Duncan to be the division’s expert on the RPK, Adrienne had asked him to go over to Georgetown and give her his personal take on the scene. Mike Nelson had called him, too, and asked if he could stop by.

It didn’t surprise him at all that Abe Monticello had wanted the FBI involved in this from the get-go. He was a smart man and very savvy about handling the press. Someone had broken into the apartment of one of his research assistants and staged a scene that matched the romantic little sets that the Rose Petal Killer had designed for his victims. Abe would want to step into his favorite role—the white knight, charging in to save the day.

Both Adrienne and Nelson had called him because they wanted the answer to one question. Was this the work of the real Rose Petal Killer or a copycat? He imagined Nelson would prefer the former. The detective, along with everyone else in law enforcement, would like to get Lightman back behind bars.

Abe Monticello wanted the answer to be “copycat” because he’d spent a lot of time in front of TV cameras during the past few weeks speaking in defense of the legal system and the way it worked to prevent the violation of every citizen’s rights. The speech might not play so well if Patrick Lightman started murdering slender young brunettes again. Or threatening to.

Well, you couldn’t please everyone, and Duncan already had a feeling about which man would be happier about his opinion. His insights into the criminal mind were usually right. His mother had told him when he’d joined the FBI that his interest in behavioral science had begun with his trying to figure out what had motivated his father to become an embezzler.

David Fedderman had been born to wealth and privilege, but he’d abused both. In his position at Fedderman Investments, a firm that his grandfather had founded, he’d run a successful Ponzi scheme for years until it had collapsed and Fedderman had been arrested on several counts of fraud.

Of course, his father’s arrest and eventual incarceration hadn’t been the end of the story. His mother had had to battle Fedderman’s parents for custody, and as soon as she’d won, she’d legally changed all their names back to Sutherland and accepted a position teaching at a liberal arts college in Chicago. As to figuring his father out, that hadn’t been much of a challenge. David Fedderman had been one of those men for whom running a con and living life on a constant adrenaline rush was worth more than family or wealth. It had been worth risking everything. He was still serving time in a federal prison, and Duncan would have bet good money his father was still running scams.

Analyzing what he was seeing in front of him was a lot more challenging. The way the white sheet was spread was fairly accurate, the edges folded in to make what looked like a perfect square. The Rose Petal Killer had been meticulous about that. In the tiny room, the sheet filled most of the available space between the couch and a TV stand against one wall. Duncan dropped to one knee and caught the edge of the sheet between his thumb and his forefinger and rubbed. Then he studied the rose petals. They all looked fairly fresh.

Nelson spotted him first and walked to the back of the sofa. “Thanks for coming, Sutherland. Take your time.”

He didn’t need any more time to answer the question he figured was foremost in Mike’s mind, but he’d learned a long time ago that the information he provided would be taken more seriously if he strategically delayed the delivery. “Any sign of a break-in?” he asked.

“No. She was out for a run when it happened. Claims she locked the door and took the key,” Nelson said. “The only person who has a spare key is the woman who runs the dress shop downstairs. We’ll question her as soon as she opens up.”

The lack of evidence of a break-in was consistent with the RPK’s pattern. The widely accepted theory was that his victims let him in. But that hadn’t happened in this case.

“We didn’t find any evidence that the lock was picked,” Nelson continued. “But a pro wouldn’t have had a problem with it.”

And a duplicate key made from a wax impression was also a possibility, Duncan mused. A robbery ring recently arrested in nearby Baltimore had accessed house keys by distracting parking valets at high-end restaurants. The customers would return home after an evening of fine dining to find their houses stripped. A stalker with the patience and skills of Patrick Lightman might have used a similar method to gain access to his victims’ homes.

It was when he was replacing the edge of the sheet that Duncan spotted the thin envelope that lay just beneath. He pinched the corner of it to draw it out.

“I want to know if Ms. MacPherson is in danger,” Monticello said.

As Duncan glanced up and met the older man’s eyes, his mind was racing. “Ms. MacPherson?” Piper wasn’t a common name and he recalled that Piper MacPherson had gotten her law degree from Georgetown Law School.

“Yes,” Abe said. “She works for me. I want to know just how much danger she’s in.”

Abe hadn’t mentioned her first name yet, but Duncan was beginning to get a feeling. Then Piper strode into the room and confirmed it in spades.

He hadn’t seen her in seven years, not since they’d stood beneath the stone arch at the castle and listened to their parents exchange vows. But every detail of her appearance slammed into his mind and pummeled his senses. The slender frame, the long, long legs that extended from narrow ankles to running shorts, the compact curves, slim waist and the dark brown hair that hung in a ponytail. He’d never been so aware of a woman as he’d been the day of the wedding. Or now.

“Whoever did this isn’t the Rose Petal Killer,” she said as she walked with economical grace toward Nelson and Monticello.

The voice with its low pitch and huskiness rippled along his nerve endings. It was the kind of voice that tempted a man to come closer. A whole lot closer. He imagined the mythical sirens who’d lured sailors to their deaths might have had voices exactly like hers. Which was why he’d kept his distance on their parents’ wedding day. He’d been about to graduate from college and had his sights set on the FBI. And their parents’ marriage had made the MacPherson girls family.

“Of course it’s not,” Abe Monticello said.

“The FBI is here to determine that for us,” Nelson said.

Duncan stayed right where he was. For a moment he still needed the distance, but he knew the second she became aware of him. He could see the tension ripple through her, and even as she turned, he braced himself. Seven years was still a long time.

But as he looked into those amazing amber-colored eyes, once again he felt the impact like a blow. Desire sprang up, primitive and strong enough to nearly have him rising from his crouch. Then he felt his mind empty as suddenly as if someone had pulled a plug. All he could see was her. All he wanted was her.

For seven years, he’d tried to convince himself that what he’d felt that day was a fluke. A onetime event. And he’d succeeded in compartmentalizing it.

But he knew now exactly what he’d known then. Piper MacPherson was it for him. The only one. For seven years he’d compartmentalized that, too. He’d tried to convince himself that she was family, and that meant hands-off. But as he continued to sink into the depths of those golden eyes, Duncan had a feeling that the lids on all those compartments had been blown clean off.

“You,” she said.

In Duncan’s opinion, she’d summed up his situation nicely. And what in the hell was he going to do about it?

PIPER CLOSED HER EYES. There was always the chance that she was hallucinating. Or her habit of visualizing was getting the best of her. But when she opened her eyes again, Duncan Sutherland was still crouched on the floor of her apartment.

For an instant, she certainly hoped it wasn’t longer than that. She felt just as she had when she’d stopped short in the open doorway of her apartment and seen the rose petals strewn over the white sheet.

Except that it wasn’t just shock she was feeling. And her blood hadn’t turned to ice. Instead, it seemed to be sizzling through her veins like an electrical current, melting bones and paralyzing muscles so that she wasn’t sure she could talk. Or move.

“What are you doing here?” she asked.

“This is FBI agent Duncan Sutherland, Ms. MacPherson,” Mike Nelson said. “He works for the Behavioral Analysis Unit at Quantico. I asked him here because he worked on the Rose Petal killings.”

“I know Duncan,” Piper said. Okay, she was breathing and talking. In a couple of seconds, she’d get her thoughts back on track. Should she try stuffing him into a bottle? Would he fit?

A young uniformed officer appeared in the open doorway. “Sorry, sir. She got away from me.”

Piper managed to drag her eyes away from Duncan and glanced back at Nelson. “He was kind enough to get me coffee, and the caffeine helped me think.” And she was thinking again. Finally. She waved a hand at the sheet. “I came up here to save you some time, Detective. This isn’t the work of the Rose Petal Killer.”

“Tell me why not,” Duncan said.

Bracing herself, Piper turned to face him and managed to take one step closer to the edge of the sheet. And him. “Because the rose petals are so fresh. I read all the files. He used to buy the flowers over the course of days and save them up.”

“Too many roses purchased at one time, one place, might have drawn attention. Plus, there was some speculation that he bought them over time as little anonymous gifts for his victims,” Duncan said. “And if they saved them, he used those older petals.”

She narrowed her eyes. She’d read those very words in the files she’d worked on. And those details had never been released to the press nor had they made it into the court records. Duncan had worked on the cases, all right. Of course he had. He might even have consulted with the police on the Suzanne Macks murder.

“What else is different?” Duncan asked. “Take your time.”

She shifted her gaze to the sheet. “I should have done that instead of panicking.” She sank to her knees to get a better look. But what she was looking at and what she was feeling were two different things. She was close enough to touch him now. She could certainly smell him—sunshine and soap and something else that bumped up that sizzle in her blood.

Focus.

Ruthlessly, she shifted her attention fully to the details she’d only glanced at before. The edges of the sheet were tucked in to form a perfect square in the available space. That was right. No wrinkles. The RPK had always been neat and precise.

Suddenly, she frowned. “There are fold marks in the sheet, as if it’s been newly purchased.”

“Good point,” Duncan said. “What else?”

Lifting the edge of the sheet, she rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger. “This is wrong, too. The texture is too rough. The thread count should be higher. He always used Egyptian cotton.”

“You did read the files,” Duncan murmured. “You worked on the appeals brief, didn’t you?”

After taking in a deep breath, Piper met his eyes and nodded. She’d prepared herself to find anger, maybe condemnation, censure at the very least. And why not? She’d set a killer free. And now she was facing a man who’d probably worked very hard to bring that killer to justice. But what she saw in the clear green depths of Duncan’s eyes was understanding.

Something moved through her then, something she couldn’t begin to name. But even as her gaze lingered on his, those green eyes darkened and triggered very different feelings. The rush of desire, the flood of heat, was intense and immediate, as if a button had been pushed. The impulse burst into her mind of just grabbing him, shoving him onto that sheet and rolling with him across it as she stripped him out of those clothes.

No. That couldn’t happen.

But the thrill of what that might be like mingled with the accompanying shock that she’d actually thought of doing it. Wanted so badly to do it.

Here.

Now.

If they’d just been alone.

But they weren’t. She dragged her gaze away from him and back to the sheet with its bloodred petals. What in the world was wrong with her? No man had ever made her think this … crazily before.

“Ms. MacPherson did an amazing job on the appeal,” Abe Monticello was saying. “I’ve invited her to take second chair in the trial I’m scheduled for in a couple of weeks.”

“She did an excellent job,” Duncan agreed. “Thanks to her, a shoddy lab was shut down. For a while, our hardworking law enforcement agencies will be very careful about the way they collect and store evidence, and judges will think more precisely about what kind of evidence to admit into the record.”

“Before we throw a ticker-tape parade, let’s remember that the amazing appeal set a serial killer loose on the streets,” Nelson added.

“So put him back in jail,” Abe said. “In any case, our experts seem to agree that this incident is the work of a copycat.”

“Not so fast. Before we jump on that bandwagon, we’d better take a look at this.” Duncan lifted his hand, and out of the corner of her eye, Piper saw the thin envelope he held between two fingers.

“I found this tucked under the sheet.” As he spoke he opened the unsealed flap and pulled out a piece of cream-colored vellum, the kind that a formal announcement might have been printed on.

He turned it so that she could see what was written in block letters. THE NEXT TIME, YOU’LL BE THE ONE LYING BENEATH THE PETALS.

It was only as Duncan read the message aloud to the other two men that the meaning began to sink in. A sliver of fear worked its way up her spine, but a little flare of anger chased it away. She shot to her feet. “Leaving a note was never part of the RPK’s pattern. Who would do this?”

“Someone who’s angry because we won our appeal,” Abe said. “So it’s clearly not Patrick Lightman. He’s got to be very happy with the work we did.”

“Well, someone definitely isn’t,” Nelson muttered.

“Agreed. Your job is to find out who’s threatening Ms. MacPherson,” Monticello said.

Duncan rose to his feet, but whatever he might have added was forestalled by the commotion at the door of her apartment. Turning, she saw her colleague Richard Starkweather stride through the still-open door.

“Piper, thank God you’re all right.” He started toward her.

Duncan quickly stepped in front of her. “Who are you?”

Richard frowned at him. “Who are you?”

“He’s all right,” Abe said. “Richard Starkweather is one of my research assistants.”

Because Duncan was completely blocking her view, Piper edged to his side. Two men now flanked Richard, a uniformed officer and Detective Nelson.

“What are you doing here?” Nelson asked the question that was foremost in Piper’s mind.

“I came to see if Piper was all right. It’s all over the news that the Rose Petal Killer has struck again.” He gestured toward the petal-strewn sheet. “They’re running footage of the crime scene on all three local news stations. It’s even posted on YouTube. When I recognized Piper’s apartment, I had to come over here to make sure she was all right. Surely you can understand that, Officer.”

“Detective,” Nelson corrected.

When the TV blared on, Piper turned to see that Abe was using the remote to find a news channel. The moment he did, they were all viewing a video clip of the scene in her apartment. It was exactly what she’d encountered when she’d returned from her run. There was a shot of the room that took in her kitchen, the open door to the bedroom, all the way to the fireplace. Then the picture on the TV screen narrowed to a close-up of the petal-strewn sheet. She felt a sliver of ice work its way up her spine.

A reporter’s voice was saying, “This was the scene early this morning when attorney Piper MacPherson returned to her apartment. Our source tells us that Ms. MacPherson worked on the appeal that set accused Rose Petal Killer, Patrick Lightman, free. Will she be his next victim?”

Mike Nelson pulled out his phone. “I’ll find out how they got that video clip.”

“Whoever set up this little scene could easily have shot it on his cell phone before he left,” Duncan said. “Then he could have attached it to an email. Starkweather just said it’s accessible on YouTube.”

Abe switched channels and caught another replay of the tape. A reporter gave the same information in a voice-over.

Piper made herself look carefully at it this time. “Someone shot the scene from the open doorway, then stepped inside for the close-up of the sheet. But why would anyone do this?”

There were three full beats of silence before Duncan directed a question to Abe. “Who knows she worked on the brief? So far you’ve kept a tight lid on that.”

“Intentionally,” Abe said. “No one from my office leaked it.”

“Well, somebody found out,” Duncan said. “And whoever did this is angry enough at her to paint a target on her back.”

Great, Piper thought. She could picture it clearly in her mind. How could a day that had started out so normally become a nightmare so quickly?




3


TWO HOURS LATER, DUNCAN STOOD in the alley gazing at the wooden staircase that led to Piper’s small apartment. Finally, he was alone.

Monticello had left first, waiting only until Piper had showered and changed so that he could personally escort her to work. Most members of the press who’d finally tracked down Piper’s apartment had scurried after Abe’s limo.

Mike Nelson had lingered longer. His men had talked to Piper’s landlady, who owned the high-end dress shop beneath Piper’s apartment, but the spare key was hanging from a rack in her office. One of the police department’s tech men had tracked down the email message that had been sent to the TV stations. Both it and the attached video clip had been sent from a stolen smartphone. The owner hadn’t even noticed it was missing.

The uniformed officers had questioned shop owners, but the incident had taken place hours before most of them had unlocked their doors. When Nelson had left, he’d taken everyone and everything with him— crime scene techs, the uniforms, the sheet and the rose petals. Back at the precinct, Nelson and his partner would begin the tedious job of trying to track down where the roses and the sheet and the vellum note paper had been purchased. Tedious work, but it might pay off. They might get a description, even a name.

Duncan had hung around, instead of getting a late start to his golf game, because he did some of his best thinking as he wandered through a deserted crime scene. The quiet, the lack of other people, helped him to see things more clearly. He was frequently called in to consult on cases to do exactly what he was doing now. Lingering, noticing the small details, theorizing. He agreed totally with Piper. It wasn’t Patrick Lightman who’d done this. Adrienne was checking on the man’s alibi, but there were too many things about the scene that didn’t fit into the RPK’s M.O.

So who had done it? And why? Those were the key questions any profiler asked.

First, the perpetrator was smart. He’d had to gather data on the Lightman case and on Piper’s schedule. And to pull it off as a media event in such a short amount of time, he’d had to have contacts at the local new stations.

No matter what angle Duncan viewed it from, he didn’t think it was the work of a copycat who was planning to kill other women in the “style” of the RPK. His gut told him that the “who” was someone who had a personal vendetta against Piper. But whoever was trying to get to her was going to have to go through him.

Duncan wasn’t sure when he’d made that decision. Perhaps it had been when he’d been studying the rose petals strewn across the sheet and Abe Monticello had mentioned her name. For just an instant, he’d seen the image of her he’d carried somewhere in his head all these years. He’d seen her lying beneath those petals.

Or perhaps it had been a decision that had been made for him seven years ago, when he’d stood under that stone arch with her. He was Scottish enough that he couldn’t ignore the power of legends.

When he made the decision, it was irreversible. And it would lead to complications. While she’d been kneeling next to him studying the little picnic scene, he’d wanted his hands on her. And once he started down that path….

When his cell phone rang, he wasn’t surprised to see Reid’s number on the caller ID. That meant that the news about Piper had made its way to Scotland. And when there was trouble, Cam always made the first call to Reid, the oldest brother.

“I’m assuming you’ve got Piper’s back,” Reid said.

“Yes. I assume that our family in Scotland got the news and contacted you.”

Reid laughed. “Sibling jealousy just never completely fades away. If it makes you feel better, no one has contacted me. I’m in France again with the VP and I caught it on the evening news. I thought I’d check with you before I got the call. I knew Piper was living in D.C., but I wasn’t aware that she was working for Abe Monticello or that she was working on the RPK case. Your paths didn’t cross during the trial, I take it.”

“The FBI refused to share anything for that appeal.”

“What’s going on?”

“Wish I had a better handle on that.” Then Duncan gave his brother a condensed version of what had happened and what they knew or theorized so far. While it helped to run through all the essentials again, it increased his sense that Piper could really be in danger.

“Could be it’s someone who’s unhappy with the fact that she helped to set Lightman free.”

“That’s a long list, but the police will have to start with Suzanne Macks’s family, especially her twin brother, Sid.” They’d been through quite a bit already. So if he could find anything that would narrow the list and eliminate them….

“I assume you have a plan,” Reid said.

“Working on it.”

“If I were you, I’d consider getting her the hell out of Dodge. Working on the vice president’s security detail, I don’t often have the luxury of doing that when my guy becomes a possible target.”

“I’m considering that.” The problem was to get Piper to agree.

“I’ll leave it in your very capable hands, and I’ll call the Scotland group to let them know that you’re handling it.”

After glancing at his watch, Duncan glanced down the alley, trying to see and think about it the same way the man who was threatening Piper’s life had. She’d told Nelson that she ran at the same time every morning. That didn’t surprise him. Her route took her past the shops on the street. Turning, he stepped out of the alley and glanced up and down the street. It was bustling now with both cars and pedestrian traffic. At six o’clock, she would have been easy to spot from a variety of locations. A regular routine made a serial killer’s work easy.

The perpetrator hadn’t had much to carry in, Duncan mused as he turned to walk down the alley and climb the stairs. The sheet, a couple of plastic bags filled with petals and the note. Everything could have been easily tucked into one bag. Maybe a backpack or a shopping bag. He recalled Piper’s observation that the sheet had been new with the folds from the original packaging still apparent. She had a good eye for detail.

On the landing he crouched down to examine the lock. Duncan found nothing to contradict Nelson’s judgment that it hadn’t been tampered with. He took a slim tool out of his pocket, and twenty seconds later he was inside the apartment. Then he pantomimed moving the coffee table aside, shaking out the sheet. Thirty seconds. Adjusting and tucking the edges to replicate a perfect square took two minutes. Scattering the petals ate up another thirty. Tops.

He gave himself another thirty to examine the scene in his mind and thirty after that to make adjustments. Then he backed up to the door, took his cell phone out of his pocket and took a video, first panning the scene, then zooming in on the sheet and the petals.

It took him another minute to prop the ladder-backed chair against the door. Halfway down the stairs, he glanced at his watch. Seven or eight minutes from start to finish. Ten if the guy let nerves slow him down. But nothing else in the apartment had been disturbed. Whoever it was had come for one purpose only. To set up the scene, record it and get it on TV.

Mission accomplished.

Then he remembered the bag or whatever the guy must have used to carry in his props. If it had been a shopping bag, it hadn’t been in the apartment. And it wasn’t needed anymore.

On a hunch, he stopped by the Dumpster at the end of the alley. Duncan held his breath, ignoring the mix of odors he released as he lifted the lid. A Macy’s bag lay right on the top, and inside he found a sales slip and the plastic covering for a single sheet.

Bingo.

He had his phone out, intending to pass the information along to Mike Nelson, when a long dark sedan pulled up to the mouth of the alley and his boss stepped out.

Adrienne Monticello was a tall, slender blonde with long curly hair. Today, she wore it pulled back into a ponytail. She had the same camera-ready good looks as her brother and she knew how to dress to enhance them. Her jacket and slacks were purple, her shoes designer. Gold winked at her ears and on her wrist. Although he knew she was in her mid-fifties, she could pass for a decade younger.

She whipped her oversize sunglasses off as she approached, and her expression was worried. “You aren’t answering your phone.”

“I don’t like to be interrupted when I walk through a crime scene.” And that’s how she’d figured out where to track him down. The fact that she’d left the office to do so didn’t bode well.

“Abe called me. He says you don’t believe that Lightman was involved in this.”

“He wasn’t.”

She studied him for a moment, and then nodded. “He’s worried about Ms. MacPherson. He’s been watching the TV coverage at his office, and they’ve located a photo of her from law school. They’re running it along with the little petal scene.”

“And Abe noticed that she’s the Rose Petal Killer’s type. Slender, long brown hair,” Duncan added. Serial killers often had a type. Some even went for females who were left-handed or played a certain sport in high school. There’d been one who’d even chosen his victims because of the number and sequence of vowels in their first and last names.

“It isn’t just Abe who’s noticed it. The press is announcing it to the world about every fifteen minutes or so.”

Not good, Duncan thought. That put an even bigger target on Piper’s back. One that might tickle the fancy of Patrick Lightman. “Where is she right now?”

“In Abe’s offices. He wants protection for her.”

What he wanted, Duncan suspected, was for his big sister to help him out of the mess he’d created when he’d ignored her advice and taken the Lightman case.

“I thought you might have some ideas,” she said. “Piper MacPherson is your stepsister, right?”

“Yes,” Duncan said. “My mother married her father seven years ago, but we’ve never shared a home.” And his feelings for her were definitely not brotherly. “You’re having Lightman watched. Does he have an alibi?”

She nodded. “They didn’t see him leave his apartment.”

“I’m betting there’s someone else who has a beef with Piper.” He told her about the Macy’s bag and the rest of what he was thinking. “It could be Sid Macks, Suzanne’s brother.” The young man had appeared on all the talk shows he could get himself booked on to protest the release of Lightman and the miscarriage of justice.

“Yeah. He confronted Abe a couple of times outside his office, but he never made any personal threats. He didn’t seem the violent type.”

“Maybe he or someone else is doing this to get Lightman’s attention focused on Piper, hoping he’ll do the dirty work.”

“Shit. You’re making me remember why I hired you. You can really get into the twisted way someone like Lightman would think.” She glanced up at the apartment building. “Maybe it’s a onetime thing. And maybe you’re being paranoid about Lightman. He should be grateful that she helped get him off of death row.”

“Hard to bank on that with a crazy psychopath.”

“Hannibal Lecter had a soft spot in his heart for Clarice.”

“Lecter was a fictional character. Lightman’s not. But I may have a plan to keep her out of harm’s way for a while.” Duncan supposed it had been forming in his mind from the moment she’d walked into her apartment that morning.

“Then it was worth tracking you down in an alley,” Adrienne said.

“The problem will be selling it to her.”

Adrienne smiled at him. “I can’t imagine the day when you won’t be able to sell something to a woman.”

AT A FEW MINUTES PAST SIX THAT evening, Piper started down the back stairwell in the building where Abe Monticello rented office space. She was wearing dark glasses, and she’d tucked her hair into an old golf cap her boss had dug out of one of his desk drawers.

A disguise.

Abe and Richard were, at this very moment, exiting through the front of the building, thus distracting the few die-hard reporters who had hung out all day hoping to interview her about the Rose Petal Killer’s visit to her apartment.

No use telling the media that it hadn’t been the real RPK who’d broken into her home and strewn those flower petals around. Some official spokesperson from the D.C. police department had already tried to clarify what had happened. And although the clips had aired all day on the twenty-four-hour cable news stations, first impressions were lasting. And whoever had taken that original video clip and released it to the press had created a dilly of a first impression.

Within hours some enterprising reporter had located her graduation photo from Georgetown Law and she’d become the celebrity of the moment, the latest face that could be blamed for letting Patrick Lightman out of jail.

Duncan had said that she had a target on her back. And by the end of the day, she’d felt it grow brighter and heavier by the moment. It hadn’t helped one bit that every time she thought about the target, she thought about him and what she’d imagined doing to him and with him on that sheet in her apartment.

Seeing him again had blown open a floodgate of feelings that she’d successfully buried for years. The intense attraction she’d felt for him at their parents’ wedding should have been history.

Piper started down the last flight of stairs. All day she’d tried to convince herself that what she’d felt when she’d seen him that morning had been a fluke. A onetime phenomenon that had been caused by the adrenaline rush of coming home to that terrible scene in her apartment.

But try as she might, she couldn’t seem to get Duncan Sutherland completely out of her mind. Even as a child, she’d liked him the best of the triplets. He’d helped her out of an embarrassing situation once. She could still remember it as if it were yesterday. They’d been playing pirates, and Nell had drawn the short straw, which meant that she had to play the captured princess and sit in those dumb caves in the cliff face for hours on end until someone rescued her. Boring. But even though Reid had offered his help, Nell had looked frightened at the prospect of climbing up the cliff face to get to the cave. So Piper had volunteered to take her place.

She’d gotten there just fine because she and Cam, who’d been the pirate that day, had climbed up from the beach. For a while she’d amused herself by poking around in the small string of caves, three of them in total, but after a couple of hours, she’d known them like the back of her hand. Bored out of her mind, she’d decided to rescue herself. But when she’d started down the cliff face, she’d frozen.

When Duncan had arrived to “rescue” her, he’d found her just below the cave, clinging to the rocks. He’d told her he’d be right up, and when he was beside her, he simply told her that he’d go first and tell her what to do.

And he’d done just that, coaching her through it, telling her where to put her hands and feet. He had to have sensed her fear, but he’d never mentioned it or teased her. More importantly, he’d never ratted her out to his brothers or her sisters.

Duncan Sutherland was a man who could be trusted. She only wished she could trust her boss as unconditionally. But something was stopping her. Frowning, she strode down the hallway that led to the alley door. At five o’clock, Abe had called her into his office for a little heart-to-heart talk. He was worried about her safety. There might be other incidents.

Then he’d given her the really bad news.

He wanted her to take some time off. Maybe take a trip just until the media found something else to focus on. When she’d objected and pointed out that she was sitting second chair for the Bronwell trial in two weeks, he’d told her that he’d had to reconsider that decision. Richard Starkweather was going to take her place.

Her already much less than perfect day had become a whole lot worse.

Not that she could fault the logic of Abe’s argument. The media circus that had surrounded him right after Lightman had been released had begun to die down. And the break-in at her apartment had stirred everything up again.

Just as seeing Duncan Sutherland had stirred her up again.

No. She was not going to think about him. What she’d felt had been a fluke.

She had bigger problems, not the least of which was the implied death threat on the vellum notepaper. Thus, her Greta Garbo-like exit down the back staircase. Her ride home, arranged by Abe, would be waiting at the end of the alley. And maybe, just maybe, her improvised disguise would allow her to sneak into her apartment unnoticed.

She turned the knob on the alley door. A relaxing bath, layered with bubbles and accompanied by a glass of icy white wine, would help her to think. There’d be other trials. And other setbacks. Piper MacPherson didn’t believe that getting depressed or discouraged was ever an effective way to handle life’s rough patches.

She was never going to become her father’s daughter. He’d avoided life for years after her mother had died. She believed in facing life head-on. She’d figure out a way to deal with the rose petal incident and she’d win back the opportunity to sit second chair with Abe.

The instant she stepped out of the building into the alley, she stopped short and every thought or plan she had in her mind disappeared. All she could do once again was stare.

Duncan stood leaning against the hood of a very shiny red convertible. The kind that was meant for the open road and speed. Not at all the kind of car she’d expected the quiet, studious Duncan Sutherland to drive.

Neither of those adjectives seemed to apply to the man leaning against the sexy car. He looked as big as he had in her apartment that morning. And his effect on her senses was just as intense. She could see more of him now. A lot more. Broad shoulders tapered down to a narrow waist and then long, long legs crossed at the ankles. With each passing second, the sizzle in her blood grew stronger, hotter.

He’d changed into a black T-shirt and jeans that made him look just a bit dangerous. His face, with its slash of cheekbones, broad forehead, unruly hair and strong chin, was nearly movie star perfect. That was the image of him that had kept sneaking into her mind all day, even when she’d been talking to Abe and losing her dream assignment.

When she met Duncan’s eyes, they had the same effect on her senses they’d had that morning, sending a shot of heat that hit her dead center, then radiated right out to her fingers and toes. Okay. The way she was reacting to him was not a fluke and not the result of an adrenaline rush.

Terrific.

As if she hadn’t had enough to deal with today. A nut who wanted to scare her, a boss who wanted to protect her, not to mention himself, and now this.

It was only then she realized she wasn’t moving. It was the second time today Duncan Sutherland had stopped her cold.

Time to put an end to that. She’d talk to him and send him on his way. Striding forward, she forced a smile. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.”

Duncan threw back his head and laughed. Her straightforward, no-nonsense approach was one of the things he’d always liked about Piper. And he was grateful for it now since it had effectively brought him back to the present. For a moment after she’d stepped out of that alley door, she’d wiped his mind clean.

“What are you doing here?” Piper asked as she reached the hood of his car.

He had to think for a second. Looking at her was slowing his thought processes down. But the reason was the same one that had brought him to her apartment that morning. “Your boss called my boss and asked for a favor.”

Her brows shot up. “Favor? What kind of a favor? And why would your boss owe Abe Monticello a favor?”

“Family thing. My boss is Adrienne Monticello. She’s Abe’s younger sister. I suspect she grew up trying to get him out of trouble, and old habits die hard. They’re both worried about you.”

Duncan watched her absorb the information. While he absorbed more of her. The pantsuit was a pale gray linen with a slim fit that tapered down to narrow ankles and killer heels. When he slowly swept his gaze back up to her face, he saw by her frown that she didn’t like his answer, but she got it.

“You’re my ride back to my apartment.”

“Yes.” For starters. He wouldn’t tell her his entire plan, not while they were standing in an alley and they hadn’t yet discovered who’d set that nasty little scene that morning.

She shifted her gaze to the car and ran her hand over the hood. “Nice ride.”

“Nice disguise.”

“I had to improvise.” She tipped her sunglasses down as she met his eyes. Duncan took the hit dead center and he struggled to keep his thoughts from scattering again. When she pulled the cap off and a rich cascade of dark brown hair tumbled out, he gave up on thinking of anything but the way the sun showered over her long, loose curls, lightening some strands, darkening others. He reached out and wound one of those curls around his finger. He couldn’t be sure who had moved, but they were close enough that their fingers had suddenly tangled on the hood of his car. Close enough that he could see a ring of lighter gold surrounding the deep, rich amber shade of her eyes. And he could smell her. Spring flowers—he hadn’t forgotten the scent.

If he lowered his head, he could finally taste her. Something he’d been wondering about all day. No. Longer than that. He’d been wondering about her taste for seven years.

Piper’s mind was racing almost as fast as her heart but she couldn’t seem to latch onto a coherent thought. When she’d started toward him, she’d had a plan. She was going to handle the Duncan problem by politely accepting his ride home and then sending him on his way. And now her fingers were linked with his and the heat from that flesh-to-flesh contact was zinging through her blood.

She could try to blame it on the car. If she hadn’t run her hand over the hood, she wouldn’t have gotten this close. But a good defense attorney would tear that excuse to shreds and claim she’d put her hand on the hood because she’d wanted this to happen—that she’d been thinking of touching him ever since she’d seen him in her apartment that morning.

Guilty, she thought. And, dammit, now that his mouth was only inches from hers, she wanted to taste him, too.

No. She had to think.

Breathe. The air she gulped in burned her lungs.

Say something. But the desire she was feeling was so huge, so consuming, she couldn’t get any words past the dryness in her throat.

They touched nowhere else except where their fingers were linked, but he might as well have been touching her everywhere. And she wanted him to so badly.

With whatever brain cells she had left, Piper figured she had two options. Run or do what she really, really wanted to do. And why not? It had taken a Pandora to open that box and an Eve to sample that apple. Maybe she just needed to know how big a problem she was dealing with. A good attorney built her best cases once she’d read through the discovery. Gripping his shirt with her free hand, she rose on her toes and pulled his mouth to hers.

She might have made the first move, but once she had, Duncan Sutherland was no slouch in the kissing department. The scrape of his teeth had her gasping, then moaning as his tongue seduced hers. Those hands, quick and clever, were everywhere, enticing, exciting. She couldn’t get her breath, didn’t care if she ever did.

She thought she’d known what to expect.

The jolt was no surprise. But how could she have known it would knock her off her feet? Or had he lifted her?

The heat, too, she’d been prepared for. When a man could make your blood sizzle with a look, heat was a given. But she hadn’t imagined it would have the power of a blast furnace. Or trigger a need to crawl right into him until she dissolved.

Excitement was too tame a word for what was pounding in her blood.

Greed didn’t even come close to describing the desperate hunger she was feeling or the urgent need to satisfy it.

Here. Now.

Had she said the words out loud?

Had he?

ALL DUNCAN KNEW WAS THAT HE couldn’t think. She flooded his senses, blocking out everything else with her taste, her textures, her scents. He couldn’t separate them. Couldn’t possibly name them all. Couldn’t resist taking more, asking for more.

When she wrapped her arms and legs around him, as much demand as invitation, he was helpless to do anything other than take them both deeper. No other woman had ever made him feel helpless. Now she was taking him places he’d never been before, making him feel things he’d never felt before.

And why had he waited so long to let her do it?

Here. Now.

The idea of laying her on the hood of his car and quenching the desire, the need that had gone from flame to inferno in seconds, flashed brilliantly into his mind. He wanted, wildly wanted to turn the image in his mind into reality.

Here. Now.

But he couldn’t. With the words still thrumming in his mind and pounding in his blood, he reached deep for control and found it. Easing away, he settled her against the car’s fender before he stepped back. His pulse was still racing. His heart slammed like a hammer against an anvil in his chest. And he still wanted her. He had to figure that wasn’t going to stop any time soon.

So he had a problem. An even bigger one than he’d anticipated. “That isn’t what I came here to do.”

“Ditto.” She’d folded her arms across her chest, but she was no longer using the car for support. When he noticed he still was, he stepped away.

“We have to figure out a solution to this,” she said.

“Agreed.”

“I have to think.”

Duncan thought the time for that had passed.

“So.” She walked around to the passenger door and opened it. “You can take me to my apartment, see that I’m safely locked in and then go away.”

Duncan slid behind the wheel and then drove them out of the alley into D.C. traffic. He could go along with one out of three of her directives. But he figured he’d have a better chance of making his case in her apartment.




4


PIPER STOOD IN HER KITCHEN watching Duncan open a bottle of red zinfandel. He’d picked it up with the pizza on the drive back to her apartment.

“We have to talk. You have to eat,” he’d said by way of explanation.

She couldn’t argue with either point. And she figured she needed to save up her energy. If she was going to argue with Duncan about anything, it was going to be about what she was sure he wanted to “talk” about.

The mind-blowing kiss they’d indulged in.

In an alley. A very public place.

She’d made the move, but at least they knew what they were up against. And she hadn’t been the one to call a halt to it. She’d always been able to before. That aside, they had to find a solution. They both worked in D.C. They were adults. And they wanted each other like gangbusters. No way they could ignore the elephant in the room.

She made her living arguing cases, negotiating solutions, and if she’d learned anything from law school and from working for Abe, it was the value of a preemptive strike.

So while they’d driven home, she’d tried to review her options. But it was damn hard to weigh them objectively while they’d sat so close in that tiny car. Every time he’d shifted gears, his arm had brushed against hers, and each time it had, “here” and “now” had blinked on and off, little neon letters in her mind.

Now he filled all the spare space in her kitchen. She could even smell him above the spicy aroma of the food.

He’d given her no chance to send him away as he’d cut a path through the little throng of reporters that had been waiting at the mouth of the alley. And she had to admit that she was happy not to have had to enter her apartment alone tonight.

He poured the dark red wine into two glasses and handed her one. “I have a proposition for you.”

“Ditto,” she said. She just had to figure out what it was. Exactly.

“Mind if I go first?”

“Go ahead.” The only thing better than making a preemptive strike was learning what your opponent had in mind and then adjusting your strategy.

“Cam has been bugging me to take a few days off and go up to the castle to see what I can figure out about the rest of Eleanor Campbell MacPherson’s missing dowry and about that intruder he believes was breaking into the library. I want you to come with me.”

Surprised, Piper stared at him, her mind racing. Duncan Sutherland knew a bit about making preemptive strikes himself, it seemed. “Why would I want to do that?”





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