Driving Heat

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Storm Front

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A Raging Storm
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A Bloody Storm
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Castle
© ABC Studios. All Rights Reserved.
Cover artwork © ABC

Published by Kingswell, an imprint of Disney Book Group.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage
and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher.
For information address Kingswell, 1101 Flower Street, Glendale, California 91201.
Editorial Director: Wendy Lefkon
Executive Editor: Laura Hopper
Cover designed by Alfred Sole

ISBN 978-1-4847-2494-1

www.abc.com

1. Title Page
   
2. Also Available
   
3. Copyright
   
4. One
   
5. Two
   
6. Three
   
7. Four
   
8. Five
   
9. Six
   
10. Seven
    
11. Eight
    
12. Nine
    
13. Ten
    
14. Eleven
    
15. Twelve
    
16. Thirteen
    
17. Fourteen
    
18. Fifteen
    
19. Sixteen
    
20. Seventeen
    
21. Eighteen
    
22. Nineteen
    
23. Twenty
    
24. Acknowledgments
    
25. About the Author
    

Because of you.

Because of us.

Always.

T
he last thing Nikki Heat expected when she received her promotion to captain of the NYPD was how much the proud expression on
Rook’s face in the audience would make her want him. Throughout the ceremony she had been dignified, attentive, focused, and deeply moved. But toward the end, as she relaxed from the formal
constraints and propriety required of her for the program, she clutched her new gold badge, surveyed the rows of family and friends in the auditorium, and found her fiancé.

In the cab on the way back to his place, when Nikki was telling Rook about how the
Heroes
video they played, narrated by James Earl Jones, had made her cry, she caught him staring,
listening intently as she recounted her experience, and thought of taking him right there. Then he held her gaze in a way that told her he felt it, too.

The unspoken heat of their longing and the eagerness of anticipation on an elevator ride to his Tribeca loft was nothing new. All that and plenty more crackled between them on their slow rise,
as they leaned against opposite corners of the rattling beast. But this time, in the industrial lift’s sexually charged atmosphere, the eye games and the frank appraisals and the transparency
of desire grew thick enough to take on life. Decorum vanished, giving way to animal impulse.

As if of one mind, they hurled themselves at each other. Nikki, with a bit of a head start, had enough power in her lust to meet Rook beyond halfway and walk him backward into the steel
accordion gate of the elevator cage. His moan on impact sounded nothing like pain but a lot like aching. He folded his long arms around her. She pressed against him from below, shuddering and
taking his earlobe in her teeth. One of his hands left her backside and fumbled for the control panel. The car jerked to a stop between floors, lurching them hard against each other.

They found each other’s mouths. He brought his palm back to cup her bottom, pulling her to him. She resisted, but only in order to create enough space to fit her hands between their bodies
and undo his belt. By the time she did, his fingers were already pulling at her zipper.

After a cosmic union drowned out by a series of impatient hollers up the shaft from a pizza delivery guy in the lobby, they sent the cage clanking downward and strolled the short hallway toward
his loft, still adhering to one another magnetically. “I can’t believe we never did that before,” she said.

Rook smiled. “The key is to get the elevator all to ourselves. Trust me, you don’t want to pull a stunt like we just did with Mr. Zeiss from 302 in there watching.”

Nikki pictured the tiny neighbor with the thick glasses and laughed. Then an afterthought earned Rook a side-glance from her. “You’ve never done it in there before, have you?”
she asked. “I mean, you were pretty deft with that switch.”

“Let’s just call this a day of firsts and leave it there.” He turned at the door to face her and touched the new twin gold bars on her white uniform collar. “For
instance, you were my first captain, Captain Heat.”

Nikki startled at the sound of the title, just as she had when the police commissioner had uttered it at her swearing-in. Once again Heat felt the strangeness of her new rank and the daunting
weight of her new responsibilities. Even though she had known for months that the promotion was coming, now that she had taken the oath, affixed her bars, and upgraded her shield, the good news no
longer felt like talking about Christmas at a Labor Day picnic. The day had come, her captaincy was official, and with it came a twinge she nicknamed Happy-Scared.

Rook opened the door and let her go in ahead of him. From the threshold, he heard a muted whimper and joined Nikki inside, where she stood wiping a tear from one cheek. Sprawling before her
stretched a loft transformed into a parade float of NYPD colors: blue tablecloths blanketed the countertop and the dining table in the great room beyond it; blue and white crepe streamers hung from
the ceiling, interlaced with blue and white ribbons anchoring blue and white helium balloons; a half-dozen floral arrangements of white spray roses mixed with blue irises adorned the tables and
shelves; a white sheet cake with a photo transfer of a captain’s badge in blue and gold, complete with the laurel and crown insignia, sat on the coffee table beside a blue ice bucket with her
favorite white, a Jean-Max Roger Sancerre.

“Wait for it,” Rook said, and picked up a remote to start “Blue Champagne” by Glenn Miller on his Spotify. After a few bars, Nikki closed her eyes and dropped her chin as
if to hide her face. “Too tacky?” he asked.

Nikki raised her head and turned to face him—etching the memory of her friend, her lover, her fiancé so perfectly filling the Hugo Boss made-to-measure he had bought just for her
ceremony. They kissed again, tenderly this time, and she hooked his elbow with hers, drawing him to the coffee table. She picked up the ice bucket and said, “Bring the wine
glasses.”

“What about the cake?”

“Dessert first, then cake,” she said, then led him up the hall to the bedroom.

A single purr of her new department-issued BlackBerry on the nightstand
woke Nikki two minutes before her five-thirty iPhone alarm.
She rolled on one side to check it and found an email blast from One Police Plaza apprising her and the roster of seventy-six other precinct commanders of new protocols for filing CompStat numbers
on the database. As she scrolled through the assault of seemingly endless text about complaint categories, warrants served, and arrest activity, the familiar Happy-Scared tightness wormed into her
gut, with Scared leading the way. This marked Captain Heat’s first official received email as the new commander of the Twentieth Precinct, after waiting over half a year for the job to be
hers.

The past seven months had been an exercise in patience and diplomacy for Nikki, who had struggled to run her homicide squad under the bland leadership of the interim precinct commander who had
taken over after the death of Captain Irons—with everyone, including the PC, aware of the open secret: that the gig was hers as soon as the machinery of department politics could spit out a
date.

The captain’s bars had come the day before. Today the cold truth hit home: assumption of command.

She had heard Rook get up a half hour earlier and found him sitting at the dining table in a tee and boxers, illuminated by the lunar glow of his laptop. He closed the lid and put it to sleep as
soon as Nikki shuffled into the room. “You don’t have to stop working because of me.”

“No problem.” He squared the edges of some notes and slid them inside a file, which he also closed, almost furtively, she thought. “Good a time as any for a break.”

“What are you working on?”

“Now, do I ask you that?” He rose to meet her and enveloped her in a warm embrace, which they both held.

“All the time,” she said into his chest. “But if you caved and you’re ghostwriting another romance novel, like you swore you would never do again, I can understand why
you’re not eager to own up—
Victoria St. Clair
.”

“Thankfully, Disney has renewed the movie option on my dispatches from Chechnya, so I no longer have to rip any bodices under that nom de plume. Except yours, of course.”

“Speaking of. You seemed very into that ‘Leave your uniform shirt on’ thing last night.”

Rook frowned, feigning innocence. “I did?”

“You definitely did. And you asked me to say ‘I’m the captain now.’”

“OK.” He bobbed his head from side to side and grinned. “I’ll admit there was a bit of an unexpected turn-on to the whole starchy white shirt with the captain’s
dealies on the collars.”

“Seriously? Rook, my uniform turned you on?”

“I rarely see you in one. Certainly not in bed.”

“This is sounding like role-play. Was I role-playing and didn’t know it?”

“Not at all. Unless you liked it.” He chuckled. “Nothing wrong with something to keep it all interesting and playful.”

“We need that?”

“Need? Absolutely not. But it’s good to keep it fresh, right?”

“It’s not fresh?”

“I seem to have found myself digging a hole.” He felt her appraising stare, which only made him keep digging, “It’s very fresh. Although occasionally—only
occasionally—you have to admit you have been a bit…preoccupied.”

“Like in the elevator?”

“Definitely not preoccupied in the elevator. Or most of the time. This is coming out all wrong. All I’m saying is that I want to make sure that when we get married, that
we…”

“Keep the spark?”

“Well said. Yes. The spark.” He shifted gears as fast as he could. “Let’s have breakfast. I made coffee.”

“Great,” she said, “I’ll have it with my cake.”

“Look at you, Captain Cake-for-Breakfast.”

Nikki arched a brow. “Keeping it fresh.”

He pretended to be wounded by her jab and moved off to the kitchen for cups and plates.

As they finished, Rook ran a forefinger around his plate to collect rogue icing and said, “We should have this baker do our wedding cake.”

That only made Nikki start to panic about how far behind they were in their wedding plans. Both had long before agreed on August, which was still four months away, but with all his work and all
her work, so far they hadn’t reserved a venue for the ceremony or the reception, or planned the honeymoon beyond discussing the what-ifs of Venice, Nice, and Portofino. For two
high-functioning, big-career planners, this was sheer madness. “At the very least,” she said, “we should settle on the weekend so we can send out some save-the-dates.”