Line of Fire
Authors: Cindy Dees
Tags: #Contemporary, #Fiction, #Romance, #General, #Man-Woman Relationships, #Love Stories, #Suspense, #Erotica, #Special Forces (Military Science)
Line of Fire
Cindy Dees
Published by Silhouette Books
America’s Publisher of Contemporary Romance
Tex Monroe was a throwback to another time, Kimberly thought.
The men she was used to wore suits, and battled with words and money and power. But
this
man was a
warrior….
A thrill of purely female appreciation swept through her. She traced his rib cage, counting the bones beneath slabs of heavy, hard muscle.
A low warning growl rumbled in his chest, but she ignored it.
She moved against him, lifted her mouth to his neck, tasting the salt on his skin, smelling the lightly musky scent of him.
She couldn’t get enough of it. She pressed even closer to him, dying for more.
Then, suddenly, she was on her back with him looming above her, his hands pinning her arms to the jungle floor. “Enough,” he growled. “No more games….”
Dear Reader,
This is a month full of greats: great authors, great miniseries…great books. Start off with award-winning Marie Ferrarella’s
Racing Against Time,
the first in a new miniseries called CAVANAUGH JUSTICE. This family fights for what’s right—and their reward is lasting love.
The miniseries excitement continues with the second of Carla Cassidy’s CHEROKEE CORNERS trilogy.
Dead Certain
brings the hero and heroine together to solve a terrible crime, but it keeps them together with love. Candace Irvin’s latest features
A Dangerous Engagement
, and it’s also the first SISTERS IN ARMS title, introducing a group of military women bonded through friendship and destined to find men worthy of their hearts.
Of course, you won’t want to miss our stand-alone books, either. Marilyn Tracy’s
A Warrior’s Vow
is built around a suspenseful search for a missing child, and it’s there, in the rugged Southwest, that her hero and heroine find each other. Cindy Dees has an irresistible Special Forces officer for a hero in
Line of Fire
—and he takes aim right at the heroine’s heart. Finally, welcome new author Loreth Anne White, who came to us via our eHarlequin.com Web site.
Melting the Ice
is her first book—and we’re all eagerly awaiting her next.
Enjoy—and come back next month for more exciting romantic reading, only from Silhouette Intimate Moments.
Leslie J. Wainger
Executive Editor
Books by Cindy Dees
Silhouette Intimate Moments
Behind Enemy Lines
#1176
Line of Fire
#1253
CINDY DEES
started flying airplanes, sitting in her dad’s lap, when she was three, and she was the only kid in the neighborhood who got a pilot’s license before she got a driver’s license. After college, she fulfilled a lifelong dream and became a U.S. Air Force pilot. She flew everything from super-sonic jets to C-5’s, the world’s largest cargo airplane. During her career, she got shot at, met her husband, flew in the Gulf War and amassed a lifetime supply of war stories. After she left flying to have a family, she was lucky enough to fulfill another lifelong dream—writing a book. Little did she imagine that it would win the RWA Golden Heart Contest and sell to Silhouette! She’s thrilled to be able to share her dream with you. She’d love to hear what you think of her books. Write to her at www.cindydees.com or P.O. Box 210, Azle, TX 76098.
My sincerest thanks to all of my incredibly knowledgeable instructors at the Air Force Aircrew SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance and Escape) School at Fairchild AFB, Washington. Thank goodness I never had to use my training for anything except writing this book!
Contents
Chapter 1
“P
ick a target,” the man beside her ordered quietly.
There was no mistaking it. The man lying on the ground, cradling his rifle like a lover, had just shifted into killing mode. Instinctive fear of him, of his innate violence, broke over her, drenching her in her own nervous perspiration.
Tex Monroe, she’d been told his name was. He was supposedly some sort of genius at murdering people and blowing stuff up. Frankly she’d been expecting an intimidating, vicious-looking, commando type. She hadn’t been prepared for a lazy smile, dashing good looks and engaging charm from this killer.
He could have jumped straight out of the pages of
Soldier of Fortune
magazine. He had the determined jaw, chiseled cheekbones and intense blue eyes of a cover-model mercenary, and his outdoorsman’s tan emphasized the white flash of his smile. Broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped and oozing muscle, the guy wore green camouflage fatigues with the panache of a tailored tuxedo.
As if that wasn’t enough, he had a lazy, graceful way of moving and an easy Southern accent that screamed of Rhett Butler and old school Southern charm. It wasn’t the fake, plastic friendliness of so many of the politicians she worked around. He had genuine charisma. Flesh impact. Whatever the label, the whole gentleman-soldier package was devastating.
He was a huge monkey wrench in her plan. But it wasn’t like she was about to turn back. She’d see this thing through. No sweet talking assassin was going to derail her now.
Kimberly Stanton lifted the bulky binoculars to her eyes, adjusting their focus with her fingertips. Two black blobs converged into a single sharp image of the back of a man’s head. Even with the powerful Zeiss binoculars, he was little more than a pea-size dot in her vision, over a mile away.
“The guy in the black turtleneck with the black hair,” she said. Darn it. She sounded all breathless, like some teenage groupie in the presence of her idol.
In Tex Monroe’s world, life and death were held cheaply. Say a few words and a human being was snuffed out. No fuss, no muss. A shudder of revulsion whisked down her spine, but her determination to see justice prevail stiffened it again.
Tex lowered his face to the high-tech, computer-targeted rifle. Almost tenderly, his arm settled over the weapon. He caressed a knob on the side of his scope, teasing it to a peak of perfection. His cheek rested against the sleek shape of the weapon, his eyes heavy-lidded as he became one with it.
Voyeuristic discomfort blossomed inside her as she watched him make love to his rifle. And then he settled into a stillness that enveloped not only him and the cumbersome sniper rifle but also reached out to stifle her breath into complete suspension.
The sheer presence of the man was overwhelming. How could an act of such cold brutality generate such shocking heat in her? She was supposed to be appalled by men like him. Her life’s work was devoted to stopping this sort of killing.
Pull yourself together!
No questions. No doubts. If this gorgeous commando had to be the sacrificial lamb to her cause, so be it.
She made herself look through the binoculars at the dark-haired head she’d just targeted for execution. Any second now.
Bang!
The shot rang out, kick-starting her breathing with an involuntary burst of adrenaline. She jumped hard, even though she’d expected the explosion of sound.
She registered in a strange sort of slow motion the way the tiny head in the distance exploded into a million pieces.
Good Lord.
Shaken, her breath rattled tremulously. She took a deep breath, forcibly calming herself. This was part of the plan. She could do it. Her need to stop men like Tex coalesced into a hard knot of resolve deep in her stomach.
“Again,” she commanded.
The dazzling sniper beside her nodded and shifted position, pivoting the rifle gently on its low tripod stand, tugging it close to his chest.
She choked out, “Let’s see you take out a moving target, hotshot.”
He flashed her a slow, intimate grin that slammed into her gut like one of his well-aimed bullets. “Yes, ma’am,” he drawled. “Pick me another victim.”
Victim.
The casually uttered word made her shudder. Heck, the whole man made her shudder. But with horror or fascination, she wasn’t sure. It ought to be the former. She feared it was the latter.
In the distance a series of caricatured human figures moved across her field of vision, scurrying back and forth like mice trapped in a corner by a cat. “The blond man in the red shirt,” she announced. He was moving quickly in and out among other targets and would be extremely difficult to hit.
“Done,” was the sniper’s confident reply.
Bang!
The blond head exploded effortlessly.
Her hands shaking, Kimberly lowered the binoculars and stared down at the man beside her, overwhelmed in spite of her resolve not to be. Even if those annihilated heads were only clay targets on a firing range, they just as easily could have been real people getting their heads blown off.
Problem was, no matter how dangerous he was with that gun in the killing fields, Tex Monroe was potentially even more lethal to her project here today.
“That’s an impressive toy you’ve got, soldier,” she managed to say lightly.
He grinned up at her. “If you’re nice to me, I’ll let you play with it.”
A thrill of sexual awareness raced down her spine. Drat. Why couldn’t her hormones get with the program and be revolted by this guy?