eBookOriginal (Original)
Related collections and offers
Overview
Maggie Russell, a police reporter in Sacramento, works the night shift, and she's finally stumbled on the big crime story that will truly establish her career—if it doesn't end her life. A serial killer who moves from one city to the next.
As if things aren't complicated enough, Nick Sorenson, the paper's new photographer, seems to be taking an unusual interest in this case. And in her. Maggie doesn't realize that she's falling in love with a man who's not what he seems to be. A man whose deceptions may save her life.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781459295155 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Harlequin |
| Publication date: | 02/15/2016 |
| Sold by: | HARLEQUIN |
| Format: | eBook |
| Sales rank: | 131,534 |
| File size: | 476 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
"He's watching me again. I can feel it." The hairs on the back of Maggie's neck stood on end as she peered over the partition that separated the corridor where she stood from her friend Darla's cubicle. She refused to turn around for fear she'd find herself nose to nose with Nick Sorenson.
Darla, a staff writer for the Entertainment section of the Tribune, frowned and stood up, too.
"Don't!" Maggie said above the static of the cop radios on her desk a few feet down the corridor, the droning televisions, clacking keyboards and voices that surrounded them on all sides. "Sit back down, or he'll know I'm talking about him."
"Relax," Darla muttered. "He can't hear us."
"He can see us!"
"He's there, all right," her friend reported. "At the end of the hall, about twelve feet away." She shook her head. "Ooo la la, he's gorgeous. But he's leaving now. Looks like he's on his way to the photo editor's desk."
Maggie seemed to know whenever Nick was around. She could feel his presence, sense his interest. Just after he'd started working for the paper almost three weeks ago, he'd asked her out, and she'd turned him down. A man like him would have no serious interest in a woman like her. She'd learned that lesson the hard way, clear back in high school when Rock Tillman and the other jocks used to throw spit wads at her in class and make fun of her braces, her acne, her red hair, even the heavy load of books she toted everywhere. Her appearance had changed considerably since then, but one failed marriage later, the girl inside remained the same, right down to her contempt for cocky hard-bodies who thought the world should bow at their feet for the price of a wink or a grin.
Fortunately, when she'd refused his offer, Nick hadn't pressed the issue. Every once in a while, she'd look up to see him watching her, usually from a distance. Only he didn't turn away or smile when she caught him. He wore his devil-may-care disposition like a leather jacket and studied her with thick-lashed tawny eyes as though…as though he desired her. Which was unsettling enough. Add to that the obvious strength of his tall, athletic body and her own small size in comparison, and he made her nervous as hell.
"What do you think he wants with me?" she asked.
Darla chewed her lip and squinted in the direction Nick had gone. "You know what he wants. He wants a date."
Maggie braved a quick glance over her shoulder to find the hallway empty. "If I thought that was all he wanted, I'd probably go out with him. Lord knows he wouldn't want a second date, so I'd be rid of him. But I'm afraid he wants to forego the date and get right down to business. He looks like the type who's had a lot of experience, which definitely puts him out of my league."
Darla raised her brows. "That can't be all he wants. Practically every available woman in this office has made a play for him, but he treats them all the same, with a hands-off, don't-approach-me attitude. And I've seen him treat Susie with something closer to contempt."
Maggie shrugged. "Oh well, we can't hold that against him. Who doesn't treat Susie with contempt? She's slept with every guy in the office. Even the publisher."
Leaning an elbow on the partition, Darla propped her chin on her hand. "Maybe you should tell Frank that Nick makes you nervous."
"No, I don't want to bring his boss in on this. I don't really have anything to accuse him of. What do I say, 'Nick's looking at me.'? He'll think I'm a sexual-harassment case just waiting to happen. Half the time I think I'm imagining it myself."
"Maybe your job's getting to you. Listening to all those cop radios and working at night is creepy."
"A cop reporter is supposed to report on crime," Maggie retorted. "How would I know what was happening without my radios?"
"Don't you like this better? You should thank Jorge for taking the day off and trading shifts with you. Look at the sun shining outside. During the day you don't have to worry about simple things like walking to your car."
"Jorge didn't take the day off for my benefit. He's having knee surgery. Besides, you know how hard it is to get a start in this industry. I'm lucky to be where I am."
Darla stooped for her handbag, her fake nails clicking against its contents as she rummaged through it. A minute later, she pulled out some red lipstick, liberally applied it, then tossed the tube back where she'd found it. Her purse followed with a soft thud. "So what about that murder last week? You still think that's your big story?"
"Yeah. But there's definitely something strange going on with that."
"Do the police know who did it yet?"
"No, and they're being very tight-lipped. They've given me a press release with a few pat quotes, but they're holding back. I can tell. There's something about this case they don't want me to know." She smiled. "So, of course I'm going to dig until I find out what it is."
Darla grimaced and ran her nails through her long blond hair. "Well, don't feel obligated to share the details with me once you discover them. I, for one, have heard enough about the poor woman in that Dumpster. Everything about that crime is sickening and proves my point that nothing good happens after midnight."
Nick Sorenson walked by, and Darla's gaze followed him.
"That is, nothing good happens after midnight unless you're spending the night with him," she mouthed after he'd passed.
Maggie noted Nick's long, confident strides, and fought her own appreciation. "Looks do not make a man," she said to remind herself as much as Darla. "Jeez, you really have a thing for him, don't you? Too bad he doesn't ask you out."
Her friend gave her a wicked smile. "Too bad is right. There's that dangerous glitter in his eyes, you know? And there's the scar on his temple and the way his hair falls across his forehead, like he doesn't care how he looks. And yet he still manages to look better than chocolate." The audible breath she took did even more to express her admiration. "What a package. And he's intense. I can tell."
Maggie raised a doubtful brow. "'Heartbreaker' is written all over him, along with 'catch me if you can.' I'm not up to the challenge." She'd spent too much time and energy carefully building her self-esteem to risk losing it on a man like Nick.
"You only think that because you're a single mom. Single moms can't be too careful."
"True."
"Should I ask him why he's been staring at you?"
Maggie raised a hand. "No, don't embarrass me."
"All right. He probably just thinks you're attractive, anyway. What man doesn't?"
"Sometimes it's very apparent that you haven't known me long," Maggie said. "But just for starters, what about Tim?"
"He married you, didn't he? And let's face it, in the end, you left him."
A call blared across one of Maggie's radios. Instinctively she tensed, listening to the dispatcher's gravelly voice, then relaxed when she realized it was only a 5150—the call for a crazy person doing something stupid but certainly not newsworthy.
"I had to leave Tim," she responded to Darla. "If it weren't for Zach, I probably would've hung on, forever grateful that he'd deigned to marry me in the first place. But my son deserves a father who wants him." She sighed heavily. "Provided I can ever find him one."
"So that's what's happening." Darla's expression softened. "The singles scene has finally gotten you down. Is that it?"
Unexpected emotion clogged Maggie's throat and stung her eyes. What a baby, she thought. Millions of people were lonely, and they didn't cry about it. But here she was with her nose starting to run, at work, of all places. "There's just no time to meet anyone. I'm here almost every night and taking care of Zach all day, and let's face it, spending my afternoons hanging out at McDonald's Playland isn't exactly the best way to meet a single guy, you know?"
"You're working today, so you're going to have Friday night off, aren't you? Why don't you let me watch Zach so you can go dancing?"
Dancing? Dancing was Darla's idea of fun. Maggie didn't have much experience with nightclubs.
"I'm not sure a nightclub is the right place to go," she said, knowing Darla would never understand her phobia about such places. Typical reporters were like Darla, confident and bold and, professionally, Maggie fit the image. For the most part she'd buried the awkward, self-conscious person she'd been as a young girl. But all too often, when it came to her personal life, the old Maggie reasserted herself. "I don't have a single tattoo or body piercing," she joked. "I'd probably be a wallflower."
"No, you wouldn't," Darla argued.
An unruly, copper-colored curl tickled Maggie's cheek, and she tucked it behind her ear. "Anyway, you can't babysit for me. You need to get out, too. You told me you wanted to get married this year."
"I did until I decided to swear off men for good."
"You swear off men every Monday. This is only Wednesday. By Friday you'll be ready to dress up and go out again."
Ray, from sports, grinned as he strutted past them on the way to Frank Buckley's office. "Ladies."
They murmured a quick hello, then rolled their eyes because Ray considered himself such a lady's man.
"This time I mean it," Darla went on. "That last loser I hooked up with stuck me with over five hundred dollars in long-distance bills."
"Ouch." Maggie grimaced. "You're as unlucky in love as I am. Maybe we'd be smarter not to hang out together."
Darla waved her teasing away. "Enough already. We'll each find someone eventually." Sitting down, she swiveled to face her computer.
"Wait a second before you go back to that," Maggie said. "I received something in the mail I want to show you." Crossing to her desk, she opened the top drawer, retrieved the white envelope with the red heart on the front and returned to Darla's cubicle. "What do you think of this?"
"What is it?"
"An advertisement for a dating service."
Darla cocked an eyebrow at her, looking far from impressed. "What do I think? I think you're nuts. Anyone as attractive as you shouldn't have to pay to get a date."
If only Darla understood how painful that whole process was for her—getting out and meeting someone, all the little rituals and deceptions…"I kind of like the idea of the questionnaire. You get to skip the first part of dating, where everyone's kind of checking other people out." She flattened the paper against the partition. "Look, it's right here. You answer these questions so the service can match you up with someone who's compatible."
"And they use a crystal ball to decide this? Or do they simply include a 'no weirdos allowed' clause in their contract?"
"Come on, Darla. They obviously can't protect their clients from every possibility, but if Tim and I had filled out one of these we would have known right from the start that we weren't meant for each other. He didn't tell me until after we were married that he didn't want any kids."
Maggie didn't add that she'd been so happy to find a man to love her that she hadn't pressed him on anything, and he simply assumed she'd accommodate his plan for their lives. In the end, her inability to go along with his refusal to have children had come as a big surprise to both of them. "It took me several years to change his mind, and the result was disastrous. He resented Zach from day one," she said.
"But you could meet someone pretty scary through an outfit like this," Darla complained. "You could wind up dating a rapist or a murderer."
"We'd have a greater chance of meeting someone like that at a club. This route takes patience, something rapists and murderers typically don't possess."
Darla scowled. "Tell the woman in the Dumpster that. I'll bet some murderers show incredible patience. Isn't that what 'premeditated' is all about?"
"Come on. We could be going out with guys who have the same level of education, the same goals, the same marital status—"
"Pathetic bordering on desperate? Why would I want to meet someone like that?"
Maggie considered the questionnaire again. "We could always tick the 'I make over 100,000' box under annual income and insist on being matched up with someone who makes that, too."
"Now you're talking," Darla said.
Nick stretched out in his chair, crossed his legs at the ankle and closed his eyes. He wanted to photograph Maggie Russell. He wanted to dress her in a white sundress that fell off the shoulder on one side and see her through his lens, laughing and barefoot, her thick auburn hair blowing in the wind, her eyes slanting up at him.
It would have to be evening, he decided. That was when the light would be perfect and he'd be able to capture her nearly flawless skin in a warm, gentle glow. The dusting of freckles across her nose, and her mouth, slightly larger than most women's ideal, added to the earthy beauty of her face. The sun behind her would provide just enough of a shadow to hint at the shape of her body, naked beneath the cotton dress. And he'd shoot her on a beach, where surf the color of her eyes crested in the background and shimmers of heat rose from the sand beneath her feet.
Somehow Maggie Russell managed to combine innocence and vulnerability with an incredibly high dose of sex appeal. The effect was very intriguing. And he could capture the essence of it on film; he knew he could. Someday he'd put her photograph on the cover of the coffee-table book he hoped to publish—when he had the time to pursue his love of photography more seriously.
Right now he had to get back to work. The FBI's Ogden field office hadn't sent him to Sacramento to pose as one of the Tribune's staff photographers so he could waste his time lusting over the beautiful female reporter he was here to protect. The owner of the paper—someone Nick had met just once—was the only one the bureau had clued in to his true identity and purpose. Besides heading the small task force assembled by the Sacramento P.D., Nick had the added burden of performing at the Trib in a manner convincing enough to fool the photo editor who was his boss, his co-workers and everyone else, which meant he had to make the most of every minute.
