LITMIR.BIZ

      KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

       www.kensingtonbooks.com

      To my husband, James,

       the ultimate Hawaiian hero

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Chapter Seventeen

      Chapter Eighteen

      Chapter Nineteen

      Chapter Twenty

      Chapter Twenty-One

      Chapter Twenty-Two

      Chapter Twenty-Three

      Chapter Twenty-Four

      Chapter Twenty-Five

      Chapter Twenty-Six

      Chapter Twenty-Seven

      Chapter Twenty-Eight

      Chapter Twenty-Nine

      Chapter Thirty

      Chapter Thirty-one

      Chapter Thirty-two

      Chapter Thirty-three

      Chapter Thirty-four

      Chapter Thirty-five

      Chapter Thirty-six

      Chapter Thirty-seven

      Chapter Thirty-eight

      Chapter Thirty-nine

      Chapter Forty

      Chapter One

      “Move one inch in any direction and you’ll be sipping your food through a straw.”

      Caleb Wilson jerked back at the sound of the outraged feminine voice and smacked his head on the frame of the jimmied window. He cut loose a stream of profanity inventive enough to make even his old Air Force buddies proud.

      He had come to an empty house in the middle of nowhere Kauai, Hawaii, just after midnight, looking for information about a missing friend he now feared dead. Instead of explanations, Cal got a welcoming committee of the angry female variety. His least favorite type of woman.

      As plans went, so far this one sucked.

      Since the element of surprise no longer rested on his side, Cal decided to try a new tact. Until he figured out who the unidentified woman with the big mouth was and what she was doing in this small house, he would stay right where he was.

      He cleared his throat in an attempt to sound as reasonable as a guy curled in a ball on a windowsill could sound. “Maybe I could—”

      “No.”

      So much for the reasonable route.

      He twisted his six-foot frame around in the small opening. Finding a tolerable position grew more impossible by the second. His muscles hardened and his patience started a countdown to zero.

      “Ma’am, I’m stuck.” He attempted to laugh, but being doubled over the sound came out more like a wheeze.

      “What you are is trespassing.”

      Okay, that too. “You have me at a disadvantage here.”

      “And?”

      He moved to his next plan. Charm.

      “I’m sitting in a window,” he explained, throwing in an endearing chuckle to see if that could win over the woman with the voice so throaty it should be illegal.

      “I didn’t put you there.”

      Also immune to charm. Check.

      But she did have a point. “Admittedly I got into this position without your help, but if you could—”

      “Don’t move.”

      Then he heard it. An unmistakable metal clicking sound. The noise chased away all thoughts about the long legs that might complete the matching set to that husky voice.

      The woman held a gun. He survived for thirty-six years on the planet without having a female threaten to shoot him. Looked like he could consider that streak broken.

      With the door locked, slipping through the window seemed like a good idea a few minutes earlier. Now he was sorry he skipped his initial plan to pick the lock and use the door like a normal person.

      “I’m not a thief.” He played many roles in his life. Not that one.

      “Then why are you breaking in?”

      Tough talk, but he heard it. A subtle and unmistakable hitch in her voice. One that meant she was not as in control or calm as her words suggested. One that made that gun of hers even more dangerous.

      Cal went with an abbreviated version of the truth. “This house belongs to an old friend of mine. He invited me. Now I’m here.”

      A beat of silence filled the room as his arm fell asleep. The whole idea of Hawaii being the perfect beachside paradise was lost on him at the moment. So far, it had been an obstacle course. No sign of Dan. A round of apologetic glances and mumbled comments about being “sorry” when Cal asked after Dan at the private hangar where Dan kept his helicopter.

      Top all that with a near-black night and a tire-rutted dirt road leading to a cabin in a wooded area in the middle of Kokee State Park. The same cabin not being anywhere near the beach.

      Yeah, not exactly what Cal expected to find when he got on the plane that morning. Neither was the non-welcome from a female with questionable emotional stability.

      Cal toyed with the idea of launching the still-awake parts of his body at his perfumed attacker. Without seeing her, he guessed he outweighed her by at least fifty pounds. That made the chance of knocking her down pretty damn good.

      But the gun posed a problem. A big one. If the lady with the deadly weapon and deep voice was a novice, he might leave Kauai in a zipper bag. An amateur would shoot first. Probably fire straight into his forehead. On the other hand, a skilled markswoman definitely would hit him in the forehead. Fifty-fifty and both options ended with his death. Not the best odds.

      Then there was the problem with the tremor moving through her voice. Now that he was listening for it he didn’t hear anything else. She was afraid. Probably smart under the circumstances. Still, there was another emotion mixed in with the fear. He was just clueless enough about the inner workings of the female mind to not be able to define it.

      He inhaled, drawing in the strong floral scent on the warm Hawaii night air. “I’m here to see Dan Rutledge.”

      “Wh-what?”

      The stumble in her voice was more obvious that time. It gave her away. Stern words wrapped around a mushy inside.

      Now Cal was getting somewhere in

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