LITMIR.BIZ

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ping of his BlackBerry cut off his internal line of questioning. He was expecting word regarding pieces of Shayna’s background report that hadn’t been completed this morning when he’d left L.A. Maybe whatever information Amanda, his secretary, had dug up would explain whether Shayna’s irate, over-the-top response to Walker’s offer was genuine or not.

      Amazed to be getting cell reception amid the massive, shadowy trees and steep, rounded slopes, Kyle made a grab for his fallen briefcase and the cell phone tucked inside. The lightweight car veered to the right. Jerking upright, he overcorrected. The tires skied over the road’s glassy surface, sending the car sideways down the mountain. The tail flared, throwing him into a full skid.

      Hands gripped tightly at ten and two, Kyle steered into the skid. The drum of adrenaline rushing through his brain blanketed out all sounds. His lungs froze. Suddenly the swirling stopped, replaced by a swift loss of altitude. The car hit ground with enough force to rattle his skull but not enough to deploy the airbags.

      Inertia slammed him against the doorframe. Cautiously he flexed his muscles. His head felt ready to split open, and his knees, which had jammed into the steering column, stung like a son of a bitch.

      He rolled his neck to check the view out his window. A relieved breath shuddered through him. The landscape tilted at a forty-five-degree angle, the car’s grille was buried nose down in the ditch, but he hadn’t gone over the edge.

      Hands shaking, he shoved the door open with his shoulder and crawled out of the crumpled car. Wind and freezing rain slapped his face. He ducked back in, retrieved his coat and shrugged it on before snagging his briefcase off the passenger floorboard.

      He scrambled up the steep embankment as fast as he could, slipping to his knees several times in the icy mud. Night was falling quickly, the already-freezing temperature plummeting, the rain lashing at him furiously.

      Once he reached the road, he took shelter under a large tree. It blocked the deluge, but the wind continued to roar under the canopy of branches. To his right, something rustled through the underbrush just as the sun disappeared. Nature towered above him, blocking the moonlight, but the crooked beam of his headlights bouncing off the side of the ditch showed Kyle all he needed to see.

      She was to blame for this mess.

      She had him so frustrated and confused that he’d gotten careless.

      She, with her sexy Southern drawl, her stubborn refusal, her well-portrayed outrage.

      And whether she knew it or not, Shayna Miller had escalated the stakes. Now it was more than just business.

      Now it was personal.

      Shayna took Kyle’s advice and read Dr. Walker’s “generous” compromise. Definitely a shocker. By all rights, she should be even more livid than when she’d seen the check. No one would blame her if she suddenly burst into tears or started flinging breakables against the wall, but at the moment all she felt was numb. Overwhelmed. Lost.

      Tossing the offending document onto the coffee table, she pushed to her feet and stood in front of the fireplace. Stirring up the flames helped melt away a layer of disbelief. As did imagining feeding the annoying papers to the hungry fire.

      When she’d first seen that check, she’d been terrified. What would a man like Walker demand in exchange for such an obscene amount of money? Turned out the quarter mil was only a down payment. The full agreement, which turned out to be little more than an appalling, drawn-out employment contract, promised her a million dollars if she cooperated.

      Wanted: one formerly mistreated and unwanted child to play the part of Dr. Steven Walker’s long-lost, much-loved and stupidly forgiving daughter. Experience as Patty Hoyt’s stooge preferable. Ethics: optional. Pay: one million dollars. Office hours: one hour on live television—as the surprise guest for the debut episode of Dr. Walker’s new talk show.

      She could practically see the tagline: Benevolent father and prominent family therapist welcomes daughter he never knew into his happy family, saving her from a lonely life of poverty and despair.

      What a load of malarkey. Or was it? All Shayna had to go on was Patty’s word that Walker had paid her off when he’d learned she was pregnant. Hell, even that much of her backstory could be a lie.

      Sagging against the arm of the couch, she rested her sock-covered feet on the hearth. Walker’s offer did come with one very appealing caveat. In return for Shayna’s cooperation, he would pay Patty fifty grand a year for life, providing mommy dearest didn’t so much as blink in Shayna’s direction.

      That kind of peace held way more appeal than a million-dollar bribe. Not that any prize could ever tempt her to agree to such a ludicrous plan.

      She couldn’t believe that pompous jerk actually thought she’d go on national television and tell the world her daddy hadn’t taken good care of her. Sure, money had been tight in the Miller household, but they’d always had everything they needed. She’d had a far better life than a lot of kids. A hell of a lot better than the life she’d been living before James Miller became her daddy.

      Letting her body fall backward, Shayna lay across the couch, staring up at the portrait over the mantel. It had been taken at the annual Moonlight and Mistletoe Ball. She’d been ten, with Bugs Bunny teeth and her first pair of high-heeled shoes. Daddy had looked handsome despite the four-inch-wide red-and-gold tie she’d insisted he wear, because it matched her new dress.

      Even now she still considered it one of the happiest nights of her life. Despite the complete lack of physical similarities, the picture screamed family.

      And now Kyle Anderson, her personal messenger of doom, had delivered a bizarre request that threatened everything she’d ever cherished. Dredging up her and James Miller’s past on national television would stir up entirely too many questions. With answers that could very well mean the end of her life as Shayna Miller.

      Chapter Three

      Kyle had managed to talk himself out of his unjustified anger with Shayna during the forty-minute hike back up the slick, icy mountain. He’d decided to withhold judgment on whether or not she was playing him until he’d had a second chance to thoroughly outline Walker’s plan. But after standing in the freezing rain, banging on her blasted door for five minutes, his good intentions had vanished. His fury rocketed back to full force.

      She had to be in there. The damned weather had them both trapped on this mountain. No way he was going to freeze to death while she sat in her toasty cabin and ignored him.

      The door finally swung open. Warm air brushed against his face but didn’t do a damn thing to thaw his temper. “What the hell took you so long? It’s damn cold out here!”

      “Ex-cuse me?” Shayna tossed a mass of wet hair over her shoulder.

      The apology he knew he owed her froze in his throat. Damn, but she was beautiful. Freshly showered, smelling like vanilla, her sensuous hair hanging loose to her waist, her curvy body wrapped in the most atrocious robe he’d ever seen.

      Desire scorched through him. He barged inside, no longer aware of the cold that seconds before had nearly turned him into a block of ice. His briefcase slid from his grip and landed on the floor, unheeded by them both. Standing this close, her intoxicating aroma made him lightheaded. He swayed forward, his hands intent on touching her skin, but his aim was thwarted when she rushed him, grasping his biceps, her face scrunched in concern.

      “Kyle?” The urgency in her voice cracked through the fog in his brain. “Are you all right?”

      Hell no, he wasn’t all right.

      Pulling himself together, he stepped away. As soon as he’d cleared the way, she shut the door behind him. Without the benefit of the mountain’s wide-open spaces, the lamp-lit cabin felt too small, too intimate.

      The concern in her amber eyes intensified. Again, she moved closer, this time with her hands aimed for his face. “You’re bleeding.”

      At

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