LITMIR.BIZ

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      For the real Khleo, who lay under my feet,

       hoping I’d rub his belly with my toes, while I wrote most of this book.

      My daughter insists everyone know he’s a male

       cat, spells his name Khleo and is a sweet, gentle soul, without a violent or vindictive bone in his giant, furry body.

      And for his brother, Inky,

       who we call our $900 kitty, after his stay at the Emergency Vet’s last Christmas.

      Chapter One

      Kim Cassidy grinned like crazy as she made her way off the plane at the Atlanta airport and into the arms of an exasperated-looking blond giant of a man who happened to be her brother.

      Jackson Cassidy was gorgeous, solid as they came and most definitely mad.

      “Are you trying to make me old before my time?” Jax demanded, crushing her to him for a long moment.

      “No, I am not trying,” she said, hugging him in return before easing back to smile at him. “And you? Been flashing your badge around again?”

      “What if I have?” he said, completely unrepentant, as he waved off the contingent of airport security waiting three paces behind him. “I’ve got it from here, guys. She’s not going to get away from me.”

      Kim laughed.

      “Come along quietly, miss, and I won’t get out the handcuffs,” he said, hustling her away from the gate.

      Kim’s fellow passengers, many of whom she’d chatted with on the plane from Heathrow, looked aghast. Airport security understandably looked annoyed. She’d been met at the gate like this more than once, having an unfortunate tendency to run into trouble when traveling. Not that it had been all trouble this time.

      “Honestly, baby girl, pirates?” he said, taking her tote bag from her and throwing it over his shoulder.

      She giggled, couldn’t help it.

      “Pirates?” he repeated, louder this time and sounding even more irate.

      “Just a couple,” she said.

      “That’s not what I heard.”

      And, knowing him, he’d heard all about it by now. He probably knew more about the incident than she did, even though she’d been there and he’d been thousands of miles away.

      It was truly annoying at times, sweet at others.

      “It was not my fault,” she insisted. “I was minding my own business, doing nothing more dangerous than sunning myself on the pool deck of the ship. That’s it. Just lying there sipping my froufrou drink with one of those cute little umbrellas sticking out of it, when…”

      Her cruise ship was attacked by pirates!

      It was nearly impossible to believe.

      She won a trip on a luxury cruise ship and what happened?

      Attacked by modern-day pirates?

      Who knew?

      Leave it to her to find—on vacation—a disaster of the sort she’d thought had been extinct for hundreds of years.

      “I mean…come on?” she tried. “Did you know there were still pirates floating around looking for ships to hijack? I didn’t know. How was I supposed to know?”

      Looking no less worried or annoyed, Jax flipped open his cell phone and hit Speed Dial. As they continued to walk, he put the phone to his ear and said, “Got her. All in one piece, too….Yeah, we’ll be there in an hour and a half if I use my sirens.”

      “There’s no need for sirens,” she insisted, trying to take the phone from him, but he just frowned down at her, flipped it shut and put it away, which meant he intended to interrogate her all by himself on the ride home without anyone getting in the way.

      “Hey, I could still pull out the handcuffs,” he said.

      “Do it and you won’t get a word from me about my trip or the guy I met there,” she threatened.

      That got his attention. “There’s a guy?”

      She nodded, her grin back full force as she looked up at him.

      “Jax…” she sighed, knowing her voice had taken on a silly, dreamy quality and simply unable to help it. “I think… No, I’m sure. I’m absolutely sure that I’m in love!”

      He looked completely taken aback for a moment, stopped dead in his tracks, the line of airline passengers behind them coming to a grumbling halt, some cursing softly as they made their way around her and him, all in a hurry to get somewhere.

      “Okay, just…tell me he’s not one of the pirates?” he asked with a look that said he couldn’t handle that right now.

      “No!”

      “’Cause that could definitely give me gray hairs. That would be cause for handcuffs and sirens and maybe a jail cell—and you know I could arrange it—until you came to your senses.”

      “He is not a pirate! He’s the guy who saved me from the pirates.” She beamed just thinking about it.

      “Oh,” her brother said, finally giving in to the grumbling of the crowd now flowing around them and starting to walk again. “A cop?”

      “No.”

      “Rent-a-cop?” His disdainful label of anyone who worked security but wasn’t a real cop.

      “No,” Kim said.

      “Soldier?” he tried.

      “No. Nothing like that. He was just there and… He was wonderful. He made sure I was completely safe and he even helped fight off the attack. It was amazing, really. You’re going to love him.”

      “So that means I get to meet him, right? Preferably sooner than later?”

      “Of course. He’s meeting me here in a few days, as soon as he gets back home—”

      “Which

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