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      MILLS & BOON

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      Dedication:

      To Leslie King for the strength, love and support

       she’s given her mom, my dear friend, at a time

       when she needed it most.

      Contents

      Acknowledgments

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Epilogue

      Acknowledgments:

      A big Thank You to the guys in the Electronics Department at the St. Augustine, Florida, Home Depot, who left their supper uneaten to give this electronically challenged writer a lesson in how a remote control could work a tape recorder. Thanks, gentlemen.

      Chapter 1

      His hands moved expertly over her hot flesh, bringing it to life, bringing her to life in a way that made her squirm beneath him. What was he waiting for? Why didn’t he give her what she wanted, what she ached for?

      “Please,” she pleaded, her nails digging into his shoulders.

      “Not yet,” he growled against her swollen breast. “First, tell me you love me, that you trust me.”

      He circled the aching tip of her breast with his tongue, sending wave after wave of intense longing through her. The teasing was excruciating. Her body throbbed with need.

      She couldn’t stand any more of this torture. She had to say it. She had to—or die from the gnawing need inside her. She opened her mouth to speak the words that would release her from this sensual prison, but they wouldn’t come. Every time she tried to tell him she trusted him, loved him, she felt as though a large hole had opened beneath her, a hole that would swallow her up the moment the words passed her lips, a hole from which she would never escape and the fall would be more painful than she could stand.

      “Say them, Sam. Say the words.”

      “I can’t,” she sobbed. “I just…can’t.”

      “Then there will be no release for you.” He rolled off her, leaving her emotionally hungry and physically cold.

      “No!” she cried. “No!” She reached for him, but she found only air.

      Her eyes flew open.

      She bolted upright and looked at the empty bed beside her. Slowly the haze of sleep receded, and she realized it had all been a dream. The fabric of her nightgown stuck to her sweat-slicked body. Her hair hung in tangles around her tear-dampened face. The night air sent chills over her, despite the fact that her body was so hot, she could almost smell the smoke coming from it.

      Pushing her hair from her eyes, she buried her hot face in her hands. “Samantha Ellis, you’re committing emotional suicide, and it has to stop. Now!”

      Sam didn’t make a habit of talking to herself, but mental admonitions didn’t seem to be working anymore. If she didn’t get a handle on this crazy obsession with Chief of Detectives A. J. Branson, she’d be serving up her heart to him on a silver platter, and he’d slice it to ribbons.

      Sam had already been through that pain with Sloan Whitley, the onetime love of her life, when he neglected to tell her he was married; she was not about to do it again. When she’d added Sloan to the lineup of betrayals by her family, her quota had been filled to overflowing. After the Sloan fiasco, she’d locked her heart away and sworn there would be no more relationships, and certainly not with A.J., a man with a trail of heartbreaks and a history of running from commitment. But if she didn’t get control of this attraction she was nursing for the handsome blond detective, she might well find herself back in her old room at the Heartbreak Hotel.

      Disgusted with her frustrating lack of ability to control her feelings, Sam rolled over in bed and glanced at the bedside clock’s illuminated dial. 5:33 a.m. The alarm would sound in another hour, and she didn’t see herself falling back to sleep. Might as well call it a night. Free of the disturbing, erotic dreams of the Orange Grove, Florida detective, dreams that had become all too common of late and all too disturbing, she sat up, hit the off button and rubbed her eyes.

      Determined not to give A.J. any more of her time, she threw back the damp sheets, slid from the bed, grabbed her robe and then headed to the kitchen to put on a pot of wake-up coffee. As she passed through the hall and into the living room, she rubbed at her throbbing temples. Lack of sleep had brought on a headache that was quickly increasing in strength to the point that it felt as if someone was twisting an ax in her skull.

      She’d taken two steps into the living room when she detected an odor she and every other firefighter knew well. Smoke. A remnant of her all-too-vivid dream? But she was wide-awake now. She sniffed the air again.

      Burning fabric.

      Instantly alert, headache forgotten, her firefighter training kicked in. She ran through the house searching for the source. It didn’t take long to find it. Just a few feet from the front door, thick gray curls of smoke poured from under an armchair and had begun to accumulate in a misty layer along the ceiling.

      “What the…”

      Despite her bordering-on-petite size, she upended the heavy chair and found a plain white, smoldering, business-size envelope beneath it. Automatically, she scooped it up by a corner. Racing to the front door and nearly falling on the highly polished cypress floor, she unlocked the door and yanked it open, then ran to the edge of the porch and threw the envelope onto the dew-wet grass.

      With the emergency in the past, the surge of adrenaline that had driven her dissipated—just as it always did after every fire she’d ever attended—leaving her drained and emotionally exhausted.

      Then realization of what had just happened and its possible outcome hit her between the eyes.

      I could have died. And my home could have burned to

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