Kay Hooper - Outlaw Derek

Contents

Shannon Brown was running for her life! Touched by the fragile stranger, Derek Ross agreed to help her elude her pursuers. He never could resist a lady in distress, but the ferocity of his desire for Shannon stunned him... and mystified her. She'd known so much hurt -- how could his promises be more than words written on the wind? Derek's voice calmed her fear, but his touch excited her, made her long to be held, to hear another heartbeat beneath her ear. When he called her beautiful, she knew it couldn't be true -- and yet in the mirror of his passion-shadowed eyes, she saw that it was. Shannon felt reborn in the arms of the man who lived by no one's rules, but feared trusting Derek might cost her more than her heart. Drawn into an elusive world of danger and deception, Shannon felt her soul's scars healed by the wildfire of ecstasy, but she had to know the truth: was the man who'd made her a woman hers to keep, or only a cherished illusion?

Derek Ross struggled up through the heavy layers of jet-lag exhaustion with an awful buzzing in his ears. Rolling over in a tangle of bedclothes, he started to reach for the phone on the nightstand, but then recognized the sound he heard. Sitting up instead, he raked his fingers through his hair.

The door. In the middle of the night. No. He looked blearily at the clock on his nightstand. At four a.m. A visitor? Even in exhaustion, his mind automatically considered and rejected possibilities of felonious intent. It wasn't likely. In general, the guys in the black hats didn't lean on door buzzers to announce their arrival, especially at four in the morning, when stealth tended to be a prime consideration.

He kicked the blankets away and got up, finding his jeans in the darkness and struggling into them to the accompaniment of a few sleepy curses. He turned on lights as he made his way through the apartment to the front door, and, when he reached it, said in a voice little more than a growl, "Yeah, what?"

"Mr. Ross? I need to talk to you."

Standing well to one side of the still-closed door, Derek frowned. A woman whose voice he didn't recognize. In his business, that tended to be a bad sign. He realized that he had tensed. "It's four o'clock in the morning," he said shortly. "Who are you, and what do you want?"

"Mr. Ross, please, I - I have to see you. It's very important."

Derek hesitated, then leaned forward cautiously so that he could look through the security peephole. He was taking a chance, because the door was composed of only a few flimsy layers of plywood, which wouldn't stop a bullet or withstand even a well-placed kick. His view through the tiny hole was distorted, but he saw enough to make him relax - if only a bit. "Hold your hands where I can see them," he said curtly.

Outside in the well-lighted hallway, the woman held both hands up at shoulder height, palms out toward him. She didn't seem surprised by his extreme caution, but then, she was obviously too distraught to be surprised by anything.

"Keep them up," he said, and drew back away from the door as he unlocked and opened it. Instantly, the woman came into the apartment, her hands still held at shoulder height. Derek closed and relocked the door.

"I'm not armed," she said softly.

He was reasonably sure of that: it was why he had relaxed. The silk dress she wore clung like a second skin and left little to the imagination. She couldn't have hidden a bullet under the garment, much less a gun. But he hadn't lived to be thirty-five by being reckless or taking unnecessary chances, so he kept his distance while watching her intently. "All right. Into the den, straight ahead."

Following her, Derek observed thoughtfully that her walk didn't fit the dress. She had the carriage of an athlete or dancer, fluid and graceful in spite of an obvious limp. The dress, on the other hand, was designed to emphasize curves and wiggles, in fact to make it nearly impossible for a woman to walk in it without wiggling. She managed, however, despite the limp; the slight sway of her hips was utterly feminine, but in no way exaggerated.

Still seductive as hell, though.

She stopped by the couch, continuing to hold her hands as he'd instructed. "Can - can I sit down?"

Derek circled slowly until they faced each other. "I don't know," he said dryly. "Can you?"

She blinked, then glanced down at the bright red, skintight sheath. A flush lightly colored her pale face. "Oh. I haven't sat down since - Well."

"Try," he invited her.

She did, gingerly. And managed the feat, although the strapless bodice might have slipped downward half an inch or so. An unconscious relief filled her expression as the weight was removed from her legs. Slowly, she lowered her hands until they twined together in her lap.

For a long moment, they studied each other in silence. She saw a big man, barefooted and beard-stubbled, his wheat-gold hair tousled and a thick mat of golden hair covering his powerful chest. He had very dark and lazy eyes and a way of standing that was seemingly relaxed and negligent, but gave an impression of latent strength casually under control. And he had a face that would fascinate women and artists, because it was starkly male, diamond-hard, and utterly beautiful, even though he was obviously very tired.

He saw a young woman somewhere in her twenties, of medium height and slender in a way most women wanted to be and few were; she was full-breasted, her hips curved gently, and there wasn't an ounce of excess flesh anywhere. Her hair was a rich dark brown with red highlights, falling past her shoulders in a thick mass of loose curls. Her face was heart-shaped and delicate, and she had large eyes so light brown they were almost amber, eyes with haunting shadows of pain. She looked lovely, fragile, gentle and scared. Scared to death.

"Who are you?" he asked abruptly.

"Shannon." Her gaze flickered. "Brown."

"Well, it's better than 'Smith,' I suppose."

"It's my name, Mr. Ross."

He let it go. "And how do you happen to know mine?"

"I - someone gave me your name."

"Who?"

She worried her lower lip with small white teeth for a long moment. "I was told not to mention his name if I could help it."

"There's the door," Derek told her politely.

Her eyes seemed to grow larger. "He said you were hard," she murmured. "Tough without having to act like it. But he said you'd help me if I ever needed help. I need help."

"Who?" Derek repeated.

She sighed. "William Franklin."

"Governor Franklin?"

"Yes. He - over a year ago, he gave me your name. He said you could be trusted, no matter what the problem. And he said you were very good at what you do."

"Did he happen to mention what I do?" Derek asked, no expression at all in his deep voice.

Her eyes flickered, then steadied on his face. "He said you were sort of a troubleshooter. For different government agencies sometimes and freelance sometimes. He said that you take care of problems, any kind of problems. He said"

"What?" Derek asked when her voice trailed into silence.

Very softly, she said. "He told me you could be a - a bastard when you wanted to, but you were honest. And that you weren't afraid of anything."

Derek shook his head. "That sounds like him." He remembered several years back when a blackmail threat had almost cost Franklin his political career. Looking intently at Shannon "Brown," he said slowly. "The governor's happily married, or was the last time I saw him. What are you to him?"

"He's a friend."

"Uh- huh." '

Her chin lifted and the big eyes flashed gold. "He was right." she said in a shaking voice. "You can be a bastard!"

Very dryly. Derek said. "Look, Miss Brown, mine isn't a name that people like governors hand out to casual acquaintances. If Franklin gave you my name a year ago, it was either because you and he are very, very close, or else because he knew you were in some kind of trouble, or likely to be, and it was the kind that required my brand of problem solving. Which is it?"