Sherrilyn Kenyon - Deadly Promises

T HE H OTTEST N AMES IN R OMANTIC S USPENSE!

Praise for their previous books

#1 New York Times bestselling author

SHERRILYN KENYON

Brisk, ironic, and relentlessly imaginative.

Boston Globe

A delicious balance of suspense and sensuality.

Publishers Weekly

DIANNA LOVE

Wicked suspense woven with a deeply emotional romance. Plan on an all-nighter.

Publishers Weekly

CINDY GERARD

Edge-of-your-seat perfection!

Romantic Times

Hot, sexy, tender, it will steal your breath.

Her Voice Magazine (FL)

LAURA GRIFFIN

Suspense and romanceright down to the last page.

Publishers Weekly

Combines a perfectly woven and tense mystery with a sweet and compelling love story.

Romantic Times

Deadly Promises is also available as an eBook

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Just Bad Enough copyright 2010 by Sherrilyn Kenyon and Dianna Love Snell
Leave No Trace copyright 2010 by Cindy Gerard
Unstoppable copyright 2010 by Laura Griffin

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Text design by Jacquelynne Hudson
Cover design by Lisa Litwack. Photo Arcangel Images.

Manufactured in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

ISBN 978-1-4391-9111-8
ISBN 978-1-4391-9112-5 (ebook)

Contents

Sherrilyn Kenyon and Dianna Love

Cindy Gerard

Laura Griffin

Just Bad Enough

S HERRILYN K ENYON
AND
D IANNA L OVE

One

Jeremy Sunn stood next to the gazebo in the middle of the park and glanced around the festival to be sure no one saw him where he normally wouldnt be. Not on a Sunday off. Working undercover required patience, persistence, and popcorn. He tossed a fluffy kernel into the air and caught the buttery delight in his mouth then eyed the Greek water-maiden statue.

The one hed been lusting over for the past hour.

More like three weeks.

Hed staked out a lot of things in his undercover career with the BADBureau of American Defenseagency, but never a woman for purely personal interest.

No one at the Festival of Emperors paid attention to him, probably because hed dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt instead of period clothing. Roman soldiers and women in togas hustled around trying to buy up the last deals of the day. The mid-July event drew traffic from across metro Atlanta to the historic square in Marietta.

And no one strolling past the water maiden in the last hour had noticed why that one statue was different from the other three, besides being the only female sculpture.

But he did.

Beneath all that caked-on makeup beat the live heart of a flesh-and-blood woman. One he had to get an answer from before heading back to work on Tuesday.

Hell of a way to squander his last day off for a while and ancient history wasnt his forte, but he lived only a mile away and she was worth standing here waiting for the festival to end. He hoped.

A simple yes or no.

One answer had the power to eat a hole in his gut.

Sweat trickled down his neck but he couldnt be as hot as that water maiden posed silently amid three massive concrete sculptures of Greek gods.

CeCe Caprice just pretended to be a statue. She could go for hours without moving a muscle when she performed.

He could attest to how hard she trained daily at his gym in Marietta. Yep, every inch of that shapely body wrapped in a toga and posed with a baby doll also coated in white plaster was very much a living, breathing human and one hot female.

That he couldnt touch, damn it.

Correction. Wouldnt touch. Not if he found out she really had meant to give him a back off signal yesterday after spending the afternoon planting some damn flowers in her yard.

At least, thats how hed read her odd reaction when he asked her out to dinner. Now he was starting to wonder if hed jumped to the wrong conclusion when she hadnt actually said the word no.

Hed never pressed a woman for anything so hed backed off. Quick. Then regretted it when he missed her for the past twenty-four hours. Hed gotten used to sharing iced tea on her patio for the best part of three weeks, had never spent that much time just talking to a woman. The females he met were only interested in what he intended to do to their naked bodies.

But CeCe had hung on his words. And laughed at his jokes.

He hadnt even kissed her or had dinner with her.

Twenty-four hours of no iced tea, no talking, and no smiles. He missed her. Couldnt get her out of his mind for one day.

A woman had never spun him inside out like this.

Lust used to be fun, and short-lived. Not obsessive.

Three weeks at home recuperating from a leg wounda souvenir of his last missionhadnt turned out anything like hed expected. Limping to his mailbox the first day at home hed expected nothing more exciting than his standard fan mail from bill collectors.

When the screen door on the rental house next to his burst open and CeCe strolled down her driveway, the first thing hed noticed was the sweet belly button winking at him between a red half shirt and white shorts.

Hed thought one of his teammates from BAD had sent him a get-well-soon girl. No way could that little bombshell be his honest to God next-door neighbor.

His luck had never run that hot.

But she was indeed a new addition to the neighborhood. For the first time since moving there he regretted having to leave as soon as he healed.

CeCe had destroyed any operating brain cells hed possessed the minute she smiled at him. Blue eyes had sparkled bright as sapphires tossed up in blazing sunshine. Every time she turned her head, he fought the urge to touch the wavy auburn hair that brushed her shoulders.

He woke up at night thinking about that thick mass spread across a pillow. His pillow. His bed.

But CeCe wasnt the kind of woman you spent a couple of steamy nights with then walked away. Hed be the first to admit he came by women easily only because the women he met saw him as nothing more than a short-term sexual buzz. Something to hold them over until the real thing came along. Hed accepted that for years as a trade-off for not having to spend his life entirely alone.