The Call of Bravery

by Janice Kay Johnson

  The ultimate test of courage

  No emotional connection means zero risk of being hurt. DEA agent Conall MacLachlan has learned that the hard way. And it’s been the key to his survival. So why is his latest assignment getting to him? Could be that he’s back in the town he rejected years ago. But he suspects the real reason is Lia Woods.

  He’s instantly and powerfully attracted to Lia—something that’s never happened to him. And running a surveillance operation from her house has them too close—he can’t catch his breath. Between her and her foster kids, Conall feels the domestic ties tighten…yet it’s not so bad. He just needs to be brave enough to take what Lia offers.

  “Ready to go in?”

  Conall rose to his feet in a smooth motion and held out a hand.

  Touching him might be…risky. Still, Lia reached out and let his hand close around hers.

  And knew immediately that she’d been right.

  His warm clasp felt better than almost anything she could remember. Strong, safe…and yet not safe.

  With a gentle tug, he boosted her to her feet. They ended up no more than a foot apart. Her breath caught in her throat. Neither of them moved. He didn’t release her. She wanted, quite desperately, for him to pull her closer, until her body bumped up against his. She wanted him to kiss her.

  And she knew letting that happen would be stupid. He was here only for a little while, and she suffered enough every time a child left her. She couldn’t bear anything else temporary in her life.

  Yet the temptation...

  Dear Reader,

  I find myself feeling a little sad at introducing Conall MacLachlan to you, because it means saying goodbye. I don’t know when I’ve been as drawn to my characters as I was writing this trilogy. I fell in love with each brother. Their shared childhood meant they all had major issues, but not the same ones. Conall was the youngest, the most vulnerable, when his family dissolved and the big brother he’d adored sacrificed all to keep the boys together—but in doing so became a tyrant.

  In his head, Conall knows that his brother saved him; at twelve, Conall was angry, constantly in fights, drinking alcohol, even going so far as stealing a car. He was in trouble because neither of his parents cared enough to stop him. Duncan did care—but Conall grew to hate his brother’s rules, his brother’s rigidity…his brother. When The Call of Bravery opens, Conall hasn’t been home in over ten years. He’d never intended to come home, but his job brings him back. And now everything he remembered, everything he believed, gets shaken up and settles in a different way.

  Of course, a woman has something to do with that. No surprise that Conall has vowed never to have a family—not when his memories are so terrible. I figured he needed to confront his worst fears in a big way, so I made him move in with a beautiful, generous, compassionate woman who has a houseful of foster children—including two recently orphaned boys who remind Conall of himself.

  Oh, I loved shaking up this man who believed himself invulnerable and who turns out to be the most vulnerable of the three MacLachlan brothers! Wow. Making the hero of my next book measure up is going to be a real challenge.

  Good reading!

  Janice Kay Johnson

  The Call of Bravery

  Janice Kay Johnson

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  The author of more than sixty books for children and adults, Janice Kay Johnson writes Harlequin Superromance novels about love and family—about the way generations connect and the power our earliest experiences have on us throughout life. Her 2007 novel, Snowbound, won a RITA® Award from Romance Writers of America for Best Contemporary Series Romance. A former librarian, Janice raised two daughters in a small rural town north of Seattle, Washington. She loves to read and is an

  active volunteer and board member for Purrfect Pals, a no-kill cat shelter.

  Books by Janice Kay Johnson

  HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

  1454—SNOWBOUND

  1489—THE MAN BEHIND THE COP

  1558—SOMEONE LIKE HER

  1602—A MOTHER’S SECRET

  1620—MATCH MADE IN COURT

  1644—CHARLOTTE’S HOMECOMING*

  1650—THROUGH THE SHERIFF’S EYES*

  1674—THE BABY AGENDA

  1692—BONE DEEP

  1710—FINDING HER DAD

  1736—ALL THAT REMAINS

  1758—BETWEEN LOVE AND DUTY**

  1764—FROM FATHER TO SON**

  HARLEQUIN ANTHOLOGY

  A MOTHER’S LOVE

  “Daughter of the Bride”

  SIGNATURE SELECT SAGA

  DEAD WRONG

  *The Russell Twins

  **A Brother’s Word

  Other titles by this author available in ebook format.

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  EPILOGUE

  PROLOGUE

  CONALL MACLACHLAN SLUMPED on the bathroom floor, his back against the tub, a wet washcloth pressed to his face. One eye had already swollen shut, and the other lid barely opened. His nose wouldn’t quit gushing blood. He could taste it in his throat, and thinking about it, he lunged forward barely in time to retch into the toilet. Afterward he stumbled to his feet to rinse his mouth out and then brush his teeth. Neither helped much when blood kept pumping from his nose and running down his upper lip.

  He wet then wrung out the washcloth again and lifted it to his face. His hand paused briefly as he caught a glimpse of his face with the swelling, bruising, a puffed lip, two black eyes that were going to be hideous, blood…and tears.

  He didn’t cry. He didn’t! He was nine years old, way too old to weep like a little girl. But he felt…he felt… A sob tore its way free and he crumpled again, pressing the cold cloth to his face to stifle blood and tears both.

  He’d been beaten up before. He was a shrimp for his age, and hated it. When other boys shouldered him aside or knocked him down for the fun of it, he hit back. Every time, he knew he’d lose, but he couldn’t seem to help himself. He was so full of rage, even he didn’t understand it.

  And it wasn’t fair that he was small. His brothers weren’t; Duncan at fifteen didn’t have a man’s muscles, but he had a man’s height. He had to be six feet tall. And Niall wasn’t far behind at twelve. Their mother always said he was growing like a weed. She’d sigh, because usually she was noticing that his jeans were too short. But then her gaze would stray to Conall, the runt of the litter, who wasn’t growing like a weed. Sometimes she looked…he didn’t quite know, and wasn’t sure he wanted to identify her expression. It was too much like she couldn’t figure out where he’d come from. As if he’d followed Niall home one day like an abandoned puppy and moved in without her noticing, until recently, that he was always there.

  It was getting worse, too. Not that long ago, she would have yelled at him when she saw him like this, but she also would have hustled him upstairs, cleaned him up and gotten him a bag of frozen peas or corn for his face.

  Today when he’d stumbled in the door and Mom saw him, she said
, “Not again. What is wrong with you?”

  When he fled toward the stairs, he saw his father step out of the kitchen. What was Dad doing home this early? Had he lost his job? Or quit? The surprise on his face changed to disgust, and Con knew what he was thinking.

  What’s wrong with you?

  He didn’t know what was wrong with him, why he couldn’t be like Duncan, who was smart and athletic. Nobody would be stupid enough even to try to beat him up. Not Duncan. Anyway, Conall’s big brother didn’t get in trouble. He was too controlled, too focused on what he wanted.

  And Niall…well, Niall did screw up. He used to be a good boy, too, until Dad got out of prison and things weren’t the same. But even so, he was also the star forward of the middle school soccer team and the basketball team. Dad liked Niall because he played the bagpipe like Dad. In fact, he was better than Dad, Con privately thought, maybe because, like Duncan, Niall had that ability to focus so intensely, he shut the world out.

  Niall had Duncan, too. They were friends. When Mom and Dad started yelling, they often disappeared together. Con would look out his bedroom window and see them walking down the sidewalk to the school, one or the other dribbling a basketball. They didn’t seem to remember he was here.

  Like they’d waste time teaching him, the runt, to play basketball. Not that long ago, Dad had said, “Usually a boy can start playing the bagpipe by the time he’s nine or ten, but you won’t be able to.” He’d snorted and turned away.

  The nosebleed had finally stopped. Conall washed his face again, and decided he really needed ice. He could hardly see at all.

  He’d made it most of the way downstairs when he heard Dad yell, “Why are you blaming me? You’re supposed to be raising the damn kids, aren’t you? If that pathetic excuse for a boy is anyone’s fault, he’s yours.”

  Conall froze, steps from the bottom.

  “Mine?” Mom screamed. “You know I never wanted him. You’re the one who insisted we have another kid. God knows why, when you can’t be bothered doing any real parenting. Conall wouldn’t be such a mess if you did.”

  “What am I supposed to do with him? Teach him how to be a man?” Dad laughed as if the idea was unbelievably stupid. That laugh sank into the very marrow of Conall’s bones, becoming part of him. “He doesn’t have it in him.” His voice became ugly. “Is he even mine, Laura? Because I sure as hell don’t see myself in him.”

  This time Mom’s scream was wordless. There was a metallic crash as if she’d thrown something like a pan. Ceramic splintered. Dad bellowed in fury; there was another crash and then a thud, the screams and yells continuing.

  Conall whimpered. Feeling the way with his foot, he retreated up a step, then another. Please don’t let them hear me. Please don’t let one of them come out of the kitchen.

  When terrible weeping replaced his mother’s screams, he turned and fled, stumbling, falling, banging his shins but scrambling up the stairs. He raced into his room and shut the door. Quietly, so carefully.

  I sure as hell don’t see myself in him.

  I’m glad, Con thought fiercely. I wish he wasn’t my father.

  You know I never wanted him.

  He wished she wasn’t his mother, either.

  Conall cried again, and was ashamed. The snot he wiped away with the back of his hand was mixed with blood, and he didn’t care.

  Sometime in the next couple of hours, all his rage and bewilderment and hurt hardened until his emotions felt petrified, like a slice of smooth stone he had on his desk that had once been wood. At first the sensation was uncomfortable, but that wasn’t surprising, was it? Think how compressed the wood must have been to become stone. All moisture squeezed out. After a while, the glossy, hard surface in his chest felt okay, and he could replay what he’d heard his parents say without feeling anything in particular.

  He did stiffen when he heard footsteps on the stairs and his bedroom door opened. By this time he couldn’t open his eyes at all. If Mom pretended to care now, he didn’t know what he’d do.

  But it was Duncan who swore, and said, “Have you put ice on your eyes?”

  Conall shook his head.

  “I’ll get you some.”

  Duncan’s footsteps retreated. Eventually he came back with a bag of frozen vegetables and a washcloth to wrap it in. He said, “There’s a lot of blood in the bathroom,” and Con shrugged.

  “Nose,” he mumbled, and grabbed for the bag as it slipped.

  “Don’t suppose you want to tell me what it was about.”

  He shook his head.

  “Did Dad do this to you?” Duncan’s voice had changed a while back to sounding almost like a man’s. Now it was so hard, so unforgiving, that change was complete. “Or Mom?”

  “No,” Con whispered, wincing when he realized one of his teeth was loose. He wriggled it with his tongue.

  “I saw the kitchen.”

  “They were fighting. This was a couple of guys.”

  Duncan sighed. His weight compressed the edge of the bed as he sat. “You know, you can run away instead of getting into it every time.”

  Conall shook his head.

  “Sometimes it’s better to be smart than brave.”

  He got it, he really did. But…there wasn’t much to him. Pride was about it. If he ran, he wouldn’t even have that. He wasn’t like his big brother.

  He told himself he didn’t care, and almost believed it.

  Conall shrugged again. Duncan tried to talk to him for a bit, then finally gave up and went away.

  Alone again, Con realized that today, for the first time, not caring was easy.

  CHAPTER ONE

  DOMINGO GARCIA STAGGERED toward the storefront and artistically fell against the large window, which shivered from the blow but didn’t break. He slid to a sitting position on the sidewalk.

  Crouching on a concrete staircase dropping to a basement apartment not thirty feet away, Conall MacLachlan watched with admiration. Garcia played a homeless guy like no one else; Conall didn’t even want to know what he’d rolled in to make him stink like that. The sacky army fatigue jacket did a great job of hiding a bulletproof vest.

  As they’d hoped, the steel door to the storefront slammed open. Two big men appeared, one with a snarling Rottweiler on a leash, the other using his body to prop open the door.

  Clutching his bottle of cheap wine in a brown paper bag, Garcia peered blearily at them. “Hey, dudes.” He pretended to look alarmed. “Your dog won’t bite me, will he?”

  The handler laughed and told Garcia in obscene terms that yes, indeed, the Rottweiler would rip him to shreds if he didn’t move on.

  Garcia whimpered and got to his hands and knees, coincidentally a few feet closer to the door and the dog’s frothing muzzle. Then he demonstrated his one true talent. Everyone had to have one. Garcia’s was handier than most, however, for a special agent with the United States Drug Enforcement Agency. He could puke at will, assuming he’d primed his stomach in advance. Conall had sat with him an hour ago while he consumed two huge burritos in green sauce at a little Mexican joint a few blocks away.

  Now, with sound effects and spectacular retching, he brought them back up. Vomit spattered the dog handler’s shoes and pant legs; even the Rottweiler backed up in alarm. Garcia managed to drop the wine bottle and shatter it, adding to the mess and stench. The other guy swore. All their attention was on the stinking pool of vomit and the seemingly drunken homeless man crawling on the sidewalk. The dog whined and scrabbled backward toward the door.

  Conall murmured into his transmitter, “Now,” and moved, coming in fast while Johnny Harris did the same from the other direction. At the same time Garcia sprang to his feet, his Sig Pro pistol in his hand.

  “Drop your weapons! This is a police raid. Drop them now!”

  Conall
slammed the doorkeeper to the sidewalk and went in first, low and fast. Garcia leaped over the dog and was on his heels. Reinforcements sprang from a van parked halfway down the block and within seconds were on the two guards, dragging them away from the window glass in case of flying bullets before cuffing them.

  The interior was poorly lit, the window having been covered with butcher paper, the bare overhead bulb maybe forty watts. Two men burst from a rear hallway, firing as they came. Conall took one out with his Glock while Garcia brought down the other. They kicked weapons away and plunged down the hall. The back of the store was the drug distribution facility; the guys packaging coke were already wild-eyed at the spray of bullets and had their hands up before Conall went through the door.

  Garcia and Harris checked out the bathroom and office while Conall kept his gun on the pathetic trio in front of him. Within moments, other agents arrived to cuff and arrest.

  It was all over but the cleanup. Conall’s experienced eye weighed and measured the packets of cocaine, leaving him disappointed. They wouldn’t be taking anywhere near as much off the street as they’d hoped. Either this operation was more small-time than they’d realized, or a shipment was due and their timing had sucked.

  That was life, he thought philosophically, holstering his weapon.

  And I’m bored out of my frigging skull.

  As he all too often seemed to be these days.

  * * *

  LIA WOODS SAT on the middle cushion of the sofa, a boy perched stiffly to each side of her, and watched Transformers. She’d seen bits and pieces of it before; Walker and Brendan were addicted. This was the first time she’d sat down with the intention of watching beginning to end.

  In her opinion, the movies were too violent for the boys at eight and ten, especially as traumatized as they were. But their mother had given them both the first two Transformers movies on DVD, and Lia couldn’t criticize Mom, even by implication. Not when she’d died only three days ago.

  Besides, she could see the appeal of the movies to the boys. Chaos erupts, and regular, nerdy guy seizes control and ultimately triumphs. The fantasy must be huge for two boys who’d now lost both parents, who had no idea what would happen to them. For them, it was a fantasy worth clinging to.