Tough Enough
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHORS
THE COWBOY
JAYNE ANN KRENTZ
THE COUGAR
LINDSAY MCKENNA
USA TODAY BESTSELLING AUTHOR
ODD MAN OUT
B.J. DANIELS
Praise for New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Jayne Ann Krentz
“One of the hottest writers of romance today.”
—USA TODAY
“Krentz’s storytelling shines with authenticity and dramatic intensity.”
—Publishers Weekly
“Krentz’s flair for creating intriguing, inventive plots; crafting clever dialogue between two perfectly matched protagonists; and subtly infusing her writing with a deliciously tart sense of humor are, as always, simply irresistible.”
—Booklist
Praise for New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Lindsay McKenna
“Talented Lindsay McKenna delivers excitement and romance in equal measure.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Another masterpiece.”
—Affaire de Coeur on Enemy Mine
“Buckle in for the ride of your life.”
—Writers Unlimited on Morgan’s Mercenaries: Heart of Stone
Praise for USA TODAY bestselling author B.J. Daniels
“Daniels has a knack with small towns, bigger-than-life characters and twisted situations.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Daniels knows how to write a mystery and a strong family drama.”
—RT Book Reviews
ISBN: 9781460804155
TITLE: TOUGH ENOUGH
First Australian Publication 2012
Copyright © 2012 Jayne Ann Krentz/Lindsay Mckenna/B.J. Daniels
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THE COWBOY
JAYNE ANN KRENTZ
PROLOGUE
“MARGARET, PROMISE ME YOU’LL be careful.” Sarah Fleetwood Trace, struggling to get out of her frothy wedding gown with the help of her two best friends, paused and frowned. For an instant the joyous glow that had infused her all day vanished. She looked at Margaret Lark, her fey hazel eyes clouded with sudden concern.
Margaret smiled reassuringly as she carefully lifted Sarah’s veil and set it aside. “Don’t worry about me, Sarah, I’ll be fine. I promise to look both ways before crossing the street, count calories and not talk to strange men.”
Katherine Inskip Hawthorne, concentrating on the row of tiny buttons that followed Sarah’s spine, flashed a brief grin. “Don’t get carried away, Margaret. You’re allowed to talk to a few strange men. Just exercise some discretion.”
Sarah groaned, her golden-brown hair moving in a heavy wave. Diamonds set in an old-fashioned gold design glittered in her ears. “This isn’t a joke, you two. Margaret, I have a feeling …” She nibbled her lip in concentration. “I just want you to be careful for a while, all right?”
“Careful?” Margaret arched her brows in amusement. “Sarah, you know I’m always careful. What could possibly happen to me while you’re on your honeymoon?”
“I don’t know, that’s the whole problem,” Sarah said in exasperation. “I told you, I just have this feeling.”
“Forget your feeling. This is your wedding day.” Kate undid the last of the buttons, green eyes sparkling with laughter. “Your famous intuition probably isn’t functioning normally at the moment. All the excitement, champagne and rampaging hormones have undoubtedly gotten it temporarily off track.”
Margaret grinned as she hung up the wedding gown. “I don’t know about Sarah’s hormones, but I think it’s a good bet Gideon’s are rampaging. The last time I saw him, he was looking very impatient. We’d better get you changed and on your way, Sarah, before your husband comes looking for you. He’s very good at finding things.”
Sarah hesitated, her worried gaze still on Margaret, and then she relaxed back into the glorious smile she had worn for the past few hours. “Having a big wedding was Gideon’s idea. He’ll just have to put up with the necessary delays.”
“Gideon doesn’t strike me as the type to put up with anything he doesn’t want to put up with.” Margaret handed a quince-colored shirt to Sarah along with a pair of jeans.
Kate chuckled as she reached for a brush. “I had the same impression. He’s a lot like Jared in that respect. Are you really going to spend your honeymoon on a treasure hunt, Sarah? I can think of better things to do.”
“I can’t,” Sarah said blithely as she slipped into the jeans. She leaned toward the mirror to touch up her lipstick.
Margaret met her eyes in the mirror, warmed by her friend’s evident happiness. “Hoping to find another treasure like the Fleetwood Flowers?”
Sarah touched the diamond earrings she was still wearing. “There will never be another treasure like the Flowers. After all, when I went looking for them, I found Gideon.”
“What did you do with the other four sets of earrings?” Kate asked.
“Gideon has them safely hidden. He chose this pair for me to wear today.” Sarah turned away from the mirror and buttoned the bright-colored shirt. “Okay, I’m ready.” She hugged Kate and then Margaret. “Thank you both so much. I don’t know what I would do without either of you. You’re more important to me than I can ever say.”
Margaret felt herself grow a little misty. She quickly blinked away the moisture. “You don’t have to say it. We all understand.”
Kate smiled tremulously. “That’s right. You don’t have to say it. Friends for life, right?”
“Right. Nothing will ever change that.” Sarah pulled back, her expressive face full of emotion. “There’s something very special about a woman’s friends, isn’t there?”
“Very special,” Margaret agreed. She picked up Sarah’s shoulder bag and handed it to her. “Something very special about a husband like Gideon Trace, too. Don’t keep him waiting any longer.”
Sarah’s eyes danced. “Don’t worry, I won’t.”
Margaret followed her friends into the elevator and across the hotel lobby to the large room where the wedding reception was still in full swing. A crowd composed chiefly of other writers, bookstore people and their families milled about inside, sipping champagne and dancing to the music of a small band.
As the three women stepped through the open doorway, two big, lean men moved into their path. One of them reached for Sarah’s hand, a look of proud satisfaction on his face. The other flashed a wicked pirate’s grin and took Kate’s arm.
Margaret stood quietly to the side, studying the two males who had claimed her best friends as brides. On the surface there was no great similarity between Gideon Trace and Jared Hawthorne, other than the fact
that they were both large and both moved with the kind of fluid grace that came from strength.
But although they looked nothing alike there was something about them that stamped them both as being of the same mold. They were men in the old-fashioned sense of the word—men with an inner core of steel, a bit arrogant, perhaps, a bit larger than life, but the kind of men who could be relied upon when the chips were down. They were men who lived by their own codes.
Margaret had met only one other man who was in the same league. That momentous event had occurred last year and the fallout from the explosive encounter had destroyed her career in the business world and left her bruised emotionally for a very long while. A part of her would never completely recover.
Dressed in black and white formal attire, both Jared and Gideon were devastating although neither was particularly handsome. There was an edge to them, Margaret realized—a hardness that commanded an unconscious respect.
Jared was the more outgoing of the two. He had an easy, assured manner that bordered on the sardonic. Gideon, on the other hand, had a dour, almost grim look about him that altered only when he looked at Sarah.
“About time you got down here,” Gideon said to his new wife. “I’ve had enough wedding party to last me a lifetime.”
“This was all your idea,” Sarah reminded him, standing on tiptoe to brush her lips against the hard line of his jaw. “I would have been happy to run off to Las Vegas.”
“I wanted to do it right,” he told her. “But now it’s been done right. So let’s get going.”
“Fine with me. When are you going to tell me where, exactly, we’re going to?”
Gideon smiled faintly. “As soon as we’re in the car. You’ve already said goodbye to your family?”
“Yes.”
“Right.” Gideon looked at Jared. “We’re going to slide out of here. Thanks for playing best man.”
“No problem.” Jared held out his hand. His eyes met Gideon’s in a man-to-man exchange. “See you on Amethyst Island one of these days. We’ll go looking for that cache of gold coins I told you about.”
Gideon nodded as he shook hands. “Sounds good. Let’s go, Sarah.”
“Yes, Gideon,” Sarah spoke with mock demureness, her love as bright in her eyes as the diamonds in her ears. Gideon took her hand and led her swiftly out the door and into the Seattle night.
Margaret, Kate and Jared watched them go and then Kate rounded on her husband. “What cache of gold coins?”
“Didn’t I ever tell you about that chest of gold my ancestor is supposed to have buried somewhere on the island?” Jared looked surprised by his own oversight.
“No, you did not.”
Jared shrugged. “Must have slipped my mind. But unfortunately that old pirate didn’t leave any solid clues behind so I’ve never bothered trying to find his treasure. Trace said he might be able to help. I took him up on the offer.”
Kate smiled, pleased. “Well, at least it’s a good excuse to get Gideon and Sarah out to the island soon. You’ll come, too, won’t you, Margaret?”
“Of course,” Margaret agreed. “Wouldn’t miss it for the world. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I promised one more dance to a certain gentleman.”
Kate’s eyes widened. “You mean, an interesting gentleman?”
“Very interesting,” Margaret said, laughing. “But unfortunately, a bit young for me.” She waved at Jared’s son, David, as the boy zigzagged toward them through the crowd. The youngster, who was ten years old, was an attractive miniature of his father, right down to the slashing grin. He even wore his formal clothes with the same confident ease.
“You ready to dance yet, Ms. Lark?” David asked as he came to a halt in front of her.
“I’m ready, Mr. Hawthorne.”
THREE HOURS LATER, MARGARET got out of the cab in front of her First Avenue apartment building and walked briskly toward the entrance. The cool Seattle summer evening closed in around her bringing with it the scent of Elliott Bay.
A middle-aged woman with a small dog bouncing at her heels came through the plate-glass doors. She smiled benignly at Margaret.
“Lovely evening, isn’t it, Ms. Lark?”
“Very lovely, Mrs. Walters. Have a nice walk with Gretchen.” The little dog yapped and hopped about even more energetically at the sound of her name. Margaret smiled briefly and found it something of an effort. She realized that she was suddenly feeling tired and curiously let down.
There was more to it than that, she acknowledged as she crossed the well-appointed lobby and stepped into the elevator. An unusual sense of loneliness had descended on her after the wedding reception had ended. The excitement of planning the event and the fun of seeing her two best friends again was over.
Her friends were both gone now, Sarah on her mysterious honeymoon, Kate back to Amethyst Island. It would be a long time before Margaret saw either of them again and when she did things would be a little different.
In the past they had all shared the freedom of their singlehood together. Late evening calls suggesting a stroll to the Pike Place Market for ice cream, Saturday morning coffee together at an espresso bar downtown while they bounced plot ideas off each other, the feeling of being able to telephone one another at any hour of the day or night; all that had been changed in the twinkling of two wedding rings. Sarah had found her adventurer and Kate had found her pirate.
Sarah and Kate were still her closest friends in the world, Margaret told herself. Nothing, not even marriage, could ever change that. The bond between them that had been built initially on the fact that they all wrote romance novels had grown too strong and solid to ever be fractured by time or distance. But the practicalities of the friendship had definitely been altered.
Marriage had a way of doing that, Margaret reflected wryly. A year ago she herself had come very close to being snared in the bonds of matrimony. A part of her still wondered what her life would be like now if she had married Rafe Cassidy.
The answer to that question was easy. She would have been miserable. The only way she would have been happy with Rafe was by changing him and no woman could ever change Rafe Cassidy. Everyone who knew him recognized that Cassidy was a law unto himself.
Now what on earth had brought back the painful memories of Rafe?
She was getting maudlin. Probably a symptom of post-wedding party letdown. She thought she had successfully exorcised that damned cowboy from her mind.
Margaret stepped out of the elevator into the hushed, gray-carpeted hall. Near her door a soft light glowed from a glass fixture set above a small wooden table that held an elegant bouquet of flowers. The flowers were shades of palest mauve and pink.
Margaret halted to fish her key out of her small gilded purse. Then she slid the key into the lock and turned the handle. She thought fleetingly of bed and knew that, tired though she was, she was not yet ready to sleep. Perhaps she would go over the last chapter of her current manuscript. There were a few changes she wanted to make.
It was as she pushed open the door and stepped into the small foyer that she realized something was wrong. Margaret froze and peered into the shadows of her living room. For a moment she saw nothing but deeper shadow and then her vision adjusted to the darkness and she saw the long legs clad in gray trousers.
They ended in hand-tooled Western boots that were arrogantly propped on her coffee table. The boots were fashioned of very supple, very expensive, pearl-gray leather into which had been worked an intricate design of desert flowers beautifully detailed in rich tones of gold and blue.
A pearl-gray Stetson had been carelessly tossed onto the table beside the boots.
The hair on the back of Margaret’s neck suddenly lifted as a sense of impending danger washed over her.
Sarah’s words came back in a searing flash. Promise me you’ll be careful.
She should have heeded her friend’s intuitive warning, Margaret thought. Instinctively she took a step back toward the safety of the hall.
“Don’t run from me, Maggie. This time I’ll come after you.”
Margaret stopped, riveted at the sound of the deep, rough-textured voice. It was a terrifyingly familiar voice—a voice that a year ago had been capable of sending chills of anticipation through her—a voice that had ultimately driven her away from the man she loved with words so cruel they still scalded her heart.
For one wild moment Margaret wondered if her thoughts had somehow managed to conjure reality out of thin air. Then again, perhaps she was hallucinating.
But the boots and the hat did not disappear when she briefly closed her eyes and reopened them.
“What on earth are you doing here?” Margaret whispered.
Rafe Cassidy’s faint smile was cold in the pale gleam of the city lights that shone through the windows. “You know the answer to that, Maggie. There’s only one reason I would be here, isn’t there? I’ve come for you.”
CHAPTER ONE
“HOW DID YOU GET IN HERE, Rafe?” Not the brightest of questions under the circumstances, but the only coherent one Margaret could come up with in that moment. She was so stunned, she could barely think at all.
“Your neighbor across the hall took pity on me when she found out I’d come all this way just to see you and you weren’t here. It seems the two of you exchanged keys in case one of you got locked out. She let me in.”
“It looks like I’d better start leaving my spare key with one of the other neighbors. Someone who has a little more common sense.”
“Come on in and close the door, Maggie. We have a lot to talk about.”
“You’re wrong, Rafe. We have nothing to talk about.” She stood where she was, refusing to leave the uncertain safety of the lighted hall.
“Are you afraid of me, Maggie?” Rafe’s voice was cut glass and black velvet in the darkness. There was a soft, Southwestern drawl in it that only served to heighten the sense of danger. It was the voice of a gunfighter inviting some hapless soul to his doom in front of the saloon at high noon.
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