The Complete Mackenzie Collection

by Linda Howard

  “Ah.” Gently he turned her in to him, cradling her against his shoulder while he examined the injury. His fingers barely touched her scalp. “You have a nice goose egg here.”

  “Good,” she mumbled. “I’d hate for it to be a bad goose egg.”

  He gave her another narrow-eyed look, something he had down to an art. “You have a concussion, damn it. Are you nauseated? How’s your vision?”

  “The light hurts,” she admitted. “But my vision isn’t blurred.”

  “What about nausea?”

  “A little.”

  “And I’ve been letting you sleep,” he growled to himself, half under his breath. “You need to be in a hospital.”

  “No,” she said immediately, alarm jangling through her. The last thing she wanted was to go to a hospital. She didn’t know why, but some instinct told her to stay away from public places. “It’s safer here.”

  In a very controlled tone he said, “I can handle the safety. You need to see a doctor.”

  Again there was that nagging sense of familiarity, but she couldn’t quite grasp what it was. There were other, more serious, things to worry about, however, so she let it go. She took stock of her physical condition, because a concussion could be serious, and she might indeed need to be in a hospital. There was the headache, the nausea…What else? Vision good, speech not slurred. Memory? Rapidly she ran through her family, remembering names and birthdays, thinking of her favorite horses through the years. Her memory was intact, except for…She tried to pinpoint her last memory. The last thing she could remember was eating lunch and walking down to the stables, but when had that been?

  “I think I’m going to be okay,” she said absently. “If you don’t mind, answer a couple of questions for me. First, what’s your name, and second, how did we wind up in bed together?”

  “My name’s MacNeil,” he said, watching her closely.

  MacNeil. MacNeil. Memory rushed back, bringing with it his first name, too. “I remember,” she breathed. “Alex MacNeil.” His name had struck her when she’d first heard it, because it was so similar to the name of one of her nephews, Alex Mackenzie, her brother Joe’s second-oldest son. Not only were their first names the same, but their last names both indicated the same heritage.

  “Right. As for your second question, I think what you’re really asking is if we had sex. The answer is no.”

  She sighed with relief, then frowned a little. “Then why are we here?” she asked in bewilderment.

  He shrugged. “We seem to have stolen a horse,” he said.

  Chapter 2

  Stolen a horse? Maris blinked at him in total bewilderment, as if he’d said something in a foreign language. She’d asked him why they were in bed together, and he’d said they had stolen a horse. Not only was it ridiculous that she would steal a horse, but she couldn’t see any connection at all between horse thievery and sleeping with Alex MacNeil.

  Then a memory twinged in her aching head, and she went still as she tried to solidify the confused picture. She remembered moving rapidly, driven by an almost blinding sense of urgency, down the wide center aisle of the barn, toward the roomy, luxurious stall in the middle of the row. Sole Pleasure was a gregarious horse; he loved company, and that was why his stall was in the middle, so he would have companionship on both sides. She also remembered the fury that had gripped her; she’d never been so angry before in her life.

  “What is it?” he asked, still watching her so intently that she imagined he knew every line of her face.

  “The horse we ‘seem’ to have stolen—is it Sole Pleasure?”

  “The one and only. If every cop in the country isn’t already after us, they will be in a matter of hours.” He paused. “What were you planning on doing with him?”

  It was a good question. Sole Pleasure was the most famous horse in America right now, and very recognizable, with his sleek black coat, white star, and white stocking on the right foreleg. He’d been on the cover of Sports Illustrated, had been named their Athlete of the Year. He’d won over two million dollars in his short career and been retired at the grand old age of four to be syndicated at stud. The Stonichers were still weighing the offers, determined to make the best deal. The horse was black gold prancing around on four powerful, lightning-fast legs.

  What had she been going to do with him? She stared at the ceiling, trying to bring the hours missing from her memory back to the surface of consciousness. Why would she steal Sole Pleasure? She wouldn’t have sold him, or raced him—in disguise, of course—on her own. She rejected those possibilities out of hand. Stealing a horse was so foreign to her nature that she was at a loss to explain having apparently done exactly that. The only reason she could even imagine having for taking a horse would be the animal was in danger. She could see herself doing that, though she was more likely to take a whip to anyone mistreating one of her babies, or any horse at all, for that matter. She couldn’t bear seeing them hurt.

  Or killed.

  The thought knifed through her, and suddenly she knew. Oh, God, she knew.

  She jerked upright in bed. Instantly pain mushroomed inside her skull, the pressure almost blinding her for a second. She gave a gasping, almost soundless cry; a hard arm shot upward and closed around her, preventing her getting up, but it didn’t matter anyway. She felt her muscles going slack, unable to support her, and she slumped over on him. The pain quickly subsided to a far more manageable level, but the moment of agony left her weak and shaking, collapsed on his chest, in his arms, her eyes closed as she tried to recover from the shock.

  MacNeil gently turned so that she was flat on her back and he was half over her, one heavy, hairy, muscled leg thrown across her much slimmer ones, his arm under her neck, his broad shoulders blocking the light from her closed eyelids. One big hand covered her left breast, the contact brief and warm and electrifying, then moved up to her throat. She felt his fingers pressing against the artery there, then a soft sigh eased from him, and he briefly leaned down to press his forehead against hers, very gently, as if he were afraid the touch might hurt her. She swallowed, trying to control her breathing. That was the limit of her control, though, because there was nothing she could do about the speed at which her blood was thundering through her veins.

  Only the thought of Sole Pleasure kept her focused. Maris gulped, opening her eyes and staring up at him. “They were going to kill him,” she said in a stifled tone. “I remember. They were going to kill him!” Renewed rage bubbled in her bloodstream, giving force to the last sentence.

  “So you stole him to save his life.”

  He said it much more as a statement than as a question, but Maris nodded anyway, remembering at the last second to limit herself to only a tiny movement of her head. The calmness of his voice again piqued her interest with its familiarity. Why wasn’t he alarmed, indignant, or any number of other responses that could reasonably be expected? Maybe he’d already guessed, and she had only confirmed his suspicion.

  He was a drifter, a man who routinely walked away from responsibility, but even though he’d guessed what she was doing, he had involved himself anyway. Their situation was highly precarious, because unless she could prove the charge she’d made, they would be arrested for stealing Sole Pleasure, the most valuable horse in the country. All she remembered now was the danger to the stallion, not who was behind it, so proving it could be a bit chancy.

  Chancy…Chance. Chance and Zane. The thought of her brothers was like sunrise, bringing light to the darkness in her mind. No matter what was going on or who was behind it, all she had to do was call Zane, and he would get to the bottom of it. Maybe that had been her original plan, lost in the fog that obscured the past twelve hours. Get Sole Pleasure out of harm’s way, contact Zane, and lay low until the danger was over.

  She stared at the ceiling, trying to remember any other detail that would help clear up the situation. Nothing. “Did I call anyone last night?” she asked. “Did I say anything about calling one of my
brothers?”

  “No. There was no time or opportunity to call anyone until we got here, and you were out like a light as soon as you hit the bed.”

  That information didn’t clear up the question of whether she had undressed herself or he had done it. She scowled a little, annoyed at how the physical intimacy of the situation kept distracting her from the business at hand.

  He was still watching her closely; she felt as if his attention hadn’t wavered from her for so much as a split second. She could sense him analyzing every nuance of her expressions, and the knowledge was unsettling. She was accustomed to people paying attention to her; she was, after all, the boss. But this was different, on an entirely different level, as if he missed nothing going on around him.

  “Were you going to call your family for help?” he asked when she didn’t say anything else.

  She pursed her lips. “That would have been the most logical thing to do. I should probably call them now.” Since Zane had left the SEALs, he was much easier to contact; Barrie and the kids kept him closer to home. And he would know how to get in touch with Chance, though the odds of Chance even being in the country weren’t good. It didn’t matter; if she needed them, if she made the call, she knew her entire family would descend on Kentucky like the Vikings swooping down on a medieval coastal village—and heaven help those who were behind all this.

  Maris tried to ease herself away from him so that she could sit up and reach the phone. To her amazement, he tightened his grip, holding her in place.

  “I’m okay,” she said in reassurance. “As long as I remember to move slowly and not jar my head, I can manage. I need to call my brother as soon as possible, so he can—”

  “I can’t let you do that,” he said calmly.

  She blinked, her dark eyes growing cool. “I beg your pardon?” Her tone was polite, but she let him hear the steel underlying it.

  His lips twitched, and a ruefully amused look entered his eyes. “I said I can’t let you do that.” The amusement spread to his mouth, turning the twitch into a smile. “What are you going to do, fire me?”

  Maris ignored the taunt, because if she couldn’t prove Sole Pleasure was in danger, neither of them would have to worry about a job for some time. She lay still, considering this sudden change in the situation, possibilities running through her mind. He was too damn sure of himself, and she wondered why. He didn’t want her to call for help. The only reason she could come up with was that he must be involved, somehow, in the plot to kill Sole Pleasure. Maybe he was the one who’d been hired to do it. Suddenly, looking up into those blue eyes, Maris felt the danger in him again. It wasn’t just a sensual danger, but the inherent danger of a man who had known violence. Yes, this man could kill.

  Sole Pleasure might already be dead. She thought of that big, sleek, powerful body lying stiff, never to move again, and a nearly crippling grief brought the sheen of tears to her eyes. She couldn’t control that response, but she allowed herself no other. Maybe she was wrong about MacNeil, but for Sole Pleasure’s sake, she couldn’t take the chance.

  “Don’t cry,” he murmured, his voice dropping into a lower note. He lifted his hand to gently stroke her hair away from her temple. “I’ll take care of things.”

  This was going to hurt. Maris knew it, and accepted the pain. Her father had taught her to go into a fight expecting to get hurt; people who didn’t expect the pain were stunned by it, incapacitated and, ultimately, defeated. Wolf Mackenzie had taught his children to win fights.

  MacNeil was too close; she was also lying flat on her back, which took away a lot of her leverage. She had to do it anyway. The first blow had to count.

  She snapped her left arm up at him, striking for his nose with the heel of her palm.

  He moved like lightning, his right forearm coming up to block the blow. Her palm slammed into his arm with enough force to jar her to the teeth. Instantly she recoiled and struck again, this time aiming lower, for his solar plexus. Again that muscular forearm blocked her way, and this time he twisted, catching both of her arms and pinning them to the pillow on each side of her head. With another smooth motion he levered himself atop her, his full weight crushing her into the bed.

  The entire thing took three seconds, maybe less. There had been no explosion of movement; anyone watching might not even have realized a brief battle had taken place, so tight had been the movements of attack and response, then counterattack. Her head hadn’t even been unduly jarred. But Maris knew. Not only had she been trained by her father, she had also watched Zane and Chance spar too often to have any doubts. She had just gone up against a highly trained professional—and lost.

  His blue eyes were flinty, his expression cold and remote. His grip on her wrists didn’t hurt, but when she tried to move her arms, she found that she couldn’t.

  “Now, what in hell was that about?” His voice was still calm, but edged with an icy sharpness.

  Then it all fell together. His control, his utter self-confidence, the calmness that seemed so familiar. Of course it was familiar—she saw it constantly, in her brothers. Zane had just that way of speaking, as if he could handle anything that might happen. MacNeil hadn’t hurt her, even when she had definitely tried to hurt him. She couldn’t have expected such concern from a thug hired to kill a horse. The clues were there, even those sexy gray boxers. This was no drifter.

  “My God,” she blurted. “You’re a cop.”

  Chapter 3

  “Is that why you attacked?” If anything, those blue eyes were even colder.

  “No,” she said absently, staring up at his face as if she’d never seen a man before. She felt stunned, as if she really hadn’t. Something had just happened, but she wasn’t sure what. It was like the way she’d felt when she first saw him, only more intense, primally exciting. She frowned a little as she tried to pin down the exact thought, or sensation, or whatever it was. His hands tightened on her wrists, drawing her back to the question he’d asked and the answer he wanted, and reluctantly she gathered her thoughts. “I just now realized that you’re a cop. The reason I tried to hit you was because you wouldn’t let me call my family, and I was afraid you might be one of the bad guys.”

  “So you were going to try to take me out?” He looked furious at the idea. “You have a concussion. How in hell did you expect to fight me? And who taught you those moves, anyway?”

  “My father. He taught all of us how to fight. And I could have won, against most men,” she said simply. “But you—I know professional training when I see it.”

  “So the fact that I know how to fight makes you think I’m a cop?”

  She could have told him about Zane and Chance, who, even though they weren’t cops, had many of the same characteristics she’d noticed in him. She didn’t, though, because she wasn’t one hundred percent certain their organization or agency or whatever it was was exactly squared away with either the State or Justice Department. Instead, she gave MacNeil a secret little smile. “Actually, it was your shorts.”

  He was startled out of his control, his blue eyes widening. “My shorts?”

  “They aren’t briefs. They’re not white. They’re too sexy.”

  “And that’s a dead giveaway for being a cop?” he asked incredulously, color staining his cheekbones.

  “Drifters don’t wear sexy gray boxers,” she pointed out. She didn’t mention the interest she could feel stirring in those sexy gray boxers. Perhaps, under the circumstances, she shouldn’t have mentioned his underwear. Not that his reaction was unexpected, she thought. She was barely clothed, and he wore even less. She could feel the hard, hairy bareness of his legs against hers, the pressure of his hips. Just minutes before, she had thought his touch carefully controlled, so that there was no intimacy, despite his closeness. She didn’t feel that way now. It wasn’t just his arousal; there was something very intimate in the way he held her beneath him, as if their brief battle had startled him out of his careful control and provoked him into a heated, pure
ly male response. She took a deep breath as an unfamiliar excitement made her heart beat faster, made every cell in her body tingle with life. The secret part of her, the wildness that she had always known was there but which no man had ever before managed to touch, shivered in fierce satisfaction at the way he held her.

  “Cops don’t necessarily wear them, either.”

  Her comment about his shorts had definitely disturbed him. She smiled again, her dark eyes half closing in sensual delight as she absorbed the novel sensation of having a hard male body on top of her—an extremely aroused male body. “If you say so. I’ve never seen one undressed before. What kind of cop are you, specifically?”

  He was silent for a moment, studying her face. She didn’t know what he saw there, but the set of his mouth eased, and if anything, he settled even more heavily against her. “Specifically, FBI. Special agent.”

  A federal agent? Startled out of her sensual preoccupation, she gave him a puzzled look. “I didn’t think stealing a horse was a federal crime.”

  He almost smiled. “It isn’t. Look, if I let go of your hands, are you going to try to kill me again?”

  “No. I promise,” she said. “Besides, I wasn’t trying to kill you, and even if I had been, I’m not as good as you are, so you don’t have to worry.”

  “I can’t tell you how reassuring that is,” he said dryly, but he released her hands and shifted his position a little, propping himself over her on his forearms. The change forced his hips more firmly against hers, forced her thighs slightly apart to accommodate the pressure. She caught her breath. His interest had grown, to the point that there was no politely ignoring it. But he was ignoring it, not in the least embarrassed by his body’s response to her.

  Maris took another deep breath, delighting in the way the simple action rubbed her breasts against the hard, muscled planes of his chest, making her nipples tingle. Oh, God, that felt so good. She would gladly lie in his arms and do nothing more than breathe, if they didn’t have a stolen champion horse stashed somewhere and someone presumably on their trail, trying to kill both them and the stallion.