The Complete Mackenzie Collection

by Linda Howard

  The sharp turn of events had thrown him off balance, that was all. Until last night, she and everyone else at Solomon Green had been on his list of possible suspects, and he had refused to let himself dwell on the heat that ran through him every time her slight, disconcertingly female body came within sight. Hell, she hadn’t even had to be in sight; the thought of her had slipped into his consciousness at odd times during the day and disturbed his sleep at night.

  He had resented his inability to ignore her as easily as she ignored him. She had a very still, intense quality about her, a focus that bespoke a will of iron. She was as absorbed in her job as he was in his, to the point that he’d thought she didn’t even know he existed as a person, much less as a man. The idea had been strangely disturbing. He’d needed to blend in, but instead he’d found himself wanting to stand out, so that she would look at him with recognition in her eyes instead of a blank stare. Night after night he’d lain alone and thought about her, resenting both the fact that he couldn’t seem to stop and the fact that she was oblivious to him. He wanted her to be as aware of him as he was of her, wanted to know that she, too, twisted on lonely sheets and thought of him in bed with her.

  He wanted her with an intensity that infuriated him. Everything about her appealed to him, and that was surprising in itself, because there was nothing overtly sexual about her manner. She was pure business; she never flirted, never played favorites with the men under her authority, never made a suggestive remark, didn’t go out of her way to make herself more attractive. Not that she had to; he couldn’t have been more aware of her than if she made a practice of parading naked in front of him.

  He knew exactly how her jeans clung to her curvy little ass, had imagined more than once gripping those round cheeks in his hands and lifting her into his thrust. He’d studied the shape of her high, round breasts underneath the flannel shirts she wore and, considering the slightness of her build, driven himself crazy thinking about how tight she would be when he slid into her. He’d had all the normal, heated sexual thoughts. But he’d also found himself absorbed in the satiny texture of her skin, as flawless as if she didn’t spend countless hours outdoors. No woman should have skin like that, as pure as a child’s, and so translucent he could see the fragile blue veins in her temples. He would look at her pale brown hair, bleached by the sun into streaks of ashy blond, and think of how it would trail across his arm like a fall of silk. Her eyes were as black as night, fey and unfathomable, tempting a man to try to plumb those mysterious depths.

  Desire, like heat, was measured in degrees, and ran the gamut from lukewarm to vaporization. She had long since turned him to steam, he thought; it was nothing short of a miracle that he’d held her in his arms all night and done nothing more than that, even though all she was wearing was a pair of skimpy, blood-pressure-raising panties and his own T-shirt, which was so large on her that it kept slipping down to reveal one silky shoulder.

  This was desire, all right—and more. It was want carried to a higher degree than he’d ever before experienced, a fever that refused to cool, a need he hadn’t let himself satisfy. Until last night, he hadn’t even let himself talk to her, even though he’d known he should, to see what, if anything, he could find out from her. Oddly enough, she had seemed to avoid him, too, though he’d noticed immediately that Ms. Mackenzie was a hands-on trainer who knew everyone working under her and was on easy terms with them. She was pure magic with the horses and a tyrant when it came to their care, but a benevolent tyrant, and everyone from the stable hands to the riders seemed to treat her with varying degrees of respect and adoration. It was out of character for her to avoid him, but that was exactly what she’d done.

  It had made him suspicious. It was his job to be suspicious, to notice anything out of the ordinary, and her behavior toward him had made him wonder if something about him had made her suspicious, put her on guard. With his background, he was familiar with horses, which had made him the logical choice for the job, and he’d tried to blend in. Still, he was always aware that his training had permanently changed him, and a sharp eye might be able to spot the little things that forever set him apart from others: the extraordinary alertness, so that he was aware of every little detail of the activity going on around him; his sharp, fast reflexes; his unconscious habit of placing himself in positions that could be defended.

  And she had spotted those details, known what they meant. He didn’t at all like the swiftness with which she had sized him up and said, “You’re a cop,” even if her actions of the night before had already convinced him that she wasn’t involved in the ring that killed racehorses and collected the insurance money. She saw too much, with those black eyes of hers, and now she was looking at him as if she could see into his soul.

  Honesty prodded at him. Even though every hormone in his body was roaring at him not to do anything to jeopardize his current position, to stay right where he was, on top of her and all but between her legs, he ground his teeth and said what he knew he had to say.

  “Marriage? You must be hurt worse than I thought, since you’re delirious.”

  She didn’t take offense. Instead, she curled her arms around his neck and gave him that small, inscrutable, damnably female smile again. “I understand,” she said gently. “You need time to get used to the idea, and you have a job to do. This can wait. Right now, you have to catch some damn horse killers.”

  Chapter 5

  She needed to clear her head, needed some time away from him so that her nerves would settle down. Maris pushed lightly against his shoulders; he hesitated, but then rolled to the side, freeing her from his weight. The loss of that heavy pressure, the vital heat, was so unexpectedly painful that she almost reached out to pull him over her again. One glance at the straining fabric of his shorts told her that he might not be able to withstand any more temptation, and while her entire body yearned for him, she wanted to be able to fully enjoy their first time together. She had a concussion, and there were an unknown number of people after them who would likely try to kill them, as well as Sole Pleasure—powerful distractions, indeed.

  Gingerly she sat up on the side of the bed, being very careful to hold her head as still as possible. The aspirin had helped; the pain was still there, but it didn’t throb as sickeningly as it had before. She eased into a standing position and was relieved when the room remained stable.

  Instantly he was on his feet beside her, his hand on her arm. “What are you doing? You need to rest as much as possible.”

  “I’m going to take a shower and get dressed. If I’m going to be shot at, I want to be on my feet and wearing clothes when it happens.” God, he was big, and there was all that naked flesh right in front of her. She took a deep breath, fighting the urge to press herself against him, to find out exactly where her head would fit against his shoulder now that they were standing up. His body was so beautiful, his shoulders wide and powerful, his arms and legs thick with muscle. How silly she’d been to avoid him all these weeks, when she could have been getting to know him! Silently she mourned those wasted days. She should have realized sooner why her reaction to him had been so sharp, why she’d felt that odd sense of fright.

  This was the man with whom she would spend the rest of her life. No matter where her career had taken her, home had always been a mountain in Wyoming, and Alex MacNeil was going to change that. Her home would be with him, wherever he was, and an FBI special agent could be assigned anywhere. Though her life would never be completely without horses, he might be assigned to a city, where she wouldn’t be able to find a job as trainer. She had never before met a man whom she would even consider putting ahead of her horses—but she looked at him and instinctively thought, No contest.

  He was hers. She was his. She recognized it at every level of her being, as if she were vibrating to a resonance that only he produced.

  But danger surrounded them, and she had to be prepared.

  He had been watching her face with that narrow-eyed, intensely fo
cused way of his. He didn’t release her, but drew her closer, his arm circling her narrow waist. “Forget whatever you’re thinking. You don’t have to do anything but stay out of the way.”

  His nearness was too tempting. Maris leaned her head on his chest, rubbing her cheek against the hairy roughness as an almost painful tenderness filled her. “I won’t let you do this alone.” His nipple was right there, only a few inches from her mouth, and as irresistible as catnip to a kitten. She moved those few inches, and her tongue darted out, delicately licking the flat brown circle.

  He shuddered, his arm tightening convulsively around her. But his gaze was grim and determined as he cupped her chin with his other hand and gently lifted her face. “It’s my job,” he said in the even, quietly implacable tone she had heard before. “You’re a civilian, and you’re hurt. The best way you can help me is by staying out of the way.”

  She smiled in wry amusement. “If you knew me better, you wouldn’t say that.” She was fiercely, instinctively, protective of those she loved, and the thought of letting him face danger alone made her blood freeze in horror. Unfortunately, fate had decreed that she love a man whose profession was putting himself between the lawless elements in society and those he had sworn to protect. She couldn’t demand that he quit his job any more than her family had demanded that she quit the dangerous work of gentling unbroken horses. He was what he was, and loving him meant not trying to change him.

  She straightened away from him. “I’m still going to shower and dress. I still don’t want to face anyone in just my panties and a T-shirt….” She paused. “Except you.”

  He inhaled sharply, his nostrils flaring, and she saw his hand flex as if he wanted to reach for her again. Because time had to be growing short, she stepped away from him, away from temptation, and gathered up her clothes. Just as she reached the bathroom door a thought occurred to her, and she stopped, looking back at him. Was he alone? Though Zane and Chance never talked about their assignments, they had sometimes discussed techniques, back in their training days, and she had absorbed a lot. It would be very unusual for an FBI agent to be working without backup.

  “Your partner should be close by,” she said. “Am I right?”

  His eyebrows lifted in faint surprise; then he smiled. “In the parking lot. He got into position an hour or so after we got here. No one’s going to take us by surprise.”

  If his partner hadn’t been on watch, Maris realized, MacNeil never would have relaxed his guard enough to be in bed with her or let himself be distracted by the sexual attraction between them. Still, she was certain he hadn’t slept but had remained awake in case his partner signaled him.

  “What’s his name? What does he look like? I need to be able to tell the good guys from the bad.”

  “Dean Pearsall. He’s five-eleven, skinny, dark hair and eyes, receding hairline. He’s from Maine. You can’t miss the accent.”

  “It’s cold out there,” she said. “He must be frozen.”

  “Like I said, he’s from Maine. This is nothing new to him. He has a thermos of coffee, and he lets the car run enough to keep the frost off the windshield, so he can see.”

  “Won’t that be a dead giveaway, no frost on the car?”

  “Only if someone knows how long the car has been there, and it isn’t a detail most people notice.” He picked up his jeans and stepped into them, never taking his eyes off her as he considered the somewhat startling workings of her nimble brain. “Why did you think of it?”

  She gave him a sweet smile, her mother’s smile. “You’ll understand when you meet my family.” Then she went into the bathroom and closed the door.

  Her smile faded immediately once she was alone. Though she fully realized and accepted the wisdom of not interfering with a trained professional and his partner, she was also sharply aware that plans could go wrong and people could get hurt. It happened, no matter how good or careful someone was. Chance had been wounded several times; he always tried to keep it from their mother, but somehow Mary always sensed when he’d been hurt, and Maris did, too. She could feel it deep inside, in a secret place that only those she loved had managed to touch. She had been almost insane with fear that time when Zane was nearly killed rescuing Barrie from terrorists in Libya, until she saw him for herself and felt his steely life force undiminished.

  It had happened to Zane, and he was the best planner in the business. In fact, expecting things to go wrong was one of the things that made Zane so good at what he did. There was always a wild card in the deck, he said, and she had to be prepared for it, no matter how it was played.

  Her advantages were that she was trained in self-defense, was a very good shot, and knew more about battle tactics than anyone could expect. On the other hand, her pistol was in her cottage, so she was unarmed, unless she could talk MacNeil into giving her a weapon. Considering how implacable his expression had been, she didn’t think she had much chance of that. She was also concussed, and though the headache had lessened and she was feeling better now, she wasn’t certain how well she could function if the situation called for fast movement. The fact that her memory hadn’t returned was worrisome; the injury could be more severe than she’d initally thought, even though her other symptoms had lessened.

  Who had hit her? Why was someone trying to kill Sole Pleasure? Damn it, if only she could remember!

  She wrapped a towel around her head to keep her hair dry and stood under a lukewarm spray of water, going over and over the parts she remembered, as if she could badger her bruised brain into giving up its secrets. Everything had been normal when she went back to the stables after lunch. It had been after dark, say around six or six-thirty, when she stumbled across MacNeil. Sometime during those five hours she had learned that Sole Pleasure was in danger and either surprised someone trying to kill him or confronted the person beforehand and earned herself a knock on the head.

  It didn’t make sense, but the Stonichers had to be behind the threat to their prize stallion, because they were the only ones who could benefit financially from his death. Since they would make much more by syndicating him for stud, the only way killing him made any sense at all was if he had some problem that would prevent them from syndicating him.

  It wasn’t a question of health; Maris had grown up around horses, loved them with a passion and devotion that had consumed her life, and she knew every detail of the well-being of her charges. Sole Pleasure was in perfect health, an unusually strong, fast horse who was full of energy and good spirits. He was a big, cheerful athlete who ran for the sheer love of running, sometimes mischievous but remarkably free of bad habits. She loved all her horses, but Pleasure was special to her. It was unthinkable that anyone would want to kill him, destroy forever that big, good-natured heart and matchless physical ability.

  The only thing she could think of that would interfere with his syndication, the only possible reason anyone would grab for insurance money rather than hold out for the much larger fortune to be gained from syndicating him, was if the fertility tests had proved him sterile.

  If that was the case, the Stonichers might as well geld him and race him as long as he was healthy. But injuries happened to even the hardiest animals, and a racing career could be ended in a heartbeat. The great filly Ruffian had been on the way to victory, well ahead of her male opponent in a special match race, when an awkward step shattered her leg and she had to be put down. Given the uncertainties of winning purses on the track and the given of insurance money, if Sole Pleasure was sterile, the Stonichers could conceivably be going for the sure thing and have hired someone to kill him.

  She didn’t want to think it of them. Joan and Ronald Stonicher had always seemed like decent people to her, though not the kind with whom she would ever be close friends. They were Kentucky blue bloods, born into the life, but Ronald particularly seemed to be involved in raising horses only because he’d inherited the farm. While Joan knew the horses better and was a better rider than her husband, she was a cool, e
motionally detached woman who paid more attention to social functions than she did to the earthy functions in the stables. The question was, could they deliberately kill a champion Thoroughbred for the insurance money?

  No one else was in a position to collect, so it had to be them.

  They wouldn’t do it themselves, however. Maris couldn’t imagine either one of them actually doing the deed. They had hired someone to kill Pleasure, but who? It had to be someone she saw every day, someone whose presence near the horses wouldn’t attract attention. It was likely one of the temporary hands, but she couldn’t rule out a longtime employee; a couple hundred thousand would be terribly tempting to someone who didn’t care how he earned it.

  She turned off the shower and stepped out, turning the situation around and around in her head. By the time she was dressed, one thought was clear: MacNeil knew who the killer was.

  She opened the door and stepped out, almost stumbling over him. He was propped against the countertop in the small dressing area, his arms crossed and his long legs stretched out, patiently waiting in case she became dizzy and needed him. He, too, had dressed, and though he looked mouth-wateringly tough and sexy in jeans, flannel shirt and boots, she regretted no longer being able to see him in nothing more than tight-fitting boxers.

  Maris jabbed a slender finger at his chest. “You know who it is, don’t you?”

  He looked down at the small hand so imperiously poking him, and one dark brow lifted in bemusement. He probably wasn’t accustomed to being called to account by someone he could have picked up with one hand. “Why do you think that?” he asked in a mild voice, but even so he stood so that he towered over her, silently reestablishing his dominance.