She was far from beautiful, she thought. Though her mother had brought her a change of clothes, she'd refused to leave her husband's bedside long enough to wash up, until her mother had convinced her to use the shower in the bathroom marked “Patient use only” while she stood guard at the door.
She’d brought that file folder, too. The one she hadn’t had time to read before. The one that held the family secrets.
Kira looked down at the clothes her mother had brought her. A dressy pantsuit. Far from her usual attire. “Not exactly what I would have chosen,” she said.
"I do love you in leather.” There was a gleam in his eye that let her know he really was going to be all right, as he added, "Better out of it, though."
His voice was coarse, and she reached for the water pitcher, poured some into a glass, and then held the flexible straw to his lips.
He drank, then let his head rest on the pillows.
"How are you feeling?" she asked.
"Weak. A little groggy. Not sure if I'm remembering what really happened, or if it's a bad case of wishful thinking."
She leaned over him, pressed her mouth to his. "You want me to climb into that bed and refresh your memory?"
He smiled against her lips. "Damn straight I do, long as you don't mind doing all the work."
"I always did like being on top.”
“You did get your memory back.”
She sat on the edge of his bed, better to cradle his head to her chest. "You're gonna be okay," she told him. "They got the bullet out of your chest. It missed your heart. You'll be fine."
"I've never been more glad to be alive, Kira."
"Neither have I." She sat up a little, but couldn't keep her hands off him, and so she stroked his shoulders, upper arms, occasionally his face as she spoke. "I had a long talk with Mom," she said. "Explained to her that I've been a deep-cover DEA agent for the past two years and that the whole thing with Peter was just a ploy to bust him for drug trafficking, and that I was already married. To you."
"Must have broken her heart."
Kira smiled widely. "You know what she said?" She went on without waiting for an answer. "She said she kept wishing I wasn't engaged, because she would have managed to throw you and me together. She loved you from the minute she met you—in your guise as wedding planner."
"She said that?"
Kira drew an X across her chest with a forefinger.
Michael followed the motion, smiling, but then his smile died and he looked at her neck, frowning. "Where's—?"
"My ring?" She held up her hand, showing him her wedding band, resting right where it belonged, on her finger. "I told you before, Michael. I love you. I want our life back. I want you back.” He reached for her, but she held him off a little and added, “Besides, I need your help.”
“Since when?”
She nodded at the file folder on the bedside stand. “My second father had an entire background check done on my first father. His name was del Rio. He was a doctor, and he made Don Juan look like a wallflower.”
Michael lifted his brows. “Was?”
She lowered her eyes. “He’s gone. Suicide.”
“I’m sorry, Kira.”
“Me, too.” She inhaled deeply, lifted her chin. “But there’s more. Apparently, I have half-sisters scattered all over the state.”
“Holy….”
“I want to look them up. I want to know them.”
He nodded. “As soon as we wrap up this case, that’s gonna be our top priority. We’ll take time off, do it together.”
“Wrap up this case?” She blinked.
“We still have to bring down Mr. White. That was the goal from the start. We’re not finished yet.”
She bit her lips, nodded slowly. “I hate to leave a case unfinished.”
“You always have.”
She smiled. “I’m not going back to work until you’re better, though. I want you by my side from now on, whatever we do. I’m so glad I’ve got you back again.”
He closed his hand around hers. "You never lost me, babe." He glanced toward the door. "So you gonna lock that door and climb into this bed with me or what?"
She got to her feet and went to the door, then she came slowly back to the bed, still smiling. "Now, you've been injured," she said. "I don't want to do anything that might hurt you. So I’ll be very gentle.”
He laughed softly. “Well, that’ll be a new twist.” He grabbed her wrist and pulled her down on top of him, cupped her head and kissed her slowly. And then he said, “Damn, I love you Kira Waters.”
“I love you, too, wedding planner. Always will.”
–THE END–
Continue Reading for an excerpt from HUNTED.
HUNTED
On a beautiful summer evening in upstate New York, FBI Senior Special Agent Connor “Molotov” Romano’s life ended in a white-hot fireball.
He’d been heading home after another day on the job, feeling damned full of himself, too. He’d get a bonus for this one. No question. Maybe get that swimming pool Wendy had been teasing about. Or the mini-ATVs the boys had been asking for.
Thinking about his family made him remember to call home. He hit the phone button on his in-dash touchscreen, then got a little nervous when it took Wendy so long to answer. But that was the deal these days. Two kids made answering the phone fall very low on his wife’s list of priorities.
She finally picked up on the third ring. “Still alive, I take it?”
He grinned. She was only half-teasing. He knew she worried every time he had a dangerous mission, and while he could never tell her the details, he always let her know the risk. That was something she’d insisted on from the start, and a concession he’d reluctantly made. She needed to be prepared for the worst, she’d said. Today had been risky. Big time risky.
“Still alive,” he confirmed. “I don’t think I could be this hungry otherwise.”
“Stop for food, then, silly.”
“Nope. In too big a hurry to get home.” Brushes with death always left him with a gnawing need to hold his little boys in his arms. Four-year-old Justin and Jackson, at only two, seemed to wipe out the darkness and dirt he dealt with for a living.
“The boys are in a hurry for you, too. They’ve been asking when you’re going to be home every ten minutes for the last three hours.”
“How are the little rugrats today? Drive you nuts?”
“Perfect angels like always. Jack made you a gorgeous self-portrait on the bathroom wall with a black Sharpie, and then to celebrate its completion, tried to flush a couple of pounds of Legos. Justin couldn’t wait to tell on him.” He laughed while she went on. “They’re in the back yard now. I was just about to call them in to get cleaned up for dinner. So it went okay?”
He nodded. “Couldn’t have gone better. Chalk up another win for the good guys.” Today he had thwarted a plot to blow up the capital building in Albany by remotely detonating the explosives while they were still in the terrorists’ van. Took out six of the bastards in the process and really pissed off their handler, the mercenary known only as Mr. White. And not one single civilian casualty. Getting innocents killed was not an acceptable outcome to him. Never had been. And in the Bureau these days, there was always a risk.
“And you’re all in one piece?” Wendy asked.
“Intact. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna leave you to raise our monsters alone.”
She laughed softly. “How far out are you?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“I’ll put the lasagna into the oven. Should be ready about the time you pull in.”
Wendy was a fabulous cook and a terrific mother. He loved her as much as he was capable of loving anyone. His little boys being the one exception to that. He loved them like the sun.
Their marriage hadn’t been the result of any great romance, but rather the result of a potent cocktail consisting of alcohol, libido, and carelessness. But they were making it work for the kids, and in the process they’d become best
friends.
“Saw your boss today,” she said. He could hear the pan sliding into the oven, the door closing, the soft beeps when she set the timer. “He looked guilty as hell when he saw me. Flu my ass.”
“Darren? Where’d you run into him?”
“Gas station on the way to Chuck-E-Cheese for a play date. He was talking to the oddest looking—oh, hey, Justin’s hanging upside down from the monkey bars and hollering at me to come out and see. Gotta go. See you when you get here.”
She hung up the phone. The radio came back on. Old school Metallica filled the car, the bass booming so loud it could be heard from outside, and he stepped on it, his stomach growling in anticipation of Wendy’s lasagna.
Twenty minutes later, he pulled onto their neat suburban lane, slowed down to the speed limit, and watched for kids on bikes and skateboards, and other kids walking with their eyes glued to their device screens. Not too many outside at the moment. It wasn’t quite dark. The summer sun was just getting ready to set. When his house came into sight, he smiled. It was a one-level, ranch-style haven, with a huge fenced-in yard for the boys, a back deck with a giant barbecue grill, and a basketball hoop above the garage door.
Wendy must have heard the telltale purr of his powerful engine, because she opened the front door and smiled at him, wiping her hands on a dishtowel. He waved at her, put on his signal and waited for another car to pass between him and his driveway.
And then there was a blinding flash, a deafening explosion, and a percussion that knocked him sideways in the seat. When he lowered his arm, and came upright, a rainstorm of debris was falling all around him. The shockwave had shattered the car windows. He grappled with the door and stumbled out of the car, deafened by the ringing in his ears, almost blinded from the dust cloud and debris and the blood in his eyes. He ran unevenly toward his house, only one goal in mind—getting to his family.
But the house was gone. It was just… gone.
He ran toward where it should’ve been, and then something fell out of the sky and flattened him to the blacktop.
*****
The next time Connor Romano opened his eyes, his boss and best friend, Assistant Director Darren Wade standing over him. He was on his back, unsure why. He looked around and saw fellow agent and nemesis Monroe Stryker standing on his other side. The memory of the blast shot through him like adrenalin and he sat up in what turned out to be a hospital bed, would’ve jumped right out of it, if they hadn’t both grabbed him by the shoulders and held him still.
“Nurse!” Darren shouted. “A little help in here!”
Stryker thumbed the call button on his bed repeatedly. Romano met Darren’s eyes and saw the grief there, the message, the unspoken words. Wendy was gone. He knew that. But he had to ask all the same. “The boys?”
Darren shook his head slowly.
An infusion of darkness filled his veins, pushing everything else out. It replaced his blood with thick, black despair. He sank back onto the bed, no longer struggling to get up.
There was no point in getting up.
“This was White. It had to be White,” Darren said.
“Does it?” Stryker’s tone carried a hundred suggestions, none of them flattering.
Romano glanced at the well-dressed asshole. “Yeah. Unless it was you, you bastard. Everybody knows you wanted Wendy for yourself. Did you finally get frustrated enough to do something about it?”
“I loved her, you bastard!”
“And I married her. Four years ago. You’re still obsessed, though. Obsessed men do violent things.”
“I might be obsessed, but I’m not the explosives expert in the room.”
Romano leaned out of the bed, grabbed him by the front of his shirt, and punched him in the face twice before three orderlies were pulling him off. A nurse jabbed him with a tranquilizer. It made his brain go fuzzy before he even hit the pillows.
“I loved her,” Stryker said again. “If you killed her because of that–”
“Shut the fuck up, Stryker,” Darren warned. “You’re out of line. Keep it up and you’ll be out of a job, too. This was White. There’s no question.”
“Yeah? Then how the hell did White know where they lived? How did he find them with all the precautions we take to protect agents’ families?”
Romano reached out with an all-but-limp hand, closed it around the I.V. pole beside him, and tried his damnedest to swing it at Stryker’s head. He was unconscious before he knew whether it had connected.
Find HUNTED on Smashwords.
Don’t miss the rest of the Shattered Sisters Series.
Also Available
Shayne’s Supernaturals
Miranda’s Viking
Everything She Does is Magic
Stargazer
Witch Moon
Zombies! A Love Story
Magic By Moonlight
The Immortal Witches
Eternity
Infinity
Destiny
Eternal Love: The Immortal Witch Series
The Texas Brands
The Littlest Cowboy
The Baddest Virgin in Texas
Badlands Bad Boy
Long Gone Lonesome Blues
The Lone Cowboy
Lone Star Lonely
The Outlaw Bride
Texas Angel
Texas Homecoming
The Oklahoma All-Girl Brands
The Brands Who Came for Christmas
Brand-New Heartache
Secrets and Lies
A Mommy For Christmas
One Magic Summer
Sweet Vidalia Brand
A Brand of Christmas
Buckles, Boots and Mistletoe
Wings In The Night: Reborn
Twilight Guardians
Twilight Vendetta
The Rhiannon Chronicles
Edge of Darkness
And MAGGIE’S NON-FICTION
Shayne On You
Magick and the Law of Attraction: A User’s Guide
About the Author
New York Times bestselling author Maggie Shayne has published more than 60 novels and 23 novellas. She has written for 7 publishers and 2 soap operas, has racked up 15 Rita Award nominations and actually, finally, won the damn thing in 2005.
Maggie lives in a beautiful, century old, happily haunted farmhouse named “Serenity” in the wildest wilds of Cortland County, NY, with her husband and soul mate, Lance. They share a pair of English Mastiffs, Dozer & Daisy, and a little English Bulldog, Niblet, and the wise guardian and guru of them all, the feline Glory, who keeps the dogs firmly in their places. Maggie’s a Wiccan high priestess (legal clergy even) and an avid follower of the Law of Attraction
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