Dangerous

by Lee Magner

  Table of Contents

  Cover Page

  Excerpt

  Dear Reader

  Title Page

  Books by Lee Magner

  About the Author

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Copyright

  As Clare turned to say goodbye, Case pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

  “I would never do anything to hurt you,” he said quietly when he broke off the kiss. “No matter what happens, I want you to believe that.”

  He touched her lips once more with his, then turned her around and pushed her firmly through the doorway into the house. “Keep your eyes open, Clare.”

  Let her be safe, he added silently as he walked to his car. His weakness had put her in danger now. Someone might decide to hurt her because she would make a more vulnerable target than he would.

  “Damn!” he swore. He turned on the ignition and gritted his teeth.

  He had to find out the truth about what had happened here fifteen years ago. Before someone got seriously hurt.

  Or seriously dead.

  Dear Reader,

  Once again, we’ve got an irresistible month of reading coming your way. One look at our lead title will be all you need to know what I’m talking about. Of course I’m referring to The Heart of Devin MacKade, by award-winning, New York Times bestselling author Nora Roberts. This is the third installment of her family-oriented miniseries, “The MacKade Brothers,” which moves back and forth between Silhouette Intimate Moments and Silhouette Special Edition. Enjoy every word of it!

  Next up, begin a new miniseries from another award winner, Justine Davis. ‘Trinity Street West” leads off with the story of Quisto Romero in Lover Under Cover. You’ll remember Quisto from One Last Chance, and you’ll be glad to know that not only does he find a love of his own this time around, he introduces you to a whole cast of characters to follow through the rest of this terrific series. Two more miniseries are represented this month, as well: The Quiet One is the latest in Alicia Scott’s “The Guiness Gang,” while Cathryn Clare’s “Assignment: Romance” begins with The Wedding Assignment. And don’t forget Lee Magner’s Dangerous and Sally Tyler Hayes’ Homecoming, which round out the month with more of the compellingly emotional stories you’ve come to expect from us.

  Enjoy them all—and come back next month for more excitingly romantic reading, here at Silhouette Intimate Moments.

  Yours,

  Leslie Wainger

  Senior Editor and Editorial Coordinator

  Please address questions and book requests to:

  Silhouette Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  Dangerous

  Lee Magner

  Books by Lee Magner

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Mustang Man #246

  Master of the Hunt #274

  Mistress of Foxgrove #312

  Sutter’s Wife #326

  The Dragon’s Lair #356

  Stolen Dreams #392

  Song of the Mourning Dove #420

  Standoff #507

  Banished #556

  Dangerous #699

  LEE MAGNER

  is a versatile woman whose talents include speaking several foreign languages, raising a family—and writing. After stints as a social worker, an English teacher and a regional planner in the human services area, she found herself at home with a small child and decided to start working on a romance. She has always been an avid reader of all kinds of novels, but especially love stories. Since beginning her career, she has become an award-winning author and has published numerous contemporary romances.

  For Jan Robison, in appreciation for your support and encouragement, and, most especially, for your friendship Memorial Day 1995

  Chapter 1

  It was the strange expression in Logan’s eyes that captured Case’s attention.

  Case had seen that meditative stare before. Usually just before Logan suggested, invariably in a deceptively mild tone, that some unique opportunity had just arisen. Maybe Case would find it, well, interesting?

  Logan’s charcoal-colored eyebrows would lift ever so slightly, indicating just a hint of encouragement. Then he’d hand over something in writing—a letter or a slim report of some sort— and as Case took it from him, Logan would begin to smile. The strange expression that had been in his eyes would transform subtly into the gleam of a man determined to get something done come hell or high water.

  Unfortunately, hell and high water usually had starring roles in Logan’s “unique opportunities,” Case recalled cynically.

  Case wondered where in the devil Logan had acquired the dry sense of irony that let him call all manner of outrageous ideas “interesting.”

  Case halted a few feet inside the door to Logan’s spacious office and watched Logan warily.

  Logan noticed. He also took note of the mulish look settling on Case’s face.

  “Don’t look so suspicious!” Logan objected, laughing.

  Case was not so easily disarmed.

  “I’ll quit looking like this when I know that I won’t end up in some Third World jail in the pursuit of your latest ‘interesting opportunity,’” Case said bluntly.

  “We got you out fast enough,” Logan retorted, just a little defensively. He still felt bad about that particular mission, and it showed in his face, even now, years later.

  “Fast?” Case exclaimed. “You call that fast?”

  “All right,” Logan conceded. “So maybe a month there wasn’t much of a picnic…”

  Case made a guttural sound like a howl of outrage being strangled in the depths of his throat. He turned back long enough to grab the heavy walnut door to the office and slam it shut, giving them a little privacy. Outside in the hall, a visiting engineer nearly jumped out of her skin in surprise at the force of it.

  Case walked toward the desk, determination in every stride he took.

  Logan put up his hand in a gesture of peace and surrender.

  “Okay, so I underestimated the downside risks a little that time,” Logan magnanimously conceded.

  “A little?” Case exclaimed.

  “But I gave you a hundred-thousand-dollar bonus and stock options in the company when they finally came around last year and agreed to take our offer. All’s well that ends well, right?”

  “Quoting Shakespeare doesn’t impress me, Logan. Remember?”

  Logan laughed and nodded that he did indeed recall that particular fact about Case.

  “Well, what else could I have done, Case?” Logan challenged. “Hell, I even offered to trade places with you. Remember?”

  Case laughed in genuine amusement. Oh, yeah. He remembered that part, all right. Right down to the sour-smelling saliva of the guard who’d punctuated the message by spitting on him. The guard had paid for that later, of course. But as much as Case had hated that jail, he never would have agreed to let Logan take his place there. In the past fifteen years, he’d come to think of Logan as his savior and as someone he’d lie down and die for. That prison exchange offer had made it very clear to Case that he loved Logan like the brother he’d never had.

  “That would have been a sight, all right,” Case said sarcastically. “Logan Reilly, forty years old and born with silver stock certificates in hi
s mouth, giving up his comfortable life-style to live in a human pigsty. Oh, the newspapers would have gone ape over it. And once those so-called businessmen discovered how much you were worth, we’d never have gotten you out of there. Now me, on the other hand…well, everyone knows I’m hired help, a relative from the wrong side of the blanket. Hell, that concept crosses cultures with no problem at all. They knew I had very limited value. That’s why they did such a lousy job of keeping an eye on the jail. And why it was easy to bribe someone to slide the key into the cell one morning.”

  The two men looked into each other’s eyes and felt the strength of the bond that had been forged in that particularly tense and dangerous incident. It was a blood bond. Case straightened up and relaxed. Then he grinned, breaking the tension for both of them for a moment.

  “Hell, Logan,” Case drawled. “I considered that little fiasco a form of paying my dues. As the resident black sheep of the Reilly family, my mother being a Reilly and me being the son of disrepute, I always knew I’d have to earn respect around here any way I could. Besides, you wouldn’t have lasted a day there,” he added teasingly. “You’re used to a finer sense of hospitality and table manners than they practice.”

  Logan looked genuinely riled.

  “You’re my dead sister’s son,” Logan reminded him in a soft but steel-edged voice. “That means we’re blood relatives. You aren’t so very different from me. And I’m not so very different from you, Case. Don’t let the clothes fool you. I’ve been in my share of tough spots. We just never got around to talking about any of them.”

  Case was surprised. He thought he knew Logan pretty well. Obviously, there were things about Logan that he didn’t know. He wondered what they were. And if Logan would someday tell him.

  Logan didn’t bother to fill him in at the moment. He was busy defending himself and was not about to get sidetracked.

  “Forget that garbage about earning respect and having to prove yourself and paying some damn dues. Who the hell gave you that idea, anyway? I thought we got past that kind of stuff ten years ago, after you’d been on your own and doing fine.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Or maybe you just won’t let yourself feel like you’ve been accepted?”

  Case shrugged. Logan was right on the money with that comment, he thought. Case never permitted himself to believe that his place in the Reilly conglomerate was completely settled. He knew that sense of insecurity came from the crazy way he’d grown up, with all the rootlessness and his father’s temper and drinking problems. But he couldn’t totally shake the thought that security might be snatched away from him at any time. So he never completely counted on anything. Or anyone.

  There’d been only two other people he ever got close to putting all his faith and trust in. One was an old man named Luther. The other had been a young girl named Clare. But that had been years ago. Fifteen, to be exact. And he’d gotten out of both their lives, Clare’s especially. He’d done it as a favor to them. He’d written to Luther at Christmastime every year. He owed the man that much. Sometimes Luther mentioned Clare. But Case had always been careful not to encourage any news sharing. He didn’t want Luther carrying tales back to Clare. He’d made that very clear to Luther, too.

  “Case?”

  Case snapped back to the present. Logan was looking at him with a little touch of impatience.

  “So feel accepted here, damn it,” Logan exclaimed. He was both exasperated and amused. “Look, we’re closer in age than any other uncle and nephew I ever met. Mairi was eighteen when she ran off with Seamus and conceived your sorry self. Mairi was my older sister, as you well know. I’m only eight or nine years older than you. That makes me closer to a brother to you than an uncle, right?”

  “What’s your point, Logan?” Case asked, raising an eyebrow and standing his ground.

  “I can put myself on the line for you just like you can put yourself on the line for me.”

  The silence that followed that sentence underscored the seriousness of Logan’s words. Case exhaled.

  “All right. But if I had let them trade us, your bank account would have been the death of you and you know it, Logan.”

  Logan frowned. He obviously agreed and was pained by that fact.

  “Face it, Logan, that soft bed you grew up in wouldn’t have prepared you for the, uh, rustic accommodations they were offering. You’re a silk purse, Logan. You’d have been worn to shreds in that prison. Silk gets hard use in rough hands. That kind of job is better given to a sow’s ear like me.”

  Logan laughed and shook his head.

  “Have it your own way, Case,” he said, basically tiring of arguing the point. He had other things on his mind today and they needed to be dealt with quickly. “You win. You get all the poor accommodation jobs in the future. I’ll take all the silk sheet assignments. Will that make you happy? Will that make you feel like you’re earning your keep around here?”

  “I hate winning arguments with you, Logan,” Case groused wryly. Logan rarely allowed himself to be outmaneuvered, and Case had the distinct impression he’d lost yet another skirmish with the sly fox. “Just try to get hotels without fleas, okay?”

  “Case, Case,” Logan lamented. “Here I am, grooming you to be my successor someday, training you in the fine art of being the leader of the pack, and all I get are whining complaints about a few bedbugs.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m getting soft in my old age, I guess.”

  “I’m the first to concede that not every idea that I have works out exactly as I’d hoped it would.” Logan shrugged his broad shoulders and the fine material of his suit rustled softly against his custom-tailored shirt.

  “Nice of you to admit that,” Case said dryly. He flexed a muscle, recalling the scar across his shoulder he’d bear for the rest of his life because of one of those “interesting possibilities” that hadn’t quite gone as planned.

  Logan cleared his throat and tugged at the knot of his tie. He slid his fingertips down the cinnamon-and-red silk fabric absentmindedly, looking a little uncertain of how he wanted to proceed.

  Case frowned. That wasn’t like Logan. Logan was never unsure of himself. Wrong. But not uncertain.

  “What’s going on, Logan? Why’d you leave word for me to stop in your office first thing this morning?”

  “I have something for you.”

  Case noticed that Logan’s eyebrows hadn’t arched upward as they usually did at this point in the conversation if he had some wild scheme in mind and was about to convince Case that it was the best thing since baseball. Maybe this had nothing to do with Logan’s wild ideas and empire-building plans.

  Logan swiveled his chair and leaned over to open a file drawer behind his desk. He removed a letter from it and turned back toward Case.

  “Here. This is why I wanted you to see me this morning. It came in the mail last week.”

  Case took the letter. It was addressed to Case in care of Logan here at the office.

  Only certain important items of mail were handled like that. They were the matters that couldn’t wait while Case was out of town, or out of the country. Things that Case trusted Logan to screen for him. Personal matters, mostly. One matter, especially.

  And this letter dealt with that one, touchy matter: Case’s father, Seamus Malloy, imprisoned for murder for the past fifteen long years.

  The letter came from a prison in Ohio. It had been written by the prison physician at the request of Case’s father.

  Case looked at Logan, silently asking what kind of news was contained in the letter he was holding in his hand. How bad was it going to be?

  “I read it already,” Logan said. “Probably while you were catching a puddle jumper on your way from Moscow to Shanghai,” Logan explained. “I was afraid it might be a problem that couldn’t wait, but, as it turned out, they’d already taken care of the problem there at the prison. At least, as much as they could.” Logan’s voice trailed off and he seemed at a loss for words.

  C
ase frowned. What the hell did that mean?

  “Your old man’s all right, for the moment, anyway,” Logan reassured him seriously. “But…well, read it for yourself. You’ll see.” Logan sighed. “I didn’t have a chance to talk to you until this morning, and I thought it would be easier for you to hear about this once you were back here in Chicago. There wasn’t anything you could do while you were out of the country.”

  Logan rose from his chair and paced across the room. The thick carpeting absorbed the sounds of his expensive leather shoes, making his passing soundless. He stopped in front of the huge window overlooking Lake Michigan and stoically stared out across its windswept blue surface.

  Case quickly scanned the letter, wondering what could have happened.

  Then he read it again. Slowly. Incredulously.

  Case swore softly and stared blindly into space.

  “He’s not got long to live. And they’re letting him out of prison early with credit for good behavior and in light of his deteriorating health.” Case’s voice sounded hollow to his own ears. He felt hollow. And powerless. And angry. Always angry, where his father was concerned.

  Logan turned around and watched Case carefully.

  “I’m sorry, Case,” he said quietly. “If there’s anything I can do—doctors… second opinions…”

  “Yeah. Thanks.” Case sat down hard on the arm of the plush chair facing Logan’s aircraft carrier of a desk. He’d always known this would happen someday, but the reality of it was still a shock.

  “He obviously doesn’t want to come here to live the last of his life,” Case noted in a voice devoid of feeling. He didn’t know what he felt. Didn’t really want to feel anything, if he could avoid it. He shouldn’t be surprised that his old man hadn’t wanted to see him, would rather die in a shelter with strangers than come to his son in his final days. Not that Case had ever encouraged him to think he’d welcome that.