Coming up empty-handed after hours spent searching for her brother who’d commandeered her car didn’t make Victoria Dewitt McCall feel like an ace private investigator. 

    Instead, she felt like a volcano waiting to blow.

    Now, minutes after a fellow P.I. dropped her off, Tory stalked upstairs to her bedroom.  She tossed her purse on the chair near the floor-to-ceiling window, stripped off her black leather jacket, then shoved back one side of the drapes.  She stared out the frosted pane, her thoughts as dark as the January night.

    The eighteen-year-old brother she’d raised had clearly been in the popcorn line when common sense got handed out.  Danny was out on bail, his license suspended over unpaid parking tickets.  If he got stopped by a cop while driving, he’d be back in a cell.

    And her car would wind up in the police impound lot.

    Tory huffed out a breath, leaving a small foggy circle against the window.  In truth, it wasn’t just Danny’s latest stunt that had her teeth grinding.

    Life sucked.  Her life, specifically. 

    She hadn’t turned on the bedroom light, so when she glanced across her shoulder, the bed, bureau and chest of drawers crouched like shadowy forms in the weak light spilling from the hallway.  The heavy, dark-wood furniture wasn’t to her liking, but little in the house was.  It wasn’t her house, after all. 

    It belonged to her husband.

    Estranged husband, Tory corrected.  Her own common sense had taken leave one evening nearly a year ago.  That’s when Lt. Bran McCall gave Danny a break and hauled him to her doorstep instead of booking him into juvie hall for illegal gambling.  With a hand clenched on Danny’s upper arm, Bran had sent her a slow, reckless grin which she’d instantly decided was the sexiest thing she’d ever seen.  Two nights later, she and the cop were in bed.

    Even now, those first heady weeks she’d spent with the rugged widower were a blur of searing lust  and hot sex.  As was the weekend she and Bran both lost their minds and eloped. 

    Huge mistake.  Huge.  No way could a union based primarily on physical attraction and set-your-hair-on-fire sex survive long.  Not when the parties involved were both independent, take-charge and used to running the show.  Bran’s walking out three months ago proved that he, too, believed they’d made one hell of a mistake. 

    A sudden shift in the shadows at the far side of the front lawn snapped Tory’s senses to alert mode.  Narrowing her eyes, she leaned closer to the window.  With the quarter moon ghosting through fat gray clouds, it was possible the movement had been nothing more than wind rustling the thick copse of evergreens.

    Seconds later the shadow oozed fully out of the trees.  An alarm shrilled in her head.

    In full P.I. mode now, she assessed the figure clad entirely in black, including the baseball cap pulled down low.  A man, she determined, watching him move.  Tall, judging by the way he dwarfed the spiky hydrangea bush he crept past. 

    Adrenaline jolting her system, Tory jerked on her leather jacket while watching the man skulk toward the east side of the house.  Her pride might have taken a hit with Danny eluding her, but she could still deliver any number of well-placed kicks that would take down some sneaky prowler. 

    And if her varied self-defense skills didn’t do the trick, she had backup.  She stabbed a hand in her purse, pulled out her trusty Sig-Sauer P226.

    Leaving the lights off, she pounded downstairs.  It took only seconds to cut through the dark living room and cross the expansive kitchen.  At the back door her finger flipped off the Sig’s safety, then floated to the trigger.  Twisting open the deadbolt, she eased outside.  A slap of freezing air hit her.

    Her mind had already settled on a plan.  She wanted the advantage of surprise, so she would approach the man from behind.

    The Sig hidden against her thigh, she veered west, moving soundlessly in the dark across the winter-dry grass.

* * *

    Bolting around the house into the back yard, Bran McCall had no presentiment, no intuition, no flash of cop instinct warning him of another presence.  He never even sensed the black-clad figure until he plowed over it, toppling it backward as he lost his footing and stumbled forward.

    Bran landed with a jarring smack on top of the figure.  In the glow of a neighbor’s backyard light he caught a glint as something metallic flew through the air.  Gun.

    There was no way he could draw his own weapon, not with whoever was beneath him flailing and twisting violently while trying to knee him in the groin.  Fists punched the sides of his head; the curses spewing against his parka were so muffled he wasn’t sure if they came from a male, female or a plague of angry wasps.

   Even as he clamped a hand around one thrashing wrist then another, a scent as subtle and alluring as moonlight hit him, Tory’s scent, and he knew his wife was the kicking, spitting demon trapped beneath him.

    “Tory, it’s me.”

    When he felt her hesitate, he braced his forearms on either side of her shoulders.  He eased his chest off hers.  The next instant she pried one booted foot out from beneath his leg and delivered a stunning kick to the side of his shin that had stars springing into his head.

    “Get off me, you jerk!”

    Expelling an explicit curse, he locked his leg back over hers.  “Dammit, woman, it’s me.”

    “I heard you the first time,” she hissed.

    As if accepting she was outweighed and out-muscled, she stopped squirming.  Rays from the far-off light slanted across her face, picking up the flashing anger in her green eyes as she glared up at him.

    “I looked out the window and saw some prowler skulking in the dark.  I thought you were on the other side of the house.”

    “I doubled back.  Decided to look through the garage window for your car.”

    “You ought to know better than to prowl around at night.  I came out, prepared to take you down.”  She jerked her chin in the direction the Sig had flown when she crashed to the ground.  “Shoot you, if I had to.” 

    Bran set his jaw.  Her reaction was typical Tory--grab a situation by the throat and deal with it.  In contrast, his first wife would have stayed safely indoors, phoned the police and reported the prowler.  But Patience was long-dead and at this instant the woman squirming beneath him was the primary concern of both his mind and his body.

    His hands tightened on her wrists.  “When you saw me, you should have called the cops.”

    “No self-respecting private investigator needs a cop’s help to take down a measly prowler.”

    He hooked a brow.  “This coming from the P.I. presently smashed beneath said measly prowler.”

    Her eyes narrowed.  “What do you want, Bran?”

    “If you’d have returned my calls you wouldn’t have to ask.”

    He stared down at her for the first time in three months. Her long blond hair looked like polished gold as it flared across the dry grass.  He didn’t have to wonder how it would feel to stroke that soft cheek or settle his mouth on those lush lips.  Despite his parka’s thickness, he was aware of the long, economical lines of her body.  Her warm, supple body.  The sparks they’d forever generated in bed had made for register-on-the-Richter-Scale sex.  Problem was, they always had to come up for air and that was when their clashing personalities and opposing needs sent everything to hell.

    Heat swarming into his blood had him clenching his teeth.  Dammit, he hadn’t come here to sate his physical needs.  Not when an escaped killer had threatened revenge against him and three other cops. 

From the book: SHATTERED VOWS

By: Maggie Price

Imprint and Series: Silhouette Intimate Moments

Publication Date: December 2004

ISBN: 037327405X

Copyright © 2004

By: Margaret Price

® and ™ are trademarks of the publisher.
The edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.