Read an Excerpt

One
 
 
“Hold it right there, friend.”
 
An intense circle of light suddenly flooded the path. The elderly man shuffling along stopped and hunched over his cane. Silence seemed to envelop the park. Only the sound of distant laughter and traffic penetrated the hush.
 
“Do exactly as I tell you.”
 
The intruder didn’t need a speaker horn to magnify the threat in his voice.
 
“Stay cool, Fred,” Toni Gresham whispered from her perch on the limb of a massive oak tree. “Don’t move, we got him.” She held her breath, gripping her whistle in one hand.
 
Fred swayed unsteadily, playing out his role, just as they’d done on the other nights. Now all she had to do was pretend to be the law, blow her whistle, and frighten the mugger away.
 
But this man didn’t look like the other muggers they’d scared off. This man was big and mean, and as he stood in the half-light she could see that he had a gun. Toni didn’t think a mere whistle was going to be enough. Maybe she could distract him while Fred went for help.
 
Maybe whales bought shoes and took up tap dancing.
 
At the edge of the trees Adam Ware fanned his flashlight slowly up and down the path. Several minutes ago he’d spotted the old man who had veered off onto the seldom-used path. At first Adam was simply going to warn him that there were muggers in the park. When the old man’s stance changed from merely old to crippled, Adam wondered if he was actually inviting someone to follow him. On closer examination, Adam decided the man wasn’t old, and he wasn’t some bum looking for a place to sleep.
 
Following him through the woods along the path, Adam had realized the man was like a swamp hen, trying to lure a predator away from the nest, or to the nest. He’d found his mugger, or one half of the mugging team. Where was his fellow conspirator?
 
Up in the tree, Toni waited, checking out the enemy. Like a commando on a night mission, the bad guy was dressed in camouflage black and green, and combat boots. An olive-green sweatband encircled his forehead, holding back his thick, dark hair. Balancing his tall, muscular frame lithely on the balls of his feet, he stood like a jungle animal ready to spring.
 
“All right, now,” the stranger directed calmly. “Throw down your weapon and step forward—very slowly.” He casually laid his hand on the gun sheathed in a leather holster.
 
In answer to his command the bald man dropped his cane and ambled toward Adam, smiling hugely.
 
“Yo, dude, I got no sweat. My money’s yours, no regret.” He slapped his thighs rhythmically and held up his hands in a gesture of resignation. “I say, hang loose. You’ve cooked my goose. Just take my funds and I’ll vamoose. You dig, man?”
 
“Well, well, if it isn’t Dead Fred. Cut the rap, Fred, and spread ’em! You’re under arrest. When did you start stalking the park?”
 
Toni’s heart plunged to the tips of her scuffed Reeboks. They’d made a mistake. The man confronting Fred was no mugger. This stranger was the law, and from the looks of him, he meant business.
 
“Yo!” Fred exclaimed. “Captain Adam. No attack. The moon is bright. The night is right. Let Dead Fred go and he’s out of sight.”
 
Let Fred go? Toni thought. The man below wasn’t about to do that. She’d better move fast before Dead Fred dropped the jive talk and did something dumb like rush the man with the gun. There wasn’t a doubt in her mind that he’d do just that to keep her from being caught. She’d gotten Fred into this and she’d have to get him out.
 
Toni waited as the intruder walked toward Fred, thankfully stopping beyond her tree, so that his back was to her. Quietly, she crept along the massive limb to the trunk, where they’d secured the rope she’d used to climb up the tree. The braided hemp was no jungle vine, and she was no Johnny Weissmuller, but this was war. She wound the rope around her waist, held on for dear life, and pushed off into the darkness with reckless abandon.
 
“Aaaa—haaa—eee—aaahh!”
 
Her bloodcurdling Tarzan yell split the night like the cry of a banshee as she became a human cannonball and sailed through the sky. The startled stranger whirled around, and her feet hit him in the chest with a resounding thud. His flashlight sailed into the trees behind them, and the gun spurted across the path and into the darkness. By the time she skidded to a stop, she’d pinned the gun-toting man to the ground, slamming his head against a tree trunk on the way down.
 
“Run, Fred. I’ve got him!”
 
Adam gasped for breath and shook his head, trying to fight off the effects of the crash. A woman! The kamikaze pilot who’d kayoed him from the heavens was a woman, a petite and—from the feel of her as she struggled to get a grip on him—generously equipped female. She smelled like honeysuckle. No, he was spacey from hitting his head. The woods smelled like honeysuckle. The woman smelled like lumber and pine tar. And she lay pressed against him.
 
“Freeze!” she ordered, lifting her weight onto her arms so that she could get a good look at him. “Don’t move a muscle!”
 
Under normal conditions Adam knew he would already have thrown her off and had her pinned in a death grip. He must still be a little stunned. And when she lifted her head, allowing the light from the streetlamp along the path to illuminate her face, he knew he was in trouble.
 
Noting the man’s dazed expression, Toni temporarily forgot about protecting Fred, transferring her concern to the man beneath her.
 
“Are you hurt?” she asked worriedly.
 
Was he hurt? Flat on his back in a wooded area not three miles from the Atlanta Police Department, Adam “Ironman” Ware, tough guy, ex-receiver for the New Orleans Saints, was being held captive by the most angelic creature who’d ever jumped on his body. Hurt? No. Astounded? Yes. He studied her sternly.
 
There was a leaf caught in the cap of soft blond hair that crowned her heart-shaped face. Incredibly big blue-green eyes flashed with the kind of vitality that a photographer searching for a lively model would kill for. In the recesses of his trained memory, a fleeting recognition hovered. He’d seen this woman before, not on the streets or in the mug books. He couldn’t bring a name to mind, but he knew this arrest was going bad.
 
“Hey!” Toni yelled. “Fudge! Gosh! ‘Hey, diddle diddle. The cat and the fiddle.’ Answer me, turkey. Are you okay?”
 
Adam sighed, staring up at his attacker in resigned fascination. Even in the moonlight he could see genuine concern in the deepening blue of her eyes and the wrinkle in her brow.
 
“I don’t know,” he said ruefully. “I seem to be hallucinating. I think I’m being molested by an angel who’s reciting nursery rhymes. Is she real?” He shifted his body in a tentative, examining move. “Nah! It must be a lovely dream.”
 
“I’m real. And I’m not reciting nursery rhymes for you. I substitute nursery rhymes for curse words. I’m trying to quit. I asked if you’re all right.” she repeated crisply.
 
Even though the man beneath her might have hit his head and might not know what he was doing, Toni couldn’t afford to take any chances. He was too big and too strong. Fred and the others were her responsibility. They had to come first. Once she was certain they were safe, she’d deal with any injury she may have caused the stranger.
 
“I don’t know,” he said. “Do I feel all right to you?”
 
He was teasing her. In a swift move that she knew surprised him, she caught his wrists and twisted them above his head. She might be small, but she was trained in self-defense.
 
Big mistake, Toni, she thought instantly. The move mashed her breasts against his collarbone. Her mouth was in kissing distance of a man who looked like the answer to every woman’s most erotic fantasy. With dark, smoldering good looks, the stranger could have been Mel Gibson’s brother. Intense black eyes seemed to emanate liquid heat. His full lips parted in an invitation to be kissed.
 
“Don’t move a muscle,” she said desperately.
 
“Believe me, Jungle Girl, I wouldn’t move a muscle if I could help it. Unfortunately …” His voice trailed off and he crooked one eyebrow. Both of them felt at least one of his more obvious muscles stubbornly refusing to obey her order.
 
Toni thought quickly, shifted her knee along the inside of his thigh to the spot where she judged she could do the most damage, and lifted her own questioning eyebrow. The “hickory, dickory, doc” was only half under her breath. “I think you ought to know that I can protect myself. Want a demonstration?”
 
“Okay, okay. I surrender.” He bit back a smile of admiration that he suspected bordered on some crazy kind of infatuation. She was brave, this renegade, brave and smart. And she’d thrown him totally off balance. He never teased. He never allowed his personal feelings to color his responses. Or at least he never had before.