Love Under Fire

They had to get out of the burning house or a lack of oxygen would suffocate them.

Two kicks and the barrier fell outward. Rowan turned to Jo and swung her into his arms. With her clasped against his chest, he ducked his head and stepped sideways through the gap and into the sunlight.

God, life was great!

He made it to the lawn. With his lungs heaving, he halted and watched the fire swallow up the room they’d fled from with less than a second to spare.

Rowan threw back his head as relief ripped a huge bellow of glad-to-be-alive laughter from his throat. Then he turned his attention to Jo.

Perspiration beaded her forehead, and smoky trails of tears painted her cheeks. She’d never looked more beautiful. She was alive. They were alive.

“Rowan…” Her lips seemed to tremble on his name. Her beautiful mouth filled his vision. His head dipped to take her lips with his own. Just one kiss. A hero’s kiss. He was entitled, and this time he would claim it.

Love Under Fire

Frances Housden

FRANCES HOUSDEN

has always been a voracious reader, but she never thought of being a writer until a teacher gave her the encouragement she needed to put pen to paper. As a result, Frances was a finalist for the 1998 Clendon Award and won the award in 1999, which led to the sale of her first book for Silhouette, The Man for Maggie. Frances also teaches a continuing education course in romance writing at the University of Auckland.

Frances’s marriage to a Navy man took her from her birthplace in Scotland to New Zealand. Now he’s a land-lubber and most of the traveling they do is together. They live on a ten-acre bush block in the heart of Auckland’s Wine District. She has two large sons, two tiny grandsons and a wheaten terrier named Siobhan. Thanks to one teacher’s dedication, Frances now gets to write about the kinds of men a woman would travel to the ends of the earth for.

This one is for family. My darling husband, Keith, for all his encouragement, my sister-in-law, Susan Church, for her courage to read my first draft, and in memory of my mother-in-law, Yvonne, who introduced me to the delights of reading romance. Also, my thanks to Graham Pelham for teaching this perennially bad sailor to drive a boat without ever having to leave solid ground.

Contents

Prologue

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

Epilogue

Prologue

Life as Jo Jellic knew it had become increasingly filled with little quirks. Okay, so she was being facetious, yet less than an hour and a half ago, she’d anticipated spending the evening in the local pub with her colleagues. After letting out a collective sigh, they’d have let off a little steam, celebrating the successful conclusion of a case which had tied them up 24/7 for four months.

Instead, she was up to her elbows in dirt, listening to an ultimatum—“I’ll give you five minutes to back off or I’ll shoot the girl”—with the whaump, whaump, whaump of the helicopter they’d arrived in still hanging in the air.

Every breath was filled with dust, its bitter tang coating her tongue, no matter how hard she swallowed.

Her meager cover was a scrubby pittosporum bush and twenty yards away, on the other side, Maggie, the best friend she’d ever had, was being held hostage.

Jo squinted, eyes straining to cut through the darkness. “Where the hell is Max?” She shred the words between teeth clamped as tight as her jaw. No need for anyone but her to know her boss had gone walkabout. Only a minute ago, Detective Sergeant Max Strachan had been positioned not less than five yards away. His disappearance wasn’t part of the plan, though understanding his desperation, she couldn’t give him away. Just this afternoon, Max had asked Maggie to marry him.

This was the man she’d actually imagined herself in love with for years, but naturally it had been one-sided. Max didn’t find her all that lovable and who could blame him? She was a product of the job she did, made by the career she loved. A person couldn’t work the homicide cases she had and remain the same naive girl she’d been when she joined the force.

It was as if she’d locked all her finer feelings inside and thrown away the key. The truth about love had struck her that afternoon when she’d watched Max and Maggie together. If she ever found a man who could bring out her softer side, she’d know the love was real.

What a time to start bleating, Jellic. She had more immediate problems, like what could she do about Max?

Senior Sergeant Rowan McQuaid on her other side was in no doubt of her feelings for Max. Hell, they’d been making book on it at Auckland Central, betting on the outcome, but their money hadn’t been on her. Soon they’d be able to collect. She’d a notion if she started fussing over Max, Rowan would think she’d given in to her own brand of paranoia.

Jo huffed out air to release her tension. It didn’t work. Her heartbeat raced on a full head of steam, her grip tightening on the 9mm Glock held against her cheek. Metal that had once been cool to the touch now burned in her hand.

She stared into the growing darkness on her left. This shouldn’t be happening now, not in the middle of a hostage drama. Max was in charge. He’d no right to leave. They’d departed Auckland on what seemed a whim, unprepared for an armed siege.

Sure, the Armed Offenders Squad were on their way, but for now, they had to make do with two detectives, including herself, a senior sergeant and the helicopter jockey who had ferried them to the vineyard. Add to that four local cops, country cops, nervous as hell and excited to boot, who’d probably be about as much use as her Glock when it came to hitting a target in the gloomy light.

“Ooh.” Darned if there wasn’t a bug crawling up her arm on the inside of her sleeve. She shuddered. Man, she hated bugs. She hated dirt, too, yet her fingernails had clawed grooves in the ground. Pushing up on the ball of her palm, she paid for her view with the fetid stench of wormy earth on a defrost cycle.

Give her the city any day. She breathed easier with asphalt underfoot and streetlights overhead. This country stuff was a whole other world.

She pushed up higher. Well, the view was better, but Max wasn’t part of it. Drat the man. She hoped he wasn’t doing something stupid.

Glancing over her shoulder she watched Rowan. At least he was still in position, though facing toward the youngest of the cops they’d brought in to help. Knowing Rowan, he’d be doing his level best to calm the kid’s nerves. Something about his size was reassuring; the sergeant had muscles to die for, and didn’t have a nervous bone in his body. Always in control, that was Rowan.

Turning back, she caught a glimpse of movement, a glimpse of black hair slashed with silver darting through the trees. Max.

Anger and fear clutched at her chest, followed by guilt. She might have missed him by letting her attention wander. The urge to haul Max back screamed up her arm. As if he gave a snap of the fingers for her wants. Maggie, the woman Max loved, was inside the house. Nothing, absolutely nothing, she or anyone else said was going stop him acting the fool for love.

“Is Max all right?” Rowan whispered as a movement at the window caught her eye. A glimmer of light slid down the dull-gray barrel of the rifle following Max’s trail like a heat-seeking missile.

Everything she’d ever been taught about safety sloughed right off. Distract the gunman or Max’s as good as dead. “He’s gone!” she shouted to warn Rowan as she leaped to her feet. The rifle in the window swung, taking a bead on her position. She couldn’t move as fast.

“Damn and blast!” yelled Rowan.

A thud of feet and snap of twigs raced time, raced the swing of the barrel. No time to yell, “Stay down!” Although time appeared to stop, she didn’t have any. Then his hand gripped her shoulder.

An inane thought that this was the first time he’d ever laid hands on her, struck at the same moment a shot cracked and the air beside them opened in a rush.

Rowan lunged, his legs straddling hers. His large body barreling into hers dragged her down. She tasted dirt. The scent of dead leaves, grave-cold earth and the coppery tang of blood filled every breath.

Blood? Who was bleeding?

Though Rowan’s weight crushed her, she felt no pain.

As the truth hit, she wanted to scream, “Noooooo!” And she did. “No, no, no,” she repeated the word, repeated the prayer.

She squeezed out from under his lax body and struggled to her knees as if daring the gunman to try again. Blood and some other stuff she didn’t want to put a name to covered her shoes. “God, don’t let him be dead.” Groaning, she rolled him over.

There was no need to feel for his carotid pulse. Proof of life pulsed in the fountain of blood gushing from a hole the size of a fist in his thigh. “You fool, McQuaid. What you want to go and do that for?” She dragged the sleeves of her jacket down her arms and flung it aside.

“I don’t want you to die for me.” There were no other sounds in the world except her beating heart and Velcro ripping as she pulled at the straps of her Kevlar vest. Peeling the vest off, she started in on her shirt buttons. “I don’t need a stand-in. I’m quite capable of dying by myself.”

“Is Sergeant McQuaid all right?”

She’d forgotten that anyone but Rowan and her existed. Her shirt was off, and the kid Rowan had helped was staring at her underwear. “No, he’s not all right. We need an ambulance.”

“I already called the paramedics.”

He hunkered down at Rowan’s head and continued to stare. She knew he was waiting for orders, but her mind raced faster than her lips could frame the words. And no wonder. She was kneeling in the dirt, her hands fighting to staunch the flow of blood with her second-best shirt, while all she wanted to do was howl, to let her feminine side have its way and cry her damn eyes out. But there was no time. She didn’t know where Max had gone but Rowan was down and that made her in charge.

“Press down on this, kid. Let’s hope the ambulance doesn’t take too long,” she told him and shrugged back into her vest, then jacket while he complied. She nudged his hand aside, replacing it with hers. “Now give me your shirt and your belt,” she ordered, digging her other fist into Rowan’s groin in search of the pressure point.

Too busy now for tears, she’d save them for another day, praying that it wouldn’t be at his funeral.

Chapter 1

A little over two years later

“Babe alert.”

The shout jarred Jo out of a daydream. Her head jerked around in time to see the fierce concentration on Ginny’s face as a piercing, two-note twist of air whistled through the gap in her front teeth. Then awe threaded a breathless gasp. “Cooool.”

Good grief, had she ever been so young?

Thank heavens the air-conditioning god insisted on tightly closed windows; she’d hate anyone to think the wolf whistle came from her.

Jo had been quite content to layer her own thoughts over her passenger’s prattle—prisoner was too harsh a word. Ginny sure could talk, and had started the moment she entered the car taking her to the station house. The constant stream of words laced with a mixture of nerves and relief, had settled into a comfortable drone in her ears when Ginny’s shout brought her out of her reverie.

By rights, it should have been the owner of the Two Dollar Shop on the receiving end of all her youthful fervor. The suggestion to let Ginny off with a warning for shoplifting had come from him. Yet from the moment Jo had explained the conditions she’d been promoted to saint…well, let’s say knighthood.

It was kind of nice, really.

Half an hour later she was redundant. Ginny had found someone new to worship. Replaced by a babe no less.

“Where? I can’t see him.” She might be twice Ginny’s age, and then some, but she wasn’t immune to an attractive male, so she let her gaze follow the direction of Ginny’s pointing finger. No use. The glare of late-October spring sunshine against the windshield blinded her. All she got for her effort was the impression of an elongated black shadow sliding across the white weatherboards cladding the Nicks Landing station house.

Wasn’t that always the way? One bright spot in a mediocre day, and she’d missed it. Win some, lose some, usually the latter.

A designated parking space was one of the perks of being a detective, and Jo automatically swung into hers.

“Look out!”

Heart pumping, Jo slammed the brake pedal to the floor, skinning a week’s worth of rubber off the tires in the process.

“Darn,” she spat, ever mindful of her fourteen-year-old passenger, the ineffectual curse bearing no resemblance to her true feelings. “I don’t believe this.”

She blinked and shook her head but the Jaguar S-type, squatting between the white lines of her parking space, was still there. Two vacant spaces, yet again, someone stole hers. Some people simply failed to comprehend the meaning of the word reserved.

Jo spun her car back into the road. Chances were she’d find a spot in the small, crowded visitor’s parking lot on the far side of the station house.

Two years she’d worked out of this station house, and still was no wiser why, out of the three spaces assigned to detectives, no one ever pinched the other two?

“Now that’s what I call a car,” said Ginny.

About to agree, she caught the tail end of Ginny’s expression. So her car wasn’t top of the line. She liked it. Tongue in cheek, Jo responded, “Pretty good huh? Maybe they’ll deliver mine next week.” Ginny’s jaw dropped. Jo’s smile said, “tit for tat.”

“So…did you recognize the babe, Ginny?”

The girl’s smile was dreamy. “I wish.”

“What do you think, should I give him a ticket?” Jo joked.

“Noooo!” Ginny squealed. “The guy wouldn’t know any better. He’s not from Nicks Landing. Him I would have remembered.”

Same goes. Of course it was that Jag, Jo had in mind.

Who was she kidding? Since arriving in Nicks Landing, there had been a dearth of any male who could draw a wolf whistle from her lips, or she suspected, even Ginny’s.

She wasn’t sure why, but she felt drawn to the girl. Perhaps she found an echo of her own patchy youth in Ginny’s overbright chatter.

Rounding the side of the station house, her car began to whine. Envious of the leashed power nestling under the Jag’s hood, no doubt. Well, her mind had been on other matters, too. Male matters. Changing down a notch fixed her car’s complaint, but didn’t stop her wondering what kind of man it took to handle such lethal-looking power.

Slotting her car into the only available space, she imagined her palms wrapped round the walnut steering wheel of the Jag, and took vicarious pleasure in imagining the money-flavored newness of the leather. She resisted an envious sigh and instead, unfolded her six-foot length from the driver’s seat.

Once, she’d been secure in the knowledge of her own personal worth, her own capabilities. Not anymore. Living in Nicks Landing had done a number on her ego. A few more friends might have sweetened her stay, made her feel less of an outsider. Maybe…

With Ginny skipping to keep up with her longer stride, Jo glanced at the white station house. Two years on and she still hadn’t gotten over her first impression. That down-home, country look didn’t quite gel with what went on inside. Friday and Saturday nights were the worst. That’s when the drunks came out to play. The local innkeeper couldn’t seem to tell when they’d had enough. Oh, he’d excuses aplenty. Personally, Jo figured it had more to do with getting back at them for still being cops while he’d been made redundant, though no one else saw it that way. Hell, maybe her prejudice was showing.

Since it was closer, she shepherded Ginny to the back entrance.

“Coming through.”

The warning left barely enough time to pull Ginny to the side of the ramp as Seth McAllister, the cop who manned the reception, ran past. “Where’s the fire?” she called to his back view.

“Personal emergency.”

Jo could have said, “Again?” but kept her own counsel. Seemed Seth had one of those emergencies at least once a month. The fact that he and his wife were desperately trying to conceive a child couldn’t have anything to do with it. And pigs could fly!

The air in the station house rang blue with curses. Someone was putting the boot into one of the metal cell doors. The lockup was pretty rowdy considering it was only two in the afternoon. She noticed Ginny wince and hardened her heart against an urge to erase the fear she could see in her young eyes. Fist clenched close to her thigh, Jo’s emotions warred between duty and empathy. There was a lesson for Ginny to learn here. A lesson that would do the girl more good than harm. Jo swallowed the tightness clogging her throat as she guided the teenager to a bench on the wall. Jo remembered the first time she’d visited the cells. Yeah, she knew what it felt like.

“Sit.” She squeezed out the command, aware of how brusque she sounded. And when Ginny bobbed up again, hovering nervously a few inches above the seat, added, “Stay.” Ginny’s blue eyes paled against the whites as they widened. Blood drained from her face and promoted her carrot-colored frizz from unusual to startling.

The color of that hair was one reason Jo had known the kid couldn’t seriously have intended to steal. The idea of pink barrettes holding back such riotous brilliance put the mind on hold. Though she allowed there was something about pink that tempted with its sheer femininity. That was something else she’d remembered since picking up the girl.

Gently, she pressed Ginny down to the bench. “You’re okay here. No one will hurt you.” Jo nodded toward the desk. “See the sergeant over there? He’ll look out for you.”

As always, Jo’s first glimpse of Senior Sergeant Harry Jackson reminded her of her father. Maybe it was the silver buttons sparkling against the navy uniform, or an echo in the mannerisms. After all this time, the subject was still up for discussion.

Her first memories of her father had to be of those buttons. She’d sit on his knee, feel the scratchy wool under her skinny little legs, and play with the shiny baubles while he told her about the events of his day. Of course he’d always been the knight in shining armor, rescuing fair maidens, locking the bad guys up.

Even after he’d made detective, she’d waited for his stories, sometimes falling asleep before he got home. Two weeks into the job she’d realized he’d always given her the abridged edition.

The day he died had felt like they’d amputated her soul.

Four sons and one daughter he’d had, and out of them all, she was the only one following in his footsteps. Maybe being the youngest, she’d been the only one not taken in with their lies about him.

Jo caught her bottom lip in her teeth, stifling a grin at the way Harry ignored the clamor around him. He looked up as she approached, putting down his pen.

“Busy day, Sergeant?”

“Just a couple of local bad guys Bull and Jake caught growing cannabis in a house they’d rented. A right pair of smart-asses! They lined the walls with foil and grew the weed under lights.”

Jo’s hearing pricked up at the mention of drugs. Features bland, she prevented her longings from showing. Those kinds of cases seldom came her way now, and though her homicide training might have given her an edge in that area, no one had been murdered in Nicks County since the day she’d arrived.

Her immediate superiors seemed to be under the impression shoplifting and breaking-and-entering were more her speed. It wasn’t as if she’d never protested. She had, long and loud. Which was one reason why the boys had handed over the one case they hadn’t known she wanted. The one they’d decided would never be solved. An assault on Rocky Skelton, local innkeeper, purportedly by satanists who’d torched his house with him inside.

It was the kind of tale that made her eyes roll. Satanists in Nicks Landing…it sounded like a play on words, but when she’d mentioned “Old Nicks Landing,” no one had laughed.

She’d had her eyes on Skelton from the moment she’d hit town. Finding her father’s ex-partner running a bar in Nicks Landing had been like striking gold. And landing the case had been finding the mother lode, as if some power was at work, nudging her on, helping her to resolve the past. So what if her means of getting to Nicks Landing had come through a sideways demotion? They’d blamed her for what happened to Rowan. But in comparison, none of that mattered now. She’d been in the right place at the right time. Her father had been innocent and this might be her chance to prove it.

Harry’s expression grew paternal, a ridiculous state of affairs as barely eight years separated them. “Nothing to worry your head about, little lady,” he said in reference to the drug bust.

Maybe it was just Harry’s protective instincts, and if so the disease was endemic. Where once she’d found it amusing, slightly endearing, now she felt smothered by living in male-chauvinist territory. If anyone in Nicks County had ever heard of equal rights for women, they’d quickly forgotten it.

Nicks Landing was about two hundred and fifty miles from Auckland where she’d worked before, and about fifty years backward in time. Located on New Zealand’s East Coast, it was the sort of place needing a detour—and a damn good reason—to visit. It certainly wasn’t on anyone’s way to anywhere else.

The reasons she’d been transferred there were solid, nothing to be proud of, and she’d taken her licks, no sense in making excuses. She hadn’t expected to be the only woman working out of the station house, or that she’d still be the only one today.

“Who have we got here?” Harry asked, nodding toward Ginny.

Jo’s mind shifted gear and she told Harry. “Ginny Wilks. The owner of the Two Dollar Shop caught her slipping some plastic barrettes into her pocket. He didn’t want to press charges, though, just give her a warning. Can you call this number and get her mother to come pick her up? She should be all right sitting here with you. I’ll be upstairs if you need me. Call me when her mother arrives.”

Jo had just turned away when she remembered. “Someone stole my space again.”

“I keep telling you, take one of the other guys’.”

Shaking her head, she didn’t pursue it. Harry didn’t realize she couldn’t do the very thing she was complaining of to someone else. She couldn’t be that hypocritical, or dishonest. Twelve years’ service and she still felt the need to mind her p’s and q’s.

“I just wondered who owned the S-type Jag.”

Harry’s smile deepened, becoming more knowing than friendly. “Go on upstairs and find out for yourself. He’s in your office.”

The words your office were a misnomer. Harry knew it and so did she. Jo shared with two other detectives, including Detective Senior Sergeant Bull Cowan. Since his section took up half the space, the likelihood of the car’s owner actually waiting to see her, in her office, wasn’t something she contemplated.

Logic told her the driver and the stranger Ginny had admired earlier were one and the same. It could prove interesting to discover if he lived up to his car’s image, and Ginny’s high approbation.

In less than a minute she would know.

The stairs disappeared behind her two at a time. She stopped her momentum by grasping the door handle, her palm sweating lightly in anticipation of the babe being inside. She heard a rumble of male voices through the gaps where the door didn’t fit the frame, too indistinct to decipher, and behind the gold-leaf lettering and frosted glass panel, their images blurred grotesquely.