Road To Temptation

Destination: Love

The disappearance of a state politician’s teenage daughter sends missing-persons consultant Elise Carrington into uncharted territory. Especially when the independent PI is forced to partner up with Broderick Cannon, who insists on working the high-profile case his way. As they come to terms with each other, Elise can’t let her intense attraction to the sexy, infuriating former Secret Service agent interfere with their mission.

Joining forces with a beautiful woman on a search and rescue isn’t Broderick’s usual style. But he has his own reasons for signing on, which ups the ante even as he and Elise give in to an overwhelming desire. As they chase down leads across the Midwest, Broderick must confront an unresolved personal tragedy that still haunts him. Will he find the answers he’s looking for? Or will his lonely pursuit of justice cost them a bright future together?

When Elise failed to laugh with him, he sobered up by degrees, looking at her like she was crazy. “You’re serious.”

“Yes, I am. I told you, I take insults very seriously. So, what’s it going to be? Are you in or are you out?”

He looked up from watching her lips move and caught her eyes. “Suppose I was in. What are the stakes?”

“I want the Hummer.”

“That was quick. Would this be the same Hummer that you’ve previously referred to as a rolling monstrosity?”

She dimpled at him, and he had a sudden urge to feast. “It is. Don’t tell me you’re afraid you’ll lose?”

Don’t sweat it, Broderick. She won’t win anyway. “Not at all.” But you will. He scraped the skin beneath his bottom lip with his teeth for a second as he silently weighed his options. She had issued him a dare, so there was really only one option. “Fine. The Hummer. What do I get if I win?”

“That depends. What do you want?”

“You,” he said simply and just as quickly.

Dear Reader,

There’s nothing like a sizzling romance in the frosty wintertime! Add a gorgeous alpha male, a spur-of-the-moment road trip and a blushing heroine to the mix and you’ve really got a recipe for ecstasy. Wouldn’t you agree?

Sparks start flying the moment Elise Carrington’s sleek Jaguar and Broderick Cannon’s snarling Hummer kiss bumpers on the street. This brings the shy former cop turned private investigator and the rugged former navy SEAL turned corporate security specialist face-to-face for a confrontation that can only be described as, well...foreplay. A twist of fate forces them to work together—grudgingly, of course—but since when does fate make mistakes?

After all, what could be better than taking to the open road with a fellow comrade, especially one with a wealth of knowledge to share? Lucky for Elise, Broderick is the generous sort and she’s a willing student...

Safe travels!

Terra

Road to Temptation

Terra Little

www.millsandboon.co.uk

TERRA LITTLE has been reading romance novels for decades and falling in and out of love with the heroes within the book covers for just as long. When she’s not in the classroom teaching English literature, you can most likely find her tucked away somewhere with her laptop, a dog-eared romance novel and romance so heavy on the brain that it somehow manages to weave its way into each and every story that she writes, regardless of the genre.

Terra resides in Missouri, but you can always find her on the web to share feedback, the occasional joke and suggestions for good reading at writeterralittle@yahoo.com.

For Alex.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

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

Extract

Copyright

Chapter 1

“I have a present for you,” a sultry feline voice said, breaking the early-morning silence.

Elise Carrington looked up from her computer screen and frowned at the petite woman heading across the reception area in her direction. Curly sandy-brown hair with copper highlights flew wildly around her heart-shaped face and bounced against her shoulders with every step she took. Her plump lips were shellacked to perfection with a frosty fuchsia-tinted gloss and curved into a smile wide enough to sink the matching dimples in her cheeks. And the naturally arched brows above her deep-set, amber-colored eyes were poised, as if they expected to take flight at any moment.

Elise was immediately suspicious of the woman’s intentions and slightly amused at the same time. Looking at another person and seeing an exact replica of herself still startled her every now and then, even though she’d been doing it for over thirty years and should’ve long since grown used to it. “Only you could manage to look bright and chipper at seven o’clock in the morning,” she drawled, reaching for a mug of steaming coffee on the tabletop. “The rest of us poor schmucks are still cracking our eyelids open.” She sipped the hot liquid gingerly, taking a moment to appreciate the creamy, caramel-flavored blend as she eyed her identical twin over the rim of the mug. She knew without having to be told that the file folder in her sister’s hand didn’t contain good news. The ones that tended to land in either of their laps these days rarely did. “What’s up?”

“We have a runaway on our hands,” Olivia Carrington said. “Well, I guess I should say you have a runaway on your hands.”

“Excuse me?” Elise watched incredulously as Olivia smoothed her silk tunic over her hips, plopped into one of the upholstered chairs across the table from her and crossed her legs. The blouse’s bright fuchsia color matched Olivia’s lip gloss perfectly, reminding Elise that she hadn’t bothered with anything more than leggings, a tunic-style hoodie and a fresh-scrubbed face this morning.

“I’m in the middle of the Donaldson case,” her sister began, “but since you wrapped up your last case a few days ago, I figured that it was okay to accept a new case for you.”

Elise’s frown deepened. “That’s my present? A new case?”

“Yep,” Olivia chirped, dimpling prettily.

“Seriously. I don’t know why I put up with you.” Unconsciously mimicking her sibling’s pose, Elise sat back in her chair and crossed her legs. “It’s not like I don’t have enough paperwork to do before I can finally close the file on my last case. Plus, I was hoping to take a break before I accepted another assignment, maybe sneak off to the Bahamas for a few days with a few of the girls and relax.”

“Okay, first of all, you put up with me because we’re twins. I’m two minutes older than you are, so you have to. Secondly, you don’t have any girls. Plus, I couldn’t have turned this one down if I wanted to and, believe me, I really wanted to. Do you remember Joel Barclay?”

“Sure, I remember Joel.” How could she forget him? He and Olivia had carried on a scorching affair for several months back in high school. Despite the fact that he was twenty at the time, almost twenty-one, and a junior in college, and Olivia was barely seventeen and a high-school senior, what had started out as a carefree summer fling had quickly turned into an intense, nearly year-long relationship. Up to that point, Elise had never known a member of the opposite sex to hold Olivia’s attention for longer than a few weeks at a time, and, as far as she knew, there had only been one or two others who’d managed to accomplish the feat since. It was a toss-up as to which of them—Joel or Elise—was more shocked when Olivia turned down Joel’s marriage proposal and then broke up with him shortly afterward. “How is he?”

“He’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown,” Olivia said, suddenly serious. “His daughter is missing, and we have to find her.”

Surprised for the second time in as many minutes, Elise stared at her sister as she reached across the table for the file folder that Olivia held out to her. Setting her coffee aside, she opened the folder and scanned the 5x7 color photo that was clipped to a thin stack of written notes inside. The teenage girl staring back at her was the spitting image of the Joel she remembered—raven-haired, with classic features and a warm smile. According to the notes in the file, her name was Meagan, she had just turned eighteen a little over a month ago and she’d been missing for nearly twenty-four hours.

“I remember when he got married right after college,” Elise remarked absently as she continued scanning the case notes. “You had the nerve to be upset because you weren’t invited to the wedding, as if you hadn’t just broken the poor guy’s heart ten minutes before he walked down the aisle.”

“It did seem like he got over me rather quickly, now that you mention it.”

Elise’s gaze flickered up to her sister’s briefly and then skated away. No way was she touching that subject. Of the two of them, Olivia, bless her heart, was by far the vainest. As a teenager, Elise had always preferred the company of a good crime-fiction novel and a steaming mug of chamomile tea over that of chattering girls and hormonal boys. But Olivia was the exact opposite. She’d always been smart and had ultimately graduated cum laude from Loyola University, but only after their parents had spent most of their daughters’ adolescent years worrying themselves sick over whether or not Olivia would ever get serious about something other than boys, lip gloss and gossip.

She’d also dated enough for the both of them in high school, which was just fine with Elise, since it had taken most of the pressure of adolescent expectations off her. But Olivia’s tendency to make everything about herself could be a bit much if you didn’t know her well enough to know that her heart was just as big as her head.

“So this is their kid, huh?”

“Their one and only,” Olivia said. “So you can see why I couldn’t say no to the case, but I couldn’t exactly take it on myself, right? It would be...weird.”

“Yes, I can see how it might be.”

It was a high-profile case, one that would definitely get its fifteen minutes worth of fame if the media caught wind of it. After marrying his pregnant rebound girlfriend right out of college, Joel had set his sights on a career in politics and law. He was currently in his first term as a circuit court judge, a seat that he’d just barely won in the last election, thanks to his teenage daughter’s penchant for scandalous public exploits. Add that to the fact that, before he’d become a judge, he was the kind of young brash defense attorney who himself had a tendency to take on the kinds of controversial cases that kept him in the public eye, and the result was a private life that didn’t exactly lend itself to voter sympathy. The last thing he or his wife needed was the kind of publicity that a presumably out-of-control runaway child would attract, especially since his name was now on the short list for appointment to the Illinois Appellate Court. That had to be why he’d bitten the bullet and reached out to Olivia. His was just the kind of case that Carrington Consulting specialized in.

In the three years since Elise and Olivia had grown tired of taking orders from power-hungry men and gone into business for themselves, they’d taken on countless missing persons cases and, at last tally, they were operating at a more than 90 percent success rate. With Elise’s background in law enforcement and Olivia’s forensic experience, if anyone could find Meagan quickly and with a minimum of fuss, they could.

Glancing at her watch, Elise pushed back from the table and got to her feet. She picked up her laptop, coffee mug and, as a last thought, the file. “I hate to run out on you like this, sis, but I have a videoconference later this morning,” she told Olivia. “Can I finish looking over the notes on the case right afterward and let you know what I decide?”

“This afternoon?” Olivia’s eyes widened in alarm as she tracked Elise’s progress out of the room. “Joel was frantic when he called this morning, Elise. I don’t know if putting this off until this afternoon is such a good idea.” Her wispy hair rode the wind as she swiveled in her chair. “He mentioned something about her having behavioral problems. Something could happen to her by then, if it hasn’t already.”

Elise thought about the possibility for a moment. “I won’t be long,” she said before disappearing down the hallway.

“Okay, but if your videoconference isn’t until this afternoon, where are you going now? It’s still morning,” Olivia called after her.

“I have a teleconference in ten minutes, and I can’t miss it. My last case isn’t going to close itself,” Elise called back. “When the phone rings, it’ll probably be for me, so I’ll pick up the extension in the study.”

Hoping that she had escaped having to make a decision on the Barclay case, if only for a little while, Elise closed the study door at her back and took a seat at the conference table across the room. She was almost done setting up her temporary base of operations when Olivia opened the door and stuck her head inside the room. Elise couldn’t say that she was all that surprised.

“I have an idea. Why don’t I have Harriet call Joel and set up a meeting with him for this afternoon?” she said, referring to the gray-haired dynamo who was their administrative assistant. “Just in case,” she added when Elise’s amber gaze rose from the computer screen to meet hers and narrowed in warning.

“You’re not going to let up until I agree to take this case, are you?”

“Why do you ask questions that you already know the answers to?”

“All right,” she said, nodding reluctantly. “All right. Have Harriet schedule an early-evening meeting. I should be done with everything by then, so I’ll go to him instead of having him come here. I need some fresh air, anyway. But I’m telling you, after this case, I’m officially on vacation.”

She looked away from Olivia’s smiling face when the phone rang. Pushing a button to accept the call, she didn’t see the victory fist pump that Olivia executed before the door closed softly in her wake.

* * *

Working from home did have its advantages, Elise mused as she stepped into the shower and quickly soaped herself from head to toe. It certainly made transitioning from one task to the next on her to-do list a lot easier. Ironically enough, that was precisely the argument that Olivia had used three years ago when the question of where they would set up Carrington Consulting’s business offices had come up. Elise was in favor of leasing office space in downtown St. Louis, so they could at least try to keep their private investigations business and their personal lives separate, but Olivia’s arguments to the contrary had eventually worn her down. There was more than enough room in the house for both business and pleasure to coexist, she’d pointed out, and they could save money on overhead expenses. Put that way, Elise could hardly refuse. Olivia was right on both counts, though Elise would cut out her tongue before she’d admit it.

Her parents had built the house five years ago, after her father decided to give up his thriving Clayton law practice and retire early, and, for a while, decorating it had kept both Lance and Yolanda Carrington busy. It was a showplace, something tangible that they could both appreciate and enjoy after years of hard work. It wasn’t until after it was finally completed and each room had been meticulously appointed that her parents had suddenly decided that they didn’t want to live there, after all. Almost thirty years of living in the States was long enough, her father had said. He was homesick for London, where he’d been born and raised. Leaving the house to their daughters, they had updated their passports, packed up their personal belongings and left the country seemingly in the blink of an eye, a decision that hadn’t surprised Olivia at all but that had finally confirmed for Elise the origin of Olivia’s flighty tendencies.

True to form, Olivia hadn’t wasted any time ditching her South County condo and moving in, but Elise hadn’t been quite so eager to let go of her Clayton town house. Her sister had already been living in the house a full six months before she sublet her town house and joined her.

After showering and moisturizing, she paired a cream-colored cashmere sweater dress with a wide chocolate-brown belt and matching suede boots. The steam from the shower had completely wrung the life out of her hair, so she brushed it until it was smooth and caught her wild, curly locks at the crown of her head with a jeweled clip. As a finishing touch, she added mascara and gold-tinted lip gloss before tossing her cell phone and iPad in her red Kate Spade tote and slipping her favorite Chanel sunglasses over her eyes.

Downstairs in the foyer, she grabbed a red vintage leather coat from the coat closet and then swiped her car keys from the entry table on her way out the door. With just about forty-five minutes to spare, she could just barely make it to Joel Barclay’s Waterloo, Illinois, estate on time.

Chapter 2

Half an hour later, Elise’s Jaguar was stuck in rush-hour traffic on Interstate 40, sandwiched between an ancient bright green Beetle that had obscene bumper stickers plastered all over it, and a snarling black Hummer with tinted windows and aggressive tendencies. Every few minutes, the Beetle crept forward a couple of feet, putting her that much closer to the exit she wanted, which, thankfully, was only about a half mile up ahead. Thanks to the pushy Hummer that had been riding her rear bumper nonstop for the last twenty minutes, a half mile seemed more like a million. The thing practically growled every time she hit the brakes and forced it to stop on a dime barely an inch from her bumper, as if her car and her car alone was responsible for the bumper-to-bumper traffic.

Jerk. She eyed the idling bully in her rearview mirror steadily. The windows weren’t just tinted, they were also reflective, making it completely impossible to see who, or, in this case, what was inside, behind the wheel. But she didn’t need to actually see the face of evil to know that it existed, did she? He—and she was convinced that it was a he—was probably one of those corporate types, with a string of vengeful ex-wives, dangerously high blood pressure and out-of-control anger issues. He probably laughed maniacally every time that his rolling bully narrowly avoided tagging her bumper because driving like a maniac and terrorizing everyone else on the road made him feel powerful.

Elise docked her iPod into the dashboard, scrolled through her music and selected her Marsha Ambrosius playlist. Turning up the volume a couple of notches, she sat back in her seat and drummed her fingers on the steering wheel in time to the rhythm. She couldn’t remember the last time that she’d been nervous about anything.

Before Carrington Consulting, she’d been a police officer for two years and then a US marshal for seven, and, by now, there was very little about criminal behavior that surprised her. She’d dealt with bullies every day on the job, and most of them were men who were on the same side of the badge that she’d been on. Compared to that particular brand of chaos, this maniac and his souped-up Hummer were child’s play. Still, his theatrics were starting to get on her nerves, especially since she was in just as much of a hurry to get where she was going as he apparently was.

I’m stuck in traffic, she texted Harriet. Please contact the Barclays and advise them that I’m going to be—

A car horn blared behind her, calling her attention to the fact that the Beetle had moved forward in front of her just about a fraction of an inch. She rolled her eyes at the culprit in her rearview mirror, then slowly caught up to the Beetle, with the Hummer riding her rear bumper the entire time. Its tires squealed when it suddenly stopped behind her and she sighed long and hard.

—a little late, she finished texting. She was this close to her exit. Another fifty yards, give or take, and she could ditch the Hummer from hell for good. Waiting for the moment that she could escape was like watching paint dry.

Done, Harriet texted back a few minutes later.

As soon as Elise was close enough to maneuver her Jaguar into the exit lane, she did, stirring up roadside gravel in her wake as she gratefully left the standing traffic on the interstate and took off down the exit ramp. Resisting the urge to flip the bird to her rearview mirror as she went, she rolled to a stop at the red light at the bottom of the ramp and reached for her cell phone, intending to reactivate the GPS.

She didn’t see the Hummer bearing down on her until it was too late to do anything except stare up at her rearview mirror in disbelief. “What in the world?” She heard tires squealing and then a sharp bump from behind sent her Jaguar hopping forward on the pavement and her cell phone flying out of her hand. Her car shuddered to a stop dangerously close to the Buick in front of it and vibrated with indignation for several seconds afterward.

Oh my God! I’ve just been hit by a stalker! Frantic, Elise threw her car into Park and quickly dived at the passenger-side floorboard in search of her cell phone.

The light changed, and, as if nothing out of the ordinary had just occurred, the line of cars to her left moved forward and merged into traffic, while the Hummer behind her pulled into the tow lane to her right and its driver shut off its engine. It took a second for the gravity of the situation to sink in, but when it did, she joined him in the tow lane, leaving enough space between the two vehicles to make a quick escape possible.

It didn’t occur to her to be afraid. What she was, she suddenly decided, was completely and thoroughly pissed.

* * *

Hidden behind tinted one-way glass, Broderick Cannon saw the woman coming, closing the distance between her sophisticated little gold car and his Hummer with long-legged, angry strides. With every step she took, her leather coat flapped open, giving him an enticing glimpse of nipples hard enough to cut glass underneath her dress and a generous hourglass figure. He sat back in his seat and lazily watched her come, wondering what the Jackie O–style sunglasses covering half of her face were hiding and if she was packing something other than lipstick in the ridiculously large purse dangling from the crook of her arm. She had to be, he decided, pressing a button to disengage the electronic locks and then releasing his seat belt. Either that or she was certifiable.

The pretty ones always are, he thought as his gaze momentarily settled on the rhythmic sway of her hips, then slowly traveled back up to her face. The fact that she could be, this very second, walking into a dangerous trap either hadn’t occurred to her or she simply didn’t care. Either way, the chances of her being completely nuts were looking better and better.

As if she could somehow read his thoughts, she slowed to a stop at the midway point between their vehicles and struck a pose, tapping a foot impatiently on the pavement. He cracked a smile despite himself. She was a sitting duck, and she didn’t even know it. But just in case she wasn’t as stylishly clueless as she looked in her red-bottom boots, he released the safety on his .357 SIG Sauer pistol and tucked it into the rear waistband of his slacks. Twice, he’d seen her touching up her makeup in the rearview mirror, instead of driving. Another time, she’d held up traffic while she fiddled with something on the dashboard instead of driving. And still another time, she’d spent way too much time fiddling with her cell phone instead of driving. Any idiot could see that her negligence was to blame for their accident, but maybe forcing him to rear-end her was her plan all along. Maybe she thought that he was the sitting duck.