Danger and Desire (Outlaws and Heroes, Book 3)

By Mallory Rush

Clay Barker is a damaged man with a carefully crafted image that masks his real job: CEO of Revenge Unlimited.

Then Clay makes the mistake of roughing up a bad but well-connected Federal agent.

That's when Agent Melissa Lovelace gets her orders—to set Clay Barker up and lure him in, using herself as bait.

But the real enemy is blurring the lines between right and wrong, and desire has arrived fully cocked and loaded.

OUTLAWS AND HEROES, in series order
Love Slave
Dead or Alive
Danger and Desire

OTHER TITLES by Mallory Rush
Shades of Deception, a four book series
Bad Boy of New Orleans
Between the Sheets
Hurts So Good
Half-Moon Hearts
Kissed by the Beast

• Language: English
• Publisher: ePublishing Works
• Release date: Apr 6, 2013
• ISBN: 9781614174103

Mallory Rush

Mallory Rush (aka Olivia Rupprecht) began writing romances when her babies were in diapers. Now that they’re grown, she’s still writing about the most amazing experience in the world: Falling in love with an imperfect someone who just happens to be perfect for us; the dizzying euphoria of a first kiss, the devastation of a heart being broken, and the thrill of emerging with a happy ending despite all the odds against it. Her own life story goes something like this: Nearly destitute, divorced young mother of four, working two jobs, loses her house—but keeps typing away into the wee hours, determined to see her love stories in print. Enter a really hot, single guy riding a Harley (er, Suzuki) and building corporate empires (as a CFO for a manufacturing plant in Lubbock, Texas). One kiss and KA-POW! It was like you read about. He asked her (and all those kids) to marry him and bought them a house as a wedding present. A year later they had a miracle baby. A few years after that, Bad Boy of New Orleans hit the bookstore shelves. Many other novels would follow, and corporate moves would take them to Tallahassee, Memphis, Boulder, and finally to Fox Lake, Wisconsin, where they’ve renovated a big historic tavern. A lot of people thought it wouldn’t last, but 30 years later they’re still really into each other. Little wonder that Mallory believes in the transcendent power of love and its ability to elevate all of our lives from the ordinary to something mystical and amazing. Although she’s written and edited historical thrillers and non-fiction as Olivia Rupprecht, she considers romance to be more than a genre—it’s as essential as breathing for a truly rich life. Mallory loves to hear from her readers.

Book preview

Danger and Desire

Outlaws and Heroes

Book Three

by

Mallory Rush

Bestselling, Award-winning Author

Published by ePublishing Works!

www.epublishingworks.com

ISBN: 978-1-61417-410-3

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Copyright ©2013 by Olivia Rupprecht. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

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Dear Reader,

As we all know, sometimes bad things happen to good people—and vice versa—and by golly, it just isn't fair! Wouldn't it be nice if we lived in a world where justice always triumphed? Even better, if true love always conquered all.

One of the real joys of being a writer is the ability to create the kind of world I wished I lived in, and to share that world with readers. But even in fiction, my characters must still grapple with the realities we all face: Moral and ethical dilemmas. Divided loyalties. Fear of failure. Love and the risk of rejection. How simple it would be if these judgment calls were divided cleanly between lines of black and white, right and wrong, win or lose. But that's not usually how life or good fiction work. Danger and Desire gave me the opportunity to explore this fascinating mire of contradictions life can throw at us while we simply try our best to do the right thing.

Just between us, I'm glad I don't have to tread the same high wire Clay Barker and Melissa Lovelace have ahead of them. She's on one end, he's on die other—and neither have a pole to sustain their balance. All they have to guide them are their hearts and mutual determination to see justice done. There are obstacles aplenty in their way—they're working from opposite sides of the law.

I hope you enjoy Danger and Desire, and I wish you the sweetest justice of all: May you get your man!

Warm wishes,

Mallory Rush

Chapter 1

"Bad news, Clay. Bad, bad news."

Badder than me? He chuckled, then quickly sobered at his associate's anxious nod. Any news badder than Clay Barker himself had to be worse than awful. Have a sit, Red, and lay it on me. Clay waved to the Queen Anne chair facing the carved antique desk where he played judge, jury and, more often than not, hangman.

Minus the rope, that was. He meted out justice, fair and simple, but executions weren't his job. The way he figured, he might be the law at Revenge Unlimited, but that didn't give him the right to play God. To take another life would make him no better than the criminals he cleaned off the streets.

Sitting, Red leaned close and whispered, You had this office checked out lately?

First thing on my agenda every mornin'. No bugs, it's clean. So let's get down to business. What's up besides Labor Day weekend leftovers and the start of football season?

Red made a sound that was between a snort and a groan. You remember that hooker from Austin—the one you took on personally after she had her face messed?

Sure, I do. Pretty gal, except for a broken nose, split lip, eyes too swollen to tell what color. Of course, she looked real good in comparison to the john who did it after I let him know that's no way to treat a lady... of the night.

Turns out that wasn't just any john. Red slapped the desk. Hell and be damned, Clay, it was a fed!

Oh, really? he drawled. Leaning back in his big leather chair, Clay propped his feet on a neat pile of Barker Imports letterhead. Does this mean I'm supposed to be shaking in my boots? He tapped his pair of custom-made ostrich skins together.

You oughta be, but you don't have enough sense for that. We're in deep trouble, Clay. Our friend at the Bureau sent word that the top dog wants your head.

The only beef the FBI has with me is for making their job easier, he said flatly, unable to believe even the top dog would cut off his nose to spite his face, as his mother, God rest her soul, would have put it. I clean up the streets, no charge to the taxpayers, and deal with the vermin that slip through the legal cracks that keep their hands tied. As for the fed I dealt with personally, if he'd kept his hands off that woman, I wouldn't have had to get mine dirty on him. Fed or no fed, nobody has a right to do what he did. And if he values his continued health, he won't be doing it again.

You're talking business as usual, and this is anything but. Your client conveniently forgot to tell you that she had a regular who's a major drug dealer and the fed who beat her up got carried away trying to extract some information. It wasn't a mean bit of S and M, like she said.

Clay finger-drummed the desk and considered the belated facts. Seemed for once he hadn't been thorough enough in checking out a potential client's claim of being victimized by the legal system. Loopholes, deals cut, bail jumping—the reasons people came to him were endless. But every case he took on had a common thread that ran through the shredded fabric of his own life: while the victim was held prisoner to trauma, rage and fear, the violator roamed free. Revenge Unlimited was about justice, not mindless vigilantism.

All things considered, the hooker still qualified.

Okay, so that makes her a liar—of omission, Clay said. As for the perpetrator, his reasons don't justify his actions. And frankly, I doubt the Bureau suits would condone such overly ambitious methods of persuasion—including the big shot who supposedly wants my head. He must be upset because I'm getting jobs done that going by the book can't, and it's screwing with his Christmas bonus, not to mention his ego.

Unfortunately it goes deeper than that. You pissed off the wrong person, Clay. The fed whose face you rearranged just happens to be Mr. Big Shot's favorite nephew. A word of advice? Close shop before you end up doing hard time with the same kind of scum that keeps you in business.

Clay knew for a fact it wasn't his front business that Red was referring to. A man didn't get much more respectable than being a purveyor of fine European imports, and while he wasn't the richest man in Dallas, he did better than okay. Good enough that he could pay his handpicked associates like Red plenty well for their services, despite the fact his organization was nonprofit. A price could not be put on justice. Besides, his real payoff had nothing to do with money and everything to do with needing a reason to live.

Close shop? He may as well put a gun to his head and join Martha and their two children at the graveyard he visited when the days were too empty, the nights too lonely. Hell, seven years and he still couldn't sleep without seeing the mangled remains of his family. Why them and not him? Why?

Knowing that was one answer he'd never have, he returned his attention to the immediate concern. Should I take it that you're putting in your notice?

You take it right, Clay. You do a lot of people a lot of good, and working with you these past five years has been a privilege. But I've got a new wife and a baby on the way to think about, and nothing is worth risking what I've got.

Yep, there was the difference between Clay Barker and the others. Most of them had something to lose; Clay Barker had already lost it all.

If I were in your position, I'd feel the same way. Don't be a stranger, you hear? They shook hands. Take good care of that wife and baby. Oh, and Red, you're right. Nothing's worth risking what makes a man well and truly rich.

After shutting the door that separated his legitimate enterprise from the not-so-legit office, Clay tried to sort his mixed feelings. Happy as he was for his friend's reasons to get out while the getting was good, he couldn't deny a twinge of envy.

Returning to the desk where he screwed with the screwed-up legal system—one that had certainly screwed him royally—Clay found himself wishing that he had something to lose again, too.

Chapter 2

She was trying hard not to sweat. And just her luck that she was wearing a bulky cardigan on this unseasonably warm October day. Prepared as she'd ever be, Melissa Lovelace held tight to the bulging manila envelope documenting her cause. A deep, bracing breath and in she went.

The smell of leather and potpourri and exorbitant prices assaulted her comparatively pedestrian senses. Clay Barker's upscale store was the kind of place that made the rich feel at home and people such as herself feel like imposters pretending they could afford to do more than browse.

Pretending to browse, she silently rehearsed her plea for help from a man whose ruthless reputation was a stark contrast to his obvious taste for all things refined and elegant.

You're welcome to play it, ma'am, drawled a deep voice that sounded as rich and mellow as the grand piano she was gingerly touching.

Intending to decline and ask to speak to the proprietor, Melissa turned.

And promptly forgot the opening line she'd rehearsed.

If looks could kill, she was a goner. The man was drop-dead gorgeous. She'd seen a picture of him but it hadn't prepared her for this larger-than-life work of masculine art. His clothes were impeccably tailored and surely custom-made to fit his lean but muscle-mean Texas-size frame. As for his face, there was nothing pretty about it, yet that only seemed to accentuate his rare kind of handsome.

Character. It was grooved into every fine line that called him forty, going on a hundred. There was a story in his gray eyes, which were oddly warm, yet haunted. The ghost of a smile played about his firmly-set lips.

Melissa wet hers and recouped as best she could. Mr. Barker? Mr. Clay Barker?

That's what I answer to. A leisurely glance at the envelope she clutched to her chest and he said, What can I do for you today, Ms—?

Melissa Lovelace. Although they were alone, she lowered her voice to a confidential hush. "I was told through a friend of a friend, that you have another