Matchmaking with a Mission

Matchmaking with a Mission
B.J. Daniels

Who was the handsome stranger?The most stubborn of the Bailey sisters is back in town, and determined to start a horse ranch. She’s set her sights on the long-deserted Harper House and no one is going to change McKenna’s mind — not even enigmatic Nate.Now the sinister rumours plaguing the house have begun to resurface. And though McKenna refuses to be scared away, someone is trying to run her off the property. Yet gorgeous mystery man Nate has sworn to protect her.Could this stranger be about to become a permanent fixture in Whitehorse?

“I’m not after your house,” Nate said.

“Then what are you after?” McKenna asked.

He took a step towards her, closing what little distance there’d been between them, his brown eyes blazing. Suddenly there wasn’t enough air in the room. She felt a hitch in her chest, but she held her ground.

“I am jealous, all right?” Nate was within inches of her now, his gaze locked with hers. “Ever since I first saw you, you’ve been a thorn in my side. I wanted you. I want to ride off with you. I still want you and you’re the last thing I need right now.”

Before she could move or breathe or speak, his warm palm cupped her jaw and his mouth was on hers…

BJ Daniels wrote her first book after a career as an award-winning newspaper journalist and author of thirty-seven published short stories. Since then she has won numerous awards, including a career achievement award for romantic suspense and many nominations and awards for best book.

Daniels lives in Montana with her husband, Parker, and two springer spaniels, Spot and Jem. When she isn’t writing, she snowboards, camps, boats and plays tennis. Daniels is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, Thriller Writers, Kiss of Death and Romance Writers of America.

To contact her, write to BJ Daniels, PO Box 1173, Malta, MT 59538, USA or e-mail her at bjdaniels@mtintouch. net. Check out her web page at www.bjdaniels.com.

Matchmaking

With A Mission

By

BJ Daniels

MILLS & BOON®

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk/)

This one is for George “Clem” Clementson. A man who understands the power of love and friendship.

Chapter One

He’d known where she was for almost two weeks. He’d been watching her house, watching her. He just hadn’t felt a need to do anything about it.

Until now. Fate had forced his hand. He didn’t have much time left. He had to use it wisely. Take care of all those loose ends in his life.

As he pried at the flimsy lock on the side window he thought about how he had loved her. Idolized her. Thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.

Unfortunately she hadn’t felt the same way about him.

The lock snapped with a soft pop. He froze, listening even though he knew she wouldn’t have heard it. Usually by this time of the night she’d finished off enough cheap wine that she would be dead to the world.

Dead to the world. He liked that. He’d been dead to the world thanks to her.

He’d planned this for so long and yet he felt uneasy, a little thrown by the fact that he’d had to break in tonight. All the other nights, she’d forgotten to lock up. Why tonight, of all nights, did she have to remember to lock the damn doors?

A few days ago he’d waited in the overgrown shrubs outside, watching her shadow move behind the sheer curtains in the living room to turn off the television before she stumbled down the hall to bed.

When he’d been sure she’d passed out, he’d slipped inside the house, wanting to take a look around, to know the layout of the house. Not good to bump into something and wake her up on the night he planned to finally finish it.

So he’d poked around, looking into her things, seeing how she’d been doing since he’d last seen her. He’d made a point of testing to see just how deep a sleeper she was. He couldn’t have her screaming her head off when the time came, now could he?

For some reason tonight, though, she’d locked the doors. He tried not to let that worry him. But he was superstitious about crap like that. It was her fault. She’d put all that hocuspocus stuff in his head, her and her horoscopes, palm readings and psychic phone calls. She wouldn’t cross the street without checking to make sure her stars were aligned.

Except when she was drunk. Then she threw caution to the wind. He hated to think he was a lot like her that way. Except he didn’t have to be drunk.

So, as much as he hated it, he was leery as he hoisted himself up and over the windowsill to drop into the bathroom tub. He landed with a thud and froze to listen.

Maybe she’d remembered to lock the front door because her horoscope told her that she should be more careful today. Or she could have spotted him watching the house, he supposed. But wouldn’t it also be possible, given the connection between them, that she’d sensed he was here?

He liked the latter explanation the best. That would mean that she had occasionally thought of him, wondered what had happened to him.

A shell-shaped night-light next to the sink made the bathroom glow pink. She’d done the whole place in a tropical motif. The shower curtain was plastic with huge palm trees. What the hell had she been thinking? As far as he could tell, she’d been landlocked all her life and never even seen an ocean, let alone a real palm tree.

He wasn’t sure why, but it made him even more angry with her, this pretending she lived in a beach house. Did she also pretend he’d never existed?

The shower curtain made a soft swishing sound as he brushed against it. Again he froze and listened. A breeze wafted in with the smell of the river.

He thought he heard a noise from the bedroom. The creak of bedsprings as she rolled over. Or got up to come find out what the noise had been in the bathroom. Had she bought herself a gun?

He waited behind the shower curtain, hidden by the fake palms. I’m right here. Right here. Just waiting for you.

It surprised him how nervous he was about seeing her again. He’d anticipated this moment for so long he’d expected to be excited. But as he drew the switchblade from his pocket, his fingers were slick with sweat. He wiped them on his jeans and blamed the hot, humid night.

It reminded him of other hot nights, lying in bed, afraid he wouldn’t live until morning. The only thing that had kept him going was imagining this day, the day he found her and made her pay for what she’d done to him.

He wanted her to know that kind of fear before this night was over. He glanced at his watch in the glow of the shell night-light. He had plenty of time before her husband came home.

She’d married some guy who worked the graveyard shift as a night watchman. The irony of that didn’t escape him as he got tired of waiting in the bathtub and peered around the edge of the shower curtain.

No movement out in the hall. No sound coming from the vicinity of the bedroom. Gently he slid the curtain aside to step out onto the mermaid-shaped shag rug.

He felt hatred bubble up as he noticed she’d bought herself a pretty new mirror since he was here just a few days ago. The mirror was framed in seashells, and it was all he could do not to smash it on the tile floor.

It wasn’t the mirror. Or even the stupid seashore stuff. It was that she’d done just fine without him. Better than fine once she’d dumped him.

The realization was like acid inside him. It ate away at the hope that she’d missed him. That she’d been sorry she’d left him.

He thought of the seven-year-old boy he’d been. He could smell the dust her car tires had thrown up as she’d torn across the dirt lot of the filling station. He’d run out of the restroom, thinking she hadn’t realized he wasn’t in the car, and had called after her. Running, tears streaming down his dirt-streaked face, until he’d stumbled and fallen and lain bawling his heart out as her car had grown smaller and smaller on the two-lane highway in the middle of nowhere.

The memory jarred him into motion. Stepping through the bathroom doorway, he stopped to wait for his eyes to adjust. Her bedroom door was closed. That was odd. It had been open when he’d been here a few nights before.

Worry knifed through him. The hallway was lit by another shell night-light. The cramped space smelled of stale beer and old cigarette smoke.

He inched down the hall, anticipation thrumming in his veins. At the door, he stopped, suddenly worried what he would do if for some reason she’d locked it.