Racing Against Time

Racing Against Time
Marie Ferrarella

The Honorable Brenton Montgomery would break every rule to recover his kidnapped little girl. But he wasn't prepared to clash with the one woman he'd secretly loved for years, Detective Callie Cavanaugh, whose job it was to find Rachel. And when tensions grew hot between them, Brenton knew he'd have one helluva fight on his hands…and in his heart.Every time the troubled single father touched her, kissed her, he made Callie's job that much harder. When this nightmare was over, how would she ever find the strength to walk away from this man and his precious daughter without wanting more?

“She’s a beautiful little girl.”

Brent felt as if his throat was constricting again. His eyes stung, and he didn’t bother trying to blink back the tears. Would he ever see her again?

“Yes, she is,” he agreed quietly. His fingers tightened around the remote, but he made no move to stop the video. “I shouldn’t be standing here, doing nothing. Thinking about eating. Thinking about—” His voice halted abruptly as guilt washed over his face.

“Thinking about what?” Callie half expected him to say something about killing the man who’d done this horrible thing.

She was caught completely by surprise when he quietly confessed, “You.”

Racing Against Time

Marie Ferrarella

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

MARIE FERRARELLA

earned a master’s degree in Shakespearean comedy, and, perhaps as a result, her writing is distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. This RITA

Award-winning author’s goal is to entertain and to make people laugh and feel good. She has written over one hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide and have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Japanese and Korean.

To

Helen Conrad,

still wonderful

after all these years

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

Prologue

He sat in his car and watched them.

Just as he had yesterday. And the day before that. And the day before that. Watched them and memorized their movements.

He didn’t want there to be any slipups.

That was what had gotten him in trouble before. Thinking he hadn’t made a mistake when he had. He’d been too confident, too sure that he was smarter than the people around him.

This time he knew better. Knew that he couldn’t allow the fact that he was more intelligent than the people he was dealing with to blur his caution, his inbred sense of survival.

That had gotten away from him before, caused his downfall.

Pride went before a fall.

He still had his pride. And it was that pride he meant to avenge.

His pride and his life.

Because the man who lived in the house he was watching, whose comings and goings he had quickly committed to memory, had taken it all away from him. Taken away his life, his pride.

His daughter.

Payback time was finally here.

Very carefully he turned the key in the ignition. The vehicle he was sitting in purred to life, ready to do his bidding.

He smiled to himself as he moved the transmission shift lever into drive.

He was through waiting.