Loe raamatut: «The Newlyweds»
“There’s no way I’ll ever get married for real.”
Although Sam had no intention of ever walking down the aisle again, Bridget’s words surprised him. He wondered how she could make such a certain, sweeping statement.
Well, that was her business, he immediately answered himself. Not his. All he had to know about Special Agent Bridget Logan was that she was as dedicated to playing his wife, to getting the job done and to wrapping up this case as he was. He looked at her again, at the way the soft light filmed her hair in gold and made her skin glow and her eyes luminous. He noted the soft curves of her breasts and hips that even her baggy clothing couldn’t hide. In her sleep-deprived state she looked soft and tempting and vulnerable.
Yeah, he thought. They both needed to dedicate themselves to wrapping up this case.
The sooner the better.
ELIZABETH BEVARLY
is a RITA® Award-nominated author of more than sixty works of contemporary romance. Her books regularly appear on the USA TODAY and the Waldenbooks bestseller lists for romance and mass-market paperbacks. Her novel The Thing About Men hit the New York Times extended bestseller list, as well. Her novels have been published in more than two dozen languages and three dozen countries, and there are more than ten million copies in print worldwide. She currently lives in a small town in her native Kentucky with her husband and son.
New York Times and USA TODAY Bestselling Author
The Newlyweds
Elizabeth Bevarly
MILLS & BOON
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Be a part of
Because birthright has its privileges and family ties run deep.
Two FBI agents pose as newlyweds to expose a black-market baby ring. With the mission under way, this “pretend” couple finds the idea of real marriage—to each other—very tantalizing….
Bridget Logan: While hunting down dangerous criminals, Bridget secretly longed for a family of her own. Being a special agent didn’t offer her much chance of true love until Samuel Jones became her partner…and her husband!
Samuel Jones: When his ex-wife betrayed him, Samuel vowed never to commit again. But then Bridget, hardworking and earnest, stole his heart and made him rethink his philosophy of love. Would following his heart give him the happiness he so deserved?
A wanted man: He was on the loose and no one knew where he would strike next. Would his love for a certain Portland General nurse calm his vengeful soul?
Because birthright has its privileges and family ties run deep.
AVAILABLE JUNE 2010
1.) To Love and Protect by Susan Mallery
2.) Secrets & Seductions by Pamela Toth
3.) Royal Affair by Laurie Paige
4.) For Love and Family by Victoria Pade
AVAILABLE JULY 2010
5.) The Bachelor by Marie Ferrarella
6.) A Precious Gift by Karen Rose Smith
7.) Child of Her Heart by Cheryl St. John
8.) Intimate Surrender by RaeAnne Thayne
AVAILABLE AUGUST 2010
9.) The Secret Heir by Gina Wilkins
10.) The Newlyweds by Elizabeth Bevarly
11.) Right by Her Side by Christie Ridgway
12.) The Homecoming by Anne Marie Winston
AVAILABLE SEPTEMBER 2010
13.) The Greatest Risk by Cara Colter
14.) What a Man Needs by Patricia Thayer
15.) Undercover Passion by Raye Morgan
16.) Royal Seduction by Donna Clayton
For all the great folks at Silhouette Books, with many thanks and much affection.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
One
B ridget Logan knew a lot of things about a lot of things. She knew the winner of every World Series since 1986. She knew how to speak Spanish, French and German. She knew pi to the twenty-seventh character. She knew how to make her whites whiter and her colors brighter. She knew the secret to beautiful skin. She knew all the lyrics to “Louie, Louie.” Really. She even knew how to program her VCR.
She also knew how to bug a room so that nobody, but nobody, could tell it was wired. And she knew how to change her entire appearance with a few simple tricks and props that fit nicely into a nondescript handbag. And she knew how to disassemble and reassemble her .38 revolver, and how to hold it steady and shoot so that the bullet went straight through the white paper heart on the black silhouette at target practice.
But she didn’t know nothin’ ’bout birthin’ babies.
Nor did she have any desire to learn. Because Bridget Logan was on the fast track in her career, a rising star at the Federal Bureau of Investigations. She had risen so quickly, in fact, that—as of a week ago, anyway—she’d been awarded a field assignment to a counterterrorist task force in Vienna, a plum appointment that even some veteran agents had been vying to win, and which would have boosted her into a very elite investigation group at the tender age of twenty-five.
And that would have put Bridget exactly where she wanted to be. She’d decided in junior high school that she wanted to pursue a career in law enforcement. Smart and driven and ambitious since her first day of school, she’d ultimately skipped two grades and graduated from high school at the age of sixteen. Then she’d left her hometown of Portland, Oregon, to move across the country, earning her bachelor’s in computer science in three years’ time at Georgetown University. Then she’d worked another three years for one of Alexandria, Virginia’s premier private investigation firms. And then, once she’d fulfilled the three years of professional work experience required by the FBI, she’d gone after her dream. She’d entered the FBI Academy at Quantico, Virginia, when she was only twenty-two, and had become one of its youngest graduates. Since then, she’d put in three years for the Bureau, doing the usual grunt work all the newbies had to tolerate, then becoming a full-fledged field agent before she was even twenty-four.
She’d deliberately sought out the toughest cases, then had lied, begged, borrowed or stolen to be assigned to them. And she’d worked hard, with a passion that superseded anything she’d ever felt. She was still one of the youngest field agents working for the Bureau, yet she’d gained experience some of her older colleagues hadn’t come close to achieving. She didn’t have time even to think about a husband or family, because she gave everything she had to her job. The Vienna assignment would have boosted her into an even higher echelon, professionally speaking, and it would have been a hell of a lot of fun living and working in Europe.
Instead, two days after her arrival in Vienna, she’d been told she was being reassigned, effective immediately. And though she’d always had absolutely no interest in becoming a wife or a mother, she was now going to have to learn a lot about being both. Because for her new field assignment, Bridget Logan, G-woman and counterterrorist, was about to become Bridget Logan, trophy wife and mom wanna-be.
It was going to be the hardest role she’d ever had to play.
Especially since she hadn’t met her husband-to-be. She wasn’t even sure yet what the specifics of her assignment were, or why she had been selected for the job. She only knew that, a few days ago, she had been scheduled to be posing as a member of an obscure eastern European terrorist network, looking to score some stinger missiles from an American arms dealer working out of Germany, and today she was back in Portland. She’d gone into the Vienna office on Monday expecting to be briefed about her assignment before heading off to Zagreb, but had instead been told to turn around and pack her bags and head home, because she was needed for a “special assignment” she’d learn more about upon arrival.
Oh, and she’d also been told to spend her hours on the long flight home perusing the latest issues of Vogue, Town and Country and The Robb Report, along with a variety of literature on clinical infertility. And because Bridget Logan knew a lot of things about a lot of things, she’d suspected right off that she’d been pulled from her work in Europe to go home—and to learn about clinical infertility along the way—because of her parents’ involvement in one of Portland’s most famous establishments: the Children’s Connection. That could be the only reason why they’d taken her, specifically, off such an elite overseas assignment, one that would have pushed her even more quickly up the professional ladder, to travel halfway around the world for an assignment that could have gone to anyone.
Because the Logans of Portland, Oregon, were known—even internationally—for the work they did at the foundation that helped infertile couples adopt or conceive. Long before Bridget was born, her parents had suffered a terrible tragedy; their firstborn child had been kidnapped and murdered. Leslie and Terrence Logan had never quite gotten over the loss of their son Robbie, but eventually, they’d managed to heal enough to move on and start their family anew. Through adoption and conception both, the Logan children now numbered five, of whom Bridget was the youngest. That family had come about due in large part to Children’s Connection, and Leslie and Terrence were so grateful to the organization for making it happen that they had virtually become a part of the organization, donating both considerable time and considerable money to help it thrive.
Before the Logans became involved, Children’s Connection had consisted of a small orphanage that had been in operation since the early 1940s, and a fledgling fertility clinic associated with Portland General Hospital. But through generous grants from the Logans, and very effective fund-raising events often orchestrated by Leslie Logan, Children’s Connection had expanded over the years into a state-of-the-art fertility treatment center that included counseling for childless couples and support groups for single parents. Financial support—again, often provided by grants from the Logans—to orphanages in key cities around the world, especially Moscow, had, in recent years, also introduced foreign adoption as an option to prospective parents.
These days, Children’s Connection had satellite orphanages all over the world, and they brought couples who were unable to conceive together with children who desperately needed homes. And their world-renowned fertility clinic had made conception a reality for couples who hadn’t thought they stood a chance having biological children. Hundreds, even thousands of families had been born over the years, thanks to Children’s Connection and the Logans. And thousands more would come about in the future.
Bridget utterly respected and admired her parents’ dedication to the organization. Especially her mother’s, as Leslie Logan was as committed to her volunteer work at Children’s Connection as Terrence Logan was to his job as CEO of the Logan Corporation, the family’s million-dollar computer software business. And Bridget’s sister, Jillian, worked for Children’s Connection, too, as a therapist. Her brothers Eric and Peter had followed in their father’s footsteps, and both worked for the Logan Corporation. Well, she had to concede affectionately, Eric perhaps worked harder at being a playboy than he did at being VP of Marketing and Sales at the Logan Corporation. Or, at least, he had until he’d been auctioned off to his now-fiancée, Jenny. Jenny had had a rather humbling effect on Bridget’s slightly older brother, something all the Logans had welcomed. And her adopted son, Cole, had had rather a wonderful effect on Eric, bringing out a softer, nurturing side of him that none of them had even known he possessed. That was something—and someone—all the Logans had welcomed, too.
Peter had recently married, to—wonder of wonders—Katie Crosby. The Vegas wedding had come as a surprise to all the Logans, because there had never been any love lost between the two families. Leslie and Terrence still blamed Katie’s mother, Sheila Crosby, for the kidnapping and murder of their son Robbie, because Robbie and his friend Danny Crosby had been playing unattended outside when Robbie was abducted. Had Sheila been more alert and less neglectful, Robbie, to the elder Logans’ way of thinking, would still be alive and well today. Still, it was good to see Peter and Katie in love and together, and maybe it was another step toward putting Robbie’s memory to rest. Bridget had flown home briefly for a reception Leslie had hosted for Peter and his new wife, and the two had very obviously been devoted to each other—and to the baby they were expecting.
Bridget’s interests and passions, though, like her brother David’s, had lain somewhere other than the Logan Corporation and Children’s Connection. David worked for the State Department and had until recently been on assignment overseas. In fact, he’d recently gotten engaged, too, to a woman he met while in Moscow. And he, like Eric, would soon be a dad, to Elizabeth Duncan’s adopted infant daughter, Natasha. But that was where the similarities between Bridget and David ended, because she had no desire to find herself married and in the family way. Having cut her teeth on Nancy Drew and Harriet the Spy, Bridget had known early on what she wanted to do with her life. And she was doing it. Exactly the way she’d envisioned.
Well, except for being pulled off of a dangerous, high-profile foreign case to be assigned to a piddling, boring, domestic one instead. But then, no life, she supposed, was completely without bumps. She had to pay her dues at some point, didn’t she?
After deplaning and collecting her two tailored leather suitcases from the baggage carousel, Bridget did her best to smooth the travel wrinkles from her beige linen trousers and white linen shirt. Knowing it was futile, but being tidy by nature, she tucked a few errant strands of auburn hair back into the no-longer-neat braid that fell to shoulder length. Then she finger-combed her thick bangs, grimacing when she noted how badly in need of a trim they were. She was exhausted from the twenty-plus-hour trip and what had seemed like hundreds of plane changes, and what she really wanted most was to go to her parents’ house to shower and change and catch a quick nap. But she had work to do first. And for Bridget, work always came first.
She’d been told she would be met at the airport by someone from the Portland field office, so she resigned herself to make do for now with the few hours sleep she’d stolen over the last twenty-four, and with the airline peanuts and the bagel and cream cheese she’d consumed while changing planes in Chicago. Her stomach grumbled its discontent at her decision, and she grumbled back that it was the best she could do.
What time was it here, anyway? she wondered. She searched her tired brain, trying to remember what time her flight had been scheduled to land. Three-thirteen, she recalled. But was that a.m. or p.m.? Surely p.m., she told herself. Though, truly, she wasn’t sure. It was the end of April, however, that much she did know, because it had been the end of April in Vienna, too. And springtime in Portland, she recalled, meant rain. Lots of it. Of course, summer, fall and winter meant rain, too, but springtime seemed to be the worst for it. She just wished she’d remembered that before she’d packed her raincoat.
Popping a mint into her mouth, Bridget collected her things and made her way toward the exit, scanning the crowd of people beyond baggage claim before she realized she had no idea whom she was looking for. Unless maybe it was that guy over there who was holding up a hand-lettered sign that said Logan. Being a good agent, and knowing a lot of things about a lot of things, Bridget recognized a clue when she saw one. Even in her sleep-deprived state.
But she woke up a bit when her gaze wandered higher, and she saw the face of the man who was holding the sign. He looked plenty rested and was in no way rumpled, something that made Bridget feel even more disheveled than she already was. His hair was the color of imported milk chocolate, flecked with flashes of gold in the glare of the fluorescent lights overhead. Lights like that always made her hair look brassy, she couldn’t help thinking. And instead of travel-worn and disarrayed locks like hers, his hair was expertly cut and styled, not a strand out of place. He was dressed in the sort of suit most field agents wore—dark, nondescript, the kind meant to draw no attention—with a white dress shirt and plain blue tie. In spite of that, the man had drawn quite a bit of attention, Bridget noticed, because a trio of women standing nearby were all gazing at him with something akin to longing.
Which wasn’t exactly surprising, Bridget had to concede, since the man was, in a word, gorgeous, his features chiseled and powerful and jagged, as if sculpted by the ferocious hands of an irascible artist. Instead of making him look dull and inconspicuous, the blandness of his clothing only made more appreciable his virile good looks. But his eyes, she decided as she drew nearer, were without question his best feature yet, because they were seductively hooded and breathtakingly blue. But not the kind of blue one normally saw on people. They were a dark, midnight blue, reminiscent of a twilit sky, that silky mix of purple and sapphire that slipped in just before complete darkness overtook everything.
As she drew to a stop in front of the man, she noticed he was tall, too, something that came as no surprise at all. But at five-seven, Bridget didn’t have to tip her head back to meet too many male eyes. For this man, though, she had to tip her head way back, because he easily topped six feet.
She told herself not to be intimidated by him—yeah, right—and did her best to sound efficient when she told him, “I’m Special Agent Bridget Logan.”
He dipped his head forward in acknowledgment and gave her a quick once-over, the kind of appraisal any agent would give anybody, simply because it was in every agent’s nature to do so. But Bridget couldn’t get a handle on what kind of impression he formed about her, which was more than a little disconcerting since she had a real knack for reading people. It was something else that had benefited her in her quick climb up the Bureau ladder. As soon as he finished his silent assessment, he tossed the sign with her name on it into a trash can to his left, making the shot effortlessly without even looking.
“Sam Jones,” he told her by way of a greeting. “Special Agent Samuel Jones,” he then corrected himself, as if he needed to make the distinction. As if he needed her to know he needed to make the distinction. “I’m with the Portland field office. Welcome home, Logan.”
His welcome was as warm as the rest of him—namely not warm at all—but that was just fine by Bridget. She wasn’t all that pleased to be home, truth be told. Yes, she rarely made it back to Portland these days, but she spoke to everyone in her family regularly by phone. And although she missed them, she’d been too busy to feel homesick. It wasn’t that she didn’t like Portland. On the contrary, she loved being able to call the city her hometown. But she had things to do, places to go, people to see. She had a career to build. And returning here had been a giant step backward in that regard.
“Special Agent Logan,” Bridget corrected his identification of her. She needed to make that clear to him, too. “So just what am I doing home, anyway?”
“You’re needed for a job,” he told her.
“That much I gathered,” she replied, biting back the duh with which she’d almost punctuated the statement. Exhaustion, she told herself. She always got cranky when she didn’t get enough sleep. “What I want to know is why me?” she elaborated patiently.
Instead of answering her, Sam Jones—or, rather, Special Agent Samuel Jones—bent to pick up the larger of her two bags, leaving the small one for Bridget. An equal opportunist, she thought. She liked that in a man. Not that she liked this man, mind you, she hastily backpedaled. But he clearly wasn’t a coddler, and she respected that. She wasn’t a coddler, either.
He tipped his head toward the exit doors. “Car’s just outside. You’ll be briefed on the assignment when we get to the field office. You’re expected ASAP. I’m expected to be the one to get you there.”
He was obviously no-nonsense, too, something else Bridget admired. Still, a little information up front would have been nice.
Without awaiting a response from her, Samuel Jones began to make his way to the exit, so she hastily retrieved her other suitcase and followed. Involuntarily, her gaze fell to the elegant expanse of his broad shoulders as he cut a swath easily through the crowd, and she noticed how much taller he was than everyone else. He turned his head once, to glance at something that must have caught his eye, and even his profile made her want to sigh wistfully. And seeing as how Bridget Logan didn’t have a wistful bone in her body, that wasn’t exactly a reaction she welcomed.
Fatigue, she told herself again. She was only acting like a boy-crazy preteen because she was tired and crabby and hungry. She hadn’t been boy-crazy even when she was a preteen. She’d been way too focused on school, and way more interested in changing the world than in thumbtacking pictures of River Phoenix and Leonardo DiCaprio to her bedroom wall. Once Agent Jones dropped her at headquarters and took off again—and once she got some decent sleep and a decent meal—she wouldn’t give him a second thought.
They walked in silence until Jones halted behind a black, commonplace, four-door sedan—government issue, natch—and thumbed the key bob to open the trunk. He hefted her suitcase inside, reached for the one she held out to him and repeated the action, then thumbed the key bob again to unlock the car doors. He didn’t stride to the passenger side to open the door for Bridget. And again, she grudgingly saluted him for it. He was obviously the kind of man who assumed a woman in her job could take care of herself. And she could.
So it made absolutely no sense that Bridget should feel slighted by his gesture. Or lack thereof. For some strange reason, though, she did. Boy, she really did need to catch up on her sleep.
After folding herself into the passenger seat and strapping on her seat belt, she turned to face Agent Jones again. “So how much do you know about this case I’m being assigned to?” she asked.
He looked over at her, his stony facade cracking just enough that she could see he thought she was nuts for asking such a question. “I know everything about it,” he told her in a tone of voice that likewise suggested he thought she was nuts.
Or maybe he thought she was stupid. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time she’d received such a reaction from a male agent. Not that that made it any easier to tolerate now. She arched her brows in surprise and resentment at his tone, but before she could speak, he continued, this time sounding mildly disgusted.
“You think I’m just the errand boy they sent to pick you up, don’t you?” he asked curtly.
“Well, aren’t you?” she asked.
He narrowed his eyes at her. “How old are you, Logan?”
“Twenty-five,” she told him crisply. Actually, she was mere months from her twenty-sixth birthday. Then, just as abruptly as he had, she asked, “How old are you, Jones?”
He clearly hadn’t expected the rapid-fire retort. Nevertheless, he told her readily enough, “Thirty-two. I have ten years in at the Bureau. Seniority, one might say.” And before she had a chance to remind him that seniority was earned by more than just years, he continued coolly, “Look, Logan, I know all about you, all right? Hell, it’s been hammered home to every agent here in Portland how fast and furious the homegrown Girl Wonder rose through the ranks at Quantico. But I, for one, suspect a lot of that was due to Daddy Logan’s influence, both in Portland and elsewhere. Must be nice having an old man worth millions pulling strings for you. Me, I wouldn’t know. I earned my position the old-fashioned way—by working hard and fighting tooth and nail for it.”
Now Bridget’s eyebrows really shot up. The animosity she had sensed simmering just beneath his surface had boiled right up from under the lid, burning her with hisses and steam. This time she didn’t battle anything except Jones when she replied. “My father had nothing to do with my progress,” she snapped. “I earned my position, too, Agent Jones. By working my ass off, fighting a hell of a lot harder than you, and by making sacrifices you couldn’t begin to understand. Don’t you dare suggest otherwise. If anybody gets handed anything in this business, it’s those of you who have a Y chromosome. We women get handed jack. We have to work twice as hard as any of you guys to get half as much.”
He set his jaw tightly at her outburst, but he said nothing more in response. Which was just as well. Bridget’s animosity wasn’t exactly cooling at the moment, and she hated losing control almost as much as she hated not being taken seriously. Jones cranked the key in the ignition then, turning his gaze forward. He said not another word for the rest of the ride, and that was just fine with Bridget. She wanted to be rid of the SOB as soon as possible. And until then, she wanted to forget he existed at all.
The Portland field office of the FBI was located in the Crown Plaza Building, a boxy white building downtown that housed a number of other organizations and businesses. The city itself was just as Bridget had seen it the last time she had spent more than a couple of days at home about seventeen months ago. When she’d come home for Peter and Katie’s reception, she’d barely seen anything outside the Logan home. The only difference now was that when she’d been home two Christmases ago, for all of five days, a delicate whisper of snow had been falling—a fairly rare occurrence for the city. Now, a fine gauze of rain misted over the entire downtown, the product of fat slate clouds overhead. In spite of that, a strange warmth spread through her. Even though, under other circumstances, she might have been in Vienna at the moment, it really did feel kind of nice to be home.
Until she remembered her dour driver. Once she got rid of Agent Jones, she amended, then it would feel kind of nice to be home.
He parked the car on a lower level of the parking garage and, again without a word, unfolded his big frame from behind the wheel and began walking toward the elevators before Bridget’s feet even touched the ground. Somehow she refrained from rolling her eyes heavenward.
Jerk, she thought.
But she hastened her stride to catch up with him. After all, she’d never been inside the Portland office. And since 9/11, a lot of new security checks had been put into place. She’d have to follow Jones’s lead if she wanted to make this as simple and as fast as she could. So she doubled her pace, taking two steps for every one of his, so large was his stride with those long, long legs. And she did her best to keep breathing at her regular rate as she hustled along, because the last thing she needed to be doing was panting after this man, even if it was only because she was winded.
They rode in silence up to the fourth floor, then he led her down a hall to the field office and entered ahead of her. But he held the door open for her once he passed through it, something that frankly surprised her. Okay, so he had some latent sense of courtesy, she conceded grudgingly. That didn’t make up for the way he had verbally assailed her in the car.
A secretary dressed in efficient gray snapped to attention at their appearance, and she greeted Agent Jones informally before saying, “He’s expecting you. Go on in.”
Bridget was surprised when Jones did exactly as the receptionist instructed. Okay, so he could take orders from women and not be put off by his inferiors, she further conceded, though still grudgingly. Clearly, it was just something about Bridget herself who put the guy off.
Her father’s money and influence, she recalled, neither of which had she ever taken advantage as an adult. She’d earned academic scholarships to put herself through college, and had worked both on- and off-campus to pay for her living expenses. And although her new role would have her posing as a trophy wife, a lifestyle with which she should have been familiar enough, Bridget had never really been into the physical trappings of the Logan wealth. Yes, she’d grown up in a big, beautiful home in one of Portland’s most desirable neighborhoods. Yes, she’d benefited from private schools and extracurricular activities a lot of families couldn’t afford. But not once had she taken any of them for granted. And as soon as she’d been old enough to start making her own way in the world, she had.
Not that she’d bother to tell any of that to Jones. Within minutes, the guy would be out of her life for good. And good riddance to him, too.
For now, though, she followed him into the next room and found one that looked a lot like the offices of other Bureau heads she’d seen, painted an institutional off-white and furnished with institutional gray Berber carpeting, fake wood shelves, a fake wood desk and fake leather chairs. The man who stood behind that desk was very real, however, looking as much like a federal agent as Jones didn’t. Average height, average weight, middle age, medium-brown hair and eyes. Average, middle and medium everything else, too.
