LINDA CONRAD

      was born in Brazil to a commercial pilot dad and a mother whose first gift was a passion for stories. She was raised in South Florida and has been a dreamer and a storyteller for as long as she can remember. Linda claims her earliest memories are of sitting in her mother’s lap, listening to a beloved storybook or searching through the picture books in the library to find that special one.

      When Linda met and married her own dream-come-true hero, he fostered another of her other inherited vices—being a vagabond. They moved to seven different states in seven years, finally becoming enchanted with and settling down in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.

      Reality anchored Linda to their Texas home long enough to raise a daughter and become a stockbroker and certified financial planner. Her whole world suddenly changed when her widowed mother suffered a disabling stroke and Linda spent a year as her caretaker. Before her mother’s second and fatal stroke, she begged Linda to go back to her dreams—to finally tell the stories buried within her heart.

      Linda’s hobbies are reading, growing roses and experiencing new things. However, her real passion is “passion”—reading about it, writing about it and living it. She believes that true passion and intensity for life and love are seductive—they consume the soul and make life’s trials and tribulations worth all the effort.

      “I am extremely grateful that today I can live my dreams by being able to share the passionate stories and lovable characters that have lived deep within me for so long,” Linda declares.

      For Emily Olmstead, Sarah Gross and Donna Kordela, the greatest critique group ever. This book never would have happened without your valuable input.

      And to my sister, Susan Zyne, and to my dearest husband, J.C. Both of you believed in me always, and that made all the difference in the world.

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Epilogue

      One

      “You want me to take my baby on a stakeout?” Carley Mills shoved her chair back from the desk and stood to confront her boss. “Have you totally lost your mind?” she muttered in her typical lazy, Southern accent.

      “This isn’t a ‘stakeout,’ for crying out loud. Will you listen to the proposition before you go jumping to conclusions?” Carley’s boss, Reid Sorrels, towered over her, and she felt the brunt of his notoriously dark stare.

      As the busy assistant field operations manager for the Houston office of the FBI and agent in charge of Operation Rock-a-Bye, Reid got to the point. “Besides, you know I’d never do anything to put my goddaughter in jeopardy, don’t you?” He plopped down in one of the two secretary chairs facing Carley’s desk.

      She stiffened her spine to face him and thought of how far she’d come in the last eighteen months. She’d been so devastated when her partner and lover, Witt Davidson, disappeared that she couldn’t have confronted a flea, let alone someone as burly and determined as her boss.

      Witt had vanished into thin air. She’d always thought she was a strong person, able to cope with anything life threw her way. She prided herself on being able to help others with their problems and emotional traumas. But the stress of not knowing what happened to the man who fathered her child had nearly broken her.

      All right, so he’d never said he loved her. And he certainly hadn’t shown any enthusiasm for settling down with a family…but Witt hadn’t really known he had a family, either. Carley hadn’t given him a chance to know. She’d been so desperate to be sure he really cared for her that she’d put off telling him until they could get away from their jobs and truly be alone.

      But right in the middle of a major sting operation at Lake Houston one fateful August night Witt disappeared. One minute he’d been smiling at her and heading off to check out a suspicious-looking truck—then he was gone. Without a trace.

      They’d been so close to a tentative commitment. She’d known he was skittish about settling down, but she was positive she could have made him admit his love. Despite her conviction that Witt was a good man and wouldn’t run away, the doubts continually plagued her.

      “You still with me, Carl?” Reid broke into her thoughts, and she set her jaw to tackle her immediate problem.

      Carley edged around the beat-up oak desk until she stood a couple of feet from her boss, a man whose chronological age placed him at about thirty-three, only a few years older than she. Regardless of chronological age, he was light years ahead in wisdom and strength.

      She leaned her rear against the desktop and forced a smile at the man who’d been her savior more times than she could count. “Of course I know you wouldn’t hurt Cami…intentionally. But to uproot her and go chasing off to some remote part of the West sounds like it might not be in her best interest, either.”

      Reid scowled. “You