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      MILLS & BOON

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      Contents

      Acknowledgments

      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

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 22

      Chapter 23

      Chapter 24

      Chapter 25

      Chapter 26

      ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

      I want to thank my wonderful editor, Margaret Marbury, for all of her help and encouragement, and Police Chief John Weiss for helping me with this book’s ending. I also want to thank my stepbrother, Chris Sullivan, my mother, Gail Davis, and my stepfather, Richard Sullivan, for taking care of my son while I wrote this novel. Last but absolutely NOT least I want to thank my son, Isaac, for being my biggest fan and greatest motivator. Isaac, I love you with all my heart and soul.

      1

      Why sleep with the enemy when you can screw ’em?

      —C’est La Mort

      It’s not often that an old friend and mentor asks you to seduce her husband. I suppose it was the bizarre nature of the request that made me want to do it. Or perhaps it was because I knew that Melanie O’Reilly was at least partially responsible for my becoming a novelist. Or maybe I just agreed because I thought it would be a good way to get my mind off my ex-boyfriend, Anatoly Darinsky.

      Whatever. The point is that after years of very sporadic contact Melanie invited me to lunch and asked if I would do her a big favor. My initial assumption was that she wanted me to donate some money to one of her favorite organizations or charities—the Salvation Army, the Symphony, the Boy Scouts…what have you. It even occurred to me that she wanted me to attend one of those five-hundred-dollar-a-plate dinners to support Flynn Fitzgerald, the majorly right-wing Contra Costa County congressional hopeful whose campaign was currently employing her husband, Eugene. The last really would have been a huge favor since I disagreed with almost everything Fitzgerald stood for, but for my favorite former writing professor I would have done it. But this…this one came out of left field.

      It seems that Eugene had not been the same since he and a few of his evangelical buds had returned from a Moral Majority road trip, an excursion not unlike the MTV Rock the Vote road trip, except this expedition involved more Jesus talk and less talk of body piercing. Melanie was convinced that the Jesus van had doubled as a magnet for wayward sluts, and that her husband had been nibbling on the forbidden fruit.

      But I digress. My mission had nothing to do with Jesus, nor was I supposed to emulate the Virgin Mary. My mission was to tempt Eugene by behaving like Mary Magdalene during her party years. Melanie explained that I was the only “younger woman” friend who had never met her husband. At thirty-one I wasn’t sure I still qualified as a younger woman, but it was true that I had never met Eugene O’Reilly. I was supposed to have gone to their wedding but a bout of strep throat put an end to those plans.

      I wasn’t going to sleep with him, of course. Apart from the fact that this was only a fact-finding mission, one look told me that the man’s weight had to be somewhere under one hundred and twenty pounds. If a guy looks like Brad Pitt I’ll willingly compromise my political ideals in exchange for a little face time, but when confronted with a conservative who’s twice my age and skinny enough to make me feel fat, I emphatically refused to cross the party line.

      I’d simply be testing him: if Eugene O’Reilly wanted to play “break the commandments” with me I would simply ditch him and report back to Melanie. If he resisted my charms, all was right with the conservative world.

      I took one more sip of the lemon drop I had been nursing while scoping him out from my seat in the darkened corner of the Antioch bar, screwed up my courage and then crossed the room to Eugene.

      “Is this seat taken?” I pretended not to notice the way my short red dress rode up when I climbed onto the bar stool.

      The man didn’t even bother to look up from his Scotch and soda. “Not that I’m aware of.”

      So far so good—still, I couldn’t help but feel a little hurt. I mean really, when an older man doesn’t bother to give you the time of day after you stick your boobs in his face you have to question your own sex appeal.

      I tried to discreetly glance at myself in the mirror behind the bar. No major pimples, and as far as I could tell I didn’t have food in my teeth. My hair was a little out of control but no more than usual. My father was African-American and my mother had curly hair that was typical of her Eastern European Jewish ancestry, so when it came to my hair “a little out of control” was the best-case scenario.

      I rested my elbow on the bar and tried another tactic. “I’ve never been to this place before.”

      “Mmm.” He took another sip of his Scotch and casually looked around the room. I caught a glimpse of his hands, which seemed to be one of his few saving graces. They were big and strong…I’m into hands, but they need to be attached to a body that is at least a little appealing. Anatoly had great hands, and arms, and shoulders…but I wasn’t going to think of him right now or ever again. I was over Anatoly. Really.

      “I don’t usually go to bars,” I said, bringing my focus back to the task at hand, “but tonight I just had to get out of the house. You ever feel like that? Like you just need to go somewhere no one knows you and forget your troubles?”

      Eugene looked at me for the first time. “What are you trying to forget?”

      I hesitated. I hadn’t really worked this story out in my head yet. “Oh, you know…family stuff.”

      He nodded and turned his attention back to his