Running Hot

  Dedication

  For Wendy Duren, my inspiration for a heroine who is the perfect blend of beautiful and fierce.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  A Sneak Peek at Playing Dirty

  About the Author

  An Excerpt from An Heiress for All Seasons by Sophie Jordan

  An Excerpt from Intrusion by Charlotte Stein

  An Excerpt from Can’t Wait by Jennifer Ryan

  An Excerpt from The Laws of Seduction by Gwen Jones

  An Excerpt from Sinful Rewards 1 by Cynthia Sax

  An Excerpt from Sweet Cowboy Christmas by Candis Terry

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  WARD BENNETT JERKED back into consciousness. One shift, and he nearly wrenched his shoulder out of its socket. He didn’t need to see the plastic zip tie to know that’s what dug into his wrists and bound them behind his back.

  Moving his ankle, he didn’t meet any resistance. The person who shackled him had made a pretty big miscalculation. As if he needed his hands to escape. Any idiot could break a zip tie. But first he had to figure out how he’d gotten in this position and why.

  That must have been one hell of a date. It was a fucking shame he couldn’t remember one minute of it.

  Humidity made his skin slick, and sweat gathered between his shoulder blades as he scanned the open area. He’d been in similar structures for a week now but didn’t recognize this particular one. He’d call it a bungalow or cabana of sorts. The locals referred to it as a bure. Wooden beams, a thatched straw ceiling soaring a good twenty feet above his head, open walls, and not a stick of furniture other than the chair he was tied to.

  A warm breeze blew over him, and darkness fell around him on all sides. He could make out the shadow of trees and smell the ocean in the distance. He strained to listen for the usual sounds of the resort—the mumble of conversation and ever-present local music piped through the speakers, maybe the sound of motorboats in the distance—but heard nothing.

  People described this place as paradise. Right now, to him, Fiji pretty much sucked.

  As soon as the thought registered, footsteps echoed around him. The gentle sway of hips came into view. His gaze traveled up the tanned, lean legs peeking out from under the navy cargo shorts. Then to the sliver of bare stomach visible at the bottom of the slim tank top and to the impressive breasts filling out the top of it. He finally landed on that face.

  Tasha Gregory, the damn-she’s-hot, smooth-talking bartender from the Waitui Resort. The same one with the husky voice that made him stupid. From the slight wave in her long blond hair to the big brown eyes, everything about her worked for him. Which was how they ended up at her place last night . . . but the rest between then and now was a blur.

  The “how” was simple enough to understand. The zipping attraction had led to flirting. That explained why he’d spent most of the last six nights parked on a stool across from her, trading bits of island gossip. Well, that and because he was on Maku, a private island in the pacific nation of Fiji, to gather intel. She just happened to be a smokin’ hot source of intel.

  Which led to a new issue. For a supposed resort bartender she sure knew her way around a zip tie. And he was not an easy man to get the jump on. He’d been trained by the best at the Farm, the CIA’s top-secret training facility near Williamsburg, Virginia. There he’d learned how to do everything from survive interrogation to fly a helicopter to cut a man’s head off, sometimes all at the same time.

  A hundred-twenty-pound hottie shouldn’t worry him, but he’d lived long enough to appreciate the power of a pissed-off female. And he seemed to have ticked this one off in a big way. Normally not a problem, but he had a job to do and being tied to a chair made that tough.

  He twisted his hands, trying to keep the rest of his arms still and not give away his movements as he inched his thumb closer to his back jeans pocket. “Uh, Tasha?”

  “You’re awake.”

  He still wasn’t clear on when and how he’d gone to sleep. “You don’t seem too happy about that.”

  “Not really.” She didn’t bother to look up as she shuffled her way through his wallet, picking out one item at a time, checking it then letting it drop to the floor by her feet.

  Again, not exactly the usual bartender MO. Of course, every item on the floor could pass for real but wasn’t. His cover depended on that level of craftsmanship.

  He cleared his throat. “This is not the way I generally end a date. Start one, sure, but not end.”

  “Shut up.” She exhaled as she dumped the rest of the wallet on the floor and slipped a phone out of her back pocket.

  “Now, that phrase I’ve heard on dates.” His eyes narrowed as he realized the cell she held looked an awful lot like his burner. “Care to tell me what we’re doing?”

  She finally glanced up, firing a load of you’re-a-dead-man fury in his direction. “Who are you?”

  There was a question he couldn’t answer. The CIA tended to frown on black ops agents spilling their biographical data. She could pull out a flamethrower and put it to his dick and he’d still duck this one. And he was starting to worry she had a lethal weapon of some sort on her.

  “I thought we dealt with that days ago. I came to the bar. You served me drinks. We’ve been flirting and then we graduated to touching.” Sweet Jesus, the touching. She had smooth skin and this body that was so fit and curvy it made his fucking eyes cross. “Any of this sound familiar?”

  “We’re done playing games.” That’s all she said. Dropped the comment, and then nothing.

  She stood eight feet away, outside of kicking distance, and didn’t move. No telltale signs of nerves. She didn’t shift her weight or her gaze. She looked at him as if she could kick his ass and was just seconds away from starting. For some reason, Ward found that sexy as hell.

  The fact she’d dropped her usual smile and now came off as trained and not some random bartender was not quite as sexy. A grifter maybe? A hot woman who conned men out of their vacation money. Possible.

  Thinking she might have a partner, Ward glanced to the side. The kick of pain had him blinking and swearing. Looked like he couldn’t move his head without bringing on a stabbing sensation. That was new. “My head is killing me. What the hell kind of sex did we have?”

  “None.”

  Well, that was a damn shame. “Is that why you tied me up? Because I’m totally capable. I assure you. We can go right now.”

  “You talk too much.” But she stepped in closer.

  He’d been accused of a lot of shit on this job. Being chatty was not one. “You’re not exactly coughing up information here.”

  “Nor will I.”

  “You were more fun as a bartender.” Her arm shot out so fast he almost didn’t twist away in time. In and out. One shot, then she backed up again. Not that he could get too far while stuck in the chair or do anything to grab her anyway. At the last minute he threw his head to the side and took the brunt of the smack from the heel of her hand on his collarbone instead of his chin. Good thing, since his head ached enough already. “Damn, woman, that hurt.”

  “It was supposed to.”

  Felt like she held a weight in her hand or something. “Then congratulations.”

  “This isn’t funny, and you’re no tourist.”

  That made them even, as there was no way that hit came from a novice. Still, if she wanted to play,
they’d play. “I’m a businessman.”

  “A financial planner. Yeah, you fed me that line days ago.”

  “What, you’re not a fan of money?” It was a good cover. Solid. On business in New Zealand before he flew over for a vacation detour. Getting some sun, relaxing . . . maybe finding a hot bartender.

  “Actually, I hate liars.”

  This was not going well. Hard to charm a woman who looked ready to kill him, but he tried anyway. “Maybe you could untie me.”

  She pulled a gun out from behind her back. Not a baby gun either. No, this was a SIG Sauer P229, the same type that he preferred to carry and could put a good-sized hole in him.

  He cleared his throat. “Or not.”

  “Your record is clean.” She took a step closer. Just one and not quite far enough.

  “I don’t know what that means.” But he did. She was talking in a language he knew all too well. In an instant he went from thinking about her as some kind of con woman looking to score on a hapless businessman to something very different. Something mercenary and potentially dangerous to his operation.

  “The underage drinking charge was a nice touch on your record. Most people clean up their backgrounds a bit too much.” She shot him a level gaze. “But I think you know that.”

  Forget mercenary. This woman worked for someone. Getting that deep into his cover, past the stuff that even though faked should have looked as if it were expunged, meant connections. Impressive ones. “And you know this as part of your job as a resort bartender?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now who’s lying?” He focused on her face as he slipped the homemade shim out of his back pocket and went to work forcing it under the locking mechanism on the zip tie.

  The who-was-she possibilities spun through his head. He was there on a sanctioned job to find a nasty dictator hiding in paradise. The operation’s directive was clear: find Drissa Tigana and neutralize him before he started selling off some of those rocket launchers he’d stolen when he skipped his country and headed here. Fear was Tigana would destabilize Fiji, and no one wanted that to happen except possibly Tigana.

  Tasha could be one more person looking to make a quick buck in Fiji. Ward leaned toward believing that possibility but wondered if maybe he’d stumbled into something unrelated to Tigana. Maybe she liked tying guys up. Any way you looked at it, their time together was about done, which was a damn shame since they’d skipped the sex part.

  Her gaze bounced away from his face then returned. “You’re not as smooth as you think you are.”

  “I refuse to believe that’s true.” But just in case, he stopped fiddling behind his back.

  “You’re not as attractive as you think either.” She took another step.

  “Come on now. Take that back.” He judged the distance between them. Another few inches and he’d take her down. Might even feel bad about it for a few seconds, despite the fact she’d tied him to a chair.

  “And that thing you’re doing . . .” She eyed him up.

  Interesting, but she was going to need to be more specific since he had about ten exit strategies swimming around in his head at the moment. “Being charming?”

  “You’re counting my steps and thinking, ‘Wow, she was too dumb to tie my feet to the chair,’ and are now spinning all kinds of plans about getting the jump on me.”

  Well, shit. “I have no idea what you’re talking about. I sit at a desk all day.”

  “You should know, if you move your feet even one inch I will punch you in the junk so hard I’ll have to send an apology to the future kids you’ll never have.” She winked at him. “Got that, stud?”

  Sweet hell. Enemy or not, mercenary or con woman, she was so fucking hot. “You have my attention.”

  “Then tell me your name.”

  “Ward Bennett.”

  She sighed. “Your real name.”

  He wedged the shim under the tie’s locking bar and tugged. If she’d bound his hands together in front of him, he’d be out and knocking her down already. “You think if I made one up I’d go with that?”

  “Since you won’t talk when I’m being nice—”

  “This is you being nice?” He snorted for effect and to cover any noise from behind his back. “I gotta tell you, sweetheart. Your dating etiquette needs work.”

  “We’ll do this the hard way.” As she said the words, the gun came up again until it aimed at his head.

  “Lower that.” At this distance, she should be able to hit some body part he needed, and that was not okay with him.

  “Then talk.”

  He thought about keeping up the businessman ruse and doing a whole fake panic song and dance, but she clearly didn’t buy the cover. No need to act like an idiot and give her even more reason to blow his nuts off. “Give me a topic and I’ll babble until your damn head falls off, but put the weapon away.”

  “This is your last chance.”

  “Who do you think I am?” He slammed his foot against the floor to throw off her concentration as he took one last whack at the zip tie.

  “No, we’re not doing it that way.”

  She sure as hell talked like someone with intelligence experience. He mentally ran through the briefings for this operation. No one came to the island except him and Ford Decker, who was currently pretending to be a wealthy entrepreneur looking to buy a private Fijian island of his own. Up until ten minutes ago, Ward thought by hanging out with Tasha every night he got the better end of this op, but now he envied Ford and his task of sucking up to the idiot resort owner.

  The island consisted of one all-inclusive resort and a few bures for the people who worked there. In a space that size they couldn’t afford to bring in a team of people. They’d streamlined, and now Ward wondered if they’d gone a bit too bare bones; something else was clearly at play on Maku, and it looked like Tasha might be in the middle of it.

  “I’m guessing since you have the gun and the sudden can-kick-your-ass scary-woman thing happening that you’re not a regular bartender.” He didn’t usually point out the obvious, but he needed to stall for a bit more time.

  “You think?”

  That was the closest she came to admitting anything. Her background check had been clean. He had her file memorized. A California girl who landed in Fiji after washing out of college in Hawaii. She had the surfer girl look, but suddenly nothing else in the backstory fit as neatly as it once did.

  “Look, I don’t care who you are. And if you’re into weapons during foreplay, more power to you. But it’s time to let me go, Tasha. I check out of this place in two days and head back to my boring life. So, I want to enjoy the island before I leave.”

  “I’m going to shoot you in the knee in three seconds.” She aimed, and the frown suggested she wasn’t bluffing. “One . . .”

  “Ward Bennett.”

  “Two . . .”

  Damn if she didn’t look spitting angry and ready to fire. “You forgot one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Any idiot can defeat a zip tie.” One yank of his hands, and he heard the rip. The tie dropped to the floor, and his arms fell to his sides.

  He was up and out of the chair in a second, ignoring the rattling in his head. She jumped back, but he moved faster. He nailed her in the midsection, thinking he’d take her to the floor and question her once he had her pinned down and under him.

  She tried to stop him with a knee to the jaw, but he held on. With one hand under her knee, he tugged, and her balance faltered. He started to knock her down when he felt the prick in his shoulder.

  That fast, his fingers stopped bending and he lost his hold. Before he could shout, his tongue went numb and his muscles turned to liquid. One second he was on his feet, and the next he slammed to his knees. He could feel his body lean from one side to the other as he stared at the floor, watching the wood slats jump and dance through blurred vision.

  Gentle hands pushed him onto his side. Her hair swept over her shoulder and against his chee
k as she leaned over him. No matter how hard he tried, how much he concentrated, he couldn’t reach out and grab her. He didn’t even have enough control over his body to shove her away when her lips brushed against his ear.

  “And you forgot that I knocked you out once.” She waved something in front of his face. Looked like a needle. “Lucky for me I brought a second dose.”

  The bure started to spin.

  “Be a good boy and stay out of my way, Ward.”

  Chapter Two

  AS FAR AS great escapes went, Tasha thought she’d pulled off that one pretty well.

  She jogged through the rough terrain, over the tree roots, and dove into the thick groupings of trees. Her hiking boots slid over the fallen branches made wet from the just-after-dawn humidity. After a few minutes of blocking every thought and concentrating on staying on her feet, she broke through the brush and into the small clearing. A beat-up, fifteen-year-old SUV waited for her in the prearranged space by the dock on the far side of the three-hundred-acre island.

  She lowered the tailgate and lifted the torn carpet over the floorboard. After a quick press of the code into the lock, she heard a click and the hidden drawer popped open. She scanned the cache of shiny weapons stored inside before trading the gun strapped to her side for two knives. This part of the assignment called for weapons she could hide on her body without tipping off the local police.

  There were very few easy afternoons as an officer for the Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as Britain’s MI6, but Tasha found today especially annoying. She’d lost contact with the other officer on the ground in Fiji, hated the reports coming from the home office about Tigana . . . and then there was the Ward issue.

  The guy was a complete pain in the ass. Hot in that one-smoky-look-could-burn-away-your-underwear type of way, but a nuisance. She should have known he’d be trouble when he’d sauntered up to her bar, all tall and sexy and full of self-confidence. Between the full mouth and the muscular swimmer’s body, he’d had her common sense flickering.

  She blamed too many days on the job. Too much heat. His slim-fitting T-shirts . . .