Mackenzie's Promise

Mackenzie's Promise
Catherine Spencer

Life has led Mac Sullivan to promise himself two things: never get involved with other people's problems–or with women. He's stuck to his guns until now, when Linda Carr begs him to find her baby niece. As an ex-police detective he has the skills to help her…. But what about the prospect of an emotional search in the company of a beautiful woman whom he's wanted since the moment he laid eyes on her?Mac knows there's no contest when it comes to one of his vows: a child is missing and he will track her down. But can he stick to his other promise–and keep Linda at arm's length?

“Are you sleeping?” Linda asked.

“Hardly! I was trying to decide if I should let you sleep in your car, or if I should play the gentleman and offer you my bed—without me in it, of course,” Mac replied.

“You’ll play the gentleman,” she said, her smile disturbingly sweet. “Of course.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I’ve got you figured out.”

“Don’t try to second-guess me, cookie. I’m not that easy to read.” He ran his fingertips over his jaw. “I’ve been going over a few things in my mind.”

She sat motionless, her clear blue eyes huge in her face.

“I’ll help you find your missing niece,” he said.

She sagged against the cushions, her relief manifest. “If you do that, there’s nothing I won’t do for you in return.”

“Be careful what you promise.”

CATHERINE SPENCER, once an English teacher, fell into writing through eavesdropping on a conversation about Harlequin

romances. Within two months she had changed careers, and sold her first book to Harlequin in 1984. She moved to Canada from England thirty years ago and lives in Vancouver. She is married to a Canadian and has two daughters and two sons—plus a dog and a cat. In her spare time she plays the piano, collects antiques and grows tropical shrubs.

Mackenzie’s Promise

Catherine Spencer

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

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

CHAPTER ONE

THE day they shipped her sister off by ambulance to the psychiatric wing of Lion’s Gate Hospital was the day Linda Carr decided to take matters into her own hands. The police had had their chance and, as far as she could tell, were getting precisely nowhere. Bad enough that the baby had been missing for seven weeks now; to stand idly by while June retired farther into the fuzzy world of tranquilizers was not to be countenanced.

Not that Linda blamed her sister. She’d known her own share of sleepless nights since the infant girl had disappeared, and she could only imagine how much worse it had been for the new mother to be told that her firstborn had been smuggled out of the hospital nursery—by the father, no less!

It shouldn’t have come as a surprise that Kirk Thayer would resort to extreme measures. From all accounts, he’d shown an astonishing lack of moderation in most things to do with June, practically from the day he’d learned she was expecting his child. It was the main reason she’d refused to marry him. But that he’d go so far as to kidnap the baby and disappear without trace…!

“I’ll bring your little daughter home,” Linda promised, when she visited June the morning after she’d been hospitalized. “You just concentrate on getting well so that you’re ready to be a mommy, and leave the rest to me.”

“And how do you propose to do that?” Linda’s friend Melissa asked that night, as the two of them dined on pasta primavera at their favorite West Vancouver restaurant. “Being a bona fide European-trained chef doesn’t exactly qualify you as a private investigator. It’s already been established that Thayer left town the same day he stole the baby and probably returned to the States. He could be anywhere by now, and given his unpredictable state of mind, I think you’re going to need an expert to track him down.”

“Uh-uh!” Linda shook her head decisively. “Not an expert, the expert—and I’ve got you to thank for finding him for me. Remember that magazine article you sent to me when I was living in Rome—the one you wrote about the maverick police officer who quit the force because he refused to be bound by all the red tape surrounding it?”

Melissa eyed her incredulously. “Please tell me you’re not referring to the reclusive Mac Sullivan, former ace detective now living in exclusive solitude on the Oregon coast.”

“The very same. Going through the conventional channels isn’t working. It’s time for a more radical approach.”

“Quite possibly it is, but Mac Sullivan’s not your man. He won’t even return your phone calls, much less agree to help you. I’d even go so far as to say that he’s the most bullheaded creature on earth, and I know whereof I speak. Researching that article was worse than pulling hen’s teeth. Setting up a private tell-all interview with the Queen of England would have been easier.”

“I don’t care. He’s the acknowledged expert when it comes to tracking down missing persons—practically clairvoyant, according to your article—and I’m prepared to camp on his doorstep so that he trips over me every time he sets foot outside his house, if necessary. It beats sitting on my hands and watching June turn into a wraith of the woman she used to be.”

“I can’t say I blame you. I barely recognized her the last time I saw her. She’s nothing but skin and bone. And those haunted eyes…!” Melissa inspected her glass of wine and let out an exaggerated sigh. “So what can I do to help—since I assume that’s why you’re bribing me with this very fine merlot?”

“I want you to check your sources and find out exactly where this Sullivan man lives. I need something a bit more specific than ‘on the Oregon coast’, which covers a lot of territory.”

“I don’t need to check any sources for that. He lives right on the beach in Trillium Cove.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Not many people have. It lies between Bandon and Coos Bay, and caters to the rich and reclusive, not tourists or newshounds. We were treated like lepers when we started nosing around town. Your best bet, if you’re determined to go this route, is to be discreet and look sophisticated, which shouldn’t be too difficult, given your worldly, cosmopolitan air. It’s a small town and none of the streets have names, so there’s no point in looking at a map. On the plus-side, though, his place lies at the end of a gravel road running directly west of the post office, so you’ll find it easily enough. But for what it’s worth, if you do find him—”

“When,” Linda corrected her. “I will find him, Melissa. I have to. June can’t go on like this and neither, come to that, can our mother. She’s been sick with worry for weeks now and the stress…well, you know how much she has to put up with already. This could be the last straw for her.”

“Then when you find him, don’t rush your fences.”

“Why not? This is an emergency and time’s of the essence. What’s wrong with being up-front about that?”

“Trillium Cove isn’t Rome or Paris—or even Vancouver. Things don’t happen at breakneck speed around there just because you want them to—and Mac Sullivan’s definitely not someone to be pushed. You can’t go hammering on his door and expect the only thing he’ll ask is ‘How high?’ just because you tell him to jump. If there was one thing which came across loud and clear during the brief interview he granted us, it’s that his priority these days is completing the book he’s writing on criminal profiles, and he resents anything which takes time away from that, although he did admit to doing a bit of police consulting on the side, once in a very rare while.”