Parker And The Gypsy

Parker And The Gypsy
Susan Carroll

JUST LIKE A DAME…"It was one of those days when life arrives on your doorstep, unannounced. A day full of weak coffee and bourbon-colored memories. A day, like every other. Until she walked in the door… " Private Investigator Mike Parker was too cynical to believe in love.And when free-spirited Sara Holyfield showed up, requesting help with a strange missing-persons case, his first instinct was to show her the door. But something about Sara drew him in. Maybe it was her innocent face - or her not-so-innocent body. Or maybe it was the fact that Mike's archenemy had told him to stay away.But whatever the cause, Mike suddenly found himself faced with the biggest assignment of his career - protecting his wayward heart.

“It’s Late. I Should Be Going.” (#ue8794267-42e2-5205-b03c-eeba12d1a72a)Letter to Reader (#u2d4b768f-67dd-523b-85c5-af46b115405a)Title Page (#uca5cb746-208c-58ca-82b0-b28281a8334d)About the Author (#u7631be1d-4998-5828-bb3a-4bb59f25794f)Dedication (#ua127e346-57e0-58c1-9536-6c45fff25478)Chapter One (#u0c751035-a6d2-5eec-8cee-e5428240b17c)Chapter Two (#u574c519a-34a5-501a-9675-06762ba55dd9)Chapter Three (#u7011f589-654f-5f9f-8e72-1c6d2fb39740)Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

“It’s Late. I Should Be Going.”

“No!” Sara’s cry seemed almost involuntary. “I—I mean, you don’t have to. You could...stay.”

There was no mistaking her meaning. Her face was suffused with the delicate flush of passion, the glow of a woman waiting, willing to be loved. He’d never realized that desire could be such a pure and simple thing, almost holy when shining from a pair of deep blue eyes.

She was offering him everything he hungered for, and he didn’t know why he didn’t just reach out and take advantage of it. She was his gypsy lady. All the warmth that had always been missing from his black-and-white world.

He hesitated one moment more before taking the biggest risk of his life.

Mike Parker reached out of the shadows and took Sara’s hand.

Dear Reader,

A sexy fire fighter, a crazy cat and a dynamite heroine—that’s what you’ll find in Lucy and the Loner, Elizabeth Bevarly’s wonderful MAN OF THE MONTH. It’s the next in her installment of THE FAMILY McCORMICK series, and it’s also a MAN OF THE MONTH book you’ll never forget—warm, humorous and very sexy!

A story from Lass Small is always a delight, and Chancy’s Cowboy is Lass at her most marvelous. Don’t miss out as Chancy decides to take some lessons in love from a handsome hunk of a cowboy!

Eileen Wilks’s latest, The Wrong Wife, is chock-full with the sizzling tension and compelling reading that you’ve come to expect from this rising Desire star. And so many of you know and love Barbara McCauley that she needs no introduction, but this month’s The Nanny and the Reluctant Rancher is sure to both please her current fans...and win her new readers!

Suzannah Davis is another new author that we’re excited about, and Dr. Holt and the Texan may just be her best book to date! And the month is completed with a delightful romp from Susan Carroll, Parker and the Gypsy.

There’s something for everyone. So come and relish the romantic variety you’ve come to expect from Silhouette Desire!

Lucia Macro

And the Editors at Silhouette Desire

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

Susan Carroll

Parker And The Gypsy

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

SUSAN CARROLL

began her career by writing Regency romances. It was a long way from the starch of the British aristocracy to the sizzle of a contemporary American love story. But, in making the leap, Susan found one thing remained the same: that spark of humor that gives zest to any romance, no matter what the time period.

Susan draws on the same humor in her own life. Currently residing in Illinois, she keeps busy between books, coping with two lively children, two rambunctious cats and one very noisy hamster.

To my friend Paula Jolly, for reading the runes and helping to keep my aura fluffed.

One

Mikey ran through the maze of dark alleys, heart thumping beneath his ragged T-shirt, his grubby sneakers pounding the cold, hard concrete. Behind the kid, the shadow of a man loomed, tall and wavering in the streetlights, like a dangling spider.

Mikey glanced wildly about him for an escape route, but there was none. Brick walls enclosed him on all four sides. A ragged sob tore from his chest as he whirled about. The shadow man crept closer, ever closer. The boy flattened himself against the wall, tears streaking down his dirty cheeks as his stalker stepped into the light.

Mikey could almost see his face now....

“No! Go away,” the boy screamed as the shadow-man grabbed at him, his fingers sinking into Mikey’s shoulder like bony talons. With his other hand, the dark demon raised his knife—

“No!”

The word tore from Mike Parker’s throat as he wrenched awake, his head snapping back against the battered upholstery of his office chair. The leather creaked as he sat bolt upright and clenched the sides of his old oak desk, his brown eyes flying wide open. It took a few moments for him to remember where he was. The four plaster walls, the steel file cabinets and other trappings of his one man detective agency slowly penetrated his sleep-fogged brain.

No dark alleys. No shadow man. No knife. He had just dozed off at his desk, had a bad dream. That was all. But for a brief second, Mike felt all of twelve years old again. Small, helpless and scared. His hand crept reflexively to his shoulder, seeking traces of the wound that had long ago healed. Or should have. Damp patches stained the black T-shirt that hugged the hard contours of his chest, but they were from perspiration, not blood.

Swearing under his breath, Mike shook his head in disgust, raking back uneven lengths of tawny-colored hair from his eyes.

At the age of thirty four, he was too old for this, to be still having nightmares about the bogeyman. Or in this case, a day-mare. Anytime he was overtired or a little run-down, he could almost count on that stupid dream to come creeping up on him again. But after all these years, why, damn it?

“The answer is obvious, Michael,” the grad student from Rutgers he’d once dated had told him. “The dream is a manifest sign about some unresolved issue from your childhood.”

“You don’t say,” Mike had snapped, wondering how they’d gotten around to discussing his restless sleep habits in the first place. He’d been quick to change the subject with a suggestive remark that had brought both the uncomfortable conversation and his dinner date with the lovely Carolyn Saunders to an abrupt end. As she had stormed out of the restaurant, Mike had resolved upon two things. In the future, to steer clear of women who called him Michael. And to keep his dreams to himself.

“Manifest sign,” he muttered, still irritated by the memory of Carolyn’s attempts to play Sigmund Freud. The issues of his childhood had all been resolved quite well as far as he was concerned. Locked neatly away behind the bars of Trenton State Prison and forgotten.

The only thing the damn dream was ever a sign of was a hangover, just like the one that was making his head pound this morning. The dull pain still throbbed behind his eyes despite the cold shower and aspirin tablets that had gotten him awake and into his office earlier that morning.

Rummaging around in his top desk drawer, Mike managed to locate the plastic bottle and shook out two more white tablets into his hand. Uncoiling his six-foot-two frame from the chair, he dragged himself over to the water cooler and filled a stained ceramic coffee cup. He gagged down both aspirin in one huge gulp.

The blasted air-conditioning was on the fritz again and outside his open second story window, the heat and noisy traffic of another Atlantic City summer morning assaulted his much-battered senses in one great oppressive wave. He couldn’t remember how much he’d had to drink last night, but if it had him dreaming about the shadow man again, it had obviously been too much.

It had all started out harmlessly enough—hefting a few cool ones at Boom Boom’s Bar and Grill with his friend Jimmy Potts, in celebration of Jimmy’s upcoming marriage. Mike had spent most of the time staring morosely into his glass and wondering how many months it would take before Jimmy turned up in his office, hiring Mike to get the goods on the little woman when she took to cheating with some new Romeo. That, in Mike’s bitter experience, was how most marital bliss panned out. All those hearts and flowers, promises of love and eternal devotion—just another con game.

Despite his raging headache. Mike congratulated himself on surviving this bachelor party better than he had the last one, when he’d trailed after the girl who’d jumped out of the cake. Darcy Robbins. But she was another nightmare he’d just as soon forget.

Rubbing one hand along his unshaven jaw, Mike tried to summon up the energy to return to his desk and complete the report he’d been working on before he’d fallen asleep. Skip traces on some missing deadbeats for a local finance company. Boring as hell but—

A knock sounded on his office door, nearly startling him into dropping the coffee cup. As he replaced the mug back on top of the water cooler, he grumbled, “Now what?”

He knew it couldn’t be his secretary. Rosa had no respect for a closed door. She barged in whenever she felt like it. The rapping sounded again, causing Mike to wince. “All right, all right!” he snarled. “Just stop the damn pounding and come in.”

The door opened slowly and Mike blinked at the vision that filled his threshold. It was as though a burst of sunlight had pierced his gloom-ridden office and assumed the form of a woman. She was all softness, from the rainbow-hued skirt that clung to the willowy outline of her hips, to the white flowing blouse that shifted half off her creamy shoulders.