Total Package

Safe, big, strong, masculine…sensual, hot, hungry…fierce lover, taking, giving…tender friend, sharing…

Flipside: Brooding, arrogant, traditional, a family man if ever there was one. Worse, he cooked and cleaned and washed her clothing and seemed content that she had no housekeeping skills whatsoever.

The whole tall, muscular, good-looking package was irritating, unsuitable for the lifestyle that she had wanted.

I love you,
he’d said.

Just maybe she’d been on the rebound and had gotten blindsided by Danya.

Who was he, anyway?

But she knew. Danya was a part of her now, a man who had shared her body, making love, not having sex with her. Now that was scary. Lovemaking was more than sex and now, no thanks to Danya, she knew the difference.

It would probably haunt her forever.

Dear Reader,

Welcome to another scintillating month of passionate reads. Silhouette Desire has a fabulous lineup of books, beginning with
Society-Page Seduction
by Maureen Child, the newest title in DYNASTIES: THE ASHTONS. You’ll love the surprises this dynamic family has in store for you…and each other. And welcome back
New York Times
bestselling author Joan Hohl, who returns to Desire with the long-awaited
A Man Apart,
the story of Mitch Grainger—a man we guarantee won’t be alone for long!

The wonderful Dixie Browning concludes her DIVAS WHO DISH series with the highly provocative
Her Fifth Husband?
(Don’t you want to know what happened to grooms one through four?) Cait London is back with another title in her HEARTBREAKERS series, with
Total Package
. The wonderful Anna DePalo gives us an alpha male to die for, in
Under the Tycoon’s Protection.
And finally, we’re proud to introduce author Juliet Burns as she makes her publishing debut with
High-Stakes Passion.

Here’s hoping you enjoy all that Silhouette Desire has to offer you…this month and all the months to come!

Best,

Melissa Jeglinski
Senior Editor
Silhouette Desire

T

Below the cliff on which Danya Stepanov stood, the waves caressed the smooth silvery strip of sandy beach. Alone and brooding, Danya stared at the small cluster of lights that signified Amoteh, the town in southwest Washington State.

In the distance, jutting out into the darkness was the Amoteh Resort, managed by Danya’s cousin, Mikhail. The lush resort, one of a worldwide chain, offered tourists rest and businesses convention facilities. It also supplied many of the residents in town with an income from their crafts. Within the huge resort was a display room for Stepanov Furniture; the pieces were crafted by Danya’s uncle Fadey, his cousin, Jarek, and others.

Winds swept up from the shoreline below the cliff, tearing at Danya’s hair. Carrying the fresh bite of salt and the earthy fragrances of mid-June, the mist stirred around his body.

He turned to the ancient rocky grave, no more than a weathered mound behind him and walked to it.

The wind stirred the grass at his work boots, as if the Hawaiian chieftain who had died there recognized another lonely male. Danya understood the Hawaiian chieftain’s curse upon the land, a dying man damning his fate. Kamakani had been captured by whalers over a century and a half ago, and he’d been stranded on a land that wasn’t his, missing a woman who belonged to him.

Danya knew what it was to miss part of his heart and soul, his love, a wife who had died too young.

Familiar with brooding and loneliness at midnight, Danya looked around him. Strawberry Hill, a peninsula jutting out into the Pacific Ocean, was windswept and accessed by a rocky path. During high tide the waterway passage from the peninsula to the small town of Amoteh was dangerous. The huge deadly stone rising out of the crashing waves had already caused many boaters’ deaths. At low tide, Strawberry Hill could be reached by a long walk along the shoreline and a hike up that rocky path.

Danya found what he wanted—a small stand of wind-whipped trees, nothing like the soaring straight pines of his native Wyoming mountains—but it held the scent and feel of home.

An experienced woodsman, Danya moved into the shadows of the trees to brood.

Nine years ago, a drunken driver had taken the life of Danya’s young wife. Danya had been driving—how could he have avoided the crash, those headlights crossing the road?

Danya had lived that nightmare many times—what could he have done?

He inhaled the salty air and felt his heart twist, as if part of it had been wrenched away. His brother, Alexi, had also been a rancher, starting a new life in Amoteh. Now, over a year later, he was married and a father. Would it actually help Danya’s empty heart to relocate with his father, Viktor?

Last year, Danya had desperately needed the change from
his father’s Wyoming ranch, where everything reminded him of his wife. Jeannie would have liked Amoteh, a Chinook name for the wild strawberries growing in the southwest Washington State coastal area. She would have liked the tourist pier, the sailboats skimming along the horizon, and digging in the sand for razor back clams.

She would have loved raising children amid their Stepanov cousins.

He inhaled unevenly and wondered if she was there with him, swirling around in the mist, waiting….

Danya turned his thoughts to what he did have—a family surrounding him, children to hold, a growing building and remodeling business with his brother—

The sound of a stick breaking caused him to tense—someone walked through the grass. The steady sounds said that one person had purpose, tramping to a familiar destination without the use of a flashlight.

He smiled grimly; there were others walking in the night, shielding their loneliness from those who cared and worried about them.

A high loud howl broke the night—a frustrated sound too high for a man, but still a howl. Danya eased aside in the shadows, watching the small shadow cross in front of him. It tossed a bulky object to the ground in front of Kamakani’s grave.

The person turned and lifted arms high—and a woman removed her top, bending to shimmy out of her loose pants.

A woman with hair too short to be caught by the wind stood, her legs braced apart, a small curvy silhouette, but definitely a woman. Outlined by the moon peeking through the clouds, she seemed almost mystical, a goddess coming to court the night.

Then she raised her hands high and yelled angrily, “Dammit, what’s wrong with me? Look at me, will you, Chief? I’ve got everything any other woman has—maybe less in some places, but the basic equipment is there. So why did Ben marry some little fluff-cake and not me? Fluffy hasn’t got a brain in her head. So why did he pick her over me?”

A string of unladylike curses sailed through the night air, and Danya had the uneasy suspicion that the lady just might intend something drastic—like stepping off that cliff onto the jagged rocks below.

“Look. Basic thirty-year-old female equipment. Correction: prime equipment. We had sex. Sure, Ben never took that long, but then we didn’t have much time between jobs and that suited me. Look. Breasts. They have nipples and everything.”

The woman flung away a scrap of something, that just could have been a bra. She shimmied and tugged at her hips, and her foot kicked away another scrap. “Okay, Chief. You’re a man—or you were. What’s wrong with me?”

Absolutely nothing was wrong with her.
The woman’s silhouette was all curves. Danya’s throat dried and something he thought had died started stirring. She was right: all the basic equipment was there. The impact shot right down his body and lodged into a hard tight knot.

“Okay, so I don’t do the helpless little Fluffy-no-brains act. That’s all fake anyway. Really, Chief. Tell me. Send some sign or something.”

Danya should leave her to grieve over her lost lover.

But she just might step over that cliff and that would be a shame.

Then, he thought as he weighed his options, there was the little matter of his own curiosity.

Danya moved silently through the shadows and circled down the rocky path leading to the grave site. When he’d gotten a distance down Strawberry Hill, he called loudly to the night, “I’ll be fine. Go on back down without me.”

Satisfied that would warn the woman of his coming, he began a slow upward walk to where he expected she would be rapidly dressing. From the corner of his eye, he noted a sleeping bag spread on the ground. His foot tangled in something and he reached down to collect a stretchy garment; it was a woman’s sports bra, which he’d seen other women wearing as they worked out. The rumpled white cotton briefs
were still warm and fragrant from her body. That light floral scent of a female caused him to tense, suddenly aware that it had been a long, long time since he’d made love. He crushed the fabric possessively in his fist and forced himself to toss it carelessly to the sleeping bag. “Huh. Leftovers from a romantic night I guess,” he said loudly.

Danya walked slowly past the woman hidden by the night; rustling sounds said she still wasn’t finished dressing, and giving her more time, he walked to the edge of the cliff.

He could hear her breathing, and sensed her waiting behind him. Then she cleared her throat. “Um, mister. You’re not thinking of jumping, are you? Please don’t do that. I’ve had a really miserable day and you’d only make it worse.”

Sidney Blakely only wanted to escape the coy, perfumed, primping, light-brained mass of calendar models at the Amoteh Resort.

She did not want to witness a suicide, a cliff jumper determined to end his miserable life.

On the other hand, as a professional photographer, she could get a good shot of—Sidney discarded that thought. For once, she didn’t have a camera and she really didn’t want to see someone splattered all over the rocks below. If he fell onto the sand, that might be different, but still—

She paused just a heartbeat—the man looked really big, maybe six foot three or so, and powerful. If she came too close, he could easily take her five-foot-five-inch, 110-pound body right over the cliff with him.

She might be Ben’s sexual leftover, but she wasn’t ready to die.

Sidney hurried to finish pulling on her camouflage pants and tugged her sweatshirt down to her hips. Her boots were discarded and she had no time to put them on before she stopped the jumper. The rocks bruised her feet as she tried to both hurry and avoid pain. “Ooh, ouch…ooh…ouch. Hey, mister. Don’t do anything rash. Let’s talk this—ouch—out.”

Sidney came closer to stand a little behind the man—just out of reaching distance.

As a freelance photographer, she’d seen men, stunned by war, want to take their own lives. She’d seen them walk deliberately into enemy fire. She’d seen whole native villages taken out by floods and volcanoes; she’d captured the devastation of the western U.S. fires, flown above the scorching deserts, crossed desolate Arctic stretches to photograph reindeer herds. Well published in various magazines, she was an on-the-spot prime and well-paid photographer and she recognized people who were on the very edge of life, ready to throw it away.

This man was brooding, maybe contemplating death—she had to stay calm, work him down, make him see that life wasn’t all that bad…even though hers was in the toilet now that Ben had married Fluffy.

She eased into position a few feet to the side of the “jumper,” and studied him. The wind caught his hair, the salty mist swirling around him. Early thirties maybe, shaggy wavy hair, a rugged hard face and a jaw covered with stubble, from there on down, he was all power and broad shoulders and long lean legs in jeans that topped his work boots. The hand raised to push back his hair was big and wide and strong—he was a man who worked with his hands and those broad shoulders said he was probably a laborer, Sidney decided.

“I come up here to be alone,” he whispered in a deep gravely voice.

Sidney moved closer. She had to think of something to keep him from jumping. “Yeah? Want to tell me why?”

He turned to her and those deep-set eyes, only slivers of silver in the night, pinned her. Oh, no, Sidney thought wildly, the guy could be a serial killer waiting here every night for his victim, and she’d walked right into—

A strand of his hair drifted across his cheekbone, softening the hard edge. His voice came deep and wrapped in a Western drawl that seemed to hold humor: “Sometimes, life is just the pits.”

Sidney decided that serial killers probably weren’t the humorous kind of guys and reverted back to her “jumper” theory. “How well I know—er, ah…Now, it isn’t always the pits. Look at the bright side, guy. Why don’t we talk about this?”

“What’s ‘this’?”

“You know, how good life is. We’ll swap stories and you’ll feel better. All we need is a beer and some talk and you’ll see that life isn’t that bad.”

“You brought beer up here?”

He sounded interested in that, but then maybe he was an alcoholic, and already pretty well on his way—but then he smelled like fresh air, newly cut lumber, that wonderful just showered soap-and-male smell. “No beer. Just a buddy to listen to you in the night. We’ll swap stories. You’ll see that my life is no joy ride and you’ll feel better.”

“I doubt if you can top what I’m going through.”

“Oh, no, I can. Wait until I tell you about it—step back from the edge there and I’ll tell you about my miserable excuse for a life. If you think you’ve got problems, you should try my life.”

A human touch, that’s what the man needed at his lowest hour, to know that someone cared about him. Sidney eased closer. “Now don’t do anything rash, just take my hand.”

His frown directed toward her was suspicious. “Why should I? What do you mean, rash?”

He wasn’t playing his role well—she was supposed to be rescuing him and instead he was asking questions. “Because I said so, dammit. I mean that a step or two more and you could go over the edge.”

He stared at her blankly for a moment and shook his head. “You think that I might—Uh…I see.” In the darkness he smiled slightly, as if enjoying a new thought. “Okay,” he agreed meekly.

He looked down at her extended hand, then slowly his large rough one closed over it. Calluses, Sidney thought, a workman who probably has pride in something—she just had
to find out what made his life worth living and open the good things up for him.

Sidney inched back from the cliff and he followed her just those few feet. She breathed a little easier. Still. He could take a running jump at any time, and maybe take her with him. She could read the newspaper headlines now—or rather the memos and back copy that only a few people might read—Sidney Blakely, Freelance Photographer Dies in Lovers’ Leap. Send donations to—yada, yada. Bulldog, her father, would curse her for stupid female brain and her sisters, Stretch and Junior, would be left to fend for themselves. Fluffy would cry prettily and Ben would yawn and turn over. He did that well, yawn and turn over when he finished sex—Well, sex with Fluffy now.

The problem was, this guy wasn’t her lover. The headlines and memos would be wrong—typical bad reporting; the facts would be skewed.

“Guy, I’m going over there and sit down on my sleeping bag—” If the jumper was sitting, he couldn’t jump, could he? “And you’re welcome to sit a while. Or maybe we could walk down together. Maybe go for a beer somewhere?”

The man’s palm fitted against hers, his fingers linked with hers. Oh—Sidney cursed mentally—he was going to take her over with him. She stepped up the pace, and tugged him along to the sleeping bag. “Sit, dammit.”

“Are you always so sweet? That sounds like an order.” There was a slight, but unusual accent in his voice. She couldn’t place it—a cross between a Western drawl and something foreign.

“Bulldog—my dad was in the Marines. He raised my sisters and me according to regulations. Take it from there. And sit.”

When the tall man folded himself down onto her sleeping bag, Sidney took a deep breath. Shoot, she knew a few self-defense moves and just where to hit a man where he was most vulnerable. She’d been in basic training and maneuvers since she was old enough to toddle. Besides, he was staring off to
ward that cliff. It was probably calling him—jumpers sometimes said they got called to their deaths.