Book Excerpts

Her first day on the job as a bodyguard for the Zimmermans and Chloe Howard already wanted to quit. In a limousine heading for the Dallas Community Christian Church, Chloe sat next to her client, Mary Zimmerman. Across from her, T. J. Davenport guarded Mary’s husband, Paul. If Kyra Hunt, her employer at Guardians, Inc., had told her she would be working with T. J. Davenport, she would have declined the assignment. Instead, she would be around the man for the entire month of the Zimmermans’ book tour. Chloe kept her gaze trained out the side window, but occasionally felt the brush of T.J.’s dark gaze. He was probably trying to figure out how to back out of this assignment, too. She’d worked with him nine years ago when he was a Secret...

Excerpt from In Defense of Love by Margaret Daley Maggie Summers sank wearily onto the chair, placing her large, brown-framed glasses on her desk. Reports were neatly stacked on its polished surface, along with a batch of letters that had to be signed before she could leave on her vacation. Vacation! She wasn’t sure if she should call the next week’s trip a vacation. Why had she allowed Ruth to talk her into this—a bicycle tour through Virginia? Her work must really be getting to her. She was crazy. That was the only excuse she could come up with. Maggie took a resigned swallow of her cold coffee, then leaned forward and quickly signed her name on several sheets of paper. It was extremely important for her to generate the necessary support for next month’s battle...

Ice spattered the windshield and laid a thin layer on the streets and sidewalks. Trees began to sag with the extra weight on their limbs. U.S. Deputy Marshal Colton Phillips leaned forward and inspected the roiling dark gray clouds moving in from the west. At least the roads were still passable; the weather lately had been warm in St. Louis, especially for February.But he didn’t have much time to get his witness to the St. Louis Downtown Airport. He was meant to transport the man to his temporary new home in Denver. The pilot of the U.S. Marshals Service’s jet had called earlier to warn Colton that, due to the weather, the airport would most likely shut down within forty minutes. Which didn’t leave him much time to make the flight.Colton kept...

Excerpt from Deadly Hunt (part of the series Strong Women, Extraordinary Situations): Tess Miller pivoted as something thumped against the door. An animal? With the cabin’s isolation in the Arizona mountains, she couldn’t take any chances. She crossed the distance to a combination-locked cabinet and quickly entered the numbers. After withdrawing the shotgun, she checked to make sure it was loaded then started toward the door to bolt it, adrenaline pumping through her veins. Silence. Had she imagined the noise? Maybe her work was getting to her, making her paranoid. But as she crept toward the entrance, a faint scratching against the wood told her otherwise. Her senses sharpened like they would at work. Only this time, there was no client to protect. Just her own...

Suddenly he was running toward the half-consumed hut. He stumbled and fell to the ground, the hard impact knocking his breath away. The smell of the smoke-saturated air made him scramble to his feet. Instantly he was moving forward again, his cry of agony rising above the sounds of the raging flames. He had to reach his parents. Michael Rutledge bolted upright in bed. His eyes flew open as sweat streamed down his face, drenching his body. Shudder after shudder racked him as he focused on his safe surroundings—thousands of miles away from the African jungle, decades later. But the stench of charred wood and burned vegetation seemed to hang in the air like a shroud, and images filled his mind that reminded him of that day thirty years ago. It was as though it had...

Silence finally reigned in the classroom, the noise and energy level swept out with the ten children who raced to catch their bus. Anna Stanfield walked slowly about the classroom, straightening some desks, picking up a piece of wadded paper, and savoring the quiet that came at the end of a school day. At the window she paused, took several deep breaths, and gazed at the mountains west of Denver. A cold front was pushing the unusually warm October weather further south, the wind catching multicolored leaves and hurling them through the air like bright tennis balls. People pulled their coat fronts tighter as they bent their heads into the norther. Anna smiled. She loved winter with its snow and crisp, chilled air, and had already gotten down her skis the weekend...