Heroes In Uniform Boxed Set
Publication date: June 9th 2015
Genres: Adult, Contemporary,
Synopsis
Ten full-length books and one novella from NY Times and USA Today Bestselling Authors. A Romantic Suspense and Military Romance boxed set of 11 Sexy Contemporary Alpha Heroes — Soldiers, SEALs, Spies, Agents, Rangers and Cops.
Including brand-new, never-before-published stories: a novella from Gennita Low and a full-length novel from Nina Bruhns.
KAYLEA CROSS–Danger Close. With his cover blown, former undercover CIA agent Wade Sandberg finds himself, and an innocent woman, the number one targets of the world’s most dangerous terrorist.
PATRICIA McLINN–At The Heart’s Command. Colonel John Griffin Jr. is a good and honorable soldier who faces the toughest mission of all when he returns home to Wyoming: Protect the woman he’s always loved – especially from himself.
GENNITA LOW–Dangerously Hot. While working undercover, looking for his missing brother, Luke meets the mysterious Nina who appears to know more than she’s saying. Can Luke charm the sexy and dangerous Nina into assisting him?
CARIDAD PINEIRO–Sins Of The Flesh. Ex-Army Ranger Mick Carrera has been hired to hunt down a woman who is nothing like he expects. As passion erupts between them, danger threatens from those who want to end Mick and Cat’s lives in order to safeguard their secrets.
SHARON HAMILTON–Cruisin’ For A SEAL. What starts out as a cruise vacation for 9 Navy SEALs and their wives, winds up a full scale Team operation, as they save the passengers from terrorists.
KAREN FENECH–Snowbound. FBI Agent Mallory Burke, injured and on the run for her life, is stranded in a snowstorm with a reclusive and secretive cop she’s not sure she can trust but is falling in love with.
TONI ANDERSON–Her Last Chance. Eighteen years ago the Blade Hunter found his first victim on the streets of NYC. Now, unless FBI Agent Marshall Hayes can stop him, he’s back to finish the job.
NINA BRUHNS–Barely Dangerous. Blue Wolf Cooper has a bear problem–as in, he suspects the pretty new USFS fire spotter is part of a vicious bear poaching ring he is trying to shut down. Margarethe “George” Johansen has a bare problem–as in, she keeps dreaming the sexy Fish and Game warden who’s been following her around sneaks up into her isolated tower, strips her bare, and makes incredible love to her…right before he kills her.
LORI RYAN–Everlasting. Katelyn Bowden never imagined coming home would dredge up a twenty-four year old murder and put her life at risk. She also never expected the man to come to her rescue would be the one man she’d resented for years. The one man she wanted nothing to do with.
CRISTIN HARBER–Garrison’s Creed. An injured CIA agent runs into the only man she can never see again–her first love, the one who “buried” her years ago.
DANA MARTON–Deathblow. Former small-town football hero turned cop, Joe Kessler never met a linebacker, perp, or a woman he couldn’t handle. Then a troubled single mom walks into his life, and the only place this hot jock will ever see ‘easy’ again is in the dictionary.
Don’t miss this anthology by contemporary romance bestsellers treating you to heroes to melt your heart!
EXCERPT
AT THE HEART’S COMMAND, A Place Called Home, Book 2
Patricia McLinn
Col. John Griffin, Jr., has just arrived at Far
Hills Ranch, his family’s Wyoming homestead for generations. It’s run now by
his aunt. But Grif hasn’t come to see her. He’s come to help two kids and their
mother -- the woman he’s never stopped wanting and can never have.
And nothing is going to stop him. Not the U.S.
Army. Not the pair of kids he’s getting ready to face. Not Ellyn Neal Sinclair.
Not even himself…
He moved ahead
to open the back door for her. “I’ll carry the basket.”
“There’s no
need for that.” He followed her out and took the basket, this time using enough
strength on his first attempt to overcome her resistance. “Grif – ”
“Go on up.”
He titled his head in the direction of the path to the ridge. The railroad ties
that had formed rough steps had rotted, but the path was passable, at least on
good days like this. “Unless you want to stay here and I’ll hang these myself.”
She’d
already started up the path, recognizing Grif’s never-to-be-budged tone. But at
the incongruous image, she chuckled and tossed over her shoulder, “How would it
look to have a major in the United States Army hanging up laundry?”
“Colonel,”
he murmured absently.
“Colonel?
You’ve made full colonel? That’s quite a jump in a short time.” She looked back
at him, but could read nothing in his face.
“I suppose.”
At the top,
she turned and faced him. “That must have been some assignment you got – the
one you left Washington for so suddenly right when...” She took a breath and
finished in a different direction. “Before we moved back here.”
“It was.”
His quiet answer both filled in the gap she’d left and cut off the subject like
a concrete wall at the end of a one-way alley. “Where do you want this?”
She gave up
thoughts of trying to break through that concrete, and nodded to a stretch of
unfilled clothesline. “Thanks, Grif. Now, why don’t you go see Marti and – ”
He ignored
her, pulling out a pair of racing stripe pajama bottoms and shaking them out. “Ben’s?”
“Yes, but –
”
“He must
have grown a foot.”
His tone – a
crust of sadness overlaying awe – clogged her throat. She nodded, and
swallowed. “Meg, too.”
He jammed a
clothespin over the waist of the pajamas and the line. He looked over at the
items she’d hung earlier, then at his handiwork, and frowned. “That’s not
secure.”
“It works
better if you pin each cuff to the line – the material catches more breeze that
way and dries faster. But, really, Grif, this isn’t necessary.”
As she took
out another of Dale’s old shirts that she wore around the house, she used her
peripheral vision to watch Grif remove the clothespin, turn the pajamas upside
down and pin one cuff. He recognized the new problem immediately. She caught
the inside of her cheeks between her teeth.
Trying to
keep the unpinned pajama leg from flapping around, he stretched toward the
basket for a second clothespin. He should have looked awkward, ludicrous,
uncoordinated. Instead, the twisting, reaching motion pulled the knit of his
shirt taut across long, ropy muscles in his back, and molded the fabric of his
pants around the powerful curve of his thigh and the even rounder curve of his
–
No longer
tempted to grin, Ellyn jerked her gaze and thoughts from where they didn’t
belong, grabbed a clothespin and moved in to help him.
He released
the loose pajama leg to her hold, then reached over her shoulder to help keep
it in place. With his other hand still on the first pin and with the pajamas in
front of her, she was surrounded. She drove the pin home with more power than
finesse, and quickly ducked under his extended arm.
“That’s how
you do it,” she said once she’d gained some distance. “But, as I said, this
isn’t the kind of duty you’re used to, Colonel Griffin.”
“Even a
colonel can learn.”
As they both
bent over the basket, she to retrieve the shirt she’d dropped there when she
grabbed the clothespin, and he to pull out one of Meg’s sweatshirts, she
glanced at him, found his eyes on her and looked away.
“You never
learned to do laundry? I thought the army made men self-reliant.”
“I’ve washed
clothes now and then, but nobody ever taught me the finer points. Mom did the
laundry when I was a kid. When she got sick...” His next words were
matter-of-fact. “My father could never be bothered with household stuff, so we
sent everything out. My self-reliance comes in the form of finding the best
laundry in the shortest amount of time in a new place. One good thing I learned
from my father.”
A year and a
half ago, and anytime in the eight years before that, she would have said that
John Griffin Junior was her best friend. Now it struck her that in all the
years she’d known him, stretching back to spending most childhood summers on
this very ranch with him and the others, she’d heard him mention his mother maybe
a dozen times, and his father half that. So exactly how well did she
know him?
Certainly
not well enough to have avoided being blindsided by his absence these past
fifteen months.
She didn’t
know how long she’d been mulling that while automatically hanging clothes
before Grif’s voice cut into her thoughts. “Why aren’t you using the dryer.”
“Use a dryer
on such a beautiful day? That would be a homemaker’s sin,” she said airily.
“I don’t
remember you caring much about homemaking sins.”
He must have
caught her reflexive wince, because he reached a hand toward her that she
evaded by stretching up to secure the corner of one of Ben’s shirts.
“I didn’t
mean anything critical, Ellyn. I just remember you not worrying about such
things, so – ”
“Of course
not. You’re right,” she said lightly. “I was never that kind of woman. A mouse
to start, a bit of a tomboy later, then a haphazard housekeeper, and, as a wife
– ”
Grif’s hand
on her arm drew her around. “You’re talking nonsense – you know that, don’t
you, Ellyn?”
“Just
quoting Rose Neal Brindford.” And Dale, but Grif didn’t need to know that.
“Don’t. Your mother’s a – ”
She watched
him bite back the word she could almost hear on his tongue. He turned away, and
his big hand settled on the inside seam of the jeans hanging upside down. Even
as kids, he’d always hated the way her mother criticized her. Hated it even
worse if she criticized herself with her mother’s words. But that was a hard
habit to escape.
“Ellyn.” She
couldn’t take her eyes off his hand. In a motion she was certain was
unconscious, his hand slid slowly along the inside seam of the jeans – her
jeans. “There are some things we should talk about. Get clear.”
The
caressing touch of his hand dropped lower along that seam – nearly to the point
where the left leg met the right, to the point where – Oh, lord. She
spun around, looking for something else, anything else to absorb her
attention.
Marti and
Kendra were right. She’d been alone too long. Living out here without any male
companionship. Letting her libido get so desperate it rioted at the sight of a
strong hand sliding down the seam of her jeans, toward – No!
“About why
I’m here,” Grif was saying, “and...other things.”
This was not
the time for her to try to talk to him about anything, not while images of a
hand on a pair of jeans strobed through her brain and bloodstream. She needed
something to keep him occupied while she got her mind on a different track...an
entirely different track.
“Ellyn? Are
you listening?”
She let out
an audible whoosh of relief as she spotted exactly the distraction she
needed.
Saved by the
school bus.
“The kids
just got off the bus down at the highway.” She nodded toward two distant
figures starting along the ranch road. “I’m going down to wait for them
inside.”
And to get
away from the unexpected dangers of hanging laundry.
Grif had
turned to see for himself, and now he remained looking that way as he spoke.
“Maybe you should tell Meg and Ben about my being here before they see me. It
could be a shock.”
“A shock?”
Her own unsettled feelings sharpened her voice and words. “In the past year and
half, we’ve become shock experts, and believe me, this doesn’t count, Grif.
Don’t make a bigger deal of this than it is.”
And if he
didn’t realize after that little speech that she’d changed, he never would. But
somehow she didn’t want to see his judgment of this new Ellyn right now. She
started back to the house without looking at him.
* * * *
If the army
had Ellyn Sinclair, it wouldn’t need drill sergeants to cut recruits down to
size.
Don’t
make a bigger deal of this than it is.
That put him
in perspective, didn’t it? Grif grimaced as he followed Ellyn’s straight back
down the eroded steps.
Well, what
had he expected? That she – they – would fall on him like a savior? Just
because pulling out of their lives had been like pulling himself off life
support didn’t mean it had affected them the same way.
When the
four Sinclairs left Washington fifteen months ago, he’d known they’d have
support in Far Hills, led by his aunt, Marti Susland. Even when he’d heard
about Dale’s death, he’d been certain Ellyn and the kids would be looked after.
Still, he’d planned eventually to come to Far Hills to assure himself they were
okay, maybe try to pick up some of the threads that had once tied them...when the
time was right, when he was sure he was ready.
The time had
never been quite right, and he hadn’t been ready.
Then phrases
from Marti started to nag at him. Subtle at first, but not for long.
Increasingly more pointed phrases about tough times for Ellyn and the kids –
tough times emotionally and practically. She’d eventually written it flat out
in an email: They needed help.
So it no
longer mattered if he was ready.
interesting!!
ReplyDeleteSounds really good, looking forward to reading this boxed set!
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