Where Texas society reigns supremeand appearances are everything.
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Phillip Westin joined the Lone Star Country Club to meet nice girls and to forget about the not-so-nice one who broke his heart years ago. But when his ex comes to town, trouble isnt far behind. To keep her safe, Westin must rely on his tough-guy instincts to discern truth from lie, and his friends from his enemies.
Celeste Cavanaugh, aka Stella Lamour, cant remember a time when she didnt have stars in her eyes. These days, though, the stars are pretty tarnished, and a happily-ever-after in the sizzling embrace of her personal hero, Phillip Westin, doesnt sound so bad.
Cole Yardley had only met Celeste once, but hed remember her anywhere. When the shadowy ATF agent comes to town to investigate a gun-smuggling ring in quiet little Mission Creek, Texas, he threatens to blow Celestes secrets and her chances with Phillip away.
Dear Reader,
Top off your summer reading list with six brand-new steamy romances from Silhouette Desire!
Reader favorite Ann Major brings the glamorous LONE STAR COUNTRY CLUB miniseries into Desire with Shameless (#1513). This ranchers reunion romance is the first of three titles set in Mission Creek, Texaswhere society reigns supreme and appearances are everything. Next, our exciting yearlong series DYNASTIES: THE BARONES continues with Beauty & the Blue Angel (#1514) by Maureen Child, in which a dashing naval hero goes overboard for a struggling mom-to-be.
Princess in His Bed (#1515) by USA TODAY bestselling author Leanne Banks is the third Desire title in her popular miniseries THE ROYAL DUMONTS. Enjoy the fun as a tough Wyoming rancher loses his heart to a spirited royal-in-disguise. Next, a brooding horseman shows a beautiful rancher the ropesof desire in The Gentrys: Abby (#1516) by Linda Conrad.
In the latest BABY BANK title, Marooned with a Millionaire (#1517) by Kristi Gold, passion ignites between a powerful hotel magnate and the pregnant balloonist stranded on his yacht. And a millionaire M.D. brings out the temptress in his tough-girl bodyguard in Sleeping with the Playboy (#1518) by veteran Harlequin Historicals and debut Desire author Julianne MacLean.
Get your summer off to a sizzling start with six new passionate, powerful and provocative love stories from Silhouette Desire.
Enjoy!
Melissa Jeglinski
Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire
Shameless
Ann Major
www.millsandboon.co.uk
This book is dedicated to Ella Mae Lescuer for all her hard work.
ANN MAJOR
lives in Texas with her husband of many years and is the mother of three grown children. She has a masters degree from Texas A&M at Kingsville, Texas, and is a former English teacher. She is a founding board member of the RWA and a frequent speaker at writers groups.
Ann loves to write; she considers her ability to do so a gift. Her hobbies include hiking in the mountains, sailing, ocean kayaking, traveling and playing the piano. But most of all she enjoys her family.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
Prologue
Mezcaya, Central America
El Jefe terrorist compound
Lt. Col. Phillip Westin, burly ex-Marine, wasnt dead.
Hell. He almost wished he was. Solitary confinementit made you crazy.
Groggily, he chafed at the ropes binding his wrists and ankles. Beneath the restraints his skin burned from too much rubbing.
He tried to roll over but he was so weak he could only lie facedown in the dark, gasping. The windowless walls seemed to close in upon him. He wanted to screamor worseto weep. One minute he was burning up, the next he was shivering and whimpering on his cot like a baby. The cramps in his legs and arms knifed through him constantly.
Where the hell was he? Remember! Try to remember. His thoughts were slow and tortured. It took him a while to realize that he was lying on a dirty canvas cot deep in The Cave that served as the dungeon underneath Fortaleza de la Fortuna. The fortaleza was a terrorist compound in Mezcaya run by a particularly dangerous group of thugs who went by the name El Jefe.
Westin had been captured a few weeks ago shortly after hed run Jose Mendoza, one of the terrorist ring-leaders, off a mountain road and killed him. Too bad Mendozas illegitimate son, Xavier Gonzalez, didnt have a forgiving nature.
Westin blinked but couldnt see a thing. The damned dungeon was blacker than the inside of an apes behind.
His head throbbed where Xavier had smacked him with a rifle butt yesterday. His throat was dry. He was thirsty as hell. Dehydrated probably.
Xavier and his unkempt dirty bunch of thugs had captured him and beaten him senseless and then gleefully trussed him like a pig for slaughter.
He was going to die. At dawn. A single bullet to the head, the final coup de grace. An hour ago Xavier and a couple of short, teenage captors reeking of body odor had strutted inside The Cave like a bunch of bantam cocks in a barnyard and kicked him with their black, muddy combat boots.
Gringo. ¿Cómo estás? Theyd prodded him with their assault rifles and made cruel jokes in Spanish rather than in their Mezcayan dialect. Theyd flipped coins to see whod get lucky enough to pull the trigger. Xavier, the youngest and the most lethally handsome, had slid a .45 out of a black holster and dried it off on his sleeve.
You kill my father, so you die, gringo. You have no right to be in my country.
Your drug and gun money was making inroads in my town, bastardo. My town.
The kid was dark with a permanent Mezcayan tan. With one brown hand hed lifted a cigarette to his pretty mouth; with the other hed carefully centered the cold barrel on Phillips forehead.
Your town?
Xaviers eyes were scarily irrational in his pretty-boy face. His finger had pulled back the trigger ever so slightly. Bang. Bang, gringo. Your town is going to be my town.
Before Phillip could argue, the thick, acrid cigarette smoke from the kids cigarette had made him wretch. Hell, maybe puking up his guts had saved him. Instead of firing his gun, Xavier had burst out into hysterical laughter and shrieked, Cobarde. Coward.
Then the bastardo had danced a little jig.
Tengo sed. Im thirsty, Phillip had said.
Xavier had smiled that pretty smile. Sodrink this! Hed pitched the cigarette into the vomit in front of Phillips face.
Bastardos. His death was a game to them. Phillip Westin, ex-Marine, had been handpicked for the Alpha Force. His usual style was spit-and-polish perfect.
He wouldnt be a pretty corpse. He wouldnt even rate a body bag in this hellhole compound that was hidden deep in Mezcayan mountains and rain forest.
Thered be no military honors at his funeral. No funeral, period. No beautiful woman to weep over his grave back home in south Texas.
Suddenly a blond goddess, no a witch, seemed to float above him in the misty black.
Oh, God. Just when he was weak, wet, shaking and puking with fear, he had to think of herthe icy, trampy witch, whod walked out on him. Usually, the witch was satisfied to haunt his dreams. When he was awake, he was disciplined enough to keep his demons and witches at bay.
But he was weak and coldso cold and feverish a spasm shook himand so scared about dying he could think only of her.
Anger slammed him when her sulky, smoky voice began to sing the love song shed written about their doomed relationship.
He jerked at his ropes, and to his surprise they loosened just a bit. Go away! Leave me alone! he yelled into the steamy darkness.
The perverse phantom draped her curvy body against the black wall and sang louder.
Nobody but you/Only you.
Shut up, he growled even as every cell in his body began to quiver as he fisted and unfisted his fingers in an attempt to free his hands.
I had to say goodbyebut everywhere I gotheres nobody in my heartonly you.
Her husky voice had his head pounding. He dug his fingernails into his palms. Suddenly to his surprise, he jerked his right hand free of the ropes. Damn you, shut the hell up!
And yet I had to say goodbye, the witch crooned.
Tramp! Youre just a one-hit wonder. You know that, dont you?
That shut her up, but she didnt go away. Instead, that sad, vulnerable expression that could tie him in knots came into her eyes, which shone brilliantly in the dark. Her golden hair fell in silken coils around her slim shoulders.
Hell. She looked like a little lost sex kitten in need of a home and a warm bed. His home. His bed.
Oh, God, all she ever had to do was look at him like that and all he wanted to do was to hold her and to protect her and to make love to her. What would he give to have her one more time before he died?
Everything
His gut cramped as he clawed his cot with his free hands. He remembered exactly how her hair smelled, how her skin smelled, how her blue eyes flashed with tears if he got too domineering. Shed had a fearsome talent for gentling him.
Escape. He had to escape.
His hands shook. He closed his eyes and tried not to remember how small she was or how perfectly shed fit him.
Think of something else! Like getting out of here!
But when he swallowed, he tasted her. One taste, and he was as hard as a brick.
Somehow he got the ropes around his ankles loose, but when he tried to stand, the black walls spun and he fell back onto the cot. Weak as he was, his groin pulsed with desire. Hell. The proximity of death was the best aphrodisiac.
Damn Celeste Cavanaugh. Hed asked her to be his wife, to marry him. What a damn fool hed been to do that. Hell, hed picked her up in a bar. No. Damn it. Hed rescued her from a bar brawl. Shed been a nobody from the gutter, the prettiest, sexiest little nobody in the whole world with a voice like an angel.
Hed lifted her out of that life, given her everything, and treated her like a lady. Shed moved in with him and theyd played at love and marriage. Why the hell hadnt she bothered to tell him about her ridiculous ambition to be a country-western star? Why hadnt she at least given him a chance to understand it?
As soon as shed gotten on her feet, shed run to Vegas with another man. Phillip had come home from a dangerous mission in the Middle East where hed gone to rescue his buddies. His homecoming had been delayed because hed been captured and had had a narrow escape. But once home again, hed thrown his seabag down at the door, stalked through the ranch house, calling her name. God, all those days and nights when hed been a hostage trapped in that cell in the Middle East, hed been burning up for her. Just like now.
Shed left him a letter on his pillow.
I met a man, whos going to get me an audition with a world-famous producer, Larry Martin. Ill call you from Vegas. Shed said her stage name was Stella Lamour.
There had been more letters in the mailbox from Stella. After hed read and reread those letters, every word carving his heart out, something had died inside him. Maybe his feelings.
Forget her.
But he couldnt. Seven years later, she still starred in all his dreams.
When he died down here, she wouldnt even know. The bastardos would sling his bloody corpse into the jungle, and hed rot. In this rain and heat and mud, hed be fertilizer in less than a month.
Youre an ex-Marine. Forget her.
When he tried to stand again, he passed out and dreamed he was back home in Texas dancing with her at the Lone Star Country Club while his Marine buddies cheered and clapped.
He regained consciousness to heat that was as thick and dark as a sauna, to no-see-ums eating him alive. To explosions and heavy boots stomping down some corridor.
Dawn. Time to die.
Was there a weepy, pink light sifting through the single crack in the ceiling or was he hallucinating again?
Shouts in Spanish were followed by more heavy footsteps. Then the lock on the heavy door clicked. The door banged. Flashlights danced in the dark, blinding him.
Xavier? Westin squinted. Terror gripped him like a fist. He felt so weak and vulnerable he muttered a quick prayer.
Cobarde. Xaviers contempt still stung.
In those last fleeting seconds before certain death, Phillips life flashed in front of him in neon colorhis lonely childhood in his mothers Houston mansion with all those rooms that echoed as a solitary little boy walked through them in search of love.
Nobody had ever wanted himuntil Patricia, his college sweetheart. For a time shed seemed so perfect, but in the end, she hadnt wanted him enough to understand his determination to see the world and become a Marine.
Neither had Celeste. Both his loves had left him.
The flashlight zeroed in on his face, blinding him again. What was the use? He held up his hands in surrender. All he said was, If youre going to kill me, just be done with it.
Cobarde.
Not tonight, sir, said a familiar respectful voice that slammed Westin back to his days in the Marines, back to the Gulf War. Phillips eyelids stung when he tried to stand. Once again his legs crumpled beneath his weight. The lights spun and he nearly fainted.
Friends, came that familiar, husky voice that made Phillips eyes go even hotter.
Tyler.
Westin blinked. Ty Murdoch, his handsome face painted black and green, his night-vision glasses dangling against his broad chest, towered above him like a warrior god.
Tyler
Phillip was trying to stand but was falling again when Tylers strong arms grabbed him and slung him over his broad back in a firemans lift.
Youre going home, a woman said.
Celeste?
Before the beautiful woman could answer, Phillip fainted.
He was going home. Home to Celeste.
When he opened his eyes, they were beyond the compound, hunkering low in the tangle of bushes on the edge of the lavish lawns. Dimly he was aware of the pretty woman cradling his head in her lap.