Lawless. HelenKay Dimon

       “Hope.”

      One look and her body froze. Right there in the beating sun, she couldn’t even feel her heartbeat.

      Joel Kidd, the boyfriend who’d walked out on her eighteen months ago, stood next to the helicopter.

      Black T-shirt, olive cargo pants and sunglasses to hide those dark eyes. From this distance she could see the ever-present dark scruff around his chin. His black hair was longer, grown out from the short military style she remembered.

      She could see the gun strapped to his hip and knew Joel knew how to use it. That used to scare her a little. Now it comforted her frazzled nerves.

      “What are you doing here?” The whip of her voice mirrored her frustration.

      He hesitated, as if weighing what to say and whether to let his question go. Whatever he saw in her expression had him closing the distance between them. “I came to find you.”

      Lawless

      HelenKay Dimon

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Award-winning author HELENKAY DIMON spent twelve years in the most unromantic career ever—divorce lawyer. After dedicating all that effort to helping people terminate relationships, she is thrilled to deal in happy endings and write romance novels for a living. Now her days are filled with gardening, writing, reading and spending time with her family in and around San Diego. HelenKay loves hearing from readers, so stop by her website, www.helenkaydimon.com, and say hello.

      To my husband for agreeing to watch all those big budget Hollywood action movies with me and pretending I was telling the truth when I called them writing research

      Contents

       Chapter One

       Chapter Two

       Chapter Three

       Chapter Four

       Chapter Five

       Chapter Six

       Chapter Seven

       Chapter Eight

       Chapter Nine

       Chapter Ten

       Chapter Eleven

       Chapter Twelve

       Chapter Thirteen

       Chapter Fourteen

       Chapter Fifteen

       Chapter Sixteen

       Chapter Seventeen

       Chapter Eighteen

       Extract

      Chapter One

      Hope Algier preferred sunshine and fresh air to a stuffy office. Except today.

      She spent most of her life outdoors. Her father had tried for years to entice his baby girl into the boardroom of the family business with promises of expensive cars and impressive bonus packages. She turned them all down without a second thought, but right now a leather chair behind a big desk sounded good.

      Trees towered over her and surrounded her on every side. This section of land adjacent to West Virginia’s Cranberry Wilderness was called the Cranberry Backcountry for a reason. It consisted of more than eleven thousand acres of hills and woods and little else.

      Animals skittered around her. Leaves rustled as the summer wind blew warm air under her ponytail and across the back of her neck. Thick branches blocked most of the sunlight, giving her an eerie sense of isolation.

      No people, no houses and no easy way out.

      Turned out, this patch of forest messed with her satellite phone. She needed open sky for a signal, and she could only see peeks of blue through the canopy of summer green leaves above her. Right about now she’d give anything for a second of heat on her face.

      She slipped behind a large trunk and leaned against it. Her heartbeat hammered in her ears as she slipped the sat phone out of the pocket of her cargo shorts. It measured a bit longer than a cell phone and fit in her palm. The map she’d memorized earlier and carried in her back pocket pointed to a clearing up ahead. She hoped she was close enough to catch a signal.

      Please let it work this time.

      She pushed buttons. When that didn’t do anything, she smacked the side, hoping to jolt it into action. She even thought about smashing it against the cushion of dirt and leaves under her hiking boots.

      She was about to repeat the hitting cycle when something crunched off to her right...again. The same subtle crackling she’d been hearing on and off since she’d dove deep into the trees. A squirrel, probably. She repeated the comment in her head over and over, hoping to reassure her brain and stop the sudden subtle shake moving through her hands. She refused to think bear or, worse, predator of the two-legged kind.

      As she shifted, the stray branches scratched her bare legs and caught on the short sleeve of her cotton tee. She balanced her head against the hard bark again and counted to five. It took all of her control not to call out for Mark Callah, the vice president of finance for Baxter Industries.

      He’d been all gung ho about “roughing it” on this corporate retreat. So much so he had brought a gun along without telling her. She saw it when he had waved it around last night at dinner. As the person leading the retreat, she had confiscated it. That didn’t go over well. Now he was missing.

      Crack.

      There it was again. That made the fourth time she picked up the sound she wanted to write off as nothing. Something furry and four-legged and small...she hoped. But the gentle thuds sped up.

      She peeked around the tree she was using as a shield and spied what looked like a flash of blue in the distance. The same flash she’d seen twice so far on this journey to find Mark and grab a clear shot to the satellite to jumpstart the phone.

      She’d left the rest of the executives back at camp with orders to make breakfast and clean up. Except for Mark, they weren’t exactly the venture-out-alone types. She strained to remember any of them wearing navy this morning at roll call, but her brain refused to focus.

      Crunching and snapping echoed all around her until she couldn’t tell from which direction the noises originated. The tunnel effect had her doubting her hearing and her vision.