Unauthorized Passion. Amanda Stevens

your life is over. I’m giving you a chance to make something of yourself, but the first thing you have to learn about our business is that protecting our client’s interests comes first.”

      Jack glanced at his ex-partner in disgust. “Sounds to me like covering your ass comes first.”

      Max walked over to the window and stared out for a moment, then turned. “Let me ask you something. Do you really think you were kicked off the force for ruffling too many feathers at city hall? Hell, you’d been doing that for years. But the brass put up with it because you were a good cop. They didn’t want to lose you. So what changed?”

      “You seem to have all the answers,” Jack said coldly. “You tell me.”

      “They got rid of you because you scared them. You became so obsessed with the Casanova case that even guys who’d known you for years began to worry about your stability. An unbalanced cop is a dangerous entity, as we both know. You go down there now with a cockamamy story about some actress being stalked, what do you think they’re going to do? Who do you think they’re going to put under surveillance? It won’t be Celeste Fortune.”

      “We’ll see about that.” Jack whirled and strode toward the door.

      Behind him, Max said, “Did it ever occur to you that the best way to protect her is to keep doing what you’re doing?” When Jack turned, Max continued grimly, “You’ve got a job to do, Jack. If someone wants to harm Celeste Fortune, it’s in our client’s best interest to find out who that person is.”

      * * *

      FROM HIS POSITION across the street, Jack could see the southeast corner of the hotel, including Celeste’s balcony. The lights were off inside her suite so he assumed the earlier incident hadn’t awakened her.

      He hated to think of her up there sleeping peacefully in her bed with no inkling of the danger that could be lurking nearby.

      And Jack couldn’t tell her.

      Max was right about that. I know someone is stalking you because I’ve been stalking you myself. Yeah, that’d go over big—with her and the police. He couldn’t tell Celeste she was in danger any more than he could alert the cops because he’d be the one put under a microscope. So what the hell was he supposed to do?

      After he left Max’s place, Jack had toyed briefly with the idea of placing an anonymous call to the police, but he knew only too well how much good that would do. At the most, they’d send a patrol car to check out the alley and when they found nothing, the whole thing would be forgotten.

      So it was up to Jack to protect her. Max was right about that, too. Jack had to keep doing what he was doing in order to watch out for her, but would that be enough? He couldn’t spend twenty-four hours a day on surveillance. He couldn’t shadow her every move.

      Or…could he?

      An idea came to him suddenly, and yanking his wallet from his pocket, he pulled out the check Max had given him a few days ago. An advance, he’d said, to get some nice clothes and a decent haircut.

      Well, he had the haircut. And he knew that Cher, queen of resale shopping, could help him out with his wardrobe. Now all he had to do was book himself into the Mirabelle and strike up a friendship with Celeste. With any luck, he’d be able to catch her stalker in the act before his money ran out.

      Settling in for the night, Jack slid down in the car seat, folded his arms, and began to plan a “coincidental” meeting with the gorgeous actress.

      CHAPTER SIX

      CASSIE LAY ATOP the padded sundeck of a thirty-five-foot cabin cruiser and hoped this second outing Celeste had arranged for her would go more smoothly than the first.

      So far everything had gone according to schedule. The rental car had arrived at the hotel that morning promptly at nine o’clock, and less than an hour later, Cassie had crossed the causeway on I-45 into Galveston.

      She’d spent another half hour looking for Ethan Gold’s house on Jamaica Beach, but she hadn’t minded the search. From her very first glimpse of the Gulf, the tension had steadily melted away.

      Now Cassie felt positively decadent, lying topless in the sun on her own boat. Well, okay, her own borrowed boat. The distinction didn’t bother her one bit because she had two whole days to loll about in the sun and surf and pretend that this life really did belong to her.

      Soon enough she’d have to come back to earth and start the old job search, but for now, this had to be one of her cousin’s better ideas, she decided lazily.

      According to Celeste, Ethan Gold, her old drama professor at the University of Houston, had insisted that she have the use of his beach house while she was in town. “There’s a boat and everything,” Celeste had told her. “I know how much you love to be out on the water.”

      Cassie had forgotten just how much she did love the fresh air and open sea. When she and Celeste were kids, their fathers had owned a fishing boat together, and on weekends and summers, the cousins had practically lived on the Gulf. They’d become expert swimmers early on—their fathers had seen to that—and had even learned to handle a boat by the ripe old age of eleven.

      They’d become so proficient, in fact, that by the time they hit adolescence, they were taking the boat out alone, sometimes with permission and sometimes without.

      The two had been as close as sisters back then, and those days were some of the happiest and most carefree of Cassie’s life.

      Then everything had changed. Celeste’s family moved away, and Cassie’s parents divorced. Her father relocated to Florida, and Cassie seldom heard from him. A few years later, her mother was diagnosed with emphysema and later, lung cancer. For almost a decade, it had been one trauma after another, and somewhere along the way, the carefree, adventurous Cassie had gotten lost in the harsh realities of life.

      In her most vulnerable moments, she sometimes wondered how differently things might have turned out if her parents had stayed together. Would her mother still have gotten sick? Would Cassie, free of responsibilities, have had the nerve to pursue her dreams the way her cousin had?

      She liked to think so, but she’d learned a long time ago that there was no profit in looking back. Besides, she had the rest of her life to work on those dreams, to try and recapture that old carefree Cassie, and now she had nothing to hold her back. No job. No fiancé. No responsibilities except to herself.

      That was why she’d been so eager to accept Celeste’s proposal. It wasn’t just the money or the new clothes or the luxurious accommodations that had attracted her to the scheme. It was the scheme itself. The promise of adventure for which Cassie had been yearning a long, long time.

      And so here she was. Footloose and fancy-free.

      Well, almost.

      There was the little matter of that threatening voice on the phone the other night.

       “Did I scare you?”

      Yes, as a matter of fact.

      Every time Cassie thought about that anonymous call, shivers stole up and down her spine. The person on the other end hadn’t actually threatened her, but if the call had been nothing more than a prank, why had the caller gone to the trouble of electronically disguising his voice?

      And afterward, Lyle Lester had shown up at Cassie’s door.

      True enough, he’d left a flashlight and candles outside her room, but his arrival had been extremely fortuitous. Could he have called her from the hallway on a cell phone? Cassie wondered. She’d received a couple of hang up calls since then, too. Was Lyle responsible for those as well?

      He’d said the other night that he was an admirer, but just how big a fan was he? Had his appreciation crossed the line into psychotic obsession?

      And speaking of psychotic…

      Cassie frowned as an image