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EXCERPT from FACING FEAR
By Gennita Low (AVON Books 2004)
copyright@2004
All Rights Reserved
….Her hair was too long to dry completely and she gave it a quick towel-off. She usually
braided it before going to bed. She opened the bathroom door, clicking off the lights. Her hand
was still on the inside wall of her bathroom when another hand grasped that arm from the
outside, jamming it and making her gasp. She hadn’t seen or heard anything. She pushed off
with her free hand, going for the solar plexus. Not quick enough.
It was over in a few seconds, and she found herself trapped against the side doorframe,
her hands behind her back. Her towel had loosened, hanging on precariously. The stranger
tugged at her hair, forcing her head up.
He was dressed all in black and the backlight from her bedroom put his face in the
shadows. He looked like the devil she had conjured up in her mind. And he was much too close.
Closer than any man she had allowed in years.
“I heard you were researching an agent who runs a lot. I’m here for the interview.”
#
Rick knew he shouldn’t be there. It was rare for him to follow impulse, but he couldn’t
seem to help himself. There was something going on here, more than the suspicious nature of
Nikki Taylor’s sudden appearance in his life. What, he hadn’t figured out yet, but he was
determined to get to the bottom of it. For some reason, she challenged him, just by the sheer fact
that she hadn’t come to him. He wanted to see her face-to-face, test her strength. He wanted to
understand why she invaded his dreams.
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She was smaller than he had thought. On her bare feet, the top of her head only cleared
his shoulders by a couple of inches. Yet everything about her overwhelmed his senses.
He had grabbed her to see how she would react. Someone trained wouldn’t have been so
easy to trap. This close, her damp hair smelled of flowers and vanilla. Her body exuded an
elusive scent—a mixture of woman and something else, and it filled his lungs and invaded every
pore in him as his body became aware of her state of undress.
Good. He wanted her vulnerable, just as he felt vulnerable in his dreams, incapable of
escape. She couldn’t run with a towel on. He tangled his hand in her hair, forcing her face up
toward the bedroom light. Her eyes were large, doe-like, and her mouth was parted, and it
suddenly dawned on him that what he smelled was the combination of heat and fear. The
woman’s eyes were terrified. He gazed into them, and briefly felt shame and revulsion at putting
that look there.
He should let her go. The woman was no danger to him.
Without planning to, he pushed his body against her soft one. That scent surrounded him,
the thick sweet smell of clean woman and fear. She didn’t scream, after the initial gasp, and her
tongue licked her upper lip. His gaze lowered and studied the pearly glow of her tempting flesh
above her towel, heaving nervously and slipping slowly out of its protection. No, he wasn’t
going to let her go yet.
Nikki watched as his nostrils flare. Something dark and unfathomable entered his green
eyes and without warning, he trapped her body with his own, arching her up against him by
putting pressure to her locked arms behind her.
Her heart roared in her head as panic bubbled up. She had reacted out of instinct to
defend herself with the first move, but the moment he had touched her, the moment her brain had
started to assimilate the fact that a man was holding her, all thought had fled. In its place was
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just the knowledge that she was powerless. Her speeding heart made her faint, and she tried to
slow down her breathing. This was Rick Harden. It wasn’t…them.
Before she could think of something to say, he did the unthinkable. The lower half of his
tall, hard body pinned her against the corner of the wall and doorframe, and the hand imprisoning
hers behind her back was like manacles, yanking her to her toes.
She was helpless in this position. She couldn’t fight back without exposing her
nakedness. There were things she had been trained to do but it had been so long, and she had
never allowed anyone close enough to harm her before. She resisted by digging down on her
heels and gasped again when he inserted his leg between hers and lifted her off the floor, bracing
his knee against the doorframa.
She felt every tense and contracting muscle in his thigh. The heat from his body
blanketed her. For a strange moment, she caught herself imagining him running in his shorts,
those muscles moving and flexing with each step. Be careful what one wished for. She had
wanted to see him run, had gone looking for him today; instead, he had come looking for her.
His hot skin against hers. She didn’t know why she was imagining that. She should
loathe what he was doing to her, but her naked body wasn’t pulling away from his clothed one.
What she was feeling wasn’t revulsion. She didn’t like what Rick Harden was doing to her. Her
mind rebelled at the thought of giving in.
Her eyes met his. Pleading. Desperate. But of course he would never understand. He
was a man. And she was in his power.
“Let me go,” she finally managed a whisper. She had to escape before her body betrayed
her further.
“Not yet,” Rick told her very softly, his lips inches from hers.
“Let me down, then.”
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His green eyes mocked hers. There was anger in them, and that other dark element she
couldn’t put a finger on that was frightening her. In answer, he adjusted his position and slid her
along his thigh toward him. She felt her towel parting further and the friction of his black pants
against her nakedness pressed home the point that she was in no position to bargain.
“All in good time. After you’ve answered a few questions.” Rick frowned as her dark
hair fell forward and covered his hand, a soft caress that distracted him from his goal of
intimidating the woman. He wanted to run his fingers through it as it dried. He fought the urge
to lift and bury his face in it. He scowled. Diversion. “Who sent you?”
She shook her head.
“Who?” he persisted. “You’ve been asking questions about me.”
Her brown eyes lifted. “Really? And you haven’t been doing the same about me?”
This time her voice was steady, and although her eyes were still making him feel like a
bastard, there was a challenging tilt to her chin now. For some reason, he couldn’t stop looking
at her mouth and thinking of strawberry daiquiri, and how her lips had pursed around that straw.
Nikki forced herself to meet his eyes. There was no place to run and she knew, in her
heart, that Rick Harden wasn’t here to cause her the kind of harm she feared. He wouldn’t
know—would he?
“You have no background, besides the fake one you’ve conjured up for the last ten years.
You came to my apartment that night, didn’t you?” He tugged at her hair again. “Didn’t you?”
She didn’t see any reason to deny it. “Yes.”
“And you were with a group of touring writers the other day. And lunch. You knew I
would be there. Didn’t you?” He spoke softly, his breath warming her in hot puffs.
“Yes.”
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“You went jogging, looking for me. And all that talk about your novel, it was about me.
Why did you tell Agent Jones those things, if you hadn’t meant to bait me?” His eyes demanded
answers that she wasn’t ready to give.
She hadn’t really thought about Agent Jones as a connection to Rick until he had shown
up on the trail that morning. She had answered his questions because it had been painfully
obvious that the young operative was trying hard to get some sort of information on her, and she
had felt sorry for him.
“I…didn’t mean to bait you,” she told Rick, trying not to breathe too hard, or her towel
would surely fall open. “He did me a favor, and I was returning it.”
Rick frowned. “What favor?”
He was a runner, with legs strengthened from years of endurance. He would not get tired
of this position for a while, and she was beginning to be aware of too many things about him,
things that she had no right to notice. The heat of his body. The curling brown hair above the
collar of his black shirt. The easy strength of his body as he bore her entire weight. The way his
fingers were half-caressing and half-pulling her hair, as if he couldn’t decide what to do with her.
“What favor?” he repeated, his arctic voice a direct contrast to his body heat.
She closed her eyes. She decided to give him the truth because that seemed to be the
only thing he couldn’t see, but she had a feeling he wouldn’t appreciate it. “I interrupted your
routine and was attempting to balance your not being in your usual…place. However, Agent
Jones ran your miles for me instead. I owed him that, so I answered his questions.” Which
brought Rick into her space. All debts were paid in full.
The silence was drawn out to a screaming pitch. “Look at me,” he finally ordered, his
voice dangerously quiet. She did so, openly defiant now, but heart still thudding too loudly. His
green eyes studied her intently, then he asked, “What do you do besides write?”
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Nikki jerked at his sudden change of subject. She had expected mocking recriminations,
sarcastic disbelief. Rick Harden had succeeded in surprising her again. She licked her lips,
drawing his attention to them. “I observe what is out of balance and suggest corrections.”
“Is that another way of telling me that Internal Investigations wants to get dirt on me?”
Rick sneered.
Oh, no. She would not be linked to that kind of underhanded work. Her chin tilted
higher. “I’m not Denise Lorens.”
This time, she succeeded in surprising him into releasing his vice-like hold of wrists.
Unable to keep her balance, perched as she was, she grabbed at the nearest thing. That happened
to be Rick Harden. At that moment, her towel loosened completely and she went for the ends
too, falling forward, sideways, rocking and stumbling, her long hair tangling with everything.
Panic filled her. And desperate anger. Why couldn’t she do what she had been trained to do?
Rick was struck with the familiarity of it all—yet, she was just too…soft. Her hair, her
body, her smile. Even her struggles. There wasn’t any hard edge to her. He knew, without a
doubt, that she had been sent to mess with his mind, but whoever was behind this didn’t know
his wife very well.
He gathered the falling woman into his arms, her hands trapped against his chest. She
had been willing to land on the floor rather than expose herself. That alone told him more than
she had in the last five minutes. The woman was no Denise Lorens. Or any of the types I.I.
would engage to send.
She was trembling but she didn’t protest when he stepped away from the bathroom door,
with her in his arms. Her eyes shone, even in the semi-darkness, and he slowly slid her down the
length of his body, feeling her knuckles running down his chest and stomach. She didn’t move
away when he put her down, her face buried against his breastbone.
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He had not held a trembling woman in his arms since forever. It made him ache inside,
and he didn’t like it. It felt like a hairline crack was appearing where he bottled up all his
emotions. He smoothed his hand down her long hair and steadied her with gentle arms. His eyes
narrowed. No, she was more dangerous than Denise Lorens.
“Go put something on,” he said abruptly. “I don’t hurt injured birds, and you tremble
like one.”
Nikki stiffened at his harsh words. For a few moments there, she had been lost in his
heat, and his arms around her had made her feel…she took a few steps away from him. She was
about to say ‘safe.’ The man attacked her, and she felt safe?
How was that possible? She didn’t like people touching her, and this man had his arms
wrapped around her. Her body had slid against his heat and wasn’t repelled at all. And he
hadn’t let her embarrass herself when he could have easily just let her fall, just to humiliate her.
He cocked a golden brow at her. Those green eyes glinted dangerously, as if he were
about to change his mind. She blinked hard and swiftly made her escape into the bathroom.
Before the door closed, she heard him say, in that silky velvet voice, that reminded her of
an arrogant warrior who understood the sharpness of a new blade, “Don’t take too long, Nikki. I
don’t like waiting.”
FACING FEAR
Gennita Low
Copyright@2004
All rights reserved
Available AVON BOOKS March 2004
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