DalCon is finally home

YAY!!!! After all this time, Hot Contract is finally out

right here

I hate saying "buy my book", so instead I'll just say...read my excerpt. Reading my excerpt will make me happy, lol.

When Jen Stalling, chief geologist on a new magma-based power plant known as the Pele Project witnesses the murder of a fellow scientist, Project officials don't want the negative publicity of a murder investigation. "An accident," they say. Jen knows better. So does her father, billionaire Art Stalling. But having pushed Jen away years ago, he can't now reveal his interest without exposing her to danger. He hires DalCon, a Seattle-based security group to watch over her.

Keegan Dalfrey has his own problems. Four days ago, during a routine mission gone wrong, his brother was captured by South Pacific extremists. They want two million in ten days. Keegan can make that in nine days by neutralizing the threat to Jen. It's an all or nothing gamble with his brother's life in the balance. He never expected to fall in love.

read an excerpt:

Keegan saw Jen through the open door, sprawled out on her belly. One arm hung over the edge, fingers curled up tight. There were three beds in the cabin and she occupied the biggest. The tiny bedroom at the back contained the other two in the form of a couple of stripped down twins shoved in the corner to form a lumpy square.

Corlis took one look at the amenities, threw her jacket on the floor and fell back on the antique ticking, both arms up over her eyes.

Fallon leaned against the pine-veneered nightstand, his expression hard to read. A mosquito drifted into the light and floated up and down, dazed by the cold. Keegan swatted at it and it spiraled away to land on his sister. Fallon brushed it off.

“Mosquito,” he said, like that single word explained everything.

Keegan rubbed a hand down over his chin and sighed. “Four hours?”

“Yeah,” said Fallon, already half-asleep. He shrugged out of his jacket, took a blanket from the nightstand and dropped, flat out on the bed. “Wake me.”

Keegan stepped back into the tiny hallway, pulling the door closed behind him.

A single forty watt bulb cast a dim glow over the rest of the cabin. There was a couch squeezed beneath the largest window and a breakfast bar with four mismatched stools. The loft up in the rafters held exactly one foosball game.

So far he hadn’t done anything but react.

Time was running out. He needed to hang those bastards out to dry, and do it fast.

How well connected were they?

Layers on layers.

If Jen’s father didn’t know, he had to suspect. With his own security compromised it made sense to create a firewall unconnected to anyone within his corporate structure.

If Jen thought she’d walked away from her family’s internal politics, she was wrong. She was in some serious shit.

The tinny sound of the kitchen clock expanded to fill the silence.

Keegan dug his fingers into his neck, trying to ease the tension that knotted his shoulders. Deacon had said the Aina had gone dormant, which meant something had triggered their abrupt resurgence.

He paused, staring down at the chipped Formica with unseeing eyes. Something that traumatic would leave tracks. He needed to get back to the Project. And the only
way in was with Jen. Without someone to interpret what he saw, it wouldn’t mean squat.

Something moved behind him. Keegan whirled, gun out.

Jen stood in the door, one end of a long paisley sheet thrown over her shoulder.

Her arm was bare. Jesus, she was naked.

He retreated behind the breakfast bar, only she followed him, rubbing at her eyes like the dim bulb bothered her.

He slipped his gun down in the holster behind his hip and grabbed the edge of the counter. “Go back to bed.”

Please?

He wasn’t just obvious, he was out and out open for business. Keegan glared down into the darkness between his thighs and the table, then back up at her.

She gave him a drowsy smile and sat on one of the stools, breasts pushing against the damned sheet.

Goddamnit.

She gestured at a small bottle of non-alcoholic champagne half-hidden by a basket of fruit and a welcome card. “Can I have some of that?”

Keegan twisted the champagne open and pushed it over. It was barely more than a pint.

“Don’t you want some?” she asked.

He glanced at her. “After you.”

Jen lifted it to her lips and drank exactly half. “Fizzy grape juice? There’s a winery around here that makes mead.” She passed the bottle back to him. “Have you ever had mead? It’s hard to describe.”

She leaned her elbow on the counter and put her chin in her palm. Keegan looked at the bottle and back at her lips.

Just fuck me already.
Please?

Her hand touched his and he almost jumped out of his skin, breathing hard and fast, eyes narrowed on her so-innocent fingers.

“Are you all right?” she asked, holding on to him.

“No, I’m not okay,” he said, jerking his hand out from under hers. “I thought you didn’t like to be touched.”

She blinked in surprise. “I don’t.”

“Then don’t touch me,” he gritted through clenched teeth. He felt crazy and out of control. Was this what Fallon felt? How could he stand it?

She frowned. “I didn’t mean to. It just happened. I feel...comfortable with you.”

He wanted to spread her out on the table, pour grape juice on her and have a Jen-tini.

And she felt comfortable with him?

“I don’t scare you?”

She rubbed at a smear on the counter, a frown twitched down between her brows. “You’re okay for a bodyguard,” she said.