Her One and Only (A Porter Family Novel Book #4) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Becky Wade

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221 pages

English

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2017 Christy Award WinnerGray Fowler, star NFL tight end, is being pursued by a stalker, so his team hires a protection agency to keep Gray under the watch of a bodyguard at all times. When Gray meets Dru Porter, an agent assigned to him, he's indignant. How can an attractive young female half his size possibly protect him?But Dru's a former Marine, an expert markswoman, and a black belt. She's also ferociously determined to uncover the identity of Gray's stalker. And she's just as determined to avoid any kind of romantic attachment between herself and the rugged football player with the mysterious past. But the closer they get to finding the stalker, the closer they grow to each other. As the danger rises, can Dru and Gray entrust their hearts--and their lives--to one another?

Sujets

Romance

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Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	03 mai 2016
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441269461
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0202€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
© 2016 by Rebecca Wade
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4412-6946-1
Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Jennifer Parker
Cover photography by Mike Habermann Photography, LLC
Dedication
For editor extraordinaire, Charlene Patterson
Thank you so much for the effort and belief you dedicated to my novels. Your intelligence and experience were matched only by your kindness and enthusiasm. Your input strengthened each story in important ways and I’m wholeheartedly grateful to you.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Prologue
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
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-one
Chapter Twenty-two
Chapter Twenty-three
Chapter Twenty-four
Chapter Twenty-five
Chapter Twenty-six
Chapter Twenty-seven
Chapter Twenty-eight
Epilogue
Questions for Conversation
About the Author
Books by Becky Wade
Back Ads
Back Cover
Prologue
D ru lifted her handgun, leveling it on Gray’s stalker as she rushed forward through the crowd. The realization that she’d been outsmarted washed over her with sickening certainty. Gray was unprotected. The stalker had pistols in both hands, both barrels aimed at Gray. Had she been next to Gray, she’d have shoved him down, been able to dodge in front of him to keep him safe. But she was much too far away for that. Despair arced through her mind and heart. She was too far. He was unprotected.
“Lower your weapons,” she demanded, shouldering past bystanders.
The stalker’s face turned sharply in her direction, giving her a direct line of sight into facial features that were drawn and blank. Viciously cold.
The attacker kept one of the guns trained on Gray. The other pistol moved, with chilling deliberation, until its barrel aimed squarely at Dru.
“No!” Gray yelled.
The stalker’s attention returned to Gray, fingers whitening on the triggers.
Dru fired.
Her bullet met its mark.
But so did the stalker’s. So did the stalker’s .
Ammunition tore into tender flesh, destroying the muscle and bone and organs in its path. A screaming denial the color of red obliterated Dru’s thoughts.
Furious, she fired again.
Chapter One
Three months earlier
D ru Angelica Porter was a former Marine, a black belt in jiu-jitsu, a national pistol-shooting champion, and an experienced executive protection agent for Dallas’s most prestigious security company. She was also about to meet her new client. A new client who would, just like all her past clients, be too busy trying to process the fact that she was female to give a hoot about her qualifications.
When people heard the term bodyguard , they very predictably imagined big, muscle-bound guys in suits and sunglasses, with wires coiling up from their shirts into earpieces.
Dru wasn’t big or muscle-bound. Today’s “suit” consisted of a pewter-colored leather jacket, closely fitted, with several creatively placed zippers and a collar that turned up behind her neck. High-quality white shirt. Slim black trousers. Heels. Her sunglasses were stashed in her purse. No wire coiled into an earpiece.
She was an executive protection agent à la the new millennium.
She made her way down the hallway that led to the administrative offices for the NFL’s Dallas Mustangs. The Mustangs’ complex, which also housed the team’s practice field, gym, and a physical therapy wing, had been decorated, without a great deal of creativity, in the Mustangs’ colors. A carpet of light blue trimmed in hunter green and white absorbed her footfalls. The gleaming ivory walls sported horizontal green and blue stripes, as well as framed action shots of the team.
Go Mustangs! the decor seemed to shout. Rah, rah, rah! Go, fight, win, team!
She paused to peer at one of the photos. Confetti laced a brightly lit sky behind the team as they hoisted the Lombardi Trophy. The season before last, the Mustangs had won the Super Bowl. Dru frowned slightly at the image, which showed the players with sweaty hair and big grins and hastily donned hats and t-shirts pronouncing them the champs. No doubt she’d find all this team spirit more charming if she actually liked the Mustangs.
Like any good Texan, she was a born and bred Cowboys fan. She’d always viewed the Mustangs, a relatively new franchise team and the Cowboys’ crosstown rivals, the way one might view an upstart in-law who arrived at a family reunion and ate all the sheet cake.
Her gaze traced across the photo before coming to a stop on the face of her new client. Gray Fowler, famed Mustangs’ tight end, battle-hardened warrior, object of a million infatuations, was not the client she’d have chosen for her first executive protection assignment after the disaster in Mexico.
Celebrities who’d reached Gray Fowler’s level of fame could be egotistical, bossy, and unmanageable. Athletes of his caliber were sometimes full of testosterone and stupid machismo. Add the two together and—no. They did not equal Dru’s dream client. Any type of businessperson, even the brash, hard-charging type who never set aside their smartphone, would have been preferable. A politician? Fine. The teenage daughter of a billionaire who needed to be taken to field hockey practice after school? Sure.
Since Mexico, for the past year and a half, she’d been riding a desk job at Sutton Security’s downtown Dallas office. It had taken her longer than she’d expected to rehabilitate her body. To put her life back together. To earn back the complete trust of her boss, Anthony Sutton. The backward step on her career ladder had dealt a blow to both her professional aspirations and her pride. She’d been itching for, praying for, waiting for this chance to get back out in the field and prove her capability.
So she would be fulfilling her protective responsibilities toward Gray Fowler expertly, doggedly, and exactly by the book. She drew in a slow, determined breath and straightened her posture. Gray Fowler had decimated the baddest defensive players the NFL could serve up. But he’d yet to meet the likes of her. Woe to him if he got in her way.
She knocked on the door of the team’s GM at exactly two o’clock. An administrative assistant ushered her into a spacious office filled with at least twelve people and five conversations.
One group of executives thronged the centrally positioned desk. Another had gathered on the room’s left. On the right, she caught sight of Big Mack, her co-worker at Sutton. An African-American man in his early forties, Mack looked every inch the bodyguard stereotype. Unless one knew him, one would never guess that his two tween daughters had gotten their gentle giant of a father hooked on the Disney Channel and the musical stylings of 5 Seconds of Summer.
Big Mack smiled at her and motioned her forward with a large paw of a hand. “Afternoon, Dru. How you been?”
“Afternoon, Mack. I’ve been well. You?”
“Can’t complain.” He stepped to the side, giving Dru her first glimpse of Gray Fowler. Their agency’s newest client was sitting on a small sofa, leaning back, one hand tucked casually behind his head. He’d focused his attention up and to the side and was in conversation with a fellow player who stood at the sofa’s end.
Fowler had the profile of a gladiator, no prettiness to it whatsoever. His corded neck gave way to the hard, clean line of his jaw. His skin was lightly tanned, his lean cheeks marked with a five-o’clock shadow. He kept his dark brown hair short on the sides, slightly longer on top.
Dru had done her best to study him, both through the informa tion provided by her agency and through her own private research. Very few details existed about his childhood. She’d been able to learn only that he had a younger brother and sister and that he’d overcome a mysteriously rocky start in small-town Mullins, Texas. He’d then parlayed his athletic ability into a star turn at Texas A&M before being drafted in the early rounds by the Mustangs.
He was not a man who’d stumbled or bought or lucked his way into success. He’d earned his success one tackle, catch, block, and injury at a time. His toughness, speed, and steely concentration had lifted him to his current status as one of the Mustangs’ most popular players. He had a reputation with journalists as a straight talker and a reputation with entertainment reporters as a ladies’ man. He’d been selected to the Pro Bowl eight times in his ten-year career, was one of the architects of the Mustangs’ Super Bowl victory, and in general, broke football records as easily as other people ate cereal.
The player Gray had been talking to moved off, and Gray’s face turned toward Dru. He l