THE PERFECT TARGET
Book 1: The Carringtons
Silhouette Intimate Moments #1212
March 2003

“I just want to live a normal life,” she said simply. “Is that really so very wrong?”

The longing in her eyes, her voice, twisted him up inside. “No,” he said. “Just dangerous.”

In more ways than she realized.

“But that’s just it,” she said, angling her chin. The color rushed back to her cheeks, the life to her eyes. “Life is dangerous, not just for me, but for everyone. And that’s all I really wanted. To be like everyone else. To slip into a crowd and not be mobbed. To dance in the street and not be splattered across the front of every tabloid. To embrace my friends without speculation as to my sexual orientation.”

Sandro braced himself, tried to hold himself back, but felt himself going over the edge anyway. “There are some things more important than dancing in the street, bella.”

She looked up and met his eyes. “Like what?”

He might live to be an old man like his grandfather, or maybe just another year, another day. A man in his line of work never fully knew. He did his job as best as he could, taking every precaution imaginable, and then some. Mistakes were unacceptable, because mistakes got people killed.

Miranda was a mistake. He knew that. He accepted that. But for the first time in five long years, he couldn’t find the right counter-maneuver. He felt himself move, felt himself draw her close. Felt the heat shoot through him. Felt himself stiffen.

Felt the long freefall begin.

“Like dancing in a wine cellar,” he murmured against the clean smell of her hair.

She didn’t move against him like he wanted, didn’t curl her arms around his waist. “Sandro—”

“There’s no tabloid photographers waiting in the shadows,” he whispered. “Only me.”

“There’s no music.”

That, he thought grimly, was a bald-faced lie.

He pulled back far enough to see her face. “Not all music comes from radios and compact discs, bella. Listen,” he instructed, pausing to let the purr of the wind and the whisper of the candles prove his point. “Don’t you hear it?”

Her eyes took on a slow glow. “Drums?”

He took her hand and drew it to his chest, pressed her palm to the soft cotton of his shirt, felt the heat clear down to his bones. “The next best thing.”

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