No Holds Barred Read online

  Be careful what you wish for

  Returning to Castle MacPherson was definitely not FBI profiler Duncan Sutherland’s choice. But when defense attorney Piper MacPherson is targeted by a serial killer, Duncan knows it’s the only place she’ll be safe. At least, safe from her stalker. There’s no guarantee he’ll be able to keep his hands off her....

  Little does Duncan guess that Piper has always wanted him, too. In fact, years ago, she’d written down her most intimate fantasies—all of them involving on-demand sex...and him. Now though, she wants the real deal. And with a serial killer threatening her life, the best thing Duncan can do is provide Piper with full-body cover—day and night!

  Nobody can write Forbidden Fantasies like Cara Summers

  Led Into Temptation

  “Sensationally sensual…this tale of a forbidden, guilt-ridden love is a delight. Brimming with diverse, compelling characters, scorching-hot love scenes, romance and even a ghost, this story is unforgettable.”

  —Romancejunkies.com

  “This deliciously naughty fantasy takes its time heating up, but it’s worth the wait! 4 ½ stars.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  Taken Beyond Temptation

  “Great characters with explosive chemistry, a fun intrigue-flavored plot and a high degree of sensuality add up to an excellent read! 4 ½ stars.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Filled with intrigue, mystery, humor, sizzling-hot love scenes, a well-matched couple, a surprise ending and a ghost, this story is unforgettable and definitely a winner.”

  —Romancejunkies.com

  Twice the Temptation

  “Well written!…Fans will be delighted to see their favorites return for brief appearances. 4 stars.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Cara Summers has penned two tales in Twice the Temptation which will not be forgotten, but will live on in the reader’s fantasies.”

  —Cataromance.com

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Was Cara Summers born with the dream of becoming a published romance novelist? No. But now that she is, she still feels her dream has come true. And she owes it all to her mother who handed her a Harlequin romance novel years ago and said, “Try it. You’ll love it.” Mom was right! Cara has written more than forty stories for the Blaze and Temptation lines, and she has won numerous awards including a Lifetime Achievement Award for Series Storyteller of the Year from RT Book Reviews. When she isn’t working on new books, she teaches in the writing program at Syracuse University.

  Cara Summers

  No Holds Barred

  Books by Cara Summers

  HARLEQUIN BLAZE

  188—THE DARE

  192—THE FAVOR

  239—WHEN SHE WAS BAD…

  259—TWO HOT!

  286—TELL ME YOUR SECRETS…

  330—THE P.I.

  336—THE COP

  342—THE DEFENDER

  396—A SEXY TIME OF IT

  413—LIE WITH ME

  437—COME TOY WITH ME

  474—TWIN TEMPTATION

  480—TWIN SEDUCTION

  511—CHRISTMAS MALE

  540—LED INTO TEMPTATION

  547—TAKEN BEYOND TEMPTATION

  555—TWICE THE TEMPTATION

  593—TAKE MY BREATH AWAY

  622—TAILSPIN

  655—SEXY SILENT NIGHTS

  691—NO RISK REFUSED

  To get the inside scoop on Harlequin Blaze and its talented writers, be sure to check out blazeauthors.com.

  All backlist available in ebook. Don’t miss any of our special offers. Write to us at the following address for information on our newest releases.

  Harlequin Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

  To my grandchildren, Marian and Andrew. All my love for the future.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Excerpt

  Prologue

  Glen Loch, New York, Summer, 1812

  ELEANOR CAMPBELL MACPHERSON stood on the cliffs alone, except for her memories. And there were so many good ones. In a marriage that had lasted over fifty years, she and Angus had come here so often. The caves below in the cliff face had always been one of their secret places. They’d picnicked there often during the early years of their marriage, sometimes climbing up from the lake below and sometimes climbing down. And later, after the children and even the grandchildren had arrived, it had been one of their secret trysting places. Sneaking away to make love here with Angus had always made her feel wicked and wild and very like the young girl who had allowed him to sweep her away all those many years ago.

  She missed him so much. How often had they walked together here on mornings just like this one?

  The mists swirled over the lake, but the newly risen sun, a bright red ball, would burn them away quickly. To the west on a rocky promontory stood Castle MacPherson, the home that Angus had built for them. There it rose, three stories high, strong and graceful and as enduring as the life they’d built together. Beyond it she saw the gardens that gave her so much pleasure. And at the far edge, nestled at the foot of a sharply rising hillside, she could make out the top of the stone arch that Angus had built for her.

  It was a replica of an older arch that had stood in the gardens of her family’s estate in Scotland and it had a legendary power from ancient times—the power to unite true lovers. The story had been passed down for years in the Campbell clan—the man or the woman you kissed beneath the stone arch would be your true love forever. Angus had even stolen some of the stones from the original arch so that this one would carry the same power.

  With a smile, Eleanor let her mind drift back to that long ago night when she and Angus had met beneath those powerful stones on the Campbell estate for the last time. Her family had thrown a ball to celebrate her upcoming wedding, and she’d been wearing her future husband’s gift to her—a sapphire necklace and earrings that had been bestowed on his family for service to the Scottish court. Mary Stuart had worn the jewels at her coronation, and Eleanor’s husband-to-be had insisted that she wear them at their betrothal ball as proof of his love for her.

  She’d snuck out of the ball to meet with Angus and to tell him that their secret meetings had to end. She’d practiced the speech for days. There was no future for them. Their families had been locked in a blood feud for years. She was promised to another man, a fine man from a prominent family. Then Angus had kissed her the moment she’d arrived—before she could say a word.

  And that had been that.

  Oh, she’d tried to talk some sense into him, but he wouldn’t listen. Impetuous, impatient, irresistible, Angus hadn’t taken no for an answer. He’d simply promised her everything and carried her away.

  Thank God.

  Eleanor let her gaze linger on the castle, with its lovely gardens and the stone arch. Angus had delivered on his promise. He’d given her everything. Going with him and settling here was the best decision she’d ever made. She only had one regret. And that was what had brought her to the cliffs this morning.

  Slipping her hand into her pocket, she closed it over the leather pouches that held the Stuart Sapphires. Having them had always troubled her conscience. A man who’d loved her had given them to her. Not only had she betrayed that
love, she’d also become a thief. Everything had happened so fast the night she’d fled with Angus, and any attempt at sending the jewels back later might have given her family some clue as to what she’d done, where she was. It was better that she just vanish.

  But Angus had always known about her feelings. It was why he was visiting her now in her dreams, helping her to make things right. He’d always been so very good at making things right.

  The latest dream had come this morning, and it had brought her here to the cliffs. She would tell no one what she was doing. Her sons and her daughters-in-law wouldn’t be pleased. They’d always assumed that the sapphire necklace and earrings she’d worn in her wedding portrait had been her dowry, the gift that her family had given to her when she’d married Angus.

  The stone arch had played a part in the first dreams that Angus had sent her. In them she’d seen a young girl with reddish-gold curls finding one of the Stuart earrings in the stones. Angus had said her name was Adair. So Eleanor had hidden the first of the earrings there.

  But the girl in her latest dream had long dark hair and she’d found the second earring in one of the inner chambers of the caves. Eleanor tightened her grip on the pouch in her pocket, and as she did, she heard Angus’s voice in her ear.

  Her name is Piper. She believes in the power of the stone arch enough to bury her dreams and fantasies beneath them. And she knows about our secret cave. When she finds the second earring, the Stuart Sapphires will continue to find their way home. Trust me, Ellie…just as you did on the night we ran away.

  The mists had cleared from the lake. With Angus’s words still clear in her mind, Eleanor began the short climb down the cliff face to the cave, just as she’d done so many times with her lover before. She would leave the second earring for Piper to find, and then she would wait for Angus to send her more dreams.

  1

  Washington, D.C., Summer, 2012

  PIPER SNAPPED AWAKE AT THE first annoying clang of her Donald Duck alarm clock. A long-ago birthday present from her sisters. They knew how she loved keeping her life in order and on schedule. Donald had gotten her to class on time through four years of college and three years at Georgetown Law School. He was still going strong. The clock had no batteries, no power source, and all it required to silence it was a strong, determined whack.

  She gave it one. And since Donald provided no snooze option, she sat up in bed and rubbed her eyes. Then she ran her hand through her hair and automatically reached for the scrunchy she’d left on her nightstand. Her mind was already clearing and her vision would, too, in a couple of seconds. In the meantime, she tossed off the covers and reached for the gym shorts she always laid out at the foot of the bed. Swinging her legs to the floor, she pulled them on, then groped for the sports bra and T-shirt. By the time she’d managed socks and her running shoes, she could find her way to the bathroom to brush her teeth.

  Her next stop was the coffeemaker in her kitchen. Unlike Donald, it required a power source, and thanks to top-of-the-line technology, it had already brewed a pot of strong coffee. The coffeemaker had also been a gift from her sisters. She poured a quarter of a cup and inhaled the fumes while she stretched and then slipped on the wristlet that held her apartment key. Finally, she took her cell phone off its charger and slipped it into her pocket.

  Her morning routine never varied. But then variety wasn’t her goal. Order and routine were. Life got messy. Piper had learned at an early age that controlling the parts she could gave her more time to fix up the messy ones.

  And lately, her professional life had gotten very messy.

  Not yet. Firmly, she blocked the thought while she blew on the coffee and managed two swallows that burned her mouth and nearly cauterized her throat. It was a sacrifice she made each morning to the caffeine goddess.

  Then she headed for the door of the flat she leased above a ritzy women’s clothing boutique in Georgetown, shut the door, tested the lock, then hurried down the steps and along the short alley to the sidewalk. At 6:00 a.m., the street was still mostly free of traffic. Mr. Findley who ran the coffee shop down the street was washing his windows, while a customer sat at one of the outside tables reading a paper. The sun was up and the humidity tolerable. The scent of stale beer and fresh bread baking mingled in the still air. Perfect.

  She ran because it was an ingrained habit from her high school and college years, when she’d been on cross-country teams. But she also ran because it was the best way she knew to clear her mind and get ready to face the day.

  Which promised to be another busy one. Her current job as a research assistant to prominent law professor and celebrity defense attorney Abraham Monticello was one she worked hard at. She’d accepted his offer right out of law school because it would look good on her résumé and because it offered her a unique chance to get a background in criminal law.

  It was turning out to be unique, all right, and it was causing her to question her career choice. Her main reason for choosing law as a profession was that she believed in justice and in the power of the legal system to help people find it. But recently.…

  No. Not yet.

  While she took the first block at an easy pace, she used a visualization technique her aunt Vi had taught her when she was very young. First, she pictured all the chaos of her upcoming day and her self-doubts being sucked into a bottle in much the same way Aladdin’s genie had been sucked into the lamp. Then she jammed the cork in with the same energy she’d used to whack Donald.

  Whenever things got really bad, she let herself remember the really chaotic time in her life right after her mother died. She’d been three, her older sister Adair four, and Nell had been a baby. They’d been too young to really understand the loss—except that their mother wasn’t there anymore. And neither was their father. He’d hidden away in his studio and used his art to escape from his grief. Then their Aunt Vi had moved into the castle with them, and life had finally taken on some order again. That’s probably when her love of routine had taken root.

  As she reached the end of the second block, Piper shifted her focus to the details of her surroundings, taking the opportunity to speed window-shop in the stores that stretched along the street. She saw changes in the displays and made a mental note to take a closer look at a pair of red sandals—when she had the time. And she’d have to make time to call Nell and tell her that her first published children’s book, It’s All Good, was still on display in the window of the bookstore.

  When her younger sister had last visited, she’d made a good friend of the owner and now Nell’s story was selling well in Georgetown. Piper had to admit she was impressed. Nell had inherited their father’s creative talent, except she’d chosen writing rather than landscape painting as A. D. MacPherson had.

  But she certainly hadn’t inherited their father’s reticence. Currently, Nell was using a federal grant to travel across the country, offering writing classes to children in underprivileged schools, and at the same time, establishing a network for her own writing.

  As Piper turned down a residential street, her muscles began to warm and perspiration sheened on her forehead. She settled into a rhythm. If Nell was surprising her, her older sister Adair had truly shocked her.

  During the past eight months, Adair and their aunt Vi had turned Castle MacPherson, their family home in the Adirondacks, into what was becoming a very successful wedding destination spot. Adair had always been an idea person, and when they’d been growing up, Piper and Nell had been more than willing to go along with most of her schemes. But whenever Adair’s plans had gone awry, it had always been Piper’s job to do the cleanup, which usually included negotiating with Aunt Vi, and on some occasions, even with their father.

  No wonder she’d always been drawn to the practice of law. What did lawyers do except clean up the messes people got themselves into?

  Only this time, the mess was of her own making.

  Not yet. She was not going there yet.

  The biggest surpris
e from the castle was that her sister and Aunt Vi had discovered one piece of their several-times-great grandmother, Eleanor Campbell MacPherson’s, priceless missing dowry: a sapphire earring that had reputedly been worn by Mary Stuart on the day she’d taken the throne. And during the same weekend, Aunt Vi had gotten engaged to Daryl Garnett, who ran the domestic operations unit of the CIA here in D.C. Even more astounding was that Adair, the practical queen of the five-year plan, had fallen in love, too. With Cam Sutherland, of all people.

  Piper ran in place at the corner until the traffic cleared, then found her stride again. She hadn’t seen any of the Sutherland triplets since her father had married their mother seven years ago. The MacPherson sisters and the Sutherland triplets, Reid, Cameron and Duncan, went back a long way to a summer of playdates when the boys had opened up a whole new world of games—bad guys versus good guys, sheriff and posse, pirates and treasure, along with rock-climbing on the cliff face, a place where she and her sisters had been forbidden to play.

  Then the Sutherlands had completely disappeared from their lives until they’d returned to the castle on the day their mother, Professor Beth Sutherland, married A. D. MacPherson beneath the stone arch. Since she had an eye for detail, Piper had duly noted that the scruffy, annoying Sutherland boys had morphed into tall, gorgeous and hot young men.

  Especially one of them. Duncan. He’d really caught her attention that day with that tall, rangy body, the dark unruly hair and the mesmerizing green eyes. She’d felt those eyes on her during the ceremony when they’d been standing with their parents beneath the stone arch, and she’d felt a kind of tingly awareness that rippled along her nerve endings and heightened all of her other senses.

  Intrigued, she’d met his gaze directly, and for a span of time, her vision and her mind had been totally filled with him and nothing else. Only Duncan. Heat had flooded her, melting her, muscle and bone, right to her core. The experience had been so new, so exciting, so terrifying. No one had ever made her feel that way before—or since.