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Flirting With Disaster - Softcover

Buch 3 von 4: The DeMarco Family

Jane Graves

 
9780345458407: Flirting With Disaster
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0345458400 ISBN 13: 9780345458407
Verlag: Ivy Books, 2003

Inhaltsangabe

The pilot for a humanitarian mission to fly doctors to a remote Mexican village, Lisa Merrick discovers that the trip is part of sinister plot involving smuggling, conspiracy, and attempted murder after her plane is sabotage, leaving her trapped in the wilderness, and is forced to turn her former lover, Texas cop Dave DeMarco, for assistance. Original.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jane Graves received a B.A. in professional writing in 1978, but several years passed before she pursued her dream of becoming a novelist. In 1999 she was a finalist for Romance Writers America’s Golden Heart award, which led to the publication of her first book. Flirting with Disaster is her seventh contemporary romance novel. Jane lives in Texas with her husband of twenty years.

Aus dem Klappentext

HE WAS THE MAN SHE COULDN'T HAVE . . .

On a humanitarian mission to fly doctors to a remote village in Mexico, pilot Lisa Merrick discovers something sinister lurking behind the organization in charge. Her plane is sabotaged, leaving her trapped in the Mexican wilderness with a price on her head and no way out. Injured and desperate, she manages to contact the one man she knows will help her: Dave DeMarco, a tough but compassionate Texas cop she was once wildly in love with, a man who left her with nothing but a whispered promise that now provides her only hope.

. . . SHE WAS THE WOMAN HE COULDN'T FORGET

Dave DeMarco is stunned when a woman from his past phones him late one night with an incredible story of smuggling, sabotage, and attempted murder. Just hearing Lisa Merrick s voice brings back memories Dave doesn t want to face, but a promise he once made leaves him no choice but to help her. Soon, though, his mission to rescue Lisa becomes a struggle for survival against an enemy who wants them both dead. When the danger they face clashes with the passion that still burns between them, Dave vows to protect the woman he never stopped loving and keep her in his life forever. . . .

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chapter one

“You think I won’t do it?” the man shouted. “Is that what you think? Well, you can damn well think again!”

Dave DeMarco bowed his head and let out a breath of frustration. This was not going well.

Five minutes ago, he’d pulled his patrol car onto Highway 4, heading back to the station after a particularly demanding shift, when the guy caught his attention. He was maybe fifty years old, sitting there in his immaculate suit, polished shoes, silk tie, and sixty-dollar haircut, just sitting there, as if he had nothing better to do than watch the world go by. And Dave might not have thought a thing about it, except for the fact that the place he’d chosen to sit was on a highway overpass, his legs dangling over rush hour traffic.

Dave had radioed the situation, asked for backup, then pulled his patrol car onto the overpass. He couldn’t say for sure whether the guy was serious or not, but most of the time if potential jumpers chose a public venue they were just attention seekers, hoping for somebody to give a shit long enough to tell them not to take a dive. With luck, this guy was one of those.

Right now Dave stood ten feet from where the guy sat on the retaining wall, easing as close as he dared. He ticked off the procedures in his mind: Get his name. Establish rapport. Keep him talking.

He inched forward.

“Don’t come any closer!” the guy shouted.

Dave held his ground, glancing down to the highway below, not surprised in the least to see that several cars had pulled over to the side of the road to watch the festivities. And already they’d been joined by a Channel Seven news van. Wonderful. An audience. This was going to be a regular dog and pony show.

“Hey, I’m warning you!” the guy shouted. “Back off, or I’m going over!”

Not likely. If he really did have a death wish, the coroner would be zipping the body bag right about now. But Dave still had to play by the numbers.

“What’s your name?” Dave asked.

“Fuck off!”

“Now, something tells me that’s not really your name. Try again for me, will you?”

Dave forced himself to remain calm. Patrol cops were taught to be patient problem solvers, and he’d always been damned good at his job. But right now, for some reason, he felt edgy and irritated, wishing the guy had chosen any overpass but this one on which to make his point. Maybe it had just been a very long day. Most days in recent memory had seemed like very long days.

Finally the guy’s belligerent expression faded, and Dave saw a tiny window of communication creak open. “Frank,” he said. “My name’s Frank.”

“Are you armed, Frank? Gun? Knife?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Okay. Tell you what. It’s a little dangerous on that wall where you’re sitting, and I’m thinking maybe you ought to get off it. What do you think?”

“I’m thinking maybe I ought to stay right where I am.”

“Okay, then. Tell me why you’re doing this. What’s the problem?”

“Like you give a shit about my problems?”

Dave didn’t want to deal with this. He just didn’t. He saw a couple of patrol cars lining up behind his on the overpass, and if he could have handed this one off to anyone else he’d have done it in a heartbeat.

“Just get down from there,” Dave said, “and we can talk about whatever’s bugging you.”

“Yeah, right. Talk. Just how stupid do you think I am?”

Dave glanced at the gold band on the guy’s left hand. “Tell me about your wife.”

“What’s to tell?”

“Got any kids?”

“Yeah. So what?”

“So maybe they’d like their father alive. You suppose?”

He made a scoffing noise. “Right now, I don’t know anyone who gives a damn if I live or die.”

“Now, Frank, you and I both know that’s not true.”

“You don’t know shit about me. If you did, and you were me, you’d be up here on this wall, too.”

Dave started to say it. He started to say, You don’t really want to do this, do you? Don’t you know that suicide is a permanent solution to a temporary problem?

But as the words ran through his mind, all at once they sounded like some stupid cliché that even the biggest idiot on the planet wouldn’t buy. Lately he was having a hard time believing any of the bullshit he told people in his line of work: That if a husband and a wife would just calmly talk things out, they’d come to an understanding. That if a crackhead only went into rehab, he could kick that nasty habit and his life would be rosy. That suicide wasn’t the answer, because it was a permanent solution to a temporary problem. Had there ever been a time when he’d believed any of that crap?

The truth was that anyone who even thought about committing suicide just might have a few problems that were going to stay with him pretty much through eternity. Dave would bet his last buck that within days of the obligatory psych consult Frank here would be back at it again one way or another, figuratively screaming at the world, trying desperately to make somebody else solve his problems because he sure as hell couldn’t.

Well, Dave had news for the guy—bold-type, front-page, above-the-fold news: He couldn’t solve them, either. Didn’t want to solve them. Christ, he didn’t even want to stand here and pretend that he did. And as he continued to stare at this man who thought nothing of displaying his mental malfunctions for the entire city of Tolosa, Texas, to see, something inside him snapped.

“So what’s the deal here anyway, Frank?” Dave said. “Are you one of those corporate executives who played loose with the stock market and sent his company into the toilet?”

The guy gaped at Dave, his expensive silk tie fluttering in the breeze. “No! Of course not!”

“Find your wife cheating on you?”

“No!”

“Lose your life savings betting on the horses?”

“No! Nothing like that! I just—”

“To tell you the truth, Frank, I don’t give a shit what you’re doing here. And you’re right. I don’t know a damned thing about you, which means that for all I know, you might be on the right track.”

The guy swallowed hard, his eyes as wide as searchlights. He looked down at the traffic whizzing by beneath him, then back at Dave. “What?”

Dave took one step closer and lowered his voice. “Jump.”

“What?”

“Simplest thing in the world. Just jump the hell off this bridge and get it over with. Then maybe I can get the paperwork done in time to grab a beer and watch the Mavericks game.”

“But . . . but I don’t want to jump!”

Dave drew back with feigned surprise. “Oh, really? You don’t want to jump? Then would you mind telling me why the hell you’re sitting on this goddamned bridge during rush hour, screwing up traffic and dragging half the cops and paramedics in the city out here to deal with this?”

“Wh-what I mean,” the guy said, “is that I don’t want to jump, but I will. I will, if that’s the only way—”

“The only way to do what, Frank? To show all those people who have been making your life hell that they...

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Verlag
Ivy Books
Erscheinungsdatum
2003
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0345458400
ISBN 13 
9780345458407
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
352
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