The Maverick

But what if he’d been wrong about her? What if he’d been wrong to believe in secondhand gossip instead of the heart-and-guts proof of their actual relationship?

No. There was evidence, the kind she couldn’t hide.

Luke coughed. “I hear you’ve got a kid.”

The car shot dangerously fast around one of the switchback curves. She slammed her foot on the brake, sending the back end fishtailing into the soft shoulder.

“Take it easy,” Luke said just before he was flung across the seat. By the time he’d awkwardly righted himself, pushing up with hands cuffed behind his back, she’d gotten the car under control and was proceeding as if he hadn’t spoken.

“A boy,” he said.

Her fingers clenched on the wheel. “Let’s keep this strictly business.”

“Not possible. You and I will never be strictly business.”

“Fourteen years without contact certainly indicates otherwise.”

“Fourteen years without contact only means that we both went cold turkey. Now that I’m back…”

Dear Reader,

After writing thirteen books for Harlequin, I’m thrilled to be making my Superromance debut this month with The Maverick. It’s a reunion story, it’s a bad boy (and girl!) story, it’s even a secret baby story…although this time the “baby” happens to be a moody thirteen-year-old named Joe. Telling Luke and Sophie’s story was, by turns, a fun, emotional, exciting and even wrenching experience.

Thanks must go to The TIBS and John, my online buddy group, who provided support, sharpened my wits, listened to my gripes, answered my stupid questions at 2:00 a.m. and made me laugh every single day. And especially to you, the reader, for welcoming me to the wonderful world of Superromance by reading this book.

Please let me know how you like it! You may write to me in care of Harlequin, or via e-mail by going to www.eHarlequin.com or www.superauthors.com.

Cheers,

Carrie Alexander

For the scholar and the woodsman, my mom and dad, who

taught me the love of books and the benefits of hard work.

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

THE SILVER-AND-BLACK MOTORCYCLE zipped through downtown Treetop, Wyoming, at fifteen miles above the speed limit. Deputy Sophie Ryan was so startled she flinched, spilling her coffee and dropping her car keys. From Sophie’s vantage point in the parking lot of the True Brew coffeehouse, she shouldn’t have been able to recognize the driver.

Yet she was afraid that she had.

Maverick. The name flashed through her like lightning—as shocking and electric as the man himself.

The presence of Luke Salinger in Treetop—after fourteen years!—was too much to accept all at once. Sophie didn’t want him here. She truly didn’t. But there was no denying that she was transfixed by the possibility. Steaming latte soaked the front of her police uniform, and she was too stunned to feel it.

Squeezing the half-empty foam cup, she stared blankly after the speeding motorcycle. Even though Range Street had returned to its usual early-morning tranquility, the air seemed to reverberate with the bike’s annoying buzz and hot blue exhaust fumes. Sophie shuddered. Every self-protective sense that she’d honed in the years since Luke’s departure went on red alert.

Her mind raced. Try as she might, she couldn’t convince herself that some other member of the defunct Mustangs motorcycle gang had chosen to take a joyride through town for old time’s sake.

For one thing, it was only quarter to eight. That let out the likeliest candidate, Damon “Demon” Bradshaw, who rarely rolled out of bed to open his run-down bike shop before noon.

The motorcycle in question had been black and chrome, sleek, stylish, fast. Snake Carson’s bike was a big, ugly chopper that sounded like a dump truck. And ever since Skooch Haas had found religion he’d sooner wear a dress to bible school than break the speed limit.

While the driver had been little more than a blur, Sophie’s observation of details was keen. She’d seen enough to identify dark wavy hair, whipped by the wind since it was a little too long to be reputable, a possible Mustangs tattoo on the left biceps, and a long, lean body clad in denim and brown leather. Which meant she could also eliminate Punch Fiorelli, who’d gained fifty pounds in the past decade, and Bronc Lemmons, who was in the hospital, sick and bald as a colicky baby from his second round of chemotherapy.

Sophie took a shaky breath. Other than the deceased and the incarcerated, that left one member of the Mustangs unaccounted for. And he happened to be the only man on earth for whom she’d never been able to rationalize—or completely stifle—her tangled, tumultuous feelings.

“Maverick,” she said through her teeth, remembering with a spurt of pain a time when he’d left her scared, alone and, as she’d soon learned, pregnant. She clenched her fist. The last of the coffee gushed from the cup in a hot brown waterfall.