O'Halloran's Lady

Fiona Brand

World-famous writer Jenna Whitmore has her share of fans. She just never thought one would be out for blood. There’s only one man she can trust, VIP security expert Marc O’Halloran. He left her once without a word, so how can she ask him for help now?

“So just who is going to be my bodyguard?”

O’Halloran’s gaze locked with hers. Her heart slammed against her chest as he held the door and stepped inside the elevator. As one big hand cupped her jaw, she acknowledged that somehow she had managed to completely misread the situation.

His head dipped. She had a fractured moment to log the masculine scents of soap and skin, the heat blasting off his body. His mouth brushed hers once, twice, then settled more firmly.

Heat and sensation shot through her as he angled her jaw to deepen the kiss. A split second later, O’Halloran released her and stepped back out into the hall.

He hit the close button. “Honey, who do you think is guarding you? I am.”

About the Author

FIONA BRAND lives in the sunny Bay of Islands, New Zealand. Now that both her sons are grown, she continues to love writing books and gardening. After a life-changing time in which she met Christ, she has undertaken study for a bachelor of theology and has become a member of The Order of St Luke, Christ’s healing ministry.

O’Halloran’s

Lady

Fiona Brand

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

To The Lord, who really did renew my strength while

I was writing this book.

“Guard me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the

shadow of your wings.”

—Psalm 17

Acknowledgments:

Huge thanks to Stacy Boyd, my editor,

for her patience, expertise, encouragement and grace.

Thank you!

Prologue

Disbelief and cold fury gripped Branden Tell as he sat in the echoing solitude of a cavernous warehouse. Motes of dust lit by beams of late afternoon sun drifted through the air as he read Jenna Whitmore’s latest romantic suspense novel.

The words on the page seemed to swim and shimmer before his eyes. But no matter how hard or how long he looked, the truth he thought had been lost in the smoke and fire and confusion of the past kept stubbornly reforming.

Six ugly letters spelling out m-u-r-d-e-r. Black ink on a pulp page: pointing the finger at him.

He broke out in a sweat; his heart was pounding as if he had just run a race. He wondered how much Whitmore actually knew. Given that she had not gone to the police but instead had included the details of his past crime in a novel, he had to assume she probably didn’t know much. He was willing to bet she had stumbled on her conclusions by pure, dumb luck.

He blinked rapidly and tried to think. Would anyone else notice the connections Jenna Whitmore had unwittingly made and link them to her cousin’s death in a house fire six years ago?

The answer swam up out of the acid burn in his stomach. Marc O’Halloran, the hotshot police detective who had been hunting him with a dogged, relentless focus for the past six years. He would.

Two months ago, almost to the day, O’Halloran had walked into a security firm Branden supplied with alarms while he had been there delivering a consignment. The second he had recognised O’Halloran, he had turned on his heel and left, but he had felt O’Halloran’s gaze drilling into his back as he walked.

The close shave had almost given him a heart attack. There was no way O’Halloran could have recognised him, because he had been wearing overalls and a ball cap pulled low over his forehead. He would have looked like a hundred other tradesmen or casual labourers. He had found out later that O’Halloran had been following up on a lead on the fire that had killed his wife and child, checking on who had installed the alarm in his house.

Six years and O’Halloran was still hunting him.

The fear that gripped Branden for long, dizzying moments almost spiralled out of control. He had to think.

No. He had to do something.

Snapping the book closed, he found himself staring at the photograph of Jenna Whitmore on the back cover.

She was nothing like her cousin, “The Go