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  Drake knew all the martial arts moves Jim knew, and some he didn’t. Clearly, Rabat had been trained in the Russian art of SAMBO, and he was adept at savate. When he stripped to shower, Jim could see the thickened shinbones that came from thousands and thousands of hours of kicking either sand-filled bags or ass. He suspected the latter.

  When they were dressed, Rabat had congratulated him. It was the first time anyone had lasted fifteen minutes with him.

  He’d passed the first test.

  The second came five minutes later, on a mile-long shooting range, where Jim was tested on handguns, machine guns and rifles, at varying distances. Well, at least he got that right. With each weapon, at each distance, he was able to put ten rounds in a nickel. Something told him, however, that Rabat could place them in a dime.

  The third test was on a race track, where he was put through a grueling series of tests. A bootlegger’s turn at 80 mph, evasive driving and combat driving.

  At the end of the day, he was offered a job for enough money to make him rich in ten years’ time, and lodgings on Rabat’s compound. He was introduced to Mrs. Rabat as her new driver, but Jim was clear on what he was.

  The money was worth it to be lackey and bodyguard to a rich bitch. He’d do his duty, no question. But it turned out that the lady was no bitch. Inside of a month, Jim had half fallen in love with her, as had everyone else on the staff.

  She was gorgeous, but then that went with the territory of rich, powerful men. If they couldn’t have beautiful women, who could?

  There was something else about her, though, a sweetness, a gentleness mixed with a skewered sense of humor that made Jim realize that he’d defend her with his life, even without Rabat.

  The woman was magic. Not to mention a highly gifted artist. For Christmas, he’d gotten two watercolors of a puppy who’d adopted him, and they were small masterpieces that he’d framed himself and put up on the wall at the foot of his bed so they were the last things he saw at night and the first things he saw in the morning.

  She ran a small, highly successful art gallery in the center of town, selling mostly her own works. She strongly encouraged local talent, but prospective buyers zeroed in on her stuff and didn’t have eyes for anything else. Apparently, she sold everything she ever showed, within a week.

  And still, there was enough left over to cover every inch of wall in their huge mansion. He’d heard Rabat was planning a new wing just to house all her stuff.

  “Jim…” She smiled into the mirror. “I know you’re a careful driver, but could we please…speed it up? I have some good news I want to share with Mr. Rabat.”

  Well, maybe that wing was going to be used for something a little more lively than paintings. Jim raised his speed by five miles. Rabat was already insanely overprotective. If anything happened to his pregnant wife…

  Jim shuddered at the thought.

  Behind him, she drummed long, delicate fingers on the armrest but said nothing more. She wasn’t the type to insist or whine.

  Finally, they were at the big steel gates that were only one aspect of Rabat’s perimeter defenses. There were motion sensors, thermal imaging cameras, trip wires. Discreet, hidden, but definitely there.

  Oh yeah, Rabat was an operator. A fucking rich operator.

  Rabat had appeared out of nowhere a year ago and in a month had become the proprietor of the three airlines that flew in and out of the Sivuatu airport and the owner of the four shipping companies and two cruise lines that operated out of the port.

  Jim glanced in the rearview mirror. Victoria was sitting on the edge of her seat now as they drove through the gates, gathering her things, smiling a secret smile. The smile reserved exclusively for her husband.

  And there he was, waiting for his wife, as always.

  Jim drove slowly down the drive, waiting for the moment that always twisted his guts.

  He pulled up, aligning the back door exactly with where Rabat was waiting. Rabat opened the door himself, lifting his wife out of the backseat and…his face melted.

  It never failed to amaze Jim.

  Rabat was a hard-ass. It was hard to imagine that look could be on the face of a man like him. All that hardness and toughness and cold detachment, gone.

  Victoria whispered in her husband’s ear and he picked her up and twirled her, her happy laughter loud in the tropical evening air.

  This was happiness on a scale that almost scared Jim. Rabat put his wife down, touching her cheek gently. The expression of yearning and tenderness on his face was so raw, Jim looked away, chest tight.

  Some things are too much for mere mortals to see.

  Like looking into the sun.

  Acknowledgments

  As always, a heartfelt thanks to

  May Chen, my editor,

  and Ethan Ellenberg, my agent.

  About the Author

  LISA MARIE RICE is eternally thirty years old and will never age. She is tall and willowy and beautiful. Men drop at her feet like ripe pears. She has won every major book prize in the world. She is a black belt with advanced degrees in archaeology, nuclear physics, and Tibetan literature. She is a concert pianist. Did I mention the Nobel?

  Of course, Lisa Marie Rice is a virtual woman and exists only at the keyboard when writing erotic romance. She disappears when the monitor winks off.

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  Also by Lisa Marie Rice

  DANGEROUS SECRETS

  DANGEROUS LOVER

  Credits

  Cover design by Mumtaz Mustafa

  Cover photograph © Photodisc/Getty Images

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DANGEROUS PASSION. Copyright © 2009 by Lisa Marie Rice. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Adobe Digital Edition June 2009 ISBN 978-0-06-189837-2

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

&nb
sp; Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by Lisa Marie Rice

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher