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You really do want him. Right here, right now.
Regret assailed Lyn. Her alarmed expression, her body language…it must have felt like a slap in the face to Joe.
The thought that anything so strong, so overwhelming, could be anything but induced…
She couldn’t. Not with this man. Not with a Sentinel gone dark.
A Sentinel who just left himself open to a painful surge of power to save four people…
That didn’t mean he hadn’t got himself into trouble. Troubled men could mean well…could even be admirable. And a troubled man could damn well drag her down into the dark with him, if she let him.
Available in April 2010 from Mills & Boon® Intrigue
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Backstreet Hero by Justine Davis & Becoming a Cavanaugh by Marie Ferrarella
The Rancher Bodyguard by Carla Cassidy & Kincaid’s Dangerous Game by Kathleen Creighton
The Bride’s Secrets by Debra Webb
Cry of the Wolf by Karen Whiddon
Sentinels: Lion Heart by Doranna Durgin
Sentinels: Lion Heart
By
Doranna Durgin
Doranna Durgin responded to all early injunctions to “put down that book/notebook and go outside to play” by climbing trees so that she’d have the freedom to read and write. Such a quirkiness of spirit has led to an eclectic publishing journey that has spanned genres and forms and resulted in twenty-five novels, which include mystery, science fiction and fantasy, action romance, paranormal and a slew of essays and short stories. But she still prefers to hang around outside her southwestern home with the animals, riding dressage on her Lipizzan and training for performance sports with the dogs. She doesn’t believe so much in mastering the beast within, but in channelling its power. For good or bad has yet to be decided…
You can find her online at www.doranna.net, where she keeps a picture collection of gorgeous high desert sunsets, lots of silly photos, the scoop on new projects and her contact info.
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Unquestionably dedicated to:
The FMC Hospital Crew (I really was writing this book on that wee little machine!)
The Recovery Crew: Jennifer, Tom, Mom, Nancy, Adrianne, Amy, and that whole wonderful SFF newsgroup
Prologue
Dark Sentinel
Lyn Maines stared at the image of Joe Ryan, big as life—much bigger than life—as it splashed across the high-definition plasma screen of the sleek Sentinel conference room in Tucson, Arizona. Both Joe Ryans, actually—the man and his beast. On the left, tawny mountain lion, heavy masculine head with black tracings and jaw dropped in a snarl as the animal stalked the camera, clearly aware of and annoyed by the photographer’s presence. On the right, Joe Ryan the man, caught unaware, leaning over a railing before an enormous high desert panoramic vista of pines and sere ocher plains, head turned three-quarters to the camera, wind lifting his tawny hair with its dark tracings at the nape of his neck and temple, features clean and strong.
Not always did the human form reflect the Sentinel form. Her own didn’t, aside from a certain something around the eyes. But there in Joe Ryan, the mountain lion lurked out loud—the sinuous authority, the simmering power. All of it.
Too bad that striking exterior covered a corrupt interior.
Joe Ryan was as dirty as they came—a dark Sentinel. He’d killed his partner for cold hard cash, and he’d done it cleverly enough so that the Sentinel’s brevis region consul and his echelon hadn’t been able to pin him down. Cleverly enough so that Ryan had gone on to a new assignment, a new home at the base of Arizona’s San Francisco Peaks, to start a brand-new scheme—acquiring power on top of his money. Still on the Sentinel payroll, still roaming free in his powerful form. Still playing with power itself. And Lyn…
Lyn would prove it.
We think the Atrum Core drozhar might have fled there after the battle near Sonoita, the consul’s grim adjutant had said moments earlier, a warning. He’ll know you if he makes contact with you. He’ll target you.
Then she simply wouldn’t let herself be seen. “Send me there,” she said, flexing her fingers slightly as if she could feel her sharp claws while in this form. Ocelot, small and quick, with a knack for following power traces that had served her well against the Atrum Core this past spring—well enough so that the consul owed her one, if any such thing could ever be said. “I can be on his trail by nightfall.”
Yes. Lyn was the one who would finally prove it.
Chapter 1
Joe Ryan took a heady breath of hot, pine-scented air, basking in it—the scents so much stronger to the cougar, so subtly layered. Dirt and fallen pine needles and the scrub oak beside him, tangy and sharp as he barely brushed against it…each scent heated by the rising afternoon temperature and intensified by the moisture in the gathering monsoon clouds.
The humans he followed through this national forest probably noticed none of it, just as they’d missed the red-backed Abert’s squirrel shooting away from their blundering dog and the birds gone quiet overhead.
Joe noticed them all—but it was the humans he stalked.
The humans
