Hero Under Cover (Hqn Romance) (Mass Market Paperback)

by Suzanne Brockmann (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
When Pete Taylor first offered his services as a bodyguard, Annie Morgan wanted nothing to do with him. She was sure that the death threats against her weren't serious. While the Native American mask she was working on was valuable, it wasn't worth killing for.

One murder attempt later, Annie was glad to have Pete around. She owed him her life. Suddenly she was beginning to believe in heroes—and dreams. But Pete wasn't a fantasy—he was real, and at the moment he was the only person she could allow herself to trust, no matter who he was.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
You're going to do what!"

"A strip search," the FBI agent said, heading for the door. "Please follow me."

Dr. Annie Morrow crossed her arms and planted herself firmly. She wasn't going anywhere, that was for damn sure. "You've gone through my luggage with a fine-tooth comb, you've X-rayed the hell out of my purse, and now you want to do a strip search? This is harassment, plain and simple. You've held me here for nearly five hours without letting me contact an attorney. My civil rights are being violated, pal, and I've had damn near enough."

On the other side of the one-way mirror, CIA operative Kendall "Pete" Peterson stood silently, watching Dr. Anne—nickname Annie—Morrow, renowned archaeologist and art historian, professional artifact authenticator. According to her file, she was thirty-two years old, and one of the world's foremost experts on ancient metalworkings—coins, statues, works of art, jewelry. The daughter of two archaeologists, she'd been born on a dig in Egypt. She'd lived in thirteen different countries and participated in nineteen different excavations, and that was before she'd even attended college.

What the file didn't tell him was that she was filled with a seemingly limitless supply of energy. During the course of the five hours he'd been watching her, she had sat still for only a very short time. Mostly she paced; sometimes she stood, she leaned, she tapped her foot, but generally she moved around the small interrogation room like a caged animal.

The file also didn't describe the stubborn tilt to her chin, or the way her blue eyes blazed when she was angry. In fact, the photo included hadn't managed to capture much of anything out of the ordinary, except maybe her long, shining brown hair, and her almost too-sensuous lips.

But in person, in motion, she was beautiful….

"So that's our little Dr. Morrow," came a voice at his shoulder.

Peterson turned to look at Whitley Scott, the man in charge of the FBI side of the investigation. Scott smiled at him, his eyes crinkling behind his thick glasses. "Sorry I'm late, Captain," he said. "My flight was delayed."

Peterson didn't smile back. "We've been holding her for hours," he said. "She's pretty steamed."

Through the speaker system, he could hear Dr. Morrow still arguing with FBI agent Richard Collins.

"I've told you nine million times, or is it ten million now? I was in England to pick up an artifact—a gold-cast death mask from the nineteenth century—for a client. I wasn't out of the U.S. long enough to do whatever illicit crimes you're trying to accuse me of. The shipping papers for the death mask are all in order—you've admitted that much," she said. "What I'd like to know is when you intend to let me leave."

"After the strip search," Collins said. He was a good man for this job, Peterson thought. Collins could outargue anyone. He was solid, steady and extremely patient. And he was absolutely never fazed.

"She's just your type, Pete," Whitley said, with a sideways glance at the taller man. "Something tells me you're going to enjoy this job."

Peterson didn't smile, but his dark brown eyes flashed in Scott's direction for a microsecond. "She's too skinny," he said.

In the interrogation room, Annie Morrow had had enough. She slammed her hand down on the table, pulling herself up and out of the chair she'd recently thrown herself into. "You want to strip-search me?"

she said. "Fine. Strip-search me and let me get the hell out of here."

She shrugged out of her baggy linen jacket, tossing it onto a chair as she kicked her sneakers off. A quick yank pulled her loose red shirt over her head, and she quickly unbuttoned her pants.

"Umm…" Collins said, rattled. "Not here…."

"Why not?" Annie asked much too sweetly, her eyes bright with anger as she stood in the middle of the room in her underwear. "Oh, relax. I have bathing suits that are more revealing than this."

A slow grin spread across Peterson's face. Man, she'd managed to faze Collins. She knew darn well he had wanted her to follow him to a private room where she'd be searched by a female agent. Yet she'd undressed in front of him, simply to upset him. He felt a flash of something, and realized that he liked her—he liked her spirit, her energy, her nerve. He frowned. She was a suspect, under investigation. He wasn't supposed to like her. Respect, admire even, but not like. But, man, standing there, looking at her, he found an awful lot to like.

Annie turned and gestured toward the mirror, hands on her hips. "Don't you think the rest of the boys want to get in on the fun?"

She knew they were watching her. She was really something, really sharp. Her file said she'd had a 4.0 average throughout college, graduating with a Ph.D. in half the time it normally took. He liked smart women, particularly when they came wrapped in a package like this one.

Her bra and panties were both black and lacy, contrasting the smooth paleness of her fair skin. Her breasts were full, her waist narrow, flaring out to slender hips and long, beautiful legs. "I take it back," Pete said to Whitley Scott. "She's not too skinny."

She seemed to be looking directly at him. He could see the pulse beating in her neck. Each ragged, angry breath she took made her breasts rise and fall.

"Do you intend to harass me every time I leave and re-enter the country?" she said.

Pete glanced at Whitley. The older man shrugged. "She's looking right at you," Whitley said.

"You know she can't see me," Pete said, but he motioned for the mike to be turned on. "The Athens investigation," he said, raising his voice so the mike would pick him up, "hasn't been closed."

Annie threw up her hands and began to pace. "Well, there we go," she said. "We're finally getting somewhere. You are trying to harass me. You don't give a damn about this death mask. You still think I have something to do with the jerks that bombed and robbed that museum."

Pete tried to keep his attention on her words instead of her body. But it wasn't easy. She moved like a cat, the muscles in her legs rippling….

"How many times do I have to tell you that I am not a thief?" she continued. "Shoot, I wish I were. It would make this a whole hell of a lot easier. But I'm not about to confess to crimes I didn't commit."

She stopped pacing, coming back to stare directly up at him again. It was eerie, as if she really could see him through the glass.

"There was an explosion and a robbery at the gallery in England two hours after you left it," Peterson said, his voice distorted over the cheap speakers. "This time, people died."

Peterson watched Annie's face carefully as a range of emotions battled through her. Anger finally won.

"So, naturally, you believe Iwas involved. That's great, that's really great. Innocent people die, and the best you guys can do is to give me a hard time as I get on and off planes. You should be over there chasing the creeps that did the bombing, not playing peekaboo with somebody who gets queasy when she cuts her finger, pal."

"Doesn't it seem a little strange that you should go to European art galleries twice in five months, and within hours after you leave, each of them is hit by a bomb and a robbery?" Peterson had been in this business long enough to know that when there was smoke, somebody was trying to hide a fire. He wasn't buying the indignant act. "How do you explain the fact that you left the Athens convention hours before anyone else?"

"I don't!" Annie countered, eyes aflame. "I've already told the FBI, and the CIA, and everyone else who's asked, that I left because I'd seen everything at the exhibit and I wanted to catch an early flight home." She was pacing the floor now, clearly upset. "What ever happened to innocent until proven guilty? Huh? Just what the hell is going on here?" she shouted, right through the glass at Peterson.

There was silence. Big fat silence. It disarmed her as Pete knew it would. Dr. Anne Morrow was low on patience, and impatient people didn't like being made to wait. She turned, gathering her clothes. "If we're through…" she said pointedly.

"But we're not," Pete said. "It's called a strip search for a reason."

What little remained of her patience snapped. "Oh, give me a break," she said, throwing down her clothes and striding over to the mirror. She came up really close—close enough for Pete to see the details of her thick, dark lashes and the streaks of lighter color in the deep blue of her eyes. Close enough for him to see that her skin was as smooth and soft as it looked. If the glass of the window hadn't been between them, he could have lifted his hand and touched her.

Peterson felt Whitley watching him, and somehow he managed to remain expressionless. But, man, it had been a long time since he'd looked at a woman and wanted her this badly. It had been a real long time.

"I assure you that everything I'm hiding in my underwear is attached, pal," she said. "No removable parts."

"Sorry," he said. "I'm being paid a lot of money not to trust you."

"What exactly are you looking for?" she asked. "Maybe if you tell me, I can check and see if I've got it on me somewhere."

"You ever hear of mules?" Pete asked.

She froze.

He'd managed to shock her, but somehow he didn't feel triumphant about it. "Mules are people who smuggle illegal substances into the country inside their bodies," he said.

"I know what a mule is," she said. "Tell me honestly, do you really think I've swallowed the crown jewels? Whole?"

"Not swallowed," he said, and then was silent, letting her figure it out for herself.

"Oh, Christmas," she said. Her face paled slightly

beneath her tan, and her freckles stood out. "We're really trying to go for total humiliation here, aren't we?"

"Just going by the book," Pete said. "And the book says that you'll be searched—completely. We have a physician waiting in another room."

"Oh, you mean you don't want to do it right here?" Annie said. She was furious. He could almost see her pulse accelerating as he watched the ...

Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: HQN Books; Reprint edition (November 1, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0373773366
• ISBN-13: 978-0373773367
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 4.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #37,170 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars ok but not fantastic , November 28, 2004

By	IRRS (North Carolina) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hero Under Cover (Harlequin Silhouette Intimate Moments) (Paperback)

This is an early Brockmann that was written in 1994 and resurrected and published in 2001. The suspense part of the plot takes a little bit of a back-seat to the tons of lusting that goes on. But I did find the underlying reason for the actions of the villains to be believable.

The heroine is an archaeologist who is suspected by the FBI and CIA of being involved in a series of museum bombings. The CIA hero is placed under cover as her bodyguard when she's threatened and has her home/lab broken into by some shadowy group trying to get their hands on an old death mask she's currently authenticating. The agency hope is that the hero will get earn her trust and learn something to help them nail her for the bombings.

Most of the book centers on him watching her and watching out for her. There is
a sprinkling of information on authenticating artifacts but I don't know enough to tell if Brockmann did her research or not. There is a heck of a lot about what the heroine eats. What I did find hard to believe is the fact that the heroine doesn't immediately go to work on authenticating the piece that is causing so much trouble. The FBI and CIA use the fact that the heroine is being threatened for handling it as a cover to have its owner put a 24 hour guard on her for weeks and she just lets it sit in her safe while working on other pieces? I would think she'd want to get rid of it quickly but then we'd have no story.

I also thought the change in whether or not the hero believed her innocence very quick and would have expected to have a few scenes of him poking around through her stuff and listening in on phone calls. Instead he just seems to accept that she had nothing to do with the bombings. But it's a series book so maybe space was a factor here. All in all, it's not bad but has an awful lot of lusting.

19 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Romantic mystery with great twists!, July 21, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Hero Under Cover (Harlequin Silhouette Intimate Moments) (Paperback)

I don't want to give it all away. Basically, a doctor is called
in to authenticate a Native American "death mask" While she is
attending the piece, she is assigned an agent to act as bodyguard. Their personalities are oil and water. But when serious murder attempt is tried against the doc, more than a
mystery starts to heat up.
Swift moving story with sharp 3-D characters.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Slow Romance!, January 25, 2009

By	Melvin Hunt (Cleveland,, Texas United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

DFr Annie Morrow is a suspect in an art scandal. She is harassed by the authorities constantly. She is even strip searched at the airport. Dr. Morrow comes into possession of a Navaho Indian Death mask. The mask belonged to "Stands Against the Storm" a Navaho chief. Immediately Dr.
Morrow begins recieving death threats and has a rock thrown through her window with a death threat tied to it. The CIA sends an undercover into
her office to be a bodyguard. His name if Pete Taylor. He is to guard Dr.
Morrow as well as investigate her. He has his hands full. She does not want a bodyguard and wants Taylor gone. He finally wins out. She does not
take the death threats seriously. She discovers that the mask is worth
killing over.Annie finaly realizes that it is good to have Taylor around.
The book finally comes to a conclusion.