Exposed Read online

  ALSO BY BESTSELLING AUTHOR DONNA KAUFFMAN

  UNDER A FIREFLY MOON

  LAVENDER BLUE

  BLUESTONE & VINE

  BLUE HOLLOW FALLS

  THE INN AT BLUE HOLLOW FALLS (ebook novella)

  LAVENDER & MISTLETOE (ebook novella)

  A SEASON TO CELEBRATE

  THE BAKESHOP AT PUMPKIN AND SPICE

  THE SUGAR COOKIE SWEETHEART SWAP

  The Bachelors of Blueberry Cove Series

  PELICAN POINT

  HALF MOON HARBOR

  SANDPIPER ISLAND

  The Brides of Blueberry Cove Series

  SEA GLASS SUNRISE

  SNOWFLAKE BAY

  STARFISH MOON

  Cupcake Club Series

  HONEY PIE

  BABYCAKES

  SWEET STUFF

  SUGAR RUSH

  “Hot Scot Trilogy”

  UNWRAPPED/Santa In a Kilt

  OFF KILTER

  SOME LIKE IT SCOT

  HERE COMES TROUBLE

  A GREAT KISSER

  LET ME IN

  Hamilton Series

  THE NAUGHTY LIST/Naughty But Nice

  KISSING SANTA CLAUS /Lock, Stock & Jingle Bells

  TO ALL A GOOD NIGHT/Unleashed

  “Unholy Trinity” Series

  THE BLACK SHEEP AND THE ENGLISH ROSE

  THE BLACK SHEEP AND THE HIDDEN BEAUTY

  THE BLACK SHEEP AND THE PRINCESS

  “The Chisholm Brothers” Series

  THE GREAT SCOT

  BAD BOYS IN KILTS

  “Men of Rogues Hollow” Series

  MERRY CHRISTMAS, BABY

  CATCH ME IF YOU CAN

  EXPOSED

  BAD BOYS, NEXT EXIT

  JINGLE BELL ROCK

  BAD BOYS ON BOARD

  I LOVE BAD BOYS

  Exposed

  Donna Kauffman

  KENSINGTON BOOKS

  Kensington PublishingCorp.http:

  http//www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Teaser chapter

  ZEBRA BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2004 by Kensington Publishing Corp.

  “Exposed” copyright © 2004 by Donna Kauffman

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the Publisher and neither the Author nor the Publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  All Kensington titles, imprints and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund-raising, educatiJ246onal or institutional use.

  Zebra and the Z logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  First Ebook Edition: October 2020

  ISBN: 978-1-4201-5320-0

  Chapter One

  Austin Morgan got paid to shoot beautiful women. And he was very good at his job.

  Had been, in fact, since he’d caught Cindy Harper in only her bikini bottoms, sunning herself on a raft out in old man Ramsay’s pond when they were both seventeen. He’d never forget that hot August day. He’d staked out his spot in the woods for hours, hoping to get a shot of the great blue heron who’d made a habit of coming in every afternoon, usually just as the sun started its descent.

  Instead he’d zoomed in on Cindy Harper. Her soft breasts, plumping out along the side of her body as she floated, facedown, on her bright orange raft. He remembered as if it were yesterday, how he’d skimmed his lens along the tight curve of her very sweet ass, feeling it as deeply as if he were stroking her for real. He remembered admiring the way her hamstrings flexed those perfect cheeks of hers when she flip-kicked her way back from the center of the lake. Girls Volleyball State Champ two years running. And the payoff was a body boys drooled over. And made his fingers twitch on the trigger.

  He remembered thinking he couldn’t figure out which had excited him more . . . the idea of wading out in that water and flipping her off the raft . . . and wrapping those strong legs of hers around his waist. Or capturing for posterity the exact element of her that had him rock hard in his shorts. Considering Cindy was dating his older brother Tag at the time, he’d opted for posterity.

  Austin closed his eyes, shut out the sounds of people shuffling up and down the narrow aisle outside his private rail car, ignoring the stream of anxious chatter that filled the air that was growing more still and stifled the longer the train sat motionless on the snow-covered tracks. Instead, his thoughts continued to drift back through the years, as they had since he’d boarded the damn train in Florida, twelve interminable hours ago. This time to that day on Ramsay’s pond. To that one snap in time that had changed his whole life.

  The endless hours spent dreaming of a future spent traveling to exotic locales, photographing wildlife, capturing them in their native element, examining their power, how they fit in on the playing field of life . . . all forgotten the instant that shutter had clicked. The hunger to capture the primal glory of an entirely different kind of wildlife sprang to life inside him that hot afternoon, making him feel alive in a way he never had before. A hunger that, with a great deal of perseverance, and support from everyone back home in Rogues Hollow—except his father, of course—had led to a very lucrative career, traveling to all those exotic locales he’d dreamed of and many more he hadn’t. Still focusing on the primal beauty of nature . . . only now it came wrapped in a string bikini.

  The corners of his mouth kicked up just a little. And he owed it all to Cindy Harper’s sweet ass. Now, a dozen years and a hundred magazine covers later, he was heading back home to Rogues Hollow. And any urge he had to smile vanished.

  Home. He could be in Milan right now, shooting that bathing suit layout for Elle. Instead, he was stuck on a train, plunging headlong into a howling winter storm. Heading to a house, to a past, that—Cindy Harper’s ass notwithstanding—held memories he’d traveled the world to forget. But what the hell, it was that time of year, right? Peace on earth, goodwill toward men?

  Yeah, he thought as he stared out at the heavy white swirl beyond the fogged passenger window. Merry fucking Christmas.

  * * *

  Delilah Hudson loved Christmas.

  But not for all the traditional reasons most people cherished and lovingly tended to every year. In fact, she loved it for all the reasons that had nothing to do with tradition or sentiment. Christmas was a season when everyone packed up, bundled up, and trundled home to friends and family, leaving work, the hassle of day to day living behind, to embrace the warmth of that impossible-to-duplicate familial cocoon.

  Del hadn’t come from a cocoon, familial or otherwise. She liked to think she’d emerged from the chrysalis fully formed and totally independent. She allowed herself a little smile, her first in hours, and a dry one at that, thinking the nuns who ran the orphanage she’d been raised in would agree on that last part. Her knuckles, however, still bore the scars of their opinions on the former.

  Unlike the people presently milling past her,
up and down the aisleway, she had no desire to revisit any of the places or people who had been a part of that time. She’d rather embrace a city empty of expectations and demands. For two glorious weeks, from the days just before Christmas, through the New Year, everyone hustled and bustled around town, thoughts focused on gift giving and partygoing . . . not on work, not on deadlines. And not on Del.

  For two glorious weeks she felt like she had the whole place to herself, a place out of time, where she could wander as she pleased. Just her, and her camera. Only the pictures she took during that time weren’t for the print ads that dominated her working hours. They were for herself. A reflection of who she was, what she saw in the city that had given her a life she loved. Museums were empty, the park cold and windswept, the harbor barren of sails. For those two weeks, New York City was hers.

  Or it would be, if I could get the hell back to it, she thought grimly. Instead she was snowed in on a goddamn train . . . and snowed out of getting home anytime soon.

  She drew her attention away from the grumbling of her fellow passengers and back to the fogged window. When she’d boarded the train in Atlanta early this morning, she’d seen expectant faces and chubby-cheeked smiles. People happily leaving work and home behind, heading off to spend the holiday with family or friends. Now those same faces were weary, frustrated, the littlest ones tear-stained. She could hardly blame them. It was Christmas Eve and they’d just been informed their train was temporarily stalled on the tracks.

  Another train coming the other direction had partly derailed due to icing. The conductor had informed them that there had been thankfully few injuries, but that with the storm still ongoing, and the wind picking up, causing heavy drifting and near whiteout conditions, rescue and repair efforts were being severely hampered. They’d been forced to stop a dozen miles away from the next station. Which was still hours short of Penn Station in New York City, so what difference did it make?

  At least she didn’t have anyone waiting for her: no relatives tipsy from too much eggnog, no family worrying about her safety, no significant other hoping he’d found just the right gift to surprise her with. “No me, wondering breathlessly if this is going to be the night he finally proposes,” she said, lips twisting into a wry smirk.

  Only, somehow, the acerbic internal monologue didn’t quite give her the perspective she’d been hoping for. She’d always prided herself for not falling into that trap. The trap of expectations that others inevitably placed on those they loved. She took pride, and a significant amount of pleasure, in the fact that the only expectations she had to live up to were her own.

  How often had she watched her friends and coworkers succumb to the lure of letting someone else define their happiness? Infatuation was great, lust even better; she was a firm believer in enjoying both. But only up to the point where you forgot it was just for fun. Once you started to rely on it, depend on it . . . Big mistake letting it progress beyond that point.

  So, it was ridiculous to feel even the tiniest twinge of... what, loneliness? After all, she’d set the boundaries, right? What to others might appear a too solitary life, was, to her, a life filled with the sweet intoxication of complete freedom. She’d spent the first eighteen years of her life totally dependent on others to define her existence. The day she’d been emancipated from the orphanage, the day she’d first faced the actual reality of being completely in charge of her own fate, awash with the twin sensations of terror and exhilaration at the very prospect, had been every bit the defining moment in her life she’d always assumed it would be.

  She clung to that freedom with a fierceness that only someone who had walked in her shoes could hope to understand. Almost ten years later, she still wasn’t willing to give up an inch of it to someone else’s demands, expectations, needs. Selfish perhaps, but she figured she’d earned the right. Maybe someday she’d cross paths with someone who’d make her reconsider those boundaries. And, okay, maybe, that little twinge she’d felt just now was the first inkling that she was ready to even consider it. But that was up to fate, wasn’t it? Hardly something she could control, so why worry about it?

  Del shifted in her seat, tired of watching the blizzard of white on the other side of the fogged windowpanes. Tired of the tension that filled the air. And supremely tired of the muck and mire of her own thoughts. Trapped. She felt trapped. “Well, hell, I am trapped,” she muttered, not wanting to admit the sensation had nothing to do with being stuck in this metal matchbox. So she did what she always did when the world closed in on her, made her think too much, question herself. She grabbed her camera. Always easier to focus outwardly, rather than inwardly.

  Pushing out of her seat, Del forged a path through the passengers clogging the aisles. She wasn’t even sure where the hell she was going, or where there was to go. She only knew she had to move, had to find some space to breathe. She wove her way to the end of the car, wanting, needing fresh air. It would be frigid, and she hadn’t grabbed her coat, but no way was she going back. Freedom, temporary though it may be, was too close.

  She ducked into the hatchway that spanned the distance between the cars, disappointed to discover it was fully enclosed. She’d envisioned those little rear balconies. “Gotta stop watching Fugitive,” she murmured, even though she knew she wouldn’t. She and Harrison had a long-standing Friday night date. Pathetic but true, Harrison Ford was the most constant man in her life.

  She stood in the hatchway, camera in hand, shivering, debating on what to do next. She looked back, then ahead. One car was the same as the next. Full of grouchy people thwarted by the Snow Grinch who’d stolen Christmas.

  But the car in front of her had one thing going for it. It was one car closer to the end of the line. Surely if she made it to the very back, the caboose, if there was still such a thing, would have an open-air platform or something. Resolved, she plunged forward.

  Eight cars, two stubbed toes, one banged elbow and a dozen swallowed invectives later—okay, so there was that one that didn’t quite get stifled, but the guy who’d pinched her ass deserved it—she made it to the last car. God help them all if that door was barred. Any goodwill toward men she might have scrounged up had disappeared with that pinch. Men could be such assholes.

  Probably even Harrison. She sighed. And shoved through the door. No alarms went off, no bells clanged. At least none that she heard. Even if someone came after her, she had at least a few minutes of total solitude.

  She stepped through the narrow door and into an artic wall of white. The cold air hit the back of her throat, making her gasp. Snow immediately clung to her hair and eyelashes, blew into her mouth, and eyes. Ducking her head, she moved back against the wall under the narrow overhang, pressing her back next to the door. Squinting, she tried to make out her surroundings.

  White pretty much summed it up. It was dusk, although she was going more by her watch than anything else. The sky had been a deep gray all day. But the heavy blanket of snow illuminated the landscape as far as she could see, which wasn’t very far as the wind was driving the snow sideways and upways, downways and swirlways. She could, however, see that the tracks behind them were already deeply drifted over. She had visions of being trapped in this chain of tin boxes for days on end. Apparently there was a fate worse than death.

  Teeth chattering, the tip of her nose already growing numb, she fumbled with the camera she’d tucked under her arm to protect it from the snow. She’d come this far, she was going to take a few shots. “What I Did on My Christmas Vacation,” she muttered, already mentally framing a shot of the buried tracks. She set the f-stop on her Nikon, shifted the ISO speed, absently wishing she’d brought her wide-angle lens and a few filters with her as she lifted the viewfinder to her eye. She exposed frame after frame of film as she maneuvered around the narrow confines of the rear landing, the cold and damp forgotten as her entire world narrowed to the view captured by her lens. Escape, pure and complete. Thank you, God.

  She shifted so she could lean her we
ight back over the railing, wanting a direct shot up at the sky, capturing the flakes as they drove directly into her lens, when the door shoved open. She jerked in surprise, sending her feet slipping out from beneath her. One arm flailed out, grappling at the slick railing as strong hands braced her hips.

  “Sorry,” came the deep male voice that accompanied those hands.

  She was blinking snow from her eyes, so all she could make out was a big, dark blur. “It’s okay,” she said, assuming he’d let go when she regained her balance.

  He didn’t.

  Chapter Two

  As surprised to discover another person on the landing as the woman apparently was, Austin said, “And here I thought I was the only lunatic driven to risk frostbite rather than—”

  “Risk death by claustrophobia?” she shot back dryly.

  Austin’s lips quirked. “Something like that.”

  It was only when she tugged her hips from his grasp that he realized he was still holding her. Even with snowflakes frosting his eyelashes and obscuring his vision, he was completely drawn in by her face. Her angular chin was offset by a small but very lush mouth. Her overly defined cheekbones stood out in stronger relief when combined with her choppy dark hair. But the capper that pulled it all together for him was the exotic slant to her almond shaped eyes—dark eyes that gazed directly, almost starkly, into his. Demanding . . . what? he found himself wondering.

  He was already framing the way he’d shoot her as she took another step away. He ducked back under the slight overhang as a gust of wind eddied the snow into a swirl around them. It was only after he scrubbed the dampness from his face that he noticed the camera in her hand. And it was no little point and shoot. His interest increased. “Nice gear,” he said with a nod, moving to make room for her against the wall. “Pro? Or serious enthusiast?”