LINDA
HOWARD
“Another firecracker Mackenzie book from favorite author Linda Howard…the hero is rough and tough, the lady is gallant, the adventure pulse-pounding and the romance sizzling hot. Another keeper for the bookshelf.”
—Romantic Times BOOK reviews on A Game of Chance
“Linda Howard writes with power, stunning sensuality and a storytelling ability unmatched in the romance genre. Every book is a treasure for the reader to savor again and again.”
—New York Times bestselling author Iris Johansen
“Ms. Howard can wring so much emotion and tension out of her characters that no matter how satisfied you are when you finish a book, you still want more.”
—Rendezvous
A Game of Chance
Linda Howard
MILLS & BOON
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For the readers
Contents
Cover
The Beginning
Epilogue
Coming back to Wyoming—coming home—always evoked in Chance Mackenzie such an intense mixture of emotions that he could never decide which was strongest, the pleasure or the acute discomfort. He was, by nature and nurture—not that there had been any nurturing in the first fourteen or so years of his life—a man who was more comfortable alone. If he was alone, then he could operate without having to worry about anyone but himself, and, conversely, there was no one to make him uncomfortable with concern about his own well-being. The type of work he had chosen only reinforced his own inclinations, because covert operations and anti-terrorist activities predicated he be both secretive and wary, trusting no one, letting no one close to him.
And yet…And yet, there was his family. Sprawling, brawling, ferociously overachieving, refusing to let him withdraw, not that he was at all certain he could even if they would allow it. It was always jolting, alarming, to step back into that all-enveloping embrace, to be teased and questioned—teased, him, whom some of the most deadly people on earth justifiably feared—hugged and kissed, fussed over and yelled at and…loved, just as if he were like everyone else. He knew he wasn’t; the knowledge was always there, in the back of his mind, that he was not like them. But he was drawn back, again and again, by something deep inside hungering for the very things that so alarmed him. Love was scary; he had learned early and hard how little he could depend on anyone but himself.
The fact that he had survived at all was a testament to his toughness and intelligence. He didn’t know how old he was, or where he had been born, what he was named as a child, or if he even had a name—nothing. He had no memory of a mother, a father, anyone who had taken care of him. A lot of people simply didn’t remember their childhoods, but Chance couldn’t comfort himself with that possibility, that there had been someone who had loved him and taken care of him, because he remembered too damn many other details.
He