Renegade

Prologue

The dresses were gorgeous.

Mikayla Martin stood back from the finished products and rubbed at her lower

back as she let a small, pleased smile curve her lips.

They were the dresses that romantic dreams were made of. Miles of frothy lace,

satin, silk, and chiffon. Thousands of tiny seed pearls had been hand-sewn onto each one.

Love had gone into the creation of each of the three wedding gowns, and the jade

bridesmaid dress had been sewn with extra attention to detail. It was her favorite color, and one of her own designs.

Finally, after so many years of hard work and dreams, and the designs she so

lovingly crafted, Mikayla's Creations was beginning to get a small measure of notice.

Mikayla had no dreams of runway success. What she did have were dreams of a small, exclusive reputation that would keep her clothing shop open and thriving.

She breathed out a deep sigh and fought to let the dresses go. She wanted to pack

them up and take them home with her. She didn't want to let a single one of them out of her sight.

"I know that look on your face, Mikayla." Her assistant, Deirdre Maple, pushed back her hair, propped her hands on her hips, and gave Mikayla a knowing smile.

With her kittenish expression and long red-gold hair, Deirdre was the advertising

drive behind the shop. While Mikayla kept the customers happy, Deirdre brought them in by showcasing the wedding gowns and exclusive ball gowns Mikayla created. The

bridesmaid gown she had been fondling was one of those. A one-of-a-kind that had been designed for one woman, one body.

There was a small section of the shop dedicated to less formal clothing. Exclusive designs of more casual attire and a small selection of unique, one-of-a-kind footwear and other accessories. But the majority of the shop was dedicated to the formal dresses and wedding gowns Mikayla so loved.

"Yeah, I know, I gotta let it go." Mikayla forced a grin as she stepped back and gave it one last regretful look. "Go ahead and call our future bride and our lucky bridesmaid and let them know their dresses are ready for pickup. They'd better hurry, though, because I just might steal them after all."

Deirdre gave a low, light laugh, her hazel green eyes twinkling with laughter as

she shook her head. The girl wore a sleeveless silk emerald blouse, no collar, the tailoring sewn to match her slender figure. The taupe above-the-knee slim-line skirt and matching pumps drew attention to the blouse and to Deirdre's lush head full of red-gold curls as they cascaded nearly to her hips.

"You told me to remind you that you have to pick Scott up after work today."

Deirdre glanced at the clock on the wall. "If you're going to get there on time, then you'd better rock and roll."

Mr. Unreliable. Of all her brothers, Scotty had to be the most irritating, if the most lovable one. The baby of the family, he was always happy, always laughing, and rarely 9

took anything seriously. He was forever needing a ride, advice, or a loan. Their mother called him the "needy one". Mikayla just called him lazy--although she did it affectionately.

"You know you'll have to listen to him whine if you're late." Deirdre laughed.

"Better hurry."

Mikayla grimaced before looking around the interior of her "baby." This store was her life.

"You could hire a cab to go after your brother," Deirdre told her. "That way you could stand here and admire your handiwork a while longer."

Mikayla laughed, though her gaze lingered a moment longer. She turned away

and strode across the plush chocolate carpeting of the floor.

She moved around the display of dresses and gowns and toward the counter

where she pulled out the invoices from the shelf below.

"Everything has been paid in full," she told Dierdre as a sense of accomplishment filled her. "Now, if we could just get a few more of these orders in, I could breathe a little easier."

"They'll come in," Deirdre assured her, and Mikayla couldn't help but believe it.

The shop was growing slowly, but it was growing. The sense of fulfillment she

felt was overwhelming at times. Mikayla was doing something everyone had told her she didn't have a chance of succeeding at in the current economy.

"Do you think either of us will ever wear one of those wedding gowns?" Deirdre nodded toward them. "Hell, Mikayla, aren't you tired of waiting for Mr. Right yet? I think I am. Mr. Almost Perfect might do it for me."

Mikayla turned her face away, hoping to hide her own doubts. She sometimes

feared that Mr. Right was a figment of her dreams. That the incredible sex, deep

romance, and shared bonding she dreamed of was the stuff of fantasies and romance

novels, not real life.

"Not for me." Mikayla shook her head at the very thought of settling for less, though. "Some things last forever, Deirdre, if you know how to work for your dreams."

That dream didn't have to be a marriage, children, a life spent sharing the day-today adventure of simply living together. But it was a dream Mikayla found hard to let go.

Deirdre's sigh was heavy. "You have to be the only pragmatic romantic I've ever heard of," she accused. "Come on, Mikayla; it never lasts forever. Why not take what we can get?"

"It" being marriage. Deirdre thought in terms of marriage. She wanted the dress, the wedding, the little gold band on her finger, the little white picket fence.

For Mikayla, marriage, like any commitment, took a lot of work, understanding,

and patience. She'd seen that in her parents' marriage all her life. Her mother and father had set a perfect example of what real love and a real relationship was. That was what Mikayla wanted. Not just the wedding, the gold band, or even the white picket fence. It was that sense of belonging, that feeling of being a part of something that was larger than herself. Something that she could be a partner in.

She wasn't dependent. She didn't want to be taken care of, and she didn't want to

take care of anyone. At least not in the sense of accepting responsibility for him. She wanted to take care of his heart with the promise of her own, and she wanted a partner willing to share each day with her and, perhaps, one day, to share children with her.

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She wanted the whole dream, and she was willing to wait for it. She just hoped

that while she was waiting there was someone out there actually making his way toward her. She wasn't getting any younger, her grandmother often reminded her. Just as her grandmother reminded Mikayla that twenty-six was too old to still be a virgin.

How Mikayla's grandmother knew Mikayla was still a virgin she hadn't yet

figured out. Did she have a red V painted on her forehead that she couldn't see?

"I don't know, Mikayla." Her assistant leaned against the counter, her hair falling around her face as she grinned impishly. "I know what I'm missing by sleeping alone."

Mikayla laughed. "As if you sleep alone that often. You and Drake aren't exactly abstaining, last I heard."

Deirdre and Drake Marshal had been on-again, off-again since high school. They

couldn't seem to make up their minds if they loved each other or hated each other. Just as Deirdre couldn't seem to decide if Drake was Mr. Right or just Mr. Available.

"Okay, I'm out of here then." Mikayla straightened the paid invoices again before gazing around the shop a last time.

Grabbing her keys, she turned and opened the old-fashioned glass front door and

stepped out onto the sidewalk. Hagerstown was in its full flush of late-spring warmth.

The trees were fully budded, many already showing their bright green foliage and

swaying with the gentle wind that pushed through the historic town.

Mikayla loved it here. This was home. She had been born in Hagerstown, raised

in it. She had gone to design school in New York, and the whole time she had been away all she'd wanted to do was come home.

It was sprawling, often loud, filled with tourists on the best of days, and pulsing with life. It wasn't as exhaustingly busy as New York or D.C., but Hagerstown still thrived with life and hummed with excitement.

At least, she felt the excitement.

Pulling her keys from the pocket of her light jacket, she hit the remote and

unlocked the doors to the cherry red Jeep, she'd finally allowed herself to buy, before stepping onto the running board and lifting herself in.

Her skirt tightened above her knees before she swung her legs in and closed the

door behind her. Starting the engine, she almost grinned at the feel of the motor throbbing through the vehicle.

Pulling into the stream of traffic, she eased through the busy streets, heading for I-70 and the job site her brother was working on several miles along the interstate.

The building site for the newly designed office space was a major deal for the

company her brother worked for, as well as for her father. Her father had won the

plumbing contract for the building, and a cousin had won the interior design contract for part of it.

Hagerstown was booming, and growing, though sometimes Mikayla feared it was

growing too fast. Still, she loved watching its progress.

Flipping on the CD player, she slid one of her favorite CDs in. The soft-rock

eighties tune filled the interior and soothed the weariness that was beginning to blur at the edges of her mind.

She had put four months of steady, hard work in to make the deadlines for the

early-spring weddings of the brides whose dresses were waiting at the shop. Ordering, fitting, sewing, adjusting. From late winter through late fall the store, though not 11

booming, was definitely busy. This year had been their best year yet.

She wanted to get home, relax in a bubble bath, and let that sense of satisfaction work through her before she started on reconciling accounts, bills, and orders.

It might be Friday night, but Mikayla still had work to do. Not that she had much

else to do. The dating pool had been relatively dry lately, she had to admit.

Or maybe, as Deirdre accused her of doing, she had perhaps just set her sights too high.

That was always a possibility, she admitted to herself. She wanted something that

might not even exist in the real world.

None of her friends had ever been swept mindlessly off their feet with a kiss. Sex hadn't made the earth move beneath them. They didn't love with a devotion that canceled out the thought of ever being with anyone but the one they loved. They were often

unfaithful and saw the practice as a game of sorts. The thrill of the chase, of being chased, and being smart enough not to get caught.

They played with their own lives and with their children's lives, and it was

something Mikayla wanted no part of.

She wanted the romance, the excitement, and she wanted honesty. She hated

being lied to, and the thought of having the man she loved being unfaithful to her was enough to make her take a third and fourth look at any man offering to fill her life.

Was she as deranged as her friends often accused her of being? Were her

standards simply set too high and dooming her to failure as well as to a life of loneliness?

Perhaps not deranged, but she was definitely beginning to worry that she was that

hopeless romantic who was going to turn into an equally hopeless spinster.

What had her brother Scotty said? She was going to end up living alone in her

perfect house, surrounded by her dresses, and still waiting for her perfect Prince Charming the day she died a perfectly lonely death.

And she was very afraid that was definitely the future she was looking forward to.

And in those moments she wondered if Deirdre wasn't right . . . if perhaps Mr.

Almost was good enough. Except Mikayla hadn't even managed to find a Mr. Almost,

either. If she ever laid eyes on him, then she might consider it. Just to say she had tried.

Shaking her head at the thought, Mikayla took the exit along a newly developed

business site and drove along the rough, uneven road to the hulk of steel and metal rising from the dirt at the end of the dirt drive.

She pulled her Jeep alongside the six-story skeletal frame of the office building

where her brother Scotty had all but ordered her to meet him.

Why her youngest brother couldn't manage to keep his own ride running she

hadn't figured out yet. He was always tinkering with this, tinkering with that, and it never failed that he called her when he managed to tinker it into complete auto failure.

One of these days she was going to do as she threatened and get the family

together for a mechanical intervention where her brother was concerned. He was going to have to learn to keep his hands off his vehicle's guts. If something wasn't truly broken, then there was no need to fix it, right?

Pulling into the muddy mess at the front of the unfinished building, Mikayla blew

out a hard breath.

Mr. Unreliable had struck again. As usual, he wasn't where he was supposed to be

or doing what he was supposed to be doing.

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In this case, waiting for her to pick him up.

So where was he? Where was anyone? The place was utterly deserted.

Turning down the lush, wild strains of Barry White on the CD player, Mikayla

tapped her fingers on the steering wheel. Pursing her lips, she stared around the muddy mess of the job site, eyes narrowed against the dim light as she searched for her brother.

Her lips thinned as she mentally counted to ten.

She wouldn't get upset, she told herself. Her day had been too good to let this ruin it. She'd just finished two of the most gorgeous wedding gowns she had ever created and the last bridesmaid's dress. Rows upon rows of seed pearls, yards of satin, silk, and lace, and miles of tucks to go along with the hefty payment she had received.

Two months of sewing delicate rows of tiny pearls and witnessing the tearful

smiles of two brides who would treasure those dresses for the rest of their lives.

She sent up a little prayer that those dresses would be treasured through a lifetime of wedded bliss.

Now, where was her brother?

She wanted to get home, pour a glass of wine, and relax in her new hot tub just

long enough to ease the tension that still hadn't worked its way out of her body. She had meetings tomorrow with several brides, a groom, and four society princesses looking for the perfect dress to wear to the perfect party.

She grinned at the thought. The women scheduled to go through the dozens of

books filled with ball gowns, slinky satiny gowns, and silky clouds of perfect creations tailored to bring a gasp to the most jaded lips would bring a much-needed boon to the shop.

The financial crisis hitting the world at the moment hadn't seemed to affect the

sale of dresses, gowns, and various accessories that were "must-haves" for the well-put-together society princess.

Mikayla checked her watch, tapped her fingers on the steering wheel again, and

blew out an irritated breath.

Scotty better hope he didn't need her to ever pick him up again. This was it. She

had been sitting here for ten minutes already. Where was he?

Turning the CD off, she opened the door to the Jeep and stepped out of the

vehicle.

Her nose wrinkled at the smell of oil, mud, and what she swore was sweaty men.

What was it about construction sites? Every time she had been forced to come out after her brother she swore the place smelled like guy BO.

This was the last time she would allow herself to be guilted into this. Scotty was going to have to get himself a girlfriend or something. Someone willing to make this drive and go searching for him, again, because he needed a ride.

The last time he had needed a ride Mikayla had ended up waiting an hour for him

to finish what he swore was an important project before he left. She'd learned later he'd been playing poker in one of the toolsheds.

The rat.

Gritting her teeth, she pulled her cell phone from the holder at her hip and hit his number.

It rang.

"This is Scotty; leave a message." Voice mail. She hated it. She hung up without 13

leaving a message. She would end up saying something she was certain she would regret.

Dammit, the least he could do was answer his phone.

"Listen, I told you I was taking care of it."

The sound of an angry voice above had Mikayla stepping back to stare up at the

building, searching for the source of it. Perhaps Scotty was up there.

She was going to kill him.

A quiet murmur of another voice had her straining to hear what was said.

"Look, you owe me already. It's time to fucking pay up, you ignorant bastard. I told you, I need the fuckin' money. I did my part; now you do yours."

Mikayla's nose wrinkled as she searched for bodies to go with the vulgar words.

There was a low, quiet murmur in response.

"Look, I've had about enough of this. Pay the fuck up before I let him know

exactly what's going on here."

The voice belonged to Scotty's boss. Eddie was his name. The foreman, Eddie

Foreman. All three of her brothers snickered over the name.

Her lips parted to speak, to let the foreman know she was there and, she hoped, to find out where her brother was.

"What the hell are you doing? Put that gun the hell away. Have you fucking lost your mind?"

Mikayla stared up in horror as the pair came into view.

"You're costing me too much, Eddie." The voice was low, a harsh, angry growl that sent a shard of fear racing up Mikayla's spine, but what met her eyes had terror streaking through her. The gun in his hand, even from five stories up, drew her gaze, the dull black reflecting the last rays of the sun with a wicked, vicious light.

She jerked her gaze from the gun to the man holding it, her mouth going dry at the shadowed face she recognized despite the steadily dimming sunlight. It was Maddix

Nelson, the owner of the construction company her brother worked for, and Maddix was holding a gun on his foreman.

She could see Eddie Foreman's face clearly. His heavy features were twisted into

lines of disbelief and fear. Maddix Nelson's face, on the other hand, was cold. Colder than Mikayla could ever remember seeing it. And she had seen him many times over the past several years. All three of her brothers worked for him. The oldest brother, only two years younger than Mikayla, had worked for Nelson Building and Construction for over four years now.

Her father worked with Maddix through the plumbing business he owned.

She could feel her hands shaking, her stomach clenching in horror, as she watched

Maddix lift the gun until it was pointed directly at Eddie Foreman's chest.

"You're crazy!" Eddie wheezed. "Put that fucker down, man. All I want is my friggin' money. You owe it to me."

"You owed me results, Eddie," Maddix snarled, his lips pulling back from Eddie's lips in anger.

Mikayla watched in suspended disbelief as Eddie stepped back, though there was

no way to escape. A thick steel beam met his back. There was only one way to go, and Maddix Nelson had that way blocked.

She had to do something. What could she do?

Mikayla could feel her chest tightening in fear, in total and complete disbelief, as 14

Maddix took a step closer.

Mikayla backed to the Jeep, gripped the door, and scrambled inside. She had to

give Eddie a chance. There was no one else around.

She had to do something.

"Don't do this, man!" Eddie cried out.

Mikayla laid on the horn, praying. . . .

She screamed at the sharp retort of gunfire. Throwing the Jeep into gear, she

screamed again, hysteria threatening to overtake her as Eddie fell five stories to the rough ground below, obviously dead.

He fell faceup, his eyes wide, staring blankly as Mikayla hit the gas. She heard the bullets hit the driver's side door. One tore through, cracking the hard plastic of the gearbox, sending shards of sharp plastic flying.

Ducking over the steering wheel, she raced from the job site. Mikayla's hands

shook as she tore at the cell phone at her side. Pulling it free, she hurriedly hit the programmed speed dial as sobs tore from her chest.

"Hey, Miki, Scotty called--" Her father's voice came over the line.

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God! Daddy, he killed him! He killed him! I saw it. I saw it all!"

Heavy sobs shook her body as she raced off the rough dirt road onto the interstate and raced for home, for her parents.

"Miki, settle down." Her father's voice tightened, firmed, and became

commanding. "Are you driving, Miki?"

"Oh, God, Dad, he shot at me," she cried out as she checked the rearview mirror, her body shuddering so hard she was surprised she could keep the Jeep on the road. "It was Maddix Nelson, Dad. I saw him."

"Miki, where are you?"

"I was supposed to pick up Scotty." Then a horrible thought pierced her mind.

"Where's Scotty, Dad? Where is he?"

"Miki, settle down," he snapped then.

The sound of his voice, commanding, reminding her of her childhood years, when

she knew when her father was at his most serious. He was at his most serious now.

"Now, listen to me. I'm getting in the truck, honey. Me and Mom are coming. Tell me where you are right now. We'll meet you."

She hurriedly gave him her location.

"Keep heading toward us, honey," he ordered. "Keep talking to me. We're on our way."

"Where's Scotty?" she sobbed. "Was he there?"

Oh, God, her brother couldn't be dead. She couldn't bear the thought of it.

"Scott called me earlier, Miki," her father promised her. "He got a ride. His phone died while he was talking to me and he couldn't reach you. Scotty's fine. Now concentrate on driving. I'm almost there. When you see me, just pull over."

She could hear her mother in the background, her tone calm but the concern in it

heavy.

She was safe. She would be safe. Her father wouldn't let anyone hurt her.

She was amazed that she wasn't pulled over. They would surely think she was

intoxicated if they had. Panic was pulling at the edges of her mind, and Mikayla never 15

panicked. She had been raised with three younger brothers. Three younger brothers

would make a girl crazy if they had half a chance. Mikayla had never given her brothers a chance.

But her chest was so tight she could barely breathe. Tears filled her eyes and

blurred her vision. She felt as though she were in a nightmare she couldn't wake up from.

"He killed him," she whispered again.

"Keep it in your mind, Mikayla Ann. Remember it until we get to you and get you to the police." Her father's voice firmed again, the use of her first and middle names snapping her out of the hysteria threatening to overtake her again. "Where are you, honey?"

She quickly gave him her location once again.

"Pull over at the gas station just ahead of you," he told her. "We're coming up on it now."

"I see it. I see it." She was crying harder.

She couldn't believe it. Eddie Foreman's face kept flashing before her eyes, his

eyes unseeing, the blood soaking his chest, his body bent and broken.

"Mikayla, pull over!" her father snapped.

Mikayla shook her head, blinked, and with a hard twist of the steering wheel

whipped into the gas station. The Jeep tilted at the hard turn, rocked, then righted itself before she pushed it into park and threw the door open.

She fell out of the Jeep as her father and two of her brothers raced from the two

pickups they had arrived in. Behind them were two state police officers she hadn't expected--officers her father or brothers had obviously called. Mikayla ran to her father's arms, desperate; she felt his arms close around her.

She was safe, she told herself. Her father and the police would take care of

everything.

Maddix Nelson wouldn't kill anyone else.

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