HE'S AN ELITE NAVY SEAL LIVING A RISKY DOUBLE LIFE. SHE'S THE GORGEOUS REPORTER HOT ON HIS TRAIL. Nick Devane's life is one big classified secret. Until Kaylee Smith busts his covert world wide open, threatening to blow his cover. Digging around where she doesn't belong could get them both killed...especially when the beautiful journalist uncovers top secret information that could set off a global disaster if it falls into the wrong hands. Nick can't let that happen, even if he has to battle deadly mercenaries and an irresistible attraction that is all consuming.... Kaylee didn't expect her search for her missing ex-husband to lead to this sexy and dangerous warrior. Now she's teamed up with Nick on a mission that takes them into deepest Africaand into the middle of a massive government cover-up. With rogue agents hot on their trail, Kaylee's going to unearth all Nick's secrets. Before they both vanish without a trace. Before the passion burning between them sets off an explosionno onemay survive...

Stephanie Tyler writes what she loves to read - romantic suspense with military heroes. She lives in New York with her husband, her daughter and her weimaraner. She also co-writes paranormal erotic romance for Bantam Dell under the pen-name Sydney Croft.

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Chapter One

“That which does not kill us makes us stronger.”

—Friedrich Nietzsche

The car wasn’t moving fast enough. Eighty miles per hour would be fine for most men, but Nick Devane wasn’t most men, and never would be if he had anything to say about it.

The midnight black Porsche Turbo shook when it reached 110 and skidded onto the curved expanse of highway on two wheels. His breath came in short gasps, heart slammed in his chest, fingers curved around the steering wheel. The rush spread through him like a fever until he was no longer thinking, the possibility of danger vibrating his soul, the catch in his throat urging him to push past the brink of fear.

Some people might say he hadn’t changed a damned bit from the wild kid he’d been. Built for speed and trouble, and his pulsing drive for adrenaline seemed to feed on itself, increasing exponentially through his early years and culminating with an outlet as a member of the elite Navy SEAL Teams.

It was a job he planned on keeping until they threw him out on his ass. A job he’d gotten because of his need for speed and trouble.

Hotwiring a judge’s car and taking it for a joyride ten years ago might not have been the smartest idea, but Nick had to say it was the best thing he’d ever done.

Seventeen, cocky as hell and without a care in the world, he’d pushed the borrowed Porsche Carrera to the limit on that darkened stretch of highway along the Virginia– Maryland border, pushed it so hard the gears groaned and the chassis shook and he’d been sure the car would either explode or take flight off the pavement. At that point, he wouldn’t have given a shit either way. If he’d had to make an honest assessment of himself as a disowned teenager of wealth and privilege, death would’ve been an easy option.

But it would’ve made things easier still for the man he refused to call Father anymore, and that special brand of screw-you Nick had been born with, and continued to reserve for authority, had been too deeply ingrained in him to quit anything. Especially living.

That night, he’d slowed the car, turned off the engine and rolled the sleek silver baby up the long driveway. He’d been prepared to leave it ridden hard and put away wet where the judge had parked it, no worse for wear—save the near-empty gas tank.

He’d never expected Her Honor, Kelly Cromwell, to be standing there as though she had all the time and patience in the world. Which, he would discover later, she did.

“End of the line,” he’d muttered to himself, had gotten out of the car and swaggered over to her, because he did not run.

Not anymore.

When given the choice between jail or the military, he’d chosen wisely.

Tonight, the black Porsche was his, but there was also somebody waiting for him when he slammed into the back lot of the diner and eased into the last available space.

No, nothing had changed inside of him. But on the outside, the façade, the carefully concealed past was a tightly woven secret that he refused to let unravel.

Which was exactly why he needed to meet Kaylee Smith and do what he’d promised six years ago to the man who saved his life.

Don’t get yourself into trouble, his CO had warned earlier that evening. Nick had almost said, Too late, but figured the wiseass remark was better kept to himself.

A brutal, three-month mission overseas and the team’s combined injuries—consisting of a bullet wound, two broken ribs and a broken nose, none of which were his—added to one week stateside, and a twenty-four-hour window of R&R practically screamed for a night out.

He had expected to get into trouble that evening—hadn’t expected the trouble to actually find him.

Whe

Excerpted from Too Hot to Hold: A Novel by Stephanie Tyler
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