Cody Walker's Woman

Working undercover with the last man she should trust…

Rescuing a “civilian” blew his latest undercover op—but when Special Agent Cody Walker next met the damsel in distress, he was astonished to discover she was a fellow agent! Now they are assigned to the same task force to track down a terrorist cell that has a personal connection to Cody’s past….

While Keira is grateful to Cody, she’s determined to prove she can handle herself professionally. But their sizzling chemistry is making it hard to keep things quiet. And as they hunt down the would-be terrorists, they are getting closer—and more personal—than ever….

“What do you think you’re doing?”

“Kissing you again.” He didn’t give her a chance to escape.

She resisted at first but then surrendered.

Desire flooded him as her body softened against his. The yearning, the aching need, rose to the top, and he pulled her closer, wrapping his arms around her.

He wanted. Needed. Yearned. His hands clasped her hips and pulled her closer so she couldn’t help but feel his desire.

He wanted to lay Keira down in a field of grass with a breeze rippling through it, the wide, blue Wyoming sky arching overhead and the sun warming their skin. He wanted to stroke her skin, to caress her until she cried his name and pulled him close, needing him as he needed her.

But all he could do was kiss her. Endlessly.

Dear Reader,

When I wrote Reilly’s Return years ago, my editor, Mary-Theresa Hussey, told me that Cody Walker was such a strong secondary character he deserved his own book. So who better to write about when I finally sat down to start writing romance again?

The problem was, part of Cody’s appeal was that he was so deeply in love with Mandy Edwards, the heroine of Reilly’s Return. How could I find a woman to replace Mandy in Cody’s heart? I reread Reilly’s Return until I finally found the clue to the kind of woman Cody needed. Someone very different from Mandy, and yet who in one crucial way was exactly like her—a woman who would kill or die to protect the man she loved.

Enter Keira Jones. I hope you’ll agree with me that Keira is the only woman who could penetrate the shell guarding Cody’s tender heart. And I hope you enjoy reading Cody Walker’s Woman as much as I enjoyed writing it.

I love hearing from my readers. Please email me at and let me know what you think.

Amelia Autin

Prologue

“Scream.”

Keira Jones pushed the hair out of her eyes with both hands and stared in incomprehension at the man who’d just dragged her kicking and clawing all the way from the other room into this one. His hold had been brutal, crushing her bones as he’d thrown her onto the filthy bed in the corner of this room before moving to shut the door behind them and lock it.

And then nothing. Nothing except that one word uttered in a harsh undertone—scream.

“What?” she gasped.

He held one finger to his lips, pressing his ear against the wooden door. He cast a sharp glance around the room, grabbed a rickety chair and propped it under the door handle. Then he moved purposefully toward Keira.

She scrambled off the bed and backed away from him, away from what she thought was coming. If she was going to be raped, she wasn’t going to make it easy for him. She looked frantically around the room for something, anything to use as a weapon, but he was on her before she had a chance.

“I said scream, damn it!” His angry voice was pitched to carry no farther than a foot away as he plastered her body against the wall with his muscular frame.

But she couldn’t. Her heart was pounding in her chest, and her breath was coming in rapid pants, but no sound emerged from a throat dry with terror she refused to betray.

He made a sound of frustration deep in his throat. He held her squirming body captive with his while his powerful hands gripped the lapels of her cotton blouse and ripped it open from top to bottom. Then she screamed. And screamed again when one hand groped her breast through and beneath the fabric of her bra while the other moved to the juncture of her thighs.

She clawed at his face. He ducked, but she had the savage satisfaction of seeing her fingernails make contact with his skin and leave four red welts before he captured her flailing hands and pinned them both to the wall over her head with one iron hand.