Honor Bound Read online

  Synopsis

  A request from the commander-in-chief forces Secret Service Agent Cameron Roberts to break her word to the woman she loves—a woman who just happens to be Blair Powell, the president's daughter.

  Cam places duty before love, despite knowing that this decision may destroy her tenuous new relationship with the first daughter. As the rift between the two women widens, more than one would-be-suitor is happy to offer Blair the company that Cam cannot.

  Amidst political intrigue, and escalating threat to Blair's safety, and the seemingly irreconcilable personal differences that force them ever further apart, Cam and Blair struggle to find their way back to one another.

  Honor Bound

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  Honor Bound

  © 2002 By Radclyffe. All Rights Reserved.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-256-6

  This Electronic Book is published by

  Bold Strokes Books, Inc.,

  P.O. Box 249

  Valley Falls, New York 12185

  First Edition: Renaissance Alliance Publishing 2002

  Second Edition: Bold Strokes Books 2005

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

  Credits

  Editors: Jennifer Knight and Stacia Seaman

  Production Design: Stacia Seaman

  Cover Design By Sheri ([email protected])

  By the Author

  Romances

  Innocent Hearts

  Love’s Melody Lost

  Love’s Tender Warriors

  Tomorrow’s Promise

  Love’s Masquerade

  shadowland

  Fated Love

  Turn Back Time

  Promising Hearts

  When Dreams Tremble

  The Lonely Hearts Club

  Night Call

  Secrets in the Stone

  The Provincetown Tales

  Safe Harbor

  Beyond the Breakwater

  Distant Shores, Silent Thunder

  Storms of Change

  Winds of Fortune

  Honor Series

  Above All, Honor

  Honor Bound

  Love & Honor

  Honor Guards

  Honor Reclaimed

  Honor Under Siege

  Word of Honor

  Justice Series

  A Matter of Trust (prequel)

  Shield of Justice

  In Pursuit of Justice

  Justice in the Shadows

  Justice Served

  Justice For All

  Erotic Interludes: Change of Pace

  (A Short Story Collection)

  Radical Encounters

  (A Erotic Short Story Collection)

  Stacia Seaman and Radclyffe, eds.

  Erotic Interludes 2: Stolen Moments

  Erotic Interludes 3: Lessons in Love

  Erotic Interludes 4: Extreme Passions

  Erotic Interludes 5: Road Games

  Romantic Interludes 1: Discovery

  Acknowledgments

  My thanks to Jennifer Knight, who reviewed the first edition with an eye toward addressing the quirks and foibles in my early writing while kindly forgiving my idiosyncrasies. The second edition has benefited greatly from her keen eye.

  Stacia Seaman has once again made the final edits painless—and that is no small feat where I am concerned.

  Sheri has created a wonderful set of covers for this series, and I am very happy to be able to publish the complete set to date.

  Most especially, Lee makes room without complaint for the characters who demand the time that should rightfully be hers. She makes our life a safe place for me to write. Thanks will never be enough.

  Radclyffe 2005

  Dedication

  For Lee

  For Every Day

  Chapter One

  Mac Phillips looked up from his seat at the main monitoring station as the door to Command Central opened at 0625. He tried to suppress a grin but failed as he recognized the tall, trim, dark-haired woman who strode purposefully toward him. He stood and extended his hand with a smile. “Welcome back, Commander.”

  Smiling warmly, United States Secret Service Agent Cameron Roberts shook the hand of the boyishly handsome blond agent. “It’s good to be back, Mac.” Despite the personal difficulties sure to come, she realized just how much she meant it.

  She looked around the large open room that occupied the eighth floor of a brownstone apartment building overlooking Gramercy Park in Manhattan. It had been almost six months since she’d been in charge of the Secret Service security detail that worked out of this space, and she had not expected to return; at least, not in any official capacity.

  Heading this unit was not a posting she had welcomed originally. She had spent most of her career in the investigative division of the Secret Service, tracking counterfeit funds used in illegal drug transactions. Working with members of the DEA, ATF, and Treasury Department in the field, she had considered the protective arm of the Secret Service a place for rookies and bureaucrats. Guarding diplomats, foreign visitors, and members of political families did not interest her.

  Until now. Now, it mattered a great deal.

  “Is Egret back on the ground yet?” Cam asked. She shrugged her shoulders, trying to work out the residual stiffness from her midnight flight. She'd been in Miami on a new assignment, pursuing a trail of treasury forgeries that the agency hoped would lead to a network of cocaine importers, when the call had come reassigning her.

  This change in her orders was completely unexpected, and the fact that she had been instructed to report to New York City immediately, with no explanation and no interim briefing in DC, bothered her. No one had suggested that there was potential trouble on this end, but then that didn’t mean anything. The federal government depended upon multiple security agencies with overlapping spheres of interest and influence, and there were never-ending turf struggles. Even those with a need to know often didn’t get critical information until it was too late to be useful. She’d had personal experience with that kind of foul-up more than once. And once, it had nearly destroyed her.

  “Long flight?” Mac couldn’t help but notice the strain in her expression.

  “The usual.” Shaking off the cloud of fatigue, she dispelled the memories along with it. She wouldn’t let that kind of screw-up happen here, not with something—someone—so important at stake. She would find out who, or what, was behind her transfer.

  But first things first. She had work to do before her initial meeting with the woman she was charged to protect. A woman who, under the best of circumstances, was an unwilling participant in her own protection, and one who was certain to be even more resistant now.

  Cam refocused on Mac. “I’ll need to be briefed before I meet with her. I’ve been in the air most of the night and haven’t been informed of her location.”

  “She’s back in the nest,” Mac affirmed, pointing toward the ceiling and the penthouse apartment above them that comprised the top floor of the building. “They returned from China late last night, but Egret didn’t want to remain in Washington. They came up by car about 0300. That wasn’t in the plans.”

  “I guess some things never change.” Cam smiled to hers
elf. She always has to remind everyone who’s really in charge of her life.

  Mac shook his head, but he wasn’t smiling. He regarded his chief seriously for a moment and tried not to think about how close she had come to dying only months before. She looked fit and healthy now, but he knew that she had only been back on active duty for six weeks. As usual when on duty, she wore an impeccably tailored, understatedly expensive suit and appeared capable, competent, and cool—all the things he knew she was. He also knew from experience that it was hard to tell very much beyond that just by looking at her. She rarely revealed what she was feeling, but could always be counted on to say exactly what she was thinking.

  “The team will be very happy to have you back,” he said.

  “What about you, Mac?” She leaned one hip against the edge of the desk, her dark gray eyes studying his. “I’m bumping you out of the commander’s seat.”

  “You mean out of the hot seat?” He laughed, shook his head, and leaned back in the swivel chair, gesturing with one hand to the array of computer monitors, audiovisual equipment, and satellite feeds from the NYPD and New York Transit Authority on the long counter in front of him. “I’m an information man. This is what I want to be doing, and these last few months of doing your job proved it to me.”

  “Good,” Cam said briskly. “I’m glad you’re okay with it, because no one is more important than the communications coordinator, and I need the best.”

  “Thanks.” Mac felt good about her confidence in him. “You’re doing me a big favor, Commander. I’m no good at the VIP stuff, and with this kind of detail, that’s key.”

  Cam didn’t need him to tell her that knowing how to handle high-profile personalities was a requirement of the work. It was one of the reasons she was good at this particular assignment, and it was also the reason her next task was going to be so difficult. Blair Powell, code name Egret, had had Cam removed once as head of her security detail, and she was going to be very displeased to find she had returned.

  She has every right to be angry, Cam thought. This reassignment changes everything. Jesus, how am I going to explain this to her?

  Six weeks ago, they had spent five nights in one another’s arms. If she had known then that she would be back heading Blair’s security detail, she might have made a different choice. Yeah, right.

  Blair’s face briefly flickered into her mind, and the instant surge of heat that accompanied the image told her she was kidding herself. She had wanted her then, badly. Had wanted her for months—too much for procedure or protocol to have stopped her. She wasn’t sure what she was going to do about those feelings now that circumstances had changed, but the one thing she did know was that she had a job to do.

  Cam stood abruptly. “I’ll see everyone at 0700 in the conference room. Bring what you have on her itinerary for the week, projected out-of-town events for the immediate future, all pertinent problematic field reports from the time I was gone, and anything else that you think needs my attention. I need to be up to speed by the time I meet with her this morning.”

  Mac nodded, then watched Cam walk toward the small glass-enclosed cubicle in one corner that served as their conference center. He saw her looking casually left and right toward the center of the room where several work areas were partitioned off by low dividers. He knew that she was assessing the monitoring equipment that the men and women assigned to her command utilized twenty-four hours a day to observe and protect the only child of the president of the United States.

  At precisely 0700, Cam walked into the conference room carrying her second cup of coffee. She set it down at the end of the rectangular table and looked over the faces turned toward her. They were all familiar. No one had transferred out during her absence, and that pleased her because all of them were confirmed good agents. She had seen to that when she first took command almost a year before, demanding that anyone not one hundred percent committed to the task of guarding the president’s daughter transfer out. Those who had chosen to stay had proven themselves under fire.

  “Well,” she began, allowing a faint grin to pull at one corner of her mouth. “At least I won’t have to learn any new names. And we can skip all the introductory bull and get down to business.” She looked down the room to where Mac sat with a pile of memoranda in front of him. “Mac?”

  “Nothing new planned on the foreign front until the trip to Paris with the vice president and his wife next month.”

  “Right. ” Cam settled into her chair with her PDA. “We’ll need the routine advance information on motorcade routes, local hospitals, and transit lines for each day’s events. That should all be in the database. I assume they’ll be staying at the Hotel Marigny, as usual. That needs to be confirmed.”

  She turned to the collegiate-looking African-American man on her left, who happened to be fluent in nine languages with a working command of seven others. “Are you still doing the advance work on the foreign travel, Taylor?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good. Then you can contact the secretary at the Protocol Department in Paris to review the scheduled functions—charity dinners, museum outings—whatever they have planned. I want guest lists for any pre-announced gatherings and seating placements for theatre and dinner engagements.” The French were notorious for changing itineraries at the last minute, and Paris was an international city where terrorism was a very real threat. “Keep after them. Make sure we’re current by the time we’re in the air. I don’t want to be surprised.”

  “Got it.”

  “Fielding.” She looked at a burly redhead two seats to her left.

  “Ma’am?”

  “Check with your buddies in intelligence and make sure we have the latest on any dissident activity in France, particularly active cells in Paris. I want photos and bios distributed to all team members before we depart. Mac will schedule a pre-flight briefing for sometime the week before we leave.”

  Taylor and Fielding nodded and made notes while Cam signaled Mac to continue. He shuffled some printouts and said, “Domestically, there’s the opening of the Rodman Gallery in San Francisco in three weeks.”

  “Where’s she staying?” Cam asked absently, her mind still on the Paris details. International travel placed any recognizable political figure at risk, and when that individual represented a country as widely hated as the USA, the risk escalated.

  “We don’t know yet.” Mac sounded uncomfortable.

  Cam looked up, narrowing her eyes. “You don’t know? She must have reservations by now. Who’s handling her itinerary?”

  Mac blushed but kept his eyes on hers. He had forgotten how unforgiving she could be about any breach in protocol. He prepared himself to be dressed down. “She is, Commander.”

  “She is,” Cam repeated in disgust. She knew damn well it wasn’t Mac’s fault. Struggling with her temper, she closed her electronic notebook and stood. “Is there anything pressing that the team needs to discuss this morning, Mac?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Who’s heading the day shift?” She looked over the team.

  “I am, ma’am.” The answer came from a smooth-featured, dark-haired woman in her late twenties. She might have been any one of the earnest, athletic, all-American types so often associated with government agents except for the surprising intensity in her voice.

  “Fine,” Cam acknowledged with a quick nod. After one nearly career-ending lapse in judgment, Paula Stark had proven herself to be cool and levelheaded. She was an invaluable asset as a member of the shift that spent the most time in direct contact with the first daughter. “Then go get your detail organized.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Stark replied, getting to her feet.

  “Mac,” Cam added crisply, “if I might speak with you, please.”

  Chairs scraped as agents hastened to get out of the conference room. They’d all seen Roberts take people apart if she felt they had been lax in guarding the president’s daughter—no matter how difficult Blair Powell might make t
hat job.

  When they were alone, Cam looked at Mac and raised an eyebrow. “Okay. You want to tell me what the hell is going on? First, I get called back with no explanation and no notice. Then you say that Egret is bypassing normal security protocols. What else is happening that I don’t know about? I can’t work in the dark here.”

  “I’d tell you if I could, Commander, but I don’t know why you’ve been recalled.” He looked across the table into Cam’s unreadable dark eyes and chose his words carefully. He liked her; he respected her; he was happy to serve under her. But they weren’t friends. They didn’t share personal confidences. He didn’t know, for sure, what her past with the first daughter had been. “No one reported any problems to me, either about my command or anything else. As for Ms. Powell…” He shrugged, looking exasperated. “Ms. Powell is difficult.”

  Cam almost smiled at that enormous understatement but did not. She remained silent, watching him, waiting for the rest.

  “She remains very reluctant to reveal her plans or destinations. She refuses to discuss personal...uh, relationships, so we have no intelligence regarding potential threats from that area. She slips our surveillance—” He halted at the soft curse from Cam, then added quickly, “Not very often, but it happens.”

  “You reported that?” Cam asked. Fighting fatigue, she rubbed her face briefly. God, Blair is stubborn. But she couldn’t blame her, not really. Living under the constant scrutiny of strangers was wearing, even under ordinary circumstances. And Blair Powell’s circumstances were far from ordinary.

  Mac straightened. “No, ma’am, I did not.”