Bodyguard to a dog? Former commando Nash Wilder can't believe he took this assignment, watching over the prized poodle of some spoiled heiress.

Benedek Kerkay, youngest prince of Valtria, stared at the evenly printed lines on the paper, but all he could see was the face of the most beautiful woman in the universe, the one who'd been holding him enthralled for years. A woman he could never have.

For Prince Miklos, a royal wedding was a royal duty, one more step toward saving his beloved, beleaguered country.

A half-dozen men were dead. And some of the clues pointed to a business associate of his, a man he had vouched for. If even the hint of terrorist involvement surfaced, it would end.

He would kill a man before the day was out. And— God help him—Cade Palmer hoped this would be the last time.

Proud, imperious and leery of pretenders to the throne, Sheik Karim Abdullah saw Julia Gardner as just another gold digger. The American claimed to be carrying his dead twin's child, so the Dark Sheik decreed she remain his palace "guest" until paternity was established.

A good spy has many tools at his disposal. One of them is the instinctual knowledge when to run. Parker McCall was running for his life, toward the Tuileries on Rue de Rivoli that stretched parallel to the River Seine.

She'd been brought here to fail. It was expected of her. Hoped for.

"We have two weeks before we have a major terrorist attack on our hands," Brant Law, the FBI agent who had organized the mission, said over the phone. "And we don't know the location or what kind of weapon we are facing."

In his line of work he rescued people. He didn't stand back and let them walk into danger...

She was bait, dressed in clingy red silk to attract the attention of every man in the room...

Burge, happy whenever he got to order her around, pushed her through the green metal door at the end of the cell block, but didn't follow. What did they want with her now? She was on her guard, scanning people ahead with suspicion--a good basic stance for the incarcerated...

Dr. Sadie Kauffman had always been skeptical of people who, as their death sentence neared, claimed to have changed and reformed. Now she believed it. Time made all the difference, being locked up with nothing to do but think. She'd had forty long days and nights to mull over what her life had been so far--a mad race for things that in hindsight didn't matter. She would live differently. She rubbed her fingertips together. Today was the day of her execution...

Kaye Miller looked at her friends and colleagues milling around the grand ballroom, and wondered which one had tried to kill her...

Of all the stupid things he'd done in his life, this might take the cake. He didn't even know for sure that she was still alive. All he had to go by was a partial sentence in a two-page report he wasn't supposed to have seen: "team was unable to recover the second body." Not exactly a beacon of hope, considering that the other researcher had been found half-eaten by bears...

Brian hid his shaking hands under his arms. He had spent the last four years waiting for a chance to escape, but now that the opportunity was here it overwhelmed him. He took a slow breath. He was in better shape than he'd been at any of his previous attempts. Which still didn't guarantee that he could break out of his prison and make the two-week trek out of the Malaysian jungle...

The Sheik scanned his surroundings from the mouth of the cave before he stepped outside into the sunset, careful to note every dune. Two assassination attempts in two weeks had made him cautious...

Jack "Spike" Logan crouched behind the counter, his finger on the trigger. He couldn't hear them, but he knew they were out there somewhere in the cold night, waiting to take him down. They were welcome to try...

After two months of covert surveillance, every tantalizing detail of Nicola Barrington's body was etched into his mind to torment him whether or not he was looking...