Rush: A MacKenzie Family Novella (The MacKenzie Family)
Read Rush: A MacKenzie Family Novella (The MacKenzie Family) Online
Authors: Robin Covington
Rush
By Robin Covington
A MacKenzie Family Novella
Introduction by Liliana Hart
Rush
A MacKenzie Family Novella
Copyright 2016 by Robin Covington d/b/a Burning Up the Sheets, LLC.
ISBN: 978-1-942299-38-7
Published by Evil Eye Concepts, Incorporated
Introduction copyright 2016 Liliana Hart
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights.
This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or establishments is solely coincidental.
Rush
by Robin Covington
From Liliana Hart’s
New York Times
bestselling MacKenzie family comes a new story by
USA Today
bestselling author Robin Covington…
Atticus Rush doesn’t really like people. Years in Special Ops and law enforcement showed him the worst of humanity, making his mountain hideaway the ideal place to live. But when his colleagues at MacKenzie Security need him to save the kidnapped young daughter of a U.S. Senator, he’ll do it, even if it means working with the woman who broke his heart …his ex-wife.
Lady Olivia Rutledge-Cairn likes to steal things. Raised with a silver spoon and the glass slipper she spent years cultivating a cadre of acquaintances in the highest places. She parlayed her natural gift for theft into a career of locating and illegally retrieving hard-to-find items of value for the ridiculously wealthy. Rush was the one man who tempted her to change her ways…until he caught her and threatened to turn her in.
MacKenzie Security has vowed to save the girl. Olivia can find anything or anyone. Rush can get anyone out. As the clock winds down on the girl’s life, can they fight the past, a ruthless madman and their explosive passion to get the job done?
USAToday
bestselling author, Robin Covington loves to explore the theme of fooling around and falling in love in her sexy books. When she's not writing sizzling romance she's collecting tasty man candy pics, hoarding red nail polish, indulging in a little comic book geek love, and obsessing over Chris Evans. Don't send chocolate . . . send eye candy!
Robin's bestselling books have won the Golden Leaf Award and finaled in the Romantic Times Reviewer's Choice, the Book Seller's Best and the National Reader's Choice Awards.
She lives in Maryland with her handsome husband, her two brilliant children (they get it from her, of course!), and her beloved fur babies - Dixie Joan Wilder and Dutch.
Drop her a line at [email protected] - she always writes back.
Special thanks to Liliana Hart for asking me to be part of this project and for being a friend.
Hugs to Liz Berry and MJ Rose for being so wonderful to work with and making this such a blast.
A shout out to Christopher Rice, Cristin Harber, Avery Flynn, and Kimberly Kincaid for stepping up my game. Yeah…I’m fan-girling a little bit over here.
To the Main Man, Little Man and Lulu – huge hugs and kisses for your unwavering support. How blessed am I to get to spend my days and nights with you?
An Introduction to the MacKenzie Family World
Dear Readers,
I’m thrilled to be able to introduce the MacKenzie Family World to you. I asked five of my favorite authors to create their own characters and put them into the world you all know and love. These amazing authors revisited Surrender, Montana, and through their imagination you’ll get to meet new characters, while reuniting with some of your favorites.
These stories are hot, hot, hot—exactly what you’d expect from a MacKenzie story—and it was pure pleasure for me to read each and every one of them and see my world through someone else’s eyes. They definitely did the series justice, and I hope you discover five new authors to put on your auto-buy list.
Make sure you check out
Troublemaker,
a brand new, full-length MacKenzie novel written by me.
And yes, you’ll get to see more glimpses of Shane before his book comes out next year.
So grab a glass of wine, pour a bubble bath, and prepare to Surrender.
Love Always,
Liliana Hart
* * * *
Available now! Click to purchase.
Trouble Maker
by Liliana Hart
Rush
by Robin Covington
Bullet Proof
by Avery Flynn
Delta: Rescue
by Cristin Harber
Deep Trouble
by Kimberly Kincaid
Desire & Ice
by Christopher Rice
Table Of Contents
An introduction to the MacKenzie Family World by Liliana Hart
Discover the Liliana Hart MacKenzie Family Collection
Discover the World of 1001 Dark Nights
Her Secret Lover by Robin Covington
“You’ve got five seconds to get the fuck off my property or I will bury you on it.”
Atticus Rush had zero patience for people who just showed up on his doorstep. Sure, he should probably give the trespassers props for finding him lodged deep in the heart of nowhere Montana, but he couldn’t muster up the enthusiasm when he resented the hell out of their very existence.
And he deeply resented the large man currently standing on his porch.
He’d tracked the truck coming up the long driveway, watching as they pulled into the yard under his trees and cut the engine. Uneasy when anyone showed up at his house uninvited, he’d exited his house through the back door and then circled around the side yard and waited in the bushes as the unwelcome trespasser got out of the vehicle and mounted the front porch steps. As the man rang the bell, Rush had silently crept up behind him and pressed the muzzle of his gun to the back of the man’s head. His visitor had raised his hands in the air without being told.
“Dammit, Rush. Put the gun down. If you kill me, Darcy will be royally pissed off.”
The voice was familiar, friendly, so he lowered the gun a little bit and used his free hand to nudge the man around. One look at his face and Rush engaged the safety on the weapon and lowered the muzzle to face the ground. Brant Scott wasn’t exactly
unwelcome
but if he was here unannounced, it wasn’t a good thing.
“Scott, what did you do? Join the Jehovah’s Witnesses or something?” he asked as he shouldered his way past his old friend to get to the door.
“What are you talking about?”
“Being hit by the sudden urge to save my eternal soul is the only thing I can think of that would make you come here without letting me know first.”
“We both know you don't have a soul to save.”
Unable to argue with such blatant truth, Rush pressed his palm against the lock pad and shoved the door open to get inside. He strode across the stone floor of the entryway and entered the large open space housing the kitchen and living room. The back wall was almost entirely made of glass, the view of the mountain range behind the house the only rival for the attention normally commanded by the two-story stone fireplace.
Sliding the clip out of his gun, he placed them both on the counter, reached into the fridge and emerged with a solitary beer. Brant leaned against the island and stared at him with narrow eyes as he took a long, deep swallow.
“What?” he asked, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, glaring across the kitchen.
“You’re not going to offer me a beer?”
“Are we going to pretend this is a social call?”
The stare-down continued for a few long moments and Rush took another swig of beer before Brant broke first and advanced forward, jerking the door to the fridge open with a curse. Rush barely bit back a sharp bite of laughter as he watched him slam the door and viciously pop the cap off the bottle.
“How long are you going to bust my balls?” Brant asked on a swallow and then pointed at him across the island. “You could have blown my head off, asshole.”
“It’s my land. My porch. I’m sure you saw the multitude of
No Trespassing
signs I posted.” He shrugged. “You trespass and I shoot you. Seems like a very easy concept to grasp.”
“No wonder you live out here in the middle of nowhere. Nobody can stand you,” Brant grumbled, giving him the evil eye. “And what the fuck is up with your hair?”
At that, Rush did let a small laugh get past his lips. Seeing the usually collected Brant lose his shit even just a little bit was fun. The only person that could get him ruffled was his wife, Darcy. That was fun to watch too. Or at least it was until they started with the kissy-kissy love crap. That’s when he usually made himself scarce and high-tailed it back to his mountain.
“It’s long,” he answered, shrugging off Brant’s skeptical raised eyebrow. “I have no problem catching tail with it.”
Brant stared at him, lifting his hand to make an “anything else” movement with his fingers. “That’s it?”
“Is there anything else?” Brant opened his mouth and Rush could almost hear the lecture about how “great marriage was with the right woman.” Blah. Blah. Blah. He was not the marrying kind…not again, at any rate. The women he met for occasional weekends to blow off steam were fine when his right hand and Astroglide weren’t cutting it any longer. Marriage? Once burned, twice shy…or something like that. He’d risked his heart once and he wouldn’t do it again. “Are we at the point where you stop pretending that you’re here because you missed me?”
Brant eyed him across the short distance, clearly weighing whether he would go through with what he’d come here to do. Rush waited him out, but each passing second convinced him that this was not a proposal he was going to like.
“MacKenzie Security needs your help.” He paused as he pulled his phone out of his jeans pocket. “
I
need your help.”
He thumbed the screen and tapped a couple of times before turning it to face Rush. A young girl, smiling huge and hugging a Labrador Retriever. She was about twelve years old and she looked familiar.
Very familiar
.