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KAREN KENDALL
After Hours Bundle
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
Contents
Midnight Oil
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Midnight Madness
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Midnight Touch
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue
About the Author
Coming Next Month
KAREN KENDALL
Midnight Oil
TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON
AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND
To my editor, Wanda Ottewell,
who is always a lot of fun to brainstorm with.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
1
TROY BARRINGTON FELT like a pervert, sitting here in his car in a dark parking lot at 10:00 p.m. Either a pervert or a cop on a stakeout, except he didn’t have any doughnuts or one of those cool police radios.
“What are you doing, Uncle Troy?” asked his eleven-year-old nephew, Derek, via cell phone.
He visualized the kid, tousled blond hair sticking out every which way and a chocolate stain on the Marlins T-shirt he liked to sleep in. His skateboard was probably at the end of his bed. “Just sitting out on the porch, smoking a cigar,” Troy lied. He couldn’t tell an eleven-year-old what he was really up to: spying on a bunch of people he didn’t know but suspected were up to no good. He also couldn’t tell Derek that one luscious redhead in particular made the stakeout a lot less boring than it could have been.
“Why are you still awake?” Troy asked, tearing his eyes away from her very interesting curves. “Huh? You should be in bed.”
“Mom says cigars are bad for you,” Derek told him, ignoring the question.
“They are. Terrible. But someone gave me this as a gift, and I didn’t want to throw it away.” It was true that he had a cigar in his glove box, from his friend Amos, whose wife had just had a baby girl. His old teammates were dropping like flies to wives and kids. He scrubbed a hand over his face. Hadn’t it been just yesterday that they were all a bunch of rowdy, testosterone-crazed twentysomethings? He had no idea how he’d suddenly fallen into his midthirties, and still had no desire to settle down with a woman.
“Well,” Derek said judiciously, “I guess that’s okay, then. So did you fix the holes in your porch?”
“Nope. That’s my weekend project, big guy. You wanna help?”
“Yeah! Can I really?”
“Uh-huh. If you promise to hang up the phone and go to bed now. I’ll bet your mom doesn’t know you’re still up.”
Guilty silence.
“Does she?”
“No. Are you gonna tell?”
“Not if you get to bed this minute. I’ll talk to her tomorrow and see if I can pick