Page 1 of Hawk and the Cougar

Chapter One

Liz Williams slid into the last empty desk in the middle of the back row of the tiered lecture hall at Arizona State University. A low hum of conversation buzzed in the large room filled with university students nearly half her age. She hunched low in the seat. Dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, she blended in. Almost. She wanted to stay anonymous until the class finished. She’d taken the dress code cue from her daughter Emma who, despite being a genius, dressed like the teenager she was.

Emma had graduated high school three years ahead of schedule and gone directly to college. She’d started her undergrad education this semester. The kid was a machine, which was why Liz had been relieved to learn she had finally become interested in a young man. Until the conversation Liz had shamelessly eavesdropped on had taken a serious turn and she’d discovered the young man was Em’s bioarcheology professor.

“Good in bed?” Emma had laughed into the phone. “Oh, yeah.”

Liz’s shock had been compounded when Emma told her friend that Professor Hawkins would later join them at the dig where she was headed in Monument Valley.

For the thousandth time, Liz fretted that Emma had slipped out of thier home while Liz had been on a conference call with Leland Industries’ Chicago clothing buyer. Darn the kid. Liz had tried reaching her without luck. Em was notorious for dropping her phone into her backpack and forgetting about it. Once she reached the mountains, there wouldn’t be a signal for hours, if at all.

The door in the right-hand corner of the opposite wall opened, and the room quieted. Liz leaned to the right and peered down through the sea of bodies. She stilled at sight of the tall, broad-shouldered man entering the room. This couldn’t be Professor Anthony Hawkins, PhD, the professor her daughter was having a relationship with. The picture on the university website had been taken on a dig. He’d stood in the distance, straw hat pulled low over his brow. His lean build had been obvious, but Liz had assumed the picture to be at least fifteen years old—maybe even older.

This man looked like he belonged in a time long past when Native American spirits roamed the desert. Jet black hair framed an angular face bronzed by countless hours of sun. The crisp white shirt and tight button-fly jeans he wore belied the sense of the ancient and emphasized the hard edge.

Light glinted off his belt buckle where a spider web, lime green, Apache cabochon stone was set inside a sterling silver cable design buckle. Before Liz realized the impulse, her gaze dropped to the generous bulge pressed against his fly. She flushed and yanked her gaze upward, where it snagged on a broad chest defined beneath his shirt.

He reached the desk and set the tan satchel he carried on top. He faced the blackboard, picked up a piece of chalk, and began writing. The shirt went taut across muscled shoulders. His hair brushed the back of his collar, as if he’d waited just a little too long between haircuts. Liz’s mouth went dry. She could almost feel the silky strands between her fingers as she fisted his hair with each thrust of his cock inside her.

The girl beside her released a low, but audible, “Ohhh.”

Liz jarred from the erotic vision. She glanced around to see if anyone had caught her staring, but the students were intent on him. What had gotten into her? He had to be fourteen or fifteen years her junior—not the older man she’d assumed Emma was looking for to replace the father who walked out on them just after Em turned three.

This man was no father figure. Liz understood the attraction. What woman would be impervious to over six feet of tanned muscle? She couldn’t deny his effect on her. But she was an adult and understood her reaction to be sheer lust. Just as he had to know better than to seduce his students.

As if sensing her stare, he faced the class and swung his gaze directly onto her. Liz slid lower behind her desk. He took a small step to the left and made eye contact again. What was she doing? She wasn’t one of his young students to be intimidated. Despite the tremor that rippled through her, Liz kept her gaze locked with his and straightened. His brows rose in…amusement? Before she could be sure, his attention shifted to a student in the second row from the front.

“What are the four areas of investigation into cremated remains, as outlined by Charles Merbs?” he asked.

The student murmured an answer Liz couldn’t hear over the thunder of her heart.

Fifty-five minutes later, Professor Hawkins ended the lecture, and everyone but Liz rose. She’d regained her composure. She would approach him reasonably. If he was stupid enough to risk his career over a seventeen-year-old kid, then he deserved everything she could dish out.

Five students waited to talk to him, four of whom were female. He answered their questions in a hushed tone, his eyes on the papers he stacked and put into his satchel. His gaze didn’t so much as flick upward when the last young woman he spoke with leaned forward just enough to offer an inviting view of her impressive cleavage. He only asked if she needed anything else. The girl finally left, casting a murderous glance Liz’s way as she passed her on the way to the door.

The door closed behind the girl, and he said, “If you’re going to give Reid his money’s worth, you’d better move your pretty ass. I have to be somewhere.”

Liz froze. Reid? Money’s worth? Pretty ass?

He picked up the satchel and headed for the door.

She jumped from her seat. “Hey!”

Liz hurried down the stairs. She reached the door as it clicked shut behind him and burst into the hallway. He was already halfway down the corridor. She sprinted after him with ease.

Thank you, Stairmaster.

He reached the exit a second before she did, and she slipped through the opening as the door nearly closed. Liz started forward, then hesitated. Two streetlights stood at each end of the deserted parking lot, but shadows hung heavy. Her heart raced. She couldn’t let him go to Monument Valley without talking to him. She hurried forward and, seconds later, came up alongside him. His long strides forced her into a fast walk.

“We need to talk,” she said.

He looked at her. “Talk? Come now, you don’t get paid to talk.”

He stopped beside a beaten-up green Chevy truck, then reached through the driver’s side’s open window, pulled up the handle, and opened the door.

“Listen, I came here hoping you’d see reason,” she began.

He tossed his case inside and started to get into the truck. Liz couldn’t believe it. He had no intention of giving her even five minutes. She seized the door, yanking it back so hard the old metal creaked. He stared for a long moment, then started to turn. Liz grabbed his arm. He shoved the door closed. Before she realized his intent, he had her against the car, arms stretched out on both sides so that she was trapped against the metal. Her pulse jumped into overdrive.