Untamed

Nora Roberts

Hot Ice

Sacred Sins

Brazen Virtue

Sweet Revenge

Public Secrets

Genuine Lies

Carnal Innocence

Divine Evil

Honest Illusions

Private Scandals

Hidden Riches

True Betrayals

Montana Sky

Sanctuary

Homeport

The Reef

River's End

Carolina Moon

The Villa

Midnight Bayou

Three Fates

Birthright

Northern Lights

Blue Smoke

Angels Fall

High Noon

Tribute

Black Hills

The Search

Chasing Fire

The Witness

Series

Irish Born Trilogy

Born in Fire

Born in Ice

Born in Shame

Dream Trilogy

Daring to Dream

Holding the Dream

Finding the Dream

Chesapeake Bay Saga

Sea Swept

Rising Tides

Inner Harbor

Chesapeake Blue

Gallaghers of Ardmore Trilogy

Jewels of the Sun

Tears of the Moon

Heart of the Sea

Three Sisters Island Trilogy

Dance Upon the Air

Heaven and Earth

Face the Fire

Key Trilogy

Key of Light

Key of Knowledge

Key of Valor

In the Garden Trilogy

Blue Dahlia

Black Rose

Red Lily

Circle Trilogy

Morrigan's Cross

Dance of the Gods

Valley of Silence

Sign of Seven Trilogy

Blood Brothers

The Hollow

The Pagan Stone

Bride Quartet

Vision in White

Bed of Roses

Savor the Moment

Happy Ever After

The Inn BoonsBoro Trilogy

The Next Always

The Last Boyfriend

The Perfect Hope

eBooks

The O'Hurleys

The Last Honest Woman

Dance to the Piper

Skin Deep

Without a Trace

The Donovan Legacy

Captivated

Entranced

Charmed

Enchanted

Cordina's Royal Family

Affaire Royale

Command Performance

The Playboy Prince

Cordina's Crown Jewel

The MacGregors

Playing the Odds

Tempting Fate

All the Possibilities

One Man's Art

For Now, Forever

The MacGregor Brides

The Winning Hand

The MacGregor Grooms

The Perfect Neighbor

Rebellion & In from the Cold

Night Tales

Night Shift

Night Shadow

Nightshade

Night Smoke

Night Shield

The Calhouns

Courting Catherine

A Man for Amanda

For the Love of Lilah

Suzanna's Surrender

Megan's Mate

Irish Legacy Trilogy

Irish Thoroughbred

Irish Rose

Irish Rebel

Best Laid Plans

Loving Jack

Lawless

Summer Love

Boundary Lines

Dual Image

First Impressions

The Law Is a Lady

Local Hero

This Magic Moment

The Name of the Game

Partners

Temptation

The Welcoming

Opposites Attract

Time Was

Times Change

Gabriel's Angel

Holiday Wishes

The Heart's Victory

The Right Path

Rules of the Game

Search for Love

Blithe Images

From This Day

Song of the West

Island of Flowers

Untamed

Her Mother's Keeper

Sullivan's Woman

Less of a Stranger

Nora Roberts & J. D. Robb

Remember When

J. D. Robb

Naked in Death

Glory in Death

Immortal in Death

Rapture in Death

Ceremony in Death

Vengeance in Death

Holiday in Death

Conspiracy in Death

Loyalty in Death

Witness in Death

Judgment in Death

Betrayal in Death

Seduction in Death

Reunion in Death

Purity in Death

Portrait in Death

Imitation in Death

Divided in Death

Visions in Death

Survivor in Death

Origin in Death

Memory in Death

Born in Death

Innocent in Death

Creation in Death

Strangers in Death

Salvation in Death

Promises in Death

Kindred in Death

Fantasy in Death

Indulgence in Death

Treachery in Death

New York to Dallas

Celebrity in Death

Delusion in Death

Calculated in Death

Anthologies

From the Heart

A Little Magic

A Little Fate

Moon Shadows

(with Jill Gregory, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Marianne Willman)

The Once Upon Series

(with Jill Gregory, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Marianne Willman)

Once Upon a Castle

Once Upon a Rose

Once Upon a Star

Once Upon a Kiss

Once Upon a Dream

Once Upon a Midnight

Silent Night

(with Susan Plunkett, Dee Holmes, and Claire Cross)

Out of This World

(with Laurell K. Hamilton, Susan Krinard, and Maggie Shayne)

Bump in the Night

Dead of Night

Three in Death

Suite 606

In Death

The Lost

(with Patricia Gaffney, Mary Blayney, and Ruth Ryan Langan)

The Other Side

(with Mary Blayney, Patricia Gaffney, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Mary Kay McComas)

The Unquiet

(with Mary Blayney, Patricia Gaffney, Ruth Ryan Langan, and Mary Kay McComas)

Also
available
 . . .

The Official Nora Roberts Companion

(edited by Denise Little and Laura Hayden)

INTERMIX BOOKS

Published by the Penguin Group

Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

USA | Canada | UK | Ireland | Australia | New Zealand | India | South Africa | China

Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have control over and does not have any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

UNTAMED

An InterMix Book / published by arrangement with the author

PUBLISHING HISTORY

Harlequin Books edition / May 2010

InterMix eBook edition / April 2013

Copyright © 1983 by Nora Roberts.

Excerpt from
Whiskey Beach
copyright © 2013 by Nora Roberts.

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. Purchase only authorized editions.

For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

ISBN: 978-1-101-59981-5

INTERMIX

InterMix Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group

and New American Library, divisions of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

INTERMIX and the “IM” design are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

For my sons,

Life's a circus.

Go for it!

Chapter One

At the crack of the whip, twelve lions stood on their haunches and pawed the air. On command, they began to leap from pedestal to pedestal in a quick, close-formation, figure-eight pattern. This required split-second timing. With voice and hand commands the trainer kept the tawny, springing bodies moving.

“Well done, Pandora.”

At her name and the signal, the muscular lioness leaped to the ground and lay down on her side. One by one the others followed suit, until, snarling and baring their teeth, they stretched across the tanbark. A male was positioned beside each female; at a sharp reproof from the trainer, Merlin ceased nibbling on Ophelia's ear.

“Heads up!” They obeyed as the trainer walked briskly in front of them. The whip was tossed aside with a flourish, then, with apparent nonchalance, the trainer reclined lengthwise across the warm bodies. The center cat, a full-maned African, let out a great, echoing bellow. As a reward for his response to the cue, his ear was given a good scratching. The trainer rose from the feline couch, clapped hands and brought the lions to their feet. Then, with a hand signal, each was called by name and sent through the chute and into their cages. One stayed behind, a huge, black-maned cat who, like an ordinary tabby, circled and rubbed up against his trainer's legs.

Deftly, a rope was attached to a chain that was hidden under his mane. Then, with swift agility, the trainer mounted the lion's back. As the door of the big cage opened, lion and rider passed through for a tour of the practice ring. When they reached the back door of the ring barn, Merlin, the obliging lion, was transferred to a wheel cage.

“Well, Duffy.” Jo turned after the cage was secured. “Are we ready for the road?”

Duffy was a small, round man with a monk's fringe of chestnut hair and a face that exploded with ginger freckles. His open smile and Irish blue eyes gave him the look of an aging choirboy. His mind was sharp, shrewd and scrappy. He was the best manager Prescott's Circus Colossus could have had.

“Since we open in Ocala tomorrow,” he replied in a raspy voice, “you'd better be ready.” He shifted his fat cigar stump from the right side of his mouth to the left.

Jo merely smiled, then stretched to loosen muscles grown taut during the thirty minutes in the cage. “My cats are ready, Duffy. It's been a long winter. They need to get back on the road as much as the rest of us.”

Duffy frowned. As circumstances had it, he stood only inches higher than his animal trainer. Widely spaced, almond-shaped eyes stared back at him. They were as sharp and green as emeralds, surrounded by thick, inky lashes. At the moment they were fearless and amused, but Duffy had seen them frightened, vulnerable and lost. He shifted his cigar again and took two quick puffs as Jo gave a cage hand instructions.

He remembered Steve Wilder, Jo's father. He had been one of the best cat men in the business. Jo was as good with the cats as Wilder had been. In some ways, Duffy acknowledged, even better. But she had the traits of her mother: delicate build; dark, passionate looks. Jolivette Wilder was as slender as her aerialist mother had been, with bold green eyes and straight, raven black hair that fell to just below her waist. Her brows were delicately arched, her nose small and straight, her cheekbones high and elegant, while her mouth was full and soft. Her skin was tawny from the Florida sun; it added to her gypsy-like appearance. Confidence added spark to the beauty.

Finishing her instructions, Jo tucked her arm through Duffy's. She had seen that frown before. “Somebody quit?” she asked as they began to walk toward Duffy's office.

“Nope.”

His monosyllabic reply caused Jo to lift a brow. It was not often Duffy answered any question briefly. Years of experience told her to hold her tongue as they moved across the compound.

Rehearsals were going on everywhere. Vito the wire walker informally sharpened his act on a cable stretched between two trees. The Mendalsons called out to each other as they tossed their juggling pins high in the air, while the equestrian act led their horses into the ring barn. She saw one of the Stevenson girls walking on stilts. She'd be six now, Jo mused, tossing the hair from her eyes as she watched the young girl's wavering progress. Jo remembered the year she had been born. It had been that same year that she had been allowed to work the big cage alone. She had been sixteen, and it had been another full year before she had been permitted to work an audience.

For Jo, there had never been any home but the circus. She had been born during the winter break, had been tucked into her parents' trailer the following spring to spend her first year and each subsequent one of her life thereafter on the road. She had inherited both her fascination and her flair with animals from her father, her style and grace of movement from her mother. Though she had lost both parents fifteen years before, they continued to influence her. Their legacy to her had been a world of restlessness, a world of fantasies. She had grown up playing with lion cubs, riding elephants, wearing spangles and traveling like a gypsy.

Jo glanced down at a cluster of daffodils growing by the side of Prescott's winter office and smiled. She remembered planting them when she had been thirteen and in love with a tumbler. She remembered, too, the man who had stooped beside her, offering advice on bulb planting and broken hearts. As Jo thought of Frank Prescott, her smile grew sad.

“I still can't believe he's gone,” she murmured as she and Duffy moved inside.

Duffy's office was sparsely furnished with a wooden desk, metal filing cabinets and two spindly chairs. A collage of posters adorned the walls. They promised the amazing, the astounding, the incredible: elephants that danced, men who flew through the air, beautiful girls who spun by their teeth, raging tigers that rode horseback. Tumblers, clowns, lions, strong men, fat ladies, boys who could balance on their forefingers; they brought the magic of the circus into the drab little room.

As Jo glanced over at a narrow pine door, Duffy followed her gaze. “I keep expecting him to come busting through there with some crazy new idea,” he mumbled as he began to fiddle with his prize possession, an automatic coffeemaker.

“Do you?” With a sigh Jo straddled a chair, then rested her chin on its back. “We all miss him. It's not going to seem the same without him this year.” She looked up suddenly, and her eyes were angry. “He wasn't an old man, Duffy. Heart attacks should be for old men.” She brooded into space, touched again with the injustice of Frank Prescott's death.

He had been barely into his fifties and full of laughter and simple kindness. Jo had loved him and trusted him without reservation. At his death she had grieved for him more acutely than she had for her own parents. In her longest memory he had been the core of her life.

“It's been nearly six months,” Duffy said gruffly as he studied her face. When Jo glanced up, he stuck out a mug of coffee.

“I know.” She took the mug, letting it warm her hands in the chilly March morning. Resolutely, she shook off the mood. Frank would not have wanted to leave sadness behind. Jo studied the coffee, then sipped. It was predictably dreadful. “Rumor has it we're following last year's route to the letter. Thirteen states.” Jo smiled, watching Duffy wince over his coffee before he downed it. “Not superstitious, are you?” She grinned, knowing he kept a four-leaf clover in his billfold.

“Pah!”
he said indignantly, coloring under his freckles. He set down his empty cup, then moved around his desk and sat behind it. When he folded his hands on the yellow blotter, Jo knew he was getting down to business. Through the open window she could hear the band rehearsing. “We should be in Ocala by six tomorrow,” he began. Dutifully, Jo nodded. “Should have the tents up before nine.”

“The parade should be over by ten, and the matinee will start at two,” Jo finished with a smile. “Duffy, you're not going to ask me to work the menagerie in the sideshow again, are you?”

“Should be a good crowd,” he replied, adroitly skirting her question. “Bonzo predicts clear skies.”

“Bonzo should stick with pratfalls and unicycles.” She watched as Duffy chewed on the stub of a now dead cigar. “Okay,” she said firmly, “let's have it.”

“Someone's going to be joining us in Ocala, at least temporarily.” He pursed his lips as his eyes met Jo's. His were blue, faded with age. “I don't know if he'll finish out the season with us.”

“Oh, Duffy, not some first of mayer we have to break in this late?” Jo demanded, using the circus term for novice. “What is he, some energetic writer who wants an epic on the vanishing tent circus? He'll spend a few weeks as a roustabout and swear he knows all there is to know about it.”

“I don't think he'll be working as a roustabout,” Duffy muttered. Striking a match, he coaxed the cigar back to life. Jo frowned, watching the smoke struggle toward the ceiling.

“It's a bit late to work in a new act now, isn't it?”

“He's not a performer.” Duffy swore lightly under his breath, then met Jo's eyes again. “He owns us.”

For a moment Jo said nothing. She sat unmoving, as Duffy had seen her from time to time when she trained a young cat. “No!” She rose suddenly, shaking her head. “Not him. Not now. Why does he have to come? What does he want here?”

“It's his circus,” Duffy reminded her. His voice was both rough and sympathetic.

“It'll never be his circus,” Jo retorted passionately. Her eyes lit and glowed with a temper she rarely let have sway. “It's Frank's circus.”

“Frank's dead,” Duffy stated in a quiet, final tone. “Now the circus belongs to his son.”

“Son?” Jo countered. She lifted her fingers to press them against her temple. Slowly, she moved to the window. Outside, the sun was pouring over the heads of troupers. She watched the members of the trapeze act, in thick robes worn over their tights, head toward the ring barn. The chatter of mixed languages was so familiar she failed to notice it. She placed her palms on the window sill and with a little sigh, steadied her temper. “What sort of son is it who never bothers to visit his father? In thirty years he never came to see Frank. He never wrote. He didn't even come to the funeral.” Jo swallowed the tears of anger that rose to her throat and thickened her voice. “Why should he come now?”

“You've got to learn that life's a two-sided coin, kiddo,” Duffy said briskly. “You weren't even alive thirty years ago. You don't know why Frank's wife up and left him or why the boy never visited.”

“He's not a boy, Duffy, he's a man.” Jo turned back, and he saw that she again had herself under control. “He's thirty-one, thirty-two years old now, a very successful attorney with a fancy Chicago office. He's very wealthy, did you know?” A small smile played on her lips but failed to reach her eyes. “And not just from court cases and legal fees; there's quite a lot of money on his mother's side. Nice, quiet, old money. I can't understand what a rich city lawyer would want with a tent circus.”

Duffy shrugged his broad, round shoulders. “Could be he wants a tax shelter. Could be he wants to ride an elephant. Could be anything. He might want to take inventory and sell us off, piece by piece.”

“Oh, Duffy, no!” Emotion flew back into Jo's face. “He couldn't do that.”

“The heck he couldn't,” Duffy muttered as he stubbed out his cigar. “He can do as he pleases. If he wants to liquidate, he liquidates.”

“But we have contracts through October. . . .”

“You're too smart for that, Jo.” Duffy frowned, scratching his rim of hair. “He can buy them off or let them play through. He's a lawyer. He can figure the way out of a contract if he wants to. He can wait till August when we start to negotiate again and let them all lapse.” Seeing Jo's distress, he backpedaled. “Listen, kiddo, I didn't say he was going to sell, I said he
could.
”

Jo ran a hand through her hair. “There must be something we can do.”

“We can show a profit by the end of the season,” Duffy said wryly. “We can show the new owner what we have to offer. I think it's important that he sees we're not just a mud show but a profitable three-ring circus with class acts. He should see what Frank built, how he lived, what he wanted to do. I think,” Duffy added, watching Jo's face, “that you should be in charge of his education.”

“Me?” Jo was too incredulous to be angry. “Why? You're better qualified in the public relations department than I am. I train lions, not lawyers.” She could not keep the hint of scorn from her voice.

“You were closer to Frank than anyone. And there isn't anyone here who knows this circus better than you.” Again he frowned. “And you've got brains. Never thought much use would come of all those fancy books you read, but maybe I was wrong.”

“Duffy.” Her lips curved into a smile. “Just because I like to read Shakespeare doesn't mean I can deal with Keane Prescott. Even thinking about him makes me furious. How will I act when I meet him face to face?”

“Well.” Duffy shrugged before he pursed his lips. “If you don't think you can handle it . . .”

“I didn't say I
couldn't
handle it,” Jo muttered.

“Of course, if you're afraid . . .”

“I'm not afraid of anything, and I'm certainly not afraid of some Chicago lawyer who doesn't know sawdust from tanbark.” Sticking her hands in her pockets, she paced the length of the small room. “If Keane Prescott, attorney-at-law, wants to spend his summer with the circus, I'll do my best to make it a memorable one.”

“Nicely,” Duffy cautioned as Jo moved to the door.

“Duffy,” she paused and gave him an innocent smile. “You know what a gentle touch I have.” To prove it, Jo slammed the door behind her.

***