“Join the army, see the world,” Master Sergeant Alex Shepard mocked under his breath.
He hated jungles. Yet here he was, stuck in another one. Central America this time. Why couldn’t he be sent to the Arctic or Siberia? What drew the bad guys to the heat and humidity? Or did the atmosphere make them the bad guys in the first place?
He wiped sweat from his eyes with a shrug of his shoulder. Almost midnight and hotter than midday back home in Texas.
He and his team of Rangers joined a group of DEA agents crouched on a hillside, surveilling a sprawling home in a manmade clearing in the middle of the jungle, a compound as out of the way as Santiago Saldana could make it.
Saldana was the baddest of the bad when it came to drug kingpins. He’d kidnapped, tortured and killed DEA agents, and used the scum-of-the-earth MS-13 gang to get his product over the border. A DEA agent had infiltrated Saldana’s inner circle, but hadn’t been heard from in weeks, so here they were.
Problem was, they might be too late. They hadn’t been able to confirm Saldana’s presence in the compound. After three days, there was no sight of him, or the American infiltrator who had been their source of information.
So they waited. In the heat. With the bugs. And the rain.
“Showtime,” Sergeant Julian Cervantes murmured from Alex’s left, his binoculars trained on the compound.
A light flickered on in the house below and a goddess stepped into the bathroom, a goddess with dark wavy hair, eyes that tilted up in the corners like a cat’s, and creamy skin that glowed in the soft light. Alex didn’t have to raise his own binoculars to know—they’d managed to be on this side of the compound the past two nights at this time. The side on the hill, with the view of the bathroom which held the luxurious large tub and glassed-in shower.
The goddess wore a silky white robe tonight and flipped back the sleeves as she reached over to turn on the water. She poured in a pink glob of some stuff she’d had sitting on the side of the tub, no doubt sweet smelling, and it foamed under the stream of water. Then she twisted her shoulder-length hair up and pinned it with a clip, exposing a long, graceful neck.
Yeah, he was watching through his binoculars now. This job had damn few perks and she was just about the best he’d seen during his twelve years in.
Then facing the window—she had to think she was alone, with this damn jungle all around—she let the robe slide down her arms in a slow, sensuous movement.
Beside him, Julian uttered what sounded like a prayer.
She was a fantasy woman, with full, round dark-tipped breasts, her nipples erect from the friction of the silk. Her skin was flawless. He could almost feel the smoothness of it under his rough palm, and he folded his fingers against the sensation. The curls at the apex of her thighs were dark and neat.
She stepped into the tub—hell, even her feet were graceful—and slipped beneath the bubbles.
This time Julian swore.
She lathered up some fluffy cloth and smoothed it over her arm, leaving tiny bubbles in its wake.
The sight of a woman indulging in a bubble bath in the middle of the jungle was so incongruous. She poured soap on the thick cloth, lifted her legs from the bubbles to smooth it on, such feminine actions. So out of place in his world.
Then her hands disappeared under the water. For a while.
She closed her eyes, scooted lower and her lips parted.
“Jesus,” Alex breathed.
“I hate bubbles,” Julian said in a choked voice.
Alex shouldn’t be watching. He should tear his gaze away as she tilted her head back, offering her throat to her invisible lover. Who was she imagining over her, touching her? Saldana? The thought almost gave him the strength to turn away before she reached out of the tub and picked up a bright pink object.
He recognized it from last night, when there had been no bubbles, only the woman, standing with her robe parted, one leg on the edge of the tub and--
“Is that her—?” Julian didn’t say the word. “Are those things waterproof?”
She arched her back, revealing soapy breasts. Alex imagined his own touch smoothing away the bubbles to make way for his mouth. Her body undulated with pleasure, sending water and bubbles over the side of the tub.
He jerked his gaze away with a curse. He had no business watching this woman, Saldana’s lover, not when he had sweet Rebecca waiting for him back home.
Rebecca, who he’d never seen naked, never touched, never more than kissed. She wasn’t ready for a physical relationship after her bastard of a husband had taken off on her, and Alex treasured her too much to push for it. Rebecca Kelso was his ideal, not the goddess in the tub. Rebecca was the kind of woman who would make him sane again after the things he’d seen and done. She would give him balance.
He reached over and smacked Julian’s arm. The younger man turned with glazed eyes and inclined his head. The goddess was rising from the tub now, soap bubbles sliding down her flushed body, her movements languid with the aftereffects of her ministrations. The cat eyes were heavy lidded, the look of a satisfied woman.
Alex hadn’t seen that look in a long time.
“Let’s get out of here,” he mouthed to Julian.
“Who is she, do you suppose?” Julian whispered as they slipped through the foliage on their way back to the rudimentary camp. “Saldana’s girlfriend? We don’t have any intel on a girlfriend.”
“Who cares?” Alex said. “She has to know what kind of person he is, and she doesn’t care. If that’s what floats her boat, she ain’t worth fantasizing about.”
“Were you not watching the same thing I was? Damn, have you ever seen a woman do that? I’ve never seen a woman do that.”
Alex didn’t think Julian expected an answer. Thank God. “She’s given up her soul for the lifestyle he offers her.”
Julian frowned. “Way out here? Not a lot of women would go for that. The question is, why would he leave a woman like that out here alone so long? Something’s wrong with that picture. You don’t think he’s already moved to the States?”
Alex shook his head. He didn’t know. He had to hope they weren’t too late. “Maybe there’s a leak. The agent who gave us the intel on Saldana also could have given him the heads-up that we were coming. Maybe he tortured it out of him. No matter how, Saldana isn’t here. We’re wasting time and resources waiting for him to come back.”
He pulled away from Julian, as they entered the camp, already reaching in his rucksack for the spiral he kept there. When the younger man went to make a report to Keith Vasquez, the agent in charge, Alex dropped against a tree and flipped open the battered spiral to write to Rebecca.
But he couldn’t get his mind off the raven-haired goddess. He had to do something.
“We’re wasting time.” Alex confronted Vasquez when he couldn’t calm down enough to finish his letter to Rebecca. They weren’t going to complete the mission by waiting Saldana out. The man was long gone. “Saldana isn’t coming back. He’s not stupid enough to just drive past us to get home. We missed him. Time to regroup.”
“Master Sergeant,” Vasquez said coolly, keeping his voice low to avoid detection. “He left something valuable behind.”
“What would that be?”
“The woman. Isabella Canales. She’s an American citizen.”
“Saldana’s whore,” Alex spat.
Even Vasquez drew back. “You know her?”
“We saw her on surveillance. You think she’s worth his freedom? More importantly, does he?”
“Hell yeah,” Julian murmured.
Alex shot him a look. “You don’t get it. Women like that are a dime a dozen. It’s not like he loves her for her mind.”
“Maybe not. But she is an American citizen,” Vasquez said.
“Who shares her bed with the scum of the earth.”
Vasquez tightened his jaw. “One more day. We haven’t seen Agent Cortez yet.”
They wouldn’t. If Saldana was gone, he wouldn’t have left his associates behind. If he’d knocked the agent off as a spy, well, they’d likely stumble over his body in the jungle. But this wasn’t Alex’s call. Vasquez made it clear his opinion didn’t count.
“Send me back down to watch, then. Let’s make the most of these twenty-four hours.”
“I already have Lee and Jordan out there.”
“Another man can give you another angle.”
“I need you fresh.”
Alex looked at him pityingly. “I’m a Ranger. I do what needs to be done.” He turned to find Julian.
“You know she’s asleep, right?” Alex asked Julian a few moments later as they hiked the short distance to the compound.
“Yeah, but if you think I’m going to be the only Ranger snoozing while the rest of you are on the mission, you got another think coming.”
“Did it sound to you like Vasquez wants to go in for the girl?”
“That is what it sounded like.”
“He better have damn good information on the inside of that place. I do not want to be booby-trapped in the jungle.”
They moved clockwise around the perimeter, west of where they had been at their earlier post. A spider the size of a tennis ball dropped on Alex’s arm, and even after he flicked it away, he could feel the hairy legs on his skin.
He hated the jungle.
“What the hell is that?” Julian muttered, directing Alex’s attention to a corner of the compound and the slight figure emerging from it.
“A kid?” Alex theorized. “Out for an adventure?”
“In the jungle?” Julian scoffed. “At night?”
“They aren’t always smart.” Damned if he didn’t know that from experience.
“This one is.” Julian motioned to the way the figure glanced over his shoulder. “Doesn’t want to get caught.”
“Running away from a parent.”
“You see anyone besides the girl and the guards in there since we’ve been watching?”
“Christ.” Alex focused his binoculars on the kid, only it wasn’t a kid. Dark hair hidden under a dark cap, pulled back into a ponytail that curled in at the nape of a slim, graceful neck. When she turned to look behind her, he saw the feminine tilt of her nose. “What the hell is she doing?”
“Who is it?”
Alex lowered his binoculars and started moving down the hill. “The goddess.”
“Who?” Julian asked from behind him. “Where are you going?”
“Vasquez says she’s the only thing Saldana cares about, the only thing that will draw him out. We need to get her.”


Isabella Canales’s heart pounded. Maybe this wasn’t the best idea. How would she find the American soldiers in the jungle at night? Clearly they didn’t want anyone to know they were here. If that was the case, how would she, with no training and no real jungle experience, find them?
When Eric Reyes had told her soldiers were on their way to take Santiago into custody, she’d hatched her plan. But Santiago had seen the American talking to her, alone, secretively, and he’d gone into a rage. She didn’t want to remember what he’d done to the man.
She didn’t want to think about what Santiago had done to her. So she’d planned her escape.
She’d staged her show every night at midnight, luring the guards into an unofficial schedule. They would stop outside her window at that time, then they’d move on, leaving her a window of time to get out of the compound unseen. No one would miss her till the morning.
If Santiago even dreamed she was thinking about escaping, her life would be so much worse. She couldn’t afford for him to catch her. She couldn’t be his prisoner anymore.
Her stolen boots rubbed with every step despite three pair of socks, and the rough fabric chafed her skin after years of wearing only the finest fabrics. She hoped the soldiers had transportation, and that it wasn’t far. She hoped she could charm them into taking her home. She didn’t want to play her trump card yet.
A stealthy rustling to her left froze her in her tracks. Jaguars were nocturnal, right? But surely they’d be intimidated by her size.
If she were a hundred pounds heavier.
Too late, she realized the jungle had gone silent, as if the creatures in the trees froze as well, hoping the predator would ignore their existence.
Great. She was out in the jungle, in danger of either being discovered by Santiago’s guards or being eaten.
Then a face emerged from the brush, only it wasn’t the face she was expecting. It was…green and black streaked, and a moment passed before her terror-stricken brain processed it as human, beneath a helmet wound with vines.
A soldier.
Her relief was short lived, because the soldier had an automatic weapon pointed at her chest.
“Isabella Canales?” His American accent skipped over the nuances of her Spanish name.
“Yes?” Her voice was shaky.
“Toss your pack over there and put your hands in the air.”


Goddamn. Up close she was even more stunning, a tiny little thing, the kind of woman a man wanted to care for, protect. The kind who, while he was watching her back, stabbed a knife in his.
“You stay there while Cervantes goes through your pack, then he’s going to pat you down.” He wished he didn’t have to hold a gun on her so he could do it himself. To make sure she was safe before he brought her back into camp. That was why.
His grip tightened. Yeah, right.
He glanced over to see Julian unzip her pack and swear.
Alarm raced through Alex, and he weighed possibilities and solutions. Was she armed? Wired? He scanned the area for cover. “What?”
“It glows in the dark.” Julian gingerly lifted a familiar pink object from the bag with two fingers.
“Christ.” Alex turned back to the goddess. “You’re going out into the jungle to get off? Putting on a show in front of a window wasn’t enough?”
She didn’t answer, every line in her body tight as Julian dug through her things. Keeping one eye on her, Alex noticed Julian paw past a colorful piece of fabric, saw the flash of high heels. Where the hell did this woman think she was going?
“Clean,” Julian pronounced after another minute. “You want me to search her?”
“I’ll do it.” Instead of shouldering his gun, he passed it to Julian, never taking his gaze off her.
He reached to remove her hat, forking his fingers through her hair, dragging the rubber band free, ignoring the silky strands catching on his rough fingers and the flowery scent rising as he dragged his fingers along her scalp. She looked up at him, eyes large and wary, her gaze not leaving him as he moved his touch down her slender back and into the waistband of her cargo pants, skimming his palms over silky panties. The pants were loose enough that he could reach her thighs, but that would mean bringing her body even closer to his. Already he could smell her on his clothes, no doubt the scent from that pink stuff she’d poured in the tub.
Stepping back, he snatched his hands out of her pants. The expression in her eyes was daring. A thrill of admiration ran through him.
He squashed it like the spider.
He reached under her tank top, over her smooth flat stomach, under the underwire of her bra, his fingertips brushing the plump undersides of her breasts.
Soft.
Then hard. Her nipples pebbled at his touch and he tried to quell the lust that rose up. He didn’t linger, but searched under her bra, beneath her arms.
Still she looked at him with those dark eyes.
Then he slid his hands down inside the front of her pants, kicking her feet apart.
The flesh of her belly jumped under his palm, but other than that she didn’t move when he reached down the front of her panties, over those neat dark curls that he could see in his memory. He probed her heat briefly, businesslike, ignoring the tightening in his groin, then removed his touch to pat down her thighs.
“Take off your boots.”
“May I sit?” A thread of fury underlay her voice.
“Be my guest.”
She dropped to the ground, untied one boot and shoved it at him. He inspected it, marveling at the large size, then dropped it to the ground beside her and took her other boot.
“What exactly did you think I’d be hiding?” she asked as she retied her boots and got to her feet.
Her voice was too loud, so he hushed her, leaned close to answer. “I’ve seen women stick some nasty things in some nasty places to kill soldiers.”
“You think I’m coming to attack you?” She glared, and her words whipped out. “I’m coming to you for help.”
He eased back, the scent of her overwhelming the scent of the jungle and his own stink. “We’re to believe you because you tell us? You’re not exactly trustworthy.”
“Why not?”
He inclined his head toward the compound. “The company you keep.” He motioned her to walk ahead of him back to camp. What the hell was she doing out here in the first place? He squelched his curiosity. He was the muscle, not the detective. He’d let Vasquez take care of it. The more distance he kept from Isabella Canales, the better.
But he could still smell her on his hands.


This was a bad idea. Isabella’s skin hadn’t stopped crawling since the silent soldier had stopped touching her. She was a prisoner, a suspect. She hadn’t foreseen this, the disdain, the suspicion. The near-hatred.
The man the soldiers took her to introduced himself as Vasquez and looked down at her like he had found some prize. Her whole body tightened so much she thought her muscles would snap.
“Where is Saldana?” Vasquez asked, his voice smooth.
Isabella didn’t fall for the attempt at charm. “You think he’d tell me?”
Vasquez lifted an eyebrow. “You’re his lover, aren’t you?”
She felt herself flush. The young Hispanic soldier who had gone through her pack studied her, and the others didn’t hide their smirks. Only the silent one, the one who had searched her, had no expression. But he watched her.
“He left when he heard you were coming.”
“Where did he hear it?”
She swallowed her fear. If they hated her this much now, how would they feel about her if they knew an American had been tortured and killed in the compound and she had been the reason? “I don’t know.”
“You’re lying.”
She recognized the tone. Santiago used it often enough to intimidate her. “Why would I lie to you? I need your help.”
Vasquez drew back a little. “You need our help?”
She didn’t look away, though she wanted to. God, she hated how he was looking down his nose at her. “I want to go home.”
“Saldana wouldn’t take you?”
She had to turn her head then. “I served him better here. And I didn’t have money to leave on my own. You’re my only chance.”
“You’re saying you’re his prisoner.” The silent soldier spoke at last, and all the contempt she’d gotten from Vasquez was nothing compared to the tone of his deep voice.
“I haven’t been allowed to leave the compound in four years.”
“In my experience, hostages don’t get silk robes and vibrators.”
She kept her head turned away. Of course he’d assume she was lying, but she was still humiliated by the search. “Those things were for his pleasure, not mine.”
“Not from what I saw tonight.”
She whipped around on him then, needing to release the tension that threatened to shatter her. “You have no right to accuse me. You don’t know what I’ve endured.”
“I know drug dealers. I know what whores endure.” He pushed away from the tree at last, looking down at her with hate in his dark eyes. A contempt even Santiago didn’t show.
“Shepard, that’s enough.” Vasquez’s voice was calm but firm, and the soldier stepped back.
Shepard. That was the name of the man who’d touched her so roughly. He straightened at the order but didn’t look away. So she didn’t either.
“If you won’t tell us where Saldana has gone, we use you as bait,” Vasquez said, drawing her attention.
That forced a laugh from her. “You overestimate my value. If I was so valuable, do you think he would have left me here?”
Vasquez moved closer. “I don’t believe I do. I know Saldana—I know he doesn’t tolerate having something he owns being taken from him.”
So, in four years, she had made no gains. She was nothing more than a pawn. Her safety, her happiness was important to no one, and the only person who loved her was thousands of miles away.
She had to get to him.
These men, the three agents and four soldiers, planned on using her. She would use them in return. She just couldn’t let them know.


Surrounded by DEA agents in a Humvee, heading back home, and still Isabella didn’t feel safe. Would she ever feel safe again? She would spend the rest of her life waiting for Santiago to catch up to her. What Vasquez had said about him was right. He didn’t like things taken from him, and she was his property. If she didn’t get back to the States before he found out she was missing, he knew just how to hurt her most. She hadn’t thought that part through.
Maybe this wasn’t the best plan, but it was the only one she had.
At least the silent soldier, Shepard, was in the other vehicle. She was operating on the last reserves of the courage that had brought her out of the compound, and didn’t need his constant judgment.
The ground shook and the men in the front seat swore. There was a rattling, and the man beside her grabbed the back of her head and shoved her down behind the seat onto his lap. She tensed instinctively. This had been a risk, but here? Now?
“Don’t fight me.”
What did he mean? Did he think she would do what he wanted here?
“They’re shooting at—” He grunted, but as soon as she heard the word shooting, she was down. The rattling sound was louder, almost constant, sometimes in harmony. God, how many were shooting at them?
The vehicle lurched forward, the front end dropping at an angle, flinging Isabella against the back of the front seat and pushing the other man on top of her.
The shouting in the front seat had stopped, and the man on her made no effort to get off of her, his dead weight pushing her to the floor, bending her waist at a painful angle, something wet soaking into the back of her shirt.
Dead weight. Wet and warm, a coppery scent of…
Oh, God.
She gagged, then forced the thought away and gathered her strength to push out from underneath him. He must weigh over two hundred pounds. She couldn’t get enough leverage with her legs to lift him off her, so she had to squirm toward the door sliding out from underneath him.
She reached for the door and the metal handle was hot. She snatched her hand back. God, the car was on fire. She was going to die here, burn alive. Would she never get home, never see—?
“Come on.”
She turned to the other door, saw a hand reaching in and followed the arm to the dark eyes of Shepard.
“Come on,” he said, sharper this time.
“I can’t. He’s—” The weight of the man still pinned her to the seat. But the other door was beneath her. “Can you open this door?”
“No.”
The heat was unbearable through her pants, and Shepard withdrew his arm, probably figuring she wasn’t worth saving. She didn’t want to burn to death. She shoved harder against the dead man on her back, and suddenly the weight was gone, she was free, and Shepard was stretching toward her again.
She reached for him, and the truck lurched forward, putting another foot between her hand and his. It felt like she was standing on the door she’d been trying to escape from. Another lurch, another few inches. She screamed his name and saw him throw himself forward, his fingertips brushing hers.
“You have…to climb…on him,” he grunted, every word an effort.
Oh God. Climb on a dead man to lever herself out. Could she do it?
“Now. The truck’s about to go.”
Go where? She wanted to ask, but the strained expression on his face told her now wasn’t the time for questions. She put one booted foot on the man lying against the door, then the other, sinking into the soft tissue. Heaven forgive her.
He grasped her wrists firmly, and when she looked up into his eyes, she saw the first hint of approval.
But when he started to lift her—she could see the strain in his face, his arms—she remembered. She couldn’t leave her pack behind, not after what she’d risked to get out. She pulled one hand free and twisted to look for it, found it wedged between the dead man and the floorboard.
She pulled her other arm free and bent to tug it loose.
Above her, Shepard swore a string. “What are you doing? Do you want to die? The truck is going over.”
She tugged it by the straps and the truck lurched, along with her heart. Another tug and it was free. She looped it over her arm and turned back to see Shepard still waiting, reaching, and she lifted her arms to him.
He pulled both wrists, making her arms ache as the slender bones held the weight of her body. He slid one hand down to her elbow, then the other to her shoulder as her feet scrabbled for purchase first on the seat, finding a place on the back of the front seat, pushing her way toward him. The truck shifted. Over the sound of her pounding heart, she heard the groan of metal, the rattle of more gunfire, which had grown louder now, closer.
Finally Shepard had her, his arms hooked under both shoulders, her face pressed to his sweaty, stubbled throat as he lifted, as the truck fell away in a screech of metal and she tumbled onto Shepard’s chest.
She couldn’t even catch her breath because he was yanking her to her feet and shoving her—his hand on her ass and back, keeping her bent over as she moved—shoving her toward the sound of the gunfire, the intermittent muzzle flashes. She hesitated, turned to protest, and he tackled her, sending her face first down a muddy incline with a mouthful of vegetation. He skidded beside her on his back, gun cradled to his chest. When she turned to give him a dirty look, she saw that the shooting was coming from the other soldiers, providing cover.
So Shepard could save her butt.
She opened her mouth to say thank you and spit out some leaves.
Shepard turned to her, his eyes hard with a layer of desperation sheening them. “Put your arms around me.”
“What?” She fought to focus, still shaking.
“We’ve got to go down there.” He pointed.
She turned. In the moonlight, she could see that a few feet away, the ground dropped off. A cliff.
Shepard was pulling her toward it. She dug her heels in and clutched her pack to her with both arms.
“Are you crazy?” she shouted over the continuing sound of gunfire, both from their enemies and from the other soldiers.
He glared, jaw set, lips tight. “If you don’t we are going to die. I don’t think you can make it down on your own. Put your arms around me.”
She couldn’t. She couldn’t even look down.
Shepard stuck his face in hers. “Would you rather go back with him?”
That riveted her. She slipped the knapsack against her chest and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. He pulled her against him, harder than she expected, knocking her breath out.
“Don’t let go,” he said, his muscles bunching so she could feel the tension running through his body as he stepped back, and the world dropped out from beneath her.

Breaking Daylight is available at all retailers.

Brioney Dawson balanced on the stool, one heel hooked on the bottom rung, and tuned her guitar. She strummed, adjusted, then, satisfied, look out over the customers of The Wharf, the restaurant where she performed every week. For a Friday night in October, the place was pretty empty, though it would probably fill up closer to sunset. The restaurant’s location on pylons extending over the bay made it an ideal spot to watch the sunset.
This time of year, the snowbirds hadn’t started drifting down to the Texas coast, ahead of the heavy work that went with winter up north. But by January many would descend, after enjoying a picture postcard Christmas before heading to warmer climates.
Right now Brioney would venture a guess that the dinner crowd was mostly Texans, having a last summer hurrah.
The open-air restaurant suited that, cooled by the ocean breeze through the rolled-up doors.
“Good evening, everybody. I’m Brioney Dawson, your entertainment tonight. If you have any requests, I have a book here.” She motioned to a cute little journal with butterflies that her daughter had bought her. It sat at the edge of the stage next to the tip jar. “I’ll do my best to play it. I’m going to start with one of my favorites.”
Her fingers moved on the frets without conscious thought as she closed her eyes and swung into an old Stevie Nicks song. She was so lucky JoAnna let her sing here. She only sang on Friday, and only for tips, but she loved it. Performing made her feel like there was life beyond being a maid at the one hotel on Avalon Island. As she sang, the noise softened, the clink of glasses and clank of silverware disappeared, and she slipped away from the small town and landed on a stage in Nashville or L.A. or Las Vegas. Instead of dozens of people in her audience, she had thousands. A ridiculous fantasy, she knew, but she enjoyed it anyway.
When she’d finished the song to what she always thought was surprised applause, she opened her eyes, back to reality, and met the amused blue eyes of Blue Ramsey. He leaned back on the barstool and clapped his big hands heartily before he stopped to take a deep swallow of his beer. This was a usual routine. She sang at The Wharf on Friday nights, he’d drink at The Wharf on Friday nights. JoAnna could count on them for consistency.
She thought it was kind of strange, though, that she and Blue had become friends, considering he’d dated her sister throughout high school and followed her to Austin, before they’d broken up and he’d moved back to Avalon Island. Still, he’d been coming around for a while, like he was looking out for her and her daughter.
Brioney sang a couple more songs, including a new Taylor Swift her daughter had urged her to learn, then two of her own compositions before she consulted the notebook. She had three requests, a folk song from the 1960s, a song from the radio, and an obscure title written in Blue’s distinctive hand.
This was a game they played. He would try to stump her with a song, and she would play it. Since he’d grown up with eccentric parents—thus the name Blue—he had an eclectic taste in music. Sometimes his songs were indie rock and sometimes they were bluegrass. So far, she’d been able to meet his challenges.
She attributed her broad knowledge to the fact that she spent most of her days cleaning hotel rooms, listening to all kinds of songs on her earbuds. This one was from the movie her daughter Joy had been watching over and over, so she knew it cold. She played the other two first, then met Blue’s gaze as she sang his song with a bit more sass than the original.
“I guess that can count,” he said when she took a break and joined him at the bar.
“Not even a challenge,” she retorted.
“Buy you a drink?” he asked, motioning to his own beer.
“I don’t drink when I’m playing.” Or ever, really. She didn’t want to go home to her daughter with alcohol on her breath. And she needed to set a good example for her younger brother, Brandon, who lived with her.
“Lemonade, then? Sweet tea?”
She took the seat next to him. “I wouldn’t say no to a soda.” She’d cut back on those, too, but every once in a while liked to indulge.
“How’s Joy?”
“She’s good.” She shifted on the barstool, happy to discuss her favorite subject. “Fourth grade math is kind of kicking her butt, but thankfully Brandon is good at it and can help her. They do a lot of writing in fourth grade, and that she likes.”
“Can’t believe she’s in fourth grade. Before you know it, she’ll be a teenager.”
That was not her favorite subject. “I have plenty of time for her to be a little girl.”
“You should bring her down to the docks. I’ll take y’all out for a ride on the boat.”
She couldn’t remember the last time she’d enjoyed the benefits of living on the coast. “I’ll have to check my schedule to see when I’m off, and she doesn’t have anything going on. When do you work?”
“I go out on weekends, mostly, but I’m down there most days, doing something or another.”
That was Blue, always doing something or another. During the summer, he ran a rental booth on the beach with his friend Logan, renting beach chairs and canopies to beach-goers. Occasionally, he gave surfing lessons, and sometimes he drove a tow truck, usually catering to tourists who got their little cars stuck in the sand. Now and again, he filled in as bartender. No focus, no responsibility. She didn’t understand it, the lack of drive, when she was working as a maid, going to college online and singing here. And she thought of herself as a late bloomer. When Blue had returned to Avalon Island after college, she’d figured he just wasn’t ready to grow up, but now, nearly seven years later, he hadn’t changed.
At all.
Brioney couldn’t understand that.
“Come down tomorrow. When was the last time you were out on the water?”
“Won’t you have a full boat on a Saturday?”
“Maybe, maybe not. You know what you’re doing, though, so you don’t need me to hold your hand. It’d be good for you to get out on the water.”
Why did he think that? He couldn’t know how stressed she was. He didn’t know the meaning of the word.
She saw another person drop her notebook back to the stage, and she nodded in that direction. “I need to get back up there.”
He smiled. “Yeah, you do. Come down tomorrow,” he urged again, and she wondered if she should.
* * *
Joy was asleep when Brioney got home, but Brandon was awake, playing a violent video game she didn’t allow him to play when Joy was awake. She greeted him with a kiss on the cheek, no longer noticing the ink-black hair, the black painted fingernails. Her brother had been a cute kid before he’d gone full-on gamer. But if this was what made him happy, if that kept him going, she wasn’t going to fight him.
“How was she?”
“Good, as usual.” He paused the game and sat back, but didn’t take his gaze from the screen. They held most of their conversations like this.
She set her guitar on the floor on the far side of the kitchen table. She’d eaten a little at the restaurant, but she wanted something sweet, and wondered if Joy and Brandon had found her secret stash of Milanos. “What are you doing tomorrow?”
He gestured with his controller at the big-screen television. “Same thing I’m doing now.”
“Blue invited us out on the boat.”
“Ah. No.”
“Seems a shame for us to live so close to the water and never take advantage of it, when so many people spend so much money to do the things we take for granted.”
“Yeah. I’m sticking with no.”
“I feel bad leaving you behind.”
“Nah, it’d be nice to have the house to myself.”
He’d definitely find her Milano stash then. “And what will you do if you have the house to yourself?” Even as the words left her mouth, she regretted them, especially when he paused the game and turned to give her a look over his shoulder.
“Okay, well, I’m going to bed so I can get out there early.” Giving up her desire for cookies at the risk of giving away the hiding place, she kissed the top of his head and walked toward her bedroom.
* * *
Brioney shifted her weight to balance the backpack over her shoulder as she followed Joy out on the dock. How did the kid have so much energy this early? She’d been up over an hour already and helped make their special Saturdays-off breakfast of pancakes and sausage.
She made a beeline for Blue’s boat Blue Skies, where he stepped out and caught her in his arms, swinging her up. She squealed with laughter, like a little kid, before he deposited her on deck and turned to smile at Brioney, white teeth flashing, blue eyes crinkling.
She came to a stumbling stop as her stomach dropped to her toes. Where had that reaction come from? She’d known Blue since she was a kid. Her sister was only a year older than her, so the three of them and Mercedes, her best friend, had done a lot together. Okay, maybe more than once she’d admired the look of him, like when he’d been shirtless on the beach or by the pool. But she loved her sister too much to do more than that. But today, the ratty flip-flops, ragged cargo shorts, and the faded-to-colorless T-shirt didn’t matter, only that smile and the way he was looking at her.
His smile dimmed, and he stepped forward. “You okay?”
How long had she been standing there, gawking like an idiot? “I’m fine. I’m good.”
He took the backpack and staggered, exaggerated, under the weight. “What do you have in there?”
“Water, sunscreen, a change of clothes, a jacket for each of us.” All the things a mother needed to think about.
“I have water and sunscreen, and extra jackets on the boat.”
“Well, I didn’t know that.”
“Because you haven’t been out in so long. Come aboard.”
“Do you have a lot of clients today?” she asked, ignoring his proffered hand because honestly, she just wasn’t sure what touching him would do to her brain right now. She pulled the backpack away from him.
“Two older couples. Should be here any minute. You ladies get settled in.” He hopped on the deck beside her and tugged on Joy’s braid, much like he’d done with Brioney’s hair back in the day. “Good to see you, kid. Give me a hand making ready, and tell me what you’ve been up to.”
She watched her daughter tag along after him, and stowed their bag under the seats that lined the boat. Blue was good with Joy. She’d forgotten about that, how he’d been around her whole life and seemed to feel invested, like an honorary uncle. And it was good for Joy to learn about boats and fishing and things Brioney didn’t have time to teach her. She dropped to her seat and leaned her head back, closing her eyes against the sun reflecting off the water. She knew she should put on her sunscreen, and she would in a minute, but for now, she wanted to just savor the warmth.
“Hello?” A gruff voice brought her out of her reverie, and she opened her eyes to see Blue’s clients standing on the dock. She stood quickly to welcome them, and Blue joined her to offer his own greeting.
The man with the gray beard stepped onto the deck before helping down a blonde woman. Then a tall, slender man with military bearing followed, and his wife, a brunette, was on her own.
Brioney watched as Blue settled them in, showed them where to store their belongings, where the cooler was so they could help themselves to refreshments. He was good at this, good with people, making everyone comfortable before he beckoned Joy to come to the bridge with him. He motioned for Brioney to cast them off from the dock, then they were on their way out of the channel, heading toward the bay. She leaned her head back again, letting the breeze wash over her, and watched a flock of pelicans soar overhead. They were her favorite, so primitive-looking. One broke away and dove toward the wake of the boat, startling an exclamation from one woman as the pelican swooped beneath the surface, then emerged victorious, a large fish flapping in its beak.
“I wish I was that lucky,” one of the men, who’d introduced himself as John, said.
“If you had that laser surgery like I told you to, you might be,” his wife Marie countered.
He scowled at her.
“How long have you been married?” Brioney asked, and wondered what compelled her curiosity. Lord knew she saw enough people at the hotel and didn’t want to know their stories, beyond what they left behind in their rooms.
“Twenty-eight years,” Marie said. “Long enough that I hear that every time we come on vacation.”
“Are you from Texas?” Brioney asked.
“North Dakota,” John responded. “We live there half a year, and here half a year. Tired of shoveling all that damn snow.”
“I can see that.” But she couldn’t help a wistful sigh. “I’ve never even seen snow.”
“Have you lived here all your life?”
“Yes, and I couldn’t ask for a better place to grow up, but we don’t have much in the way of seasons, unless you count hurricane season.”
“Now that would be terrifying,” the other woman, Sharon, said. “Risking losing everything by living here? I couldn’t do that.”
“We’ve been lucky, nothing major in my lifetime. We’ve evacuated a couple of times, when I was a kid, but at the last minute the hurricanes took a turn toward the north and we were spared.”
“That is fortunate.” Sharon looked toward the bridge. “Your husband is good with your daughter.”
The words took a minute to penetrate, then a flush heated her face. “Oh, Blue? No, he’s not my husband. He’s just a friend. He just wanted to do something nice for us today.”
“Oh, I wondered. You have such a good rapport, I was sure you were married.”
“We’ve just known each other forever.”
“What is it you do?”
“I’m a maid at the Avalon Island Hotel.” She had worked there since she was in high school and was used to the pitying looks she got. Sometimes she was compelled to let people know she was studying for a business degree, but not today. Let them judge.
“I guess you meet a lot of people when you work in the tourism industry,” Marie said. “Even people from other countries?”
Brioney took the opportunity to tell them about the British couple she’d met this past summer, who claimed to have minor roles in Downton Abbey, only to be interrupted when Joy bounded down the stairs and skidded to a stop in front of her.
“Blue told me to remind you to put our sunscreen on.”
“Right. Get the bag.”
As she applied lotion to her daughter, Blue guided the boat out on the open water.
“Blue said we might see dolphins today. Are we going to fish?”
“Maybe. It’s up to Blue.”
“You like to fish?” the other man, William, asked, surprised.
“Yes, my uncle taught me, but I don’t like to clean them.”
“If you catch them, you have to clean them. That’s the rule.”
“I know. My uncle taught me that, too, but I still don’t like to do it.” She wrinkled her nose. “Sometimes I just throw them back so I don’t have to clean them, but sometimes I like to eat them. My mom cooks them really good. Are you going fishing?”
“We certainly hope to. The advertisement said your friend knows the best spots.”
“He should. He’s been doing this since he was Joy’s age,” Brioney said with a smile.
When Blue brought the boat around and anchored it, Brioney sat back and watched him settle his clients, then Joy, with fishing poles.
“Are you sure you’re just friends?” Marie leaned over to ask. “You haven’t stopped looking at him since he came down from the pilothouse.”
Brioney willed herself not to blush, the new feelings rushing forward again. “You have to admit, he’s nice to look at.” But maybe the older women didn’t think so, not with his collar-length hair blowing in the breeze, the sun-bleached hair of his beard glistening on his jaw, the loose T-shirt plastered against his body by the wind.
“Oh, he is definitely that,” Sharon said.
Blue turned his head to flash a smile at them. “Any of you ladies game?”
Brioney shook her head. “I’m just going to sit here and do nothing for a change.” She’d thought about bringing one of her textbooks, and probably should be studying for midterms, but she needed a brain break, a day off. She wished she’d brought a novel, or even a magazine.
“Okay, well, if any of you need me, I’ll be in the water. I need to check out one of the props.” He stripped off his shirt even as he crossed to the opposite side of the boat, and dove in before anyone could say anything.
“Oh, my!” Marie said, leaning over to watch where he’d disappeared. “Is that safe?”
“Blue is part fish,” Brioney assured her, though the glimpse of muscles she’d just seen had her throat knotting.
Just then, he bobbed back to the surface, whipping his hair out of his face. “The water’s just fine, ladies!”
“How deep is it there?” Sharon wanted to know.
“Forty feet?” Brioney surmised.
“Are there sharks?”
“Probably a few. I’ve seen hammerheads and tigers off of the pier. But Blue does this all the time.” Which was why he looked like that. “He’s a surfer, so he’s in the water more than he’s out of it.”
The three women watched him dive and surface repeatedly, until William made a sound like he’d caught something. Blue heard, too, and pulled himself back onto the boat, the muscles in his lean arms rippling, the wet hair of his chest glinting in the sun. He crossed the boat to support the man reeling in his fish, but William was clearly experienced and didn’t need Blue’s help. At Blue’s quiet suggestion, Joy put her own rod in the holder and moved aside, out of the way. She came to stand by Brioney as the older man started to struggle with his catch.
“What do you think he got?” Brioney asked aloud, but no one answered as Blue stepped forward then, his mouth grim as he lent a hand.
And then the animal broke the surface, thrashing against the line.
“Shark!” Blue barked, then looked over his shoulder at the women as he pulled a knife from his pocket and switched it open. “You see it?”
Brioney saw it, all gray anger and triangular teeth, an animal that had been in the very water Blue had been in. She nodded and tightened her hands on Joy’s shoulders when she would move closer. Blue dropped his gaze to Joy, motioned her closer.
“Are you crazy?” Brioney demanded.
“I’m going to cut it loose, but I want to make sure she gets a good look. I won’t let anything happen to her.”
Because she knew that to be true, she released her grip on her daughter, who immediately slipped away to Blue, her focus on the pissed animal. Blue looked from her to the fisherman, who nodded, and with a quick motion, cut the line. The shark dropped back into the water, which calmed almost instantly, except for the fin moving back and forth, agitated, before disappearing.
Blue and William dropped into their chairs at almost the same moment, while Joy leaned over the side of the boat, scanning the water for the fish. Brioney resisted the urge to pull her daughter against her, to take her below, away from danger.
“I know what I want to do now,” Joy declared, turning to face Blue when she didn’t see the creature any longer.
“What’s that?” Blue asked.
“I want to study fish.”
“That’s a lot of science,” Marie said. “Do you like science?”
“She likes everything,” Brioney said.
“I guess this is the place to figure out if you want to do that,” John said. “Do you scuba dive?” he asked Blue.
“Nah, I don’t. Her uncle does, though. Maybe when he comes home, he can teach you,” he said to Joy.
“So she can get in the water with sharks?” Brioney demanded, still a little breathless. “Um, no.”
“She won’t start out in the water with sharks,” Blue pointed out.
But also scuba diving was expensive. Brioney couldn’t swing lessons on her budget. Maybe by the time Fitz got home from the army, she would have new interests. She felt bad even thinking that, because part of the reason she sang at The Wharf on Friday nights was to show Joy she should follow her dreams. She wanted her daughter to follow whatever path excited her.
Except getting in the water with sharks.
Once the excitement settled down, Blue started up the engines, and they moved away from the shark’s territory before dropping their lines into the water again.
“You were in the water with that animal,” Brioney said quietly to Blue, joining him in the pilothouse.
He reached past her to adjust a lever, not meeting her gaze. “He wasn’t all that big. I wasn’t in danger.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I kind of do.” He turned to her and stroked a strand of her hair back from her face. “You worry about me?”
She stepped back, breaking contact, and dropped her gaze. “You’ve been good to us. I’d be sad if something happened to you.”
“I’m your friend, Brioney.”
The rumble of his voice, kept low, sent shivers down her spine. She couldn’t meet his gaze, didn’t have enough confidence in her emotions to face him.
“I don’t know why, after the way Jessamy treated you.”
His mouth straightened into a grim line. “I won’t say it didn’t hurt, but it was a long time ago. She wouldn’t have been happy here, and I wouldn’t have been happy there, so it is probably for the best.”
He guided the boat through the waters, the rumble of the engine and the flow of the water mesmerizing. So she was caught off-guard when he spoke.
“I’m meeting my parents for dinner tonight, but do you want to go get something to eat tomorrow night? You and me and Joy?”
“I can’t,” she said automatically.
“Why not?”
She couldn’t think of a reason. “Brandon. I have to make sure he eats.”
“He can come, too.”
“I can’t.”
“You came today.”
“I…Blue, I don’t date.”
He rested a hip on the console and folded his arms over his chest. “I didn’t ask you on a date. I asked you and your daughter to have dinner with me. If I wanted a date, I wouldn’t have invited your daughter and your brother.”
“Oh.” Embarrassed by the conclusion she’d jumped to, she took another step back and lost her balance over the step. With lightning reflexes, he caught her arm and pulled her against him.
Her palms collided with his chest, the bare skin still cool from the water, so firm beneath her hands, the blond hair crisp beneath her skin. She knew she should pull away, but she couldn’t make herself.
“Mom!”
Okay, that did the trick. She snapped her gaze away from the sun-browned skin, the drips from the ends of his hair that made paths along his chest, avoided his gaze and turned toward her daughter.
* * *
“My God, Mercy, I wanted to lick him, head to toe. What is wrong with me?” Brioney asked as the two of them cleaned out one of the ocean view rooms on Sunday afternoon. The couple who had stayed here had been reasonably neat, but Lord, there was even sand in the bed.
Mercedes shook her head. The three of them, Mercedes, Jessamy and Brioney, had been best friends since kindergarten. They’d been through the ups and downs of men and jobs and ambitions. Mercedes had been there for the drama of Jessamy and Blue’s break-up, for Brioney’s own stormy relationship with Cameron and her teen pregnancy. She trusted Mercedes as she trusted her own sister, but she couldn’t talk to Jessamy about this. No. Way.
“Are you seriously thinking about going out with him?” Mercedes asked.
Brioney blew out a breath. “Jessamy would be pissed, wouldn’t she?”
Mercedes frowned as she wiped down the plate-glass window. “I don’t know. They were together for a long time. And they were close. I mean, I remember them talking about happily-ever-after, don’t you? And her talking about the sex?” Mercedes rolled her eyes. “I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to get the sex she talked about having with Blue.”
Brioney did remember. She blushed at the memory of some of the things Jessamy had told her. Could she ever be with him, knowing he’d done those things with her sister?
“I shouldn’t have said anything. It’s just a fantasy. I’ll never act on it. He’s been too good of a friend for me to chase him off when it’s over. I’d hate for Joy to get hurt because she couldn’t see him anymore.”
“So you’d go into it thinking you’d end it? You don’t think he’s a forever kind of guy?”
“No. Lord. He has a million different jobs, each one easier than the last. He has no ambition. I need more than that for me and for Joy.” She blew out a long breath after smoothing the duvet and straightening, stretching her back with her fists pressed into the aching muscles. “Cameron will be in town this weekend. Maybe he’ll help me work off some tension.”
“I cannot believe you sleep with your baby daddy, still.”
“Not all the time, and not, you know, with any expectations. We suck as a couple, but we’re really good in bed.”
“You’re an idiot. You say you’re thinking about your future, and Joy’s, but you can’t do that if you’re holding onto your past.”
“I’m pretty sure Blue isn’t my future. I mean, technically, he’s my past, too, since I’ve known him forever.”
“He’s a good guy, though. He would never hurt you.”
Mercedes was probably right about that. Blue didn’t have a vicious bone in his body. “So why don’t you go out with him?” Brioney asked her friend, even though just thinking the question gave her a twinge.
“Because I like a little bit of pain,” Mercedes said with a wink. “Otherwise, it’s no challenge.”
Was Brioney like that, too? Is that why she kept Cameron in her life? When Cameron arrived, she could see then if her attraction to Blue was just sexual frustration, or if these feelings were something more.
* * *
Wearing a tank and cut-offs, Brioney opened the door to Cameron, feeling a little slutty. She didn’t usually dress like this, but she wanted a reaction, to gauge if this weekend would be one where they slept together, or not.
“Hey, Brioney, looking good,” he said in an off-handed way, not really looking at her, but past her to Joy, who came running out of her room when she heard his voice.
“I’m going to be a marine biologist,” Joy announced first thing as he swept her into his arms.
In a couple more visits, he wasn’t going to be able to do that. Brioney had to admit, he wasn’t a bad dad, though he wasn’t around much. He lived in Houston, which was about four hours away. And he’d grown up really nice. She had to remind herself why they weren’t together—he’d hidden behind his parents when they said the baby wasn’t his, that she was just grasping onto him to ruin his future. He’d been a summer boy, had already been accepted to Tulane when she’d peed on that stick. But she’d never been with anyone else—still had never been with anyone else. His parents had insisted Cameron continue pursuing his education, and her parents, well, they were gone. Her older brother Fitz, who was raising her, Jessamy and Brandon, essentially told Cameron’s parents to fuck off, that he would make sure Brioney and her baby got everything they needed, and they and their deadbeat son could take a hike.
After Joy was born, Cameron had come crawling back, wanting to be part of her life. Brioney allowed it, for Joy’s sake, but she’d never forgiven him for letting his parents accuse her of being a liar.
“A marine biologist? Where did that come from?” He looked past her to Brioney.
“We went out on Blue’s boat last weekend and one of the fishermen caught a shark. It’s all she’s been able to think about.” Brioney closed the door behind him.
“Blue’s still around?” He set Joy down with an exaggerated groan. “Man, he used to be able to get the best—”
Brioney cut him off with a look. He nodded his understanding and turned to his daughter. “What do you want to do this weekend?”
“What are my choices?” she countered, as she always did.
“You are your mother’s daughter. I heard the water park in Port Isabel is open, and it’s fun. Have you been?”
Of course she hadn’t been. It cost an arm and a leg, and Brioney didn’t have the money, or the time, to spare.
“No, we haven’t been,” Joy said, her voice relatively calm, though her eyes were bright.
“Would you like to go?” he asked.
“I would. Can Mom come, too?”
“No, sweetie,” she said before unease could do more than flash across Cameron’s face. “This weekend is for you and your dad.”
As she said it, a strange sense of peace washed over her. Yes, she’d have time free to study. Not that Joy bugged her when she knew she was studying, but Brioney felt guilty not spending their limited free time together.
Joy’s face fell. “You’d have fun.”
“I need to study. You have fun for both of us.”
“You need anything?” Cameron asked Joy, standing uneasily in the entryway.
“I have my bag,” she said, and hurried to her room to get it.
“You can come, if you want,” he offered awkwardly.
She shook her head. “I have things to do around here. Enjoy your day.” Her daughter reappeared, and she kissed her, hugged her hard, and sent her off with her daddy.
Since Brandon was still asleep, the house was quiet. She could get a lot done.
But she could only sit at the books for an hour, when her toes flexed into the carpet one too many times. She looked out the window at the sunny day. There wouldn’t be many beautiful days once November arrived. She’d take her book to the beach, sit in the sun and study. Sure, it wouldn’t be quiet, and she’d be easily distracted, but the urge was fairly overpowering. Ridiculous, when she should be appreciating the quiet house.
But she needed it. She wrote a note to Brandon, pulled on a different T-shirt—this tank was one thing for greeting her ex, but another to wear out in public, packed a couple of bottled waters and a towel into her book bag, along with her textbook and her composition book, tucked her keys and phone in the front pocket of her shorts, and headed out the front door.
She walked the few short blocks to the beach, feeling the heat of the sun relax her shoulder muscles. She lifted her arms over her head, hands clasped, to stretch, and tightened her toes in her flip-flops. The beach wasn’t as crowded as usual, one of the reasons this was her favorite time of year. Not as many people, not as loud. She found a spot where her view of the water wasn’t obscured, spread her towel with two snaps, and stretched out on it. She knew that a few hundred yards down the beach, either Blue or Logan would be renting chairs and canopies to tourists, but she didn’t come here to see Blue. She came here to feel the sand, to let the sound of the waves relax her, let the rhythm somehow wash the words she read into her brain. The glare of the sun on the page was nearly blinding, and she dug into her bag for her sunglasses.
Finally she settled into the chapter and made notes as the warm breeze flowed over her. She didn’t know how long she’d been there when a shadow cast over the page.
Blue dropped to the sand beside her. “Surprised to see you here today.”
“What? Why?”
“Thought you’d be working.”
“No, I told Leeayn I’d work today, since Cameron has Joy, but she didn’t schedule me. Just as well, since I’m behind on my reading.” She held up her book.
He angled his head to read the title. “Macroeconomics Business and Policy. A little light reading?”
“Midterms.”
“Yeah? How’s it going?”
She stuck her composition book inside the textbook and closed it. “I wish I’d chosen another major.”
“Like what? Music?”
She snorted. “What would I be able to do with that?”
“Sing. You have a beautiful voice.”
“Thanks, but musicians are a dime a dozen. I just want something so I can give Joy a good life. I know I shouldn’t have waited so long, but…”
He put his hand over hers. “You’re doing a good thing. Once you have your degree, what are you going to do?”
“I thought maybe I’d be a manager or something. As long as I could stay on the island.”
That didn’t leave a lot of options, she knew, and if she truly wanted the best for Joy, she’d leave the island, go to another city.
“You’re getting red.” He touched the tip of her nose. “Did you bring your sunscreen?”
She’d grown up on the island, where sunscreen was as much a part of life as flip-flops. But she’d forgotten it today in her desperation to get to the water’s edge. 
“Gah. No.” And she usually kept it in her bag for Joy, but she’d run out when they’d been on the boat and hadn’t replaced it.
“Come on, I have some at the booth.”
“I probably should just head home.” She opened her bag to tuck her book and notebook inside. 
“Ah, come on. We’re in for some rain this coming week. You need to get outside while you can.” He hopped to his feet and stretched a hand to help her up. 
She hesitated, thinking it would be just as easy to push herself to her feet, but instead, she put her hand in his lean one, the palm hard and callused, strong and firm as he wrapped his fingers around her and tugged.
“Did you like college? Getting to go away, I mean?” she asked as they walked, once he released her hand.
“Not really. College was a challenge for me.”
“Was it? I wouldn’t have thought so.”
“Really? Why not?”
“I just remember high school being really easy for you.”
“Sure, it was, but that was part of the problem. I didn’t have any study skills, and college was exponentially more challenging than high school. Plus, you know, even though my parents weren’t particularly strict, having that freedom was heady.” He turned to look at her. “I do wish you’d gotten to experience that, if for no other reason than to say you did.”
She’d made her decision when she decided to keep her baby. And now it was too late, she was too old, and really, almost ready to graduate. “Did it get easier?”
“I got used to it, but I was never really disciplined. It’s pretty amazing, actually, that I got into UT because my grades weren’t great. I would have tanked grad school.”
“Is that why you came home?”
“Austin was great, you know? Great. But it wasn’t the place for me.” He motioned for her to precede him up the steps to the boardwalk. “This is home. Always has been, always will be.”
* * *
Blue told himself he was only checking on Brioney and Joy because Cameron was in town. He didn’t trust the guy. He remembered too well how he’d hurt Brioney when he left.
He hadn’t been to Brioney’s house since he and Jess had broken up almost seven years ago, but his bike flowed along the roads as if it had been yesterday.
Blue bounced the book on the tips of his fingers, his excuse for coming to the house tonight. He rang the doorbell. A few minutes passed before Brioney answered, pushing her hair over her shoulder, bare in the skimpy top she wore. And were her lips swollen?
“Blue, hi. I didn’t know you were stopping by.”
Her voice was husky, too, sexy as hell. “Yeah, ah, I saw this book on sharks and thought of Joy.” He held it up, like it was evidence, glancing past her at Cameron, who’d stepped out of the living room, adjusting his pants. Blue almost didn’t recognize the anger that rose in him, that she was fooling around with the guy who had treated her so badly. “Where is she?” He turned what he hoped was a bland expression to Brioney. Of course she would be here, but Brioney wouldn’t be making out with her ex, with her daughter nearby.
“She’s in the living room. We were watching a movie.” Her tone was almost accusing.
Had that been what they were doing? Watching a movie like a normal family, when Cameron had walked away? His temper flared. He buried it and forced a smile.
“Cameron. How’s it going?” Uninvited, he stepped into the house and closed the door behind him, like he belonged here.
“Great.” Cameron recognized the challenge and lifted his chin. “Pool business has never been better. I have four crews working at all times. Good money.” He moved closer to Brioney and folded his arms over his chest. “Brioney and Joy were telling me about your boat. Just the one?”
“Well, there’s just me.” Blue forced a casual tone. “But I love doing it.”
“And you still do the rentals on the beach, too?”
Blue rarely felt defensive about his life choices, but he was already off-balance finding Cameron here. “With Logan, yes. I like meeting the tourists.”
“Plus, you know, not a whole lot of pressure.”
Blue remembered, clearly now, how he’d hated Cameron even before Brioney turned up pregnant and he dumped her. He could see why Brioney was attracted to him, tall, dark and handsome, broad shouldered. But he was a rich, entitled asshole.
“I like my life,” he said, just as Joy came out of the living room, rubbing her eyes.
So she’d been asleep. Maybe Brioney had been making out with her ex. Again, he battled back the anger.
“Hey, Blue, what are you doing here?” Joy asked, her voice slurred by sleep.
“I came to bring you this book.” He held it out to her. “I saw it at the store and thought of you.”
His words penetrated her lethargy, and she bounced forward to take the book from him. Immediately, she let it fall open and flipped through the pictures. “This is great! Thanks, Blue!” She hugged him, quick and hard, and moved away, looking through her book.
And then he was left, awkward, by the door, as Cameron and Brioney watched him. He no longer had an excuse to be here, so he stepped back, his hand on the doorknob. He looked at Brioney, wishing he could ask her what the hell she was thinking. But it wasn’t his business.
“I’ll see you around,” he said instead, and let himself out.
* * *
Brioney flopped onto her bed—alone—feeling a little dirty. She’d thought all week about taking the edge off her libido with Cameron, but when the time came to follow through, she couldn’t go through with it and sent him home. Something about them pretending to be a happy little family left a bad taste in her mouth.
Blue stopping by hadn’t helped. The posturing between the two men had been subtle, but kind of exciting. God, what was wrong with her?
Would she have settled for Cameron if Blue hadn’t stopped by? The way Blue had looked at her….
She rolled her shoulders, as if that could relieve the tension running through her. At least she knew it wasn’t just sexual frustration. She was attracted to Blue.
What would Jessamy say? Could she really get involved with her sister’s ex?
She pushed the thought aside. She didn’t need that drama. She had her daughter, she had school, she had work, she had singing. She would get out her guitar right now to work this off, if she didn’t think the noise would wake Joy.
At least Cameron was gone, and she wouldn’t see him for another month. She had known he was an asshole, but thought maybe he might have outgrown it until she saw him with Blue tonight. She wished she’d risen to Blue’s defense, but honestly, she’d never thought Blue was the type to need defending. He was living the life he wanted, wasn’t he? She’d always just assumed. Maybe it was time to ask.
What was she doing? Was she really thinking about getting involved with Blue? Her sister’s ex? A man with whom she had nothing in common? She thought he was interested—why else was he coming around the bar, inviting her to go on the boat, bringing Joy a book?
Joy. She’d been trying to show her daughter how to follow her dreams. How could she do that and be involved with a man who had none? At least Cameron was ambitious and successful, and wasn’t that what she wanted for her little girl?
But did she really want to wait to find love?
Her head was starting to hurt, and she would never get to sleep, so she got up and headed to the living room for the television. She didn’t let herself watch TV much while she was in school because she could better use the time to study. But tonight, she wouldn’t be able to study, so she may as well clear some shows off the DVR.
She was halfway through an episode of her favorite romantic series when footsteps padded into the living room and Joy plopped on the couch beside her. Without a word, Brioney lifted a corner of her afghan. Joy curled up against her, and even though it was late on a school night, she let her daughter watch a few minutes until she fell asleep again, nestled against her side.

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Bailey Tanner unlocked the door to the log cabin and immediately drew back at the musty smell of the place. Musty and...nasty. She had never smelled something dead up close but she was pretty sure something had died in here. 
December in the Northwoods of Minnesota meant opening the windows wasn’t an option. 
But she was definitely not going to be able to sleep here as she had planned. She might have to go get a room at The Landing a couple of nights. She was pretty sure Lily had a room available this time of year. 
When was the last time anyone had been up to the cabin? Not this past summer for sure. Her brothers lived out of state, and her dad wouldn’t have even been able to make it up the front steps to the door before his knee replacement last month. So at least a year. 
She pulled her sweater up over her nose and said a little prayer that she wouldn’t find whatever had died in here. 
No, better to find it and get rid of it, rather than it be stuck in a wall somewhere. 
She entered the living room with its secondhand plaid furniture in front of the outdated flatscreen television sitting on a cedar chest where they stored blankets. The wall-to-wall carpet the salesman had assured her mother was durable looked sadly out of style. Bailey turned toward the sliding door that led to the deck. Her favorite thing about summers here was reading on the deck at all hours. Her love for books had driven her to become a professor of children’s literature in St. Paul. 
She checked behind the drapes before she pulled the cord— the last thing she wanted was a spider bite—and when she pulled the drapes open, yep, there was a pile of fur right against the window. Gray, maybe a baby raccoon or a squirrel. She didn’t look too closely, but reached around and opened the door before she headed to the kitchen for a broom. Gagging, she pushed the carcass over the threshold—with some effort—and toward the edge of the deck and over the side. 
She took a moment to gather herself before she took a deep breath of cold fresh air and looked out through the bare trees to the icy lake beyond. 
She hadn’t been up here in the winter in years, had forgotten the stark beauty of the place, even with the leaves blanketing everything, where snow should be doing that job this time of year. None of the state had gotten much snow yet this year, and the drive up had been kind of sad and gray. 
Walking into the neglected cabin had not dispelled the sad grayness that was settling over her. 
But the breeze made standing outside unbearable so she turned back inside, which was only marginally warmer. At least removing the source of the smell had been accomplished, and she left the door open a little longer to see if that helped dissipate the odor. She walked back into the kitchen and again took a deep fortifying breath before opening the refrigerator. It didn’t smell great, but at least it was working, and a good scrub should take care of the lingering odor. She braced herself before opening each cabinet, but apparently the exterminators had held up their end of the contract, because nothing scuttled in the empty spaces. 
She would have thought her mother would at least have left a few canned goods behind, but no, Bailey was going to have to go into town, go by the grocery store, maybe pick up a hot meal from Quinn’s. 
Eat it there, because eating anything here was not going to be appetizing. 
At least the kitchen was minimally disgusting. 
Then she headed upstairs. Her parents’ bedroom was in the front, with the view of the lake out of the wide triangular windows, and hers and her brothers’ were in the back, toward the woods. Once, the area had been a big bunk room, designed with the idea that the extended family could come stay and have space, but that rarely happened. Her parents erected a wall in the space after Bailey had come sobbing into their room one night too many after her brothers had told her scary stories. So now the space contained one regular sized room, and one tiny room. 
She opened the door to check each, and none had any bedding. 
Of course. She’d forgotten that her mother took all the bedding home at the end of each season to launder it. Why hadn’t she thought of that, before she’d driven all the way up here? Amazon had to deliver here, too, didn’t they? She wondered if she’d even have internet service. She needed to ask her mom if they’d had service in the cabin. The fact that she didn’t know bothered her. She had been invited up here every summer since she got married, but David had never wanted to come. They’d both worked summer school for extra money that they never spent because he never wanted to do anything. So she had closed in on herself more and more until...she didn’t know who she was anymore. 
She was going to have to figure it out, now that David was out of the picture. She closed the doors to the bedrooms again, and headed down the stairs to close the sliding door. She was going to have to see what could be done about the dead animal smell before she turned on the heat and stunk up the whole place. She wondered who she could ask. 
Just as she turned away from closing the drapes, the front door swung open, and a man strode through, gun drawn. 
She jerked her hands up reflexively as he shouted, “Sheriff’s department, freeze!” 
*****
Zach Zephardt stared down at the woman in the puffy coat and messy hair as she gaped with wide eyes, her hands up before he’d even finished the command. 
To be fair, this was his first B&E call, so he hadn’t really noticed she was complying before he barked at her. 
He holstered his weapon, then held out his hands to the woman, palm out. 
The light in the cabin was bad, and damn, the cabin was cold, and smelled like something had died. Was she squatting? He hadn’t seen a car in the driveway. How had she gotten all the way out here? Not many people used this road this time of year— most of the cabins in the area were summer places. 
“I got a call,” he said. “A prowler in this cabin.” 
“I can’t be a prowler in my own family’s cabin,” she snapped, and stepped forward. 
He squinted and...no. It couldn’t be. “Bailey?” Bailey had been a summer girl, had spent every summer with her family here in Bluestone. He’d watched her grow from a chubby self-conscious girl who spent most of the summer reading on the deck to a lighthearted teen who’d made the place her own, and had drawn everyone to her, even himself, though she was about five years older than him. 
But that young bright girl was nowhere in sight now. The woman before him was hunched inside her coat, and, okay, he’d drawn a gun on her so maybe that was part of it, but she just seemed to be a shadow of the girl he’d known. 
She stepped forward, her expression tired, sad, and he instinctively moved forward, hand out in apology. “I didn’t know you’d come back. Sorry. Mrs. Filbert reported a prowler and I had to come check it out.” 
He didn’t see any recognition on her part, though. He scrubbed a hand over his chin. He didn’t think he had changed that much. Maybe she hadn’t expected him to stay in town. Maybe she hadn’t thought he would become a cop. 
“It’s me, Zach. I was Brian’s friend, remember?” 
She stepped back again just as fast, drawing in a sharp breath that must have been a mistake in this stinky house, because she started coughing, pressing a hand to her chest and bending over. 
He caught her arm and guided her toward the door and fresh air. “Let’s get out of here for now. You don’t have any power, and it’s going to be dark soon.” 
“I forgot how early it gets dark up here,” she said, letting him lead her, then pulling her arm free when they reached the porch. “I thought my parents left the power on.” 
That would make sense because they wouldn’t want the place to freeze up in the winter, but when he flicked the light switch by the door, nothing happened, so... 
“We can get Chase Granzer out here tomorrow and give it a look. You weren’t planning to stay here, were you?” He spotted a suitcase just inside the door. 
“I had been, before I saw what bad shape it was in. I’m going to try to get a place at The Landing, I guess. I saw it was still open.” 
He drew in a breath through his teeth, then reached back in to grab her suitcase and roll it out. “That might be difficult. They’re doing the fish house parade this weekend, and she might be pretty well booked.” 
Bailey looked up at him, brows drawn together. “I thought that was always Thanksgiving week.” 
“Yeah, usually, but the lake didn’t freeze over until after that, and the fishermen couldn’t get their houses out on the lake, so we postponed it.” 
“That’s crazy.” 
He shrugged. “We had temperatures in the nineties until October.” 
Now that they were out of the shadows, he got a good look at her and yeah, he wouldn’t have recognized her if he’d passed her in town. She was pale and solemn, her auburn hair piled haphaz‐ ardly on top of her head, but her attitude more than anything made him certain he wouldn’t have known her. She was— hunched in on herself. Okay, yes, when she’d been in middle school, she’d been like that, but she’d blossomed in high school. He saw nothing of the girl she’d been in the woman before him. 
“Let’s see about getting you a place to stay,” he said. 
She looked from him to his patrol car, parked in the driveway. “Don’t you need to get back to work?” 
He motioned to the radio on his hip. “They’ll let me know if they need me.” They usually didn’t. “You want to follow me into town? Where’s your car?” 
She gave him a look he couldn’t read. “In the garage. And it’s been a while but I know the way.” 
He nodded, and headed down he steps ahead of her. 
She hadn’t given any indication she remembered him, at all. He wondered if she did, and what had made her change so much. 

​Bluestone Holiday is available at all retailers.
​

The Log Cabin Quilt Shop buzzed with conversation as the women bent over the quilting frame, glasses perched on noses, needles dipping and sliding. Willow slid bolts of Christmas fabric back on the shelf. Finally the bolts were thinning out as people realized they were running out of time as the holidays grew closer. She needed to make room for her Valentine prints, and she had bolts of 1930s reproduction fabric coming in. 
She smoothed her hand across the cloth. She loved her shop, loved what it signified. Home. Her home. Hers and her daughter Lala’s. A fresh start, a new holiday in her new home.
She looked into the open door of her office, where her daughter was sitting at the desk doing her homework, her blonde head bent over the notebook, her pencil gripped in her little hand. Willow would check it in a minute. Just knowing her daughter was within arm’s reach as she worked gave her a warm feeling...which was good for a Minnesota winter.
Even though they had yet to see one snowflake. As she listened to the women in the quilting room, she understood that this was one of the warmest winters on record. It figured, her first winter on her own, when she looked forward to building a snowman, going sledding, having snowball fights, all the things she had never experienced growing up in Texas. 
She’d been assured the snow would come, and she’d have all those experiences, but she wanted them for Christmas.
She was going to take a snow day the first chance she got.
“Oh my goodness, look at the time!” exclaimed Sharon Marcel, accompanied by the sound of her chair scooting back from the quilting table. “I need to get home and get dinner started.”
Other murmurs of assent followed, and more chairs scraped along the floor. Willow peeked around the corner to see women stretching their backs, tucking glasses away, folding up sewing kits. They’d leave the quilt stretched on the frame until they could get back to it—usually the same women, though some alternated. They’d return every day until the quilt was finished, since they’d be raffling it at the Bluestone Christmas Festival. 
Good for the town, good for her fledgling business. 
The women retrieved their coats from the hooks near the door and bundled up. It may not have snowed, but it was still cold. They all called their goodbyes to her and Lala before they headed out into the evening.
Something else she had to get used to in Minnesota—it got dark really early.
The shop was so quiet after the women left. Willow spent a few more minutes restocking the store before she walked into her office and dropped her hands to her daughter’s shoulders and bent to kiss her head. 
“How’s the homework?”
“Hard. I don’t get fractions.”
“Oh, well, you’re in the world’s best place to learn fractions.” Willow crouched beside her daughter and looked at the paper. “What are we looking at?”
“Comparing fractions. How am I supposed to know if three-fourths is bigger than two-thirds?”
“Come here, and I’ll show you.” She led the way to her cutting table, which had the fractions etched into the metal ruler, along with the inches. “Two-thirds of a yard is twenty-four inches. See? Three-fourths of a yard is twenty-seven inches.” She put her fingers on the points of the ruler. “If I sold Mrs. Marcel three-fourths of a yard, and Mrs. Givens two-thirds of a yard, who would get more fabric?”
She didn’t think Lala was listening, only stretching to peer at the ruler. “Can I take this ruler to school?” she asked as she transferred answers from the ruler onto her paper.
“Um, no, but you can take the concept of it with you. Pretty soon it will all be in your memory and you won’t have to think about it.”
“Done!” Lala announced, straightening. “Can we go home now? I’m starving.”
So was Willow. She had dinner in her new slow-cooker, and just the thought of the warm meal waiting for her made her stomach growl. Her store hours stated she would be here until six, but she didn’t think anyone would be coming in the last forty minutes or so. And a lost sale or two wouldn’t break the bank.
“Pack up your stuff and we’ll get going. I’ll just make one more round and then we’ll head home.”
Home was a little Craftsman-style house three blocks away, newly renovated and cozy. She took Lala’s mittened hand in hers and they swung arms as they walked home. Walking home in this weather was probably ridiculous, but she loved her new town and driving just seemed like a waste. She’d be driving plenty when the snow started.
She opened the door to the house, anticipating the smell of cooking roast and…nothing. Rats. Had she forgotten to turn on the slow-cooker? She flipped the light switch to investigate and…nothing.
“Mom, it’s cold in here.”
Willow rubbed her nose. “The power’s out.” 
“What are we going to do?”
She pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight app. “Wait here. I’m going to see if maybe it’s a circuit breaker.”
“What’s that?”
“Erm.” The questions were getting harder, and Lala wasn't even a preteen yet. “The builders put in different electrical circuits in the house so not everything is drawing power from the same thing at the same time. So it doesn't overload the system, see? And if it does overload the system, it automatically shuts that area off.”
“So why is the whole house dark?”
Good question. “Let me just check. Wait here.” Using the phone, she found her way to the breaker box in the kitchen pantry and opened it. No, everything looked set. Maybe the fuse box, then, but she didn’t know how to change a fuse. 
She needed to call someone, but she didn’t know who. She considered going to the neighbors, who still had lights, but hated to intrude at dinner time. 
“Let’s get in the car and head to town for some dinner.” She’d have to dispose of the no-doubt ruined meal, but she’d do that when she had more than the light from her phone. 
Lala groaned, dropped her backpack to the floor by the door and turned toward the garage. 
Quinn’s Bar and Grill was busy, the gravel parking lot filled. Willow waited for Lala to get out of the car and they walked up the stairs from the parking lot to the bar that resembled a two-story log cabin. From what she understood, it used to be just a bar, frequented by the fishermen and hunters that had come to town. But as the town had changed and tried to draw people back to it after the recession had kept people home and away from the lake, the bar had started to serve a pretty decent menu, and had become pretty popular in the small town.
They walked into the large open room, lit along the walls with neon beer signs, with green garland draped from one to the other in an attempt at Christmas cheer. She scanned the rough-hewn pine tables for an empty spot. She steered Lala toward an available one and sat down, a little disappointed as she thought of the meal she’d taken the trouble to make. Nothing on the menu was going to satisfy her. But she’d needed to come somewhere where she could ask for help with their power. They couldn’t go the night without it.
She recognized the waitress who came to their table with menus, but couldn’t remember her name, and she wasn’t wearing a name tag.
“Hey, Willow, Lala,” the waitress said brightly. “What can I get you to drink?”
They placed their orders, but before the waitress could walk away, Willow leaned her arms on the table. “Hey, I’m sorry, but our power’s out. Do you know of anyone who can come take a look?”
“I’ll ask Quinn.” She motioned to the man behind the bar, the owner of the place, who was leaning on the bar playing with the feet of a baby in a carrier.
Willow followed her gaze. “I don't want to take him away from his family. Is there someone I can hire?”
“Let me ask Quinn,” the waitress said again, and hurried off. 
“Why didn’t you let me get a Coke?” Lala asked.
“Because the last thing I need is a hopped-up sugar monkey running around a dark house.”
Lala giggled and Willow stopped herself from grabbing her daughter’s hands and holding onto them. Lala was getting to an age where she wouldn't want to be seen holding her mother’s hands…and probably was going to be tired of being called Lala before long. The nickname came from her inability as a toddler to pronounce her real name, Lorelei. 
“Do you think the power will be back on by the time Rudolph comes on?”
“Oh. Hm. I guess it depends on what’s wrong with it. If not, we’ll buy it and make a special night of watching Christmas shows.”
“Well, what do you think could be wrong with it?”
“I don’t know.” Willow sat back, unwrapping the silverware from the tightly wound napkin, then flashed her daughter a smile. “We reached the extent of my expertise with the circuit breakers.”
“What if they can’t fix it tonight?”
“Then we might have to sleep in the quilt shop. Cover up with lots of fabric.”
“We could make a fort,” Lala said with a bounce in her seat.
Willow grimaced. “Yeah, probably not that. It won’t come to that, though.” She hoped. “It’s probably just a fuse or something.”
“What’s that?”
She was saved from another electrical explanation when Quinn Alden approached the table. 
“Hey, Willow, Jess said you’re having some trouble at home? No power?”
She folded her arms on the table with a sigh. “Yes, the whole house is dark. I checked the breaker box, but it seemed to be okay.”
“I have a friend who could come take a look for you.”
Hope surged, which surprised her because she’d thought she’d been pretty sure they could fix it today. “Would he be able to come by tonight? Or she?”
Quinn grinned. “He. Yeah, let me give him a call.”
“Oh. Well. Should we get our food to go?”
“Nah, I’ll tell him to meet you here, that okay?”
“That would be perfect.” She relaxed a bit, not all that comfortable with meeting a strange man alone at her home. 
Quinn hooked his thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll take care of that, then. You all good here?”
“We’re great, thanks.”
“Do you know him?” Lala asked when he walked away.
“Everyone pretty much knows everybody. He’s married to that pretty lady there.” She motioned to the bar, where a tall blonde was wrangling a dark-haired toddler while balancing a baby carrier on the bar. “She owns The Landing, where people rent boats and ice fishing huts, and he owns this place, so they’re probably the most well-known people in town.”
“Are we really going to live here forever?” Lala’s tone held the slightest of whines. “I miss Texas. I miss my friends. I miss having places to go.”
“Come on, Lala.” This time she didn’t stop herself from taking her daughter’s hands. “This is our adventure. It’s going to be good for us.” She hoped. All she wanted was a new start, making it on her own with her daughter. She was determined to be an independent woman, to show Lala how to be one.
Their food arrived at the table and she didn’t even admonish Lala for her overuse of ketchup. 
The door opened and a cold draft swept into the room, accompanied by a guy in a knit hat and shearling coat. He didn’t take off his coat before he approached the bar, as most people did. Willow couldn’t say why she watched as he braced both hands against the bar and leaned in, calling to Quinn. Quinn didn’t respond, just pointed in her direction. The man turned and looked right at her with eyes the color of the leaves outside.
Was this her electrician? The question was erased as the man approached her table.
“Hey, you’re Willow Branson? Quinn said you don't have any power?”
“Right. We walked into the house and it was dark. Not the circuit breakers,” she added quickly, to show him she wasn’t completely helpless.
“Yeah, no, the whole house wouldn't be out if it was. I’m Chase Granzer, by the way.” He stretched out a gloved hand to her. 
She dropped her burger into the basket, wiped her hands hastily on her napkin and took his hand, strong and warm beneath the leather glove. Whoa. She hadn't had a reaction to a man since—since, well, watching Aidan Turner in Poldark. Hm. 
“I’ll just get Jess to bring us some to-go boxes,” she said, turning her attention to practical matters.
“No hurry.” He pulled out a chair and sat. “You can finish eating. Not like another fifteen minutes is going to make a difference.” He turned to her daughter. “Hey. I’m Chase.”
“I’m Lorelei,” she said, sitting straighter. 
Willow lifted her eyebrows at the formality in her daughter’s voice.
“Lorelei. I’ve always loved that name. How old are you?”
“Nine.”
“Nine. What’s that, a freshman in high school?”
Lorelei giggled. “Fourth grade.”
“Fourth grade.” He bounced Lorelei’s still-wrapped silverware on its end before unwrapping it and handing her a napkin, then touching the corner of his own mouth to show her she had some ketchup there. “I don't suppose Mrs. Finch is still teaching that?”
Lala’s eyes widened as she dabbed at her mouth. “She is! She was your teacher?”
“She was.” 
He leaned on the table, suddenly seeming very large in his heavy coat. Willow was torn between protectiveness toward her daughter and, well, appreciation.
“Did you like her? I mean, she’s kind of scary.”
He shook his head, a smile tilting up one corner of his mouth. “Best teacher I ever had, not even kidding. I still remember her reading to us after recess.”
“She still does that!”
“I bet she doesn't still read Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, with the voices.”
Lala’s eyes were huge and bright. “She does!”
“‘Funny funny funny Fudgie,’” they both said together, in oddly guttural voices, and both cracked up laughing.
Willow knew enough of Mrs. Finch and the book to smile. “So you’ve lived here all your life?”
He leaned back in his chair. “I have. I live right over on the lake there.”
“On the lake?” Lala asked.
“Near the lake, but I can walk out my back yard and sink a line, if I want.”
“Do you? Fish from your back yard?” Willow asked.
“Not much good fishing from the shore. I prefer taking my boat out.”
“You have a boat?” Lala asked, meal forgotten. “What kind?”
He waved a hand. “Ah, not very big, a fishing boat with a motor. It’s in dry dock now, for the winter. I’m waiting for the lake to ice over so I can take my ice house out there.”
“Can we see your ice house when it’s on the lake?” Lala asked.
“Lala,” Willow chided gently. “We don't invite ourselves, and we barely know Mr. Granzer.”
“What did she call you?” Chase asked Lala.
Lala blushed to the roots of her hair. “My nickname. Lala. I couldn't say Lorelei when I was little, so my parents started calling me that.”
“It’s cute. I like it. And of course you can come to see my ice house. It’s got a TV and a heater and I’ll take a cot out there sometimes.”
Willow smiled. “I don’t know if any of that makes sense to me.”
“Where are you from?” he asked.
She liked his easy tone, his kindness to Lala. She liked the look of him, light brown hair curling from beneath his knit hat, golden stubble dusting his chin, broad shoulders beneath the bulky coat, those autumn-colored eyes.
Girl, get a grip. You don't need another man in your life telling you what to do.
“Texas,” she said.
“Texas.” He repeated the word on a laugh. “This is going to be a change for you, for sure.”
“That’s what we wanted.”
He gave her a considering look, but if he had a question, she cut it off by motioning for Lala to finish her burger. 
“So are you a fisherman, or an electrician, or what is it exactly that you do?” Willow asked as they walked down the steps to the parking lot a few minutes later.
“I’m a bit of a jack of all trades. A handyman, I guess.”
Something in the way his lips thinned made her think there was more to his story, but she didn’t ask. “This is my car. We live on the same street as the school, so if you want to follow us…”
“I know where you live,” he said.
“What?” The statement alarmed her. “How?”
He shrugged. “Newest residents in town. Not many places for you to move into. You’re in the old Hughes place.”
“I had heard that.”
“And you run the quilt store.”
She straightened. “I own it, yes.”
The corners of his lips twitched at her distinction, and he opened her car door for her. “You lead the way, then.”
Her fingers were shaking a little when she slipped the key into the ignition. 
“Mom, are you okay?”
“Sure.” She smiled at her daughter in the rearview mirror. “Why?”
“Because you’re just sitting there and Chase is in his truck waiting to follow.”
“Oh!” She put the car in reverse with a little spray of gravel and pulled out of the parking lot, onto the main road that ran along the lake, and back to her house. 
“You probably should get snow tires on that car before long,” he said when they reached her house, closing the door of his truck on the street.
“Do you know something the weatherman doesn’t?” she asked as she walked up the sidewalk from her driveway. 
“I know this is Minnesota and we don't go the month of December without snow. By first snowfall, it’s too late, and it’s cold enough at night that those tires aren't going to do you good much longer. I can do it for you, if you’d like. Have you bought them yet?”
“I guess I’ll go to Beaudin and get some this weekend. They can put them on there, can’t they?” She was determined not to give that control to another man.
“Yup,” he said easily, and flicked on his flashlight as she tried to find the lock in the dark. 
She swung the door open, and started to go in first, but he gently pulled her back so he could precede her with the flashlight. 
“You don't have a dog, do you?”
“No, but Lala’s been wanting one,” she said before she understood he was asking so he didn’t get bitten. “No, no dog.”
“Where’s your fuse box?”
“In the garage.” Then, again thinking, “This way. Lala, stay put.”
She led him through the living room, into the kitchen, the mud room, and opened the door to the garage. 
“I see why you don’t park in here.” His flashlight beam bounced off the boxes that filled the space.
“I still have some unpacking to do, but I haven’t gotten around to it.”
“You’ve been here almost a year?”
“Not quite. We got here in May.”
“I’d say whatever’s in those boxes isn't important enough to unpack. You should get a storage unit, and save them for the big rummage sale we have in the spring.”
Just the thought of getting rid of her belongings made her stomach flutter. She’d made enough changes in the past year. She couldn’t let go of her belongings, not even if she couldn’t exactly remember what was in each of the boxes.
“At the very least, put them somewhere else so you can park your car in here. You don’t want to get outside more than you have to this time of year.”
She didn’t need him to tell her that. “I have a spare room. I’ll start moving them in there.”
“Have you got an engine heater?” 
“No. What’s that?”
“Once the temperature gets below ten, you’re going to have to plug your engine in so it doesn't freeze up. You have a couple of weeks to get one of those, I'd say.”
He popped open the cover of the fuse box, flashed his beam up and down, grunted. “Most of these fuses are blown. You must have had a power surge or something. Go make sure everything is turned off. I don’t know how many fuses I actually have on hand, but I’ll replace what’s important. We need to get the utility company out here to find out what happened, though. We don't want it to happen again.” He looked up at her. “You need a flashlight?”
“No, I have my phone.” She pulled it out and tapped the screen to show him. He gave her a nod of approval and she went back into the house. She turned off light switches and the slow-cooker, the heater, unplugged her television and computer, and Lala’s tablet. She heard Chase come in the front door, heard the rattle of something that was probably his toolbox. 
She realized, as she rejoined Lala in the living room, that she wouldn't know if the power was back on with everything turned off.
And then light flooded the kitchen. Chase grinned at her. “Check the heater.”
She did, and breathed a sigh of relief when it clicked on and started to roar. 
“Mom, the TV isn’t coming on,” Lala announced from the living room. 
“Check your computer, too,” Chase said. “If it was a surge, it might have fried your electronics.”
“Oh no! Is there any way you can tell?”
He grunted and crouched behind the TV stand. “Yeah, looks like it wiped it out.” He straightened and looked at Lala. “Sorry about that, sweetheart.” He turned to Willow. “Your computer okay?”
She sat and pulled it onto her lap, tried to boot it up. Nothing. “Oh, no. Lala, your tablet?”
Lala checked, and almost started crying. “Nothing. Mom, it’s broken.”
“Okay, well, don’t panic.” She tried to take her own advice as she looked at the black screen of her laptop. Thank God she stored everything on the cloud, so her work wasn't lost, and she had another computer at the shop. “We’ll figure something out. The most important thing is we find out what made this happen in the first place. We’ll get the utility company to come out to see what caused it, and we’ll replace the television and the tablet, okay? Why don't you get ready for your bath?”
Lala glanced at Chase, then nodded, wiping her eyes, and headed to the bathroom. A few moments later, Willow heard the bathroom heater come on. She turned to Chase and reached for her purse. 
“What do I owe you?”
He named a figure, and she froze with her hand in her purse. “You have to be kidding.” 
He frowned, like he hadn’t expected her to argue. “Well, that’s just to cover the cost of the fuses.”
“Chase, that’s not enough. You took time out of your evening to come help.” She pulled a couple more bills out of her purse, and he stepped back as if she’d pulled a snake out. 
“I’m not going to take that.”
“I have money. I don't need charity.” She didn’t intend for her voice to sound so sharp, but the shift in Chase’s eyes told her she’d hurt his feelings. “I pay my way.” She didn’t know how to tell him she didn’t want to depend on someone ever again, even if it was something as simple as changing fuses or snow tires. Okay, she’d get someone to do it for her, but not for free, or for an insultingly low price that probably wouldn't cover the little bit of gas he’d used to get here. “I don't want to take advantage,” she said, softening her tone.
“In Bluestone, we do the neighborly thing.”
Great, a stubborn gentleman. He was becoming less cute by the minute. “Please, can we not do the noble thing? Can you just take the money?”
He hesitated. “I’ll take half.”
Well, that was progress. She could work with that. She tucked one bill back into her purse and handed him the rest. “Thank you so much.”
“Make sure you call the utility company tonight. They might get out here tonight, which I doubt, but they’ll get here as soon as they can. Tell them it’s just the two of you living here and they might get here sooner.” He rested his hand on the door, then reached into his pocket. “If you need anything else, give me a call. Try not to overload the power tonight. And let me know what happens.” He stepped forward and handed her a business card. 
She glanced down at it and read Chase Granzer, Construction. “Thanks. I really do appreciate you coming out tonight.”
“I’ll see you around,” he said, and walked out. As she locked up behind him, she hoped it was sooner rather than later.

​Available at all retailers.

Harley Blume stood outside The Pit, the beachfront bar her brother Sam co-owned, digging the heels of her boots into the sand in the parking lot. Sam had been quick enough to invite her to come to Starfish Shores, Alabama, when she’d confessed her woes to him, but telling him on the phone was one thing. Seeing the pity in his eyes was something else.
Poor pitiful Harley, dumped by her high school sweetheart, left without a place to live, stuck in a dead-end job because she’d been an idiot and followed Asshole Tony to Nashville, where he’d been so certain he’d make it as a country songwriter. He hadn’t been bad, truly, but songwriters in that town were a dime a dozen. So were the girlfriends who supported their dreams by answering phones in an office and fending off too-friendly bosses. Naturally, once Asshole Tony started seeing some success, he celebrated by sleeping around.
So here she was, twenty-five and homeless. Sam had offered her a place to stay until she could figure out what to do next.
A fresh start. That’s how she’d look at this. The first step was going into the bar and facing her brother. She rolled her shoulders and stepped through the door leading in from the street.
She hadn’t been to his bar before, so when he’d told her it was an open bar, she hadn’t been sure what to think. What it was, was, well, an open bar. Ahead of her, across the weathered decking, were the beach and the ocean. Around the deck, space heaters were placed at measured intervals. To her left was a wood and tin structure where the main part of the bar was located. Bleached wood fronted the bar, painted in alternating colors one would see on beachfront houses, but the color had worn down so some of the wood was exposed. In front of the bar was a row of similarly painted barstools, and clear bulbs hung on strings from the posts in the bar outward over the seating area in a fan shape. Cute.
Behind the bar, however, looked like Sam’s old dorm room. The University of Alabama sports paraphernalia—elephants wearing red sweaters, cups and other things bearing giant scrolling “A’s”— littered the shelves in between the bottles, signs were hammered to the walls there, and on the wall to her right. It made sense—Sam and his college roommate Liam had played football with the Crimson Tide, and were of course in Alabama, where football was king. And the decor went with the flat-screen TVs mounted in shielded areas, both showing different sporting events. But seriously, these were two men, almost thirty, reliving their glory days?
Customers gathered near tall space heaters. Maybe her blood had thickened in her time in Nashville, because she wasn’t cold at all. She was, however, surprised the place was so busy on a Tuesday night in December.
“Harley!”
Her brother’s voice carried cheerfully above the conversation and the sound from the TVs. She barely turned before he caught her up in a bear hug.
Instantly, she relaxed in her big brother’s arms. She’d heard horror stories of sibling rivalry, but had honestly never experienced it with Sam. Maybe because he was five years older, but he’d always been protective and she’d always felt safe with him.
It didn’t hurt that he was six three and in the Coast Guard Reserves.
He drew back to look at her, and his cheerful expression collapsed. “You look like hell.”
“Gee, thanks, what I love to hear.” She passed a hand over her hair. “Not so much sleeping going on lately. A lot of worrying.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t have to worry now. You’ve got a place to stay as long as you need it, while you figure out what you’re going to do next.”
God knew she would need time, because she had no flipping idea what she was going to do.
“Look, come say hi to Liam, then we’ll take off, I’ll get you settled in the house and then I’ll come back.”
Liam. She hung back just a bit. If she looked as bad as Sam’s reaction suggested, she did not want to face Liam. She’d had a major crush on him when he and Sam were in college. Of course she’d never said anything, because how childish was that? She’d been fifteen at the time, gangly as hell, and Liam was one fine specimen. Even now, she looked like something the cat dragged in. Plus, Jesus, if Sam told Liam her pathetic story, she may just as well go bury herself in the sand over there.
But Sam tugged, and she staggered forward to where Liam worked behind the bar.
If she’d hoped he’d gotten fat and bald in the few years since she’d seen him, well, she would have been stupid, that was for sure, because that would be a waste. But no, if anything, he’d gotten better with age, his face leaner, bristling with a bit of stubble. He still kept his dark hair almost military short, which only emphasized his blue eyes. Damn, he had pretty eyes. Right now they were trained on a blonde who was toying with a beer bottle and clearly in no hurry to leave the bar, but then Sam drew his attention and he focused his gaze on Harley.
Holy crap. “I love Alabama,” she whispered.
“What?” Sam asked, but she waved him off.
“Harley!” he greeted, and used the bar to lift himself up to give her a kiss on the cheek.
She didn’t know what she appreciated more, the way the muscles in his arms rippled when he lifted himself, or the brush of his stubble against her cheek. Suddenly, she felt tons better.
“Hi, Liam.”
“Hey, you want a beer?” The words came at her like bullets. She’d forgotten how, er, energetic he was.
“No, thanks.”
“I’m going to take her to my place and get her settled, and I’ll be back in a bit,” Sam said. “You got this?”
Liam gave a casual wave. “No problem. Sure you don’t want to have a drink first?”
“I’m sure,” she promised, backing away. The sooner she got to Sam’s and could hide, the better.
Only that wasn’t to be. If she thought Sam would just drop her off and head back to the bar, she was mistaken. Instead he took her to the two-bedroom bungalow where he lived, a little more than half a mile from the beach, a cute enough place for a bachelor—and a hell of a lot more than she had to her name. He showed her to her room, almost completely taken up by a full-sized bed, but she could see he’d made an effort to clean out his gym equipment and other paraphernalia to make room for her. The Coast Guard recruiting poster featuring him still hung in the room, grinning at her. Yeah, great. Big brother was watching.
He set her suitcase on the bed and hefted a hip onto the corner of the dresser.
“So, you know you’re welcome here as long as you need to stay.”
“You’ve said,” she said, stopping with the key halfway into the lock of her suitcase. Where was he going with this?
“I was just wondering why you wouldn’t rather go home. Especially since it’s almost Christmas.”
She braced her hands on top of the suitcase and met his gaze. “Okay, let’s say you were living with someone your parents thought was worthless, and you thought you knew better, that she was awesome, and it turned out your parents were right. Would you be in any hurry to come face-to-face with them? Christmas will be soon enough, and long enough, and then I’ll escape back here with you.”
He grunted, and she turned back to opening her luggage.
“I’m sorry I’m pretty clueless right now. Still reeling, though I should have seen it coming.”
“The offer to go kick his ass still stands.”
She sighed. That had been Sam’s answer for everything since she started dating. As satisfying as it might be... “I need to start kicking asses all on my own.”
“That is true.” He stood with a sigh and kissed her forehead. “There’s Diet Coke and lunch meat and stuff in the fridge. I got some bananas and M&Ms, too. Not sure which you might be in the mood for.”
She hadn’t been in the mood for much of anything, to be truthful, and had dropped seven pounds. Her jeans hung looser on her than they ever had. “You’re a good brother.”
“I hate to leave you, but I don’t want Liam to have to close up on his own.”
“I meant to ask, how are y’all so busy in December? People still come to the beach in December?”
“A lot of them, actually, because it’s off-season and cheaper. We get snowbirds, and locals, and more tourists than you’d think. Not as busy as we’ll be in March, and later. But we’re doing okay. You want to come back out tonight?”
“Definitely not. I’ll be fine, Sam. Go ahead and go. I’ll just watch some TV and hopefully get some sleep.”
“I’ll try to be quiet when I come in.” He leaned over and kissed her forehead.
“Look, Sam,” she said as he started out the front door.
He stopped and turned.
“I don’t want to cramp your style. If you want to bring someone back, don’t worry about me.”
He gave her a grin that she couldn’t quite interpret, and headed out.
* * *
It turned out she could fall asleep, but couldn’t stay asleep. She stared at the clock beside her bed, willing the numbers to change. Sam was asleep in the next room, or she’d turn on the TV to soothe herself. She checked the weather on her phone. Upper forties. Warmer than back home.
No, wait. There was no “back home.” She sighed and pushed herself out of bed, then peeked out the curtain at the quiet dark street. The beach wasn’t far away, and Starfish Shores was a small town. She’d go for a walk. Maybe the ocean air would kickstart her brain, or relax her enough to go back to sleep.
She dressed quietly in yoga pants, a T-shirt and a hoodie and crept out the front door, making sure she had a key to get back in. Sam would not like being awakened by her banging on the door. She tucked a couple of bucks in her pocket, in case she came across an open bakery or something. Not likely at barely five in the morning, but possible. At the last minute, she rummaged for a flashlight, tested it to make sure it worked, and put it in her hoodie pocket.
The chill in the air stole her breath for a minute, but as she walked briskly to the end of the street, she warmed up enough to unzip the hoodie. She could smell the ocean, and the lure of it increased her pace. She crossed the main street of the town, and stepped with more force than necessary on the wooden walkway that led over the dunes and to the beach.
She paused. It was darker out here than she expected, even with the lights from the condos that lined the beach. Ahead of her, at the edge of the water, she saw a few people with flashlights aimed at the sand, probably looking for shells. She pulled out her own, flicked it on and grimaced at the weak beam of light. But she was here, and the sand was calling to her. She toed off her shoes, scooped down to pick them up and stepped onto the sand.
Holy crap, it was cold! She did a little dance in the sifting grains before curling her toes into it. Again, she thought about heading back to the warmth of the bungalow, but no. She could deal with the chill.
She’d forgotten how hard it was to walk in loose sand, so staggered a bit toward the water, stopping a couple of times when small crabs darted past her crappy flashlight beam.
“It’s okay, little dude, I don’t want to step on you any more than you want to be stepped on.”
Finally she reached the packed sand, and like the people she saw around her, shone the flashlight in search of shells.
She was so engrossed in the search—and shells bulged in her hoodie pockets—that she was unaware of the sky lightening and more people joining them on the beach, some searching, some out for a run. Which had been her original plan, to run herself, she realized guiltily.
She heard pounding footsteps and moved out of the way, only to meet a wave coming in. Her shriek of alarm rang out along the quiet beach, drawing everyone’s attention and once more making her want to bury herself in the sand.
And then it got better. The runner whose path she’d been clearing caught her by the arms to steady her before she fell on her ass in the water, and she looked into the blue eyes of Liam Channing.
Of course she did.
His hoodie fell back and his eyes brightened when he recognized her. “Hey, you’re not wanting to go for a swim, are you?” Instead of letting her answer, he pulled her away from the water, placing himself between her and the waves. “It’s low tide, but it can still sneak up on you.” He released her and stepped back. “What are you doing out here so early?”
“Couldn’t sleep.” Good Lord, he’d said more words than she’d thought all morning.
“Yeah, well, good call. Nothing like a walk on the beach.” He pointed to her lumpy pockets. “Find anything good?”
“Um.” Yep, she was always so verbose around him.
“Let’s go get some coffee, and you can show me what you found. One time when I was out early, I found a sand dollar that was still alive.”
“No way.”
“Yep. You could see its little tentacles or legs or whatever sticking out the sides, as it tried to swim away. They’re darker than the shells, you know. It was cool.”
“Are you sure you need coffee?” she blurted. “You seem wide awake to me.”
He laughed, another sound that carried over the beach. “Believe it or not, it calms me down.” He tapped his temple. “ADD.”
“I never would have guessed. Do you sleep? I mean, didn’t you close the bar last night?”
“Sure, I did, and sure, I sleep. But I like to run on the beach, too, and this is the best time of day. So, coffee?”
“Sam will be wondering where I am.” She took a step backwards. “I didn’t leave him a note.”
Liam snorted. “He won’t see daylight for another four or five hours at least. Come on. We’ll get some coffee, then you can come fishing with me on the pier.”
Her stomach rumbled and he grinned, as if he’d already won. “The place I get coffee has great pastries, too.”
Even though she’d been thinking of pastries all morning, she resisted. “If I get pastries, I’ll have to start running, too.”
“Good, then I’ll have someone to run with. Sam is too competitive. Plus, he sleeps late.”
“From what I remember, you’re pretty competitive yourself.”
“Stubborn. Stubborn is what I am. So come on. Pastries and coffee sound really good right now.” He started walking up the beach and despite herself, she fell in step.
“Aren’t I holding you back from your run?”
He turned back as if to gauge the distance. “Nah, I did okay.”
“So you’re going fishing? Do you have your gear? And doesn’t that require, I don’t know, patience?”
He flashed a grin that made her knees wobbly. “I’m plenty patient. Again with the stubborn, see. I can out-wait just about anything.”
She didn’t know why she got a feeling he was sending her a message. Maybe it was just her sleep-deprived mind drawing lines where there weren’t any.
“So how long are you in town?” he asked as they continued down the beach.
“I don’t know yet.” She was sure Sam had told him the whole story, but she so didn’t want to go into it with him.
“Yeah, well, the reason I was asking is that once Sam goes on his annual training maneuvers, I’m going to need help at the bar.”
She stopped. “When he goes where?”
“He didn’t tell you? He’s got annual training coming up starting this weekend. He’ll be gone until just before Christmas.”
“Why wouldn’t he tell me that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he was waiting until you got settled in or something. Don’t worry about it. You’ll have the house to yourself when he goes.”
But she didn’t know a soul in Starfish Shores, didn’t have a thing to do. But what had she wanted, really? Him to babysit her? Entertain her?
And technically, she did know Liam. Working at the bar might give her something to do, though that meant working beside Liam. She’d have to think about it.
Finally Liam turned and started hiking toward the road. Harley was slightly gratified to see that he had as much trouble walking in the sand as she did. Still, he reached out to steady her when she staggered, his hand hard and warm.
She should not be noticing what his hands felt like. She’d just ended a long-term relationship, and Liam was her brother’s best friend. The fact that he was smoking hot should not weigh on her consciousness at all. Still, she felt her face heat as she pulled away, breaking contact.
Once they reached the wooden walkway that would take them over the dunes—a different walkway than she’d used to come down to the beach—the sun was peeking over the horizon, and the shorebirds were making a racket as they soared overhead against the high clouds. Liam touched the small of her back to guide her forward, though she could now clearly see the coffeehouse in front of them. She should move away. She really should. But that might send him the wrong idea, that his touch affected more to her than it should. So she let his hand ride on the small of her back and ignored the tingles of awareness shooting through her body.
For God’s sake, she’d just broken up with Tony. Was she any better than him, if she was turned on by Liam’s touch? She gave a little skip to outpace him, and broke contact.
The aroma of coffee reached past the sidewalk, and she disguised her move as eagerness to get to it. She pushed through the door to find the shop dark-paneled and cozy, the menu and prices written in looping script in different colored chalk on a chalkboard on the back wall. The other side of the L-shaped counter contained a few sample cakes and a fancy binder with the title, “Wedding Cakes.” A few small tables were scattered about, but this wasn’t a restaurant. At this early hour, the place was quiet except for the sound of the brass coffeemaker behind the counter. When Harley crouched to inspect the variety of baked goods behind the glass counter, a redhead with her curls tucked into an unruly ponytail popped out from a doorway that led to the back, presumably the kitchen. Her eyes brightened when she saw Liam. She wiped her hands on her apron and hurried forward.
“Liam, you’re running a little late. Want your usual?”
Harley straightened and the redhead jumped, her hand on her heart.
“Oh. Hi. I didn’t see you there.” But her smile definitely dimmed.
“Brenda, this is Harley Blume, Sam’s little sister,” Liam said easily. “Harley, Brenda Wesley, the best baker in Starfish Shores.”
The wattage turned up a bit, and Brenda slid a flirtatious look in his direction. “The only baker.”
He leaned on the counter. “Doesn’t mean it isn’t good. Give me the usual, plus a bear claw for Sam, and whatever she’s having.”
Her mouth was watering, the first time she could remember wanting to eat in weeks. “That cupcake, and a mocha.” She pointed to a cupcake swirled with rich chocolate icing.
“A cupcake for breakfast?” Liam asked as Brenda moved to select it for her.
“How is that worse than a doughnut?” She pointed to the powdery confection Brenda had put on a plate for him. “And you don’t need to buy me breakfast. I brought money.”
“You get it tomorrow.” He placed a bill on top of the counter.
“If you eat like this every day, no wonder you need to run.” She took her cupcake and turned toward one of the small tables. Okay, she’d not thought this through. She’d be sitting in this small coffeehouse at a small table, and eating one of the messiest foods. She knew of no graceful way to eat a cupcake.
It didn’t matter, though. She didn’t need to impress Liam. He was Sam’s friend, was all. And she might be working with him if he was telling the truth about Sam’s yearly training. Why would he lie?
But then, why wouldn’t Sam tell her?
Brenda brought their coffee to their table, along with a bag with Sam’s bear claw. Then, to Harley’s surprise, she pulled up a chair and sat down. That was probably good, to distract Liam’s attention from her.
“So where are you from, Harley?”
“Originally, Oregon. More recently, Nashville.”
“So, visiting Sam for a few days?”
“A few weeks, I think. Not sure how long I’ll stay.”
Brenda widened her eyes. “So you don’t work?”
“I recently left my job. Just wasn’t what I wanted to do with the rest of my life. What about you? Do you own this place?”
“I wish. No, I’m just the baker, and during the off-season, also waitress and cashier. It’s a great job if you don’t like sleep.” She cast a wistful glance at Liam. “Or going out. I haven’t been to The Pit in ages. I heard you have a new band playing Friday nights.”
“They’re pretty good. You should try to come out.”
“One beer and I’d fall asleep. I swear, I’m worthless after eight, since I wake up around four. How is it?” She pointed to Harley’s cupcake.
Since Harley had bitten into it, the icing had streaked her nose and she was trying to wipe it away discreetly before Liam noticed. She sent a mental gee, thanks to Brenda when Liam grinned, leaned over and wiped the errant frosting with his thumb. Brenda’s eyes narrowed at the casual gesture.
“It’s good,” Harley managed.
“Are you looking for a job in Starfish Shores?”
“Harley’s going to work at The Pit,” Liam said.
“Harley has not said she’s going to work at The Pit,” Harley countered. Harley doesn’t know what she’s going to do. But tending bar, or waitressing in her brother’s bar, did not seem to have any more of a future than answering phones and dodging her boss’s hands. “Harley has never waitressed before.”
“Nothing to it. And you can make some decent tips.”
Right. Tips were going to help her start over. But to look at it another way, it might show her what she didn’t want to do. It might give her the motivation to figure the rest of her life out. She looked at Brenda. The woman was probably her age, maybe younger, and had a career. Liam and Sam had careers, hell, were business owners. How had she missed out on knowing what she wanted to be when she grew up?
She polished off the cupcake, picked up her paper cup of coffee and the bag with the bear claw. “Thanks for breakfast. I’ll see you.” And she bolted out the door.
* * *
Harley sat on the corner of Sam’s bed with a bounce, waking her brother, who grunted and tugged at the covers before rolling onto his back and opening his eyes. She made a show of reaching into the white bakery bag and tearing off a piece of the bear claw, and shoving it into her mouth.
“When were you going to tell me you were leaving?” she demanded around the pastry.
He climbed on his elbows until he was in a sitting position. “Where have you been?”
“On the beach.”
He blinked, coming awake. “You ran into Liam.”
“More or less. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“You had enough going on, and I thought you might think I wouldn’t want you here when I was gone, and I knew you didn’t want to go home to Mom and Dad, so I waited. I was going to tell you today.”
“You’re going to leave me in a place where I don’t know anyone, alone, for two weeks.”
“You know Liam. And who do you know back in Oregon anymore, anyway? It’s just two weeks, and when have you ever lived on your own? This will be a good experience.”
All the benefits, none of the risk, she supposed. “When are you leaving?”
“Saturday.”
Saturday. Three days away.
“Do Mom and Dad know? Will you be back for Christmas?”
He grimaced. “Christmas Eve. I won’t make it up there in time. But hey, you weren’t going to go, either, remember.”
Because she’d been going to spend Christmas with Asshole Tony’s extended family, in a lake house in Minnesota. The idea had seemed so romantic and cozy, something straight out of a Christmas card. Now she was going to spend the Christmas season on the beach. Not Christmasy in any way. But she wasn’t ready to tell her parents what had happened, not yet.
“Liam wants me to help out in the bar while you’re gone. I don’t have any experience with that.” She didn’t have much experience with anything, come to think of it.
“You don’t have to do anything for two weeks. Just get your life sorted out. Now, give me that.” He reached over and snatched the bakery bag.
* * *
Truth was, there wasn’t much to do in a coastal town in December, not when one was avoiding the bar and the bakery after making a fool out of oneself. Sitting around the bungalow feeling sorry for herself wasn’t working, either.
She found herself at The Pit the following night. Again, the place was surprisingly busy. Probably more people like herself who didn’t want to be home alone. She didn’t let Sam know she was there, just kept to the back and watched he and Liam work side by side behind the bar, joking with each other and the customers as a hockey game played on the screen overhead. Something tugged at her, and she was reminded of how she felt at Tony’s gigs, watching him with the band, him a part of something he loved, she on the outside. It was the same thing with Liam and Sam and their neighbors, only this time she’d been invited in. She had a feeling it wouldn’t take her long to get to know the people of Starfish Shores if she worked here.
She watched the waitress wheel about the crowd in tight jeans, tray held high, balancing half a dozen drinks or more without spilling them. Could she learn to do that?
She moved forward, and Liam spotted her. His grin split his face and he waved her over to the end of the bar.
“What’s your pleasure?” he asked, leaning over to hear her answer.
Was he ever in a sour mood? Just once, she wanted to see that. “If you ask all the girls like that, no wonder you’re so busy.”
He winked. “Missed you on the beach this morning.”
She’d actually slept last night, something like seven hours straight. That was part of the reason she’d come out. She could function again without exhaustion dragging at her.
“I’ll take a beer.” She pointed to the sign with her preferred brand. “So how long did it take her to learn how to do that?” She gestured to the waitress, who was loading up another tray.
“Cindi? Few days. Why? You going to come work for us?”
“Better than sitting home alone, I guess.”
His grin widened. “I can get Cindi to start training you tonight.”
“Er, I’d really rather do it when there weren’t so many people around watching me make a fool of myself.”
“All right,” he said. “Come in tomorrow around three. I’ll be in early to get things ready for Sam’s going away party. You can get some practice in then.”
Surprisingly, now that she’d made the decision, she wasn’t so jittery. “I’ll be here.”
She stayed at the end of the bar, invisible, watching. The girl on the other end of the bar flirting with Sam might be a tourist, but the guys joking with Liam were local, as was the group of girls, including Brenda from the bakery, watching Liam from one of the tables on the deck.
Harley had grown up in a city and moved to another city, but she thought she could get used to living in a small town.
“Heading out already?” Liam asked when she slipped off her barstool.
She jolted and bumped into the next barstool. She hadn’t realized he’d been paying attention.
“I’m not quite ready to close the place down.”
“Okay. Three o’clock tomorrow, then. Or come find me on the beach in the morning. I’ll be there.”
She didn’t know what to do with that invitation, so just waved and ducked out.
* * *
She didn’t make it out to the beach, even though she was awake and tempted. She didn’t want Liam to think she was following him around like some lovesick girl. Instead, she did the thing she’d been dreading since she walked out on Tony.
She called her parents.
“Hey, Mom,” she said as brightly as she could, channeling Liam and his blasted perpetual good mood. “What’s new?”
That was probably the wrong thing to say, since her mother went on forever about the new neighbors who had three adorable children and often needed a babysitter, and the new alarm system that kept going off at all hours, and the unseasonably warm weather.
“What’s new with you?” her mother finally asked.
“Funny you should ask.” Harley missed the days of phone cords that she could twist when she got anxious. “Tony and I broke up.”
Then she listened to another five minutes about Tony and how her mother had always known and had warned Harley. Because that’s what every daughter likes to hear. “I told you so.”
“So what happened?” her mother finally asked.
Harley considered lying after that diatribe. Instead, she took a deep breath. “He cheated on me. A lot.”
This tirade was shorter, about his wandering eye and his big ego, followed by, “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. He had no idea what he had. I’m sorry he hurt you.”
“Well, the plus side is, I’ll be home for Christmas.”
Silence on the other end. Holy cow, her mother was never silent.
“Mom?”
“Sweetheart, since you and Sam weren’t planning to come home for Christmas, your dad and I made other plans with some friends from the neighborhood. The group of us are going skiing in Aspen. I’ve always wanted to go at Christmastime, and we were able to get a good deal. It’ll be like a second honeymoon.” Hesitation. “You could come with us, if you’d like, and sleep on the pull-out bed.”
Right. Just what she wanted to do, crash her parents’ second honeymoon. But wow, that was unexpected. She wasn’t sure how she felt—disappointed, or glad she didn’t have to go home and listen to more “I was right about him” lectures. “I’m good here.”
“You could come stay in the house, though I’m afraid it’s not really Christmasy.”
“I’m staying at Sam’s for now. I quit my job in Nashville. I’m going to work at The Pit while he’s gone to his training, help out a little.”
More silence. Then, “Oh, that’s good. And then what are you going to do?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet. Maybe my Christmas miracle will be ambition of my own.”
One could only hope.

Flip-Flops and Mistletoe is available at all retailers! 

Erich Harlan idled the Ford F-250 at the curb, aware San Antonio Airport Security was eyeing him. Where the hell was Aubrey? She’d always been stubborn, sure, but to keep him waiting when he knew her plane from Houston had landed half an hour ago was something she’d never done. Maybe he should park and go in to look for her. Maybe she’d missed her flight.
He’d balked when his boss, Adam Cavanaugh, tasked him to collect Aubrey from the airport. He hadn’t been alone with her—a conscious decision on both sides—since she left the Hill Country ranch at eighteen. In her brief visits home since, she had been eager to get back to the city, which made him wonder why she was coming out two weeks ahead of Christmas.
And how he was going to keep his distance from the boss’s daughter, his first love.
In his rearview mirror, he saw the security cops confer, then start toward his truck. Just then, Aubrey Cavanaugh pushed through the glass door, wearing shades and a leather jacket, looking like ten miles of bad road.
She tossed her bag into the bed of the truck, yanked open the door and heaved herself in. Even across the cab, the alcohol fumes burned his eyes. Well, he guessed he knew what had delayed her.
“My folks still on their California RV trip?” she asked, her words carefully enunciated, not slurred.
“They turned around when they heard you were coming home, but they won’t be back for a few days. They were all the way up by Eureka.” He let his voice trail off, hoping she’d pick up on it and tell him why she was home so long. The drinking led him to his own conclusions—a break-up, maybe? His brain immediately formed an image of another man making her cry, making her hurt, and a swell of protectiveness rose in him. Funny thing was, Aubrey had never been one who needed to be protected. But something in her had changed, made her vulnerable, and that tugged at him.
She buckled herself in, then slumped against the door. “Aren’t you the foreman now? How did you get roped into coming to get me?”
“I needed to pick up some supplies.” He gestured to the truck bed, loaded with feed and a few spools of barbed wire, a task that had taken too long when his mind had been wrapped up with thoughts of her.
“Great. Now I’m just another sack of feed.” She turned to look out the windshield, arms wrapped tightly around herself.
“I’d say more like the barbed wire,” he countered, and she whipped her head around to look at him, her expression unreadable behind the shades.
“How’s Houston? How’s the cop life?” he asked as he pulled out of the airport and onto the frontage road.
He never expected she’d become a cop—she’d been pretty spoiled growing up as an only child, a daughter of a prominent rancher—but he’d thought on her previous visits that it had suited her. She’d always had a sharp mind, and now she was a detective on the Houston PD. He forgot which division. Vice, he thought.
The furrow between her brow deepened. “Just peachy.”
She was usually a lot more chatty, but to be honest, he’d never seen her drunk. Drunk on him, maybe, drunk on lust, back when she’d lived at the ranch and he’d been a diversion, the cowboy who’d popped her cherry and so much more. Maybe she was thinking about that, which was ridiculous because it had been a dozen years since she moved to the big city, and on the rare occasions she’d come home to visit, she’d pretended that nothing had been between them.
Still, he couldn’t look at her without seeing her naked, though damn, now she was too thin.
“Did you get anything to eat? Want to stop somewhere?”
“I thought maybe we could stop at Barney’s on the way.”
He frowned. Barney’s bar might have chips, but not food. He’d seen his favorite chain restaurant on the way into town. “Why don’t we stop there?” He pointed to a billboard advertising it.
She shrugged, and he signaled to exit the highway.
Once they were seated in a booth near the bar, beneath a flat-screen TV playing a sports channel, she ordered a margarita first thing, didn’t speak much until she got it, then drained it and ordered another one. This one she drank slower, but she didn’t seem interested in conversation, just traced the patterns in the tiles on the table.
Erich was no conversational wizard himself, but he didn’t care to eat with a sulky companion. “Going to help out with the Cascade Christmas Festival this year? I know your mom was hoping you would.”
Aubrey made a face. “I’m not feeling much like socializing.”
He chuckled. “Then you came at the wrong time of year.” The town of Cascade loved nothing better than a party, and took every advantage to do so. Christmas was their very favorite time to celebrate.
She said nothing.
“What’s going on, Aubrey? Why’d you come home for Christmas two full weeks early?”
She took a long drink and finally met his gaze—just as the waitress arrived with their food. She picked at her meal—no wonder she was so thin—but he couldn’t help devouring his. She didn’t answer his question, which meant she had a reason, but wasn’t going to share, and he didn’t bring it up again.
“Want me to box that up for you?” the waitress asked Aubrey, who shook her head and opened her mouth to order another drink.
“Can we get a couple coffees to go?” Erich interjected.
The waitress nodded and headed off.
Moments later they were in the truck, Aubrey as far away from him as possible.
“You didn’t answer my question,” he reminded her once they were on the road to the ranch. But when he looked over, she was asleep.
* * *
Aubrey walked into her parents’ empty mission style house in a fog. Fog was good—it blurred everything: pain, fear, helplessness, guilt. And it buffered her against the jostle of emotions at being home. She hadn’t had a bad childhood, but as the only child, there’d been expectations she didn’t want to live up to. Being back here brought back that smothering feeling along with other, happier memories. The fog kept the edges blurred.
Just as well her parents were gone—Aubrey wasn’t up to facing them just yet, having to rehash everything, because they’d want to know. They should know, since she’d come running home with her tail between her legs seeking—well, she didn’t know what she was seeking, actually. Peace wasn’t something she often felt in Cascade, despite the quiet, the open land, the distance from neighbors. Distance?
Safety?
Right now she’d settle for oblivion. She went into the sun room where the dry bar was, snagged a couple of bottles from the cabinet and headed up to her old room. With any luck, she’d pass out, and when she woke up, she’d have some defenses back in place.
Sad she felt she needed them when she came home, but her parents hadn’t been in favor of her decision to become a cop, had been even less supportive when she moved to Houston. She didn’t know what they wanted—okay, she did. They wanted her to live out here in the middle of nowhere, be a rancher’s wife. Well, she’d already been a rancher’s daughter and discovered small town life wasn’t for her. Her mother had adjusted, falling in love with Adam when she was a successful lawyer in San Antonio, and was now a pillar of Cascade society, but that wasn’t the life for Aubrey. She liked having restaurants within ten minutes instead of half an hour away or more. She liked the bustle, the noise.
And she’d loved her job until a few days ago.
She battled back the images that assaulted her, the smell of blood and trash and death. As she walked into the bedroom that hadn’t changed since she left home twelve years ago, still decorated in what her mother called “shabby chic” and she called “nothing like her,” she wondered if she would ever love her job again.
* * *
Knowing Aubrey was home and not seeing her was odd. Sure, she’d been home on break in the past, but those had mostly been whirlwind trips. Usually she was out and about, hanging with her parents, but so far she’d been rattling around in that old house all by herself. The few times Erich did see her wander out on the patio, she had a tumbler in her hand. He needed to get her out of there, though he wasn’t sure just what being together would change. He knew what he’d want to change, but Aubrey had always gone her own way.
Finally he had a break in mending fences on Thursday morning. He saddled two horses, his roan and Mrs. Cavanaugh’s bay mare, the daughter of the mare Aubrey used to ride, and headed for the house. He looped the reins over the post in front, the post Mrs. Cavanaugh wanted removed but Mr. Cavanaugh insisted on keeping, since they were a working ranch. Erich strode to the door and banged the wrought-iron knocker against the oak door. Silence on the other side, so he banged again. And again.
Finally the door swung open and Aubrey glared at him. He realized it was the first time he’d seen her eyes since she’d arrived. What he saw there made him take a step back, almost wish he hadn’t taken the initiative to come for her. They were shadowed, reddened and haunted.
“You need some fresh air,” he said. “Let’s go for a ride.” He gestured at the waiting horses.
“The last thing I need is to go for a ride,” she muttered, hunkering in the shadow of the house, her hand on the door.
Quickly he moved forward, blocking her intent. Her eyes widened as she looked up at him. Too late he realized he might have frightened her, but no, Aubrey wasn’t afraid of anything.
“You need to quit feeling sorry for yourself and come for a ride. I’ll give you a couple of minutes to change.” She was wearing city shoes, not good for horseback riding. “And dress warm.”
He’d never had to talk her into going for a ride before. She’d always been eager—because the rides had meant getting away from the house, finding privacy and getting naked. He shifted as his body reacted to the memory of laying her down on a blanket, filling her, letting her flip him onto his back and ride him.
She folded her arms stubbornly beneath her breasts. “That’s not who I am anymore.”
“I’m not taking you out to get laid,” he growled.
He couldn’t decipher the look on her face, but it kind of looked like he’d punched her in the stomach. He blew out a sigh. “Aubrey, just get changed. You need to get out of the house.” And away from the liquor he could smell on her breath. Damn, it was early for that. The pain she was trying to mask had to be pretty bad. Not a man, he was pretty sure. The Aubrey he knew wouldn’t let herself get that worked up over a man.
Finally she turned and headed toward her room. He followed, not sure if she was trying to ditch him. She stopped and faced him with her hand on the bedroom door.
“I’m going to change, all right?”
“You have five minutes before I come in there.”
Her nostrils flared and she slammed the door in his face. But less than five minutes later, she was standing in front of him in a sweater that hugged her curves, cowboy boots that went up to her knees, and a look on her face that told him he didn’t know what he was asking for, a look he’d seen many times before. He swallowed and took a step back, his blood running hot.
“You might want a jacket, too,” he managed, and turned around to lead the way out of the house, away from the bed behind her.
A few moments later they were out of sight of the house, loping over the field, stirring up dust behind them, taking the same route they’d taken time and again, always ending under the big oak on the hill, always ending with multiple orgasms. What was he doing, bringing her the same way? Tempting fate, was what.
“The place hasn’t changed much,” she said when they slowed to walk the horses up the path.
He looked over the winter-deadened grass, the scrub brush still a deep green against the gold of the thirsty grass, the occasional bunches of cactus. This was the land he worked, never an easy job, sometimes disappointing, but he always loved it. Always wanted to be a cowboy. “We had some trouble during the drought, had some fires, had to sell off quite a few head at a loss. But your dad always had good business sense and we pulled through. Could use some rain right about now.” He took a deep breath. “So what’s going on, Aubrey?”
She stiffened in the saddle, toyed with the reins. “Don’t know what you mean.”
“You’ve been home a few days, don’t leave the house, don’t do much besides drink. Something’s going on. You break up with someone or something? Because I can go kick his ass.” He already knew that wasn’t the issue—she would never give another person that much power over her life, her happiness.
She offered a wan smile. “No, nothing like that.”
Relief warmed his chest. “Well, what then?” He’d lost patience with her evasions. “It’s not like you to be here so long before Christmas, for one thing, for you to be cooped up in the house. You always say you come here to get outside. So what’s different?”
She heaved a breath, sagged a little. “I guess you don’t get Houston news out here?”
“You know we get San Antonio news.” What was she talking about?
“Let’s wait until we get to our spot.”
Curiosity piqued, he nudged his horse forward and she fell in behind him.
Once they reached the hill where they used to rendezvous, he dismounted and tethered his horse. She did the same, her movements stiff and out-of-practice. He kicked a couple of rocks and branches out of the way, tugged a blanket out of his pack and spread it on the ground. Again his groin tightened, remembering happier times. He sat, but she stood at the edge of the blanket, arms wrapped tight around herself.
“You didn’t happen to bring any wine to go with that blanket?” she asked, the corner of her mouth lifted.
Still he had an idea that she was mostly serious. “Nope.”
She walked toward the tree and leaned her shoulder against it. “Remember when we used to steal wine coolers and bring them up here?”
He did. For years he’d associated the taste of her with the taste of those fruity drinks. But he refused to be distracted. He kept his posture relaxed, though he didn’t feel relaxed, with her standing over him, tense.
“What happened in Houston, Aubrey?”
She picked up a blade of dried grass and twirled it between her fingers. “I had this case. Drug bust. Only the bad guys knew they were coming and recruited some kids to haul out some of their supplies, including guns, while we were approaching. One of the kids thought he was a bad-ass and raised his gun at my partner. I shouted a warning, but he didn’t lower his weapon. I could see his hand shaking, right, his finger on the trigger.” Her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists, her eyes grew unfocused. “I couldn’t risk my partner, so I shot the kid in the leg, but he was so skinny. The bullet shattered his leg and severed his femoral artery. He bled out before the ambulance got there. He was fourteen.”
“Jesus, Aubrey.” What could he say to that? Horror clogged his throat, horror that a kid would be in a situation like that, horror at the decision Aubrey’d had to make, that she had to live with.
No wonder she was drinking.
He reached over to take her hand but she shifted out of reach, locked inside herself.
“It was the first time I’d fired my gun in the line of duty, and I killed a kid.” She threw the blade of grass away and shoved herself away from the tree. “It was justified—I was cleared of any charges, but he died in my arms. I see that every time I close my eyes. I replay the scene every time I try to go to sleep.” She stood over him and nudged his pack with the toe of her boot. “Sure you don’t have something to drink in there?”
He dragged it closer and pulled out a bottle of water and handed it to her, deliberately misunderstanding. She gave him a rueful look, but took the bottle anyway. She folded her legs to sit beside him, closer than she’d been before, and drank. So maybe not locked inside herself. Maybe looking for a way out.
“So you’re here because?” Had she been suspended because of her drinking?
“The captain wanted me to get my head together, and away from the media, who as you can imagine had a field day with a cop shooting a teenager. I had vacation time, but not a lot of vacation cash, so I came home.” She stared out over the distance. “I could be on a cruise ship somewhere getting sloshed.”
“And falling overboard.”
She dragged a hand through her hair. “Or jumping.”
“Aubrey.” Her tone made his gut tighten. Surely her thoughts hadn’t really headed in that direction. “Are you talking to anyone?”
“Sure, the department makes sure I talk to a therapist. Since I’m out here we’re doing it through a video chat.”
Was that enough? “What about someone you know, are friends with? Your fellow officers?”
“Sure, but people I’m particularly close to don’t know what it’s like.”
He sure as hell didn’t, could hardly imagine the helplessness, the uncertainty. But Deke...Deke would get it. “I may know someone.”
She turned sharp eyes to him. “You? How?”
“I have a friend who was in Afghanistan. I’ll see if he’s willing to talk to you, if you want.”
“Does he have whiskey?” she teased, though an edge sharpened her voice.
He didn’t answer, refused to, just watched as she sat back, her hands braced behind her, and closed her eyes, lifting her face to the breeze. She almost looked peaceful, and he imagined that was rough for her, after what she’d just told him. Damn it, this protectiveness he felt for her was going to kick him in the balls, but he couldn’t help himself. He reached out and stroked her hair, just as soft as he remembered. He thought she’d pull away, but instead she turned her face into his hand and rested her cheek against his palm.
Against his better judgement, he leaned over and brushed his lips against hers, just to see if she tasted like he remembered.
She opened her mouth on a moan and turned into his arms, digging her fingers into the back of his scalp like she was drowning and wanted him to save her. Jesus, he wanted to save her, especially when he tasted the whiskey-flavored desperation on her lips.
He should have pulled away. He sure as hell shouldn’t have let her climb on his lap, press her body against his as her mouth devoured his. She reached between them to unbutton his shirt, dragged her fingers over his bare skin. Everything in him wanted to tumble her back on the blanket, wanted to kiss his way down her body.
Instead, he captured her hands and eased back, breaking the kiss.
“Please,” she whispered, and broke his heart with the haunted look in her eyes.
“Not when you’re hurting.”
“I won’t be, not if you make love with me.”
He took a breath, considered. “When you’re sober.”
She gave a harsh laugh and pushed herself off his lap. “That was never a problem before.”
“We were involved before.”
She made a sound he couldn’t decipher. “We were involved with getting each other naked.”
Had it been like that for her? He had been in love with her, with her sass and her dreams and her daring. He’d missed her like hell when she left, and it had been more than sex. He’d missed the rides and the conversation and the laughter.
He didn’t want to make love with her until he could hear her laugh again.
She was pissed now, though, as she rose to her feet in a fluid movement and turned toward the horses. “I need to get back. Dad has a bottle of Scotch calling my name.”


Christmas in the Cowboy's Arms is available at all retailers! 

Lauren Stokes raced down the stairs as fast as she could without tripping over her own feet. Her heart slammed against her ribs, warning her if she wasn’t fast enough it planned to escape without her. Short rapid breaths left her mouth bone-dry. She sensed her pursuer closing, so close she heard his heartbeat, felt the brush of fingertips along her shoulder.She pushed harder, the choice between capture and a fall down the stairs being one of survival. The staircase she’d descended for years became dark and unfamiliar, her vision tunneling on the steps ahead. At the bend in the staircase Lauren vaulted over the rail and into a living room full of men riveted to the football game on TV. The men shouted in protest and she panted apologies, racing past the big screen and launching over the back of the couch, determined to reach the back door and safety.
The door was bolted—she’d never known it to be so in the middle of the day. Trapped! Wildly, she cast a glance at the closed door. Did she dare face what was on the other side, or the man chasing her
Raising her hands in surrender, she turned to her best friend, who barely breathed hard despite the pursuit. Dark eyes glinted in triumph, and she nudged just a little farther into the corner. “Seriously, Seth, you don’t want me on your team. I stink at football.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s a Thanksgiving tradition. And you lost the bet.” Seth caught her around the waist and flung her over his shoulder in a fireman’s carry. His muscular shoulder jabbed into her middle, knocking out her breath with an oof. Since shouting wasn’t an option, she pounded his back over the sound of her mother’s voice from the now- open kitchen door.
“Lauren! You get down from there! For God’s sake, you’re twenty-four years old!”
Disbelief, and her upside down position, had her choking.
“Sorry, Mrs. Stokes, Lauren has a bet to settle,” Seth Escamilla said, and Lauren could just imagine the grin that had every female in San Antonio melting at his feet. “Ooh, watch the feet there, Lauren.”
“Ugh! I’d rather cook than play football!” Lauren grunted as he carried her out the front door.
“Then you shouldn’t have bet you could beat me on the PlayStation. You should know I’m the champ.” He set her down and slapped her butt. “You’re on Rey’s team.”
Great. Bad enough she’d been chased through the house, been yelled at, then dragged out to play a sport she loathed, but he’d compounded it all by foisting her off on his brother’s team. Rey always lost. That knowledge didn’t stop her from making the claim, “We’ll win.”
He edged closer and squared his shoulders in some kind of macho swagger. Dark eyes sparked as he met the challenge. “What do you want to bet?”
She lifted her chin. “If my team wins, I get to go on a ride-along.”
“Geez, again? How many ride-alongs can you go on before it gets boring?”
“I don’t know. Are you bored yet?”
He stepped closer. The light sheen of sweat on his skin, the scent of him—like autumn leaves and woodsmoke—sent an unsettling tickle through her. She’d learned long ago to bottle such reactions to Seth Escamilla. The only way to stay friends was to pretend he wasn’t the best looking guy she’d ever seen. It worked. Most of the time.
“No, but see, I get to go in and fight the fires. You,” he poked her in the chest, “get to sit on the truck with the dog.”
The tickle mellowed to a, not-unpleasant buzz low in her belly. She knew that buzz, had felt it many times recently. Lately, just watching a Brad Pitt movie did it. So no surprise a look from Seth would too. He was male, after all.
But she moved away on the off chance he could hear that buzz, and talked over it. “Still, it’s what I want.”
“All right. If my team wins, you come to Sierra Cliffs next Friday night and sing with the band.”
She twisted her hair back and secured it with a plastic clip, using the action as an excuse to move away, regain her senses. “Oh, Seth, you really don’t want me up there with a microphone in front of all those nice people, do you? I could tell stories that would have your groupies scattering.”
“Then please lose,” he said with a grin.
She scowled and marched over to Rey’s defensive line. She crouched at the end, as far from the football as possible, then bared her teeth at Seth, who flashed a grin. He took the snap, running back and inspecting his team for an open man as Rey bore down. Lauren thought she could handle blocking Seth’s eight-year-old nephew Beto, but she was wrong. The little guy proved to be fast and slippery, and Lauren scrambled after him, her sneakers skidding in the grass.
A shout made her turn to see the ball hurtling toward her head. She threw her hands up and intercepted it, almost accidentally. She barely had a moment to exalt in triumph before someone plowed into her middle and tossed her on the damp ground, knocking her breath out and pinning her down. After her head cleared, she opened her eyes to Seth’s smirking face, and his full weight along the length of her body.
“You didn’t tell me it was tackle football,” she gasped, pushing at his chest. Damn, the man was solid and warm, not an ounce of fat. All that maleness pressed against some long denied parts of her body in an interesting way. Was that a flicker of something—realization she was a girl, maybe—in those eyes? The emotion disappeared fast and he took his sweet time getting up, sliding his body down her legs.
The buzz heightened for a minute, only to be drowned out by the pain coursing up from her knee, which was turned at an awkward angle beneath her. She dropped her head back, wincing as the hair clip pinched her scalp, and stared up at the bare branches waving against the sky. “I think I just got excused from dish duty.”


Seth cradled her against his chest, careful not to jostle her leg as he carried her back into the house. Her body, which had been so soft on the ground under him now tensed with pain.
Pain he had caused.
He chased everyone off the couch and gently lowered her, unhooking her hands from the back of his neck with some reluctance. He straightened her leg, then shouted for Beto to bring an ice pack and a pair of scissors.
She rose up on her elbow at his last request. “Scissors?”
“If it’s your knee, you don’t want me taking off your pants.” Horror flashed across her face so he added, “The pain. These jeans are a little snug.”
“No they aren’t!” She tugged at the waistband. “Plenty of room for turkey! It’s probably just a sprain. Just a sprain!” she said louder when Beto returned carrying scissors. She grabbed Seth’s wrist in protest, inadvertently pressing his hand down on her knee; her eyes rolled back in pain. But when she caught her breath, she reiterated her plea. “Not my jeans. Please, Seth, I just got these the way I like them.”
“I’ll buy you another pair,” he promised, and she closed her eyes as the scissors ripped through denim. The fabric fell apart to reveal her knee, approximately the size of a grapefruit and still swelling. “Wow.”
“Wow? What wow?” Lauren curled up to see, and everyone who’d gathered around the couch leaned forward before Seth waved them off. He eased her back with a hand to her chest and gingerly probed the smooth flesh around her knee. She sucked in a breath, and the sound went straight to his guilt. Dislocated, and he’d done it.
“Mom, bring me some Advil, or whatever’s the strongest. Maybe we’d better call an ambulance.” He said that last more to himself then looked to his father for a second opinion. His dad worked as an EMT at the same firehouse, and though Seth was EMT trained, he didn’t have the years of experience.
Lauren again propped up on her elbow, but Seth saw the beads of sweat on her forehead. “No way, Seth. I do not want to go to the ER on Thanksgiving. You broke it, you fix it.”
He hated to see her suffer, but knew his training wouldn’t be enough to help her. “I’m not a doctor, Lauren. There could be some ligament damage.”
“I don’t want to go to the hospital.” Her voice rose in desperation. “Fix it.”
He couldn’t blame her for wanting to skip the ER.And even though both his dad and hers, the fire captain, were better qualified to treat her, he was the best to bully her. He used that excuse to avoid giving over the responsibility. “Dad, get her foot. Mitch, hold her still.” Her father gave Seth a look of trepidation before pressing Lauren’s shoulders deep into the couch. Seth’s father took her feet. Seth looked from one man to the other. “Ready, on three. One...” And he popped her knee back in place.
She shrieked, arching back into the couch. “Three!” she gasped. “You said three!”
“You were already tensing up. It’d only hurt more.” He molded the ice in its Ziploc bag onto her knee and she cried out, jerking her leg away.
Seth sucked in a sympathetic breath. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Dad, can you—I’m pretty sure we have a few Ace bandages in the bathroom upstairs. Can you get me one?”
Seth hovered while he waited, rubbing his thumb over the smooth skin above her knee. Lauren hissed, but this time he didn’t think it had anything to do with pain. He snatched his hand back, not looking at her, afraid she might realize where his thoughts had strayed.
Oscar returned with the bandages and Seth removed the ice to gently wrap her knee, snugging the fabric enough to give it support, smoothing it over her instead of touching her skin.
“Okay, stay off it till the swelling goes down.” He dragged a hand through his hair as he double-checked his handiwork, then looked up at her. “Please let me take you to the ER.”
Her eyes were a little out of focus from the pain, and her indecision showed as she looked at her knee. “Can we eat first? I don’t want to ruin everyone’s dinner.” She looked up at her mother. “Sorry I won’t be able to help.”
Valerie turned back into the kitchen. “I knew nothing good would come of that fooling around.”
“Thanks for the sympathy,” Lauren muttered, and pushed into a sitting position.
“Whoa, whoa, where do you think you’re going?” Seth stopped her with one hand out.
She looked around at those who’d drifted away in disinterest now that her kneecap was back where it should be and wrapped out of sight. “I have to go to the bathroom,” she said, color returning to her face all at once.
Seth turned to his father, who’d settled back on the other couch. “Dad, do we still have those crutches?”
Oscar shrugged, his attention back on the game. “Somewhere.”
“Can you go look?” Seth asked with a touch of impatience.
“Um, Seth?” Lauren touched his arm. “I can’t wait.”
“All right, then.” He bent down, slipped one arm beneath her legs and the other behind her back. His thumb brushed the side of her breast and he quickly readjusted his touch before lifting her. He grunted when she settled against his chest, curving her arms around his neck, her hands soft and cool against his suddenly overheating skin. That was just the result of exerting himself in front of the fireplace his mother insisted on burning—not because of Lauren’s skin, or her breast. Damn, he couldn’t even think about the word breast in the same sentence with Lauren. “I’m not going to keep doing this after you eat three helpings of sweet potato casserole.”
“I can hop.”
“And fall down and hit your head.” He started down the hall and through his parents’ room to the master bath. He would only do so much penance; climbing the stairs with Lauren was not on the list. “Then I would have to take you to the ER and miss Thanksgiving dinner anyway.”
He started through the bathroom door, but she grabbed the doorjamb. “Oh, no you don’t. I can take it from here.”
“Are you sure?” He set her carefully on her good leg and got his hands off her. Quickly.
“So very sure.” She eased inside, bracing herself on the sink. “And don’t stand out here listening like you did in the sand dunes when we used to go camping.”
“I didn’t just listen,” he teased.
“Oh!” She slammed the door in his face.


God, her leg hurt, not only the knee, but even the toes and hip. She leaned on the sink and edged toward the toilet, trying to figure out how to do this.
“Lauren? You all right in there?”
She snapped her head toward the door. He sounded so close. “Give me a minute!”
“Honey, you’ve been in there nearly five.”
She swayed with the knowledge. “Minutes? Really?” “You want me to go get one of my sisters?”
Shame outweighed that temptation. “No! No, just wait there, okay?”
“Okay,” he said softly. “I’ll be right here.”
Now why did he go and say something like that? Why was he being nice? She could handle Seth the tease, and Seth the bully, but when he was nice—well, she didn’t have much resistance for that. And she prided herself on being the only woman in San Antonio who could resist Seth Escamilla. She’d had the most practice.
She was washing her hands when Seth came through the door. Good Lord, she hadn’t even locked it? She slapped a hand up against the wood. “God, Seth!”
“You need help?” His eyes were dark with concern, his brow furrowed. Oh, no. She needed the old light- hearted Seth back. She didn’t want to be carted around by this guy. He was too dangerous.
“Did your dad find the crutches yet?” She hooked her hand behind his neck. This close, she noticed how neatly he kept his hair trimmed, noticed the touches of red threaded among the black. Back, damn hormones, back. Back! She envisioned stuffing the girly-looking, fairy-type things back in a bottle and corking it shut for another ten years.
“He’s carving the turkey right now. He said he’d look after dinner.”
The rumble of his voice echoed in his chest and she resisted the alien urge to rest her head on his shoulder. Whoa, those drugs worked fast. Wait a minute. She hadn’t taken any yet. She turned her thoughts to something less disturbing, like the pain in her leg. At least that pain was fleeting. Lusting after a guy like Seth could scar her for life.
Seth set her on the couch. “I’ll bring you a plate. What do you want?”
“Turkey and cranberries,” she said, trying to get comfortable, not easy without moving her leg.
He looked skeptical. “That’s it?”
“Right.” She shoved an extra pillow behind her for support. “Pile it on. Everything but corn, okay?” 
“Gotcha.”
He disappeared into the kitchen and she dropped her head to the back of the couch. She listened to the buzz of conversation from the dining room table, hidden from view by the back of the couch. No one seemed to miss her.
Seth returned with two plates and dragged the coffee table closer to Lauren. She sat up with some effort. “Two plates? How hungry do I look?”
“One’s for me.”
“Oh, good.” She took the one he offered and pointed her fork at the other. “I don’t like my food all smashed together like that.”
“You can fit more stuff that way.” He put a pillow from the back of the couch on her lap beneath her plate. “I’ll get our drinks and be right back.”
“You don’t have to sit with me,” she said when he returned with two glasses of iced tea.
“Well, sure.” He made room for himself at her feet. “I don’t want you to eat your Thanksgiving dinner alone.”
“A guilty conscience is a terrible thing,” she teased, popping a piece of a roll in her mouth. Damn, he was being nice again.
“Turn off the TV,” his mother Sandra called.
Seth reached across the coffee table for the remote, clicking off right in the middle of a kick-off. The men groaned. Sandra shushed them and the two families offered grace.
“Isn’t it sweet the way Seth is looking after Lauren?” Sandra said, sotto voce. “Maybe this is the answer to my prayers.”
“We can hear you!” Lauren called. She couldn’t look at Seth. Their parents’ fondest wish was for the two of them to hook up romantically. It was not something either of them discussed.
Sandra lowered her voice. “He should take her to the ER so they can spend that time together.”
Oh yeah. In that haven of romance. Lauren wanted to roll her eyes, but respected Sandra too darn much.
“They’re together all the time anyway,” Valerie said. “I swear, if she didn’t have her friend Hilary, I’d worry she had no female influence at all. Lord knows she never listens to me.”
“Can still hear you,” Lauren reiterated.
“It would be wonderful if they’d only realize how perfect they are for each other,” Sandra went on. “It would keep our families connected and it would settle them down.”
Wordlessly, Seth clicked on the TV, drowning out the conversation. Their families didn’t need a connection. Their fathers had been best friends since high school, had joined the Marines together, fought in Vietnam together. They came home and married within a month of each other, and now worked at the same firehouse. While Lauren was an only child—thus the only hope for a marital connection—Seth had three sisters and a brother. Lauren had always preferred Seth’s adventures to those of his sisters. It was just always comfortable. She didn’t want that to change. And if she managed to keep control of herself, it wouldn’t.
“I don’t want to go to the emergency room,” Lauren said petulantly after Seth cleared their plates. She knew it was necessary, but was scared of what the doctors would find. She cast a pleading look at him as he waited, unflinching, her jacket folded over his arm.
“You might have torn something. I’d rather be safe than sorry.”
“I’m perfectly fine.” She swung her bad leg off the couch and struggled upright, all of her weight on her good leg. “See? No problem.”
He dropped his hands down in front of him, feet slightly apart in a challenge. “Put your foot down.”
“All right, I’m putting my foot down. I refuse to go to the emergency room.”
“All right, then. I can’t make you.” He placed her folded coat on the back of the couch. “I’ll tell Mom you’re ready to help with the dishes.”
“You play dirty.” Washing dishes for a crowd of twenty held less appeal than the ER. She staggered and touched her toe to the floor to regain her balance. Everything went white and Seth gripped her arms.
“Okay, here we go.” He picked her up once more. “We’re going!” he called to the rest and carried her out to
the car.
* * *
The emergency room was a madhouse, whimpers of pain underneath loud protests echoing off the tile walls. Lauren kept her eyes averted from the electric knife accident, and several other amateur football injuries. She sat beside a man who smelled like he had a digestive problem. Food poisoning victims were well represented, making Lauren oddly grateful for her knee. Seth was engrossed in the game on the tiny TV mounted in the corner, and Lauren dozed against his shoulder, sleepy from the turkey.
She woke with a start when a woman charged into the waiting area carrying a damp blanket and screaming for help. Seth was on his feet in an instant and took the bundle, calling for a gurney. “It’s okay,” he assured the stricken woman. “I’m an EMT. What happened?”
“I couldn’t find her,” the woman half gasped, half sobbed. “She got caught in the pool cover and I didn’t see her.”
Seth glanced up at the woman, then peeled back the blanket. He made a small noise Lauren recognized as horror, but kept his expression impassive. In a calm voice, he instructed the man from the admissions desk to get the trauma doctor immediately and the woman’s voice went shrill.
“Is she dead?”
Seth didn’t answer, only tilted the child’s head back gently, swept his finger in her mouth and bent his head to cover her mouth with his. The certainty of his movements was at odds with his hesitation with Lauren’s injury earlier. Ignoring her own pain, Lauren edged closer, fascinated.
Seth rose for a quick breath. “How old is she?” 
“Three.”
Lauren closed her eyes and swallowed the overwhelming sadness.
“What’s her name?” How could Seth stay so calm when the little body was so still beneath his hands? Was this what he did every day? How could he bear it? She felt the urge to go to him, put her arms around him.
“Jackie,” the woman said.
Seth sent another puff of breath into the child’s lungs, then drew back, sitting on his heels as the child started coughing.
“Okay, Jackie, you’re going to be okay,” he said to the faceless bundle, his hands moving over her assessingly. “You’re at the hospital and the doctors are going to make you all better.” Lauren could tell by the brightness in his voice that he didn’t believe it.
When a trauma team finally rushed forward to take the child, Seth looked over at Lauren, silently asking permission to see this through. She nodded once, a lump in her throat, her chest tight, and he disappeared through the double doors.
Seth found Lauren after she’d been wheeled back to an exam room, while she waited for x-rays, ignoring the shouts of pain on the other side of the curtain.
“Hey.” He slid onto the rolling stool beside her and took her hand. He smiled, but tension pulled at the edges of his mouth. She looked from his soaked sweatshirt to his face but he wouldn’t meet her eyes.
“How is she?”
He shook his head. “It’s going to be tough going for awhile, but her mother got her here pretty quickly. That could make a difference.”
She squeezed his hand, unable to say anything. Just as well—anything that came out would probably sound stupid and insensitive. “That poor woman.”
He looked at her with something like surprise in his eyes.
She was taken aback at his reaction. “What, you don’t think I can be sympathetic?”
“Well, no, not that.” He sat back and waved his hand as if swatting the thought away.
“Then what?” she asked, straightening up on the exam table. Did he think she was so self-absorbed she couldn’t feel for someone else’s pain, that she was too involved in her own? 
“Nice to know you think I’m shallow.”
“I don’t. I just—didn’t expect—I don’t usually see people at their best. I never thought about you seeing that part of my life.”
Ah. Not about her at all. He was uncomfortable with what she’d witnessed. She reached out. “You were great with her.”
He made a noncommittal noise through his nose, which meant he didn’t want to talk about it, but she had to know.
“So you—deal with that sort of thing a lot?”
“The pay’s good, lots of overtime. I only fill in when they need me. It’s intense. Little kids are the worst. I’d rather fight fires.” He pulled his hand away to support his bent head.
Lauren fluttered her touch above his shoulder, the back of his head. She’d never seen him so upset. They’d always been good friends, but most of their interaction was lighthearted. Even the tragedies they’d faced together—her bad break up, his dropping out of college— paled in comparison to this. She’d never seen him cope with anything so traumatic, never realized he could feel so deeply over someone else’s pain, and the way he’d gone straight to work, without even thinking about it stunned and impressed her. This competence, this compassion was beyond her experience, made him more of a man than the carefree boy she’d loved forever, and something inside tightened in response.
She dropped her hand lightly against the back of his head, stroked his hair soothingly, the knot of leather at the back of his neck that held his St. Florian medal, patron saint of firefighters. His hands fell to his lap, his broad shoulders drooped, and he closed his eyes, accepting her caress. After a few moments, after she’d appreciated the thick silkiness of his hair, the warmth of his skin, he turned just enough to look at her, not enough to dislodge her caress. Now there was something she hadn’t seen in his eyes before, a sort of speculation she’d only seen when they were out in public, and never directed at her. Her breath caught.
“Miss Stokes? We’ll take you to x-ray now,” an orderly announced, pushing aside the curtain of her cubicle.
Lauren snatched her hand away like she’d been lit on fire and Seth jumped up. Whoa. What had that been? Geez, she’d touched him before, playful smacks and brief commiserative touches, but she’d never caressed him like that. He’d never wanted her to stop touching him before.
Maybe he was overly sensitive after dealing with the little girl. He avoided the EMT assignment for this reason; it left him too open, too raw. He wanted to push the feelings back behind a wall, like his father had done, wanted to keep it impersonal, but today’s incident caught him off guard. The holiday and being with Lauren intensified his reaction. He didn’t want to show her that side of his life. He shook his head to chase the child’s image, and her mother’s, from his mind.
Maybe he had an overdeveloped sense of guilt for hurting Lauren, for dragging her into the game, for tackling her too hard. Yeah, he’d taken a little too much pleasure in taking her down. All he knew was, this was wild.
He gripped the handles of the wheelchair once the orderly settled her in. “Let’s see what’s going on here,” Seth said with forced cheerfulness and wheeled her out of the exam room toward x-ray. His step stuttered when he recognized the child’s mother standing in the hall, staring out a window, hugging herself and rocking on her heels.
He wanted to speed past, pretend he didn’t see her, didn’t know her sad story. He wanted to push her pain away. But he found himself slowing, releasing Lauren’s chair to approach her. This woman shouldn’t be alone— why was she alone at a time like this?
He touched her arm. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
She jumped in surprise. Once she recognized him, she gripped his bicep like a lifeline. She raised her face, ravaged by pain and guilt, and unable to help himself, Seth opened his arms. She pressed her face to his chest, her hands fisting in his sleeves, and let the sobs rip through her. Her tears soaked into his t-shirt, the tremors of her body shook his soul.
Through his own tears he looked over the woman’s head at Lauren, who wept silently watching them them. He wanted to go to her so they could cry together, share the woman’s sorrow, comfort each other, and that desire touched him someplace deep inside, a place he didn’t know he had, a place he was afraid to name.

​Where There's Smoke is available at all retailers. 
​

“So, what do you think?” Patricia DiNorio folded her arms on the split-rail fence and turned her hopeful expression to Willow. 
Willow Hawkins opened and closed her mouth a few times, not certain she had understood the woman correctly. “Jerry is going to live here?” She gestured to the three-story Victorian home in front of her. Would a son want to live right next door to his mother? Not any man she knew. 
“You and Jerry,” Patricia clarified. “Won’t it be wonderful? We’ve already spoken to the bank and gotten preapproved for the loan. Wait until you see inside! There are a few things that need fixing, of course, in a house this old, but I’m sure Jerry can do a lot of the work himself.” She must have seen the doubt in Willow’s expression, because she added, “This is every girl’s dream home.” 
Not hers. Not a Victorian monster with gingerbread trim. No, she liked sleek and modern, and if she was going to buy a house, she was going to pick it out herself, damn it. 
“Just close your eyes,” Mrs. DiNorio urged. 
Willow did what she was told out of instinct more than any desire to humor the woman’s delusions. 
“Now, imagine yourself ten years down the road, your husband and children playing in the yard. Can’t you see it?” 
Ten years down the road. She did want a husband, and children, but the nameless, faceless man she imagined giving piggy‐ back rides to a little blond boy or pushing a little blonde girl wasn’t slender, pale Jerry. No, he was tall, and dark-haired, strong but gentle. Familiar somehow. 
Willow felt herself shaking her head, and opened her eyes. She couldn’t be certain if the woman was serious—after all, she’d only met her a few hours ago, when Willow and Jerry had arrived early for Thanksgiving. This could all be a big joke, right? Mrs. DiNorio had never even spoken to Willow until today. How could she presume to know her taste? 
And for heaven’s sake, though they worked together, Willow had only been on a few dates with Jerry, including one to her friend Judith’s wedding. She admitted to being charmed by him, and maybe a little swept away by wedding fever after seeing how happy Judith was. But no way was she ready to buy a house with Jerry. She shouldn’t even have come home with him for Thanks‐ giving, she realized now. Her best friend, Cam, had warned her visiting Jerry’s family could be misconstrued. But she’d had no other options, with her mother in Vermont with her new boyfriend, and Cam’s family off to Minnesota to celebrate with his very pregnant sister. Cam had stayed behind, but hadn’t told her why. Nor had he suggested they do Thanksgiving on their own. At loose ends, she’d accepted Jerry’s invitation and now his mother wanted to buy her a house. Was Jerry that hard up for dates? 
She took a step back from Mrs. DiNorio’s too-cheerful face, toward the DiNorio home. Jerry would talk some sense into his mother, no doubt. “You know, I think Jerry mentioned meeting up with some of his friends before dinner,” she said. “I should get ready.” 
“Don’t you want to see the inside of the house? I have the key.” Mrs. DiNorio dangled it in front of her. 
Willow took another backward step. “No, that’s okay.” 
Mrs. DiNorio lowered her hand to her side, her smile dimming only a little. “I understand. You want to see it with Jerry for the first time. I can understand that completely.” 
That wasn’t it at all, but Willow didn’t argue as long as it would aid her escape. “I’ll just—” She pointed at the DiNorio home to telegraph her intention, then pivoted and willed herself not to run away. She would get Jerry to talk to his mother, to make him see what they had wasn’t serious. It wasn’t...anything but a mistake. 


“JERRY, you might want to talk to your mom,” she said as they drove in his sedan to the bar where they’d meet up with his friends. She wasn’t wild about heading to a bar at four in the afternoon, but most of his friends had plans tonight, and this was the only time they could meet. “I don’t think she has the right idea about us.” 
“What idea would that be?” 
“Well, she tried to put us in the same room and we haven’t slept together,” she reminded him. 
He lifted a shoulder. “She’s just trying to show she’s modern.” 
Willow found her anything but, though her concerns were interrupted when Jerry swung the car into a parking lot and greeted two men getting out of another vehicle. 
Soon Willow found herself in the center of a sports bar, surrounded by the glories of Jerry’s high school football career and his former teammates, all of whom were watching her like a pack of hungry wolves. She could almost see the gleam of saliva on their teeth. And Jerry—Jerry had his arm draped over her shoulder, his hand dangling over her right boob so that, at any moment, she expected he’d give it a honk, just to show his possession. Her back hurt from leaning away from the curl of his fingers. Every word out of his mouth was accompanied by his warm yeasty breath against her cheek, and the words them‐ selves... Man, she had really screwed up, thinking she knew him. 
“Sweetheart, could we get a couple more beers over here?” Jerry leaned past her to ask the blonde bartender. He didn’t say it in the charming way some men did, with a sexy purr. No, his words had a layer of condescension that Willow hoped the bartender didn’t pick up on. 
“Then you could bring yourself over,” one of his friends, Steve, added with a leer. All the men laughed as though it was the most original statement ever. 
Willow met the blonde’s eyes and mouthed, “Sorry.” The bartender just rolled her eyes as if she was used to it. 
The phone in Willow’s pocket buzzed, giving her an excuse to pull away from the group. She ducked from under Jerry’s arm, drawing the phone out. She glanced at the unfamiliar number, then remembered that Mr. LeFleur, her boss at the ad company where she and Jerry worked, had awarded her the campaign for a hotel chain hoping to revitalize its image. He’d warned her that the hotel’s new CEO was a workaholic, but so was Willow, so she hadn’t minded. Success on this project meant a good influx of cash into their small agency, putting it in the black for the first time since the recession started, which might mean a promotion for her. She hadn’t expected a call until the weekend was over, however. 
She strode quickly toward the door, answering only when she could hear herself think over the clacking billiards, men shouting at the basketball game on TV and the pervasive country music underlying it all. 
“Willow Hawkins,” she said, one hand on the door. “Willow, this is Gwyn Liedka, from Nightengale Hotels.” 
No apology for calling the night before a holiday, but Willow let it go. 
“I just wanted to touch base with you on the design you sent over. I’m very pleased with it, but—” 
Willow didn’t hear the rest of the sentence. A hand gripped her shoulder and turned her around. She looked into Jerry’s frowning face. 
“A client,” she mouthed, but maybe he couldn’t see her in the darkened parking lot. She held out a hand for him to wait, then covered her ear to better hear the tail end of Gwyn’s sentence. 
“...image we want to project. More upbeat and modern, you know?” 
“I do know,” Willow said, though she had no idea. 
Jerry held out a hand. For a moment, Willow stared at it until he made a “give me” motion with his fingers. She raised her gaze to his, unable to believe he could really mean what she thought. He wanted her phone? Oh, hell no. She lifted her eyebrows in a challenge. He wouldn’t really ask for it. 
He didn’t. He just plucked it out of her hand. Willow stared as he snapped it closed and tucked it into his shirt pocket. 
“Come on, Willow,” he cajoled. “We’re here to have fun.” 
Her nostrils flared. She couldn’t remember ever being so angry, so humiliated. The rage rolling through her stole her breath, and her eyes burned from what she suspected might be tears. Jerry of all people should know how important clients were to their agency. She wanted to rip his pocket off and shove it in his mouth. 
“Please give me my phone,” she said through her teeth. 
He inclined his head in a condescending manner. Screw his pocket. She wanted to rip off his face. “Do you promise not to use it again tonight?” 
“Jerry, that was my new client.” A horrid thought occurred to her. Was Jerry jealous that Mr. LeFleur had assigned her to this account? Willow had been with the company longer, and Gwyn Liedka had indicated she wanted to work with a woman. 
“She can wait.” Though he was smiling, there was an edge in his voice. 
That put her back up. She stepped toward him, her hand extended in an imitation of his earlier gesture. “Jerry. Give me my phone.” 
His jaw set stubbornly and for a moment she thought he’d refuse. She’d seen that expression before, regularly, on the face of her mother’s controlling second husband, Tucker. Her stomach churned. She couldn’t put herself in the same situation that had made both her mother and her so miserable. She would fight to make sure it never happened. 
Finally he drew the phone out of his pocket and offered it with a stiff grin. “No more business this weekend, all right?” 
Ignoring him, hating herself for being such a fool, for taking her eyes off her goal and giving into emotions sparked by Judith’s wedding, she turned and strode back into the bar.


“Cam, I need you to come get me.” Willow pressed a hand to one ear and her cell phone to the other. She’d pled a headache to get Jerry to bring her back to his parents’, and he’d been so solicitous, she’d been afraid she’d have to sneak out the window in order to use her phone. Instead, she’d slipped out the front door while his mother was preparing dinner. 
On the other end of the phone, Cameron Trask grunted, signaling that he’d just woken up. He must be working nights again. “Where are you?” 
“Triple Creek, Wisconsin. Jerry’s parents’ house.” 
She heard rustling through the phone. Him getting out of bed, maybe. She hoped he was alone. “What happened?” he asked, his voice more alert, tinged with concern. 
“I just—I can’t stay. I’ll explain when you get here. Please?” 
She held her breath, waiting for his answer. Yes, she was asking him to drive three hours in the snow the day before Thanksgiving. She was out of options. Triple Creek didn’t have an airport or bus station. The town boasted only two cabs, and neither would drive her back to Illinois, or even to the next town to rent a car. Though she and Cam texted at least once a day and talked on the phone at least once a week, she hadn’t seen him in weeks. Both of them were too wrapped up in their jobs. But he had been her best friend since third grade. He would do this for her. 
“Triple Creek?” he asked. 
She heard the familiar squeak of his computer chair, the tapping of his fingers on the keys of his computer. “It’s just over the border,” she told him. 
“I see it on the map. It’s a speck.” 
“Which is why you’re my only choice. I can’t get out of here any other way. And believe me when I say I need to get out of here.” 
“It’s about two hundred miles, Will. I won’t be there in the next five minutes.” 
“I know.” She bounced on her toes and hugged herself, both against the cold and the uncertainty that he would let her stay here with her mistake. She scrambled for something, anything, to convince him. “Look, I’ll pay for gas, food, everything. Anything. You have to get me out of here.” She glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one had come out of the house. “He’s more like Tucker than I thought.” She closed her eyes, waiting for Cam’s I- told-you-so. 
Instead of gloating, he sighed. “I’ll call when I leave Illinois.” 
Relief sent a wave of warmth through her. Trust Cam to come to her rescue. “Thank you, Cam. I owe you.” 
“Don’t forget it,” he said, but his tone was light. 
Willow hung up and squared her shoulders as she faced the door leading back into Jerry’s parents’ house. She didn’t want to do this, but running off without a word was immature. After all, she’d have to face Jerry again on Monday. 
Jerry opened the door, startling her, slapping his hands over his chest as if he’d been the one standing on the porch instead of her. 
“What are you doing out here? It’s got to be thirty degrees out.” He reached out and she fought every instinct to flinch when he caught her arm and drew her inside. “Come on, Mom wants to get to know you better.” 
She couldn’t bear the thought of letting them think for another minute that she was going through with this relation‐ ship. She took a deep breath as he propelled her forward, and hoped Cam would hurry. 


Cam stood in the middle of his apartment, hands on his hips as he tried to figure out what to do. He had planned to leave tonight on the train to Seattle. He hadn’t told Willow he’d sold his car and now took public transportation, because sometimes he sensed she was impatient with his attempt to reduce his carbon footprint. So how was he supposed to ride to her rescue? 
Then there was Libby. The poor girl had warmed his bed all day, and he couldn’t leave her here. But how could he take her with him? She watched him now with those big brown eyes, head tilted to one side as if she sympathized with his dilemma. 
But Willow was in trouble. She never asked for help—for his help anyway—and while he’d finally taken steps to get on with his life, to get her out of his system once and for all, he couldn’t leave her in the lurch. He’d tried to make the separation gradual, cutting down on their face-to-face meetings by claiming work, reducing the number of their phone calls, limiting their interactions to IM. That way he wouldn’t see her face, hear her voice, and lose his resolve to take charge of his life. But now she needed him.  
He’d loved her since high school, though she’d never seen him as more than her best friend. 
An idea popped into his head, so clearly the answer he couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of it before. Okay, he probably hadn’t thought of it before because Brian would kill him. But Brian was out of town, already on his way to Melanie’s for Thanksgiving. He wouldn’t know. A six-hour round trip, maybe. Nothing would happen to Brian’s precious classic car. Then Cam could catch the train tomorrow. He’d be cutting his schedule a bit close, but this was Willow. 
Feeling lighter, he straightened his shoulders and considered Libby, still sitting among the rumpled bedclothes. She would be a more difficult issue. Because the eight-month-old puppy, half pug and half Chihuahua, was spoiled and used to getting her way, she’d stayed with him while the rest of the family traveled to Minnesota. His plan was to ditch her with the neighbors tomorrow night, but they weren’t home now. He hoped they’d be back by the time he returned with Brian’s Chevelle. 
“Okay, Lib, need to go out?” he asked, drawing out the words as he’d heard his parents do, grinning when she cocked her head comically and then leapt off the bed and headed for the door. 


WILLOW SAT in the Triple Creek Diner on Main Street, her hands folded around a cup of coffee, her luggage on the floor beside the booth and her ears ringing with accusations hurled by Jerry’s mother. She’d led him on, she’d made promises, she’d broken his heart, she was a selfish girl, only thinking of her career instead of the security Jerry could offer her. 
Doubts spun through her head. She agreed with the last assessment. She was selfish. But the other accusations—she didn’t think so. She was very careful with men and their expectations. She hadn’t slept with Jerry, though his mother had seemed to think that was the case. But Willow had agreed to go home with him for the holiday. There was her mistake, and Cam had warned her. Cam, who should be here any minute now. 
Any minute. She had to get out of this place. 
The rumble of a big engine drew her attention. She recognized the yellow classic Chevy with the black stripes along the hood, but she didn’t recognize the driver, not really. Cam’s shaggy chestnut hair had been trimmed to a more stylish length, though it still covered the tops of the ears he thought were too big. His face was leaner and his shoulders looked broader under the coat he wore. She sucked in a sharp breath. The nameless faceless husband from her fantasy earlier—it was Cam. 
She immediately shut the feeling down. Cam was her rock. He was off-limits. She’d never had success in relationships—witness Jerry—and she couldn’t risk losing Cam. He was her family. So she’d made a conscious decision never to set her sights on Cam and was good with the choice. 
Most of the time. 
He met her gaze through the plate-glass window and she scrambled to drop a bill on the table. She grabbed her luggage and purse and practically bowled over an older couple coming in the door in her urgency to leave. 
Cam smiled and stepped forward to take her suitcase. Tender‐ ness lit his brown eyes. When he touched her arm, a horrible sound came from the car, shrill and insistent. She pivoted to look at the sharp teeth of a small, fawn-colored dog. 
She turned to Cameron and lifted her eyebrows. “A dog?” 
“Mom and Dad’s baby, Libby. They didn’t want to take her to Mel’s, and they didn’t want to kennel her, so they left her with me.” 
“Why didn’t you go to Mel’s?” she asked, following him as he loaded her suitcase in the backseat. “And why are you driving Brian’s car?” 
“Get in,” he said, nodding across the top of the car. “I’ll explain on the way.” 
That was easier said than done, because when Willow touched the handle of the passenger door, the dog charged, barking ferociously through the glass. Not until Cam sat in the driver’s seat, making soothing noises, did the dog back away. The animal rested its front paws on Cam’s jean-clad leg, casting threatening glances at Willow as she slid in. The dog’s growls rumbled across the seat, replaced only by the growl of the engine as he turned the ignition. 
Willow felt as if the whole town watched as Cam drove down Main Street and out of town. She felt a twinge of guilt for Jerry. How would it look to his friends and neighbors that she left with another man? In her desperation, she hadn’t considered that. His mom was right. She was selfish, though she preferred to think of it as self-preservation. 
“What happened?” Cam asked, as she’d known he would.
“He wasn’t who I thought he was.”
Cam slowed. “Did he hurt you?” His voice deepened with threat.
“No! No, nothing like that. He’d be short a hand if he had. He just, well, you were right. I shouldn’t have come. It led him to believe we were more serious, and I couldn’t let him think we had a future. His mom took me to the house next door and said she’d buy it for us as a wedding gift. Can you imagine that? Can you imagine me living in a place like this?” 
“What about your job?” 
“Exactly! Apparently, I am supposed to stay home and raise four kids—a nice even number—while Jerry commutes and takes care of me.” Willow knew some women, like her mother, saw that as security, but for her, security was being able to take care of herself. After all, she’d seen her mother abandoned more than once. 
“Sounds like Jerry doesn’t know you very well, either.” 
She ignored the last word. “The thing is, he does. But he let his mother override his good sense with her ideas of how things should be. She was even telling me how to decorate the house she was going to buy me. I’m sure she’d tell me how to raise my kids too, and how to make love to my husband. I had to get out of there, Cam. Thank you so much for coming for me.” She reached to touch his arm, but a warning growl from the dog stopped her. “Sorry, doggie.” 
“Her name’s Libby. I wanted to leave her with a neighbor when I came to get you but no one was home. She wasn’t too bad on the ride up.” 
“Hi, Libby,” Willow ventured, but the dog only growled louder. 
“She’ll get used to you.” 
Willow shifted in her seat and adjusted the vents. “Why aren’t you at Mel’s?” 
“I didn’t have time. Work.” 
She didn’t press, her mind still preoccupied with the past day’s events. “Thank you again,” she murmured, resting her cheek against the headrest and smiling. 
He glanced over and smiled back, dimple flashing. “Anytime.” 
Whoa. He’d always had that dimple, but the sight of it never made her belly flutter before. She must be more grateful than she thought. She shoved that flutter way down, suppressing it. Clearly she couldn’t be trusted with her own emotions. “I like your hair like that,” she said, to rein in her wandering thoughts. “Why did you cut it?” 
“Work.” 
She sighed in frustration at his lack of elaboration. “I hate that you don’t love your job.” He’d been employed as an IT for a Fortune 500 company for five years and was still at the bottom rung, working the crappy hours. He was entirely too brilliant to put up with that. 
“Not all of us are as lucky as you.” 
“True.” She was lucky. She adored her job as an ad designer, loved playing with colors and designs and fonts. She got along well with the people she worked with and even had happy dreams about her job. That Cam understood that fact when Jerry didn’t warmed her. “When do you have to be back?” 
“Why?” 
“Because we’re already halfway to Melanie’s.” And she could use some normal family interaction after dealing with Jerry’s overzealous family. 
Not that she really knew what a normal family was, but she’d grown up in the middle of Cam’s family since she was eight years old, the only child of a working mom. The loud group—three brothers and a sister, generous mother and soft-spoken father— had absorbed her when they realized how often she was alone. Her mother worked two different jobs just to keep their modest house. 
“You want to go to my sister’s for Thanksgiving.”
“I think you do.”
He pressed his lips together, considering. “I don’t know.” Which meant he wanted her to make the decision. She had no problem with that. She sat back in her seat with a toss of her head. “Okay, then yes, I want to go to your sister’s. If you don’t have to be back at work too soon.” 


Cam mentally pulled up train schedules. He’d have to travel to St. Paul after dinner to catch the train to Seattle, but he could make it if he left early enough. He’d considered the route when he’d learned his interview would be the Monday after Thanksgiving, but discarded the idea since he didn’t have a car. He would have to find a way from his sister’s house to St. Paul, which meant leaving her house early in the evening, disrupting everyone’s holiday. Simpler to leave from home. 
“Maybe just you and I can have Thanksgiving dinner,” he suggested, though now that she mentioned the idea of his family...well, he wanted to see his sister about to pop with her first child. 
Willow scoffed. “Which of us will cook?”
“They have restaurants open now.”
She shook her head sadly. “Not the same.”
Ah, damn, he never could resist that wistful tone. “Where’s your mom this month?”
“Vermont, I think, or Connecticut.”
“New guy? Have you met him?”
“She’s stopped introducing them to me until she gets a ring on her finger.”
Cam liked Brenda Hawkins-Bryant-Whatever-she-would-call-herself-next, but he’d spent too many years watching her disappoint her daughter as she searched for a man to take care of her. He couldn’t blame her, really. She’d worked two jobs for the first ten years he’d known her, never getting ahead unless she had a man in her life. But her behavior explained Willow’s violent reaction to Jerry’s idiotic suggestions. “You think that will happen this time?” 
“Who knows? I’m sure he’ll see through her before long.” She shifted in the seat and Libby growled. “So? Melanie’s?” 
“They aren’t expecting us.”
She raised her eyebrows. “You think they’d turn us away?”
“It’s three hours home, five hours to Melanie’s. Even if we make good time, we won’t get there until midnight.”
Her shoulders slumped. “All right. Home, then.”
He drove farther down the road, then turned into a gas station. Libby pushed to her feet in excitement as Cam slowed, and he nudged her aside, glancing over his shoulder as he guided the car through the lot, pulling back onto the road in the opposite direction, toward his sister’s house. Willow said nothing, just leaned forward and reached for his iPod, a smile curving her lips as she plugged it into an adaptor hooked up to the radio. 
“Hey,” he warned. 
“What have you got on here?” She ignored him and scrolled through his albums. 
“Springsteen, U2, Tom Petty? What century do you live in? Oh, my God. Really? Anita Baker? You have Anita Baker on your iPod.” 
A flush crept up his throat. “It was our class song.” That she didn’t remember surprised him. Or maybe not. She wasn’t exactly the sentimental type. 
“That doesn’t make it good.” She gave an exaggerated shudder. 
He took the iPod from her and placed it back in the adaptor. “Rules of the road: driver picks the music.” 
She held up her hands in surrender. “Just not Springsteen. I’m begging you.” 
He swirled his thumb over the controller and clicked. Tom Petty rolled out of the speakers, and he set both hands on the wheel again. 
“I’m surprised Brian lent you his car. Something wrong with yours?” 
“I sold it.”
“Really? Why?”
He considered what to tell her. She knew he made a conscious effort to be green, but this might be a step too far for her. Would he ever stop thinking of her every time he made a decision? “I can get anywhere I need to be with public transportation, and even one car off the road makes a difference.” 
She shook her head. “I can’t imagine being without a car.” 
“You live life at a faster pace than I do,” he pointed out.
“True.” She rubbed her hand back and forth over the dashboard. “So it must be killing you to drive this gas guzzler.”
A grin curved his lips. “I don’t know. It’s got some power.” He tapped the gas and the car ate up the road on the way to Highway 90. 
Cam didn’t work up the nerve to ask the question that had plagued him for a week until they drove into the next town. “Still surprises me that you decided to go home with Jerry for Thanksgiving. You’re always so careful about things like that.” 
“You didn’t go to Judith’s wedding,” she said, like an accusation. 
He blinked. “Yeah. I had to work.” 
“But you didn’t see it. It was gorgeous, and so romantic. Jerry took me, and was so attentive, so when he asked, I said yes.” 
“So it’s Judith’s fault.”
“No, of course not. But I kind of got swept away.”
“You’re not the swept-away type.”
“Now I remember why.” She rubbed her hands up and down her thighs. “I’m not made for impulsive.”
“Because you’re a control freak.”
“Maybe.” Her lips quirked.
“No maybe about it.”He pulled into a gas station and parked at the pump. “You want anything?” He gestured to the attached convenience store. 
“You don’t want real food?” 
He glanced at his watch. He didn’t want to take the time to stop at a restaurant. As it was, they’d get to Mel’s place around midnight. He’d call when they crossed the border into Minnesota to let his family know they were on their way. Once he got there, he’d have to contact Amtrak to change his ticket. “Are you hungry?” 
“Not as hungry as I’ll be by the time we get to Mel’s. I’ll buy.” 
He looked at Libby. “What will we do with her?”
She frowned. “Let me think.”
“Right.” He swung out of the car to pump gas. “Take her to the area there to do her business.” He pointed to a patch of snow-covered grass. “Her leash is in the glove box.” 
When Cam closed the door behind him, Libby put her paws on the door and whimpered through the window, then turned and snarled at Willow. 
Willow popped open the glove box and drew out the slender pink leash, then considered the growling dog. “Look, honey, we’re going to have to learn to get along.” She did not want to be useless to Cam, not when he’d come for her. She held up the leash for the dog to see. “Don’t you want to go for a walk?” 
If a dog could look indecisive, Libby did. She tilted her head at the leash, then snapped when Willow moved cautiously in an attempt to attach it to her collar. 
Cam opened the door and stuck his head in. “Hey, you doing okay?” 
“Peachy.” She reached to click the leash onto the collar while the dog was distracted by Cam, but Libby turned her head to snap. Willow snatched her fingers back. 
“Here.” He held his hand out for the leash and attached it easily. Libby jumped out of the car and then turned to gaze at him adoringly. 
Willow watched as he led the little dog to the snow-covered area, kicked some snow aside and waited for her to squat. He used the available plastic baggies to dispose of the mess. 
Patience, that was Cam. She wished she could be more like him. To be honest, she didn’t have the patience to learn. Though this trip had been her idea, she was already antsy. She wanted to be there now. 
He returned to the car and caught her gaze through the wind‐ shield. His sudden grin took her breath away. Okay, she was going to have to do better about controlling these little moments of attraction if they were going to spend the next couple of days together. Her emotions were too jumbled to be trusted right now. 
He helped himself to the hand sanitizer by the pump. When he opened the door, Libby hopped in. She glared at Willow before turning her back and waiting for Cam to get in. Once Cam got the car started, Libby positioned her front paws on Cam’s thigh, her head between them, tail thumping. 
“Sorry,” Willow said. 
“She’ll get used to you. Maybe if you give her a t-r-e-a-t, she might warm up. They’re in the glove box too.” He handed her the leash to put back. 
She opened the glove box and saw Libby perk up. Willow drew a treat from the brown paper bag. 
“Libby? Do you want a treat?” 
The dog scrambled around on the seat, quivering as she looked from the treat to Willow’s face. Obviously she wanted the treat, but wouldn’t accept it from Willow. 
Hardheaded mutt. 
“Wow. She really doesn’t like me.”
“Put it on the seat beside you. She’ll warm up.”
“You sound confident about that. Did she take a while to get used to you?”
He didn’t answer right away.
“She didn’t, did she?”
“I’ve known her since my parents first got her, Will. Not the same.”
Willow placed the treat on the seat by her thigh. The little dog whimpered and lay on the seat between them, black nose twitch‐ ing, longing in her eyes, body shaking with the desire to get to the treat. Willow had mercy and pushed the treat across the seat. The puppy snapped it up and promptly returned to Cam’s lap. 
He shook his head. “You have no patience.” He nodded at a restaurant with a to-go entrance. “Will that work? Drive and eat?” 
“Easier for me than you.”
“I can manage. Better than leaving Libby in a cold car.”
“Okay. I’ll go place the order.”
He parked and shut off the ignition. “See if they’ll give it to us in something besides Styrofoam.”
She frowned. “You know they won’t.” 
He shrugged. “It’s worth a try. I’m going to run in and use the restroom.” He glanced at the dog on the floorboard, gnawing on her treat. “She should be okay that long, right?” 
Willow’s stomach rumbled loudly. “I suppose.” She hopped out. 
Cam hurried up the sidewalk and opened the door for her, so she ducked under his arm. She’d forgotten how tall he was. Definitely not his coat making him look so broad. Her nerves did a little feminine trill as she passed him. 
Once again she shoved the awareness down and took his request. He disappeared into the restaurant while she stepped forward to place their order. 
Twenty minutes later, she walked out, the scent of the warm sandwiches wafting from the paper bag, to see Cam leaning into the backseat. 
“Cam? What’s going on?” 
He straightened, banging his head on the door frame and swearing, his hand on the back of his head. 
“Will, I’m sorry. I was only inside a few minutes.” 
She was close enough now to see colorful bits of fabric across the backseat. A moment passed before she recognized the fabric as her underwear. 
What used to be her underwear. 
She dropped the bag of food on the hood of the car and charged forward. “What happened?” 
“She got into your bag. I don’t know how. Your jeans are okay. Your sweaters and...other stuff...are not in such good shape.” 
“She ate my clothes?”
“I don’t think she ate anything. Just chewed.”
“And that’s better?” She closed her eyes and prayed for patience before glaring at him over the door. “It’s the night before Thanksgiving. Where am I going to get clothes?” 


A big-box discount store, that was where. Cam and Willow sat in Brian’s car and ate their dinner, growing colder by the minute as Willow assessed the damage. Her shoes had been gnawed too, of course. And she was going to have to replace them at the only store open this late the night before Thanksgiving. The parking lot was filled with last-minute Thanksgiving shoppers. Willow set aside her chicken sandwich and took a deep breath. The worst thing, she’d realized back at the restaurant, was that she’d brought the wrong credit card. Instead of her debit card, she’d slipped her almost-maxed-out-thanks-to-Judith’s-wedding-and- her-new-couch credit card into her wallet. She hadn’t noticed until she bought dinner and had to hold her breath while the transaction went through. 
Okay, it wasn’t that bad. She had a few hundred dollars available. But she certainly hadn’t intended to replace her wardrobe. 
“I hope they haven’t put their spring stuff out already,” she muttered. 
“I’ll stay with Libby.” 
Willow cast a glare at the dog. “Why? What damage can she do now?” 
“Will,” he chided. “Don’t take too long.” 
She looked around at the sea of cars in the parking lot. “Yeah, I’ll do my best.” 
Half an hour later, she walked out of the store with purchases she wasn’t too disappointed in—new pj’s, two sweaters, a thermal shirt, two pair of shoes and new underwear and bras, for way less than she spent at her usual stores. Flashing lights drew her attention as she approached Brian’s Chevelle, and she stopped short to see two cops beside the car, one pressing Cam down over the hood, his hands behind his back, while Libby barked frantically. 
“You have the right to remain silent,” one of them said, sounding breathless. 
Cam lifted his head and met her gaze, then dropped his head to the hood as the officer snapped the cuffs on.

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Thierry Guenther rubbed his fingertips over his forehead as he looked at the lease his brother Lucien had brought home with him this weekend. As president of the Cascada Encantada Winery, which had been in the family for generations, Lucien always had plans to put the place on the map. But why did he have to come up with such big ideas that always landed so firmly on Thierry's shoulders? 
Yeah, it would be great to have an additional tasting room on Main Street, where other wineries from the area had already ventured, but Encantada already had a contract to get the wine into the grocery stores in South Texas, and increasing the production for that was already a headache. Another tasting room meant more stock, more staff. He had to hire new people and buy new grapes, because while their winery was the oldest in the area, the weather in Texas was a bit more volatile, and his production was down this season because of the cold, dry weather this winter. So he was buying some grapes from Lubbock and more from Washington already. They'd still use Encantada recipes but he always preferred to use his own grapes, especially for the viognier and the syrah. The tempranillo was no problem--those were the grapes he grew the most of. 
So, yeah, he had his hands full before Lucien had this brainchild on his own. 
He looked down at his German Shepherd, Ronan. "I need to have a talk with him and see where he thinks I'm going to get all these grapes, and all the people for the bottling." 
Ronan cocked his head, his no-longer-puppy ears not quite flopping together the way they used to. Thierry had always wanted a dog growing up, but his mother hadn't allowed it, even though they lived on a ranch. Well, she would have allowed it, but the dog would have had to stay outside, and he hadn't wanted that. He wanted a dog that would sleep in his bed, sit at his feet at the table. He'd been home from college now for almost ten years but had been so busy with the winery, he hadn't wanted to get a dog if he didn't have time to devote to it. Last Christmas, he'd decided he didn't want to wait any longer. One of their neighbors had had a litter of German shepherds, which had always been his favorite breed. So he'd bought one and spent months house training him, and leash training him, and now never even put him on the leash. He would probably never get a puppy again, because they were a lot of work, but Ronan was a good dog. Thierry was lucky he was able to bring him to work every day so the dog didn't languish at home while Thierry worked his long hours. 
Thierry rose from the desk at his home office to walk down the hill to the barrel room. Thierry's home office had its own entrance, both for privacy during rare meetings held there, and to keep Thierry from working around the clock. Ronan jumped to his feet, attentive as ever. Yeah, the dog got just as restless as Thierry did when he wasn't doing something. The majority of the paperwork wasn't his responsibility, thank God, but sometimes he just had to see what Lucien was up to.
Lucien didn't work on the property, and actually only came up on weekends lately. He had an office and apartment in San Antonio, and occasionally traveled to other parts of Texas on business. They had agreed, as a family, that they would conquer Texas first, before they moved on to other parts of the country. Thierry was just as glad to have the distance between them. He and Lucien had different outlooks on life, and clashed more often than they got along.
Thierry opened the door of the office and Ronan dashed out into the cool, damp spring morning. This kind of weather was wonderful for grapes, and just what the bluebonnets would need. He'd seen a small patch of them in someone's yard the other day. Pretty soon the roadsides would be covered, and the roads themselves filled with tourists wanting to take pictures in them. The winery made sure to have plenty of help in the tasting room this time of year, so those sightseers that were so inclined could come to the winery, maybe take home a couple of bottles, join the wine club. Yeah, March and April were a good time at the winery. But he was sure his brother Sebastian had a handle on the additional staff. He could count on Sebastian to run the tasting room, make sure everything was stocked and on-hand, just like Lucien could count on him.
Ronan ran toward him with one of the many tennis balls that littered the grounds. Thierry scooped it from him and threw it in one fluid motion. His dad had always wanted him to be a baseball player, but as disciplined as Thierry was, he'd never been drawn to the life of a professional athlete. Playing in high school was one thing, but playing in the majors was another. He didn't even care to watch the games anymore.
Ronan barreled back toward him and Thierry played fetch with him another ten minutes before the dog dropped in front of him, panting and smiling at the exertion. 
Which reminded Thierry he hadn't gone for a run in a couple of days. That was something else a dog was good for--making you got out of the house, away from work. Maybe he should sign up for another marathon and make himself accountable. He needed to do it for himself.
He walked into the barrel building and the hum of the refrigeration soothed him like no other sound. This was his favorite place in the world, the sounds, the smells. This was where he'd learned wine production at his grandfather's knee, and though he'd had to go away to college to get a degree in oenology, nothing had taught him more than spending time here with his grandfather.
He wondered what the old man would think about the improvements they'd made, the plans they'd made to advance the company. Thierry was pretty sure he'd be glad they'd decided to limit their expansion to Texas for now. He'd never wanted a big company, just wanted to share his love of wine with the people of Cascade. 
Thierry noted that his cellar lead was here already, and Charlie Everett lifted a hand in a wave. Thierry nodded his response, and started rolling up his sleeves as he headed to join him. 
* * *
With one eye on the gas gauge, Piper Tobin turned her little car the road toward Cascade, Texas. She'd heard they had the best wineries in the area, and she'd timed her trip so she would hit at peak bluebonnet season. Only, so far, not so much. She had seen one tiny cluster of the state flower near town, but not the blankets of flowers she'd expected. She would get a hotel room for tonight, drive around tomorrow and visit some of the wineries. She had a list of the most picturesque, which suited her needs better than the tastiest. She was a photographer, after all, not an advertising agency. People might be inspired to visit the wineries based on the photo journal she was producing, but they didn't have to like the taste of wine.
She drove down the main street, lined with storefronts adjacent to each other, some limestone, some brick, some wood. Antique shops, a drug store, a few clothing places, some wine tasting rooms occupied the buildings. Pretty cement planters graced the sidewalks, overflowing with geraniums and ivy.
Since her funds were limited, she selected a motor hotel that may have been built in the 1960s, on the main road between Cascade and the majority of the wineries. Maybe she could pick up a short-term job at a bar or something and earn some tips to tide her over. No more than a week, because then she was heading to Lubbock next. Hopefully spring weather would greet her. She'd seen just last night on the news that they'd gotten more snow. 
She parked, then registered with the curious woman behind the counter. Piper didn't give into her natural urge to engage in conversation. She was too tired, and her mind was spinning with thoughts that she didn't want to spill to a stranger in a small town. 
"You here to visit the wineries?" the woman asked. 
Piper was sure not many wine tasters stayed at this dated place, when there were newer hotels in the area. She shook her head. "I came out to take pictures of the bluebonnets."
"Oh, you're a little early. They're starting to come out now, but the peak will be in another two or three weeks."
Again, Piper bit back on her questions. How did this woman know? Had she lived here long? She was fairly certain the woman was eager for conversation herself, but Piper was road-weary and just wanted a bed.
When she walked through the door of the room, though, she had second thoughts. The place smelled damp, and while it was damp outside with cool humidity, this smell was older, probably from the dripping window unit. Ugh. The carpet was wet beneath the window. At least it was the carpet and not the bed, though Piper made a mental note not to walk barefoot by the window. 
She tucked her camera equipment on the bedside table away from the door, set her suitcase on the dresser and looked at the tube television with the rabbit ear antennas. Okay, she'd stayed in worse places, and she could deal with this. At least the art on the walls--Texas wildflowers--was pretty. 
Keeping her shoes on, she investigated the bathroom. Rust stains from yet more dripping pipes striped the tub, but the corners were clean, something she'd learned to look for. She didn't feel so bad now as she showered off the day's travel, toweled off with a tiny rough towel--she'd pick up some towels of her own at Walmart tomorrow--and headed for bed. The remote didn't work, of course, so she set the television on an Austin channel, just for the noise, and crawled into bed. The sheets smelled better than the carpet, and she drifted right off.
* * *
The following morning her stomach woke her, and she checked her insulated shopping bag of food. Since eating out was cost prohibitive, she brought her own food when she could. One more protein bar. She'd have to pick up more of those at Walmart, too. She chowed down on it and washed it down with a bottle of water though her brain screamed for caffeine. Maybe Walmart had a McDonald's or something inside where she could get a cheap cup, because she didn't really trust the ancient coffee pot sitting on the dresser next to her luggage. 
She'd hit Walmart early, unload here, then head out to the wineries. Maybe by then the fog that had been creeping up would burn off, and she would be able to get some good pictures, though the fog might create some interesting effects. 
She walked out to her car and tried to remember which direction to turn to get to the store. The fog had dampened all sound except that of her keys as she pulled them out of her bag. She heard a car drive by, but nothing else. This might get her some cool pictures, though, and she thought about going back in for her camera before dismissing the idea. She didn't know how interesting photos of the Walmart parking lot might be. 
She turned left onto the highway, hoping her sense of direction served her well. Man, the visibility was terrible. Maybe she should just wait, but she really wanted some coffee. And she was already out. So she pulled out onto the highway, where it seemed she was alone in the world. Everyone else had better sense than her.
The deer came out of nowhere, and even as her heart leapt in her chest, she swerved.

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Leo Erickson pulled up in front of Bluestone Elementary School and sat for a moment, gripping the steering wheel and fighting the knot in his chest. Feeling anxious about seeing one’s own son was all kinds of wrong, but he hadn’t seen Max in almost two months, and from what Leo’s mom said, the boy was having issues.
Yeah, well, why wouldn’t he, after all the changes in his short life? But Leo was his father, though he didn’t much feel like one these days, so he came home from his assignment in Afghanistan to see what the problem was. Then he’d go back to the war and finish his story. It was too important to be left untold.
He opened the door of the SUV and approached the school with the same trepidation that he’d seen soldiers approach a bunker. The place was scary quiet, as though something dangerous lurked inside, just like a bunker.
Then the bell rang, like a bomb going off. His heart threatened to jump through his ribs. The glass doors flew open and children of all sizes streamed out, the very few teachers calling ineffectively to those who veered off in search of freedom. How could so few adults be expected to control so many children?
An impact against his knees made him grunt and he looked down into the wide dark eyes of a little girl, her black hair parted exactly in the center of her head and braided to her shoulders. She stared up at him, pink Dora backpack slung over her shoulder, and shoved her thumb into her mouth. No telling how long they stood there before a woman—her mother—hurried over to scoop her out of the way, casting a wary glance at Leo.
Right. Small town. Stranger. Never mind that he’d lived here from sixth grade until he could get the hell out. No one remembered him. And though he’d hated living in a small town, he wanted that protective atmosphere for his child.
Who he didn’t see, anywhere.
“Whose Toyota is this?” an annoyed voice called from behind him.
He turned to see a beautiful blue-eyed blonde standing at the fender of his rental. “Mine.”
She huffed out a breath. “Sir, you can’t park here. You’re backing up traffic. Don’t you see the arrows?”
His face heated. He had seen the arrows but thought he’d be long gone before the traffic started to flow. His first time with the after-school business. Livvie had dealt with that, then the stream of nannies had taken over, then his parents. He’d just thought…
“Where should I go?”
“There’s plenty of parking across the street.” She pointed to the supermarket parking lot.
He turned toward the thinning stream of kids emerging from the school. Where was Max? “My son should be out any minute.” He tried his charming smile, so rusty it had to be more of a grimace.
She wasn’t charmed, just folded her arms under her full breasts and waited. Behind her, several cars took up her cause by honking. At him. Well, hell.
With another glance at the school, he turned to the rental, tugging the keys from his front pocket. “Sorry,” he muttered to the blonde as he climbed in and started the vehicle, doing his best not to peel out as he left the place.
By the time he parked—plenty of space his ass—and jogged across the street to the school, most of the kids and traffic had gone. Some older kids milled around, and one smaller one, bent double, sobs racking his body as the blonde woman crouched before him, her hair tucked behind her ear as she tried to comfort him.
Christ. He hadn’t thought—the day Liv died, Max had been left at school, with no one to pick him up for hours. His son had to think something had happened again to turn his life upside down.
“Max! Max, I’m here.” Leo increased his speed and dropped to his knees beside his son, putting his hand on his arm. The boy’s flinch surprised Leo into drawing back. “Hey, buddy. Hey. I’m here.” Helplessly he let his hand fall to his lap as he watched the blonde cradle his distraught son in her arms.
“I…want…my…grandma.”
Leo’s gut tightened at the boy’s refusal to even acknowledge him. He’d thought his mother had been exaggerating, but maybe not. “Okay. Okay. I’ll take you to Grandma’s. We just thought it might be fun if I surprised you.” Actually his mom hadn’t thought that was such a great plan, but Leo hadn’t gotten where he was without being stubborn—in his career and in his life. Look what it got him, a son who wouldn’t look at him, who clung to a stranger instead. Leo’s arms ached with the need to comfort his son.
“Are you his father?” the blonde asked.
He shifted his gaze to the woman. “Yeah. I’ve been out of town. Are you his teacher?”
“The school counselor.”
Right. So she knew Max, who lost his mother and moved to a new town so his father could report on the war in Afghanistan. He watched his son, nonplussed. The kid had loved visiting his grandparents, so Bluestone seemed like the perfect solution when the string of nannies didn’t work out. But the kid before him didn’t look like he was bouncing back from the loss of his mother. He was pale and fragile, almost unrecognizable. Did the boy think the same about him?
“Max, your daddy wanted to surprise you.” The blonde’s smooth, soothing voice even had Leo relaxing.
She rubbed her hand up and down Max’s slender back and made gentle shushing noises, just like Liv had done when Max was little and had colic. Christ, he missed his wife, missed that he hadn’t had to feel guilty when she was around because she took care of everything. Missed that he hadn’t had to feel helpless.
“He came all this way to see you,” the blonde continued.
Her words gave him a jolt. Did she know where he’d been? Probably, since this was Bluestone where everyone knew everyone else.
Max turned his face away from her shoulder with a doubtful sniff as he inspected his father—and no doubt found him lacking. Leo forced another smile. This was his kid and he didn’t know what to say.
“I’ve missed you, buddy.”
Max snuffled and pulled away, just a bit, from the counselor. Leo held out an ineffective hand, knowing the boy wouldn’t take it.
“Want to go home?”
For a moment, the boy’s face brightened and Leo knew he’d said exactly the wrong thing when the boy echoed, “Home?”
“Grandma’s.” Not the beautiful house in Excelsior with the playroom and the neighborhood where his friends lived and the mother who loved him more than anything. “Grandma’s house.” The words lumped in his throat. He wanted to go home, too, to the time before his wife had been killed, when the light that had warmed both his son and him had been extinguished.
The blonde murmured a few encouraging words Leo didn’t pick up over the roar of blood in his ears, and Max finally straightened to stand before his father. Leo flinched at the accusation in his son’s eyes. He rubbed a hand over Max’s arm.
“Wow, you’ve gotten big,” he said in what he hoped was a man-to-man voice. “What are you lifting these days?”
Max only looked at him, and again, Leo felt helplessness flow through him.
“How about some ice cream on the way home?” He glanced over at the counselor. “Is the Dairy Queen open yet?”
She nodded. “Just last week.”
Leo stood and offered a hand to his son. “Let’s go ruin our dinner.”
The blonde rose, too. “Will you be in town long? I’d like to schedule a conference with you and Max’s teacher.”
“I’ll be here awhile,” he said, not wanting to let Max know he only planned to stay a couple of weeks, until things settled again. “I’m Leo, by the way.”
“Trinity Madison,” she said, and extended a hand.
He shook it, briefly, trying not to think about the softness of her skin, the ringless state of it, and he turned to guide his son across the street to his SUV.
Now that he and Max were alone, he was even more clueless. He’d talked to Max on the phone a few times while he was in Afghanistan, but the conversations had been short. The kid apparently followed in his own footsteps when it came to social interaction.
“Have you been to Dairy Queen yet?” he asked as he buckled the boy in the booster in the back seat.
Max shook his head. “Grandma said too much sugar isn’t good for me.”
Leo remembered her saying the same to him, but weren’t grandparents supposed to spoil kids, just a little? And if any kid deserved spoiling, it was one who’d lost his mother. “Yeah, well, it’s not good for any of us, but we’re going to go anyway.”
He closed the back door and rounded the vehicle to climb in, trying to remember what his mother used to do when she picked him up from school. “How was your day?”
“I got a mark.”
A mark? What the hell was a mark? “What does that mean?”
“I couldn’t sit still in class and the teacher yelled and then she gave me a mark in my behavior folder.”
Okay, so he got in trouble. “So what does that mean? Did you miss recess or something?”
“Tomorrow I have to stand against the wall at our break.”
“Well, buddy, I guess you need to stay in your seat so you can play on Friday.”
“Doesn’t matter. No one plays with me anyway.”
His mother had mentioned Max didn’t have any friends, but Leo figured it was just a matter of time. Clearly that wasn’t the case. “Well, that sucks.”
“Grandma says that’s a bad word.”
Leo pressed his lips together. “Yeah, she’s right. Sorry, buddy. So why doesn’t anyone play with you?”
“They think I’m weird. And they’ve all been friends before. They don’t need me.”
Again Leo heard the accusation in the boy’s voice. Man, he’d really screwed this up, moving Max away from the world he’d known so Leo could get back to his life. Worse, he didn’t have the first clue about how to make it better.
* * *
Ice cream apparently wasn’t the way. Max ordered a dipped cone and dripped it all over the booster seat, then the minute they pulled into the driveway at his parents’, Max puked all over the running board. Leo’s mom Nora must have been watching from the front window because she hurried out from the side door, helping Max out of his soiled shoes and casting a baleful glare at her son.
“Ice cream?”
Like Leo needed to be judged right now. “He was upset. I was trying to smooth things over.”
“You did a bang-up job there. Come on, let’s get you cleaned up.” She scooped Max into her arms—the kid was nearly as tall as she was—and marched into the house, leaving Leo alone, his arms still aching to hold his child. Instead, he turned on the hose and washed the ice cream off his car.
When he walked into the kitchen later, Max was at the same counter where Leo had done his homework years ago, freshly bathed, the scent of the shampoo his mother had used since Leo was a child carrying him back. He wanted to press his lips to his son’s head, something he’d done when Max was little but now just felt awkward. Instead he leaned on the counter at a right angle to the boy.
“Where’s your homework?”
“We do it right after dinner,” Nora answered. “We have a routine, Leo.”
Frustration bubbled, but he tamped it down. His mother had called him to come home, but now wouldn’t make room for him.
He turned to his son, drawing on the depths of his patience. “Do you have a lot of homework? What’s it in?”
“Wednesdays are spelling,” Nora said. “Twenty sentences.”
Tension gripped his shoulders as he fought bitter words. He was trying to engage his son in a conversation, and his mother was interfering. But how could he fault her, when he’d asked her to do that very thing so he could continue his career, knowing Max was in good hands?
And he was in good hands. But that no longer seemed enough.
He sat on the stool beside Max. “Why don’t you drag out that homework and we’ll get it knocked out before dinner?”
“We do it after dinner,” Max said, parroting his grandmother.
“Yeah, well, if we get this done, we can play some ball before bed.”
“He’s already had his bath,” Nora protested, turning away from the stove.
“So he can have another one.”
“I don’t like to play ball. Or take baths.”
Leo laughed, something he couldn’t have imagined doing just an hour ago, and he reached out to ruffle his son’s hair. Max flinched.
Leo folded his hand and let it fall to his lap. “Right. Well, let’s get going on that homework. Twenty sentences seems like a lot.”
* * *
He’d had no idea how much of a struggle it was to get ten sentences out of a kid who didn’t want to talk but that was all they managed before his mother instructed Max to set the table for dinner. His mother sent Leo a chiding look when Max went into the dining room.
“He needs things a certain way, Leo. There’s security in our routine. You can’t just come in here and change it.”
“I’m his father.”
“You trusted me to do what’s right for him. So I am.”
Leo rocked back on his heels. He wasn’t willing to admit that he had no idea what was right for his son, only that he wanted to be the one to call the shots. He could almost hear Livvie chiding him, telling him he couldn’t have it both ways—couldn’t have his freedom to do his job and be in charge here, too. He’d made a choice and clearly it was the wrong one. He’d known it at the time, but God help him, he couldn’t bring himself to stay. He needed the job, the way it absorbed him.
And abandoned his kid.
“Is it that he misses her, do you think?”
“Misses her, misses you, misses home. Everything’s changed for him, Leo, against his will. He has no control over his life and it makes him angry. Sound familiar?”
He heard the smile in her voice but wouldn’t meet her gaze. He’d been much the same way when his parents had moved him away from his friends in Milwaukee and planted him here. They’d grown roots. He couldn’t wait to blow away.
Instead of responding to her, he turned toward the dining room. “I’m going to see if he needs help.”
But Max was putting the finishing touches on the table when Leo entered. Max closed the sticking drawer on the breakfront with a grunt, and turned to his father.
“What are we drinking?” Leo picked up one of the cut-glass tumblers his mom had had since he was Max’s age.
“I drink soy milk. Grandma and Grandpa drink ice water. Grandma bought your beer. She said it’s your favorite kind.”
Leo’s mouth watered at the idea of the beverage, but he wasn’t going to indulge before he tucked his son in bed. “I think I’ll have milk, too. Soy milk?”
“Grandma thinks I’m lactose intolerant.”
Leo lifted his eyebrows at the big words. But that would explain the reaction to the ice cream. “Is it any good?”
Max grimaced, drawing another chuckle from Leo. God, he should have spent more time with his kid and less time feeling sorry for himself. Max could have helped him climb out of his grief. They could have helped each other heal. Was that an irredeemable failing?
The milk was nasty, but the meal was good. Leo hadn’t had a home-cooked meal since he’d dropped Max off here two—no, almost three—months ago. The boy had been quiet, but Leo hadn’t wanted to see it, had only wanted to get out of there, get on with his life. He hadn’t seen any other choice, though. He had to work, and Max always loved visiting his grandparents. It had seemed like the perfect solution.
Wrong again.
So he drank the milk in solidarity with his son, and after dinner helped his mother clean up while Max finished the last ten sentences in half the time it took to do the first ten.
“Grandma said my brain needs fuel to do my work,” he said when Leo questioned him.
Leo scanned the sentences, good ones, and read one that caused his gut to clench.
My dad has returned but how long will he remain?
He looked up and saw the question in the boy’s eyes, but couldn’t bring himself to address it. Not long. He had a job to finish, and another after that, and another. And when he came back, how much taller would Max be? How much angrier? “Let’s go play some ball. You have a ball and mitt?”
Max shook his head. “I don’t like to play ball.”
Yet another failing. Leo’s great remaining love was baseball. He’d never shared that with his son. “How do you know if you haven’t tried?”
“I’ve tried. I don’t like it.”
Leo glanced at his mother, who gave a slight shake of her head. Right. He was pushing. “So what do you like?”
“Fishing.”
A smile pulled at Leo’s mouth. “Fishing. With Grandpa?”
“We go every Saturday morning. He has a boat.”
Oh, Leo knew about the boat. Leo hated that boat, that he’d been forced to help his father rebuild, that he’d sat on many resented Saturday mornings. But he’d been a sullen teenager who didn’t know how to sit still. Apparently his son was better at that, except when it came to class.
“Maybe I can join you this Saturday?”
Max made a face. “Grandpa said you don’t like it.”
“Maybe if I tried it now I’d like it better.”
Max frowned doubtfully.
“There’s no time now anyway,” his mother said, stripping off her rubber gloves. Funny, in their whole marriage, Livvie had never used rubber gloves. Her hands had still been silky smooth the day she died. “Max’s favorite show is on in a few minutes.”
“His favorite show?” Leo repeated, looking out the big kitchen window at the gorgeous day. His parents had never been TV watchers when he was growing up. Most of the time after dinner he was damn near shoved out the door. Of course he had a lot more energy than Max. “Nah, come on, Max, let’s go for a walk down to the lake. You can show me Grandpa’s boat.”
“I want to watch my show.”
Leo opened his mouth to push his idea, but a shake of his mother’s head had him closing it again. He didn’t want to fight with his kid his first night here. So he followed him into the living room, where the curtains had been drawn against the bright evening, and sat on the couch with his mother while Max hunkered on the floor in front of the TV and watched a hideously-drawn cartoon with glazed eyes.
Leo scrubbed his hand over his mouth, feeling impotent. His kid, yes, but he’d delivered him to his parents hoping the sense of family would pull the boy through his grief. Clearly that wasn’t happening. And now Leo felt like an interloper with his own son.
“Time for bed,” his mother announced when the program ended, rising from her end of the couch.
Sunlight still streamed around the edges of the closed curtains, and Leo braced himself for Max’s protests, but none came.
“I’ll get him to bed,” Leo said, holding a hand out to stop his mother.
She cast a questioning glance at Max, and Leo figured he’d have another argument, but Max just headed toward the stairs. Leo thought about saying something to his mother, but instead followed his son.
Max stepped into the bathroom and closed the door in Leo’s face. Uncertain what to do, Leo wandered into his old room, which his mother had redone after he left and which Max now occupied, and looked around.
Max had lived here two months and the room showed very little evidence of it. Granted, Liv had decorated his room at home, but there had been little boy stuff scattered around—action figures, a bicycle helmet, Legos, discarded clothes. He’d had a corkboard with drawings he’d made of superheroes and Godzilla, all pretty good for an eight-year-old.
But here, there were no toys, and only a few books. His school backpack sat by the door on one side, and the suitcase he’d used to bring his clothes up here sat by the door on the other side.
Like he was ready to leave at the first moment’s notice. Leo closed his fingers into a fist. He had to talk to the kid—Max was staying in Bluestone. Leo was here to help him settle in, not to move him back to Excelsior.
Max appeared in the doorway, dressed in dark pajamas, his expression solemn. Leo realized he was between his son and the bed and stepped back. He remembered then that Livvie would always read to Max at bedtime, but he didn’t see any books in the room.
“Do you, ah, want a bedtime story?”
“Dad.” Max’s tone was exasperated. “I’m too old for that.”
“Well, yeah, for picture books and stuff like that. I mean, you can read to yourself, right?” Did Max like to read? Leo had no idea. “But I can tell you a story.”
Max angled his head, then moved past his father to the bed. “About Afghanistan?”
Leo tried to think of a story that wouldn’t give the boy nightmares. Hell, Leo had nightmares about the constant shelling and danger there. “Sure. I’m stationed with some funny guys there.” He tucked the sheet and bedspread over his son and sat at the edge of the bed. “We stay in a bunker most of the time, and it can get pretty boring, so they’ve rigged up some games.”
“Like video games?”
“Nah, that’s too tame for these guys. One time the sergeant was sleeping, and his men rearranged the whole bunker into an obstacle course, so that when the man got out of bed, he had to climb over their stacked bunks, belly crawl under a tent made of sheets and wiggle through boxes, just to get to the can.”
Max’s eyes widened. “Did he do it?”
Leo shrugged. “He didn’t have a choice if he had to go, you know?”
“What else do they do?”
Leo shared a couple more of their innovations born of boredom, his heart feeling lighter at bringing his son into his world, even if only to the safe part. Then he glanced toward the window, saw the sun had set, and patted the boy’s leg. “Better get to sleep. I’ll take you to school tomorrow, okay?”
For some reason, those words shut Max down. “Okay,” the boy muttered, dragging the blankets up to his ear and turning toward the window.
What had Leo said wrong?

Bluestone Homecoming is currently free at all retailers.

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