LITMIR.BIZ

      Chapter One

      A loud bang woke Marissa Llewellyn. She rubbed the grit from her eyes and felt the ledger shift across her chest. She’d fallen asleep in the back of her cupcake shop again, this time while going over the previous month’s pitiful financial statements and waiting to see if any cupcakes would go missing tonight.

      Marissa sat up, let the ledger fall away. Something clanked in the kitchen again. She hadn’t imagined it. Someone was moving around in her shop.

      Without taking her eyes off the open door separating her from the intruder, she edged her sock-covered feet off the sofa and pawed for the bat she kept for just this scenario. Her sister Marlie had told her it was a bad idea to try to catch whoever kept breaking into her bakery. Marissa couldn’t even prove there was a thief. Very little was missing, but twice in the morning when she’d come in, things were…off, out of place and she was always down a couple of cupcakes.

      Water ran in the bathroom. She frowned. A robber who uses the restroom? She eased up off the sofa with the bat gripped tightly in one hand. In the other, she snatched up the cordless phone she’d left on the floor beside her. When the Oak Hollow 911-operator answered, she whispered, “This is Marissa Llewellyn at Sweets by Marissa. On Flower Tree. I need to report a break-in.”

      “Are you in any danger, ma’am?”

      “I don’t know. Please send someone quickly.” The operator was still talking when Marissa hung up the phone. She should have stayed on the line, but she needed both hands to swing the bat. She dropped the phone on the sofa. The police would hurry. The station was only a few blocks away.

      The water in the bathroom shut off and she paused only a couple of feet from the door to her office. Her heart pounded heavily. A shadow danced over the threshold into the office as the intruder walked past it and back toward the kitchen. Marissa held her breath.

      A moment later one of the kitchen stools squeaked.

      She crept to the opened door and gave a quick peek. The after-hours lighting cast shadows throughout the back of the shop. She couldn’t see all the way into the belly of the kitchen, so she edged farther and farther out of her office. A tall, lanky man sat at the huge stainless steel table with books open in front of him. A discarded cupcake wrapper sat at his elbow. She shook her head. What the hell?

      A siren sounded. The police had arrived. The man scrambled and shoved books into a backpack at his feet. He turned toward the back door and then froze when he saw her waving a bat at him.

      She shifted the bat. “Don’t move.” It wasn’t a man—tall and lean, sure, but in the still-going-through-puberty way. “You’re a teenager! What are you doing in here?”

      He looked like he wanted to bolt, but he stayed put. He was dressed like every other teenager in Oak Hollow, Texas. Baggy jeans hung from his skinny hips. His white T-shirt and open button-down plaid shirt looked tidy but worn. She didn’t know his name, but she’d seen him hanging around the shops.

      “What are you doing here?” She eased a step closer to him.

      The boy shrugged. There was no anger or menace coming off

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