LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter One

      Even in Buffalo Creek, Texas, with the bright sunshine streaming down and the utter absence of wind, January meant chill temperatures. Still, the willowy blonde had found a unique way to gather a crowd for her sales demonstration. Beneath the awning that she’d erected beside her minivan, she chattered and joked, flipping her long, straight butter-yellow hair, winking her big catlike eyes at her laughing onlookers, the colorful scarves draped about her person waving languidly. All the while she worked, she pressed bits of string and wood, gravel and broken glass into a damp clay disk, which she would presumably then bake in a small microwave oven at her elbow.

      As tired as he was, Dr. Brooks Leland would have liked to have paused and joined in the fun, but he’d promised his best friend, Morgan, that he wouldn’t be late to dinner. For once. Besides, since the untimely death of his pretty blonde wife, he avoided women—especially blondes—like the plague. Oh, he would do it again, go through all the pain and the grief, just for those two short years with Brigitte. He would not, however, risk that kind of loss for anyone else, let alone stand in the cold just to watch a lovely woman try to sell unusual objects of art created on the spot.

      Hurrying past the crowd, he crossed the parking lot to the entrance of the grocery store. Once inside, he picked up the multigrain bread requested by his hostess and, on impulse, grabbed a bouquet of flowers.

      He’d given up trying to make his old buddy jealous. Not that he’d ever had any real interest in Lyla Simone anyway, but it had taken a mighty shove to make the confirmed bachelor professor tumble into love with his comely graduate student, and Brooks had been only too glad to deliver the blow. Once he’d fallen, Morgan Chatam had fallen hard. He was not a man to give

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