LITMIR.BIZ

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      To Sissie, For her friendship, Jessie’s mom

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter Sixteen

      Epilogue

      Prologue

      Terrific, just terrific.

      For the first time in a very long time, he felt like having a drink. But that wouldn’t help anything. It was because he’d taken a drink—several drinks—that he was in this predicament to begin with.

      “Bad news?”

      Luc LeBlanc looked over his shoulder to see his cousin Ike standing behind him. The Salty, the saloon they both owned and Ike ran, was nearly empty this time of day.

      Ike had been watching his cousin for a while now. He indicated the letter lying on the table in front of him.

      Luc drew the letter closer to him. “What makes you ask that?”

      “The vein in your neck looked like it was going to pop out just then.” Without waiting to be invited, Ike turned the letter toward him and scanned the contents. They were closer than brothers and there were no secrets between them. For that matter, there were precious few in a town the size of Hades. It was average only by Alaskan standards. Coming to the portion that had Luc silently swearing, Ike raised his eyes to look at his cousin. “Wow, what makes Jacob think you’re—?”

      “Married?” Luc shrugged, looking off. “Might have been something I said when I ran into him in Anchorage.”

      “Well, if you want to save face, looks like you might have to go on a wife hunt.” Ike grinned. “I’d lend you mine but I’m just getting the hang of being a husband myself and I might lose my place if I let you borrow Marta for appearance’s sake.” He grew serious. “What are you going to do?”

      Luc stared down at the letter. “I don’t know.”

      “This,” Ike said as he got up to get the bar ready for the mine workers who came in to the Salty Saloon at noon, “is going to be interesting.”

      Interesting wouldn’t have been the word he would have used, Luc thought. Frustration surged through him. He resisted the urge to crumple the letter. Crumpling it wouldn’t make the problem go away. It was coming via an airplane in a little more than three weeks. Both of them were coming.

      Served him right. He’d lied; now he was going to have to pay for it. Which meant owning up to the truth.

      Something he wasn’t looking forward to.

      He’d lived with and by the truth all his life, not fanatically, but just because it was his way. To his recollection, the lie he’d allowed to slip out in a moment of pure, unadulterated weakness had been the only one he’d ever told.

      People lied every day, even here in Hades. Especially here in Hades, he thought, where boredom almost demanded it. It was a form of creative art in this tiny town hovering a hundred miles away from Anchorage. None of the townsfolk had probably ever had to face up to the fact that they had lied to someone who had once, when life was simpler, been their best friend.

      But he had lied to Jacob and now he was going to have to admit it.

      What he needed, Luc decided, wasn’t a drink. It was to get away. Both were only temporary fixes, but a trip would do him far more good than alcohol. Maybe now was the time for that visit to Seattle he’d been promising himself.

      He rolled it over in his head. Seattle. Sure, why not?

      It might just be the thing to help him pull his thoughts together and figure out how to handle this without completely humiliating himself.

      Chapter One

      The indignant scream sliced through his thoughts like a newly honed scalpel.

      By the time the angry barrage of words had followed in the scream’s wake, Jean-Luc LeBlanc had already whirled around on his heel and was running to the rescue. The reaction was purely instinctive, without so much as a shred of thought on his part to slow him down. Certainly it didn’t occur to him that a threat here on the streets of Seattle was something quite different from a threat in Hades, Alaska. There, more than likely, danger came from four-legged creatures or merciless weather. In the lower forty-nine, danger walked on two legs and could be just as merciless as any act of nature. Sometimes even more.

      Luc didn’t stop to reason out anything, or weigh pros and cons. None of that mattered. Someone needed help and Luc was close by. That was enough for him.

      It took only a moment to orient himself. Behind him in the alley, the taxi driver—who’d picked him up at the airport and had just, less than half a minute earlier, dropped him off near the hotel where he would be staying—was fighting someone off. The attacker was in the front seat of the cab, grappling with her. Something flashed, catching the light.

      The man had a knife.

      Luc threw aside his suitcase, running faster. “Let her go!”

      The voice, deep and dangerous, seemed almost incongruous with his open, blond good looks. But he had the build and the muscles to back up the warning in his voice. Reaching the cab, Luc grabbed the would-be mugger by the back of the neck and roughly hauled him out. He threw the mugger aside as if the man was nothing more than an undesirable, miserable rag.

      Caught by surprise, the man’s knife flew out of his hand. He went crashing into the broad side of a Dumpster housed against the rear of a tall building opposite the back of the hotel. Luc could almost feel the man’s brains rattling as his head made contact with the metal side.

      His eyes still on the mugger, Luc stooped to pick up the fallen knife, meaning to toss it out of play.

      Shrieking a curse that was almost intelligible, the mugger scrambled to his feet and lunged himself at Luc. Rather than throw it, Luc could only kick the knife aside. With the wind knocked out of him, Luc still managed to gain his feet quickly. He raised his fists to defend himself the way he’d learned when he was barely into his teens.

      Luc

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