LITMIR.BIZ

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closed with a dull clunk before locking it into place, trying to tamp down the energy crackling through her body before facing him again.

      She turned, dusting her palms against her jeans and swinging her long, heavy black ponytail back over her shoulder. “Hey,” she said, extending her hand, unable to read his eyes behind the mirrored shades. “You must be Sergeant Caruso. Welcome to Black Arrow Falls.”

      He lifted his shades slowly, his gaze locking onto hers, and Silver’s heart did a tight little tumble. She hadn’t anticipated eyes like that. They were a warm liquid brown, fringed by soft black lashes, but the lines that fanned out from them—the way they etched into his ruggedly handsome features and olive skin—spoke of something she recognized all too well.

      This man had been roughed up, hurt. But he was pretending otherwise.

      Strong fingers closed around hers as he clasped her hand firmly, the charge as his skin connected with hers instant. Silver’s pulse raced.

      Sergeant Gabriel Caruso oozed danger—not for Black Arrow Falls but for her personally.

      Silver had not experienced this kind of visceral response to a man since a brutal assault and rape five years ago had emptied her of all feeling. She’d remained hollow since then, beginning to think she was incapable of ever feeling physical lust again. And by the sharp flicker in his eyes, she saw he’d felt something, too.

      A quiet fear snaked through her belly.

      A Mountie was the last person on this earth she needed to be attracted to. Especially a homicide cop.

      Not with her dark secret.

      Not with the cold case files buried in the Black Arrow Falls detachment drawers.

      She valued freedom too much.

      “I’m Silver,” she said, words suddenly dry like dust in her mouth, an irrational urge to flee surging through her. But she held her ground, outwardly calm. Flight triggered chase. It showed weakness.

      Silver hated appearing weak.

      And she wanted to do nothing that would pique the new cop’s curiosity, nothing at all that might send him digging back into the old murder files.

      His eyes swept over her, taking in her rifle, the brutal hunting knife sheathed at her hips, her dusty scuffed boots, the faded and torn jeans.

      He was reading her, thought Silver. Sizing her up just as she had done to him, taking in his new surroundings, yet he gave nothing away in his features. This was a man from whom a person didn’t keep secrets. The instinct to pull away intensified as fear rustled deeper into her belly, the raw kind of fear that came from being a so-called criminal faced with the penetrating eyes of law enforcement.

      The kind of fear that came with the surprising reawakening of her body.

      Gabe felt her hand in his, noting the bracelet of leather knotted with small colorful beads around her slender wrist. She wore no ring.

      He was conscious of rings. Engagement rings.

      He couldn’t help seeking the small circle of promise on other women’s fingers. A promise a killer had denied him. His chest tightened as he recalled the reasons that had brought him here.

      She answered his handshake with a startlingly firm grip despite her willowy stature. Her palms were rough, not like the hands of any women he knew.

      Even Gia’s—his hardworking, no-nonsense, cop fiancée’s hands—had been softer. Yet there was something alluring—challenging even—in Silver’s assertive grip.

      She met his gaze just as directly, her indigo eyes showing an unveiled interest that sent a tingle down his spine.

      The startling color of her almond-shaped eyes stood out dramatically against skin the color of burnt sienna. Her cheekbones were equally exotic, angled high, and her sleek black hair was harnessed into a waist-length braid that shimmered in the sunlight as she moved, reminding Gabe of the multifaceted rainbows hidden in a raven’s feathers.

      Gabe had never seen a woman quite like Silver.

      And a woman had never looked at him with quite the same intensity. Her eyes cut into him like blue lasers, as if she could see straight through to his soul. It was as intimate as it was provocative, and he felt his energy instinctively darken and hum.

      “He’s on his way,” she said, sliding her hand free from his grasp, backing away, her voice husky, low. Smooth. The kind of voice that made a guy think about whiskey and sex, things Gabe hadn’t thought about in a long time.

      “Pardon?” he said, distracted.

      Silver swung open the cab door of her truck and whistled for her dogs to jump in the back. “I said your constable is on his way. He’d have waited until he saw your plane come in. No rush up here. There he is now—” She jutted her chin to indicate a column of gray dust churning along the distant dull-green tree line beyond the runway.

      Gabe squinted, making out the distinctive white truck with bold RCMP stripes and logo as the police four-by-four neared.

      “That would be Donovan.” She climbed into her truck as she spoke, folding those impossibly long denim-clad legs under the steering wheel of her cab.

      Gabe replaced his shades, uneasy with his own physical reaction to this unusual woman, not wanting her to read it. She seemed to be reading everything.

      “Mostly he uses the ATVs.” She slammed the door, leaning her elbow out the open window as she started the ignition. “Can’t go far with that vehicle in a town with roads that don’t lead anywhere.” She threw him a final glance, or was it a challenge?

      “How long is your posting? Two years?” she asked, a shrewd look in her eyes.

      He was glad for his shades. “You’ve only just welcomed me, and you’re ready to see me leave?” She wouldn’t be the first to want to see the back of him.

      Amusement whispered over her lips. “Everyone goes back to where they came from, Sergeant. Sooner than later. Cops included. Most come north of 60 looking for something, you know? Gold, silver, escape, freedom. Some don’t even know what it is they’re searching for.” She shifted her truck into gear. “Sometimes they find it. Sometimes they don’t. But eventually they all do go back.”

      She smiled, an incredible slash of bright white teeth against her brown skin, a wild glimmer of light in her eyes. “Apart from a few special ones.”

      Then she hit the gas, leaving him standing in a cloud of silt, her wolf dogs yipping with excitement in the back.

      Gabe couldn’t help thinking the woman was like this place—strikingly gorgeous and seemingly open, yet hostile to those unequipped to deal with the terrain.

      She’d left his blood racing.

      And for the first time in what had been a very long year, Gabe thought that maybe he didn’t want to die after all.

      Chapter 2

      Gabe’s bitterness resurfaced as soon as the RCMP truck drew to a stop and a young, eager, and smiling Constable Mark Donovan stepped out to greet him.

      Gabe reached forward to shake his hand, thinking how much he’d been like Donovan once, filled with idealistic notions of a bright future, of what it meant to be a Mountie, to maintain le droit across this vast country in a tradition dating back to the 1800s.

      As a young boy growing up in the Italian quarter of Vancouver, Gabe had devoured heroic tales of the Northwest Mounted Police sent to crush the U.S. whiskey peddlers controlling the prairies. After that came the Klondike gold rush with hordes stampeding from Alaska over the Chilkoot Trail, crossing into Canada’s harsh, frigid and unforgiving Yukon, with the most famous Mountie of all, Sam Steele—Lion of the Yukon—guarding the pass in his red serge, wide-brimmed Stetson and high browns.

      The legends of those Mounties staking claim to the great North, keeping order and

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