LITMIR.BIZ

      KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

       http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

      For Carol,

       who introduced me to Marlboro Lights,

       Bruce Springsteen, and Lee Mazzili.

       Friends for life, no question.

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 22

      Chapter 23

      Epilogue

      Chapter 1

      When it came to making a fresh start of her life, Grace Lamb thought she was doing a damn good job—right up until the moment she missed a stop sign and crashed the ancient, borrowed VW bus she was driving into a Wrightsville Police Department cruiser with a sickening metallic thud.

      It certainly wasn’t the way she would have planned to arrive in her hometown after nearly ten years away, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. Especially a beggar who had everything she owned crammed in the back of the bus, a scant thousand dollars in her wallet, and nothing more than an exhilarating eagerness to start over to convince her family and friends that she wasn’t completely crazy.

      Then Nick Griffin climbed out of the police car, long and lean, khaki and official and stern in his uniform, and she couldn’t decide if her luck had carried only as far as brilliant spring weather, cheap gas, and a perfect mocha latte on the drive from Manhattan, or if it had just gotten better. The odds were good that Nick, of all people, wouldn’t lock her up for reckless driving. But the odds were even better that Nick would at the very least give her an earful about traffic safety, not to mention her recklessness. He’d certainly had enough practice with the latter speech over the years.

      Strangely, the idea of a good old-fashioned lecture from her brother’s best friend was almost comforting. Nothing quite said “Wrightsville” like Nick and Grace squaring off.

      She smiled when he wrenched open the door of the VW and peered inside, incredulous. “Grace?”

      She waggled her fingers at him, trying for bright and breezy, as if running into him, literally this time, was an everyday occurrence. “Hey there, Nick! Um, long time no see?”

      “Grace.” Gold-flecked green eyes narrowed at her in a purely Nick combination of amazement and frustration. Nope, he hadn’t changed much.

      “I’m sorry, okay!” She climbed down from the bus’s passenger seat, flinching when Nick reached out without warning and tipped her head up to squint at her face. “What are you doing?”

      His voice was rough, deep, his mouth so close she could feel the ghost of his words on her skin. “You didn’t hit your head, did you?”

      “No!” She swatted his hand away, suddenly uncomfortably aware of how strong it was, and how warm his fingers were beneath her chin. It was just Nick, for heaven’s sake, even if their position was strangely intimate for broad daylight in sleepy little Wrightsville.

      Strangely intimate for them, anywhere. Nick was…well, Nick. She’d known him forever, and sure, once he’d dragged her out of the pond in Fraser Park, and another time he’d carried her kicking and screaming down the ladder from the roof of her house, but that was when they were kids. When she was a kid, anyway.

      And Nick was somehow a lot bigger than she’d remembered. Huge, in fact, somewhere in the neighborhood north of six feet, and in the kind of shape you didn’t see very often on men not on TV. Beneath the plain khaki cotton, his arms and chest were taut with lean, defined muscle, and his gun belt hung from narrow hips above legs that seemed miles long.

      “God, Nick,” she said finally, digging to find her voice since she was oddly breathless, and wriggled out of his reach. “I didn’t hit you that hard.”

      “I was wondering if you hit your head before you climbed in this…thing, actually,” he growled, waving a hand at the bus.

      Which was, she had to admit, a little worse for the wear of thirty-plus years. In the sharp sunlight along River Road, every detail of the rusted, flaked paint was visible, a sickly tangerine now beside the clean gray-blue of the Delaware.

      “It runs just fine,” she said primly, twisting away from Nick’s reach to round the front of the bus and examine the damage. It was worse than she’d imagined, considering that she couldn’t have been driving more than thirty-five miles per hour at the time. Possibly forty. Forty-five at the outside. Oops.

      “Yeah, well.” Nick laughed, a rough, surprised bark of amusement in the quiet morning air, and followed her around to the front of the car. The cruiser didn’t look much better, with the front right bumper dinged up and the headlight in a million glittering pieces on the pavement. “Like they said, Grace, cars don’t crash, people crash them.”

      “No one says that.” She smacked his arm without thinking, pure childhood reflex, and blushed hot when he arched a brow at her. “Sorry. You’re not going to add assault to my charges, are you?”

      “I may have a few inches on Tommy these days, but if I put his little sister in jail?” Nick shook his head with a grin. “I’m pretty sure he’d still kick my ass.”

      “True.” She smiled back at him and was amazed to realize she was at a loss for words. He was squinting in the sunlight, his brow heavy over those green-gold eyes, and awareness curled in her stomach, lazy and sensual.

      Wow. That was…new.

      A big blue SUV pulled up behind the cruiser and stopped, honking once. Nick waved and walked over to the car, his stride long and confident, which at least gave Grace a chance to catch her breath and try to convince her stuttering heart to slow down and behave.

      This was absurd. She was just excited, a little nervous, high on possibility and the idea of a fresh start, even if she’d never imagined starting over in quiet, boring little Wrightsville, the town she’d been dying to leave ever since she’d been old enough to understand that roads led away from it.

      As she leaned against the VW, breathing in the air’s cool bite, she watched Nick direct the SUV around the tangled vehicles. She’d thought a lot about what moving home would be like, about old friends and second chances and possibilities she’d never considered.

      But she’d never even imagined temptation, at least not with Nick Griffin in the same sentence.

      By the time Nick moved the squad car to the shoulder and started up the chugging, shuddering VW bus to move it, too, he’d recovered from most of his surprise.

      Okay, maybe not most, but a lot. Some, at least. And then he stepped out of the ancient vehicle and turned around to look at Grace leaning against

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