LITMIR.BIZ

       ONE

      Nicki Jackson wheeled her bulging carry-on through the carport, the rumble of the plastic wheels against the concrete breaking the silence of the dark night. The golden retriever prancing behind her had enough energy for both of them. Of course, the dog hadn’t spent the past eight hours trapped in the car, battling traffic.

      Nicki sighed. The last of her single friends was now married. But at less than a year from thirty, what did she expect? In fact, she’d almost made it to the altar herself. Instead, she was free and single, and her former intended was facing a hefty jail term.

      She hesitated in the glow of the Ram’s headlights to finger through her keys, then dragged her bag the final few feet to the kitchen door. Bed was only a few minutes away. Unpacking could wait till morning. So could a shower.

      She raised the key and stopped short. The door wasn’t shut tightly, and the jamb was chipped and scratched.

      The headlights clicked off automatically, casting her in darkness, and the hair rose on the back of her neck. Someone had broken in to her house. Heart pounding in her chest, she pulled her phone from her purse and dialed 911.

      “Come, Callie.” With a small tug on the leash, she moved to the truck and opened the door. The dog stared at her, a question in her big brown eyes. After a moment’s hesitation, she jumped onto the seat, and Nicki slid in after her. Uneasiness crawled along her skin, the sense someone was nearby, watching. Why hadn’t that call gone through yet?

      She lowered the phone and stared at the screen. Half a bar. More like a dot. In several places on Cedar Key, her cell service was sketchy. Under her metal carport, it was nonexistent. Sitting inside the truck wasn’t helping, either.

      Leaving the driver’s side door open, she moved out into the moonlight, pulling Callie with her. Two bars. It was better than nothing.

      The dispatcher answered, and Nicki’s hand tightened on the phone. Perspiration coated her palms, and all the strength seemed to have left her limbs. “Someone broke in to my house.” She quickly provided the address.

      “Is anyone there now?”

      “I don’t know. I haven’t been inside.” Her gaze darted across the front of the house, and she backed toward the road, putting as much distance between herself and the house as she could. But nowhere felt safe.

      A shadow fell over her, and she lifted her gaze. Clouds rolled across the sky, obscuring the three-quarter moon. Thunder rumbled in the distance, a far-off storm that might or might not reach Cedar Key.

      After finishing with the dispatcher, she slid her phone back into its pouch. The police would be there soon. Meanwhile, Callie was with her. Of course, Callie was a big pussycat.

      She turned to head back toward the truck, the sense of vulnerability too strong to ignore. She was used to living out of sight of the neighbors. She’d grown up in the country, at least from age nine onward. That was when she’d moved to Crystal River and found out what a real family was. The dozen or so foster homes before that didn’t count. Neither did the time she’d spent with her birth mother.

      But now, looking at the trees shielding her house on three sides, the privacy she’d cherished when she bought the place felt more like isolation. And not in a good way.

      A rustle sounded nearby and grew rapidly closer. Her heart leaped into her throat. Callie stiffened, a low growl rumbling in her chest. Something was barreling toward them through the strip of woods separating her yard from the one next door. Something large. She jerked Callie’s leash, ready to run for the truck, but Callie wasn’t budging.

      A male voice cut through the noise. “Sasha, heel.”

      Sasha? The breath she’d been holding spilled out in a rush. Sasha was the German shepherd next door, her neighbor Andy’s dog.

      A fraction of a second later, sixty pounds of quivering excitement broke from the trees and charged across the yard toward them. Both dogs’ tails waved back and forth at a frantic pace. By the time Sasha’s human counterpart appeared, the two dogs were busy exchanging sniffs.

      She watched him retrieve the leash and loop it around his hand. The other end was attached to Andy’s dog, but the man standing in her driveway wasn’t Andy. In fact, he looked sort of like... No way. She squinted in the bit of moonlight leaking through the clouds.

      “Tyler?”

      He hesitated for two beats. Then recognition flashed across his face. “Nicki.” He wrapped her in a hug, then held her away from him, his hands on her shoulders. “Wow, you look good.” The recognition turned to confusion. “What are you doing here?”

      “I live here.” The hesitation in her tone proclaimed her own bewilderment.

      Long ago, they’d been friends—close friends—until his mom got sick and moved him to Atlanta, where his aunt could care for them both. He’d been a scrawny fifteen-year-old at the time. She’d been a year younger and pretty skinny herself.

      Now he was anything but. Her three-inch heels, added to her own five feet nine inches, put her almost eye to eye with him. But he outweighed her by a good seventy pounds, all of it muscle.

      She shook her head, trying to clear it. “What are you doing here with Andy’s dog?”

      “Andy’s my brother. I’m going to help him renovate that run-down inn he bought.”

      The confusion cleared. Andy’s kid brother. The soldier. Andy and his wife Joan had told her he was coming and had given her a bit of his history, how two years ago, he’d been finishing his third tour in Afghanistan and had come under attack during a recon mission and how he almost didn’t make it out alive. Andy had just failed to mention his kid brother was Tyler Brant.

      “He told me you were coming, but I didn’t make the connection.” With different fathers, they didn’t have the same last name. And during the two years she and Tyler had hung out, Andy was already out of the house and married.

      “I just arrived this afternoon, and we had a lot of catching up to do. Since I’d kept them up way past their bedtime, I told Andy I’d take Sasha out. I didn’t realize she was going to bolt as soon as I stepped out the door, or I’d have kept a death grip on the leash.”

      The teasing grin he flashed her carried her back fifteen years. When she was a cranky adolescent, he’d had a knack for sending the dark clouds scurrying with his quirky sense of humor. Of course, she’d done her share of warding off his storms, too.

      She returned his smile. “Sasha probably picked up Callie’s scent. They’re best buds.”

      He nodded down at the golden retriever. “She must like late night walks, too.”

      “Actually, I’m just getting home.”

      He had the late part right. It was three hours later than she’d planned. After the Saturday wedding in Miami, she’d stayed a second night and enjoyed a long lunch with friends. The northerly drive from Miami to the Gulf town of Cedar Key wasn’t a lot of fun anytime. Independence

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