LITMIR.BIZ

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right back.

      In the end, they were simply too well matched, and they rolled away from each other, filthy, breathless, and laughing.

      Wiping the blood from a split lip, Jared turned his head to watch his troops engage the enemy. It looked to him as though Devin were going to have a black eye, and Shane had a rip in his jeans that was going to get them all in trouble.

      He let out a long, contented sigh and watched the sunlight play through the leaves.

      “Going to break it up?” Rafe asked, without much interest.

      “Nah.” Casually, Jared wiped blood from his chin. “They’re almost finished.”

      “I’m going to go into town.” Energy still high, Rafe bounded up and brushed off his pants. “Gonna get me a soda down at Ed’s.”

      Devin stopped wrestling Shane and looked over. “Got any money?”

      With a wolfish grin, Rafe jingled the change in his pocket. “Maybe.” Challenge issued, he tossed the hair out of his eyes, then took off at a dead run.

      The delightful prospect of shaking quarters from Rafe’s pockets was all the impetus Devin and Shane needed. Suddenly united, they scrambled off each other and chased after him.

      “Come on, Jare,” Shane called over his shoulder. “We’re going to Ed’s.”

      “Go on. I’ll catch up.”

      But he lay there on his back, staring at the sunlight flickering through the awning of leaves. As his brothers’ pounding footsteps faded away, he thought he could hear the sounds of the old battle. The boom and crash of mortars, the screams of the dead and dying.

      Then, closer, the ragged breathing of the lost and the frightened.

      He closed his eyes, too familiar with the ghosts of these woods to be unnerved by their company. He wished he’d known them, could have asked them what it was like to put your life, your soul, at risk. To love a thing, an ideal, a way of life, so much you would give everything you were to defend it.

      He thought he would for his family, for his parents, his brothers. But that was different. That was…family.

      One day, he promised himself, he would make his mark. People would look at him and know that there was Jared MacKade, a man who stood for something. A man who did what had to be done, and never turned his back on a fight.

      Chapter 1

      Jared wanted a cold beer. He could already taste it, that first long sip that would start to wash away the dregs of a lousy day in court, an idiot judge and a client who was driving him slowly insane.

      He didn’t mind that she was guilty as sin, had certainly been an accessory before and after the fact in the spate of petty burglaries in the west end of Hagerstown. He could swallow defending the guilty. That was his job. But he was getting damn sick and tired of having his client hit on him.

      The woman had a very skewed view of lawyer-client relations. He could only hope he’d made it clear that if she grabbed his butt again, she was out on hers and on her own.

      Under different circumstances, he might have found it only mildly insulting, even fairly amusing. But he had too much on his mind, and on his calendar, to play games.

      With an irritated jerk of the wrist, he jammed a classical CD into his car stereo system and let Mozart join him on the winding route toward home.

      Just one stop, he told himself. One quick stop, and then a cold beer.

      And he wouldn’t even have had that one stop, if this Savannah Morningstar had bothered to return his calls.

      He rolled his shoulders to ease the tension and punched the gas pedal on a curve to please himself with a bit of illegal speed. He drove along the familiar country road quickly, barely noticing the first tender buds of spring on the trees or the faint haze of wild dogwood ready to bloom.

      He braked for a darting rabbit, passed a pickup heading toward Antietam. He hoped Shane had supper started, then remembered with an oath that it was his turn to cook.

      The scowl suited his face, with its sculptured lines, the slight imperfection of a nose that had been broken twice, the hard edge of chin. Behind shaded glasses, under arching black brows, his eyes were cool and sharply green. Though his lips were set in a line of irritation, that didn’t detract from the appeal of them.

      Women often looked at that mouth, and wondered… When it smiled, and the dimple beside it winked, they sighed and asked themselves how that wife of his had ever let him get away.

      He made a commanding presence in a courtroom. The broad shoulders, narrow hips and tough, rangy build always looked polished in a tailored suit, but the elegant cover never quite masked the power beneath.

      His black hair had just enough wave to curl appealingly at the collar of one of his starched white shirts.

      In the courtroom he wasn’t Jared MacKade, one of the MacKade brothers who had run roughshod over the south of the county from the day they were born. He was Jared MacKade, counselor-at-law.

      He glanced up at the house on the hill just outside of town. It was the old Barlow place that his brother Rafe had come back to town to buy. He saw Rafe’s car at the top of the steep lane, and hesitated.

      He was tempted to pull in, to forget about this last little detail of the day and share that beer he wanted with Rafe. But he knew that if Rafe wasn’t working, hammering or sawing, or painting some part of the house that would be a bed and breakfast by fall, he would be waiting for his new wife to come home.

      It still amazed Jared that the baddest of the bad MacKades was a married man.

      So he drove past, took the left fork in the road that would wind him around toward the MacKade farm and the small plot of land that bordered it.

      According to his information, Savannah Morningstar had bought the little house on the edge of the woods only two months before. She lived there with her son and, as the gossip mill was mostly dry where she was concerned, obviously kept to herself.

      Jared figured the woman was either stupid or rude. In his experience, when people received a message from a lawyer, they answered it. Though the voice on her answering machine had been low, throaty, and stunningly sexy, he wasn’t looking forward to meeting that voice face-to-face. This mission was a favor for a colleague—and a nuisance.

      He caught a glimpse of the little house through the trees. More of a cabin, really, he mused, though a second floor had been added several years ago. He turned onto the narrow lane by the Morningstar mailbox, cutting his speed dramatically to negotiate the dips and holes, and studied the house as he approached.

      It was log, built originally, as he recalled, as some city doctor’s vacation spot. That hadn’t lasted long. People from the city often thought they wanted rustic until they had it.

      The quiet setting, the trees, the peaceful bubbling of a creek topped off from yesterday’s rain, enhanced the ambience of the house, with its simple lines, untreated wood and uncluttered front porch.

      The steep bank in front of it was rocky and rough, and in the summer, he knew, tended to be covered with high, tangled weeds. Someone had been at work here, he mused, and almost came to a stop. The earth had been dug and turned, worked to a deep brown. There were still rocks, but they were being used as a natural decorative landscaping. Someone had planted clumps of flowers among them, behind them.

      No, he realized, someone was planting clumps of flowers. He saw the figure, the movement, as he rounded the crest and brought his car to a halt at the end of the lane, beside an aging compact.

      Jared lifted his briefcase, climbed out of the car and started over the freshly mowed swatch of grass. He was very grateful for his dark glasses when Savannah Morningstar rose.

      She’d been kneeling amid the dirt and garden tools and flats of flowers. When she moved, she moved slowly, inch by very impressive

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