LITMIR.BIZ

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he said, and walked toward the passenger side of her old Ford.

      “In the back, Hamilton,” she ordered. “I don’t want mud all over my seats.” She fought the urge to add or you near enough to strangle me. Her grandmother told her once that there was an old cemetery, way back on Davis land, where all the deaths were recorded on headstones. Died in childbirth. Death from cholera. Died in accident. Death by Hamilton.

      Besides, she didn’t have time to clean all the property listings off her passenger seat. Her mobile office was always a mess. Four mornings a week, the farm truck was her business vehicle.

      He swung up into the bed of the truck with the ease of a man who’d done it many times and she started backing up before he was seated. The sooner she was home safe, the better. She’d loan him the pickup and tell him to just leave the keys in it. He could cross the pasture and walk back to his place easily enough.

      The road was bumpy between her land and his, but she flew toward home, not much caring if the man bounced out or not. Her people had always hated Hamiltons. They told stories about how mean they were and even though she’d been told they were all dead, she felt it her ancestral duty to hate this new one.

      So, why was she loaning him her truck?

      Dakota shook her head. It was the neighborly thing to do. Having a grandmother with Apache blood and an Irish grandfather had messed her up for life.

      A guy she’d dated a few years back broke up with her because he said she had Apache skills with a knife and an Irish temper. She almost hit him for insulting both sides of her family, but then she would have proved his point. She’d told him this was the twenty-first century and she was a skilled chef like her sister, which wasn’t true, but it sounded good. He left before she cooked him anything and proved herself a liar, as well. She heard him mumbling something about being afraid to sleep beside her for fear he’d be carved and thin sliced if he snored. He’d called her hotheaded just before he gunned the engine and shot out of her life.

      Dakota gripped the steering wheel, realizing the old boyfriend had been right. She did have a temper, but with a Hamilton riding in the back of her truck, now didn’t seem the time for self-analysis.

      She could be nice. She’d loan Hamilton the truck, and when he brought it back she’d tell him to never step foot on Davis land again. Simple enough.

      When she slid to a stop a few feet from the kitchen door of her place, she glanced back. He was still there and raindrops were spatting against her windshield.

      She jumped out and ran to haul the boxes of supplies to the cover of the porch.

      To his credit, he did his share to help. More than his share, actually, because he carried a double load with each trip.

      The guy was strong and obviously well built. And a biker. Black leather jacket. Leather pants hugging his legs. Boots to his knees. His cowboy ancestors were probably rolling over in their graves.

      In a few minutes they had the boxes on the covered porch and the rain started pouring down in sheets.

      “We made it.” She laughed. “Thanks. No supplies got wet.”

      “I’m glad I could help. I’m already soaked so the rain won’t bother me.”

      She decided he didn’t sound like he meant it about how glad he was to help. Maybe it was the tone in his voice—it didn’t sound right without a Texas twang. She frowned at him, wondering what northern state he’d come from.

      He looked down at her with his gray wolf eyes and added, “If you got wet, you might shrink and then you’d be about elf size.”

      Dakota studied him a moment. No obvious signs of insanity. “You don’t have many friends, do you, Hamilton?” She tossed him her key. “Park the truck at the turnoff on my land. You won’t have as far to walk. Leave the keys in the glove box.”

      “Aren’t you afraid someone will steal it?”

      “Nope. Nobody but you.”

      He nodded and disappeared into the downpour.

      Dakota straightened to her five-foot-two height and frowned. “Sounds just like what a Hamilton would say,” she mumbled, thinking it was obvious the Hamiltons had been the ones to start the feud.

      Elf size. No one had ever called her that.

       CHAPTER THREE

      LAUREN BRIGMAN STOOD in the shadows of hundred-year-old cottonwoods planted to slow the wind off the open plains. The lights of town were nothing more than a glow of tea candles in the distance.

      The night’s breath rattled the dried leaves in the trees as it had a dozen years ago. She felt a hint of old fear creep over her as a memory circled in her mind.

      Strange how you live thousands of days, thousands of nights but only a few live in your mind, in your heart, as clear as the moment they happened.

      She stared at the home her high school friends had called the Gypsy House. An old woman who’d died there decades ago was almost a skeleton before anyone had come to check on her. After her passing, the house was left to rot and became the setting for ghost stories told around campfires.

      Finally, the grandson of the old woman, Yancy Gray, moved to Crossroads and found himself drawn to the place. He’d discovered he owned the house and had completely remodeled it. Yancy had painted the outside a cream color with shutters the burnt orange of sunset’s last glow. He’d enlarged the second floor and landscaped beautifully.

      Yet in Lauren’s mind, the house was still abandoned and rotting, as it looked when she was fifteen. She’d danced with death that night twelve years ago; they all had. Tim O’Grady, Reid Collins, Lucas Reyes, and her. Just four kids walking home, looking for something to do, hoping for an adventure they could brag about at school.

      Three boys and her, the youngest, the only girl, all in their teens. Sometimes she felt as if they’d been bound together by fear and the lie they all kept after that night. She’d never be free of the memory. One day she’d be bent over with age, but she’d still come to this spot every year and remember what had happened.

      Footsteps played a rapid tap on the wet pavement behind her as thunder rumbled above.

      Lauren stepped farther into the shadows and watched. There was no mistaking Reid Collins’s quick, confident step. He might be twenty-eight now and rich, thanks to a trust fund from grandparents and a ranch a few miles from town, but there was still a bit of the little boy in him. Spoiled, arrogant, and handsome. Word was that he’d be running for mayor of Crossroads in the fall with his eye on the Texas State Senate in ten years, but Reid would never have her vote.

      As far as she knew, he never finished college or anything else he’d started. Her father, the town’s sheriff, told Lauren a few months ago that the only way to kill an improvement project in the county was to put Reid in charge. He’d never get around to the planning meeting, much less completion.

      The tapping of his boots stopped a few feet in front of the cottonwoods. “I know you’re in there, Lauren. That long, blond hair of yours glows in the dark. You might as well come out.” His laugh wasn’t quite real. Too polished, too practiced.

      She slowly stepped onto the road. “I didn’t think you’d be in town, Reid. Did they run out of parties in the big city?” He didn’t look entirely sober, but she didn’t mention it. “Pop said they canceled the city council meeting because you had to be in Austin today.”

      “I just got back. The Governors Balls are not what they used to be.” He smiled as if really looking at her for a change. “You know, Lauren, I miss our once-a-year dates from college. You were the only girl I took out now and then that I didn’t sleep with.” His gaze traveled down her long, slim body.

      She didn’t miss him. Those dates had been torture.

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