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“Maybe you should let them find you,” she murmured, her gaze dipping to his mouth. Her own lips trembled apart, her breath quickening.
Answering heat flooded his body. “I told you. If you go, I’ll follow.”
“You’re crazy.” Somehow, she was even closer to him, her breasts brushing against his chest. He didn’t know if she’d stepped closer or if he had been the one to close the distance.
He didn’t really care.
“I rode bulls for a living,” he answered, sliding one hand around to press against her spine, tugging her closer. “Crazy’s baked into that cake, sweetheart.”
She slipped her hands under the hem of his T-shirt, her fingers cool against his skin. She traced his muscles and the ridges of his rib cage with a light, maddening touch. “I don’t need you.”
“I think maybe you do.”
Deception Lake
Paula Graves
PAULA GRAVES, an Alabama native, wrote her first book at the age of six. A voracious reader, Paula loves books that pair tantalizing mystery with compelling romance. When she’s not reading or writing, she works as a creative director for a Birmingham advertising agency and spends time with her family and friends. Paula invites readers to visit her website, www.paulagraves.com.
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With thanks to Bill Clifton, the computer guru who answered all my questions with patience and kindness. All errors in this book are mine, not his.
Contents
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
The weather was warm for March in the Smokies, or so the woman at the diner counter informed Jack Drummond when he commented on the heat as he took a seat at the counter and scanned the large menu board behind her. She was a broad-shouldered woman in her late thirties, with work-worn hands and a plain but pleasant face devoid of makeup. The name tag over her left breast read Darlene.
“Won’t last,” Darlene warned in a hard-edged drawl as she pulled a pen and order pad from her apron pocket. “We’ll get another frost in time to kill off all the daffodils that’ll be blooming.” She shrugged. “Spring in Tennessee.”
Jack could tell Darlene a few stories about spring in Wyoming that would curl her lanky brown hair. Late-season snowstorms piling up in feet, not inches. Winds so strong and cold they seemed to blast the skin right off your face. But he refrained, ordering a steak sandwich and a sweet tea, his gaze sliding past the beer menu without snagging for even a second.
Progress.
The bell on the door behind him tinkled as another customer came in from the March sunshine. A woman’s voice called out, husky and lightly tinted with a Texas twang. “Darlene, do you have the to-go orders for The Gates ready?”
The skin on Jack’s neck prickled, and he swung his head slowly toward the newcomer, certain he’d imagined the familiar tones he’d heard in the feminine voice. She’d be too old or too young, too tall, too short, hair too red or not red enough, wrong eyes, wrong face, wrong build.
But not this time. In the middle of Purgatory, Tennessee, on an impromptu fishing trip with his brother-in-law’s family, he’d finally tracked down Mara Jennings.
He’d
