Cover

Back Cover Text

Starting over has never looked so good in this fan-favorite tale from Linda Lael Miller, previously published as Deadly Gamble

Mojo Sheepshanks knows a thing or two about new beginnings. After a long-ago tragedy she’s never fully remembered and a childhood spent moving from place to place, she’s making a home in the small town of Cave Creek, Arizona, and finally taking charge of her future. But Tucker Darroch, a sexy cop with baggage of his own, keeps complicating the life she’s trying to simplify…

Tucker has been fascinated by the enigmatic Mojo from the beginning, and try as he might, he can’t ignore the sparks that fly between them. So when a wealthy man shows up in Cave Creek claiming to be Mojo’s long-lost uncle, and her shady brother begins dogging her footsteps, Tucker decides he’s sticking close as he and Mojo work to solve a decades-old crime…and prevent history from repeating itself.

First published as DEADLY GAMBLE by HQN in 2006

First edition as ARIZONA WILD published in 2016

Chapter One

CHAPTER ONE

Cave Creek, Arizona

AT FIRST, THE chill was a drowsy nibble at the distant and ragged edges of my awareness, raising goosebumps on the parts of my flesh bared to that spring night. The sensation was vaguely disturbing, but not troublesome enough to stir me from the fitful shallows of sleep. I remember rolling onto my side, pulling the comforter up to my right earlobe and murmuring some insensible protest.

That was when I heard Nick’s voice. Or thought I heard it.

Impossible, I told myself, nestling groggily into my polyester burrow. He’s dead.

Just then, a hand came to rest on my hip, and the chill sprouted teeth and bit right through cotton nightshirt, skin and tissue to seize the marrow of my bones.

I choked out a hoarse cry, too raw and guttural to qualify as a scream, and shimmied off the mattress to land hard on both feet. In the space of an instant, my senses shifted from dial-up to broadband, and I pressed one hand to my chest, in case my heart tried to flail its way out of my chest. My brains pulsed, Cuisinart-style, then scrambled. I couldn’t seem to drag a breath past my esophagus, though my lungs clawed for air like a pair of miners trapped beneath tons of rubble.

I felt that way once on a stair-climber at the gym after sucking in a pack and a half of nicotine in a bar the night before, and subsequently swore off exercise forever. Hell, somebody has to serve as the bad example.

But I digress. Get used to it.