Colleen’s eyes glittered. “I haven’t been to a carnival since I was a kid.”

“You should come see ours. It’ll make you feel young again.” Blaze flashed what Liz called his “come hither” smile.

Yep, that redhead is a sheep being led to the slaughter by a wolf, she thought.

“I’d think all those terrifying rides would scare a few years off a person,” Colleen said.

Liz cut her eyes around to Colleen. There was heat when she looked at Blaze but something else. Rock-hard steel in her eyes said that she was attracted but she wasn’t rolling back on her heels and falling into a motel bed with him. If he liked what he saw, he was going to work for it.

Gemma bounced a knee off Liz’s and winked when Liz looked her way. Suddenly everything looked much better. Raylen wouldn’t kill Blaze or break up with her. Blaze, bless his heart, didn’t have any idea that the gorgeous redhead was a panther, and in the past he had only tamed little house kittens.

Blaze ate fast, complimented Jasmine on her cooking, flirted with Colleen, kissed Liz on the cheek, and told them all to come on out to the carnival and he’d see to it they had free wristbands, so they could ride anything all evening without paying. Then he was gone and the static electricity in the café settled down.

“Is he your aunt’s son or what?” Colleen asked.

“It’s a long story but I’ll give y’all the short version. We winter about halfway between Amarillo and Claude, Texas. We’re sixteen miles from Amarillo and fourteen from Claude. My mother’s people had a lot of land in that area when the depression hit, and they sold it to buy a small carnival. They kept enough to park the carnival for the winter months, and that’s where we’ve always gone the week before Thanksgiving. The nearest neighbor is half a mile up the road and they had a daughter, Mary Lou, who was friends with Aunt Tressa. She got mixed up with a hippie group that decided to go to Wyoming to live in a commune when she was about eighteen. That lasted until she got pregnant and decided communal living wasn’t for her. She came home and had the baby. Her folks died the year after he was born in a small plane crash going to Brownsville. Then she got cancer and died when Blaze was fourteen. Aunt Tressa took him to raise. So he’s not blood kin but just heart kin, as Aunt Tressa says.”

“What about the ranch where he lived?” Gemma asked.

“By the time Mary Lou died, she’d sold it off to pay for medical bills until all that was left was a small trailer and two acres. Aunt Tressa sold that and put it in a trust for Blaze, gave him a job, and he’s been a carnie ever since.”

“How did he feel about being jerked out of one world and tossed into another?” Colleen asked.