This isn’t going to be a slam dunk...

Former basketball star Wes Fallon owes his brother everything. So when Deacon asks him to track down some missing charitable donations, Wes is on it. For the first time, the accident that ended his career looks like a godsend...until Wes encounters Posy Jones.

Posy is unlike any woman he’s ever met. She’s beautiful, intelligent and can hold her own on the court. But she’s clearly keeping something from him. As he digs deeper into the missing funds, his gut tells him what she’s hiding is tied to it. Will he be forced to choose between the woman he’s falling in love with and the brother he would risk anything for? Hopefully not...because his choice might surprise them all.

The first time she bumped him, it was an accident

Wes was guarding her tight and Posy wanted to move him off the ball, but her elbow connected with his stomach. Ashamed that she’d let her frustration toward her mom bleed onto her game, she immediately paused to apologize.

He stole the basketball from her and put it in the hoop, obliterating her small lead. He hadn’t even noticed that she hit him, despite the fact that her elbow stung from the contact.

Posy almost called time out. She’d been apologizing for being too big, too rough, too much her whole life. Over and over she’d gotten the message that she was too competitive. People got angry when she didn’t keep herself in check.

Wes pumped his fist and pointed at her. “You done?”

No. No, she was most definitely not done. She was just getting started.

Dear Reader,

Every time I start a book, one scene cracks it open for me, showing me the characters and helping to shape their story. For Wes Fallon and Posy Jones, that scene was their first encounter on the basketball court. Until I wrote their game, I didn’t realize Posy was afraid to be her authentic self or how deep her longing was to find a guy who’d love her just the way she was. From the second Posy gave Wes a shove that was a bit too hard and then immediately felt uncomfortable in her own skin, she became one of my favorite heroines. I wanted her to win. (And not only at basketball.)

Out of Bounds is about characters who aren’t sure they’re lovable. From Posy, the heroine who suspects she’s too intense for a relationship; to Wes, who got shuffled through too many homes as a kid and never understood why; to Angel, the poodle-mix with the heart of an anarchist, these characters struggled to trust. I hope you’ll enjoy reading their story as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Extras including behind-the-scenes info, deleted scenes and details about my other books are on my website: www.ellenhartman.com. I blog with the Harlequin Superromance authors at www.superauthors.com, and I’m on Facebook. Send email to ellen@ellenhartman.com. I’d love to hear from you!

Happy reading!

Ellen Hartman

Out of Bounds

Ellen Hartman

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Ellen graduated from Carnegie Mellon with a degree in creative writing and then spent the next fifteen years writing technical documentation. Eventually, she worked up the courage to try fiction and has since published eight novels with Harlequin Superromance. Currently, Ellen lives in a college town in New York with her husband and sons.

Books by Ellen Hartman

HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

1427—WANTED MAN

1491—HIS SECRET PAST

1563—THE BOYFRIEND’S BACK

1603—PLAN B: BOYFRIEND

1665—CALLING THE SHOTS

1777—THE LONG SHOT

Other titles by this author available in ebook format.

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This book is dedicated to my editor, Victoria Curran.

Who better to receive the dedication in a book about a beloved younger brother than the person who came closest to convincing me that Sam was the more worthy Winchester?

I’ve learned so much from Victoria about writing stories that keep people entertained.

Being a writer has a lot of perks, working with her is one of my favorites.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

EXCERPT

CHAPTER ONE

“Y OU SAID THEY WERE bluffing. You said the trade threat was a tactic to get Gary Krota to sign for less money.”

Wes slumped on the concrete steps outside his building, the sandwich he’d been planning to eat before practice forgotten next to him. The midday Madrid traffic snarl in the street barely registered. “I told Fabi to ignore the news,” he added, “that I was definitely not being traded to Serbia.”

A small dog covered in tangled, grayish fur that probably should have been white, nosed into a paper bag lying on the sidewalk. Wes watched it give the bag an investigatory lick.

“That’s what I thought,” Vic said, his tone flat, and not because it was 6:00 a.m. in the New York agent’s office. He’d been negotiating with the owners of the Madrid Pirates, Wes’s basketball team, for a week and it was clear he was out of alternatives. Victor hated to lose almost as much as Wes did. “Your option clause lets them trade you, Wes. I have another call set up for later this afternoon, but it’s not looking good.”

The dog shook the bag.

Wes rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, his fingers glancing against his newly healed shoulder. If he hadn’t torn his rotator cuff would he be having this conversation? His numbers had been a little off, but it was a long season. He’d never been a superstar, but was he actually disposable?

“Look, Victor, nothing against Serbia, but I can still contribute here. My shoulder is one hundred percent. Practice was solid all week. I’m ready to go tomorrow night.” He realized he was veering close to begging. But if the Pirates didn’t want him, fine. “I don’t want the trade.”

“I’m doing everything I can, Wes.”

“I hate being jerked around.”

Victor wasn’t only his agent, he was an old family friend. If anyone understood why he didn’t want to move again, his life uprooted by the whim of someone in authority, it was Victor.

A seagull had spotted the dog and its paper-bag prize and dived down, beak extended. The dog scampered across the sidewalk, dodging around the feet of pedestrians, veering close to the traffic.

“I have to go,” Wes said. He ended the call without waiting for Victor’s response and was off the steps in one smooth motion.

“Hey, dog! Stop! Come!” The bird dived again and the dog darted between a lamppost and a bench. “Sit!”

Two women with shopping bags in their hands stared at him.

He spun, scooped his sandwich off the steps and turned back to the street.

There. The dog sprinted between two cars and slipped past the front wheel of a delivery truck. Just when it appeared to be safely on the opposite sidewalk, it turned to dart back across the street.

The dog was so small.

Wes ripped a hunk off the sandwich and threw it. “Hey, dog, come! Fetch!”

The bird swooped low and the dog skidded past the back wheel of a red car.

He was an idiot. A Spanish dog would know Spanish commands. How the hell do you say “Heel” in Spanish? He pulled another piece off his sandwich and held it out as bait while he skirted a trio of twentysomething backpacking tourists and stepped off the sidewalk.

He couldn’t see the dog anymore, but a truck loaded with full barrels suddenly accelerated into a gap in the traffic.

The truck’s bumper caught him on the hip, his head snapped back into the grille, and then he went flying backward into the outdoor seating at the Savion café. A crack as he landed on one of the café’s stone planters told him his barely healed shoulder was done for good.

Hallelujah, he thought right before he passed out from pain.

* * *

H E WOKE UP, momentarily disoriented in the dark, but quickly realized he was in a hospital bed. Weak light streaming in from the hall reflected off the machines surrounding him, as an electric hum droned too low to disturb the person slumped in a chair next to his bed. He rubbed his face, surprised to find thick stubble, and wondered how long he’d been out. His throat was dry and he coughed.

The figure in the chair started, sitting up straight and staring at him. Deacon. Of course he was here.

“Wes? You’re awake?” His brother stood and bent over the bed. He touched Wes’s hair and then dropped his hand to rest on his arm. “God, it’s good to see you, man.”

“What happened to the dog?” Wes asked.

“Dog?”

“Little white one.” The details were fuzzy, but he remembered the dog. “It was in the street.”

“I don’t know anything about a dog.” Deacon squinted at him. “You were chasing a dog?”

“It didn’t listen. Didn’t speak English,” Wes clarified. “Was going to get hit by a car.”

A deep ache down the left side of his body reminded him that he’d been the one who got hit. There’d been an impact and then that awful crack when he landed. The memory of the cracking sound almost made him pass out again. He moved his arm and felt a throbbing pain under his right shoulder blade. He winced and his older brother’s hand tightened on his arm. Deacon’s dirty-blond hair was limp and his eyes were shot with red behind his glasses.

“You need a shower,” Wes muttered.

Deacon rolled his eyes. “Sorry. I’ve been distracted. My brother got hit by a beer truck.”

Wes shifted again and the pain deepened.

“No more jokes. Laughing hurts.” He closed his eyes for a second. “Everything hurts.”

“This dog...”

Wes made an effort and opened his eyes.

“You were trying to save it?” Deacon hooked the chair behind him with his foot and pulled it closer so he could sit down, all without moving his hand from Wes’s arm. Which was strange. Deacon wasn’t the most demonstrative guy and, while he’d been the only real parent Wes ever had, he’d never been the motherly, hovering type. Growing up, Wes had been clipped on the back of the head way more often than he’d had his hand held.

“I didn’t want it to get hit.”

Deacon pushed his glasses up on his forehead and rubbed his eyes. He readjusted his glasses. “Oh. That’s good then.” He patted Wes’s arm. “A dog ran into the road. That’s good.”

Why the hell was Deacon patting him?

“No, it’s not—” His mind finally cleared enough for him to realize what was wrong with his brother. “Why are you here, D.?”

“You got hit by a truck.”

“You think I walked in front of it on purpose.”

Deacon’s denial came a second too late. “No. But Victor did say you were upset....”

Wes groaned and not from pain this time. If he could have moved his right arm without passing out, he’d have punched his brother.

“Upset, yes. They’re trading me to Serbia. Fabi is furious. I don’t want to move again.” Deacon was watching him closely. “I wouldn’t kill myself over basketball. Come on.”

At that moment Wes realized his brother had been worried precisely because Deacon could imagine killing himself over basketball. It was a fundamental difference between them.

Deacon had put every single one of his dreams into his basketball career and when it was cut short by an injury, he’d been lost.

That was when he turned his attention to nurturing Wes’s talent for the game. With his brother’s support, Wes got to a great college, played on a powerhouse team and, when the NBA passed him over, found this spot on the Madrid team. He’d expected to keep playing ball for at least a few more years, but... The memory of the accident washed back over him and he felt sick to his stomach. The truck hadn’t caught him head-on, thank God, but that sound when he hit the ground... He suspected he’d be hearing it in nightmares for the rest of his life.

“How long have I been out?”

“Three days,” Deacon said.

“You talked to the doctors?”

Wes gave his brother credit for holding eye contact when he nodded.

He’d never had the passion for the game that Deacon did, but he’d loved playing. Loved being a player, out on the court with the crowd around him. He felt alive when he was the focus of that attention in a way he’d rarely been able to duplicate off the court.

He hadn’t wanted to move to Serbia and certainly hadn’t thrown himself in front of a truck in despair, but that didn’t mean he was ready for the news he was sure was coming next.

Deacon took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes again. “Your shoulder’s done. It was touch-and-go the first time. That doctor from the team, Peter? He said you pulled off a miracle after the surgery, working it back into shape. You’ll be able to use it. But you’re not going to get back to the team.”

Wes let his eyes shut again. You’re not going to get back to the team.

So that was it.

Not going to get back...

He should be wrecked. Run down by a beer truck trying to save a dog, and now unemployed. From living the dream—playing professional basketball, traveling with the team all over Europe, dating gorgeous women—to the end of his career at the age of twenty-eight. For the past twenty years, either he or Deacon had been playing at the top levels of the game. End of an era. The Fallon era.

“You okay?” Wes asked his brother.

“Shouldn’t that be my line?”

“Seriously, Deacon.”

“Seriously, Wes. You’re lying in a hospital bed, your career is over and, judging by the fact that this—”

Deacon pointed out an enormous bunch of pink tulips “—is from the truck driver who hit you, while this—” he pointed to a tiny cactus in a black, plastic pot “—is from Fabi, I’m going out on a limb to guess you no longer have a girlfriend.” Deacon held up his hand. “Not that I’m bummed about that because Fabi is a...well, you know.”

Wes did know. Fabi was living proof you can’t judge a book by its cover. She was gorgeous. Long legs, toned muscles, perfect skin, fantastic smile. Underneath the surface was a sketchy moral code and an endless appetite for Wes’s money.

He’d loved her brains, though, and her wicked sense of humor. But he hadn’t been surprised or heartbroken when she threatened to dump him if he got traded. He’d been more bothered when he realized he wasn’t going to fight for the relationship. What had he been doing with her if he wasn’t willing to fight for her? The not-so-subtle subtext of the cactus seemed to indicate that being hit by a truck was right up there with being traded to Serbia as a deal breaker.

This breakup fell squarely in the category of not missing things you never really had in the first place.

He wasn’t worried about losing Fabi, but Deacon was another question. He couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t trying to get Deacon’s attention or make him happy. Their mom died when Wes was two. He and Deacon had been split up in foster care until he turned eight and Deacon, a full ten years older, got drafted into the NBA and immediately applied for custody of him. After the guardianship ended when he turned eighteen, Deacon had stayed fully involved in his life.

Mostly through basketball.

Now, for the first time, there was nothing tying him to Deacon. His brother had married his girlfriend, Julia, a little more than seven years ago. They had a full plate running the Fallon Foundation Centers and caring for the teenagers they took in as foster kids.

Without basketball, where would his relationship with Deacon land?

For that matter, what would his life look like? It had emptied out in the seconds after he got hit by that truck.

He could do anything. He’d owed a debt to his brother and he’d fulfilled it by playing as long and as well as he could.

“You want to go back to sleep?” Deacon asked.

“In a minute.” He tried to pull the sheet up, but the movement hurt too much. His brother took over, settling it around his shoulders.

“I’m going to get a nurse in here.”

Wes hoped the nurse would give him something to take the edge off the pain so he could sleep. “You sure you didn’t hear anything about a dog? Not in the accident report or anything?”

Deacon shook his head. “Nothing. I wish someone had told me about it. I wouldn’t have been so worried that—” He stood quickly. “Listen, Wes, Julia said I should wait until you’re feeling better, but I’m just going to lay this out there. You don’t have to say yes or no right away.”

Wes really wanted the drugs he was imagining the nurse would bring as soon as Deacon stopped acting out this Lifetime-movie moment.

“Spit it out.”

“I have this job and I want you to take it. I want you to come work for me.”

“A job?”

“Something to keep you busy.”

“I know what a job is. What do you have in mind?”

“You know the Hand-to-Hand pilot program?”

“Yes.”

Deacon and Julia ran the Fallon Foundation, building centers offering sports, arts and tutoring programs in economically depressed towns. The Hand-to-Hand program would make sister center relationships between Fallon centers and those in wealthier locations. The program’s mission statement said, Everyone needs a hand sometimes and everyone has something to offer.

“We have the site identified—it’s a town called Kirkland, right on Kueka Lake. We need the town to give us the lease on the space we’ve picked out, but it means getting a waiver from them. We’re in the last steps of negotiating a partner grant with Robinson University to fund a high-tech tutoring service to three other Fallon centers in New York State. I could really use someone on the ground full-time in Kirkland who can build goodwill and spread the word so we can close both those deals.”

Wes’s head had started throbbing. Hard work didn’t scare him, but he wasn’t sure what Deacon was asking him to do, let alone if he’d be capable of doing it.

“Don’t you want someone with experience?”

“Weren’t you the social chairman of your fraternity?”

“Yes, but you’re not asking me to hire a deejay. You want—”

“Shut up and listen. Didn’t the Madrid team make you do the press conferences after the games because your sound bites were more entertaining than half the games?”

He needed his brother to shut up so he could get some drugs. “What’s your point?”

“My point is, this job is about making people like and want to help the Fallon Foundation. You know our business and people like you.”

Wes stared at his brother.

“I don’t understand it, either,” Deacon said. “But they do.”

“Don’t you need a marketing guy? I majored in electrical engineering.”

“And I would trust you to rewire my toaster.” His brother nodded. “I would. I would also trust you to show Kirkland exactly what the Fallon Foundation Center is and why they need us in their town. If we get the Hand-to-Hand partnerships going, our ability to bring changes to other communities is going to double. Help me bring that home, Wes.”

Since he ultimately owed his life to his brother, when the rare opportunity for him to help came along, he never said no. He had very little understanding of what Deacon wanted him to do, but that was beside the point.

He nodded, which sent the throbbing inside his head off the charts.

Deacon’s jaw tightened. He leaned forward as if he was going to pat Wes again or maybe hug him, but he said simply, “I’ll get the nurse.”

A few minutes later, with what felt like a very effective painkiller finally pumping through his IV, Wes started drifting off again. Deacon was on the phone, talking softly.

“He’s going to do it, Julia. I know you wanted me to wait, but I needed to get him settled.” A pause. “He said there was a dog in the street. He was trying to grab it.”

Wes closed his eyes.

Deacon’s voice was almost a whisper. Wes might have missed what he said next, but he didn’t.

“How do I know if it’s the truth? I want it to be. He’s not going to tell me and you know it. We’ll keep an eye on him. What else can we do?”

* * *

I T WAS ANOTHER THREE DAYS before the doctors were satisfied that he was recovered enough to discharge him. Wes didn’t tell Deacon he’d overheard him. He noticed that his brother was never out of the room long, and twice he woke up to find Deacon staring at him.

The constant scrutiny was disconcerting. Did Deacon really think he’d have tried to kill himself over the Serbia trade?

When he was awake, they went over the Hand-to-Hand center in painstaking detail. By the time he was ready to leave the hospital, Wes was pretty sure he knew more about Kirkland, N.Y., than the mayor of the town. (Jay Meacham, age forty-six. Kirkland High, class of 1980, guard on the lunchtime basketball team at the Y, scotch and soda, never married.)

In the span of a week, he’d been hit by a truck, released by his team and educated in the history and traditions of one very small town in New York in preparation for the new job he hadn’t applied for and didn’t really know how to do. Life was dragging him along again. And he felt just as impotent now as he had when he’d heard about the trade to Serbia. The situation was different, because he was helping Deacon, but somehow it felt the same.

He went back to the apartment he’d been sharing with two of his teammates and took three days to pack up his life and say his goodbyes. On the streets, he kept an eye out for the little dog, but it never showed up. On the upside, his roommates swore they hadn’t seen it dead by the side of the road, either. Maybe it had found a new home.

At the next home game, Wes’s last, the arena was packed. Wes gave a farewell speech at halftime and as he ran through the joking acknowledgments he’d written for his teammates, he looked into the stands. Was this it? The final time he’d be at center court, entertaining a crowd?

That night he made the very bad decision to go out for a tour of nightclubs with the team. He ran into Fabi, who made a big deal over his scar and then tried to drag him into a private room to make out. He thanked her for the cactus and declined the invitation.

When he woke up the next morning he quickly discovered his teammates had given him a thoughtful parting gift. His usual thick hair was gone, shorn down to patchy stubble.

He was staring at himself in the bathroom mirror and wondering if he had time to hunt down Gary Krota to make him eat his razor, when his brother called.

“We have a problem,” Deacon said. “This woman in Kirkland, Trish Jones, ran a fundraiser for us last month. All her own idea and effort, but she used our name and logo. I didn’t actually know about it until she’d been promoting the event for a few days and by then it was too late to cut her off. She got the community involved and we had to be careful because we need as much goodwill as we can muster.”

Wes turned away from his reflection and leaned back on the sink.

“What’d she do, organize a bake sale? It’s not warm enough for a car wash there, is it?”

“She wrote a blog post and put up a donation button. The Kirkland paper said she managed to rake in over sixty-five thousand dollars. In ten days.”

Wes whistled. “That’s not true.”

“Honest to God. She told them she wasn’t expecting that kind of number, but apparently some other local blogger with a much bigger audience got wind of the thing and shared the link to Trish’s fundraising site and it snowballed.”

“Seventy thousand dollars?”

“It’s going to buy a lot of basketballs. Except there’s a little problem.”

“It’s all in pennies?”

“Trish hasn’t answered her phone in the past week.”

“You think she skipped town?”

“She owns a business there,” Deacon said. “I want to believe there’s an innocent explanation, but the other blogger, Chloe Chastain, called us with her concerns. Her reputation is on the line, too. When you get to Kirkland tomorrow, Trish Jones is your number one priority. We need to know where that money is and we need it to be in our bank account, safe and accounted for as soon as possible.”

“Got it.” Wes turned back to the mirror. Gary Krota better hope he never had to make a living as a barber.

* * *

P OSY J ONES SPENT one weekend, every other month, in her mother’s house in Kirkland, New York.

Trish cared what the other women on the Kirkland mom-and-community circuit thought about her and while Posy was often frustrated by her mom, she loved her. So she showed up and did her time and her mom had stories to tell her friends to prove that her relationship with her daughter was just as nice and perfect as she wanted it to be.

Timing the visits also capped the amount of crazy she had to deal with. Her mom had a habit of stepping into trouble and expecting Posy to bail her out, and the problems tended to snowball if she was away from Kirkland too long.

She flicked the button on the steering wheel to turn off the radio, silencing the Kirkland morning show—the same deejay team that had woken Posy up every morning in junior high school.

Before she got out of the car, she turned her phone on. Not a single missed call from her mom during the three-hour trip from Rochester. That never happened. She’d only spoken to her mom briefly the day before, too. When was the last time her mom had kept her on the phone longer than two minutes? Last week?

Main Street in downtown Kirkland was picturesque. As a location scout and quality control inspector for a national hotel chain, Posy was a professional at assessing the up- and downsides to communities. Kirkland was almost all upside—small, but thriving downtown full of locally owned businesses, excellent public schools, a pretty setting tucked on the shore of one of the Finger Lakes in upstate New York.

The downtown streets were lined with hanging baskets of flowers. Recycled plastic benches were spaced at friendly intervals to encourage visiting and lingering. A decent run of tourists came through in the summer for wine tours and lake camping. Another run in the fall for the foliage. Robinson University was a steady employer, and brought outlets for culture, a decent roster of small, research spin-off companies, as well as a solid but ever-changing population to fill rental units. And that bolstered the bottom line of countless Kirkland family budgets.

If she were assessing her hometown as a possible site for one of the Hotel Marie’s locations, she’d have to give Kirkland excellent marks. The year-round population was too small to support a large hotel like those in her chain, but she wouldn’t be able to fault much else.

That, however, was only the professional assessment. Personally? Posy gave Kirkland a lot more X marks than checks.

Posy’s parents separated when she was nine. Her dad moved to Rochester and her mom used every trick she could think of to drag the separation out and avoid divorce. When the divorce was finally official, Posy was fifteen and the family court judge allowed her to choose the custodial parent. She picked her dad, which precipitated an immediate campaign of guilt-tripping and pity parties from her mom. That campaign was still going strong thirteen years later.

As Trish never failed to mention, her dad hadn’t been willing or able to give Posy the kind of attention she’d been used to receiving from her mom. Which had been the point of Posy’s choice, but Trish would never accept that. It was a true story, but not a pretty one. And Trish would pick fantasy over harsh reality every time.

She found a parking place a few doors down from the Wonders of Christmas Shoppe, the store her mom owned on Main Street. Usually when she visited she did everything in her power to avoid Wonders, but her mom had insisted they meet there. She parked and locked her car, a habit she’d picked up when she moved to Rochester with her dad and that marked her as an outsider in Kirkland. Appropriate, because she’d never really fit in here in the first place.

The day was warm and there was a short line waiting for an outdoor table at the Lemon Drop Café. Wonders, on the other hand, had a Closed sign on the front door and the white lights that twinkled around the window display year-round were off. The brass door handle didn’t turn when she tried it. Posy knocked on the glass. She saw movement in the back of the store and waited while her mom made her way from the office.

Trish Jones turned the lock and pulled the door open with a jingle of brass bells. Posy was caught in a

cinnamon-scented hug, gently patting her mom’s back while trying to ignore the familiar awkwardness she felt whenever they touched. Posy was six feet tall, more than ten inches taller than Trish. Her frame was built on a completely different scale, broad and sturdy, quick to add muscle versus will-o’-the-wisp insubstantial. It was a size difference that, when Posy shot up past her mom early in fifth grade, had only exacerbated their constant conflicts over what Trish termed Posy’s unwillingness to fit in. She’d somehow managed to believe that Posy had willed herself into being a freakishly tall girl in middle school. Because that was exactly the fate every eleven-year-old girl longed for.

“I’m so glad you’re finally here, sweetheart,” Trish said. “I missed you.”

She released Posy, opened the door and quickly glanced up and down the street before closing and locking it again. Posy braced herself to be told that her orange T-shirt was too bright or that her freshly painted nails in their deep eggplant glory were disturbing.

“Did you see anyone out there? Chloe?”

“Anyone besides all the people walking around town on a gorgeous spring afternoon? No.” Posy squinted toward the Lemon Drop. “Chloe Chastain?”

“Never mind,” her mom said. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Two “glad you’re heres” in one minute? No critique of her outfit?

“Come back to the office,” Trish said.

Posy’s large leather purse held her iPad, iPhone, travel mug, business cards, emergency travel kit, makeup kit and was basically her life. Rather than risk maneuvering through the store with it on her shoulder, she set it on the tile near the front door.

She was about to follow her mom toward the back of the store when she heard a soft thump behind her.

Her mom’s tiny, white schnoodle, Angel, had jumped from the raised window display and now crouched on the floor near the bag. With fluffy white fur, round black eyes and a perky green plaid bow on her red leather collar, Angel looked the part of the perfect Christmas-shop accessory dog.

She eyed Angel. The dog’s tail twitched—a silent-movie villain’s mustache twirl.

Nonchalantly, Posy stretched one hand toward the bag, but she was too slow. With another quick swish of her tail, the dog shoved her face into Posy’s bag and emerged with her acid-yellow, leather business card wallet clutched between small, white teeth.

“No. Angel, drop it!”

Angel disappeared under the skirt around the table holding a model-train display with a village skating rink as the centerpiece. The tiny bell in the steeple of the chapel jingled when the dog bumped against the table leg. Posy knew from unfortunate experience that there’d be no catching Angel, and less than no chance the dog would do something as helpful as obey a command. She didn’t even bother lifting the table skirt. If Angel had a Twitter account and opposable thumbs, she’d send the #SillyHumans hash tag trending every day.

“Angel is under stress right now,” Trish said. Which was a new one. Sometimes Angel was delicate. Other times she’d eaten something that didn’t agree with her. The one true explanation for her dog’s terrible behavior—that Angel was a demon-spawned obedience-school dropout in a fluffy white fur coat—was never mentioned. “I’ll replace that...whatever it was.”

Posy lifted her bag, looking in vain for a spare inch or two on one of the tables where she could put it out of the dog’s reach. She ended up slinging it over her shoulder, holding it tight against her side with one arm.

Her mom bustled toward the back of the store. “I’m unpacking a shipment. Come on and I can tell you the news,” she said. “Watch that garland!”

Posy stooped to duck under a rope of gold, spray-painted eucalyptus leaves and pinecones. She turned sideways to edge past a display of the beautifully detailed, handcrafted papier-mâché mangers her mom commissioned from an artist in Pennsylvania.

Wonders didn’t have aisles so much as narrow alleys between displays crammed full of Christmas glitz and glitter. From the handblown ornaments hanging on color-coordinated trees, to the loops of beaded crystal garland Posy ducked through as she passed the register, the store carried everything and anything Christmas and delicate.

Her mom’s real specialty was miniatures. Wonders was the best-stocked retail outlet on the East Coast for holiday decorators who took verisimilitude in their train displays or light-up Christmas villages to the extreme. Every inch of horizontal space inside Wonders contained tiny, detailed, uncannily realistic miniatures and scene scapes.

Posy ran a hand over the thick nap of an ivory, velvet tree skirt. She’d worn more than her fair share of velvet Christmas dresses when she was in elementary school. Each one had been beautiful on the hanger, but the heavy fabric and childish styles had exaggerated Posy’s large frame, making her feel even more self-conscious. Trish had exquisite sewing skills—she just didn’t have any gauge to tell her when enough was so much more than enough.

In the crowded back office, her mom was bent over an open cardboard box, Bubble Wrap mounded around her ankles. A ceramic angel lay on the carpet next to her feet. She didn’t look up as Posy came in, but said, “See that envelope on my desk?”

Posy nodded and then realized her mom, who was unwrapping another angel, couldn’t see her. “Yes.”

“It’s for you. Open it up.”

The envelope was blank, no return address or mailing labels, and Posy couldn’t help feeling curious as she undid the metal clasp and slid the sheaf of stapled pages out.

She read the first few lines of the top sheet, then quickly leafed through the attached deeds and mortgage documents. “Mom?”

Trish put the second angel down and then lowered herself to her knees to reach deep into the box in front of her. “It’s your legacy, Posy.”

The papers listed all her mom’s assets, the house, Wonders, a two-year-old minivan and a safe-deposit box at the bank.

“My what?”

“Your legacy. From me to you.”

Her mom was trying to give her all the clutter Posy had been doing her best to keep strictly out of her own life for the past twenty years.

Posy was both touched and horrified. “This isn’t a legacy, it’s—” An albatross. “Mom...”

“Posy. You’ve been telling me for years that I need to sell the house, haven’t you? It’s too big for one person. And every time I add a new product line to the store, you accuse me of slipping one step closer to a hoarding diagnosis.”

Posy nodded. She felt completely confused and a finger of panic crept up her back. Surely her mom wasn’t planning to leave Kirkland. Where would she go? Rochester? Posy’s brand-new condo?

“Well, consider your advice taken. I’m selling everything. To you.”

“Selling?” Posy said, looking more closely at the pages. “Oh, Mom, it’s a nice impulse, but I just bought my condo. I don’t need your house or your car, and I can’t take care of Wonders. And where are you going to live? What’s going on?” She paused as fear crept into her gut, making her queasy. “Wait, why are you doing this? Are you okay? Everything’s okay, right?”

Posy set the legal papers aside and took a good look at her mom. Friends often described Trish as animated. Her ash-blond hair and bright green eyes were different enough from Posy’s black hair and dark brown eyes that they’d never be mistaken for relatives, let alone mother and daughter. Even though her mom was pretty, as sparkling as one of her ornaments, Posy noticed now that there was something different about Trish. Was the sparkle only a fever?

“I’m in love.” Trish clasped her hands over her heart. Actually clasped them and closed her eyes. She was a Precious Moments statue come to life.

Her mom spent way too much time looking at snow globe scenes.

CHAPTER TWO

“Y OU’ RE IN LOVE?” Posy stared at her mom, who was still clasping her hands to her heart. Still surrounded by Bubble Wrap.

“Mitch. His name is Mitch. He’s a bit older than me. He was a surgeon—worked on hands—and he’s retired now out in Ohio, with pots of money. We’ve been corresponding online since last October, and seeing each other for three months. Posy, you won’t believe this, but he loves me. He loves everything about me and he wants me to move in with him.”

Trish was right. Posy didn’t quite believe it. After her marriage broke up, Trish had become increasingly needy and clingy when anyone so much as asked her on a date.

Posy had a clear memory of a guy who’d come to pick Trish up for a first date being coerced into fixing the washing machine. He hadn’t come back for a second date. For Trish, love meant never having to solve your own problems. Not too many men stuck around after the first crisis.

It had been several years since her mom had gone out with anyone, as far as Posy knew. Despite her daily phone calls and innumerable weekly texts, she’d been keeping this guy a secret for three months?

“A surgeon? Where did you meet?”

If her mom said Match.com, she was going straight to the FBI to get a profile of this supposed surgeon/

paragon. She felt disloyal, but it was hard to believe Trish had met a guy and hadn’t scared him off. That had never happened, in all of Posy’s twenty-eight years.

“We met at the Holiday World trade show. I was testing a line of nutcrackers, which if anyone ever tries to tell you resin composites look exactly like hand-carved wood, you should run the other way. But anyway, Mitch noticed that I was uncomfortable with the salesman’s hard sell and he stepped in and put a stop to it.”

Anyone who helped her mom walk away from an investment in faux-wood, resin-composite nutcrackers won bonus points in Posy’s book.

“Why was he looking at nutcrackers?”

“He wasn’t. He was buying antique-style streetlights for his train display. The wires are so thin you can barely see them. I’ll show you—”

“Mom! The surgeon.”

“He’s retired. He owns a wonderful place near Toledo called Mitch’s Train Yard. It’s this incredible Christmas train display that fills his whole barn. He has a shop and a small café and is building up a model-train museum.”

“Your new boyfriend is a model-train-collecting professional?” Was there any way this was true? Had her mom actually met a guy who would not only put up with her crazy collections, but enjoy them? Share them? Contribute to them?

“We’re perfect for each other. It’s too bad your dad isn’t still here. I think he’d have enjoyed meeting Mitch.”

Posy’s dad would have hanged himself with a string of Christmas lights before he got anywhere near a meeting with her mom’s new boyfriend. But she didn’t say that to her mother. In the three years since he’d died, Trish had been mentally revising their relationship until it would be hard to know from her stories that after their divorce Posy’s dad had gone out of his way to avoid her company.

Trish became absorbed again in the angels. She picked one up and ran a finger over the gilded wings. “So once you write me a check, I’ll be free and clear and I can move in with him.”

“Mom, I’m not buying all your stuff so you can run away to Toledo. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy for you.” And happy that her mom was finally willing to consider downsizing. The house and store were the sources of many of the problems Posy had been called in to manage, but as much as she wanted them gone, she didn’t want her mom rushing into a relationship with a virtual stranger. “You don’t have to move right away. What if we make a plan—we’ll talk to a Realtor, get someone to look at the accounts for the store and see if you can attract a buyer. Even if you just want to liquidate the stock, you need to think this through.”

Trish was shaking her head.

“No? What no? Mom, is there something else you’re keeping from me?”

“I don’t want to get into the details.” Trish’s hands tightened on the angel and she broke the left-hand wing off. “Oh, no.” Her shoulders hunched up close to her ears and she seemed to shrink right in front of Posy. “I’d rather not discuss it.”

If Posy hadn’t already guessed there was something very wrong going on in her mom’s life, that would have been an unavoidable clue. If Trish didn’t want to discuss something, it was Upsetting or Uncomfortable or even worse, Embarrassing. She’d happily chat about cancer, crime, war, politics, heck, even religion, but as soon as the conversation brushed up against shame or negative image, Trish shut the door.

“Mom, you didn’t really think I was going to buy every one of your earthly possessions without finding out why this is necessary.”

“I told you the reason. Mitch. He’s a hand surgeon. I’m going to move to Ohio.”

Patented Trish Jones “looking on the bright side” nonsense.

“Bullshit.”

Trish pressed her hands together and her mouth tightened briefly before she smoothed her expression. “Posy, there’s no need for that type of language.”

“Tell me why you need money all of a sudden. Is this guy pulling some kind of scam?”

“No!” Trish practically shouted. “He doesn’t know. The truth is... I’m not sure how to... I need the money because...” Trish sniffed and shook her head as she picked up the pieces of the broken angel and tried to fit them back together, but she only managed to chip the end off the wing. Angel, the dog, zipped in out of nowhere and scooped the piece of ceramic off the floor before running back out into the store. “Because I don’t want to go to jail.”

Of all the things that had come out of her mother’s mouth over the years, that had to be about the most shocking. Jail? Trish Jones? Cardigan-sweater wearer, volunteer for good causes, poodle aficionado, owner of a Christmas shop spelled with an extra P and an E?

“Jail?”

The wing snapped off a second angel her mom had picked up.

“Put the angels down before you massacre the whole heavenly host, okay?”

“I didn’t want to tell you this,” Trish said. “It would have been so much easier if you’d bought everything. I could have paid the money back and no one would ever have known.”

“What money?”

“I ran a fundraiser. It was just a small thing. I put a story on my Wonders blog about the community center we’re trying to open here. Some of my readers wanted to help, so I set up a donation button. But then Chloe Chastain linked to it from her blog and her readership is much larger than mine—mommy bloggers have a big reach. Before I knew it, I’d collected quite a bit of money.”

Posy was having trouble tracking the details. She read her mom’s blog, but she had a very small core of regular commenters, fellow Christmas-shop owners and miniatures enthusiasts. Chloe—her old neighbor—ran a blog that was a different story. She’d somehow turned a twice-daily post about life as a divorced mom, taking her toddlers to the park or sipping wine from a plastic Barbie cup, into a successful business. Posy didn’t read Chloe’s blog, but she did look at it from time to time. She had to do something while waiting for movies to load on Netflix.

“Mom, the crime?”

“I don’t have the money anymore.”

She doesn’t have the money anymore. Oh, Lord.

Posy coaxed the details out of her. Trish had been shocked at the amount of money people donated. She’d told a friend of hers about it and the friend had asked to borrow the money. Trish’s friend ran a Christmas store in Maine and her credit line had been reduced by her bank. She told Trish she just needed the money for a few days while she collected on several overdue accounts.

Posy’s voice shook as she asked, “When is she going to pay you back?”

“I’m afraid I was taken in. She lied about her situation, Posy. She declared bankruptcy last week and her assets are frozen. I’m not going to get the money back.”

“I don’t understand why you lent it to her in the first place.”

“She sounded like she really needed the help. This economy has been so hard for so many of my friends. I couldn’t say no when she needed help.”

Which was close to the truth, but not exactly the whole truth. Trish needed to be loved. She collected emotional debts the same way she collected miniatures—fervently and to an extreme. If her friend told her she would be eternally grateful for the loan, Trish would have had a hard time turning her down.

“Now Chloe Chastain keeps calling me. She wants to know when the Fallon Foundation is going to acknowledge the gift. She says she’s accountable to her blog readers. Posy, she’s going to tell everyone what I did.”

Everyone including the police.

“So that’s where I come in? I buy your stuff so you can pay the money back without anyone finding out?”

Trish nodded.

They needed a list. Figure out how much her mom owed and then sell whatever they had to or even get a loan to pay it off. Glancing around the office for a piece of paper and a pen, she realized she was still holding the deeds to her legacy. Wonders, the house. Trish’s car. Her safe-deposit box where she kept her grandmother’s diamond earrings. Did her mom really think she could write a check to cover all that?

Oh, no.

“Mom, how much money did you collect?”

“Sixty-eight thousand dollars. Sixty-eight thousand, eight hundred and seventy-six dollars, actually.”

Posy leaned against the desk and fanned herself with the papers. She wondered if she was going to vomit. “Sixty-eight—” she was barely able to form the words “—thousand dollars? From your blog?”

“Chloe’s blog gets twenty thousand hits a day.”

“Sixty-eight thousand dollars?” She couldn’t stop repeating the number. It seemed absurd, but Trish kept nodding in confirmation. She’d thought they were dealing with a few thousand, ten at the most. How in the heck had she raised that much money?

How big was Chloe’s audience, anyway?

When she’d recovered enough to ask questions, the answers she got were even more alarming. Trish was in serious debt. Wonders had limped along for several years, never straying too far into the red or the black. She’d sold the building a few years ago when it needed a new roof and an upgraded fire-suppression system, and she couldn’t afford to bring it up to code. After the economy went downhill, Trish mortgaged her house twice to keep Wonders going. The final blow came when she’d mismanaged the holiday ordering the previous Christmas. Now Wonders was about as sunk as a shoppe could get without actually closing its doors.

She’d gone to her bank in a panic this week to try to get a loan to pay the fundraiser back, but she had no assets and bad credit and she’d been turned down flat.

Of all the dramas her mother had created over the years, this one was far and away the most insane. Posy was accustomed to bailing her mom out of jams and patching up messes.... She’d held her hand through an IRS audit a few years ago. This was unbelievable, though.

It had to stop. Trish’s cycle of crisis and collapse was too much. Posy had lost too much time, skipped too many dates, changed too many plans over the years.

Covering up a crime, even if it was only a temporary crime, was the last straw. If she was ever going to have her own life, Posy thought, she needed to... She had trouble finishing that thought. She couldn’t cut her mom out of her life. She just needed her mom to stop screwing up.

“Posy, this is all so complicated. How am I going to get out from under my obligations here so I can go to Ohio?”

Ohio? Trish was worried about not being able to move to Toledo? Posy didn’t want to upset her, but she really needed to be thinking about how to stay out of jail.

“If only you hadn’t broken things off with Pete. You’d probably be married by now and he was very good with math.”

“Pete would not have helped you with this. He’d have been paralyzed with fear about possible police involvement.”

She and her last boyfriend had been together for three years and although Trish had her hopes set on an engagement, Posy had realized that what she’d initially liked about Pete—his deference to her and willingness to compromise—drove her nuts. He was like a puppy, constantly rolling on his back to expose his vulnerable belly. By the time she ended things with him, she’d been eyeing that belly with the urge to give him a swift kick. She hadn’t liked herself very much by that point.

“We need time and we need money. Chloe is a problem, but we’ll figure out a way to put her off. What about the foundation? The one you raised the money for? Are they suspicious?”

“There’s a man—”

“A man?”

CHAPTER THREE

“W HAT MAN?”

“A man from the foundation. He’ll be here tomorrow to meet me and Chloe and collect his check.” Trish practically whispered the last few words.

When she said the word check, Trish put her hands over her mouth as if she could hold back the terror Posy heard in her voice.

She crossed the room to kneel next to her mom. It was a tight fit and she banged her ankle on the leg of the desk. She angled her arms around her mom’s shoulders. The cinnamon scent from the sachets her mother kept in her drawers was strong and familiar.

“I don’t have that kind of money saved, Mom. Buying my condo took almost all my cash. I’d lend it to you if I could. We’ll figure this out. I’ll help. Whatever I can do, I’m here for you.”

For a second, her mom seemed to cling to her, but then she abruptly straightened up.

“Well, I guess it’s on to plan B.”

“We have a plan B?”

Trish stood and brushed the front of her skirt. She stepped out of the jumble of packing materials, the two angels lying broken on the floor.

“Of course I have a plan B. My aunt Denise will lend me the money. She’s always been very generous and she didn’t blink an eye when I asked her for a loan.”

“You already asked her?” Posy was lost again.

“Yes, but I wanted to give you the chance to inherit first. I’m going to drive down to the city and see her. You stay here and stall the Fallon Foundation man and Chloe. I’ll be back in a few days with the money and everything will be fine.”

Posy knew that tone. Her mom was looking on the bright side again. “You really called Aunt Denise? Why not just have her send the check?”

“Posy, I’m borrowing close to seventy-thousand dollars from a lonely old woman who’s always been very kind to me. The least I can do is stop in for an afternoon chat.”

Bam. Her mother was the queen at making you feel stupid while also getting her own way. She didn’t like this, but what was she going to do? “I’ll keep the foundation people and Chloe at bay, but this has to be the last time.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, if we sell your house and close down Wonders, then your life is your own. You can spend time with your new guy or stay in Kirkland, but you have to promise me you’re going to get yourself together. I need to have my independence.”

Trish kissed her cheek. “I promise.”

Posy nodded. “Then I’m in.”

* * *

T HAT NIGHT AFTER she was sure her mom was asleep, Posy slid out of bed in the guest room. Her mom had never redecorated her childhood bedroom and the pink-and-white color scheme and fussy flounces attached to every surface from the curtains to the comforter to the skirt on the vanity table made her claustrophobic.

She didn’t turn the light on as she walked down the carpeted upstairs hall and then quietly continued down the sweeping staircase to the foyer. Her mom and dad bought the house when the development it was in had still been a blueprint in the model house’s showcase living room. Trish picked out all the fixtures and upgrades and she’d clung stubbornly to the house even after her husband moved out.

If Trish had been able to admit back then that her life would never be the picture-perfect image she’d wanted, would she be in the same mess today? If she had dealt with the hole her divorce left in her life, would she have been so desperate to connect with other people? Would Posy still be trying to work off the guilt she felt over being the wrong sort of daughter and picking the wrong parent?

That kind of what-if was absurd, especially because her mom was going to finally sell the house. Trish had, thankfully, set up a retirement fund and while she’d recently taken a loan from it, the bulk of her savings was intact. That meant Posy could meet with a Realtor about the house. And when Trish came back, the two of them would talk to an accountant about Wonders.

The house needed a lot of work before it could be sold. After Posy and her dad moved out, Trish filled up the empty hours with stuff.

Like the display space at Wonders, every corner was packed with collections and collectibles—everything from lighthouses, to thimbles to dollhouse furniture. If only she’d collected something valuable—Matisses, maybe, or original O’Keeffes. Posy might joke with her about hoarding, but the truth was, they weren’t going to be able to show the house until they cleared it out. It was impossible to see the generous space in its current state.

She turned down the hallway, heading for the kitchen, where she flipped the light on, surprising Angel, who was crouched near the sliding glass doors staring out into the dark backyard. The dog jumped and then sat down with her tail to the doors, watching Posy. If Angel had been a human, Posy would have thought she was embarrassed.

“You peeping that golden retriever next door?” Angel didn’t move. “Don’t bother. He told me he only likes smooth-coated chicks. Your curls are a turnoff.”

The dog didn’t take her eyes off her.

“You’ve met this Mitch guy? Is he the real deal?”

Angel flopped on the floor, her head resting on crossed front paws. She lifted the corner of her top lip in what might have been a yawn, but was more likely a growl.

Posy sat in one of the black wooden chairs at the kitchen island. She turned on her iPad and looked up Mitch’s Train Yard. The ex-surgeon looked friendly and normal in his photo. She’d waited her entire life for her mom to turn her laser focus and need for love on someone else. Knowing she had a boyfriend explained the relatively few phone calls and texts she’d been getting recently.

She just hoped he was on the up-and-up.

Before she continued her research, Posy called her cousin Maddy.

“The Knoll Retreat and Healing Center. This is Sister Maddy.”

“Maddy, it’s Posy.”

“What’s up? I thought you were on your pilgrimage to Trish’s house.” Maddy’s voice was warm and rich, hinting at the singing talent that had sent her to college for musical theater before she switched gears her senior year and pursued a position in the Daughters of Respite religious order. “How are you?”

“I’m at my mom’s. I guess I’m going to be here for a couple days, helping out. She’s closing Wonders. And selling her house. She met a new guy.”

“When did this happen? Didn’t I talk to you yesterday?”

“It was fast. Did you know about the fundraiser she hosted last month?”

“Someone forwarded the link. I think the retreat center sent a donation.”

As she talked, Posy looked up Chloe Chastain’s It’s a Mad, Mad Mommy blog.

“I’m looking at Chloe Chastain’s blog post about it right now. You wouldn’t believe how many comments and link backs there are.”

“Let me open it up,” Maddy said, and Posy listened as her cousin hit some keys. “Whoa. She looks good in that picture.”

Mixed in with the fundraising posts were Chloe’s regular stock-in-trade photos of her adorable daughters doing adorable things, accompanied by entries written by Chloe, who looked fairly adorable herself at the ripe old age of twenty-six.

“Chloe Chastain always looks good. Bed head is probably afraid of her.”

“It figures she’d have a blog about making life perfect. Remember when we were little and she was constantly making us do pretend weddings?” Maddy said. “You’d get so incensed because she made you be the groom.”

“I would have been happy being the priest. She just liked to make me mad.”

Maddy laughed. “It wasn’t as if she had to try very hard. Two people as competitive as you guys are—the conflict was inevitable.”

Except for her divorce, it sounded as if Chloe Chastain’s life had continued along the small-town-princess line it had been on when they were kids. Trish’s most common cause for complaint was that Posy wasn’t more like Chloe. There’d been a time when Posy would have sold her soul to be like her neighbor. In Posy’s worst memories, Chloe was always there, petite, poised, smart, graceful and so unrelentingly judgmental. Posy never felt more out of step than she did around Chloe.

“Look at the list of people who donated. Most of them aren’t even from here,” Maddy said. “This is huge.”

“My mom stole the money.” Posy was whispering even though no one else was around.

There was silence over the line.

Quickly, Posy went on, explaining how her mom had gotten into trouble. “Now this guy from the foundation is coming and I have to hold him off until my mom gets a loan from my aunt.”

“Oh. My. Goodness.”

“I hope the sisters don’t have your phone bugged.”

“Posy,” her cousin admonished. “Even if the sisters did listen in, they don’t have anything to do with punishing people for their sins. We have God for that.”

“Thank you, Maddy. You’re so kind. I can see why you went into the convent.”

“Does Chloe know?”

“No!”

“Because she won’t blink at the opportunity to bring your mom down. Imagine the traffic she’d get to her blog with that story? Especially if she can make herself look good in the process. Your mom will be crucified.”

Posy didn’t answer. What could she say?

“Sorry,” Maddy said. “That wasn’t helpful.”

“You haven’t met the guy from the Fallon Foundation when he’s been in town, have you?”

“Deacon? He seems very nice.”

“His brother, Wes.”

“I haven’t met that one.” She heard Maddy’s keyboard. “Let’s see what Google says.”

Posy knew enough about the world to know that if you were working for a foundation and you had the same last name as the guy who’d endowed it, you were probably privileged.

She typed his name in, too. Wes. Who named their kid Wes? People who wanted their kid to get beaten up in elementary school, that was who. His parents had made a bad call on that one.

Maddy’s keyboard fell silent and Posy stared at her own screen. Her cousin whistled.

“Your mom stole money from a really good-looking guy.”

There were hundreds of pictures of Wes Fallon, alone. The one that made her look twice was from some kind of formal event and showed a clear shot of his face.

The woman with him was wearing a dress slit up past where her underwear should have started. Her hair was tousled so one thick wave fell over her eye. She was undeniably sexy...and trying really, really hard. Wes had his arm around her waist and he was smiling down at her as if he knew she was being foolish, but he was having too much fun to care. Just a ridiculously handsome guy enjoying himself.

She’d always been a sucker for people who knew how to fit in and have fun.

“Call me tomorrow after you meet him, okay?” Maddy said. “And let me know if I can help.”

Posy hung up, browsed a few more pages of Wes Fallon pictures and then closed the tab. Now that she’d thoroughly depressed herself, she opened her email to send a message to Wyatt, her boss, that she needed to take some time off. An emergency. She rarely used her vacation, so she knew it wouldn’t be a problem. She’d call in tomorrow and talk to him just to be sure.

Four days tops. That was how long they’d estimated it might take for Trish to get to the city, get her aunt’s bank to set up a wire transfer and see the money cleared into her account.

If Posy could keep Wes Fallon and Chloe Chastain in the dark about the crime for four days at the most, her mom would be home free. And then maybe if she got rid of all this stuff and set her mom up with the model-train enthusiast, she could finally put down her load of guilt. The one she’d been carrying ever since the family court judge made the final custody arrangements by looking Posy in the eye and saying, “Pick.”

* * *

W HEN SHE GOT downstairs the next morning, she found a note written on thick white stationery with a red-and-green border and the Wonders logo at the top. Her mom had decided to strike out early for the city to get the money as soon as possible. Posy would meet the man from the foundation at one o’clock. Trish would be in touch as soon as she’d spoken with her aunt.

Posy didn’t like this. She and Trish had planned to have breakfast at the Lemon Drop together this morning. Her mom loved to be seen out with her daughter. Why would she skip that and why would she leave a note instead of waking Posy?

She called her mom’s cell, but it went straight to voice mail.

She glanced at the note again.

There was a P.S. on the back. Angel’s lamb and rice–formula dog food was in a plastic container in the pantry. The best-before date was coming up and Angel had a delicate stomach. If Posy needed to restock, she should be sure to buy the premium food.

Angel lifted her front paw and scratched at the glass sliding door. She wanted out.

“That makes two of us, sugar.”

* * *

W ES BALANCED THE BOX of Hand-to-Hand promotional

T-shirts and bumper stickers on his hip as he unlocked the door to his temporary office. He left the key in the lock momentarily while he scratched his head. The hospital staff had had to shave a strip above his ear to stitch up a cut the doctors were pretty sure came from one of the metal parts on the truck’s grille. And then, of course, Gary Krota shaved the rest of the hair off on their last night out. The hair growing in not only itched incessantly, it made it impossible for him to forget the accident for longer than five minutes at a time.

Deacon had arranged for him to rent office space in the Kirkland town center. He thought it was a good idea for Wes to be in proximity to the mayor and the members of the town board, who had offices in the building. Without their zoning variance, the site Deacon had picked out wouldn’t be approved.

The door swung open when he turned the key, and Wes stepped inside. The room was cramped, but the two windows set in the back wall made up for the small size. He put the box of shirts and stickers on the floor near the door and let his duffel bag slide to the ground as he opened the blinds. The office overlooked a small staff parking lot and an empty playground behind the building. Midday on a Tuesday didn’t seem like a popular time—all the swings were empty and not one kid was on the basketball court.

It was a shame to see such a nice court going to waste.

He hadn’t played since his accident, but his doctor had cleared him for normal activities before he left Madrid. His shoulder would need some physical therapy, but it didn’t hurt anymore.

He had the ball in his bag.

Flipping the cord, he let the blinds fall back down. Later. He was here to do a job for Deacon.

Trish Jones, the lady who collected the donations, was due in just a few minutes. He kicked the duffel bag behind the desk and then opened the box of shirts. Deacon’s wife, Julia, said he needed some props for his charm offensive. He was supposed to give the Hand-to-Hand shirts out so that eventually it would seem inevitable to the town that the partnership was going to go through.

Wes left his office and went in search of the Kirkland mayor. He found an office with the mayor’s nameplate on the wall. When he knocked on the doorjamb, the young guy sitting behind the desk looked up.

“I’m Wes Fallon, from the Fallon Foundation. I thought I’d say hello to Mayor Meacham.”

“Nice to meet you, Mr. Fallon. I’ve been hoping to meet you.” The guy hopped up and came around to shake hands. “Ryan O’Malley, the mayor’s special assistant.”

“Good to meet you, too,” Wes said. Ryan looked as if he’d only recently graduated from college, but he had a firm handshake and his dark suit made Wes wonder if he’d underdressed in dark jeans and a golf shirt.

“The mayor isn’t in at the moment, I expect him back shortly,” Ryan said. “But I wanted to tell you how much respect I have for the work you’re doing. This Hand-to-Hand center is the kind of innovation we need in the community services world.”

Wes smiled. “We just have to get the variance and then we’ll be all set. In the meantime, can I give you a T-shirt or a sticker?”

Ryan smiled and took one of each. Then he asked for a second shirt for his fiancée.

Wes handed them over, happy to have recruited his first ally in Kirkland.

A short guy with blond hair thinning on the top entered the office. “Hey, there you are, Wes,” he said. “Great to see you again.”

Wes smiled and nodded even though he didn’t know how the guy knew him.

At that moment a tall woman with dark hair glanced into the office, but kept walking down the hall.

“Wes,” Ryan said, “this is Mayor Meacham.”

“Jay,” the mayor said. “Call me Jay.” He took Wes’s hand and pumped it. “It’s good to have you here. Man, it’s been years.”

Wes had no memory of Jay Meacham. He had very few memories of anything that happened to him before Deacon got custody of him when he was eight, but he doubted Jay knew him from that long ago. Deacon wouldn’t have forgotten to tell him that the mayor of Kirkland was actually their long-lost cousin.

Jay must have noticed his confusion. “I met you after the last game your first season at Western U. I’m an alum, too. Big supporter of the basketball team.”

Wes still didn’t remember meeting the mayor, but he remembered that game, in particular one of the sweetest three-pointers he’d shot in his life. He wasn’t much of a jumper, but he’d had springs in his legs that night and he’d scored right over the head of the defender from the Cardinals team.

“Nice to see you again,” Wes said.

The tall woman he’d seen before passed the open door again and then paused. She stood behind the mayor, but since she was about six inches taller than him, she had a perfect view into the room.

“That was some game,” Jay said, oblivious to the woman. “You had twenty-eight points.” He’d been holding a baseball cap by his side, and now he put it on. “You signed my T-shirt that night. Mind signing my hat now?”

He bent his head as he handed Wes a Sharpie. “I’ll have a whole Wes Fallon outfit.”

Wes took the Sharpie and stared down at the guy. His neck was bent and Wes noticed that the skin there was sunburned. In college he’d gotten a huge kick out of signing stuff for people. In Madrid, it was part of his job. He was retired now. And this? This was just awkward.

Ryan turned slightly to the side, straightening one of the perfectly aligned stacks of paper on his desk, and Wes was grateful to him. The woman watched intently. He wondered for a second if she was Trish Jones, but she was much too young.

The mayor was still waiting.

The woman crossed her arms.

“You want to take the hat off?” he tried.

“I don’t want to put you to any trouble. Just go ahead and sign it on the brim.”

Because signing a hat while it’s on another man’s head isn’t awkward and uncomfortable at all.

He made the mistake of looking at the woman again. She stared right back, waiting to see what he would do. She knew how idiotic this was.

It was a stroke of freaking amazing luck that Jay had followed Wes’s college career and what he needed to do was to capitalize on that connection regardless of how it made him feel. For Deacon.

Wes uncapped the Sharpie and pinched the brim of the hat between his fingers to hold it steady. He felt Jay’s breath on his hand as he rushed an illegible scrawl across the brim. When he was finished, he tapped Jay on the head with the pen. And if he wasn’t so careful about tapping lightly, well, maybe the mayor would remember to take his hat off the next time he asked someone for an autograph. “Done.”

“I have to say, I’m thrilled you’re here!” Jay clapped his hands. “Your brother must be pleased you’re available.”

When he realized what he’d said, Jay flushed right to his hairline, the color on his face matching his bright red neck. “Not that anyone would be pleased about your injury or your—”

“It’s okay, Jay. I’m happy to be in Kirkland. Deacon and I are both looking forward to the possibilities.”

The woman stepped into the office. Her legs were a mile long in tight blue jeans and Wes was distracted by an entirely different set of possibilities.

Ryan noticed her and waved her forward. “Mayor Meacham, we have another visitor.”

The mayor didn’t seem to hear him. “Did Ryan tell you about our lunchtime basketball league on Wednesdays? I told him to tell you.” Jay punched him lightly on the biceps. “We’ll help you keep in shape now that you’re a civilian.”

Based on how tight the muscle in his jaw looked, Wes was pretty sure Ryan was suppressing the urge to punch the mayor.

“I’d love to join,” he said. “Send me the details.”

Wes Fallon, small-town rec-league guy. Fabi would have a field day if she knew.

Ryan stepped around the mayor and said to the woman, “Can I help you?”

“I’m Posy Jones. I have an appointment with Mr. Fallon.”

Posy Jones. Her voice was rich and throaty in a way that made Wes think of late nights in dark bars. He tried not to notice how long her dark eyelashes were or the way her eyes seemed lit with humor.

“Posy,” Jay said. “I haven’t seen you in a while. Did you come with your mother?”

“My mother isn’t available today.” But she didn’t offer any additional details.

Not available? Where exactly was Trish Jones and the Fallon Foundation’s sixty-eight thousand dollars?

An awkward silence fell over the room. Everyone seemed to be waiting for someone else to ask that exact question.

A weak person would have leaped to fill the silence, but Posy kept her mouth shut and her expression blank. As if she’d just informed them that the special of the day was apple pie but she really didn’t care one way or the other if they ordered it.

If something was up with the money, he would find out, but he didn’t want the mayor, or worse yet, his eager and überprofessional assistant to hear.

His brother had built the next phase of plans for his Fallon Foundation Centers around the Hand-to-Hand programs. Nothing mattered more to him than this venture. If there was something fishy with Trish’s unofficial fundraiser, it had the potential to ruin the goodwill of the town of Kirkland.

He owed Deacon a debt he could never repay, but he would keep trying. Whatever was going on with Posy Jones, her mom and this fundraiser, he’d put it straight.

* * *

P OSY WAS AT an enormous disadvantage and she knew it even before she walked into that office and got her first glimpse of Wes Fallon in the flesh. As it were.

Seeing the mayor suck up to Wes made her sweat. There’d be no hometown advantage here for her mother.

Her only option was to bluff...hard...until her mom came back with the cash.

She knew Jay Meacham mostly by reputation, but she had met him a few times at downtown business-booster events she’d attended with her mom. He wasn’t exactly a thought leader, but he got the job done and kept people happy. In a town like Kirkland where the citizens were involved and motivated, the mayor needed to be better at making friends than he was at making policy.

It had been bad enough that Chloe Chastain would be thrilled to expose Trish as a swindler. On top of that, her mom had stolen from a charity that actually seemed to do good work. Watching Wes sign a hat for the mayor brought it home that he and his brother were both minor celebrities. Her mom didn’t stand a chance if she got caught.

“I think Posy and I should head to my office,” Wes said. “Nice to meet you, guys. See you on the courts.”

He seemed to remember the T-shirt in his hand. “I brought you a shirt, Jay. Almost forgot to give it to you.”

Jay thanked him much more sincerely than was necessary for a white T-shirt that wasn’t even autographed.

Then Wes was right up close to her and she registered just how tall he was. At least six-six. She’d known the number, feet and inches, from her internet...research...but pictures and a few statistics had done a terrible job of preparing her for Wes in real life. His shoulders alone, broad and straight, deserved their own section in Google. She was used to looking down at people or looking even tall men in the eye, but Wes was a good six inches taller than her and built on a large scale. The dark stubble on his jaw and a military-style buzz cut made him look older and more commanding than the long, thick dark hair he’d had in his photos.

She swallowed.

Puppy Pete would have dropped to his belly if Wes loomed over him like this, but Posy straightened her shoulders, happy for once that they made her look even bigger.

Bluff. Hard. Game time.

“I don’t mean to interrupt. If you and the mayor want to talk about basketball, I can wait in your office.” She smiled her professional helpless-lady smile, all teeth and bright eyes with a deferential tilt to her head. When she went incognito on quality control visits for her job, that smile came in handy for assessing concierge service. Some men fell right into that particular smile and never noticed that she was grading them on everything from their attitude to their knowledge of the local hot spots.

“I think we’re about finished,” Wes said easily. “But thanks.”

He had not fallen for the clueless smile.

He motioned for her to go first and then followed her out and down the hall.

“I’m sorry I didn’t bring a hat,” she said, switching tactics on the chance his ego was big enough to let her distract him. “I didn’t realize you’d be signing merchandise.”

He glanced down at her. “It’s probably better you didn’t have one.”

“Really?”

He stopped in front of a door and opened it. “Yup. I charge five bucks for an autograph. I only did the mayor’s for free because he’s an old friend.”

Her eyes widened. His ego was that big he charged for his autograph?

“Somebody has to keep me in solid-gold sneakers.”

When she’d seen him sign the hat, she’d actually hoped he might be a dumb jock. It would have made her job so much easier. But, true to form, she could not catch a break. Wes was sharp. And funny. And capable of laughing at himself.

“Good to know. I’ll bring a five when I bring my hat.”

“Until then, maybe you’d like a shirt or a sticker.” He bent toward a box near his desk, and shallow, objectifying creature that she was, she admired the view. Wes knew how to wear a pair of jeans.

He handed her the promo items and she thanked him.

There was only one chair in the room and it was behind the desk. She didn’t know quite what to do so she stood near the window, pretending to look at the park while she gathered her thoughts.

Wes leaned on the desk at the front of the office, his long legs stretched in front of him and arms crossed on his chest. “My brother and I wanted to thank your mom for her efforts on behalf of the Fallon Foundation.” Apparently they were finished joking around. “The money she raised is going to make a difference to a lot of kids.”

She felt as if she was being lectured, but she reminded herself that he didn’t know anything. He might be suspicious—in fact, she was now fairly certain he was suspicious—but he didn’t know anything. Posy forced herself not to look at him. She was an innocent woman, admiring the view of the parking lot.

“My mom is a very kind person. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to meet you. Unfortunately, she’s been called out of town.”

“So you brought the check?”

CHAPTER FOUR

S HE PULLED HERSELFtogether. He was good-looking, but she’d known that going in. If he was also sharp, that only meant she had to be even more on her game. What she cared about was keeping him distracted and semisatisfied until her mom returned.

“She wants to give you the money in person. She’s very eager to meet you and your brother.”

“In person, huh?” He straightened his back. “My brother said your mom’s been out of touch for a couple days. Is everything okay?”

“With my mother?” Posy pulled the strap of her bag tighter across her shoulder, praying her voice would hold steady. “She’s fine.”

“Oh, good to know. I thought she might be sick or having some other kind of trouble.”

“No.” She needed to give him the file she’d brought and get out of here. “She was called out of town unexpectedly to visit my aunt. She asked me to watch her store and dog-sit—and keep this appointment with you. She’ll be back in a few days and she really wants to meet you both.”

It was mostly the truth.

Her cell was in her bag. If only it would ring with a call from her mom to tell her the wire was going through.

“I read your website last night,” she blurted out. “I really admire the work you’re doing. Kirkland is lucky you guys are coming here.”

Wes raised his eyebrows and smiled, and she was surprised to find herself smiling back at him. She’d never actually experienced an infectious smile before.

“The foundation is all my brother. This is my first day on the job and all I’ve done so far is sign a hat.”

She was definitely going to have to watch out for this guy. Good-looking, charming and sure to file a police report if he found out what her mom had been up to with her checkbook in the back room of Wonders.

Time for phase two of her bluff.

She’d considered trying to skate along for the next few days without giving him any information, but then she’d decided a better plan would be to give him too much of the wrong sort. If she had any luck, he would be so overwhelmed by the thorough records her mom had kept that he wouldn’t care that she was a few days late with the check.

“My mom did make you a list of donors and all the amounts. Everything is categorized and you can see where and how they donated.” She handed Wes a one-inch binder stacked with printed pages. “She asked me to deliver this.”

“Thanks.” He opened the binder and flipped the pages, then glanced behind him at the one chair. “I’m not set up for meetings yet.” He ducked behind his desk and grabbed a basketball out of the bag on the floor. “There are tables outside near the court. How would you feel about moving this conversation outside?”

She would feel a heck of a lot better if they ended the conversation, instead.

“I’m not sure what we’d have to meet about, Wes.”

“We’re meeting about the foundation.” He tapped the binder. “All the money these people donated. I thought I’d get to thank your mom, but since she’s not here, looks like you’re on the hook.”

Wes dribbled the ball once, the long muscles in his arms flexing as he caught the ball again with unconscious skill. The smack of the ball on the tile floor echoed in the empty office. “You ready?”

She closed her mouth. Bluff. Hard. She had a job to do here and it had nothing to do with Wes’s many physical charms.

CHAPTER FIVE

“P EOPLE ARE AMAZING,” Wes said. “Look how many are for less than twenty bucks.” They’d spread Posy’s binder out on a picnic table under a tree that was covered in pink blossoms. The petals kept drifting down onto the paper. He brushed his hand across the page, knocking another blossom to the ground.

“It’s been a remarkable experience for my mom.” Her voice had lost the no-nonsense tone. There was something going on with Posy, he thought.

She’d had one foot out the door since they stepped into his office, but Wes wasn’t about to let her off that easy. For one thing, he didn’t think she was telling him everything she knew. Posy was all business when they were going over the details, but he’d seen a quick flash or two of uncertainty, mostly when he’d said anything touching on the subject of her mom.

She closed the binder and slid it across the table closer to him.

“What about the other blogger?” he asked, refusing to take her big hint that their meeting was over. “Chloe, right?”

“Chloe Chastain.”

“She and your mom are an unbeatable team. Do you know her?”

“We grew up together.”

“So Kirkland is the ultimate hometown—everybody helps everybody else.”

“I left a long time ago,” Posy said. “But don’t believe everything you hear.”

He’d assumed she lived in town. Why was she here, otherwise? “You don’t live in Kirkland?”

“Rochester. I’m a quality control inspector for the Hotel Marie chain.”

“Quality control? Now I’m imaging you checking in with a fake name and making all kinds of crazy requests to see if the staff is up to snuff.”

“We call them personas, not ‘fake names.’ And my requests are always reasonable.”

“Extra towels, not chocolate fountains?”

Had Wes ever ordered a chocolate fountain? Maybe with one of those beautiful women she’d seen in the pictures last night. She stared at a pink petal on the table next to her pinky.

“Look, Wes,” Posy said as she stood, “I’m staying at my mom’s house so I can watch her dog. I’m in charge of her store, and I really should at least check my work email while I’m here. You’ve got all the data and as soon as my mom gets back, she’s dropping off a check. That’s about all I can tell you.”

She was brushing him off. Definitely something strange going on. Wes went into foster care when he was two and came out when he was eight. In those six years, he’d been bounced from five separate placements. He didn’t remember the details about many of them, but he’d learned to tell when someone was lying to him.

“I’m just going to say this and you can say what you know and we can move on, okay?”

She flinched. Not much, but he saw it.

“The situation seems off to me. Not just to me, frankly. Chloe Chastain had some questions for my brother. Your mom is sitting on a lot of money she raised in our name,” he said. “Our reputation is on the line and we’re still negotiating here in Kirkland.”

“I’m not surprised you have questions, but my mom will deliver your money. I promise.”

She didn’t flinch that time. She met his eyes, and he couldn’t make himself call her a liar. He didn’t want her to be a liar.

“Well, I’m looking forward to meeting her,” he said. “My brother put his heart and soul into the Fallon Foundation, and this new project in Kirkland means everything to him. Neither of us could believe that your mom, a stranger, would go out of her way to do this kind of fundraising. He’s floored and so am I. People like her don’t get enough credit.”

* * *

P OSY DIDN’ T WANT HIM to say nice things about her mom. She didn’t want him to say nice things about anything. She wanted to not like him and for him to work for some horrible corporation. Not a foundation that did good for the community. She didn’t want to respect him, because she had to keep lying to him.

She hated lying and the longer she talked to Wes, the more she hated herself. She shouldn’t have let herself get dragged into her mother’s mess. She knew better. This was the last time. It had to be.

“You play basketball?” he asked.

She waited for the obligatory comment about her height, but it didn’t come. He just waited for her to answer.

“I did.”

“High school? College?”

“Both.”

“I did, too,” he offered as he leaned down and grabbed the ball from the ground. “High school, college, then in Europe. But I got hit by a truck so I’m retired now.”

When he mentioned his accident, he touched a spot on his head behind his right ear. She noticed the scar there, a thin line of red flesh visible through the dark stubble.

“I read about the accident.” He looked up. “Google. I was trying to get ready for our meeting. I’m sorry.”

“A dog ran into the road,” he said.

“The articles didn’t mention that.”

He lifted one shoulder. “It was a little dog.”

Wes was getting more dangerous by the second. Pete hadn’t understood humor.

“So this job with the foundation, where does it take you after Kirkland?”

“It’s only a temporary gig. My brother asked me for help and I was at loose ends. It worked out.” He touched his scar.

Funny that they’d both been thrown into this through an obligation to family.

“Want to shoot around?” he asked.

She stared up at him. He was serious. “Play basketball with you?”

“I just moved to town,” he said. “I don’t know any of the other boys yet.”

He dribbled the ball deliberately while giving her that slow, sweet smile. He knew what he was doing with that smile.

Which irritated her. She was supposed to get in and get out. She’d had to buy a three-hole punch just to make that binder full of papers. She wasn’t supposed to hang around and shoot baskets with him.

“I was in Mayor Meacham’s office when you signed up for his lunchtime league.”

“Well, he’s not here right now.” He caught the ball and without the rhythmic pounding, the playground was too quiet. He leaned toward her, tilting his head. “Besides, I want to play with you.”

Oh. In that case.

“Come on, Posy. I’ll go easy on you.”

She’d been sitting at the picnic table, but now she stood. He was close enough for her to feel the height difference and to see the strength in his shoulders and arms. Wes might be named after a skinny Star Trek geek, but he was...well... There was a reason basketball players had as many groupies as rock stars. And her best fantasies had always been about guys who were built on a bigger scale, guys who were broad and tall and strong. Like Wes.

On the first day of school, her kindergarten teacher lined the class up by height to teach a lesson about big and small. Posy was the tallest kid in line. She towered over most of the girls and had a half inch or so even on the two boys in the class who were already six because they’d been held back. She’d been so proud to be the tallest kid, to have something no one else did that was hers all alone. That day on the playground at lunchtime, the girls were all pretending to be fairy princesses, but Chloe Chastain told her she couldn’t be a fairy and made her be the giant instead. That was the first time she realized her height didn’t make her special, it made her abnormal. She’d thrown herself into the game, though, and been such a successful giant that one of her classmates had to go to the nurse after she burst into tears and hyperventilated. Her mom had been so disappointed. She’d known she’d done something wrong but hadn’t understood what.

Here on this playground with Wes, she didn’t feel quite so out of step.

“Okay,” she said, taking the ball from him. “I’ll play you. But don’t even think about going easy on me.”

His smile widened, no longer the flirty weapon he used so well. She’d been with him for less than an hour and already she’d seen the serious businessman, the professional flirt, and now, a guy who looked as if he’d be an awful lot of fun at a water park.

He jogged to the foul line, clapped and held his

hands out.

“I’m the new guy. I get first ball.”

“I’m the lady. We’ll shoot for it.” She tossed it back to him and to prove she had manners said, “You can go first. Since you’re the new guy.”

While he set up for his shot, she took a long look at his...form. She had no chance in this contest. He went up for the shot and she bent to pull the laces on her sneakers tighter. The ball clanged off the metal rim of the hoop and she looked up, confused. How the hell had he missed that shot? He was staring at her. When her eyes met his, he shook himself and went to get the ball. Ah.

His miss gave her confidence, so she squared up to the basket and shot. Her ball sank so sweetly the net barely fluttered.

It might be the last shot she made, but it felt good.

* * *

H E COULDN’ T BELIEVE he’d missed his shot.

He’d had it completely under control and then Posy leaned over to tie her shoe. A perfect view down the front of her shirt. She was wearing a lacy, hot-pink bra.

Pink.

He was still getting a handle on Posy, but he hadn’t figured her for a pink kind of person. Since it practically smoldered against her dark skin, he figured hot pink was a very, very good call.

When she sank her shot, she arched one black eyebrow at him and the corners of her mouth went up in a smile that she tried to hide. He knew the feeling—no matter how trapped he’d felt by his life while he was a pro, he’d never stopped loving the game. When things went right on the court, the power felt amazing.

She took the ball out at half court and waited for him to get set. Then she checked it to him and he passed it back. Her pass had been quick and accurate. He wasn’t going to play her hard, but he was glad she’d been telling the truth about knowing how to play.

While he was thinking about how to keep the game close without letting her catch on that he wasn’t going more than half speed, she darted past him, hell-bent for the hoop.

She was a lot faster than he expected and she’d caught him entirely flat-footed. He took off after her. He could make excuses all day but it wouldn’t change the fact that she put an easy layup in while he was half a step behind her.

Another quick smile flashed across her face and the ball felt uncomfortable in his hands as he realized she was pretty. Not gorgeous like Fabi, but fresh. Like someone you’d see in a Coke commercial.

She checked the ball to him and settled in to play defense and the smile was gone as quickly as it had come. She didn’t mean to lose without a fight. Okay, maybe not a Coke commercial for Posy, Nike was more her speed. He glanced at her again and her dark eyes tracked him.

Maybe instead of commercials, she could host one of those shows where people stalked wild animals.

He didn’t have a chance to consider any more about her best match for product representation because he needed his attention on the game.

She wasn’t as good as him, obviously. He had her by more than six inches and at least fifty pounds, for starters. He’d also been playing and practicing with a professional team right up until a month ago, so he was in near-peak shape. But she had no give. Wouldn’t admit that she couldn’t muscle through him.

With the aggression she was throwing his way, he sensed Posy was taking this game to his body because she was carrying that load of anger he’d seen earlier. This was a place she could let it out.

Sure, he could have backed off, but the first time she put her hand on his back and tried to shove him off his dribble, the impression of her fingers felt good. He was aware of the scent of her hair and after a few minutes, of her sweat. When she took the ball out for the third time, he saw a bead of moisture at the base of her throat, right where the tendons in her neck came together in a vulnerable V. The sweat slid down her neck, headed for that lacy bra and he missed her head fake. She scored again.

It hadn’t been that long since he’d been with Fabi.

He was attracted to a woman who was playing him harder than he’d ever been played outside a professional game. And she didn’t seem overly concerned if she hurt him during the process. Of all the screwed-up things he’d been turned on by, he was turned on by playing basketball with Posy.

He shook his head when she blew past him again and then he settled down to play. Attraction or not, he wasn’t going to let her beat him that easily.

* * *

T HE FIRST TIME she bumped him, it was an accident. He was guarding her tight and she wanted to move him off the ball, but her elbow connected with his stomach more sharply than she intended. Ashamed that she’d let her frustration toward her mom bleed over onto her game, she immediately paused to apologize.

He stole the ball from her and put it in, obliterating the small lead she’d snagged with her first shot. He hadn’t even noticed that she’d hit him despite the fact that her elbow stung from the contact.

Posy almost called time-out. She’d been apologizing for being too big, too rough, too much her whole life. Over and over she’d gotten the message that she wasn’t just physically too big, she was too competitive and wanted too much. People got angry when she didn’t keep herself in check.

Wes pumped his fist and pointed at her, glee, not anger, on his face. “You done?”

She shook her head, energy humming through her. No. No, she was most definitely not done. She was just getting started.

She took the ball and when he moved in to guard her, she bumped him again, not that much harder, but deliberately this time. She leaned into his chest with her shoulder and pushed off, registering his solid strength. Again, he didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t lose a step.

Her focus slipped and she double-dribbled. He could have called her on it, but he didn’t.

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