Currant Creek Valley

Mary Ella didn’t look convinced but she said nothing as she slipped her arms through the sleeves of the jacket she had shed during the picnic.

“I just hate to see you so...restless.”

The term was painfully apt. She couldn’t focus on anything, she was cooking up a storm trying out new recipes, she wasn’t sleeping well.

Alex wanted to think her trouble was only jagged nerves prior to the restaurant opening, but she had a deep-seated fear the root was something else.

She had been looking for something for a long time since she had returned to the States. She had convinced herself it was only anticipation for this time in her life, when she was finally in control of her own restaurant, but what if Brazen still didn’t fill that emptiness inside?

“I’m perfectly content with my life. Everything is just the way I want it.”

Mary Ella stepped in to brush her lips to Alex’s cheek. “If that’s truly the case, then I’ll try to stop worrying.”

“I do believe you could survive without air and water longer than you could go without fretting over one of your children.”

Her mother smiled, as she had intended. “It’s a good thing I have so many of you to spread the love, then, isn’t it? Imagine if you were an only child.”

“The mind boggles.”

Her mother’s laugh trailed behind her as she headed out into the April afternoon.

She closed the door behind Mary Ella and twisted the lock then returned to stand in the empty space that would shortly—she hoped—hold her dream kitchen.

Though the kitchen faced away from the street, leaving the prime views for the diners, Jack had still designed this space with a few well-situated windows that offered lovely views of some of the older homes in Hope’s Crossing that climbed the hillside and then the mountains beyond.

This was hers. She loved it already.

All the years of planning, working, dreaming, and in a few more weeks, that dream would be real.

She had worked as a sous-chef in other restaurants for years, since she had returned from Europe. She had been offered opportunities in the past to take over as executive chef but none of those situations had ever felt quite right. Either she had always told herself she wasn’t ready or she didn’t like the restaurant owners enough to work that closely with them or she had just plain been afraid.

When Brodie Thorne approached her with his plans for this old firehouse, she had instinctively recognized this was her time. She had known Brodie her whole life and she trusted him completely, both as a savvy businessman with a well-established track record of running restaurants and, more importantly, as a person.

The stars had aligned and she couldn’t make any more excuses.

She closed her eyes for a moment and imagined this place crowded with customers, standing in the middle of a gleaming kitchen giving orders to her own sous-chefs, smelling delicious things cooking, listening to the clink of glasses and contented conversation.

And a string of colorful words coming from the back entrance.

She jerked her eyes open as the words pierced the last of her hazy fantasy and sent it whooshing away.

A man was here, in her restaurant. An unhappy man, by the sound of it. Seriously? Somebody really thought they could break into her restaurant in broad daylight, probably hoping to steal construction tools left on the site?

Guess again, asshole, she thought.

She reached for the closest weapon she could lay her hands on, a two-by-four about the length of her torso, and edged around the corner.

A hallway led off the main dining room toward the restroom facilities, as well as a space she intended to make a separate dining room for private parties.

With her heart pounding, she peeked around the corner, two-by-four at the ready. Afternoon sunlight filtered in through the windows and she registered only a few quick impressions of height and muscled bulk, dark short-cropped hair and an unmistakable air of menace.

The man had already pilfered a reciprocating saw in one hand and had a tool belt dangling from the other. Thieving bastard. No way was she going to let him get away with robbing her place, even if the stuff belonged to the contractor responsible for these knuckle-gnawing delays.

She was too angry to think about the wisdom of taking on a very large man presently armed with power tools. This was her restaurant and she had worked too blasted hard for it to let some jerk think he could march in here and loot the place.

Gripping the two-by-far in suddenly damp hands, she stepped forward. “Don’t even think about it.”

He whirled around, even tougher and scarier than she had first thought. He was also surprisingly clean-cut for someone up to no good.

“Don’t think about what?” he growled, his voice as hard as his features.

“You picked the wrong place to rob, buster. My brother just happens to be the chief of police.”

He cocked his head, one eyebrow lifted. “Is that right?”

“You better believe it. Now put down the tools and get out of here before I call him.”

“Trust me, you don’t want to do that.”

Her anger kicked up a notch at his tone. As a sous-chef, she had spent more than a few years in the kitchen with temperamental, patronizing little men who thought they could intimidate her with their bluster and bluff. She was tired of it, yet another reason she couldn’t wait to open her own restaurant.

She refused to acknowledge the grim truth of his words. She absolutely didn’t want to call in Riley to help her deal with this. As a general rule, she had always tried to take care of herself, not drag her family into her problems.

She wasn’t about to tell him that. Instead, she shifted the board—now growing increasingly heavy—and whipped out her cell phone. In this case, she would do whatever was necessary. Even if that meant turning to her brother. She scrolled through her address book and found Riley’s number but paused, her thumb hovering over the name.

“You’ve got until the count of three to clear out,” she said, aware she sounded perilously close to something out of a spaghetti Western.

He apparently agreed. “You’re going to feel really stupid if you call in the cavalry right now. I’m not doing anything wrong.”

She sniffed. “Funny, that’s exactly what I would expect a criminal to say.”

“I’m not a criminal.”

“Again, I would have totally expected you to say that.”

He gave a rough laugh that seemed to sizzle through her. Just nerves, she told herself. To fight them, she gripped the board more tightly and stared him down.

He looked a little bit old to be doing the smash-and-grab thing, maybe her age or slightly older, but he did have a biceps tattoo dripping beneath the short sleeve of a worn T-shirt that showed off every hard muscle.

All in all, he was really quite gorgeous, for a criminal, even if he didn’t seem in the least threatened by a woman holding a two-by-four and a cell phone.

“Can I ask who you are and what you’re doing here?” he actually had the effrontery to say.

She gaped at him. “None of your business! You’re the one who’s trespassing.”

“Really? You think? Then why would I have this?”

He reached into the pocket of his jeans and pulled out a key that looked remarkably similar to the one she had used to unlock the door for her book club over an hour ago.