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CHAPTER ONE
Running Up That Hill by Meg Myers
Tonight I’ll make a deal with you, God.
I’m watching three men in this ballroom.
If I promise to kill one and ruin the other, can I finally be free of the third one? The beautiful man I hate so much that I’ll love him forever?
After all... you know it too.
They deserve it after what they did.
That deal tastes sweet. Sweet like the candied almond sliding over my glossed lips. The crunch—the sugary shards pulverized by my hard bite—I love it. Candy calms me.
Sitting at this table while a magnolia centerpiece blocks the view of one of my targets across the room; that annoys me.
My other target stands at nine o’clock, slamming SoCo and lime shots down his throat. I can feel his glower sliding down my body. He deserves the heel of my stiletto stabbed in his neck. But that’d be bad manners.
I won’t make the hard-working staff at this golf resort scrub blood from the cream carpet.
The third man?
Redix Dean, Hollywood’s Romeo.
Of course, he fucking smolders over my right shoulder, sitting beside his sexy date.
My hand shakes to the syrup of his voice. Fighting back every emotion, every pain and memory, I don’t think I can do this.
Ten years is a long time to go without seeing the love of your life.
The stunning sight of him walking into the ballroom an hour ago slammed my heart into a brick wall when I didn’t think it could break any more. I was wrong.
Redix makes calm breath and logic impossible. He destroys me all over again.
But it doesn’t hurt me anymore.
That’s what I tell myself so I can breathe.
“Don’t you dare let him get to you.” A silky hand grabs mine trembling under the table. “You hear me, Cade Bryant? Keep your chin up and your cheeks dry. You can cry about him later.”
My mama can see past my stone facade. Her command fills my heart, steeling my spine.
“I know, Mama.” I force a smile her way. “I won’t give him the satisfaction. None of them.”
“That’s my girl. You can live with a broken heart. But like hell if you won’t die with your pride too.”
She lifts a crystal glass of sweet tea to her lips. It rattles against her teeth. Mama hides it well, what the second round of chemo’s doing to her. But I see it, hiding my concern. Mama refuses pity.
“You should be drinking water,” I warn, “not sugar and caffeine.”
“Take my sweet tea from my grasp”—she winks—“and I’ll give you a fight you won’t win.”
Damn, I love her.
If people think I’m headstrong, Mama wears hard-headed like a well-coifed hairdo hiding hairpins that can take your eyes out. No one fucks with her. Sheriff Gloria Bryant is a force.
And as her daughter, Sergeant Cade Bryant, I’d be wiser stealing a steak from a starving Rottweiler before fighting with Mama.
