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Chapter One

The glass door swung open and then shut, sucking cold air and a flurry of snowflakes into Marietta’s Java Café on Main Street

Even before the heavy boots thudded on the wooden floorboards, Jet felt a rush of awareness, the skin at her nape tingling He was here

Jet Diekerhof sat up a little straighter, trying to act blasé, wanting desperately to be indifferent as she was so over y seemed to have a different idea because every ti, body waruy she’d ever seen had just entered Marietta’s coffee shop

She didn’t want to be interested She didn’t want to think about guys—hot, handsome men with hard bodies, sinewy biceps, and chiseled jaws—but it was inore the crazy adrenaline rush when he was close by And the adrenaline was surging now Her hands shook and her skin flushed hot, before turning cold Even her heart was beating double time

Jet didn’t knohy he had this effect on her She didn’t know anything about hieous Hot, sexy, seous He had a whole sleeve of tattoos—she thought that hat they called the, thick, dark hair and a dark scruff of a beard that made her stare at his mouth

He had a sexy mouth Sexy muscles

But best of all—or maybe worst of all—he had a brain

She never saw him without a stack of books, tons of books, and notebooks, and a laptop He’d show up and turn his table at Java Café into a mini-office, books and notepad and laptop spread out around him, and he’d read, pen in hand, ready to jot down notes

He was always scribbling so She loved that No, hated that Hated that he fascinated her, especially when he’d sit there working with that fierce focus, oblivious to everything around him

He had to be a teacher, a grad student, a writer So like that Who else would sit for hours in a coffee shop, pouring over books, biceps beautifully bunched, brow furrowed in concentration?

He was intense and edgy and intriguing and she’d never met anyone else like him

Not that she’d ever actually met him

And not that she wanted toand they’d break her heart and she wouldn’t even see it co

So no She didn’t want to know him She didn’t even want to be aware of hioose bu…

But that didn’t matter She didn’t care She didn’t care that he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and that no one ever joined him at his table She didn’t care that he drank tea, not coffee, and that the café served him tea in a china cup With a saucer

And she most definitely hadn’t fantasized about hi into a chair at her table, long led carelessly away, even as his dark eyes watched her with sexy, lazy, delicious intent

She didn’t want that She couldn’t want it Because the last tily handso down that road again She was only just starting to feel better Just beginning to feel alain but, even now, she could still feel the deep bruise in her chest where her heart should be

She still didn’t know if Ben had played her, or she’d been naïve, but either way, falling for anyone, erous and foolish

But that didn’t stop her fro her mystery man cross the Java Café as he headed to the counter

He earing old, faded jeans that hung from his lean hips, jeans that outlined his hard quads and ha to the tips of his black boots They weren’t couy who rode a ht wear Bad ass Take no prisoners

And then he turned abruptly and his dark eyes—deep, deep brown, almost black—met hers and held

Her heart fell all the way to her feet