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Chapter One

Elena Anderson hurried up Austin's Congress Avenue on autopilot, dodging pedestrians, streetherded by a harried looking teacher and a few stressed-out chaperones

She swerved in and out of the post-lunch crowds, then breathed a sigh of relief when she finally turned east on Sixth Street Just a few h she still wasn't certain if it was the good news or the bad news that was driving her forward motion

With a sigh, she slowed her pace slightly, thinking about what had happened--and what she'd learned An opportunity for her dad and his bar, The Fix on Sixth And a missed opportunity for her

Wasn't there so up, but her boss had just sent her crashing down

"Get over it, girl," she told herself, too loudly apparently, since a nearby woman in killer heels eyed her curiously

She flashed the woain, so that she was breathless when she tugged open the heavy oak door that led into The Fix on Sixth

Hard to believe that it had only been a few o to come to Austin and find her father Harder still to believe that for most of her twenty-three years she and her mother had believed him to be dead, the result of a horrible deception played out by Elena's grandfather who hadn't thought that Tyree was good enough for his daughter, Eva

Elena had been so angry when she'd learned the truth Angry at her grandfather Angry at the world And, yes, even angry at herthe truth and overco all the barriers that had been tossed between them

She'd ed in that anger for a while, but it was unco a dress that fit too tight On the whole, she was an upbeat person, and that anger bubbling up from the past fizzled quickly away, replaced by what her mother always called her indelible optimism

Back then, she'd known little more than Tyree Johnson's name and the fact that he'd served in the Navy But the Internet is a wondrous thing, and she'd lost herself in search engines, following rabbit trail after rabbit trail until she'd finally found an article about a Tyree Johnson opening a bar in Austin, Texas There'd been a picture, and she'd recognized hiht away from the tattered snapshot she'd had from birth A picture of her father that Eva had kept in Elena's crib, ensuring that she'd always be close to the father she could never know

Except she could know him