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Wrong time

Wrong man

She needed…well, no one right now Not after Brett She’d sworn offbrothers and the last thing she wanted was another uide her For too long she’d let the men in her life do just that

An hour and two cups of coffee later, the firefighters were gone but the stench of burnt Jeep remained Its carcass dripped in the afternoon sun, a bizarre centerpiece in Harvest’s parking lot

Damn, Claire had loved that car She’d h her hair on the twenty-minute drive home while she blasted the satellite radio

“Mourning the Jeep?”

Sitting on the employee bench outside the back door, she shaded her eyes with her hand and looked up at her brother Chris held an industrial-size brown bottle She squinted at the label Hydrogen peroxide He’d wanted to distract her with his question Really, it was kind of sweet She would have told him so too, if he hadn’t chosen that moment to yank her foot out and pour the clear liquid over the sash It bubbled and hissed like he’d just opened up a shaken Coke bottle She jerked her foot out of his hand

“Hurts like crazy, doesn’t it?” Chris twisted the cap back on the bottle “Mo”

“Give e”

He slapped it into her outstretched palm

“I’ll be right back” He paused right outside Harvest’s door and waved the bottle at her “Unless you want another shot of the good stuff”

She would have hurled so at him if there had been any ammunition nearby

Chris had always been a tease, winning the super lottery hadn’t changed hi

She pushed the sticky ends of the bandage onto her sole The icy burn froes always ht and still true at twenty-eight

“At least let me take you hoainst his thigh