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After a moment of stunned perplexity, she nodded She wouldn’t press hinaw at her until he told her everything If he ever did

Mystified over how close he had co the containers of food into his truck What really got hih he could tell her And that ht be lifted if he did Maybe Charles was right Maybe keeping all of that bottled up was doing ood

Memories of when he had first met Annabel flooded hi at wood-saw blades to re at the drills He’d found that interesting It wasn’t every day a guy sao tools, unless it was for her one over to her

“Are you a carpenter?” he had asked

Her head had co dark hair and dark eyes Very beautiful

“No” She had held up a drill in her hand “Replacing old doors in my house”

“You don’t hire out for that?”

“Why? Because I’m a woman?”

From that moment on, he had fallen hard for her They talked for hours

They spent quiet tiether, just coht they had thespecial, but he hadn’t had tiun to explore They hadn’t been together long before—

He could not let his mind dwell any more on that A deep sorrow penetrated his usual wall of carefully crafted indifference He finished putting the food in the truck and closed the door

As he walked to the rear of the truck on the way to the other side, he spotted a black SUV That in and of itself didn’t alert hiuy was just sitting in a vehicle

The passengerrolled down and he barely noticed thefor cover He just made it around the side of his truck before bullets hit the buate

He drew his oeapon and inched up enough to see the shooter He took ai as ine rev and tires squeal, Calluain as the SUV raced by and bullets pummeled the truck

When the volley subsided, Calluer side and crawled behind the wheel, fleetingly seeing a couple crouching at the entrance of the inn, one of the the truck, he peeled out of the parking space and chased after the SUV He veered in and out of traffic, seeing the vehicle several car lengths ahead