Page 2 of Starcrossed Colorado

But secrets had a way of multiplying.

Maybe the more secrets you had, the easier it was to live with them. Even if the lies were eating away at your insides. You got numb to the pain.

After putting Maisie down to bed, I sat on the couch and waited for Lori to come home. But when a knock came in the middle of the night, it wasn’t her.

Two grave-faced deputies from the Hart County Sheriff’s Department stood at my door.

“I’m sorry, Mr. O’Neal. There’s been an accident.”

ONE

Ashford

“Hold on, you didwhat?”

Dixie arched a white eyebrow. “You might want to adjust that sassy tone, hon.”

I crossed my arms, fully aware of the way it made my pecs and biceps bulge, but Dixie was not impressed. She was five-foot-nothing and had celebrated her seventy-ninth birthday, again and again, each of the last several years. I was about three times her size and had black belts in three different fighting styles.

Yet my landlady’s iron stare put me in my place like I was a little kid instead of a thirty-four-year-old man. Every damn time. Probably because she’d known me since I was in diapers.

“I’m just surprised,” I grumbled. “This is coming out of the blue.”

“Hardly. I gave you notice of the new commercial lease terms a couple months back.”

“And I said I’d find a way to pay you the higher rent. I’ve been working on it.”

“Sure, dear, but wishes and hopes aren’t going to pay for my condo on Miami Beach. Not trying to be harsh here. It’s just true.”

Noisy voices and laughter filtered over from the lobby. Parents arriving with their kids for my afternoon Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu class. For the last several years, O’Neal Martial Arts had been operating from this storefront a block off Main Street. We got enough business to keep the lights on. Personal training on the side paid well per hour, and I’d slowly been adding to my roster of clients. Very slowly.

But growing a business in our small mountain town was a challenge. Add in health care and taxes, keeping our apartment habitable and my kiddo happy and occupied now that it was summer break…

I was struggling. Yet it was a sucker punch to the chest to have Dixie come in here today and make it so painfully obvious.

I couldn’t cover the increase in rent, so she was going to lease out the commercial space to someone else during the mornings.Myspace. What the hell?

Dixie patted my forearm. “You’ll only have to turn over the classroom for a few hours a day. The new renter is a music teacher. Needs a place to hold parent-and-tot music classes for the summer, and this building is a perfect fit.”

“What about my personal training clients?”

That eyebrow of hers made another trek upward. “Like I don’t see you with your clipboard over at the gym when I’m taking my Zumba classes.”

Okay, that was fair. I didn’t have a gym setup here, so I usually met my private training clients elsewhere. But I’d been thinking of hiring another teacher and expanding our class offerings. There was no way I could do any of that if I lost my training room for half of each day.

“Who is this so-called music teacher? I don’t know any music teachers in Silver Ridge.” Except for Mrs. Stuckey, who’d been giving piano lessons out of her basement for the last hundredyears or so. I couldn’t imagine Mrs. Stuckey leading a roomful of screaming toddlers through nursery rhymes.

“Her name is Emma Jennings. She’s arriving soon from California.”

“California?” I sputtered.

The vein at my temple twitched. My blood pressure was probably reaching unhealthy levels. This was my turf, and now I’d have to make room for some carpetbagger who wasn’t even from our town.

My daughter and I lived in the apartment upstairs. It was a separate rental, effectively giving us the whole building. I didn’t want some stranger hanging around and nosing into my private business.

Also, I didn’t like the nameEmma Jennings. Couldn’t say why. She sounded unpleasant. And trust me, I knew a thing or two about unpleasant.

“What if Maisie doesn’t like this woman?” An even worse idea occurred to me. “What if this Jennings woman doesn’t like Maisie?”

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