Licensed for Trouble by Susan May Warren

Author:Susan May Warren
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781414348247
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

Chapter Twelve

“I do believe in fresh starts,” Jeremy said quietly as they walked down the sidewalk in the neighborhood where Bekka Layton had died. Not a hit so far from the neighbors surrounding the now-rebuilt town house. So far, of the three tenants who agreed to talk to them, no one remembered Bekka, and none showed even a glimmer of recognition of Lyle Fisher or Max.

Overhead the sky had turned crabby, as if a storm might be rolling in. PJ stuck her hands in her pockets, trying not to step on any cracks.

“In fact, I’m the recipient of my own fresh start.”

PJ waited for more, leaning into his words, hoping.

He must have seen her expression. “I just . . . When I came home from Iraq, I was tired. Mentally and physically.”

“Being in combat could do that, I’d bet.”

“I never thought I’d leave the teams. But things changed.” He hooked her arm, stopping her. “I have no problem with someone wanting to erase their past and begin again. But the truth is, a person has to live with their choices; there’s no getting around that.”

PJ looked at the picture of the couple, the smiling, deceased Bekka Layton. “What about grace? waking up to a new day, another chance? How do you balance living with our choices with the fact that God forgives us over and over?”

He sighed. “Okay, I give you that. Both are true.”

“I just don’t want to believe that there’s no escape from the past. You have no idea what it’s like to be labeled trouble, to have to haul it around with you everywhere you go, branded into your skin.”

She saw Jeremy’s gaze travel to her shoulder.

“Yes, that brand, too. Boone is a part of that trouble label. It’s one reason why I kept moving for ten years. Everywhere I went, I became a new person. No baggage. No labels. Just a clean slate. But not in Kellogg. There, I’m a troublemaker, and it’s not only the country club. Now that I’m a PI—”

“Almost a PI.”

“Going to be a PI . . . it’s like I specialize in trouble. I’m a professional troublemaker.”

“You’re not a troublemaker.”

“I want to believe that, but how do you leave your past behind when it’s all you’ve ever been? How do you start over? And what do I call myself now?”

“Oh, PJ.” Jeremy caught her hand and his eyes met hers, held them. “You’ve come so far since the day I found you impersonating a lawn girl. But you keep dragging your past around with you, calling yourself trouble.”

He pushed a wild, blowing hair away from her face. “Remember how after Peter betrayed Jesus, he returned to fishing? He panicked . . . and despite all the change God had done in him, all he’d learned about Jesus, the Messiah, he went back to what he knew—the simple life of a fisherman. He only saw himself as a fisherman.

“But he wasn’t supposed to be there, and Jesus went after him. He called

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