Too Close To Home by Maureen Tan

Author:Maureen Tan
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, Romance: Modern, Contemporary, General, Romance - Suspense, Romantic suspense fiction, Women intelligence officers, Suspense, Policewomen, Romance - General, Romance - Contemporary, Fiction, Love stories, Fiction - Romance
ISBN: 9780373514229
Publisher: Silhouette
Published: 2006-09-12T11:11:31.606000+00:00

Chad’s truck needed a muffler.

The big blue Dodge was his pride and joy, the kind of truck only a sixteen-year-old boy could love. It had a big four-eighty engine and oversize tires that were made for mud and off-roading. The truck was noisy enough that some folks believed Chad had installed a custom glass-pack muffler. But the fact was, the old muffler had simply rusted out. Which made the truck rumble and roar, drowning out the birds and making conversation practically impossible.

“Shut your eyes,” Chad shouted. A necessity, even though he was in the driver’s seat right beside me. “Shut them now, Brooke, before we get there.”

I did as he said and also had the good sense to grab the handle mounted above the door frame and brace myself against the seat. The old Dodge jounced as he powered it through the shallow, weedy ditch that separated the road from the tree line. Then a quick correction brought it back parallel to the road. And he killed the engine.

Silence. And the ringing in my ears, already fading, was overlaid with the sound of the wind rustling through the tree branches.

“What is it that you want to show me?” I asked again.

“It’s a surprise.”

That’s exactly what he’d said when he’d picked me up from the Cherokee Rose. He hadn’t made any further explanation to Aunt Lucy when he’d apologized for taking me away from my chores, but had kept insisting that there was something he had to show me. Now. Please.

I was familiar enough with the roads around town that it hadn’t taken me long to figure out where we were going. It had been more than a year since I’d been out here last. And for good reason. There was nothing pleasant about visiting the ugly turquoise single-wide that had stood uninhabited for years, a rotting reminder of things best forgotten. Nothing pleasant about watching Chad stand and stare and rub the scar on his cheek. As if the old wound were still raw and hurting. But I was his friend, so whenever he asked me to go with him, that was what I did.

Today, however, he seemed more than happy. And that surprised me. It was as if some wonderful secret was bubbling up inside him, demanding to be set free.

“Keep ’em closed,” he commanded, “until I say open them.”

He spanned my waist with his hands, lifted me down from the truck, and then slipped his arm around my shoulders to guide me. I could tell by the way the dappled light danced across my eyelids that we were walking through a thick stand of trees. Toward the old trailer.

We stopped when there was hot sunlight on my face again.

“Okay. Now you can take a look.”

I opened my eyes.

Where the trailer had once stood, the ground was now cleared in all directions. Vines and scrub trees and brush and shadows were gone. In their place were rows of sunflowers planted to the distant tree line. All in bloom, their heads turned toward the sun.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.