Harlequin Romantic Suspense September 2021 Box Set by Jennifer Morey

Author:Jennifer Morey
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 2

Callie had just taken her order—an herbal tea and a couple of spinach-pepper egg white bites—back to one of about a dozen tables and was sitting and looking out at the still-chilly morning mist when Jude showed up and headed for the counter after confirming her presence with a glance. Apparently serious about his coffee habit, he ordered their largest size and didn’t waste time doctoring the drink before making his way to the table.

“No breakfast?” she asked, swallowing the mouthful she’d been chewing.

“Food can wait for a bit,” he said, “but the need for java’s approaching critical—especially with the heat out in my clunker.”

“Gotcha,” she said, watching as he blew across the surface and sipped appreciatively at the dark brew, which had always tasted too bitter and made her too jumpy for her liking.

The warm, rich scent of it, though, wafting her way, and the sight of a man so obviously enjoying his first hit of the morning, set off the echo of an old ache. Though sometimes the grief packed into such moments still had the power to level her, making her wish that she, too, had died on impact that night, this morning she felt only bittersweet nostalgia and a faint pang for the kind of bond she could never bear to risk again.

Certainly not with Jude Castleman, a near stranger who clearly wanted something from her. But what? And how quickly could she convince him she had nothing left to give?

He rubbed the back of his neck and grimaced, looking oddly nervous for a guy whose breezy confidence had struck her as almost cocky the first couple of times they’d worked together. “I’m not—I’m not quite sure how to start.”

“Quickly, would be my suggestion. As I mentioned, I have somewhere I need to be.”

Remembering his kindness in the chopper, she refrained from glancing down at her watch and instead sipped her tea, savoring its minty flavor.

With a sigh, he set down his coffee. “I guess I can start with my grandfather’s death. He passed away this summer, back in Phoenix.”

“Sorry to hear it,” she murmured out of reflex.

“Don’t be. He was a bitter, abusive man when he was well, and I can’t say the dementia made dealing with him one bit more pleasant.”

“You were the caregiver?” she asked, unable to keep the surprise from her voice.

Jude shrugged. “He did raise me. Reluctantly, I know, but after my mom took her life—”

“Oh, Jude—I am sorry.” Raised by a tumbleweed of a single mother, who’d dragged the two of them from town to town as she’d chased a dream of breaking into the big-time as a singer, Callie had known uncertainty, even deprivation in her younger years, but her mom had always been there, her first and often only friend, trying her heart out for the both of them.

“After her death when I was eleven,” he said with a nod to acknowledge Callie’s words, “he was pretty much stuck with me, just the way I ended up stuck with him after the memory care facility kicked him out for being overly combative.

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