Arizona Heat. Linda Miller Lael
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Some secrets are too hot to handle
After years spent trying to remember her past, Mojo Sheepshanks just wants to put it behind her. She’s finally got the life she always wanted—sisters she loves, a career that keeps her on her toes and Tucker Darroch, the handsome cop who’s stuck by her against all odds. But for the people around her, moving on is hard to do. Tucker can’t seem to let go of his past, while Mojo’s sister Greer is being blackmailed for secrets in hers. And Mojo’s stuck in the middle again.
Meanwhile, danger is stalking the citizens of Cave Creek, Arizona, Mojo’s adopted home. And even as she and Tucker work to keep everyone safe, Mojo will discover that there are mysteries in Cave Creek that someone is willing to protect at any cost.
Previously published as Deadly Deceptions
Praise for #1 New York Times bestselling author Linda Lael Miller
“Readers will be entranced by Mojo... The star of Miller’s series debut possesses the appeal of both Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum and Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse rolled up in one.”
—Booklist
“The versatile and surprising Miller is back dishing up romantic suspense liberally laced with humor and the offbeat... Mojo Sheepshanks’ extraordinary adventures brim with sassy wit, emotional complications and dangerous thrills. It doesn’t get any better than this.”
—RT Book Reviews
“[A] marvelous contemporary western trilogy launch...fraught with amazing chemistry.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review, on Once a Rancher
“All three titles should appeal to readers who like their contemporary romances Western, slightly dangerous and graced with enlightened (more or less) bad-boy heroes.”
—Library Journal on the Montana Creeds series
“Miller’s prose is smart and her tough Eastwoodian cowboy cuts a sharp, unexpectedly funny figure in a classroom full of rambunctious frontier kids.”
—Publishers Weekly on The Man from Stone Creek
Arizona Heat
Linda Lael Miller
To Josanne Lovick, with love and appreciation
Contents
I WAS SO INNOCENT THEN.
Don’t get me wrong—I’d been through a lot, starting with the savage murders of both my parents, when I was only five years old. I’d been kidnapped and raised mostly on the road, by the late, great Lillian Travers, living under an alias that has since become more representative of who I really am than my given name—Mary Josephine Mayhugh—could ever be.
I’m Mojo Sheepshanks now, and as far as I can tell, I always will be.
Then again, you never know.
That’s what I’ve learned since the day I sat in the back of an overcrowded church in Cave Creek, Arizona, on a hot day in early May, too shaken to cry. You just never know—about anything, or anybody.
The casket in front of the altar was painfully small, made of gleaming black wood, and it was open. The body of seven-year-old Gillian Pellway lay inside, nestled on cushions of white silk, clad in a blue ruffled dress, her small hands folded across her chest. I know it’s what people always say, but she really did look peaceful, lying there. She might have been asleep.
She wasn’t at peace. If she had been, her ghost wouldn’t have been sitting in the folding chair next to mine, still clad in the single ballet slipper, pink leotard, tights and tutu she’d been wearing when she was murdered a week before, sometime after a rehearsal for an upcoming dance recital ended.
It wasn’t as if I’d had a lot of experience dealing with dead people. Early trauma and the years on the road with Lillian notwithstanding, I’d led a pretty ordinary life. I wasn’t psychic. I didn’t have visions.
Then, one