CHAPTER ONE

      SARAH MCALLISTER’S EYES fluttered open and her gaze landed on the first items in her line of sight: several exposed wires crawling out of the socket in the ceiling above her bed like a spider’s creepy legs.

      She hated spiders almost as much as she hated contractors.

      Her brand-new ceiling fan and light fixture combination belonged where those wires were, but instead it sat in the as-yet-unopened home improvement store box. She had Gus “should be murdered in his sleep” Hinckle, her hired contractor, to thank for that.

      Sarah sighed and rolled over on her side. She startled at the sight of Shackles, her shaggy rescue mutt, sitting on the floor near her bed staring up at her. Unblinking.

      A month after adopting Shackles, Sarah and her rescue were still getting used to each other. He’d been through a great deal, she got it, but was it her fault he’d been flown to California by Paws and Pilots only to have his forever family change their mind? In the end, she’d agreed to adopt Shackles and had given him a name worthy of their mutual situation. He was unwittingly tied to her and she was tied to her father’s old house and the small town of Fortune, California, for reasons that didn’t seem to make sense any longer.

      “Time to get up.”

      Sarah fought with the white cotton sheets wound twice around her legs since she’d tossed and turned throughout the night. In other words, the usual.

      First order of business today was to put in a call to Gus and ask him for the tenth time this week when he planned on getting his ass over here to finish the job she’d hired him to do. Paid him to do, in fact, with a nice little deposit for his troubles. She stumbled over the unfinished flooring in the hallway where the hardwood slats were propped against the wall, waiting.

      The last time Gus had been here a week ago, he’d given her high hopes he might actually finish the job. What he’d done looked promising because, when she could get the man to work, he knew his stuff. Eventually her father’s old house, a relic of the sixties, would be updated to the twenty-first century. Then she’d be able to flip the house for a tidy profit and get out of dodge. Back to Fort Collins, Colorado, since there was nothing left for her here in Fortune.

      She grabbed her cell phone from the kitchen counter and hit her speed dial for Satan. As had occurred every day for the past week, the call went immediately to Gus’s voice mail.

      Blah blah blah I’m a contractor. Blah blah blah not just a contractor but an artist. Blah blah blah I’ll finish your project in time and under budget.

      Oh yeah, that last one was hilarious.

      “Get your ass over here and finish what you started or I swear I’m calling the cops! And I mean it this time.”

      As if the cops cared about a shifty contractor. The jails would be overflowing if that were the case. “I’ll call the Better Business Bureau and file a complaint! Did I mention my brother is an Air Force pilot? He’s big and bad and he’ll kick your ass. Get over here!”

      She hung up and threw the phone toward her couch. Her brother might be a badass but he was too busy running their late father’s flight school, Magnum Aviation, chartering flights through his new company and spending every other moment with the blonde who had tamed him. Sarah wasn’t going to ask him for any more help. He’d already done enough by installing the granite countertops after she’d bought him out of his half of the house.

      Shackles stared from his empty dog bowl to her and back again. “All right, all right,” Sarah said, filling his bowl. Never let it be said he couldn’t communicate. In fact, he was better at communication than most men.

      On the off chance he’d changed his routine, that he’d finally begun to trust her a teensy bit, she went back to the counter and started the coffee. But true to his idiosyncrasies, Shackles wouldn’t eat with anyone else in the room. He stood, guarding the bowl, less Sarah should suddenly be taken with the desire to start eating kibbles for breakfast. And he had still not touched the food.

      “Where’s the trust?” Sarah grumbled and headed to hit the shower, grateful Gus had never even started on her bathroom project.

      The