Remember Josh.
Her dark gaze locked with his, her eyes hazy with desire and regret, and he figured he looked about the same. He wanted her, damn it, but there were good reasons for both of them to keep their distance, starting with Josh.
Then she sighed softly, and he thought to hell with Josh. All their lives, Joe had been the responsible, reliable, honorable twin, while Josh had done what he wanted, taken what he wanted and run when he wanted. Joe had always thought too much, and Josh hadn’t thought at all.
At this moment Joe didn’t want to think. He wanted to feel. To do.
Liz’s breathing was shallow, ragged. Then he realized that it was his own echoing in his ears. She was hardly breathing at all, waiting, watching him, wanting…
Wanting him for who he was, or because he looked exactly like his brother?
Dear Reader,
I always fall in love with something when I write a book—a character, a place or something of importance to the story. This time there were those sweet sighs whenever Joe came onto the page, and Copper Lake is high on the list of places I’d like to live, but my true love affair was with coffee.
I’m a lifelong coffee nondrinker. But when I began a book about a man who owns a gourmet coffee shop, I thought the least I could do was sample some gourmet coffees. As luck would have it, at the same time I was doing this research, my niece came home from a year in El Salvador with bags of top Salvadoran coffee for everyone. One sip and I was in love. As further proof of serendipity, the only place to buy that coffee outside El Salvador was from the estate’s only American roastery a mere twenty miles from my house.
It’s fair to say that Liz fell in love with Joe over a cup of coffee. And so did I.
Marilyn Pappano
Criminal Deception
Marilyn Pappano
MARILYN PAPPANO
has spent most of her life growing into the person she was meant to be, but she isn’t there yet. She’s been blessed with family—her husband, their son, his lovely wife and a grandson who is almost certainly the most beautiful and talented baby in the world—and friends, along with a writing career that’s made her one of the luckiest people around. Her passions, besides those already listed, include the pack of wild dogs who make their home in her house, fighting the good fight against the weeds that make up her yard, killing the creepy-crawlies that slither out of those weeds and, of course, anything having to do with books.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 1
Joe Saldana was a sucker for a pretty female, and he’d proven it twice in the past hour alone: he’d agreed to help Ellie Maricci with her new pet project, and with nothing more than an innocent look from Alyssa Lassiter’s big blue eyes and a soft, “Pwease, Joe,” he’d committed to help her father coach Little League this summer.
Now he sat in one corner of A Cuppa Joe, his Copper Lake, Georgia, coffee shop, gazing at his neighbor across the narrow table. Natalia Porter was unusually hesitant this afternoon, a sure sign that she wanted something from him. He was determined not to help her out by asking what.
She looked up from her afternoon grande mocha caffeine fix and casually said, “I went for a bike ride today.”
“Huh.” There was nothing unusual about that. Soon after moving into the cottage next door to his two months ago, she’d bought a bike and accompanied him on dozens of rides.
“I went out to Copper Lake.”
“Huh.” The lake for which the town was named was only three miles northeast of the square, a short ride for either of them.
“I found something.” She gave up pretense for intensity that rushed out her words. “Two puppies. A male and a female. They’re so cute and sweet and—and so hungry. They’re nothing but skin and bones, and they kind of followed me home, but Mrs. Wyndham says I can’t keep them. You, on the other hand, are so responsible and so reliable and just the perfect tenant, and if you wanted to keep them, why, of course that would be another matter entirely.” Natalia paused for a breath, then looked at him hopefully. “So will you?”
He studied her. She was twenty-five, she’d told him, but with her ridiculously short brown hair and eyes that were way too big for her face, she looked about fifteen. Those eyes were green, at least for the day; she changed their color as often as she changed her contact lenses.
Very young, very innocent, very easy to say yes to.
Stubbornly, he didn’t. “You know what puppies do? They pee all over everything. What they don’t pee on, they chew up, and they eat like a horse. They’ll tear my house apart the first time they’re left alone. And in case you haven’t noticed, with the hours I keep, they’d be alone a lot.”
“I’ll help with that,” she said eagerly. “I’ll take them out every two hours and I’ll clean up whatever messes they make.”
“I don’t want pets.”
“When was the last time you had one?”
“I don’t have to have cancer to know I don’t want it,” he retorted. He was happy living by himself. He liked his shoes ungnawed on; he liked not sharing his bed. Being responsibility-free, except for the coffee shop, was his life’s goal. The only thing he didn’t want more than a puppy was two puppies.
Then he grinned faintly. That wasn’t accurate. He didn’t want to be audited by the IRS. He didn’t want Starbucks to move into that empty space across the square. He didn’t want global warming to be a fact, even though he believed it was.
He didn’t want to ever see his brother again.
Oh, yeah, Josh trumped every other bad idea out there. Josh was the worst idea out there. Life would have been easier all around if he’d never been born.
Although how would that have affected Joe? After all, they’d come from the same egg.
And Joe had been dealing with him ever since.
“Please, Joe?”
“Look, Nat, I’ll ask Miss Abigail—”
The bell over the door dinged and he glanced that way. For a moment, all he saw was red: a snug-fitting dress that hugged every curve it touched, from shoulder to breast to waist to hip. It was fire-engine, look-at-me red, and led to a pair of long tanned legs and high-heeled sandals, white dots on red and topped with a bow.
It was an amazing sight to a man with a fine appreciation for mile-long legs.
As the door whooshed shut and the newcomer took a few steps, curiosity raised his gaze. He’d been in Copper Lake a year and a half. How had he overlooked those legs before?
His glance slid back over those curves and skimmed across delicate features framed by sleek black curls before it clicked into one recognizable picture. All the appreciation disappeared, swallowed up whole by cold emptiness that spread instantly through him.
Slowly