Chapter 1
Los Angeles
The ingredients for a really bad day were all in place. Nasty breakup with Tomas the night before, her alarm clock failing to go off, and now her lost keys.
Actually, it had been a bad week. And, if she was being honest, an off month.
Okay, truth. It had been a rough year.
But that was all going to change, Jade Barrett told herself as she searched her overflowing junk drawer for her spare set of keys. Sure, the Tomas thing had thrown her off. They’d met at an estate sale. He ran a service that handled high-end probate and estate sales, and she’d been checking out some inventory for Heirlooms, her antique shop. The persuasive, fascinating man had been calling and chasing her ever since. She still marveled at that novelty, having a guy chase her—at least until last night, their two-month anniversary.
He’d looked as tall, dark, and charismatic as ever, and had been making noises about cojoining their businesses, using her stock as collateral to start up a West Coast operation, citing warehouses and numbers that had made her head spin, and her stomach sink. She liked her shop just as it was. Small. She liked the control, liked the coziness.
Then he’d upped her unease by mentioning moving in together. She’d even caught him looking wistfully at the jewelry display in Heirlooms—specifically, the few diamond engagement settings she had.
She’d always figured that when a man got close to asking for her hand in marriage, she’d be over the moon about him. She supposed she’d been too busy trying to keep afloat financially, or wondering what exactly was still missing in her life, why she felt an odd void. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it.
Or maybe it came down to one simple fact, that despite her two months with Tomas, she didn’t feel like she really knew him.
She felt she herself was easy to know, something her bookkeeper, Jody, always disagreed with. You hold back, she’d accused Jade time and time again, which she supposed was the reason why, after a year of working together, they weren’t yet close.
Jade liked to keep to herself, that’s all. She’d lost her father when she’d been eight. He’d been a cop, killed when his cover had been inadvertently blown by her mother, who then sank into a depression and died not long after.
Traumatic as that had been for Jade, the sole witness to her father’s murder, she’d been young, and had gone into a warm, kind foster home. She’d recovered. Yes, maybe she still was afraid of the boogeyman in her closet, and had a thing against guns and hated violence in general, and maybe she’d remained a tad bit aloof when it came to commitment, but it worked for her.
In fact, a good part of the attraction to Tomas had been his mysterious, sexy, charming ways, emphasis on the mysterious. If he wasn’t the commitment type, then neither would she have to be.
But last night, he’d come over, talking about the future. And she’d known. There wasn’t one, at least for them. He’d stood in her bedroom, his long, elegant fingers on the precious antique baby rattle collection on her dresser, including her grandmother’s rattle, the one and only sentimental item she owned, and his eyes had filled with cold, hard, calculated interest.
When Jade had called him on it, he hadn’t smiled or joked it away. So she’d told him it was over between them, but instead of leaving, he’d let his veneer slip, showing her a heart-stopping fury. He’d picked up her grandma’s rattle, fingered it roughly, and when she’d grabbed for it, he’d pushed her.
Shocked, she’d fallen, bumping her head on the brass base of her floor lamp, and had actually blacked out for a moment. When she’d sat up, he was sitting at her side, full of remorse and regret, but she’d been done. Kicking him out of her life had been easier than actually getting him out of her place, but she’d been firm, threatening to call the police. And finally, he’d gone.