Authors: Victoria Dahl
Taking the Heat (32 page)
“Asshole,” she muttered as she closed the curtains and locked her door. She hadn't bothered with that kind of thing in years. She'd finally felt safe from the world up here in the mountains outside Jackson, Wyoming. What the hell was she going to do now?
She stood in her entry for a moment with no clue what her next move was. She couldn't run again. She didn't want to. This was her life. Her
real
life. The world she'd chosen for herself.
She wouldn't run.
Fuzzy with shock, she headed back to her studio, feeling like a toy that was slowly winding down.
Did that guy really think she'd fall for such a flimsy story? She'd been around cops all her life. A protection detail was a protection detail; they didn't canvass neighborhoods asking who you were hiding in your house.
Her head buzzed with the noise of a thousand memories as she stopped before her easel and took up the brush. She held it poised above the line she'd painted earlier, but the color wasn't alive anymore. It wasn't good. She looked at the photos again, trying to absorb the life captured there, but when she looked back to the canvas, her mind gave her nothing. Nothing except Chicago and her parents and her old home and friends and
Patrick
.
She set the brush down and switched off the lamp. She wouldn't be able to work this evening. And she wouldn't be able to relax. That was the reason she'd started this new life in the first place. For peace and quiet and
forgetting
. And now he'd blown it up with a casually dropped bomb. Deputy Marshal Tom Duncan, asshole extraordinaire.
Heading toward her tiny living room and the ancient laptop she kept there, Isabelle pulled his card from the pocket of her jeans and shot it a nasty look. She'd find out exactly who he was and what he wanted, and she'd figure out if there was any way to make it better. And then she'd get back to painting.
Copyright © 2015 by Victoria Dahl
ISBN: 978-1-474-03582-8
TAKING THE HEAT
© 2015 Victoria Dahl
Published in Great Britain 2015
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited
Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road, Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR
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