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unasked question. “He’s no one that matters.”
    Miriam shivers again, despite the pleasant afternoon. Big men everywhere like to push people around. Maybe Craig has more experience than she thought.
    “Are you up for an extracurricular project?” she asks. Craig looks at her, surprised at the change of topic. “We have a civic duty to stop that bastard Bender. Are you in?”
    His answering smile warms her heart.
    “I’m in.”

Chapter Eleven
    Natasha can’t bear the thought of another minute in Hamilton; the smugness of the place is galling. She downshifts to fourth in the electric blue Camaro she rented and blasts up the country road that leads back to Nashville. The Camaro is a sexy car, and the growling sound of eight cylinders is a perfect background for just about anything. When she upgraded to the sports car at the rental desk in the airport, she had visions of taking Emmett for a spin. With her heart and pride in shards, Natasha grudgingly still enjoys the ride, coasting up and down the rolling green hills, flying past country music mansions and prosperous farms. It’s a far cry from Florida, where everything’s flat and straight and the mansions only live on the water. With the windows down and the wind tangling her hair, she enjoys the dry breeze, so different from Florida’s moist air. It’s still technically summer, and in St. Pete’s, the temperature is up in the nineties. But here in Tennessee, she can feel how there’s cold in the near future, even on a warm day like today. There’s something thin about the air, something that says summer’s leaving.
    Screw it
, she thinks, shifting up to fifth, the car leaping forward under her. Maybe her drunk of a brother is right. And her parents. And her sister Leni clearly has been thinking it for years. Even Sofia at the shop mentioned how anyone who didn’t get what a great thing Natasha was didn’t deserve her. Nine years was plenty of time to give someone to open their eyes. To figure out that they were perfect for each other.
    She smiles an unhappy smile at the thought of Emmett freaking out over how to pay her back. She doesn’t regret it. If he turns his back on her, then he turns his back on everything shecan give him.
    It feels excellent. in a weird, awful way, to break it all. To smash any affection he might still have for her and burn that bridge behind her. When she thinks of everything she’s done for him, everything she risked. She downshifts to third and the engine howls as the rpm needle hovers dangerously on red. It’s a special kind of pain when you try to give someone everything you have and they smile and say no thank you. Emmett’s words play back in her mind.
I’m telling you this as someone who used to care for you …
    “Screw you, Emmett,” she says. “Have fun paying back the mortgage.”
    She punches the radio on, flicks past all the country music until she finds a solid rock station playing the good stuff. Nine Inch Nails comes on and she screams along to the lyrics:
Head like a hole. Black as your soul. I’d rather die than give you control
. She’s flying by, seventy on a forty-five-mile-an-hour road, downshifting on the climbs, the throb of the engine sometimes drowning out the howling lyrics.
    There should be no way to notice the man standing by the side of the road. She should be going so fast that he would be a smeary blur, but she sees his face clearly, the mussy, too-long hair, the slight smile, the amazing leather coat that looks buttery soft, the cowboy boots that fit right in on the outskirts of Nashville. Without conscious thought, Natasha slams on the brakes, leaving thick black skid marks behind her, and the car comes to a stop after a few hundred feet. As the engine growls unhappily in first gear, she pulls over onto the gravelly shoulder, her heartbeat thudding, hands gripping the wheel. Taking a deep breath, she uncoils herself from the car. There’s a large estate off to her right, the house