DREAMS LOST…

After her father dies in a suspicious car crash, a grieving Jenna Myers moves to Denver to manage the apartment complex she inherits. The crime goes unsolved. But when one of her tenants is also murdered, Jenna must face a dark truth. It was a case of mistaken identity. Not only was her father’s death no accident. The killer is after her.

AND LOVE FOUND…

When Homicicde Detective Michael Locassio saves Jenna from a burning apartment, the sparks fly–literally! He may be surly and gorgeous, but she needs his help to solve the murders. She may be beautiful and spirited, but he needs her out of his way. The last thing Michael wants is for Jenna to end up dead like her tenant—his undercover agent.

Of all the risks Jenna and Michael must take, their greatest may be the risk of loving someone and accepting love as they find their Sweet Home Colorado.

Excerpt

Chapter One

Panic rose in Jenna Myers like a freak desert flash flood, one minute everything was calm, the next, it was raging out of control.  While standing on a dark crimson stain that seeped into the hallway from under her best friend’s apartment doorway fear clawed at Jenna’s heart.  “Torrie?”  Jenna pounded frantically against the wood, her pulse racing, her throat dried.  “Are you all right?  Torrie, open the door.”

No answer.  Terrified of what she’d find on the other side, she forced herself to turn the brass knob.  It wouldn’t budge.  With trembling hands, she found the master key to her friend’s apartment.  Hoping against hope, the stain wasn’t blood she placed the key in the lock and pushed the door open.  Near the entrance, Torrie Jenkins lay on her side.  Sightless eyes gazed at nothing.

Oh God.  Jenna choked back a frightened scream as she rushed toward her friend.  Instinct took over as icy fear twisted around her heart.  She scanned the studio apartment for an intruder and found none.  A curtain flapped against the wall from the breeze of an open window as she examined her friend.  There was no pulse.  No breath.  Nothing.  Torrie was gone.    Only Jenna’s ragged breathing broke the silence as she stood, grabbed her cell phone from her jacket pocket and dialed.

“This is 911.  Is there an emergency?”

“Help me…my friend has been murdered,” she said in a voice that seemed to come from a long way off.  Closing her eyes, memories of her father’s death floated past her eyelids.  She squelched them.

“Where are you?”

“Aspen Valley Apartments…four twenty eight East Vine, apartment number twelve.”

“Stay on the line.  A police car will be right there.  Did you check the victim’s pulse?”

“Yes, there isn’t one.  And sh–she’s covered with blood.  It’s everywhere.”  Jenna took a deep breath, trying to control her nervous shaking, seeing the scarlet blood splatters on the wall.

“Is anyone else there?”

“No, it’s a small studio apartment and I can see into all the rooms.  It’s just me.”

Turning her back to the grisly sight, she pressed the phone close against her ear and breathed in shallow, quick gasps, forcing herself to calm down.

“Stay there.  Don’t touch anything.  The police are on the way.”

Sirens wailed in the distance.  Would the police help this time, or would it be like the last?  Jenna had sold her bookstore and moved from Cedar Falls to Denver to solve her father’s murder and keep the apartment complex from being sold.  It was all she had left of her family.  She couldn’t sell it.  She hadn’t been able to solve anything and was holding on to the complex by a thread.  And now this….  A police car screeched into the parking lot and the shrill sound ceased as it jerked her from her thoughts.

She had to get away from the clogging scent of blood–Torrie’s blood.  Jenna ran out of the crimson entryway, averting her gaze from the blood-soaked carpet.  Two uniformed policemen and a plain-clothes detective moved quietly down the sides of the hall with guns drawn.  The well-built detective whirled and aimed his gun at her as she rushed toward them.

“Police.  Up against the wall,” he shouted.

“I called.  Thank goodness you’re here.”

“I said, up against the wall.  Now.”

She noted the hard suspicious glint in his eyes.  Stunned, Jenna quieted, stuck her hands in the air, and faced the white plaster, her world seeming to spin, yet move in slow motion at the same time.