Arizona Heat

Some secrets are too hot to handle

After years spent trying to remember her past, Mojo Sheepshanks just wants to put it behind her. She’s finally got the life she always wanted—sisters she loves, a career that keeps her on her toes and Tucker Darroch, the handsome cop who’s stuck by her against all odds. But for the people around her, moving on is hard to do. Tucker can’t seem to let go of his past, while Mojo’s sister Greer is being blackmailed for secrets in hers. And Mojo’s stuck in the middle again.

Meanwhile, danger is stalking the citizens of Cave Creek, Arizona, Mojo’s adopted home. And even as she and Tucker work to keep everyone safe, Mojo will discover that there are mysteries in Cave Creek that someone is willing to protect at any cost.

Previously published as Deadly Deceptions

Praise for #1 New York Times bestselling author Linda Lael Miller

“Readers will be entranced by Mojo... The star of Miller’s series debut possesses the appeal of both Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum and Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse rolled up in one.”

—Booklist

“The versatile and surprising Miller is back dishing up romantic suspense liberally laced with humor and the offbeat... Mojo Sheepshanks’ extraordinary adventures brim with sassy wit, emotional complications and dangerous thrills. It doesn’t get any better than this.”

—RT Book Reviews

“[A] marvelous contemporary western trilogy launch...fraught with amazing chemistry.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review, on Once a Rancher

“All three titles should appeal to readers who like their contemporary romances Western, slightly dangerous and graced with enlightened (more or less) bad-boy heroes.”

—Library Journal on the Montana Creeds series

“Miller’s prose is smart and her tough Eastwoodian cowboy cuts a sharp, unexpectedly funny figure in a classroom full of rambunctious frontier kids.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Man from Stone Creek

Arizona Heat

Linda Lael Miller

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To Josanne Lovick, with love and appreciation

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Extract

Copyright

Chapter One

I WAS SO INNOCENT THEN.

Don’t get me wrong—I’d been through a lot, starting with the savage murders of both my parents, when I was only five years old. I’d been kidnapped and raised mostly on the road, by the late, great Lillian Travers, living under an alias that has since become more representative of who I really am than my given name—Mary Josephine Mayhugh—could ever be.

I’m Mojo Sheepshanks now, and as far as I can tell, I always will be.

Then again, you never know.

That’s what I’ve learned since the day I sat in the back of an overcrowded church in Cave Creek, Arizona, on a hot day in early May, too shaken to cry. You just never know—about anything, or anybody.

The casket in front of the altar was painfully small, made of gleaming black wood, and it was open. The body of seven-year-old Gillian Pellway lay inside, nestled on cushions of white silk, clad in a blue ruffled dress, her small hands folded across her chest. I know it’s what people always say, but she really did look peaceful, lying there. She might have been asleep.

She wasn’t at peace. If she had been, her ghost wouldn’t have been sitting in the folding chair next to mine, still clad in the single ballet slipper, pink leotard, tights and tutu she’d been wearing when she was murdered a week before, sometime after a rehearsal for an upcoming dance recital ended.

It wasn’t as if I’d had a lot of experience dealing with dead people. Early trauma and the years on the road with Lillian notwithstanding, I’d led a pretty ordinary life. I wasn’t psychic. I didn’t have visions.

Then, one night in April, I’d awakened to find my ex-husband, Nick DeLuca, in bed with me. Not too weird—divorced people sleep together all the time. Except that Nick had been killed in a car crash two years before. I saw him often, over a period of a few weeks, and I probably owe him my life.

But that’s another story.

Nick opened some kind of door, and I’ve been seeing ghosts ever since.

They’re easy enough to spot, once you know what to look for. Their clothes are usually outdated, and they often seem lost, as though they want to ask directions but can’t get anybody’s attention. I encounter them all the time now—in supermarkets, busy restaurants, even in dog parks.

I wish I didn’t, but I do.

I try hard not to make eye contact, but it doesn’t always work. Once they realize I can see them, they tend to get in my face.

That day, sitting through Gillian’s funeral, I had mixed feelings. Of course it was a tragedy—the apparently random slaughter of a little girl. That goes without saying. But most of the people weeping in that church were crying more for themselves than for Gillian—because they’d miss her, because it might just as easily have been their own child lying in that coffin, because they thought death was an ending.