His life was such complete shit that he had no idea what she could possibly be talking about. "Lucky?"

"With your neighbors," she said. "Growing up, my neighbors were career arsonists and loan sharks." She shrugged. "The arsonist was nice enough, but if I left my dolls out, he'd set their hair on fire."

"And the loan shark?"

"He wasn't crazy about little kids," she said. "He used to tell me and my sister that he was going to sneak into our place one night and sell us on the white slave market, and then retire off his portion of the profit."

Jesus. "How old were you?"

"I don't know, twelve maybe. He never got the chance. When my mom found out what he'd said, she threw a lamp at his head. That straightened him out pretty quick."

Luke wasn't into civilians taking matters into their own hands, but in this case, the vigilante justice worked for him. "Good. And thanks for your help."

She smiled. "I figured you didn't want to socialize."

"No."

"So maybe it's fate that I'm here."

Fate? He'd call it bad luck. "I don't put much stock in fate." He believed in making his own path-even if that way was to fuck up a few times before he got it right. He never blamed something as intangible as fate for his screwups.

He blamed himself.

She stared at him for a moment, her eyes soft, as if maybe she felt sorry for him, of all things. "That's okay," she said. "I believe enough for the both of us."

Well, hell.

He tried to shake it all off, but his eyes were gritty from the exhaustion. "I'm hitting the sack." He walked away and took the stairs down to the basement.

It'd been years since he'd been down here, but not much had changed. The walls were a midnight blue with the galaxy painted on the ceiling. Pluto was still a planet. The door was covered in late '90s radio station stickers, a virtual time capsule to Luke's teenagehood.

Not that there was a lot to the time capsule. His parents, both doctors, had never put much stock in sentiment. They believed in higher education, hard work, and harder, tough love. And the cause, always the cause.

Right now that meant being in Haiti. Back then, it'd been Doctors Without Borders, which had left Luke and his older sister, Sara, more often in the care of their grandma up here in Lucky Harbor than at home in San Francisco.

Which had worked for Luke.

He'd had a lot of good times in Lucky Harbor, the best times of his life. His first climb. His first ski. His first boat race. His first jump off the pier. His first kiss. And given that Candy Jenson, a senior to his freshman, had also taken his virginity, he'd had just about every possible first here.

Good memories.

At least until several years later, on one particularly stupid night when he'd been with the girl of his dreams. They'd parked up at Pigeon Point to "stargaze," aka have sex, in her daddy's truck. They'd been doing just that when his sister had called him. Twenty years old to his eighteen, Sara hadn't bothered with Luke all that often, but that night she'd been drinking and had needed a ride home.

Luke had still had two condoms left. He'd told his sister to give him a little bit.

But Sara hadn't waited. She'd driven home drunk, blasting through a stop sign and killing an old man crossing the street.

Though Sara had never blamed him for her two years in jail, Luke still hadn't forgiven himself, and their relationship had been strained ever since.

And then his grandma had died two summers later. Again, he hadn't been the direct cause, but close enough.

He'd not come back to Lucky Harbor since.

The stack of boxes against the wall suggested that at some point this room had gone from housing a teenager to housing extra crap. His grandma Fay had never been able to throw anything of his or Sara's away. She'd been the only sentimental one in the entire family.

Luke took a long look around and nudged the first box with his toe, eyes locking in on a lump of clay-the stupid snowman he'd once made at summer camp. It was missing an eye and a chunk of its head, but his grandma had cherished the thing, which had sat on her desk as a paperweight for as many years as he could remember.

Her desk was still upstairs in the den, but it was empty now, available for whichever tenant wanted to use it.

Luke stared at the snowman, reluctantly acknowledging the damn ache in his chest before shaking his head and heading straight for the bed. Kicking off his clothes and shoes with equal carelessness, he sprawled onto the mattress.

His last conscious thought was the image of Ali standing in his kitchen in nothing but her sexy bra and panties and that smile, the one that told him he was in a whole shitload of trouble, whether he liked it or not.

And for the record, he didn't like it.

Chapter 4.

Ali heard the door shut from the depths of the house, and then nothing.

Just silence in Luke's wake.

She cleared up the shards on the floor from the ceramic pot she'd thrown and let out a long breath. Luke Hanover was a force. A big, edgy, enigmatic force.

And a cop. A detective lieutenant.

Good Lord.

Her mom loved men, all of them, but one thing she'd always imparted to her daughters was a general distrust of men of the law. Ali's growing up years had been like living through a season of COPS, and she still tended to twitch when she heard a siren. Though she'd twitched at the sight of Luke for an entirely different reason.

In light of the fact that she was just dumped and therefore temporarily uninterested in anyone with a penis, this was deeply disturbing.

Luke was a good-looking guy, she told herself. Any woman would react. It was the way he carried himself-the sharp gaze that missed nothing and a calm, controlled demeanor even after finding a half-naked woman in his house. Although, there'd definitely been something in his expression suggesting a tension that had nothing to do with her. The earful she'd gotten from the reporter had confirmed this. Luke had clearly had a week far worse than hers, especially since his had involved dead people.

Clearly Luke dealt with more stress and responsibility on any given day than Ali had ever managed. She felt bad, but at the moment, she had her own problems.

Big problems.

Roof-over-her-head problems. She could stay here tonight, but she had every other night to worry about. Letting out a shaky breath, she lifted her chin. It was what the Winters women did, they faked their bravado. Then they told themselves everything was going to be okay. "It is going to be okay," she said out loud to convince herself, because that would make it so. "It's really going to be okay."

But she had no idea how. She didn't charge the senior center when she taught there, and Lucky Harbor Flowers was slower than usual this season. Russell kept talking about his dream, which was to follow his ex-boyfriend Paul to Las Vegas. And that meant closing the shop.

Unless she could suddenly convince him that she could run the shop in his absence, things were going to go bad for her.

Her phone buzzed. It was Leah Sullivan, pastry chef and Ali's closest friend in town. "Hey," Ali said, going for chipper.

"You okay?" Leah asked.

"Yep," Ali said. "Totally okay."

Leah, a wanderlust soul, was friendly and curious and funny as hell. She seemed to have a knack for recognizing bullshit. "You're lying."

"A little," Ali admitted.

Leah sighed. They hadn't been friends that long, Leah was only in town to run her grandma's bakery while the older woman recovered from knee surgery, but some things didn't take any time at all.

"Men are scum," Leah said. "Even cute Ted Marshall apparently."

"How is this already news?"

"There was a sighting of Ted carrying boxes into a rental duplex. So you're still at the house?"

"Yes," Ali said, not mentioning that she was only staying for one more night. She didn't want to worry or burden Leah, who'd just recently come back to Lucky Harbor after a long stretch away. She worked in the bakery in the same building as Ali, which was how they'd become friends. But Leah was only here to help her grandma, and was staying in her grandma's tiny place. Leah would insist Ali join them, but Ali wouldn't impose.

"I've got fresh eclairs," Leah said. "Excellent breakup food."

"Definitely. I'll come by later," Ali said and clicked off. She could go to her mom's and sister's. White Center wasn't that far, a couple of hours, and Mimi and Harper would welcome her with open arms. But she'd left them and come here for a new start, to make something of herself, dammit.

She had other friends, but no one close enough to barge in on. Pensive over the realization that her life wasn't exactly going in the carefree, fun direction she'd hoped, she finished watering the plants. It was quiet in the house in spite of the big, brooding guy in it. Eerily quiet. She put the watering pitcher back under the kitchen sink and then sagged a little in the silence.

She didn't have to leave right now, but the fact remained that this was his home now.

Not hers.

She had no real home. This wasn't exactly a new feeling, but she hated that unsettled spot in her gut, and her fingers itched for a clump of cool, wet clay, which always soothed her. She might have gone out to the garage, where she'd set up a little workstation for herself, but the house phone rang again. She answered to another reporter and gave the same spiel that she'd given the first, but more firmly.

She'd seen something in Luke's eyes, a hollowness that she understood. Clearly he'd escaped to Lucky Harbor for some peace and quiet, and she was willing to fight for it for him. It was the least she could do to earn her keep.

Ali woke up on Sunday morning to a silent house. Luke's truck was still out front, so she assumed he was still sleeping.

She didn't have that luxury. She had a class to teach at the senior center and a life to figure out.

First up: breakfast. If her life was going to hell in a handbasket, well then she was going on a full stomach. In the kitchen, she pulled out the makings for two omelets. She cooked and then inhaled one while standing on the back deck. From here, she could see down the steep stairs to the house's private dock below, which jutted out into the water. She stared at the churning swells, lost in thought.

And worry.

And anxiety.

And lingering temper.

A movement caught her eye. There was a wiry-looking guy trying to get into the bushes along the side of the house. He had a camera in one hand and a cell phone in the other, which he was waving wildly about, trying to shoo something.

Narrowing her eyes, Ali moved closer. "Who are you?" she demanded.

He'd disturbed a few bees, and they were on him. The guy dropped to the ground, losing both his camera and his phone. "You have kamikaze bees!"

Clearly not a local. "Where are you from?" she asked.

He came up to his knees, gingerly looking around. "Are they gone?"

There was still one circling his head. "Yes."

"Whew." He let out a breath of relief and reached for his things. "I'm looking for Detective Lieutenant Luke Hanover. I just want a picture-"

That was all she needed to hear. She grabbed the hose that she'd coiled yesterday after watering the yard and nailed him.

"Hey!" He curled over his phone and camera to protect them. "Hey!"

She lowered the hose. "You're trespassing."

He stared at her like she was a loon. "You ruined my things! I'm going to call the cops!"

"Do that," she suggested. "And be sure to tell them you were on private property trying to get a picture to sell to the media when you accidentally ran into the sprinklers."

"I'm not leaving," he said. "Not until I talk to the owner of this house."

Ali lifted the hose again, and he squeaked and then ran off. "That's what I thought," she said, and dropped the hose.

Feeling a little better, she went inside and wrapped up the second omelet and put it in the fridge with a note to her tall, dark, and attitude-ridden landlord: Luke, I made you a kick-ass omelet. Thanks for letting me stay the night.

Ali P.S. I hosed the paparazzi scoping out your back deck so I doubt he'll be back today.

It took her a moment to find her keys, since she'd thrown the key pot at Luke. They were under the table. Grabbing them, she headed out to her class. It was surprisingly hot already, which might have sent anyone else scampering back inside, but Ali was made of sheer, one-hundred-percent resilience.

Or so her mom always said.

Outside, her truck didn't want to start. It was a morning thing, something the two of them had in common. "Come on baby," she coaxed, patting the dash with love. "Do it for me." The sweet talk worked, the truck roared to life, and they were off.

Lucky Harbor tended to roll up its sidewalks at dusk, and they hadn't yet been unrolled. The sleepy town was just coming to life, with little to no traffic on the streets and the shops not yet open for business. The pier was quiet too, the arcade dark, the Ferris wheel still against the morning sky.

On the outskirts of town stood a large, one-story building that had once been a small Army outpost. The barracks had been converted to apartments and then into a senior center.

Inside, Ali was greeted by Lucille. She was somewhere between sixty and one hundred, had a tendency toward velour sweat suits in eye-popping colors, and had a heart of gold. She also had an ear for gossip. She ran the local art gallery and the town's Facebook page with equal enthusiasm. Recently she'd expanded her social media platform to include Pinterest as well. She came out for all of Ali's classes because she had a crush on the men at the senior center, at least the ones who were "still kicking" as she liked to say.

Lucille smiled sympathetically at Ali. "You okay, honey?"

"Sure," Ali said. "Why?"

"I heard about your breakup. It's on Facebook."

Ali stared at her. "Who put it on Facebook?"