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royal purple underwear. What, no tiara, Princess Rainbow ? Near as Joe could tell, Miss Mooney had a costume fetish. Although yesterday’s get-up had been confined to a goofy stovetop hat. Prompted by a fortune-cookie-like email and just desperate enough to explore the impossible, Joe had visited the small local library on a highly personal and selfish mission. Bella, in all of her bubbly whimsy coupled with memories of butchered innocence, had chased him away.
    Watching her now—her long blond hair tangled from the wind, her face mottled with fury—he got a whiff of Jekyll and Hyde. The hot sauce inside the creampuff.
    Interesting .
    She stopped at the bottom of the porch steps—a tousled, grass and mud-stained, red-faced mess. “Dissing my welcome basket and scowling at my storytelling was rude, but humiliating my dad? What in the world did we do to earn your disdain? I can’t imagine! And I’ve got a honking big imagination, Savage!”
    Stunned and amused by her fiery vehemence, Joe raised a brow—which only riled her more.
    “Did you or did you not confiscate my dad’s truck last night as winnings in a poker game?”
    “I did.”
    No tears, just fury. “How could you?” she exploded. “Couldn’t you tell that he’d had too much to drink? That his judgment was impaired? What kind of a monster takes advantage of a despondent, inebriated man?”
    There it was again. That friggin’ insult, slicing and dicing his conscience.
    His former colleague’s voice rang in his ears, intensifying the sting. “ You were like a crazed animal, Savage. Ruthless.”
    Joe blocked the past. Focused on now. On Bella and her dad. When confessing his loss to his daughter had Mooney painted Joe as the damned villain? Hell, yeah, he’d known Mooney was shitfaced. Part of the reason he’d taken the truck as payment for the man’s debt. To prevent Mooney from driving and risking vehicular homicide. But instead of explaining his actions, Joe held silent. He’d been doing a lot of that lately.
    “I don’t expect you to know this or to care,” Bella railed on, “because you don’t know us—not that I didn’t extend a welcome—but my dad, Archie Mooney, is going through a very rough time.”
    “I know.” The man had lost his wife and his job in the space of a few months. Joe had taken to spending random evenings at Desperado’s Den. People talked. He listened.
    “You know? And you still… It’s his only… Our only… Do you know how far we live from town?”
    Yeah. He knew. Another reason Joe had played the prick card and taken the man’s keys. Maybe losing his truck would force him to take a hard look at his gambling and drinking problem. Joe had expected to have this conversation with Mooney himself. He hadn’t expected the man to send his daughter in his stead. Joe had heard Mooney was a good man. Maybe he’d heard wrong.
    “Okay. You know what? Obviously you’re not willing to listen to reason,” Bella blurted.
    Joe just stared. She was pacing now. In the overgrown grass. In that billowy gown and her mud-caked gym shoes. He could only assume it was a costume for another one of her storytelling gigs. So what? She’d blown off her kids to give him hell? Her animated indignation stroked him as surely as a lover’s hand. Annoying. Surprising . She wasn’t his type. But by God, the woman was a beauty when riled.
    Another thing he’d heard. Bella Mooney was a do-gooder. A head-in-the-clouds dreamer. He’d seen it for himself at the library. The intensity of her cheerful whimsy had given him a headache, heartache, and hard-on all at the same time. In that moment, in that mood, he’d wanted nothing to do with her.
    He didn’t feel that way this moment, in this mood—which was slightly convoluted.
    “We need that truck,” Bella said, sounding less angry and more desperate. “Big Red’s more than our transportation. It’s my dad’s special joy. He fixed it up himself. Plus, as if his spirits weren’t low