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down her cheeks and plopped onto the keyboard. She wasn’t even good at being Miranda Smith.
    And what was she doing about it? She was sitting at her kitchen table in her horribly empty house blubbering like a child. Again. How pathetic was that?
    The tears kept coming and the dull ache that had begun in the center of her chest spread outward. She tried to whip up fresh anger at Tom, but deep down inside she knew that somehow she had failed.
    Stumbling upstairs, she searched for something—anything—positive to cling to. In the end she was forced to settle for feeling lucky Truro didn’t have a tattoo parlor. Because then she’d feel compelled to have an
L
for loser tattooed on her forehead.

chapter 4
    C hief of Police Blake Summers cruised the main business district of Truro, which took about ten minutes. It was colder than any mid-January he could remember—it had barely hit the teens yesterday—and not too many folks were rushing to work any earlier than they had to. The snow was undoubtedly piled high up at Ballantyne Bald, and most of the narrow mountain roads outside of town were bound to be impassable.
    Calls today would be weather-related and require tow trucks and Truro’s lone snowplow rather than guns and bullets. Not that there was a hell of a lot of what qualified as real crime in Truro even when it was warm. He’d seen a lot more action on the force in Atlanta, but he didn’t regret coming home. There was a certain symmetry to the town bad boy coming back as its chief of police, even if he’d had to leave a wife behind to do it.
    Blake stashed the cruiser in the lot behind City Hall and walked down Main Street to the Dogwood Café. Here he knew everyone, and found satisfaction in that fact as he waved his hellos to the morning crowd and took his usual seat at the counter. He smiled his thanks when Jewel Whitman set a steaming mug of coffee in front of him.
    Fifteen minutes later he’d read
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
from front to back, demolished the He-Man Breakfast Special, and drunk enough cups of coffee to enable him to float to his office.
    “Jewel, if you pour me one more cup of coffee or put one more morsel of food on my plate, I’m going to have to arrest you.” Blake put a hand over the top of his cup and gave the waitress a look that had once made an armed felon throw down his gun.
    The waitress patted her beehive hairdo and flashed him a smile. “You sure you don’t want some more grits? I could fry you up another egg or two.”
    “Jewel, you’re killing me, here.”
    “Well, I know you’re not getting enough real food with no woman there to do for you.”
    “Do I look underfed to you?” Blake unfolded his six-foot-two-inch frame from the stool and patted his trim stomach before reaching into his pocket for his wallet. “The women in this town seem to think being male eradicates the cooking chromosome. Grandpa and Andie and I have been on our own for almost three years now. I think it’s time to scratch us off the Meals-on-Wheels list.”
    “Joke all you like,” Jewel said. “But two crotchety males trying to raise a teenage girl? Why, you’ve turned that cute little thing into the biggest jock in six counties.”
    Blake grinned and pulled a couple of bills out of his wallet and laid them on the counter. “Don’t you worry about us; we’re doing just fine. And I’ll lay you odds that little jock of mine will be heading to Duke on a full athletic scholarship in two years’ time.” Sport had been his salvation, and he intended to make sure his daughter reaped its benefits as well.
    “Be that as it may . . .”
    “We’re used to doing things ourselves. It gives a person backbone and determination.”
    “Not to mention ring-around-the-collar.”
    “Possibly.” Blake stuck his wallet back in his pocket. “But we’re fine, Jewel. Really. If it’ll make you feel better, you can give me an extra piece of bacon tomorrow.”
    The dry cleaner and the hardware