How could he argue with that? They saluted each other and knocked the liquor back. The back of his throat warmed all the way to his stomach.

“The first is her brother.” Dameon reenacted the scene at the house from the door barging open to the big brother’s handshake and unmistakable instant dislike. “The other issue is her friend thinks I’m a stalker.”

“How did that happen?” Omar asked.

“I’ve been trying to figure that out. I saw Grace at the hotel. But we didn’t talk then. The next morning, she walks into the coffee shop, hungover, and I approach her. Monday morning, she walks into the city office and . . .” He stopped. “I did call her from her Facebook page.”

Omar nearly spit out his beer. “You what?”

Now that Dameon said it aloud, he realized how the facts stacked up against him. “Holy shit, no wonder her friend thinks I’m stalking her.”

Tommy pushed a hot plate in front of both of them and looked at the bottle of whiskey. “You boys nursing this, or are you drinkin’?”

Omar put a finger in the air, signaling another round.

Tommy winked, poured, and walked off.

“First . . . stop using Facebook.”

“I figured that out.” It had felt genius at the time.

“You need to make good with the brother. And in my experience, if the girlfriends don’t like you, you’re running uphill the whole time.” Omar popped a fry in his mouth, picked up another.

“The girlfriend is dating her other brother.”

Omar picked up the second shot. “The whole fam damily is hating on you. You’ve got some ass kissing to do if you want in with this lady.”

Dameon reached for the shot. “Do you know how long it’s been since I needed to have anyone approve?” He was pretty sure it was high school and a sixteen-year-old’s father was involved.

“. . . or you can call Lena.”

Just thinking of that put a bad taste in his mouth that a bite of his dinner didn’t repel. “I’ll start with the brother.”

Dameon was formulating a way to do just that as he took the second shot Omar was offering.

CHAPTER TEN

Grace was back in Dameon’s house.

Rain fell on the roof like the march of a wartime drum. Nothing natural about it.

His back was to her, but her belly warmed in anticipation of him turning around.

She wanted his kiss even if she shouldn’t. And in here . . . in a dream she knew was a dream but could taste the scent of him, she could let Dameon hold her.

Grace placed a hand to his back, and the lights flickered.

He didn’t move.

Cold bled through his coat.

He turned, suddenly, and Desmond’s hand was on her throat.

Grace woke with a start, her hands reached for her neck. “Not Dameon.”

Desmond Brandt, better known as Erin’s ex, resurfaced in Grace’s dreams.

She rolled out of bed and walked to the bathroom. A flick of a switch and bright light attacked her eyeballs. Grace ran a hand over her neck, still felt his fingers lingering there.

“Stupid,” she called her reflection in the mirror. She’d been stupid to ignore his obvious lies. All because he was good-looking and worldly. Even the memory of him kissing her, something she wished she could erase from her hard drive, brought the feeling of his fingers on her neck.

Then Miah, a beat cop she’d known since high school, and his partner showed up. They were on a routine walk at the far end of the mall. They spotted her with Desmond and everything in his demeanor had changed. He must have felt exposed or nervous. He made a hasty retreat, and the next day Grace learned who he really was. A week later, the man was dead and Erin was in the ICU.

And it could have been her.

She could have been the dead one.

The investigation that followed Desmond’s death found pictures of her and Parker with the words first and second written over the images. The police had been reluctant to tell her the findings, but when they did, it was her father who’d sat down with her and explained what they meant.

“He was a sociopath, Gracie. And if he’d gotten you alone, there’s no telling what he would have done.”

“Why are you telling me this now?”

Her dad squeezed her hand, and rare tears hovered in his eyes. “Because I can’t lose you. You have to be more careful. You’re too old for me to ground so you’re not seeing the juvenile-hall-bound punk in school anymore.”

Grace ran cold water in the sink and shocked her system by saturating a washcloth and rubbing it over her face. She was being more careful all right. To the point of avoiding men in the romantic sense completely.

Until now.

Back in her room she noticed the time.

Three in the morning.

She walked the short hall to the living room and turned on a dim light in the kitchen.

After pouring herself a glass of milk, something her mother always did when she had trouble sleeping, Grace sat on the sofa and pulled a blanket over her lap.

Dameon and Desmond, their names almost identical, but that was where the similarities ended.

Two weeks following the night he died, Grace starting having nightmares. More memories of what had really happened than the one that woke her up tonight.

Having grown up with two older brothers, she’d learned to stand up for herself. Prided herself on being able to pick the bad ones out of the bunch. With Desmond, she never saw it coming. He’d casually approached her while sitting in a bar. She thought she was waiting on a Match date that never showed up. Later, when the police had finished their investigation, she’d been informed that he had created the entire setup using a fake profile. He knew where she was going to be, and knew she was never going to meet her “chosen date.”

She’d deleted every dating app she had been on and didn’t look twice at men who tried to pick her up in a bar. She’d sworn off the gender altogether.

Grace closed her eyes and tried to squeeze the whole memory from her brain.

Maybe Erin was right about him. Maybe that was why she’d suddenly started having the nightmares again. Maybe Dameon wasn’t as innocent as he claimed to be.

Or maybe her memories of Desmond were screwing with her because she was attracted to someone for the first time in nearly six months.

It was Sunday, and Grace joined Parker, Colin, Erin, and Matt on their annual walk through Santa Clarita’s version of Santa Claus Lane. The homes were decked out in every conceivable Christmas decor, with lights streaming across the street to each other’s houses. There were Grinch themes and Disney motifs, fake snow, and trees that appeared to explode out of rooftops. The air was crisp with the scent of a recent rain that simply added to the whole experience.

She knew the minute she walked up to the group that someone was going to mention Colin’s run-in with Dameon. If there was one thing her family was notoriously bad about, it was keeping anything to themselves.

To everyone’s credit, it took nearly five minutes of hellos and cheek kisses before the first word was uttered. They stood in a circle while Erin pulled on a scarf from the back seat of her car.

“What’s this I heard about a compromising position between you and a client in an abandoned house?” The question was from Matt.