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  Decision made. She veered in the opposite direction, passing the towering oak she used to climb . . . the weeping willow where she’d experienced her first kiss . . . the tire swing her father had made during one of his rare moments of affection. She clutched the pie closer. Try and take it from me, I dare you.

  “Stop,” Beck commanded. “Or I’ll make you regret it.”

  He sounded close, too close, but he didn’t sound winded. She glanced back—crap! He was almost on her. She picked up the pace . . . until several burs lodged in her tattered sandals and poked all the way to her feet, causing sharp spikes of pain to slow her down. Any second now, Beck would overtake—

  Hard hands snaked around her waist, two hundred pounds of muscle bearing down on her. As she fell, the pie went flying.

  “Noooo!” she shouted.

  Impact pushed the air from her lungs and tears into her eyes. She wiped the droplets away with a shaky hand; she wasn’t a crier, but she couldn’t stop her whimper when she spotted the dark blueberry splatters now streaming across rock and dirt, the crust—perfectly browned—now sprinkled with dirt.

  The moment she caught her breath, she snarled, “Pie killer!” These days, her dark side very rarely came out to play, but the loss of the dessert pricked it to sizzling life. “If there’s any justice in the world, you will fry for this.”

  “Really? That’s what you say to me?” He sat on his haunches, freeing her from the bulk of his weight.

  She swung around and slapped his shoulder. “You tackled me. I have rights, you know. I should sue you for everything you own.”

  “Yes, please do so. Meanwhile, I’ll press charges for trespassing. Now tell me what you were doing with my pie.”

  My pie! She’d stolen it fair and square. But the trespassing reminder sobered her, enabling her to beat her dark side into submission. “If you think about things like a reasonable adult,” she replied evenly, “you’ll see your crime is worse. Your actions led to the painful death of an innocent dessert.” Now she would go hungry for yet another night.

  Her stomach grumbled in protest.

  “The pie was going to die one way or another tonight,” he said. “I just assumed my mouth would be the weapon of mass destruction, not a dirty little thief determined to blame someone else.”

  He stood, surprising her by offering a helping hand. A trick, surely. She declined by pushing to her feet under her own steam. Besides, she’d seen some of the places those hands had been. And, really, she didn’t need to know what they felt like. If they were calloused and rough . . . if his skin was hot enough to make her burn and quiver the way Tawny and countless others had.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked again.

  Why not tell him the truth? He had only to ask the townsfolk about her to hear a thousand stories detailing her reign of terror in high school. Perhaps someone would even mention the time a poll was pinned to the corkboard of the town square: If given a choice, would you rather torture the devil or Harlow Glass?

  Harlow had won by a landslide.

  “I’m Harlow Glass, and I used to live here.”

  Gena Showalter is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the White Rabbit Chronicles, Otherworld Assassins, Angels of the Dark, Lords of the Underworld, and several of other young adult and adult romance series. She has written over thirty novels and novellas. Her books have appeared in Cosmopolitan and Seventeen magazines, and have been translated in multiple languages.

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