Prologue
Yesterday. Dane strummed the final chord.
The song had it wrong. Love was never an easy game to play.
He rested the guitar on his lap and looked up at Shana George across the small space of the trailer that had been their temporary home for weeks, and would be for weeks more. He knew she was thinking the exact same thing about the game of love.
“I never knew,” she said. “You play beautifully.”
Her words wrapped him in dizzy warmth and then sent him hurtling back too many years.
His mother had said the same words, to the same effect.
He tossed his guitar aside. He shouldn’t be so careless with the only thing he had left from his father.
From his entire past. It had been in the back of the Jeep when the bomb had exploded the beach shack.
He stood. If he jostled his mind with quick angry motions the past would be banished. His head was already too crowded with confusion, dismay, and something stranger. Bliss popped in by way of his soul like an unbidden ghost on unpredictable occasions.
Shana came to him, bent carefully and wrapped her arms around him like the blissful ghost’s messenger, Christmas Future. If he could put aside his mind, shut it down and only feel, he would be okay. She gave him plenty to feel.
“Another line to add to the legend of Dane Blaise,” she said. She was in a mood to give him shit, albeit lighthearted shit. But then, when wasn’t she? She knew his thoughts on his so-called legendary status.
The legend was a rumor spread by someone with a sick sense of humor. He was no more of a legend than any man—or woman—with a gun and a need to right wrongs, to protect the innocent. And who happened to have steel balls the size and smell of Chicago. He did have that going for him.
Problem was the only truly legendary thing about him was his penchant for attracting danger—the kind that could get a person killed.
And it had. He was more of a danger to the women in his life than to himself.
He’d lost his mother—killed by his childhood enemy grown bad and crazy with a grudge.
His old enemy, Dag, had also killed the little girl of a part-time lover.
His lover didn’t lose her life. She’d only lost her baby and her mind.
Then there’d been Elena. His great love from a decade ago. She got herself killed working undercover—on his watch.
So, yeah. He was a legendary f—ck-up when it came to women he loved.
He glanced at Shana. She’d barely recovered from her wounds at the hands of her old enemy. Dane hadn’t been able to protect her from harm. He was poison. He was a walking time bomb likely to destroy anyone near him.
But Shana was the love of his life and he would do anything, good or evil, to protect her. He would sell his soul to the devil—hell, he’d become the devil—if it meant protecting her from harm.
That attitude and determination were what had gotten him into the trouble he was in now. Shana was still on the fence about going through with their upcoming nuptials. He was an utter loser in the game of love.
And facing possible jail time for murder in the second degree.