Page 160 of Crash Course
"Cilla, I’ve never thought about the future. Never had a dream of my own. It was always the Stutz. Now? I see it. My dream. You, the house. Having someone to come home to. It’s good. Exceptional."
"Yes. It is." She gripped his hands. "We’ll build our dreams together."
* * *
Thank you for readingCrash Course. Stay tuned for details on book 5 in the Steele Ridge: The Blackwells series. If this is your first Steele Ridge book, you may want to check out Steele Ridge: The Steeles or Steele Ridge: The Kingstons.
Did you miss book one in the Steele Ridge: The Blackwells series? Check out the following excerpt from Flash Point.
FLASH POINT
BY TRACEY DEVLYN
Chapter One
Charlotte, North Carolina
Zeke Blackwell shifted his attention from the antiquities dealer’s hopeful face to the incredible array of weapons splayed out before him—an Italian stiletto dagger, an English mortuary sword, a Polish rapier, and a longsword of indeterminate origin.
It’s not here.
The stab of disappointment cut deeper this time, and the hope he’d been holding on to for the past year took a severe nosedive. He couldn’t keep this up. Couldn’t continue staving off the inevitable collapse of all he held dear while searching for an artifact he would never find.
Even so, he went through the motions of examining the sword on the off-chance that someone over the past one hundred years had replaced the longsword’s distinctive wooden grip and twisted quillons.
He indicated the sword. “Do you mind?”
“Not at all. Please.” The antiquities dealer made an encouraging motion.
With gloved hands, Zeke lifted the longsword from its black velvet bed. No four-headed wolf on the pommel or ancient Latin etched on the cross guard.
An extraordinary piece, but not the one he was searching for. A familiar, yet efficient numbness slid through his mind and loosened his taut muscles. He returned the artifact and picked up the other pieces, appreciating their craftsmanship and excellent condition. He saw no telltale signs of modern construction or technology, but, as much as he’d like to think otherwise, he was no expert.
But Lan Sardoff could identify a reproduction in a single glance, so Zeke didn’t question their authenticity.
“The pieces are not to your liking?” his friend asked, a note of concern in his voice.
“You’ve outdone yourself, Lan.”
“But none are the one you seek.”
He shook his head. “You have provenance for each?”
“Do not say after all of these years you doubt me now?”
“I would be a fool to overlook the fact that yours is a for-profit business.”
A slow smile etched tiny lines in Sardoff’s perfectly tanned face as if he intended to deliver one of his oily salesman quips. Then the curve of his lips straightened and an uncharacteristic seriousness took hold of his features. “Anyone else would need to be concerned about my profit margin. If not for you,” he waved a ringed hand around his expansive shop, “my business empire would have crumbled before it ever had a chance to rise.”
Zeke’s friendship with the dealer stretched back to their days at UNC, when Sardoff had helped him join the fencing team. Sardoff, two years older, had been fencing since grade school. He was a master. The best on UNC’s team, and he’d taken the raw promise in Zeke’s technique and molded it over the course of many private lessons.
A few years later, Zeke had been presented with an opportunity to pay his friend back when Sardoff told him about suspecting a potential buyer of stealing a vintage comic book, worth more than a quarter of a million dollars, from the shop after Sardoff refused to negotiate the price.
Zeke had broken into the thief’s home and taken back the stolen comic book, and Sardoff had thanked him by recommending his “services” to trusted clients.
His occasional recoveries—or what his brothers referred to as shadow operations—became the precursor to what would eventually become a lucrative family business. But Zeke’s first recovery hadn’t been smooth. In fact, Zeke’s ass hadn’t even cleared the thief’s office window sill before the guy entered and caught him in the act.
Even now, reliving how his surprised expression had turned into a furious, you’ll-pay outburst, as Zeke slipped, er, fell out of the window, still made him smile.
