Page 1 of Treasured

PROLOGUE

Tracy

I supposeit's fitting that I arrive in Eagle Canyon in the dead of night since that's when I left.

Some might say I snuck out. At the time, I preferred to think of it as avoiding conflict. Getting my way.

Now, I see it for the childish and hurtful behavior that it was.

One more log to add to the soaring flames of the regret fire that's burning inside me.

I should turn back. Go anywhere other than to the town that I left. I wince remembering how I'd vowed never to return until I was rich and famous.

Does infamy count?

"Of course you can come home, dear. I've kept your room just the way it always was, waiting for you." Aunt Max's words echo in my mind and more regret, plus a heaping serving of guilt, piles on.

I'd left a note on my pillow and climbed out the window of my room, leaving her to explain that I'd left town. I'd left a note for Creed and Jake, asking her to pass that along to them.

Coward.

Maybe. But the truth is, I knew if I didn't leave then, I'd stay and marry them and then I'd always wonder what I'd missed out on.

Well, now I know.

I would have missed out on my boss, Dex Dexter, the biggest criminal defense lawyer in the city, stealing millions of dollars from a drug cartel and somehow making it look like I was a master criminal before he took off for parts unknown with the cash leaving me to face Agent Muldoon, a humorless FBI agent, all alone. Of course I couldn't answer his questions, I had no idea what had happened until it all came crashing down.

Fool that I was, I’d been wowed by Dex Dexter’s smooth talk and flashy clothes. I thought we were friends. Sort of hoped we might be more.

Turns out he’d seen me coming a mile away. Naive, trusting and without any friends. I was a perfect target for him. We met when I was waiting tables at a diner. He was a big tipper and an even bigger talker. He flattered me and told me I’d make a great paralegal. He’d train me.

I loved that job. It was challenging and interesting. Being around Dex was exciting. And I was good at it. I know I was.

But none of that mattered because looking back, I can see how he’d set me up all along.

Even with all of that, while waiting in jail, I still had faith everything would work out because I was innocent and someone would believe me. This was just a misunderstanding and no doubt I'd get an apology from that big jerk Agent Muldoon.

Talk about believing a fantasy. Kevin, a lawyer with offices next door to Dex came to see me while I was in FBI custody, but he acted like I was guilty and encouraged me to confess everything.

"I can't confess if I don't know what happened," I’d said. "You believe me, don't you?"

He reassured me that he did, but suddenly he wasn't able to take my calls any more.

He at least had the decency to get one of the new attorneys at his firm to take a look at my case and finally, after two horrible weeks in jail, I was released and the charges were dropped.

I thought I could just go back to my life. The charges were dropped. I was cleared, right?

It turns out that even when the charges are dropped, everyone still thinks you're guilty of something. And since my employer was on the run, I lost my job. I went back to the diner, but despite the ‘help wanted’ sign in the window, they didn’t have a position for me. My landlord suddenly needed me to vacate right away, which was just as well since I didn’t have any money or any prospects for a paycheck in the near future.

I took my cell phone in to be checked because no one answered my calls. Surely it was a mechanical issue.

Nope.

Yep, I would have missed out on all of that.

In the six years it took for my life to go to hell in a spectacular way, I often thought about the life I'd left behind. The men I'd left behind. Creed and Jake.

I am not foolish enough to think they still care about me. Or even remember. We were just teenagers. I was eighteen and they were nineteen when they declared I was their fated mate. That the arrow of love had struck and I was the one for them. We’d live happily ever after.

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