My book Floodgates came out yesterday and so I wanted to give you an excerpt of one of the parts that I so enjoyed writing.

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We were sitting there quietly talking about Mom for some reason when the door swung open and Cord walked into the room. He looked strange: rumpled, eyes red-rimmed, and unshaven, which he never was. He crossed the floor to Evan and me and took a seat as he had earlier that night on the coffee table beside the couch, facing me.

“You look terrible.” I said dryly.

“I’ve been with Celia Hughes.”

“Why?” I asked him, concerned.

“Who’s Celia Hughes?” Evan asked before I shushed him.

“The cops guarding her found a car bomb rigged to her Lexus tonight.”

“Ohmygod,” I breathed, leaning forward to put my hand on his knee. “Is she okay?”

He let out a deep sigh and covered my hand with his own. “She’s no longer giving me shit about protective custody, I can tell you that.”

“Cord,” I pressed him, staring at him hard.

He nodded. “She’s fine, just scared.”

“Is the guy who just tried to break in—”

Cord cut me off. “No, he’s not the car-bomb guy. I don’t know who the hell this guy is outside, but he’s definitely small-time. No professional hit man fucks around for ten or fifteen minutes with a goddamn Home Depot chain lock. He comes in, shoots the dog, kills you, and he’s in and out without even waking up Alex. This was like having one of the Three Stooges come to kill you.”

“I was still scared,” I told him, my jaw clenching tight.

“I know you were scared, but between your dad’s fuckin’ monster dog and your trigger-happy brother, I don’t really think you were in any danger even for a second.”

“Is the guy dead?”

“No.”

“What was he doing here?”

“Someone hired him to deliver a dead rabbit.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Evan snapped at him.

Cord rubbed his eyes hard, scrubbing them with the heels of his palms before raking both hands hard through his short, thick dark-brown hair. “The guy outside was paid a grand to come over here, break in, and put a dead rabbit in a box on your living room table.”

“Why?”

“Someone hired him to deliver a dead rabbit.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Evan snapped at him.

Cord rubbed his eyes hard, scrubbing them with the heels of his palms before raking both hands hard through his short, thick dark-brown hair. “The guy outside was paid a grand to come over here, break in, and put a dead rabbit in a box on your living room table.”

“Why?”

“How Fatal Attraction is that?” Evan pointed out.

I couldn’t help smiling.

“It’s not fuckin’ funny!” Cord barked at me.

“No,” I said, rubbing his knee, soothing him. “It’s really not.”

“But why a rabbit?” Evan pressed him.

“’Cause in the old days, a dead rabbit meant you were pregnant, right? That’s how they checked; it was called the rabbit test,” I explained to my brother.

“Wait, so that actually meant something in Fatal Attraction? I thought it was just about the kid’s pet gettin’ iced.”

“Can you let this go?” I was trying really hard not to laugh for Cord’s sake.

“Did the rabbits only die if a woman was pregnant?” Evan was like a dog with a bone; he had to know the why of things.

“No. All the rabbits died because to check to see if a woman was pregnant, the rabbit had to be opened up so the doctor could examine its ovaries after they injected it with a pregnant woman’s urine.”

“Gross that you know that,” he said frankly, “and why couldn’t they just put the bunny back together when they were done?”

“That’s a lot of expense for a rabbit, right?”

“Are you kidding?” Evan was clearly revolted.

“I didn’t say I thought it was,” I said, defending myself, and then I coughed to cover the chuckling. “You know I would have saved every single one of them. I’m just telling you, that’s what they did.”

“That’s horrible.” He looked aghast.

“But a lot of advances in modern medicine happened that way.”

“I don’t like the sound of that.”

“Ev—”

“Are you two done?” Cord snarled loudly at us, clearly annoyed that we’d been ignoring him. “Because a dead rabbit in a box just got collected as evidence, and neither one of you is concerned about the big picture!”

“So who sent the guy?” I asked, back on task.

“He doesn’t know. He says he got a text on his phone, which led him to a locker in a bus station with the box and a thousand dollars in cash.”

“And the phone the text came from?”

“No doubt a burner,” Cord informed me.

“And are there maybe cameras in the bus station?”

“It depends on which bus station, but it’s doubtful that even if they have some that they would be focused on the lockers.”

“Okay.” I took a breath. “So some psycho paid this guy to bring a dead rabbit over here, and since he doesn’t even know who it was, it’s a dead end.”

“Yeah.”

“So, really, he wasn’t here to kill me or Alex.”

“No. He’s just a delivery boy.”

His answer made me feel better even though the fear lingered. “You really do look like crap. You should go home and sleep,” I told him seriously.

“No, I’ve got clothes in my truck, and your dad’s gonna lemme crash here tonight so I don’t have to make the drive back to the city.”

I thought of something then. “Is it a bad sign that Alex sleeps with his gun?”

“I sleep with my gun.”

“Oh, that’s comforting,” I said sarcastically with a strained smile.

He grinned widely and his eyes twinkled. “I’m kidding. I think Alex was strapped to protect you, that’s all.”

“Did he shoot the guy?”

“The guy wouldn’t put down his gun; Alex had no choice but to put one in his leg.”

“So he’ll be all right?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Good.”

“Why good?”

“’Cause I would’ve felt bad if Alex had to kill someone because of me,” I confessed.

“He’s had to shoot a few people, Trace, and they didn’t all live, ya know? It’s part of the job. It’s not personal. If you do something bad, you run the risk of getting hurt. Alex is there to enforce the law. Sometimes the law must be carried out with deadly force.”

“I hate guns,” I said flatly. “If nobody had them, it would be better.”

“That’s ridiculous. Guns have nothing to do with anything. It’s the person, not the gun.”

“Who in the hell is Celia Hughes?” Evan asked suddenly, clearly annoyed.

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Tracy Brandt considers himself a lucky man. He has a wonderful family, good friends, and a dependable job. His love life, however, features a cheating ex who, though out of the house, is not yet out of the picture—with a past that just might get Tracy killed.

Homicide inspector Cord Nolan wants nothing more than to show his best friend’s little brother that he’s a reliable man, but to do that he’ll have to get Tracy to look past the player he used to be. It’ll be a tough sell; reputation is everything, and Cord’s is tarnished by his past indiscretions.

Tracy and Cord have spent five years trying to suffocate their fiery attraction under a blanket of grudging antagonism. When Tracy finds himself with a target on his back, Cord finally has the chance to ride to the rescue and break through the dam of Tracy’s reserve. But he’d better be careful: if Cord is breaking the floodgates to wash away the past, he’s going to have to hold tight to Tracy to make sure they’re still standing when the tumult recedes.

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