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New York Times bestselling author RaeAnne Thayne finds inspiration in the beautiful northern Utah mountains where she lives with her family. Her books have won numerous honors, including six RITA Award nominations from Romance Writers of America and Career Achievement and Romance Pioneer awards from RT Book Reviews. She loves to hear from readers and can be reached through her website.

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Blackberry Summer

Harlequin Enterprises Limited

Chapter One

—Luciano de Crescenzo

Lousy, stupid horoscope.

Claire Bradford stood with one hand on the doorway and the other clutching her coffee go-cup as she stared at the chaotic mess inside her store.

According to the stars—at least according to the horoscope in the Hope Gazette she'd scanned while standing in line at her friend Maura's coffee shop for her morning buzz after dropping the kids off at school—she was supposed to prepare herself for something fun and exciting headed her way today. She had been thinking more along the lines of a few dozen new customers at her bead store or maybe a big commission on one of her more intricate custom pieces.

Discovering that String Fever had been burglarized during the night didn't exactly fit her personal definition of either fun or exciting.

Beads covered the beige berber in a glittery, jumbled disaster as apparently someone had yanked out an entire vast display of tiny clear drawers and dumped their contents all over the floor. Her cash register drawer was open and the small amount of cash she kept on hand to make change was missing. Her office door had been left ajar, too, something she never did, and even from here, she could see a big, dusty, empty spot on her desk where her computer should be.

She could handle the material loss and her computer was automatically backed up off-site several times a day. The mess, on the other hand, would be a nightmare to clean up. Claire gave a tiny whimper and closed her eyes, dreading the hours and days of work ahead of her, re-sorting all those scattered beads into their hundreds of proper compartments. String Fever was hanging by a thread anyway in the uncertain economy. How could she afford the time and energy involved in setting things to rights again?

Chester whined beside her, his basset hound features even more morose than usual. He was uncanny at picking up her emotions. She scratched behind his acres-long ears. "I know, buddy. Sucks, doesn't it?"

She dug in her coat pockets to find where she'd stowed her cell phone so that she could dial 9-1-1. She had only punched in one number before the phone vibrated in her hand and suddenly the nuclear meltdown alert ringtone she had programmed for her mother sounded its death knell through the empty store.

Yeah, not much fun or excitement there, either. Rotten horoscope.

Chester whined again. He hated that ringtone as much as she did. Claire swallowed her groan and despite thirty-six years of better instincts, she hit the talk button to accept the call. Ruth Tatum had trained her daughter well. "Mom, I can't talk right now. Sorry. The store has been robbed. I'll call you back as soon as I can, okay?"

"Robbed? You've got to be kidding!"

"Really, Mom? You think I'd joke about something like this?"

"How would I know?" Ruth went on the defensive, as she did so well. "You've always had a weird sense of humor."

Yeah. That was her. Making up stories about her store being robbed just to go for the cheap laugh. "I'm not joking. The store really has been robbed."

"That's terrible! What did they take?"

"I don't know yet. I just walked in the door and barely had a chance to even react before you called. I need to go so I can call the police, Mom."

"Well, call me as soon as you can and tell me what's going on. Do you need me to come down there?"

Sure, like she needed to stick a couple dozen earring hooks in her eyeballs. "Not right now. Thanks for the offer, though. I'll call you later."

She hung up and quickly dialed the police.

"Hope's Crossing Emergency Dispatch. What is the nature of your emergency?"

She recognized the dispatcher as a neighbor and one of her frequent customers, Donna Mazell, though her voice seemed pitched a little higher than normal.

"Hey, Donna. This is Claire at String Fever. I need to report a crime. I just came in to open my store and discovered an apparent burglary."

"Oh, lordy be. Not another one!"

"Another one?"

"You're the fourth store in town to report a break-in today. We've got ourselves a genuine crime spree! The guys are going crazy trying to stay on top of everything."

Hope's Crossing, Colorado, had a population of only five thousand year-round residents, although those numbers swelled in the wintertime to ten times that with skiers and those who owned vacation homes or condos in the canyon near the vast Silver Strike Ski Resort. Still, Claire knew the town's police force consisted of only eight officers, supplemented by deputies from the county sheriff's department when the need arose.

"Can you spare somebody to send here?"

"Oh, sure. No problem. The new chief is just down the street at Pinecone Property Management, but I think he's wrapping things up there. I'll give him a holler and tell him to head over to the store first chance he has."

"Thanks, Donna."

"Tell me they didn't take those gorgeous Czech crystals you bought for Genevieve Beaumont's wedding gown."

Her stomach took another dive. "Oh, I hope not. It took me two months to import those through Customs. I don't know if I'll have time to get more and finish the design before the wedding."

"Keeping my fingers crossed here. I'll call Riley right now and tell him to head over there when he's done over at the real estate office."

"Thanks, Donna."

"You bet. Give me another call if somebody doesn't show up in the next ten, fifteen minutes or so. And don't touch anything."

"Yeah, I watch television. I know that much. I'll wait outside with Chester until Riley can get here."

"It's freezing, darlin'. You can't wait outside in this weather and neither can that dog. He's not as young as he used to be. The chief won't care if you grab a chair inside and sit down until he can make it, just as long as you keep Chester close so he doesn't go mucking around the crime scene."

Too much restless energy zinged through her for her to sit calmly and wait for the police, so she remained standing in the doorway, horrified all over again that someone would be so malicious. Stealing from her was one thing. They could have the money and her computer, she didn't care about that. But why make such a mess? This blatant vandalism was intended to gouge and wound—causing trouble for trouble's sake, something she had never understood.

Why would someone want to be so hurtful? And why her? She tried hard to be kind to most people she came in contact with. Sure, she had a few disgruntled customers at the store who seemed to think it a crime that she expected to make at least some profit for all the resources of time and energy she poured into String Fever. But she couldn't imagine any of them being so vindictive as to trash her store just for the fun of it.

She forced herself to do a little of the circle breathing her best friend, Alex, was always trying to convince her to practice and shifted her gaze out the wide store windows at Hope's Crossing's Main Street. The morning seemed gray and cheerless, a dreary sort of day.

Even though it was mid-April, spring took its dear sweet time arriving in the Colorado high country.

The weather forecasters were predicting a late snowstorm would be moving in later that evening. The ski resort would appreciate a few more inches for the diehard skiers...