There were very few things Kane McCassey gave a damn about.

His job as an auto body repairman was one.

He enjoyed working with his uncles and cousins at McCassey’s Garage despite the fact that his cousin, Rebel, had fired Kane at least once a day since he began working there at the age of sixteen.

His truck was another.

The piece of crap Chevy he’d towed home from the junkyard with the help of his cousin, Brady, had been fixed up, jacked up, and painted a unique, flat black.

The only other thing Kane cared about was his family.

The McCassey’s were a wild bunch who’d been terrorizing Hagerstown and the surrounding area of Washington County, Maryland since before the Civil War. He and the rest of the boys had calmed down a little over the years and were no longer a public nuisance, but people still looked down on them.

Kane’s life hadn’t been easy.  He’d spent the last thirty-three years doing the best he could with what he’d been given: a sweet, loving mother who’d stuck by her wild, irresponsible husband no matter how much trouble he got into, and a father who’d had the love and support of a good woman, but still disappeared for months at a time.  One day, he just never came back.

Kane had always believed his father’s abandonment had caused his mother to die of a broken heart. That, and the fact that despite all the love and nurturing Daisy McCassey had bestowed upon her sons, Kane’s older brother, Bandit, had turned out to be more evil than Satan himself.

Growing up, Kane had compensated for all of the violence and upheaval in his life with humor. Since he was old enough to realize that having fun made the horrors of life more tolerable, he’d goofed off and done his best not to take things too seriously.

Oh, he was serious when it counted. Each time his family had needed him, he’d been there. He’d been in more bar fights and gun battles than he cared to think about, but wouldn’t change a thing; not even the occasional pain caused by the .22 slug lodged in his left shoulder.

Kane was serious today, too. There was nothing funny about the hangover he was suffering from after drinking too much of his cousin Blackie’s secret-recipe moonshine. His mouth was dry and his head was pounding, but Kane had fun hanging out with his cousins and their wives all night.

Stiff from sleeping on the floor, stinky, and still in yesterday’s clothes, Kane couldn’t wait to get home, take a shower, and fall into bed. Thankfully, McCassey’s Garage was closed on the weekends, so he had his entire Saturday to recover before he had to play softball for Team McCassey Sunday morning. He had a feeling that the rest of his cousins were just as grateful for the day off. At least they would be, when they finally woke up. Half of them were still passed out on Blackie’s living room floor when Kane left.

On his way through the center of town, Main Street became so crowded that Kane was forced to slow his truck as he approached Saint Catherine’s Church. The building had some kind of historical significance, and had been host to weddings on Saturday mornings for more than a century.

Obviously, today was no different.

Although luxury cars and limousines were parked along both sides of the road, what had slowed traffic were the people milling about in formal attire, strolling through the streets like they didn’t have a care in the world.

As the fifth vehicle in a long line of traffic sitting at a complete standstill, Kane put the truck in park and slouched in his seat as he watched the people filing into the church. It had been a long time since he’d been awake and out of the house early enough on a Saturday to see people arriving for a ceremony, but he couldn’t remember ever seeing anyone dressed so fancy. Judging by the tuxedos, full-length gowns, and diamond jewelry sparkling in the early morning sunshine, it appeared as though the couple tying the knot was royalty.

When the last few stragglers had finally entered the building and traffic was once again moving, Kane shook his head and inched his truck forward. He couldn’t fathom having the kind of life where he had to stand on ceremony, drink wines from countries he couldn’t pronounce, and dress to the nines for everything from eating in a restaurant to attending an event. Given the choice, he’d stick to moonshine or beer, blue jeans, and his own cooking.

Tired of putting along in traffic, Kane decided to take a shortcut home. Just after the main entrance to the church, he made a left turn off of Main Street. He drove slowly down the alley, splashing through puddles as he made his way toward the dirt road that would dump him out less than a mile from his driveway.

He hadn’t driven fifty yards when he was forced to slam on his breaks as a small duffle bag fell from the sky and landed a few feet in front of him. “What the hell?”

His truck still in gear, Kane’s feet were firmly planted on the clutch and brake as he leaned forward and glanced through the windshield. He looked up toward the beginning of the fire escape at the top of the building.

That bag hadn’t fallen all by itself, and he wanted to make sure its owner wasn’t on the way down behind it. He was too tired—and too hung over—to spend half the day in the sheriff’s office explaining how he wound up running over a man who’d fallen from the sky. Hell, the sheriff would probably throw him in jail just for being caught up in such a weird mess, whether Kane had anything to do with it or not.

At first glance, Kane saw nothing. The fire escape was empty, making it appear as if the bag had, indeed, fallen out of thin air.

Not wanting to get involved in whatever not-so-good deed he was sure was about to go down, Kane leaned back in his seat with the intention of maneuvering around the duffle bag and continuing his journey home.

Only, just as he put his foot on the accelerator and began inching forward, the large window to the right of the fire escape opened. Now a little more intrigued, Kane watched with interest as a young woman in a wedding dress poked her head—and half her body—out and surveyed the ground below. Kane winced when she nearly lost her balance. “Careful!” he warned, as if she could hear him.

When the girl glanced over her shoulder and down at the ground several times, Kane got a sick feeling in his stomach. “Don’t even think about it, honey. You’re twenty feet off the ground.”

But she didn’t listen to his silent advice.

From the front seat of his truck, Kane watched in horror as the girl held firmly onto the windowpane, turned her body sideways, and stuck her right leg into one of the openings on the trellis outside the window. “Dammit, I told you not to do that!”

When the girl appeared to be satisfied that the trellis was secure, she turned the rest of her body around and, in a very unladylike manner, brought the other leg out the window, dragging yards of lacy, frilly material behind her.

Because he wasn’t sure if what he was seeing was actually happening or if it was just some bad after effect of Blackie’s potent moonshine, Kane sat there like a bump on a log, watching the girl in the wedding dress shimmy down the trellis. When she nearly lost her footing, he nearly had a heart attack. “I told you to be careful for Christ’s sake!”

The part of Kane that couldn’t stand to see a woman in trouble wanted to get out of the truck and talk her down; make sure her feet hit the ground before any other part of her body. But the part of him that knew ‘no good deed goes unpunished’ told him to stay right where he was. In his truck…behind the wheel…not getting involved.

As soon as the girl’s feet hit the ground, Kane breathed a sigh of relief. At the same time, she grabbed up a giant handful of material in her left hand and ran into the middle of the road to retrieve her duffle bag. Amazed, Kane watched intently, accidentally making eye contact with her when she stood up straight and slung the duffle bag over her shoulder.

“Shit!” He chastised himself for the mistake and averted his gaze quickly, but not quickly enough.

Apparently having taken their meeting-of-the-eyes as an invitation, she once again gathered a mass of material in her hand and awkwardly ran around to the back of his truck. He heard the small thump of her bag landing in the open bed, and glanced in the rearview mirror just in time to see a blob of white material tumble over the tailgate and land next to the bag with a very loud bang.

Kane squeezed his eyes shut and reopened them, hoping this was some kind of hallucination. But the girl was still there. Only now, she was frantically waving at him, yelling at him to drive. “Go!” she shouted frantically. “Go! Please!”

Because he didn’t want to end up staring down the barrels of a shotgun while being forced to explain to the girl’s fiancé why the two of them were together, Kane pressed the accelerator to the floor and took off toward home.

He was relieved—to say the least—when he took one last look in the rearview mirror as he turned the corner. The alley was empty and there wasn’t a soul in sight. No one was looking for the escapee in the frilly wedding dress.

Not yet, anyway.

* * * *

“Oh, why did I do this to myself?”

Lizzie Barnes had gone from the frying pan into the fire.

Escape from the prison of holy matrimony to a man she didn’t even know had been the only thing on her mind when she’d jumped into the bed of this man’s pickup truck.

Hitching a ride in the vehicle had seemed like a good idea at the time; she’d needed a savior, and out of nowhere, her knight had appeared in an extended cab, flat black pickup truck. But now, as the truck sped down a dirt road deep into the woods, Lizzie realized the mistake she’d made.

It had been naïve of her to assume that the strange man would be anxious enough to get rid of her; he’d stop along the side of the road and demand she vacate his vehicle.

Why had it been too late by the time it finally occurred to her that he might take advantage of her? Now, she was practically trapped. As far off the main road as they were, Lizzie knew there’d be little she could do to defend herself if the truck’s owner decided to have his way with her.

Especially in her current get-up.

A ten thousand dollar wedding dress wasn’t an ideal outfit for being on the run; she couldn’t move very fast with all the yards of lacy material weighing her down.

Still, there had to be a way out of this mess. Lizzie hadn’t risked her life running away from one dangerous man, only to find herself in the clutches of another.

I need to get out of the truck before we wind up so far from civilization, I’ll never find my way back.

For someone who hadn’t made five snap decisions in her entire life, Lizzie had made two in the past few minutes. Wasting as little time as possible, she dragged her duffle bag to her. Because she knew she’d never be able to hold onto that and all the excess material trailing from her dress, the bag would have to go first.

If she timed it right, she wouldn’t land more than five or ten feet from the bag. All she’d have to do then is pick it up and run as fast as twenty pounds of snow white, imported French lace would allow. If she could make it far enough into the trees before the man came after her, she could hide until he gave up searching. When she was sure he’d gone, she’d change her clothes behind the cover of the brush, leave the woods, and head to the bus station for a ticket to somewhere in another time zone.

Once again lying flat in the truck bed, Lizzie lifted her head and glanced through the back window. The man was facing forward and seemed to be paying no attention to her. Perfect. “It’s now or never.”

After a quick tug to make sure the zipper on her duffle bag was securely fastened, Lizzie gave it a mighty shove across the bed and watched it disappear off the tailgate. When it landed on the dirt road, she slithered across the bed on her stomach so the man wouldn’t see what she was doing.

When she reached the spot where her duffle bag had sailed to freedom, Lizzie began to have second thoughts. Although she doubted the vehicle was moving more than twenty miles an hour, staring at the road as it passed by made it feel like they were going much faster.

She was suddenly terrified of what was going to happen when her body collided with the ground. Truthfully, it didn’t matter. Whether or not she survived the fall was much less of a concern than what would happen if the man inside the truck had any funny ideas.

Afraid time was running out, Lizzie readied herself. One, two, three deep breaths later, she moved into a sitting position, took one last glance through the back window, and leapt off the tailgate.

Pain exploded in Lizzie’s legs as they flew out from under her the instant her feet touched the road. Her body flipped and twisted; her mouth filled with dirt, and the breath rushed from her lungs when, as she was toppling ass over teakettle, she hit the ground flat on her back. Panic set in as she struggled to breathe, wondering vaguely if this was what it felt like to die.

As her momentum slowed, Lizzie looked up and caught sight of the glow of the truck’s red break lights through a heavy cloud of brown dust. Because the sight of the vehicle sliding sideways as it came to an abrupt stop distracted her, Lizzie didn’t notice that she was careening toward a large rock at the edge of the road. Her last thought was that she couldn’t let the man get near her.

And then her world went black.