"Go talk to him for heaven's sake." Brandy demanded.

Erin lowered her head and gave Brandy the deadly older sister's glare. "Keep your voice down, Lil Pain. Can't you see he's busy? Now, get out of my way."

Brandy chuckled under her breath and slid past Erin on the way to the kitchen area of the diner. "Chicken." She whispered in Erin's ear as she went past. "Don't let me hear you clucking out here."

Erin drew in a deep breath. She glanced over at the man sitting in the back of her diner. He was by far the most handsome man she had ever laid eyes on. Elijah Sessions sat in front of his laptop with earbuds in his ears, silver rimmed glasses perched on his nose and his fingers steadily tapping across his keyboard. He was the perfect mix of naughty professor and brooding gladiator.  

Erin pulled her gaze away from the mysterious writer. He'd told her once that he wrote thriller novels. She ran straight home and downloaded his book, "The Night Never Ends". He was an exceptional storyteller. His novel was full of twist and characters that felt like real people. She couldn't put her kindle down. On top of that he'd won awards for that book, prestigious awards, and remained number one on the New York Times best sellers list for months. She couldn't imagine what he was doing in Wayland Georgia.

Her town was a beautiful place, but it was a very tiny dot on the map. Erin loved that about it. She was born and raised here and had no wish to leave home, ever. The cities held no lure for her. Her friends, neighbors and her family fulfilled her and her diner kept her busy.

Erin picked up the coffee carafe and headed in Elijah's direction. This guy was something else. He lived out on the edge of town in a renovated barn. Not a brand new barn, but an old, barely holding on to its foundation barn. He didn't interact with the town folk. He was friendly towards her, but guarded. And never had she seen him crack a smile, not once.

"Would you like a refill?" She asked.

Eli lifted his eyes to her and the storm cloud gray orbs behind his glasses took her breath. Yep, drop dead good looking was Mr. Sessions.

"Thanks Emma." He replied, returning his focus to his laptop screen.

"That’s Erin, once again, my name is Erin. Elijah." She fills his cup, then spun away. He was sexy, but rude as hell. Just as well, she wasn't the type to crush on a guy. Who was she fooling? She was crushing over Eli and he most likely would be out of Wayland before too long.  

He grabbed her hand. "I'm sorry, of course, it's Erin. I was in the zone for a second. No disrespect."

Her hand tingled where his fingers wrapped around it. Erin tilted her head and gave his fingers a squeeze. "No problem, I'm sorry to disturb you. Why should you remember my name anyway?"

He removed his glasses and held her gaze a tad bit longer than was comfortable and just long enough to send a zap of electricity between her thighs.

"You are hard to forget even if my mind is dumb struck concentrating. Erin,"

His face was as unmoved, as unreadable as usual, but his eyes traveled her body from head to toe. And there went her body again, responding with puckered nipples, pounding heart and clenching down below.

Unprepared and shaken by Eli's admiration, Erin smiled, at least she prayed it was a smile, and not some gruesome shocked lip twitching sort of thing. On a normal day she could flirt with the best of them, but this man had her hands trembling and her tongue plastered to the roof of her mouth.

Erin mumbled something she sure didn't make a damn lick of sense and retreated back behind the counter putting her back to the room, heart pounding hard against her breastbone. What in the world came over her? She knew how to talk to the men that surrounded her every day, well, they were the boys that she grew up with so that made it easy. Perhaps it was because he was a stranger to her, or more to the point, he was a stranger built like a warrior with eyes that pulled you into their sultry gray depths. Lord, she sounded like a sixteen year old. She was a woman and refused to be fucked in the brain by some sexy as hell guy.

Erin faced the room. A man dressed in a dark suit and ash blond hair was sitting at the table with Eli. By the rigid way Eli held his body and the deep frown cutting across his brow, that strange man was pissing Elijah off.

Eli placed his palms on the table, leaned in and said something to the guy. Whatever Eli said caused the man to point a finger in Eli's face, stand and walked out the door. Her eyes followed the man as he stopped suddenly just outside, his head twisting back towards the street. Suddenly loud pops sounded outside as a car raced down Main Street. The stranger's body jerked hitting the diner's window, bullets and his body broke the glass into a million pieces. Erin screamed and like the rest of her customers hit the ground. Black boots appeared before her face.

"Erin you good?" Eli crouched down. His hand on her shoulder blade, he held her down.

Erin craned her neck and looked up, and nodded.

Eli didn't reply. He gave her one long, sad look, almost as if he was apologizing for what happened, then took off out the back door.

Oh, hell no. That dude was now hanging half in and half out of her shop window and Elijah was hot footing it out the back as if Satan himself was after him. Who was Elijah Sessions and what the hell did he bring to her town?

****

She was amazing. Erin Talley was the most amazing woman. She ran the only diner in town. Everyone spoke highly of her. She was friendly, kind hearted, and had a smile that could guide your soul home through the darkest of nights, but Erin wasn't for him. He was in town to lay low, not to start a relationship with her. He knew she felt the same powerful attraction for him that he felt for her. It was evident in the way her eyes sparkled when they engaged in small talk and the slight breathlessness of her voice. If she could see the boner he got whenever she was near, she'd know quickly the effect she had on him.

Elijah hit the dirt road leading to his home at a break neck speed. Liston was dead. His former teammate had found him and that could mean others were on their way if not already there.

"Some fucking disappearing job I've done." He cursed. He was out of the FBI. His team, Alpha Team Six, was disavowed and disbanded after their last cluster fuck of a mission. Not that he minded in the least. He was tired of the whole protect the United States from threats domestic and foreign. His vision of being the hero and saving the world was dead. Liston sought him out in Wayland to inform him that one other member of his team, Tim Hartwell, was killed two days ago. A car bomb sent him to his final rest, and now Liston was shot down right before his eyes. His team was down to five remaining members.

Andrew Pope, the former Deputy Director didn't play around. The Director was suspicious of Pope and the people he associated with. So, on the down low, Alpha Team Six investigated him and found that the man was a high ranking member of a far right group, dead set on infiltrating and overthrowing the government. Eli and his team brought Pope down and he was quietly removed from his position. Success was rewarded by his team being disavowed and left out in the cold. Needless to say, Pope had his hands in that. Pope's organization was deeply imbedded in all departments of the government and his team wasn't able to ferret out all of Popes connections or how far up they were before they had gotten the boot.

He had to get out of town, find another hole to hide in and that sucked on many levels. He felt at peace here. Wayland Georgia was a tiny place, beautifully slow paced with kind people and, more than all that, it had Erin.

 That woman kept him up at night thinking about how her eyes sparkled when she talked. Erin was a beautiful woman, but that smile of hers lit her up and made Eli want to kiss her while she smiled, to see if it tasted as sweet as it looked. The woman rattled him, and that was saying a lot, when he'd had women from Thailand to Texas. She had midnight black hair that she wore in a thick braid down her back, with bangs that teased him to sweep them aside and gaze into her eyes. Her caramel skin begged to be stroked, and that killer body of hers drove him mad. The most intriguing thing about Erin was that she was happy. The kind of happy that said she knew who she was and loved it. Satisfied and content in her world, small though it was, she was right where she wanted to be. Eli wished he could find that kind of contentment. For a while he thought Wayland was that for him as well, but now he was found out and he had to get the hell out of there.

He parked and got out the truck. His feet hit the ground and a wave of dizziness made his stomach heave. Eli grabbed hold of the truck door to steady himself. His breathing kicked up and dizziness all but had him blacking out. When he looked back in the truck, his headrest and the upper portion of the seat was covered in blood. He touched the back of his head and his hand came back bloody. He'd been grazed and hadn't felt it until now, he was so intent of making sure he got out of the diner before anyone else got hurt, especially Erin.

Eli knew the wound wasn't bad, but he'd lost a lot of blood and felt the effects. He made it to the door on unsteady legs, darkness floating around the corners of his vision. He made it as far as his sofa when darkness claimed him.