I wonder if anyone, especially the women, at the Texas Department of Transportation has secretly read Christie Craig‘s latest book, after the hullabaloo they generated with their crazy lawsuit over the title of the book.  I mean, most of those employees have to be curious. I know I would be!

And now I’m a happy reader after having finished reading all about Dallas and Nikki and their extended families, their hurtful pasts, and the murder mystery and their vulnerabilities that are mucking up their future together.

We wanted you to enjoy a little bit of a teaser from Don’t Mess with Texas, so here’s an excerpt just for y’all today.

Summary:

Nikki Hunt thought her night couldn’t get worse when her no-good, cheating ex ditched her at dinner, sticking her with the bill. Then she found his body stuffed in the trunk of her car and lost her two-hundred-dollar meal all over his three-thousand-dollar suit. Now not only is Nikki nearly broke, she’s a murder suspect.

Former cop turned PI, Dallas O’Connor knows what it’s like to be unjustly accused. But one look at the sexy-though skittish-suspect tells him she couldn’t hurt anyone. The lead detective, Dallas’s own brother, has the wrong woman and Dallas hopes a little late-night “undercover” work will help him prove it . . .

Enjoy!

“I’m killing him,” Nikki muttered again fifteen minutes later as she pulled out her already over-drawn debit card again.

The grocery cashier scanned the Pepto-Bismol, Tums, Rolaids, and anti-diarrhea meds before looking at Nikki.  “Kill who?”

Why did people think just because she was talking, she was speaking to them?  Was she the only one who talked to herself?  Nevertheless, with the cashier’s curious stare, Nikki felt obligated to answer.  “My ex.”  She placed a palm on her stomach as it roiled.

Holding her purchases in a plastic bag, Nikki couldn’t escape quickly enough.  She darted out the door.  The ball of orange sun hung low in the pre-dusk sky.  Her eyes stung.  She almost got to the car when the smell of grilled burgers from the hamburger joint next door washed over her and the full wave of nausea hit.  A woman with two kids dancing around her came right at Nikki.  Not wanting to upchuck on an innocent child, she swung around in the opposite direction, opened her bag and heaved as quietly as she could inside it.

Realizing she’d just puked on her medicine, she lost her backbone, and tears filled her eyes.  Only the weak cry. The words filled her head, but damn it, right now she was weak.

She rushed to her car, wanting only to get home.  Tying a knot in the bag, she grabbed her keys, hit the clicker to unlock the doors and then popped open the trunk.

Tears rolled down her cheeks.  Her stomach cramped so hard her breath caught.

She got to her bumper, was just about to drop the contaminated bag into the trunk when she saw . . .  She blinked the tears from her eyes as if that alone would make the image go away.

It didn’t.

There, stuffed in the back of her car, was a body.

She recognized the Armani suit first.  Then she saw his face.  His eyes were wide open, but something was missing.

Life.

Jack was dead.

Jack was dead in the trunk of her car.

Her vision started to swirl.

She tried to scream.  Nausea hit harder.  Unable to stop herself, she lost the rest of her two hundred dollar meal all over her dead ex-husband’s three thousand dollar suit.