MARTINI REGRETS

Trying to keep mum after she’s witnessed a crime does nothing to keep bar owner Sherri Travis out of trouble.

After Sherri is carjacked and roughed up on her way back to Jacaranda from Miami, she expects to come home to a little sympathy from Clay Adams, her fiance. But Clay seems to agree more with what her father told her when she first crossed the Everglades: “Don’t stop for anything.” Though Sherri may have learned her lesson about stopping—a brief refueling led to the carjacking, a chase and her discovery of a man’s body—she refuses to take Clay’s advice when he tells her she needs to report what she’s seen to the authorities. Sherri thinks she can pretend it was all a sort of nightmare and go back to work at the Sunset, since owning and managing the bar is trouble enough. Then she finds out that the dead man was Ben Bricklin, owner of the Osceola Nursery, whose brother Ethan is one of the richest men in Florida. Ethan’s appearance at the Sunset and his insistence on getting to know Sherri and Clay set off warning signs for Sherri. She’s known her fair share of trouble (Highball Exit, 2012, etc.), and she knows men like Ethan don’t poke around looking for answers without good reason. Is it possible he knows she was on the scene the night Ben was killed? Despite her suspicions, Ethan endears himself to Sherri, and she soon helps him search for his brother’s killer.

If you think the world that Sherri gets mixed up in doesn’t seem very closely related to the rest of her life, you’ll find big developments in this story that are bound to have lasting repercussions for this series—though they happen so quickly that readers may be left in shock.