Almost Like Being in Love

In the second installment of Dodd's contemporary trilogy, the middle Prescott sister, Pepper is featured as a hard-nosed, hard-working, wounded young woman with a tremendous amount of trust issues. Orphaned, and torn from her family at the age of eight, she had been parceled out and lived in various foster homes, none for very long as her rebelliousness caused her to be tossed around quite often. Only once, - the final foster home in Diamond Idaho, where she had stayed the longest did she feel some sense of belonging, but even from there she ran. The years in between, after reading an inspiring memoir of a woman's accomplishments, she turned her life around and started a thriving landscape business. Discovering and witnessing her hero, General Jennifer Napier, killing her aide after he accused her of furnishing government secrets to terrorists, Pepper who had been living under an assumed name herself, knew she had to run for her life because who would believe her word over that of a General. Running to the last place that had felt like a home to her, Pepper discovered that her long lost lover Dan Graham, had taken up residence and was now keeping up the ranch. Not only was Dan there, but her foster mother had died and left the ranch to her. Years before, Dan was the reason she had left, and the years in between hadn't lessened the attraction they both still felt, but trust was another matter entirely