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After locking up, she climbed into her blisteringly hot car, backed out, then headed down the narrow dirt lane. The air conditioner was turned to high, all the windows were down, and the wheel was so hot that she steered using only the tips of her fingers, but she felt damn near giddy at the prospect of getting out and seeing people.
She was not cut out for a life of isolation.
A few hundred yards from her cabin, another narrow lane forked off to the northwest. She’d paid it little attention the times she’d been by it, but now she knew it led to Jace’s house—partly because it was logical, and partly because he was sitting there in a dusty green SUV, half in his driveway, half in the road, watching her approach.
Her car was small enough she could ease around him, give a neighborly wave, then drive on—and let him drive in her dust for the next ten miles—but she politely slowed to a stop.
Instead of driving on, he got out of the truck and leaned in the passenger window. “Where are you off to?”
“The grocery store.”
“Me, too. Why don’t you park your car and ride with me?”
She wanted to coolly say no, thanks, almost as much as she wanted to agree. She needed conversation, to hear other voices, and his was a damn easy voice to listen to.
But he asks questions, her own inner voice reminded her, and he wants answers. She could be satisfied talking to the clerk at the grocery store, couldn’t she?
Oh, sure, that would be a great conversation. How are you today? Will that be all? You want paper or plastic?
Apparently her reluctance was obvious, because he grinned a killer grin. “Aw, come on…I bet you don’t even know where the closest grocery store is.”
“The only grocery store is in Buffalo Plains.”
He made a sound like a game-show buzzer. “The Heartbreak store is five miles closer. I’ll even treat you to lunch at the Heartbreak Café.”
Heartbreak. Sounded like her kind of town, she thought with a touch of irony and rue. And lunch…in a restaurant…with people. Sounded too good to pass up. And it wouldn’t hurt, would it? Not just this one time?
“Let me take my car back.”
With another grin, he lifted his hand in a wave, then returned to his truck.
It took some effort, but she managed to turn around without getting too far off the road. On the brief drive to the cottage, she tried to talk herself into reneging, but when she got out of the Honda, she didn’t blurt out an excuse, rush inside and lock the door. No, she climbed into the cool interior of the SUV, buckled her seat belt and glanced at Jace.
He wore gym shorts in white cotton with a gray T-shirt, worn-out running shoes and no socks, and his black hair was pulled back in a ponytail again. As a general rule, she didn’t like to see men with hair longer than her own, and she couldn’t help but think he would be a hundred times handsomer with it cut short. Even so, he was still incredibly hot. Heavens, she was hot just looking at him.
She adjusted the vent so the cool air blew directly on her, then crossed her legs. Deciding it would be in her best interests to start—and therefore hopefully control—the conversation, she asked, “How big is Heartbreak?”
“A better question is how little is it. I believe Paulette likes to refer to it as ‘a wide spot in the road.’”
“Yeah, I heard that phrase from her a couple of times.”
He grinned. “You don’t need to spend much time with Paulette before she starts repeating herself. She can be annoying, but at heart she’s a good person.” At the end of the lane, he slowed almost to a stop, then turned east onto the dirt road. “Heartbreak…let’s see…. It has an elementary school, middle school and high school, though if the number of students keeps dropping, they’ll have to close them and bus the kids to Buffalo Plains. There are a couple of cafés, a hardware store, a five-and-dime, a grocery store, a part-time doctor and lawyer, a post office—oh, and a boot-and-saddle maker. If you want to take home a one-of-a-kind souvenir, you should see her. There’s also a couple of small junk stores—pardon me, antique stores—and a consignment store. That’s about it.”
“All the necessities of life,” she said with a faint smile.
“If you’re not looking for anything fancy. If you are, you have to go to Tulsa or Oklahoma City.”
At the intersection where they would have turned left to go to Buffalo Plains, he turned right instead, then asked, “Get any writing done today?”
So much for controlling the conversation. “A little.”
“After you write the book, what happens then?”
She stared out the side window for a time, some part of her brain registering pastures dotted with cattle, occasional houses, barbed wire fences and acres of the scraggly trees Paulette had identified as blackjacks. Finally, when the expectant silence began to gnaw at her nerves, she gave him a narrowed look. “Didn’t we agree yesterday that I didn’t want to talk about my career?”
His laughter was warm and unexpected. “Oh, honey, we haven’t agreed on anything yet except that my mom’s a good cook. Besides, you said that about the book you’re currently writing. I’m just asking about the process in general.”
“Why?”
He gave the same answer he’d offered in regard to the Wanted posters. “I’m curious.”
“Why?”
“I haven’t met many writers before, and most of them were newspaper or TV reporters.”
She grabbed the chance to turn the conversation back on him. “Now you’ve made me curious. How does a small-town Oklahoma cowboy manage to run into so many newspaper and television reporters? They do many stories on branding and castrating around here?”
Now it was his turn to think before he answered. “Nope, not many. But if there’s a reporter around, they seem to lock in on me. Must be my charm.”
Must be female reporters, Cassidy thought dryly.
“Okay, we’ll drop that part of the discussion. Can you at least tell me what kind of research you did before coming here?”
Absolutely not. She’d chosen Buffalo Lake the same way she’d chosen every other place she’d temporarily lighted in the past three years—spread out a map of the U.S., closed her eyes and pointed. “Just general stuff,” she fibbed. “Climate, topography, industry.” Please don’t ask, she silently prayed, but of course he did.
“And what did you learn about the climate?”
In the outside mirror she watched dust clouds swirl behind them. Looking ahead she saw heat waves shimmering in the air. “That it gets hot in summer. Damn hot.”
“And?”
She gave him another of those narrow gazes. “Why are you quizzing me? I’m not a student and you’re not my teacher.”
“I bet I could teach you a few things,” he said, his voice huskier than normal. Then he gave her a long, intimate look. “And you could teach me a few.”
Her throat had gone as dry as the road they were traveling. She couldn’t think of a response, though, until he turned back to the road, when the air rushed out of her lungs and she sank back against the seat.
As if the moment had never happened, he gestured toward the house ahead on the left, identifying it as Easy and Shay Rafferty’s place, where he helped out occasionally with the horses. Farther down the road on the right was Guthrie and Olivia Harris’s ranch, where he helped out occasionally with the cattle. Two young girls were playing in the yard. One, dangling upside down from a tree branch, waved so enthusiastically Cassidy feared she might fall. The other, sitting primly on a quilt underneath the tree, raised her hand without so much as a wiggle of her fingers.
“That’s the Harrises’ twins. Elly’s the tomboy and Emma’s the prissy one,” Jace remarked. “Which were you as a kid?”
“I wasn’t prissy.”
“Did you play with dolls?”
“Of course. That’s what little girls do.”
“Let me rephrase that—how did you play with dolls? Did you play house with them, like Emma, or cut them open and stuff them with firecrackers to see if you could blow them to bits, like Elly did last week?”
She’d played house, but she wasn’t about to admit it. Instead she folded her arms over her chest and pressed her lips together.
“That’s a clear enough answer,” he said with a chuckle. “Did you ever climb trees? Collect spiders? Make a pet of a mouse and keep him in your pocket? Or did you like to sit in the air-conditioning with your dollies and books and not get dirty?”
“I climbed trees,” she said in her defense. And she had, too. At least, a time or two. Until she’d fallen from an unstable limb and broken her arm when she was eight. After that, she’d kept her feet on the ground.
“And the rest?”
“I kill spiders and the only mouse I want around is attached to my computer.” Her expression slid into something that felt remarkably like a pout. “Besides, what’s wrong with staying cool and clean and reading?”
He laughed again, not a chuckle this time but a full-throated laugh. “So you were prissy. Of course, I could tell just by looking at you.”
“How?” she challenged.
“Because girly girls always grow up to be such womanly women.” Again that low, husky tone. Again the dry throat, the air rushing from her lungs, the general weakness spreading through her body.
Spending the next few hours with him couldn’t hurt, could it? she had convinced herself back in the Honda. Not just this one time.
She would have snorted in disdain if she could have found the breath. He was a dangerous man, and his relentless questions were only the half of it. Questions she could avoid. Emotions, though… She couldn’t escape them no matter how she tried. Feelings in general were okay. Feelings for other people weren’t. Those were the rules that governed her life.
The sooner she remembered and acted on that, the better.
Jace parked in downtown Heartbreak, climbed out of the truck and waited on the sidewalk for Cassidy. As she got out and walked toward him, her gaze was swiveling from side to side and around. Looking for anything in particular or just trying to take the whole town in at once?
He’d never tried to see his hometown through someone else’s eyes. It was so familiar to him that he wasn’t even sure he saw it through his own eyes, but rather through the eyes of the kid who had once lived here. He usually didn’t notice that the buildings looked pretty shabby, that the sidewalks were cracked, that half the buildings on the next block were boarded up. He didn’t pay attention to the paint peeling from old wood or the crack that had extended through the insurance agency’s plate-glass window for as long as he could remember. He looked and saw home.
What did Cassidy see?
He gestured toward Café Shay—really the Heartbreak Café, owned by Shay Rafferty—and they started in that direction. Just two days ago he hadn’t wanted Reese and Neely to see Cassidy, and now here he was taking her to lunch in Gossip Central. Somebody would be on the phone to his mother before they made it to the grocery store across and down the street.
But he didn’t even consider taking back the offer.
The bell over the door announced them and several dozen pairs of eyes turned their way. About half the customers greeted him before speculatively looking back at Cassidy.
Hell, they probably wouldn’t even be through with lunch before someone called his mom.
They’d just claimed the only empty booth when Shay showed up, balancing a chubby-cheeked baby on one hip. She set down two glasses of water, then two menus. “Hey, Jace, how’s it going?”
“Not bad. Shay, Cassidy.” He gave the briefest introductions possible, then reached for the baby, who came to him with a toothless grin and a drool. “And this is Liza Beth.”
“That’s her name today because she’s in a good mood,” Shay said, “but we’re thinking of changing it to something like…oh, I don’t know. Difficult. Tough.”
“Nah, she’s too pretty for a silly name like that,” he responded, directing his words to the baby who was gazing with great interest at his finger closest to her mouth. “Besides, one unconventional name per family is plenty.”
Shay smacked him on the shoulder. “Who are you calling unconventional? Easy or me?” Then she smiled across the booth. “It’s nice to meet you, Cassidy. Are you visiting from K—”
Jace shot her a look and she smoothly shifted. “Or are you making your home here?”
“I’m just here for a while.”
Cassidy gave him a vaguely curious look over Liza Beth’s head, no doubt wondering what Shay had been about to say. To distract her, he announced, “Cassidy’s a writer. She’s finishing up a book.”
“Really?” Shay’s blue eyes brightened. “That’s so cool! What kind of book?”
A flush flooded Cassidy’s cheeks, so Jace answered for her. “She writes romance novels. The one she’s working on now is set in this area.”
“How wonderful. What is the name and when will it be out?”
“I—I don’t—” Cassidy broke off to take a sip of water. “I haven’t settled on a title yet, and I don’t know when…when it will come out. Probably never, if the guy next door doesn’t stop interrupting my work time.”
Shay grinned at Jace. “That would be you, I presume. He’s a terrible distraction,” she said to Cassidy. “Wants attention all the time. Just like Liza Beth.”
“Hey, we resent that, don’t we, Liza?” He moved the baby to cradle her in his lap, and she snagged his finger at last, guiding it into her mouth. “I’d’ve been perfectly happy not having any attention last winter, but it didn’t keep any of you away, did it?”
“What happened last winter?” Cassidy asked.
Shay opened her mouth, looked from Cassidy to him, then closed it again and smiled. “I believe I’ll take my child and send the waitress over to take your order.”
“Nah, let Liza stay—at least until the food comes. She’s happy enough for the moment.”
“You don’t have to say it twice,” Shay said with a laugh. “Cassidy, nice meeting you. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you around.”
She left and a young waitress appeared. Without looking at the menu, Jace ordered a double cheeseburger and onion rings. Cassidy studied the menu for a moment, then asked for the lunch special. Then she folded her hands together on the tabletop and gave him a raised-brow look.
He ignored it as long as he could before faking a grouchy look of his own. “What?”
“What happened last winter?”
“Not much. Oklahoma winters can be really mild or really cold—but then, you know that, having researched the climate.” He let a little good-natured sarcasm slide into his voice on the last words. “We had a couple ice storms that shut things down for a day or two, and we had a tornado in January. That’s something you don’t see a lot of.”
She continued to look at him, her expression unchanging.
“They have tornadoes where you come from?”
“Occasionally.”
“In San Diego? I wouldn’t have thought so.”
“Lemon Grove,” she corrected him. “And none of that answers my question. What happened with you last winter?”
He leveled his gaze on her, as steady and measuring as hers was, then smiled coolly. “I’ll make you a deal. You answer all those questions of mine you’ve danced around, like what your pen name is and what your book is about and what kind of research you did, and I’ll tell you about last winter.”
She smiled, too, a bright smile that involved her whole face without bringing one bit of warmth to it. “It would serve you right if I agreed.”
He shrugged.
“Fair enough.” Then she lowered her gaze to the baby. “She doesn’t look anything like her mother.”
“Nope. She’s the spittin’ image of Easy, except she’s prettier and has all her fingers. He’s only got seven.”
