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He wasn’t a real sociable person.
“The Trumbulls have some kids, but I don’t know how old they are,” he said at last. “They live about halfway back to town. And Sassie Whitlaw’s grandkids live with her part of the time. There’s a girl about your size.”
The wistfulness disappeared as she giggled again. “What kind of name is Sassie?”
Not much different from Lucy. It was an old name for a young girl.
A strand of hair fell forward to rest on her cheek, and she brushed it back with delicate fingers. “Do you have any animals besides puppies? Like maybe horses?”
“No.” There were cats in the barn, but they were no more sociable than he was. He kept their water dish full and supplemented their field-mouse diet with dry food, but that was the extent of their interaction.
“My dad said I could have a horse when we moved here. He said we’d have a barn and everything. He said we’d have trees filled with apples to give ’em for treats, and I could ride my horse to the store and to school.” Suspicion settled over her features, making her look years beyond five. “There’s no barn at our house. Daddy was little when he came here to see his grandma. I think he didn’t remember very well.”
Was there ever an orchard around here? her mother had asked that morning with the same sort of look, and just before that she’d all but snorted, A great old house. Clearly the Miller home had fallen far short of her expectations. Because her ex had a faulty memory—or a problem with the truth?
Lucy edged closer to the glass. “You have a barn,” she announced. “What’s in it?”
“The tractor. Some tools. A workshop.”
She tilted her head to look at him. “What kind of workshop?”
“You’re awfully nosy today.” Jayne came up to stand on the other side of the kid, combed the spiderwebs from her hair, then tried without success to remove them from her fingers. Her cheeks turned pink as she surreptitiously scrubbed them off on her sweatshirt.
“I’m bein’ neighborly,” Lucy disagreed. “That’s what Grandpa says people do in the country. Isn’t it, Tyler?”
Not me, he almost blurted out, but he just shrugged instead.
“They said we should have power by five,” Jayne said. With her gaze locked on something outside, it was hard to tell whether she was addressing the words to her daughter or him. “Do you think the roads are clear enough to go into town and pick up a few things?”
The snow had been melting steadily all day, leaving great patches of ground showing everywhere that wasn’t in the shade, and the temperature was warm enough for a lightweight jacket. How could the city girl not realize the roads would be clear? “Sure.”
“We’d be happy to give you a ride to your truck on the way.”
He’d be happy to say no. It wasn’t much of a walk, and he could use the exercise to clear his head. He couldn’t begin to guess at what made him say, “I’d appreciate it.” Maybe because then they would be even. She wouldn’t feel as if she was in his debt for the firewood and there wouldn’t be any reason for further contact between them.
Her smile was uneasy but relieved, too. “Okay. Let’s go.”
Tyler Lewis had less to say than any man Jayne had ever known.
Maybe she was just accustomed to talkative sorts. Her father could chat up anyone about anything, and Greg had never let a little thing like having nothing to say stop him from saying it. Tyler, it seemed, was just the opposite. While taking care of the electric, water and gas accounts, she’d listened to his conversation with Lucy with half an ear. Surely he had more than those brief little answers to offer.
But he wasn’t offering them to her. Without a word, she and Lucy had waited while he’d locked up, then the three of them had walked back to Edna’s house, where he and Lucy, still silent, waited while she locked up—laughable when practically every stick of furniture sat on the front porch—before loading into the Tahoe. Peripherally she watched him fasten his seat belt, then rub his long fingers over the leather armrest as if testing its texture. They stilled as his attention turned to the outside mirrors, automatically adjusting and lowering when she shifted into reverse, then returning to their preset position when she shifted into drive.
His mouth quirked slightly. Remembering that she’d told him Greg had taken everything of value? This truck was worth two, maybe three times the sorry little house and its one-acre setting. Knowing divorce was on the horizon, she’d had the sense to put it in her name only when she’d bought it.
Unable to bear the silence one moment longer, she asked, “Do you work in town?”
“No.”
She’d forgotten one of the rules she’d learned early in her career—no yes or no questions when conducting an interview. “Where do you work?”
He pressed the button that turned on the heater in the seat, then turned it off again before offering a halfhearted gesture to the west. “A few miles over that way.”
“Are you a farmer? A rancher? A housekeeper? A nanny?”
His mouth quirked again. With impatience? “A carpenter.”
“Do you frame houses, make cabinets, build decks?”
Finally he glanced at her and said in the softest of voices, “I see where your daughter gets her nosiness.”
Her face warming, Jayne slowed to a stop. They were at the bottom of the first hill, where a pickup old enough that its faded color could be one of any number was parked sideways across the road.
“Here you go.”
“Thanks.” He opened the door, ignored the running board and slid to the ground. Then he looked back. “Furniture. Tables, chairs, entertainment centers, desks…if it’s wood, I build it.”
Not a carpenter but a craftsman—and a modest one at that. She didn’t meet many modest people in her business. Authors had to believe their work was good or they would never open themselves up to crushing rejection by trying to sell it.
With a nod that passed for goodbye, he closed the door, crossed to his truck with long strides and climbed inside. It might be ten years older than her Tahoe, but the engine started on the first try and revved powerfully, and it had no problem with the mud as he straightened it out, then drove past.
“I like him,” Lucy remarked from the backseat. “He doesn’t treat me like a kid.”
Jayne wasn’t sure he knew how to treat kids. As far as that went, she wasn’t sure he knew how to treat adults either. But maybe it wasn’t all people he had a problem with—just those who invaded his privacy.
Lucy amused herself with a movie on her portable DVD player for the drive into town, while Jayne amused herself with comparing Greg’s stories with reality. Virtually everything about the house was a lie, and based on what she was seeing today, so was everything about the town. A quaint little town, like Mayberry from The Andy Griffith Show? Ha!
Sweetwater was a few blocks of shabby little buildings surrounded by a few more blocks of old houses and, on the outskirts of town, even shabbier businesses. There was a town square, and the downtown buildings were mostly old, mostly built of stone, but that was the extent of the quaintness. The welcome-to-town sign didn’t include a population, probably because people were leaving a lot quicker than they were coming. It looked sleepy and dreary and depressing.
How had she let herself believe that, for once, Greg wasn’t exaggerating?
Because she’d needed to believe. She’d needed a change, and after he’d cleaned out their joint bank accounts, this had seemed the best choice left her.
“Mom, I’m hungry,” Lucy piped up from the back.
So was she, and it appeared they had a grand total of two places to choose from—a diner near the courthouse and a convenience store on the edge of town that sold gas, hunting licenses, hot dogs and sandwiches. She opted for the diner.
Deprived of her DVD player for the walk from their parking space to the diner, Lucy looked around wide-eyed but didn’t comment on the town. Neither did Jayne. She might find it disappointing, but she certainly didn’t want to pass that on to her daughter.
The diner was warm and filled with good smells. Jayne helped Lucy out of her jacket, then slipped off her own before sliding into a booth that fronted the plate-glass window. A twenty-something waitress brought menus and offered a cheery greeting and coffee before leaving again.
“I like Sweetwater,” Lucy announced. “It’s pretty.”
Pretty? Jayne’s gaze darted to the view outside the window. Pretty old. Pretty shabby. It was the sort of place where one of her heroines would end up when everything else in her life had gone to hell and she found herself at rock bottom.
But her life hadn’t gone to hell. It wasn’t as if she had no place else to go. She could have stayed in Chicago. She could have settled anywhere.
But Sweetwater had one advantage over those options—Edna’s house. With no rent or mortgage payments, she’d figured that the savings she’d secreted away would last about eighteen months, barring emergencies, in southeastern Tennessee. That meant no outside job, no trying to work full-time and be a mother full-time and write full-time. She was a fast writer when Greg wasn’t scaring her muse into hiding. In eighteen months she could finish her current book and write two, maybe even three books on a new contract. In eighteen months she could be on her way to getting her career back on track.
That same money wouldn’t carry her through the end of the year in Chicago.
Just that thought gave the town a little brighter gleam.
They ordered hamburgers, and Jayne was all but drooling over the crispy thick-cut fries that came with them when the bell over the door dinged with a new arrival. She looked up to see another young woman, in her early to midtwenties, wearing jeans, a turtleneck under a heavy flannel shirt and boots with thick ridged soles. Despite the lumberjack clothes, there was something amazingly feminine about her, and it had nothing to do with the stylish blond hair or the three pairs of hoops that graced her earlobes.
Sorting through the stack of mail she carried, she called, “I’m back, Carla.”
The waitress appeared in the pass-through window. “How’s your mom?”
“She’s fine.”
“How’s Tyler?”
“Not answering his phone, as usual.”
One of Jayne’s heroines might jump to the conclusion that this lovely woman and Tyler were involved. Truth was, Jayne didn’t care beyond the fact that it would answer her question whether Tyler was antisocial with everyone or just her. Curiosity—that was all it was.
“His new neighbor’s here,” the waitress said with a gesture, and the woman turned to give them a speculative look. After a moment, she started their way.
Jayne dropped her gaze back to her burger. Her sweatshirt was dusty and cobwebby, and she hadn’t bothered with makeup this morning, not when she was still wearing the remnants of yesterday’s application. The last thing she needed was to meet someone who would make her feel dowdy even all dressed up—especially someone who might or might not be romantically involved with her neighbor.
But the woman didn’t detour away. She didn’t stumble and fall flat on her face or disappear into thin air but glided to a stop at the end of their table. “You must be Jayne.”
Jayne smiled politely. “Yes, I am. This is my daughter, Lucy.”
“Hi, Lucy. I’m Rebecca Lewis. I understand you’ve met my brother Tyler.”
That made Jayne feel marginally better. Sisters were less intimidating than girlfriends—no matter that she had zero interest in the man in question.
“What do you think of Sweetwater?”
Jayne glanced out the window, then back at Rebecca. “It’s…different.”
Rebecca showed no offense. “It’s small but boring, which is not always a bad thing. We grew up in Nashville—at least, until Tyler was fourteen and I was nine, when we came here to live with my grandparents. I liked the change.” She pulled a chair from the nearest table and sat down. “I take it you’re…” With a glance at Lucy, she hesitated. “Do you use the D word?”
Lucy seemed preoccupied with driving the ketchup bottle around the table with one hand while eating fries with the other, but she was never really tuned out. She often repeated something overheard during her most oblivious act. For that reason, Jayne had been as honest with her as a five-year-old deserved.
“Yeah. Lucy’s dad and I are divorced.”
“Too bad,” Rebecca said, then shrugged. “Or maybe not. I’ve got a few ex-boyfriends that I was more than happy to see the last of. The rumor mill says you’re a writer.”
“Historical romances.” Jayne was never sure what response that news would bring. There were the inevitable snickers and insults about trashy sex books and bodice rippers—not that one of her characters had ripped a bodice ever in his life—along with polite disinterest. Some people wondered why she didn’t write real books, and some, bless their hearts, were fans of the genre who were tickled to meet a real-life author.
“Really. That’s cool. How many books have you sold?”
“Eight.” Four in the eighteen months before she’d married Greg, and only four more in the following six years. There was a depressing statistic.
“Do you write under your own name?”
“No, I write as…Rochelle Starr.” Jayne hated admitting to her pseudonym. It was so overblown, so fake.
But Rebecca didn’t even blink. Instead she teasingly asked, “So, after selling eight romance novels, do you have any special insight into men?”
She laughed. “Yeah. They’re alien life-forms.”
“Isn’t that truth? So you already know everything you need to get along just fine with my brother.”
Jayne didn’t want to get along with Tyler, other than in a neighborly fashion—and she meant big-city neighborly, where you smiled and waved when you passed, helped each other out in an emergency but otherwise lived separate lives. She wasn’t looking for a man to share her life. She wrote fantasy love stories, and fantasy was one thing she already knew a lot about. She didn’t need living, breathing inspiration.
“Speaking of Tyler, could you save me a trip and give him something for me when you go home?” Rebecca asked.
Jayne’s smile was fixed in place as she gave the only answer she could. “Sure.”
“I’ll get it now.” Rebecca left her seat and disappeared through the swinging door into the kitchen.
By the time she returned, Jayne and Lucy were finished with their meals and Jayne had pulled out a twenty to pay the check Carla had delivered. Rebecca brushed it away. “It’s on the house. Consider it our welcome to Sweetwater.”
“Thank you.”
Rebecca set a large brown bag on the table. The top was folded over, and an envelope with Tyler’s name on it was binder-clipped to the fold. A chill emanated from it, suggesting its contents were frozen. Food? Did Rebecca make it her duty to make sure her big brother had a good meal from time to time?
“Thanks for delivering this and, like I said, welcome to Sweetwater. I hope I see a lot of you.”
“I’m sure you will,” Jayne said as she left a tip for the waitress, then helped Lucy into her coat.
After all, the diner’s only competition in town was a hot dog at the gas station.
Country music played on the stereo, nothing but a distant hum until Tyler shut off the sander. While running his hand over the surface, he hummed a few bars, but humming was as far as it went. The last time he had sung a song, his mother had remarked that he sounded just like his father, then burst into tears. That had been the end of singing for him.
This piece was the final door to the entertainment armoire he’d been working on for the past few weeks. It was his own design, built of walnut and carved with a rising-sun pattern on the upper two doors. It had turned out better than he’d expected—good enough to offer to the same pricey shops that sold Daniel’s work. But it was going into his living room, where few people besides him would ever see it.
He’d begun working with Daniel when he was fifteen. Life had been tough then—his mother away, adjusting to Sweetwater after Nashville, trying to fit in when kids talked about his family both behind his back and to his face. All the adults had agreed that he needed something constructive to occupy his time. Since Zachary couldn’t train him in the legal trade, his good friend Daniel had offered to teach him carpentry. They’d meant to keep him busy and out of fights, but instead he’d found a career.
He might never get rich at it, but his house was paid for, he had money in the bank, and he liked going to work every day. That counted for a lot.
A shadow fell across the open door, catching his attention an instant before Lucy Miller stepped into sight. She was carrying a grocery bag, clutching it to her body with both arms, and her eyes were wide as she looked all around. Disappointment curved the corners of her mouth. “You can’t even tell it’s s’posed to be a barn. Where’s the hay? Where do the horses go? Where do the cows go?”
His muscles tightened as he picked up a tack cloth and began wiping down the door, removing the bits of dust that inevitably escaped the sander’s vacuum bag. He didn’t like interruptions, especially from a talkative neighbor whose mother was pretty and needful. “Where’s your—”
Before he could finish, Jayne appeared behind her daughter, her cheeks flushed. “Lucy, I told you—wow.” Stepping around Lucy, she came farther into the room, to the table where the finished door was lying. She reached out, almost touched the carving, then drew back. “Did you do this?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow,” she murmured again, then turned to look around. He didn’t have to look to know what she saw—neatness that bordered on compulsion. A place for everything and everything in its place. He’d learned at an early age that there was hell to pay for disorder—and usually someone else paid it. Now that he lived alone, there was no one to care whether he put something in the wrong place, but it was a hard habit to break.
Jayne walked around the room. A stranger in his workshop was even more disruptive than in his house. He wanted her to leave—even if some small part of him appreciated the way she trailed her hand along the counter. The way she sniffed the fresh lumber stacked against one wall. The pleasure she took in studying the few finished pieces.
“This is gorgeous,” she said, ending up back at the armoire door. “Are you going to sell it?”
