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As he settled on the couch, he listened to the messages on the answering machine. Two were from Theresa, the steadiest of the recent women in his life, one just asking for a call, the other inviting him over later in the week. The third was from the wife of one of his buddies. They were going to a concert in Tulsa on Saturday and would he be interested in going along with her cousin, Stacey.
He grimaced. He’d met Stacey before, and while she was gorgeous, her biological clock was ticking loudly, making her eager to get married. Every time he spent even a few minutes with her, he felt lucky to have escaped unharmed—or unhitched.
It was barely eight o’clock. Too early for bed. He turned on the television and flipped through the channels but found nothing that caught his interest. He considered returning Theresa’s call, but figured she’d be busy grading her fifth-graders’ papers. He ate an apple and tried to finish the thriller that had been sitting on the end table since the last time he’d put it down over two weeks ago. Obviously, it wasn’t thrilling enough.
What he needed was a distraction, and where he usually found his distractions was Frenchy’s, the same place he’d recommended to Candace Thompson for a cold beer. What were the odds she would show up after their conversation at Norma Sue’s? What were the odds she was even still in the county?
And so what if she was and she did go to Frenchy’s? That didn’t mean he had to speak to her or anything. For damn sure he didn’t have to stay home and avoid one of his regular hangouts just because she might be there.
He wasted another ten minutes, trying to talk himself out of it, but when he was done, he grabbed his jacket and Stetson and returned to his truck. When he drove through the gate and onto the county road, he turned left, the shortest route to the bar. He looked for the blonde’s car in the parking lot and was satisfied when he didn’t see it. As tension he hadn’t even been aware of drained from his shoulders, he parked and headed for the door.
Frenchy’s wasn’t much—but then, nothing in Hickory Bluff was. The building was long and squat, built of concrete blocks that had been painted red once upon a time, then white and most recently, gray. Of course, most recently was about ten years ago, so patches of all three colors, as well as bare concrete, showed through.
The floor inside was cement, and the interior surface of the blocks was painted black, as if the windowless building hadn’t already been dark enough inside. Booths lined three walls, and the floor space was shared by tables and chairs, pool tables and a dance floor. A bar ran the length of the back wall, and a bandstand took up one end of the building. Frenchy’s offered live music every other weekend, some of it pretty good. The rest of the time they made do with a juke box, and it was pretty good, too.
Josh knew everyone in the place, and said hello a half dozen times on his way to the bar, where the owner was wiping the counter. He wasn’t French, and his name was Otis. Rumor had it that back in his younger days, he’d met a singer in Paris by the name of Genevieve. They’d fallen in love, and he’d come back here to build this place, where he would tend bar and she would provide the entertainment, but she’d never come to join him and he’d never found out why.
One night, when Otis had been drinking away his profits, he’d confided in Josh that the only Paris he’d ever been to was in Texas and that Genevieve was his shrew of an ex-wife who’d given him good reason to leave that great state.
By the time Josh reached the bar, an icy long-neck was waiting for him. “How’s it going, Otis?”
“Can’t complain. It’s a sad commentary on life in Hickory Bluff that you guys keep me busy. ’Course, what can you expect in a town where the only place to go is away?”
“Aw, it’s not as bad as that. You know, most of us—yourself included—live here because we like it.”
“Because we don’t know no better,” Otis retorted as he moved to wait on a customer at the opposite end of the bar.
Josh turned for a look around the room. Some of his buddies were occupied at the two pool tables at the far end, and a half dozen more sat at the big round table they’d claimed for their own. While he was debating which group to join, his gaze settled on Calvin Bridger, alone in a distant booth. He didn’t ask permission to join Cal, since he’d probably say no and Josh would do it, anyway. He just slid onto the bench across from him.
“I didn’t know you were back in town,” Josh remarked.
Cal took a deep drink from his beer, then scowled at him. “I didn’t ask you to sit down.”
“Good thing I’ve known you all of our worthless lives, or I might think you were being rude. When did you get home?”
“A couple days ago.”
“Where’s Darcy?”
Cal mumbled something and shrugged, then took another long swallow.
The three of them—Josh, Cal and Darcy Hawkins—had gone to school together from kindergarten on. When just about everyone else went out for football, basketball or baseball, Josh and Cal had started rodeoing. Cal had been a lot better at it—had turned it into a career and made a living at it for fifteen years and counting. He’d also married Darcy a few years back, and seemed to be pretty good at that, too.
“You guys staying at your folks’ or hers?” Josh asked.
“Uh-huh.”
“Which one?” It made a difference if a person wanted to go visiting, since the Bridger ranch was a few miles west of the Rawlinses’ and the Hawkins place—called the Mansion with a derisive sniff—was on the east side of Hickory Bluff, high atop a hill and looking down on the town just as the Hawkinses had always looked down on its people.
Cal drained his beer and signaled Otis for another, then fixed a hostile stare on Josh. “I’m staying at the ranch. I don’t have a clue in hell where Darcy is. She didn’t want to go to this last rodeo with me. She didn’t want to come home with me. Here lately she doesn’t want to do much of anything with me. Now will you go the hell away and let me have one beer in peace?”
Josh didn’t argue or press for more details. Taking his beer, he stood up, then turned back. “Let me know before you leave.”
Though it wasn’t a question, Cal nodded. “Yeah, sure.”
Josh never gave a lot of thought to the state of people’s marriages. Some of his buddies changed wives the way other people traded cars. A few had been married a long time and seemed satisfied with their wives, three kids and a dog. Some swore they’d never get married, and he believed them. Some swore the same, and he didn’t. But Cal and Darcy…damn. They’d been together a long time. If asked, Josh would have said they had the second-best chance at staying together forever. First, of course, went to Tate and Natalie.
Looked like he would have been wrong.
He crossed to the round table, into which some joker had carved The Knights, and pulled up a chair, swinging it around backward to straddle. The conversation was football—the college games played the weekend before and the Wildcat game coming up on Friday. Both Tate and Jordan had been Wildcat stars, both scouted by college teams, and Jordan was attending Oklahoma State University on a football scholarship. For those reasons, people seemed to think that made Josh an authority of some sort. Truthfully, he didn’t know any more about the game than anyone else—and didn’t care as much as most of them. Tossing a football around and risking life and limb against guys twice his size didn’t appeal to him at all.
He’d by far preferred risking his life and limb against bulls ten times his size, he thought with a grin.
He’d finished his first beer and was nursing his second and thinking about asking the pretty brunette at the bar to dance when Dudley Barnes hollered his name from the vicinity of the pool tables. “Rawlins, get your scrawny carcass over here and give me a chance to win back that forty bucks you stole from me last week.”
Shooting pool with Dudley was about the easiest money Josh had ever come by. He could beat him blindfolded and with one hand tied behind his back. There was no challenge to it, but it was something to do. Besides, that pretty brunette taught at Theresa’s school, and Theresa might not take kindly to him paying her any attention.
Crossing to the table, he laid a twenty-dollar bill next to the one already on the edge, then circled to take a cue stick from the rack on the wall. He chalked the tip while Dudley racked the balls, then bent over the table to break.
“How ’bout you lose twenty to me and twenty to my friend?” Dudley suggested.
“Aw, you don’t have any friends,” Josh replied. The cue ball hit with a clean cra-ack and the balls rolled in every direction. He moved to the end of the table and bent over, bracing his hand on the felt.
“I’ve got one, and she’s the prettiest girl in the place. Talks real pretty, too, ’cause she’s from…where was it, honey?”
“Atlanta.” The voice was feminine…and familiar, even though he’d never heard it before that morning and had confidently thought he would never hear it again.
He made his shot, then slowly looked up. It was easy enough to overlook anyone standing beside Dudley. At six foot six and three hundred pounds, he was a big boy. But once Josh’s gaze connected with Candace Thompson, Dudley faded into the background.
She’d changed clothes for slumming at the local honky-tonk, into jeans that clung the way they were meant to and a red button-front shirt. Her boots were brown, thick-soled work boots that hadn’t seen much, if any, work, and she wore a black cowboy hat that was way too big for her head. Seeing that it belonged to Dudley, it was probably too big for everybody’s head.
“Buddy, this is Can—”
Josh interrupted Dudley’s introductions. “We’ve met,” he said rudely, then turned his back on them to make the next two shots.
She waited until he’d straightened again to speak. “Technically, we haven’t. I know your name is Josh because the waitress called you that, but—”
He hit the next ball with more force than he’d intended, but it rolled into the intended pocket, anyway. Then he faced her impassively. “I’m Josh Rawlins. Tate Rawlins’s brother. Natalie Rawlins’s brother-in-law. And you’re Candace Thompson. And that’s all that needs to be said, isn’t it?”
And you’re Candace Thompson. Candace hadn’t known it was possible for someone to put so much pure loathing in the four syllables of her name. No doubt he’d picked that up from Natalie, a fact that sent an ache through her, but she hid it. Instead she coolly watched as he methodically sank ball after ball.
She’d talked herself out of coming here more than once through the afternoon and early evening, but somehow she’d found herself walking through the door, anyway. She’d figured Josh wouldn’t be there, on the chance that she would, but he was the first one she’d seen when she’d come in. Then Dudley had stepped between them, blocking Josh from sight, and she had gratefully accepted his invitation to join him for a drink—something she wouldn’t have done if she’d known he would soon invite Josh over, too.
But she was here, and so was Josh, and what did it matter? Clearly he didn’t intend to talk to her, and she had nothing to say to him. Enlisting his help in gaining access to Natalie was out of the question. Not only would she not ask, but he would surely refuse if she did. And with Natalie between them, that pretty much ruled out anything else.
He finished the game without Dudley even getting close to the table, scooped up the forty dollars and shoved them into his pocket and started away.
“Hey, what about the next game?” Dudley said. “You afraid to play the lady?”
Josh slowly turned and let his brown gaze slide over Candace as if he were taking inventory and coming up short. “What lady?”
Dudley pushed away from the table with surprising speed for a man his size. “That was uncalled for,” he said flatly, his voice empty of good humor. “You owe her an apology.”
“Like hell I do.”
“You sure as hell do. You can give it on your own, or I can help you with it. It’s your choice.”
Josh’s gaze narrowed and turned even colder. “You remember the last time you tried to make me do something I didn’t want to do?”
“You broke my nose.” Dudley jutted out his jaw. “But that ain’t gonna happen this time.”
Tired of the blustering, Candace stepped in front of Dudley and laid her hand on his arm. “You promised me a beer.”
“Right after he gives you an apology.”
“I don’t want an apology. Come on, a drink and a dance, then I have to go home.” She maneuvered him around until he broke eye contact with Josh and finally looked at her. Sweeping off his cowboy hat, she gave him a coaxing smile. “Come on. I haven’t danced in ages.”
After a tense moment he let her pull him around tables to the dance floor, then grudgingly took her in his arms. With one last glare in Josh’s direction, he looked down at her and smiled.
The music was country and slow, and she stumbled over her own feet and Dudley’s only a time or two. There had been a time when she’d danced as naturally as breathing—a time when a lot of things had come naturally to her. She’d taken a great deal for granted…but not anymore.
She wasn’t counting on Dudley to remain silent, and sure enough, around the middle of the song, he asked, “What’s between you and Josh?”
“Nothing.”
“Oh, come on. He’s not usually like that.”
“What’s he usually like?” she asked, though she’d seen a good example that morning, before he’d known who she was.
Dudley was quiet for a moment, then he grinned. “His mother says the trouble with Josh is he likes women…a lot. Trouble for her, because he’s never gonna settle down and give her some more grandchildren. No trouble at all for the women around here. He’s been involved with every pretty woman in a hundred-mile radius. I should have expected that he’d already met you, too.”
“And how many grandchildren does his mother have that she needs more?”
“Two. Jordan’s twenty and the little one’s ’bout three.”
Natalie mothering the three-year-old was an easy enough image to conjure, but a twenty-year-old? When she was only thirty-six herself? Of course, how much mothering did a twenty-year-old need? Candace had been on her own for two years before her twentieth birthday, and she’d done all right.
She’d just been lonely. Alone. Ambitious. Driven. Afraid.
“Have you settled down and given your mother grandchildren?” she asked to keep him from returning to Josh.
His grin was remarkably boyish. “A time or two.”
“For the settling-down or the grandkids?” she asked dryly.
“Two marriages, two divorces, two grandkids. What about you?”
“No marriages, no divorces, no kids.” And no mother around to nag her for babies to spoil.
“You’ve never been married? The men in Atlanta must be blind.”
To the contrary, she thought as the song ended. They just had so many better women to choose from than her.
When the music stopped, she stepped out of his arms. “Thank you for a nice evening.”
“What about that drink?”
She regretfully shook her head. “I’d better skip it and get on home.”
“How long are you going to be around here?”
If the Rawlins family had their way, no longer than it would take to cross the state line. In a weak moment that would be her choice, too—had been her choice that afternoon after seeing Natalie.
But she couldn’t allow herself to be weak. A weak woman couldn’t survive everything she’d been through in the past year. Though she’d often been weak in body, her spirit had been strong, and she had to keep it that way. Living another thirty-eight years depended on it.
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “Maybe a few days. Maybe a few weeks.”
“Then I’ll see you back here again sometime.”
How long had it been since anyone besides a doctor had wanted to see her again? Too unbearably long.
She smiled at Dudley with real pleasure. “Yeah. You’ll see me again.”
With that she got her suede jacket from the stool where she’d left it, pretended not to notice Josh or the icy stare centered on her back and walked out into the chilly night. As she unlocked the car, she gazed up at the sky, midnight dark and filled with more stars than it was possible to see in Atlanta. She picked out the brightest one, focused hard on it and tried to make a wish, but only one word would form. Please.
It wasn’t particularly articulate for someone who’d earned her living with words, but it pretty much covered everything. Please let Natalie give me a chance. Please let me live a long, healthy life. Please don’t let Josh look at me like that again. Please help me be strong. Please let me have just one friend…and please let Natalie be that friend.
Yep, that one word said it all.
Smiling with a satisfaction she hadn’t felt in far too long, she climbed into the car and headed off through the dark night.
Dance.
Have some fun.
Wish upon a star.
For a brief time the day before, Candace had thought she would be crossing the Arkansas state line around ten this Wednesday morning. Instead, she was enjoying a beautiful fall day in downtown Hickory Bluff. She’d had a late breakfast at Norma Sue’s and had spent more than an hour examining an appealing mix of junk and antiques. She had a shopping list tucked in her purse—mostly groceries, plus an inexpensive lawn chair for enjoying the weather. Patsy Conway, who ran the campground with her husband, Dub, had filled her ear that morning with memories of Octobers as warm as any summer day and as bitter cold as the dead of winter.
Right now the temperature was in the midseventies, the sun was shining brightly, and there was a pleasant breeze blowing out of the northwest. It was so nice that Candace had done her morning meditation outside, sitting cross-legged on an old quilt spread over straw-like grass. She’d finished secure in the knowledge that she’d made the right decision in not running away this morning. One attempt to talk to Natalie didn’t constitute making amends. Hell, it hardly even qualified as trying. She was a journalist, which meant she possessed many qualities. Among the better ones was tenacity.
Natalie, also having been a journalist, probably didn’t even expect her to give up after one refusal. She’d taught Candace better than that—though she’d lived to regret it.
The owner of the antique store had directed her down the street to find a lawn chair. Just a few yards short of her destination was a pay phone. Though she tried to ignore it as she walked, her gaze kept drifting back to it. Even though it was the last thing she wanted on such a beautiful morning, she was going to stop and make a call before finishing her shopping. She was going to pick up the receiver, drop in the correct change and dial the number she’d committed to memory.
Rejection number two, coming up, she thought as she listened to the phone ring. It was answered after the third ring, making her catch her breath until she realized it was an answering machine. So Natalie wasn’t home, or she was screening her calls. It would make a lot of difference if she knew which.
It was the husband’s voice on the machine, his message simple and to the point. “You’ve reached the Rawlins residence. Leave a message and we’ll get back to you.” Just before the beep came a childish, “Yee-haw!”
