LITMIR.BIZ

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his eyes, he stared up at the water stain on the ceiling directly over the bed. If he squinted a little, it was a dead ringer for the outline of Australia. He contemplated it with some regret, thinking of wide beaches, cold beer and tall, tanned Aussie girls in very small bikinis. Now there was the perfect place for working through a midlife crisis. What on earth had made him decide to come back here—where he’d spent the most miserable years of his childhood?

      It was all a matter of timing, he thought as he rolled out of bed and slowly straightened his aching spine. The news of his grandfather’s death had come at a time when he was reevaluating his life. A rainy night, a slick road, and he had regained consciousness in time to hear the paramedics weighing his odds of making it to the hospital alive. With the distance provided by shock, he’d pondered the irony of dying in a car wreck. He’d lived with the possibility of his own death for a long time, but he’d always assumed it would come in a more spectacular form—a bullet, a knife sliding between his ribs, a car bomb maybe. It seemed supremely ironic that death should come in the form of something as mundane as having a tire blow out.

      He eventually limped out of the hospital minus a spleen and fifteen pounds, neither of which he’d needed to lose but he wasn’t complaining. As the doctor had told him several times, he should consider himself damned lucky to be alive at all. It wasn’t the first time he’d scraped past death by the skin of his teeth. In his line of work, it was something of an occupational hazard, and he’d lived with the possibility for so long that he didn’t even really think about it anymore. But there was something about nearly waking up dead because of a car wreck that had made him stop and take a long, hard look at his life. Maybe it was the mundanity of it—the reminder that his death could be just as meaningless as anyone else’s. Or maybe it was spending his fortieth birthday alone in the hospital—the sudden realization that half his life was over that made him question what he was going to do with the rest of it.

      It wasn’t a real midlife crisis, Reece thought as he pulled clean clothes out of his duffel bag and walked, naked, to the bathroom down the hall. In a real midlife crisis, you did stupid things like quit the job you’d had for the past fifteen years, let go of the apartment where you’d lived for almost as long, and had an affair with a woman half your age. He met the eyes of his reflection in the dingy mirror over the bathroom sink.

      Hell. Two out of three and the most boring two, at that. Maybe he should have kept the job and the apartment and just gone for the affair. His mouth twisted in a half smile as he pushed back the shower curtain. Midlife crisis or temporary insanity? Looking at the grudging trickle of tepid water that seemed to be the best the shower had to offer, Reece wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

      Shannon knelt on the lawn next to the flower bed and tugged halfheartedly at a scraggly patch of dichondra that was matted around the base of a rosebush. Generally, she gardened on the “survival of the fittest” philosophy. Any plant that couldn’t survive a little competition was welcome to move to someone else’s flower bed. She had neither the time nor the inclination to pamper delicate plants, and she tackled the weeds only when it began to look as if they were going to overwhelm the flowers.

      She sat back on her heels and eyed the patch of ground she’d cleared. The weeds weren’t really all that bad but it was such a beautiful day that it seemed a shame to spend it indoors. In early November, summer’s heat was gone and the winter rains had not yet begun. The air was dry and warm and the nights were cool enough to be refreshing. Closing her eyes, she turned her face up to the sun, savoring the warmth of it against her skin. No matter how long she lived in southern California, she didn’t think she’d ever learn to take this kind of weather for granted.

      “Good way to end up with skin cancer.”

      The tart comment made Shannon jump and she stifled a curse when she realized who had interrupted the peaceful morning. Edith Hacklemeyer lived across the street. A short, thin woman on the far side of sixty, she was a retired English teacher who filled her days with gardening, quilting and offering unwanted advice to anyone who crossed her path. She was an unimaginative gardener, a mediocre quilter and a tireless busy-body. Since she was both a neighbor and a customer at the shop, Shannon felt obligated to remain on amicable terms with her.

      “Beautiful day, isn’t it?” She chose to ignore the remark about skin cancer. One of Edith’s less appealing characteristics was her ability to find the bad in everything and everyone.

      “We need rain,” Edith said, frowning at the crystal-clear sky.

      “The rain will get here,” Shannon said easily. She leaned forward to smooth the soil around a marigold.

      “Ought to pull those up and put in some pansies,” Edith told her, eyeing the marigold with disfavor.

      “It’s still blooming, and I like the flowers.”

      “Never cared much for marigolds. They always seemed a bit tatty looking to me but, even if I liked them, I’d pull them up. Got to get the winter bloomers in early so they can get established with the first rains.”

      “Mmm.” Shannon made a polite, interested noise and tucked a little more soil around the marigold. The bright little blossoms seemed to smile at her and she smiled back.

      “I don’t envy you.” Edith’s attention shifted away from the flowers and her pale-blue eyes settled on the dusty black truck parked in the driveway of the house next door.

      “Oh, I don’t mind waiting a while to plant winter flowers,” Shannon said, deliberately misunderstanding.

      “I was talking about him,” Edith said darkly. “I don’t envy you having to live right next door to him. No telling what sort of trouble he’ll cause.”

      “I don’t see why he should cause any trouble at all.” Shannon let her gaze rest on the truck. She’d taught a class at the shop the night before and the truck had been there when she got home around ten o’clock. Obviously, the grapevine had worked with its usual efficiency and Reece Morgan really was home. After all she’d heard about him, she had to admit that she was more than a little curious to see him in the flesh.

      “His kind doesn’t need a reason. Trouble comes naturally to that sort.”

      “You haven’t seen him in twenty years. He might have changed.”

      “A leopard can’t change its spots.” Edith’s tone suggested that this observation was original to her. “Mark my words, things won’t be the same now.”

      “Maybe things could use a little shaking up.” Shannon said mildly.

      “Not the sort of shaking up he’ll give them. Can’t imagine why he came back here. He wasn’t wanted before, and he’s certainly not wanted now.”

      Until that moment Shannon had been reserving her opinion about Reece Morgan. Aside from a mild curiosity, she really hadn’t given much thought to the man. But Edith’s firm pronouncement that he wasn’t welcome set her back up instantly. She had a sudden image of the sort of welcome Edith might have given to a newly orphaned boy twenty years before. And his grandfather—just how welcoming had that stern old man been? She rose to her feet in one smooth movement.

      “Actually, I was thinking that it would be neighborly to invite him for breakfast,” she said as she dusted her hands off on the seat of her cutoffs.

      “Invite him to breakfast?” Edith couldn’t have looked more horrified if she’d just announced that she was going to tap dance naked through the center of town. “You can’t be serious.”

      “Why not?” Shannon’s smile held an edge that would have warned a more observant woman, but Edith was nothing if not unobservant.

      “He’s a hoodlum, that’s why not. He rode his bicycle through my petunias.” She offered the last triumphantly, as if no more profound evidence of wickedness could be given.

      “I don’t think a man should be judged by a childish prank. If you’ll excuse me, I think I just saw someone moving around in the kitchen,” she lied.

      Shannon walked

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