LITMIR.BIZ

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the woman’s eye color from several yards away, but he’d seen her around town plenty of times. His memory automatically filled in the visual details that were fuzzy from this distance, as well as her name: Veronica Carter. Perhaps she’d merely been looking around, just as he had, and their gazes colliding was coincidence. But there seemed to be something in her expression—

      A laughing couple wandered into his line of sight, blocking Veronica, and he blinked, feeling foolish.

      “McDeere?”

      “Yeah. Sorry, I just remembered something I needed to take care of Monday.”

      “Really? ’Cause it was more like you were staring at someone.” Hank glanced over his shoulder, trying to confirm his suspicion.

      “So, are we ready to leave?” Jason asked.

      “I guess.” But Hank wasn’t completely diverted. “You sure you weren’t looking at someone?”

      Jason had never been good at lying outright. “Like who?”

      His friend shrugged. “Dunno…but if there is someone who’s caught your interest, I’ll hear about it soon enough. One thing you’ll learn about Joyous if you haven’t already, it’s damn near impossible to keep a secret here.”

      Chapter Two

      “Mornin’, darlin’.”

      Ronnie glanced up from the Monday paper she was scanning at the table and smiled as Wayne Carter came down the stairs into the kitchen. “Hey, Daddy.”

      “What’s on the breakfast menu this morning?”

      “Cereal.” She pointed to the bowl and spoon she’d pulled out for him. “It’s the one thing I’m guaranteed not to burn.”

      He paused behind her, ruffling her hair. “You’re too hard on yourself. You’ve blossomed into a fair cook.”

      Well, she hadn’t sent anyone to Doc Caldwell with food poisoning, so she guessed that was something.

      She could hold her own with prepackaged meals and brownies made from a mix, but she couldn’t duplicate the efforts of Sue Carter, who used to can her own jellies, made noodles from scratch for her soup and never once served a store-bought dessert until after her cancer diagnosis. One day, a few weeks after her mother’s funeral, Ronnie had stood inside the walk-in pantry sobbing at the realization that they were about to open the last of mama’s blackberry preserves and that there would never be any more.

      The sounds of her dad’s chair scraping on the tile and subsequent rustling of cereal into a ceramic bowl dragged Ronnie back to the present. She blinked against the phantom sting of long-ago tears.

      Wayne nodded toward the paper. “You done with the sports page?”

      “You can have the whole thing.”

      The Journal-Report was folded in half, open to the classified section. Her dad glanced down, then back at her.

      “I was, ah, looking for good deals on furniture I could restore.”

      “For the new place.” To give him credit, he tried to sound happy for her. But there was no mistaking the shadow that passed over his expression. “It’ll sure be lonely with you gone.”

      She rose, carrying her empty bowl to the sink. “You’ll still have Dev.”

      Before Ronnie was born, Wayne and Sue had bought the converted farmhouse in which she’d lived her entire life. Though the surrounding acreage that comprised the original farm had been sold off in parcels to local families, the old bunkhouse sat at the back of Wayne’s property. Devin had fixed it up and moved in, paying a nominal rent each month. Half the time, he joined them for dinner.

      Or breakfast, if he hadn’t entertained an overnight guest. At least he has the freedom to have overnight guests. Ronnie glared through the blue-checkered curtains in the direction of her brother’s unseen home.

      She rinsed the dishes, wiped her damp palms on the front of her jeans and smiled at her father. “Besides, you’ll see me practically every day, boss.”

      He laughed. “True. You probably think I’m being an old fool, don’t you? It’s just…you’re the last little bird to leave the nest.”

      Not that Devin had flown far, but she knew what her dad meant. Her brother Will had settled in North Carolina, where he’d gone to college and met his wife. Danny had Kaitlyn and Ashley now. Besides, restless Dev with his odd jobs and fleeting girlfriends sometimes seemed as likely to take off for a distant ranching job in Texas as show up for Sunday dinner. Her brothers, in their individual ways, were all living their lives.

      Then there’s me, caught in a time warp.

      She worked for her father, lived at home and was so tongue-tied at the thought of asking a cute guy to dance that she might as well still be the awkward, freckled fifteen-year-old who wore her brothers’ hand-me-down T-shirts more often than dresses. Even now, Lola Ann kidded that Ronnie only knew two hairstyles—a ponytail beneath her denim Carter & Sons cap and a ponytail without the hat. Glancing down, she took in the faded George Strait concert shirt she’d tucked into her jeans.

      “I think I’ll run and change before heading to the garage,” she said, hearing the rueful note in her own voice.

      Her dad paused with a spoonful of shredded wheat halfway to his mouth. “What the heck’s wrong with what you’re wearing?”

      For the mechanic who’d be sliding on protective coveralls, anyway? Nothing. For the woman she’d started wondering if she would ever truly become? More than she could possibly articulate.

      BY THE TIME JASON APPROACHED the front of the high school, his paper bag from the Sandwich Shoppe in hand, there wasn’t much of his free period left to eat lunch at his desk. It would have been quicker to take his car, but the mid-March weather was ideal, providing the perfect sun-dappled, breezy backdrop for the picturesque town.

      “Afternoon, Mr. McDeere.” Allen, the custodian, stood a few feet away at the half wall that formed a horseshoe around the school’s courtyard. Just beyond the brick wall were several picnic tables, the flagpole and the stairs leading inside.

      Though the overall crime rate in Joyous was low, there had been some recent drive-by mailbox bashings and a spate of graffiti on the courtyard wall. Jason shook his head at the spray-painted suggestion that had appeared over the weekend. Obscene and misspelled.

      “I see our miscreants are keeping you busy,” Jason said.

      Allen grinned beneath his bushy gray mustache. “Beats spending the day inside solving plumbing emergencies. Principal Schonrock’s on the warpath, though. In the faculty lounge, she was threatening to cancel Spring Fling if the vandalism continues, but talked herself out of it, not wanting to penalize the whole student body for the actions of a few.”

      Spring Fling was the formal dance at the end of this month. Since Jason hadn’t attended Homecoming in October or the Holiday Ball in December, Betty Schonrock had made it clear she expected Jason to take his turn and help chaperone the Fling. He’d gone so far as to promise his second-period class that if every one of them memorized either the Queen Mab speech from Romeo and Juliet or Mark Antony’s address in Julius Caesar, Jason would hit the dance floor to bust some old school moves. All part of his ongoing attempts to get the students engaged in Shakespeare.

      Plan B was to point out some of the more creative insults and dirty jokes in the Bard’s plays, but Principal Schonrock might frown on that.

      He took the stairs two at a time and had no sooner entered the building than he spotted the principal herself. She’d left the administrative office and was headed in the direction of the cafeteria. Betty was a diminutive but solidly built woman with a bob of silver-white hair and a sharp turquoise gaze that struck fear in the hearts of students, from pimply freshmen to linebackers on the Jaguar football team.

      “Speak

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