LITMIR.BIZ

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zigzagged through the trees before finally reaching the clearing where the house stood. It was a simple frame house, painted a dark rusty red. The front porch stood only a foot off the ground, so he hadn’t bothered with railings, and he generally ignored the steps centered in front. He parked at the side, stepped directly up onto the porch, then went in.

      The place always seemed so quiet compared to Tate’s house—though this evening next door had been an exception. Of course, having a three-year-old in residence made a hell of a difference. It was nice to walk into Tate’s and hear laughter, chattering and singing, to smell scents like food cooking, perfume and other feminine things, to see childish and womanly touches all over.

      Just as it was nice to come in here and find the quiet and privacy he expected.

      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

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