LITMIR.BIZ

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the livestock was a family responsibility, so he’d started pitching in as soon as he was old enough. He’d worked his way through college, taken three days off after graduation to move to Kansas City, then gone straight to work for the department.

      He liked not working for the first time in his life. Not having to get up at five-thirty to run before work, not spending more time at the shooting range each week than he did on dates, not dealing with lowlifes and lawyers, not carrying a gun with him everywhere he went. He liked not being a target for scorn and disdain, or for nutcases with weapons, and not spending more time frustrated than not.

      He liked being a bum, sleeping until noon and not seeing a solitary soul unless he wanted. He’d told his parents, Reese and Neely so repeatedly. They didn’t believe him, but that didn’t make it any less true. They thought he was burned out. Brooding. Bored. In serious need of a badge and a gun.

      Burned out? Maybe. Brooding? Nah, he’d gotten over what happened in Kansas City. Now he was just bitter. In need of another cop job? Never.

      What about bored?

      His gaze shifted to the window and the Davison place. Cassidy McRae had pulled up out front around ten-thirty. It was now six-fifteen, and he’d spent way too many of those hours watching the place, even though he hadn’t caught more than a glimpse of her passing a window. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have other things to do, like…clean house. Take Granddad’s old john boat out on the lake and catch some fish for his mother to fry. Drive into town and replenish his supply of frozen dinners. Mow the little patch of grass out front that he hadn’t yet managed to kill.

      But why be productive when he could kick back on the couch and watch the neighbor’s place during commercials on TV? Being curious took little energy and less incentive and, as a bum, he considered the less energy and incentive expended, the better.

      Besides, she was the first woman he’d really looked at since Amanda had moved out of his apartment and his life. She was the first woman he’d noticed as a woman, with all the possibilities and risks that entailed—the first who had reminded him of how long he’d been alone. Granted, he didn’t know anything about her—whether she was married, where she was from, what she did, whether she was aloof because she was shy or preoccupied or disagreeable by nature.

      What he did know was minimal. That she drove a red Honda with Arizona tags and a heavy coat of dust—a two-door that blended in easily with thousands of other little red two-doors on the road. There were no bumper stickers, no college affiliations or radio station advertising on the windows, no American flag or novelty toy flying from the antenna, no air-freshening pine tree hanging from the inside mirror. It was about as unremarkable as a car could get.

      He knew she was far from unremarkable. She was pretty, slender, five-eight, maybe five-nine, with short blond hair and pale golden skin. He hadn’t gotten close enough to identify the color of her eyes, but hoped they were brown. He’d always been a sucker for brown-eyed blondes, especially ones with long legs and full lips and an innocent sensuality about them.

      He knew next to nothing, but affairs and relationships and almost-engagements had been built on nothing more. As long as she wasn’t married, a cop or too needy, he could enjoy having her next door. He didn’t lust after married people, he’d had enough of cops to last a lifetime and enough of people who needed something from him to last two lifetimes.

      He couldn’t help but wonder, though, what had brought her to Buffalo Plains, and why she was staying all the way out here. She’d said she was here to work, but people didn’t come to Buffalo Plains to work. They came for reasons like Neely’s—hiding out from an ex-con who’d thought killing her was fair punishment for his going to prison. Or her sister, Hallie Marshall, escaping a life that had become unbearable. Or Hallie’s stepdaughter, Lexy, who’d run away from home to find the father she’d never known.

      But to work? When any work she could do over there in Junior’s cabin could just as easily be done someplace else? Someplace better?

      Maybe she was hiding, escaping or running away, too.

      He wouldn’t even wonder from what.

      He was debating between SpaghettiOs and a sandwich for supper when the sound of an engine drew his gaze to the window. Reese parked his truck under the big oak nearest the cabin, then he and Neely got out, each carrying a grocery bag. By the time they reached the deck, Jace was opening the screen door. He stood there, arms folded over his chest. “Hey, bubba. Don’t you know it’s rude to drop in on someone without calling first?”

      “We tried to call,” Reese replied, “and all we got was voice mail. You have your cell phone shut off again, don’t you? And you don’t check your voice mail, so you leave us no choice but to drive all the way out here.”

      In spite of his scowl, Jace wasn’t really pissed. Reese was his only close cousin, and they’d been raised more like brothers. They’d been buddies and partners in crime since they were in diapers. They’d gone to school together, kindergarten through twelfth grade, and attended the same university. When a shoulder injury had ended Reese’s pro baseball career, he’d gone into law enforcement in part because Jace was doing it.

      Now Reese was the sheriff hereabouts…and Jace was a disgraced ex-cop.

      Though he hadn’t invited them in, Neely nudged him aside and crossed the threshold. “We come bearing mail and food, and we’re staying for dinner.” Retrieving a rubber-banded packet of letters from the bag, she handed them over, then continued to the kitchen.

      Stepping back so Reese could enter, too, Jace thumbed through the mail sent in care of his folks. Bills for the necessities of life—electric, gas, cell phone, car insurance. He didn’t have to pay rent because he and Reese had inherited this place when their grandfather died. He’d never relied on plastic much even in Kansas City, and had even less use for it holed up out here. His only other expenses were groceries and an occasional tank of gas, plus his one luxury—satellite TV. A man had to do something day after day.

      Reese left the grocery sack in the kitchen, then helped himself to a beer from the refrigerator—fair enough, since he’d brought them the last time he’d visited. After brushing his hand against Neely’s shoulder, he returned to the living room and dropped into a chair. “What have you been up to?”

      Jace shrugged. “The usual.”

      “Exciting life,” Reese said, his tone as dry as the Sahara in summer.

      “I’m not looking for excitement.” Truth was, he wasn’t looking for anything, and he wasn’t sure that would ever change. For as long as he could remember, all he’d ever wanted to be was a cop. Since he couldn’t be that anymore, he didn’t have a clue what he could be.

      “You give any thought to coming to work for the sheriff’s department?”

      “Nope.”

      “You give any thought to anything?” Now there was an irritated edge to Reese’s voice that had appeared somewhere around the tenth or twentieth time they’d had this conversation. Reese thought Jace had had plenty of time to get his life back on track, and he wouldn’t accept that Jace’s only plans for the future dealt with sleeping, eating and fishing. He didn’t believe Jace could walk away from being a cop.

      The hell of it was, Jace couldn’t even accuse him of not understanding, because Reese had been through it before. All he’d ever wanted to do was to play baseball, and he’d lived the dream—made it to the big leagues—then had it taken away from him.

      But Reese had found something else he wanted—two other things, Jace amended with a glance at Neely. The only thing Jace wanted was for life to go back to the way it had been a year ago. And since he couldn’t turn back the clock…

      “You looking for an answer that doesn’t suck or just ignoring me?” Reese asked.

      “I think about a lot of things.” But being a cop again wasn’t one of them.

      Reese watched him for a moment, his gaze narrowed, then apparently decided to

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