LITMIR.BIZ

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and, as Jace had pointed out, it had been nine years. He’d had more than his share of women in those years, which was nobody’s business but his and theirs, and her affairs were none of his business. Not worth caring about, sure as hell not worth getting annoyed about.

      “Any questions?”

      She shook her head, and did little more than ruffle her bangs.

      He gave himself a silent command to stand up and walk out of the room, to say nothing else, to put her out of his mind for the moment. He managed the standing-up part, but not the rest. The question just popped out on its own. “What the hell happened to your hair?”

      She didn’t touch it self-consciously, which suggested that she’d worn it short a long time. She simply shrugged. “I went through a period a while back when I didn’t have much use of my right shoulder and arm. Taking care of long hair was a problem, so I chopped it off.”

      Heat flooded his face and sent an edgy shudder down his spine. She was talking about the incident in Thomasville, when she’d gotten caught in the cross fire between an unstable client and a half dozen enraged deputies—the incident that had ended their relationship once and for all, that had haunted him for years afterward. He’d lost so much that day, and it was her fault. Yet she could talk about it so casually, as if it were no big deal. A woman had died, their affair had died—hell, sometimes he’d felt as if he were dying. But, hey, it was all in the past, over and done with.

      She was waiting for him to say something, her fake-innocent brown gaze fixed on his face. He didn’t know what she wanted—an acknowledgment of what had happened? An inquiry into her recovery? An explanation? An apology? Whatever she wanted, he offered nothing. He simply circled the couch and returned to the kitchen…but not before catching a glimpse of the disappointment that darkened her eyes.

      As if he cared, after all that had happened, if she was disappointed in him.

      After putting the dishes in the dishwasher, he used the cell phone to check in with his office. It had been an average day—a few arrests, a couple of burglaries, enough traffic stops to pay the department salaries for the day. He told the undersheriff he wouldn’t be in the next day, brushed off the questions about why, and ended the call.

      It was barely four o’clock and he felt like a prisoner in his own home. The sounds of a daytime talk show came from the living room, one he wouldn’t be caught dead watching. There was no cleaning to do, no groceries to buy, no laundry to wash. He’d been pretty damn industrious yesterday, which he wouldn’t have been had he known he would be stuck at home baby-sitting Neely today. Other than mowing, there was nothing to do, and he wasn’t sure he trusted her enough to leave her alone inside while he was outside.

      Restlessly he gazed around the kitchen, then noticed the flashing light on the answering machine. He hit the playback button, then impatiently drummed his fingers on the counter until the first message started.

      “Hi, Reese, it’s Shay. I just wanted to remind you about dinner tonight. The dispatcher said you’d taken the day off unexpectedly. You’d better not be planning to stand me up, and if you do, you’d better have a real good excuse. See you.”

      He muttered a curse. He’d completely forgotten the invitation to have dinner with Shay Rafferty and her husband Easy tonight. They would be more than happy for him to bring Neely along, and she would be as safe at their place out in the country as she was here, but Shay knew him too well. She would want explanations he wasn’t about to make, and when she couldn’t get them from him, she would charm them out of Neely.

      The next message was short and to the point—“Hi, Reese, it’s Ginger. Call me sometime.”—and the third was delivered in a hot sultry voice. “Hey, cowboy, I certainly enjoyed my riding lesson the other night. I figure this soreness will be gone in another day or two, so when can we saddle up for another go-round? Give me a call. You’ve got my number.”

      A snort drew his attention to the doorway, where Neely was leaning against the jamb. With her feet bare and the denim dress that exposed her arms and throat and reached almost to her ankles, she looked very country, very natural and right, as if he’d designed the room with her in mind.

      But he hadn’t. He may have given a thought or two to sharing this place with a woman someday—he didn’t intend to stay single forever—but that dream woman had been faceless, nameless. She certainly hadn’t been Neely Madison, whom he considered much more a nightmare than a dream.

      When he turned his back on her, she padded across the cool stone floor to the sink to refill her water glass, he guessed from the sounds of it. He erased the messages, then called Shay at the Heartbreak Café. As soon as he said hello, she accusingly interrupted.

      “You forgot, didn’t you?”

      “Sort of. Something came up at work. I’m not going to be able to make it.”

      “Oh, by all means, go on,” Neely remarked on her way back into the living room. “I don’t mind staying here alone.”

      Reese scowled at her back as a note of interest came into Shay’s voice. “You have company—female company. Reese Barnett, are you seeing some woman that none of us knows about?”

      “No. I told you, it’s work.”

      “Uh-huh. I’ve never known you to take your work home with you. Is she a new deputy? A suspect? A suspect’s lawyer?”

      “Look, I really can’t talk, Shay. I’m sorry about tonight.”

      “Not as sorry as you’re about to become. Easy’s buyer from Fort Worth is joining us for dinner.”

      She was right. He was sorrier now. Shay’s husband was a rodeo champ turned horse trainer who boasted the best paints in Oklahoma. Victoria Morales, his Fort Worth buyer, was a regular customer, beautiful as an angel, rich as sin and as down-to-earth natural as any woman Reese had ever known. He’d met her a time or two before and liked her—a lot. “Tell her I’m sorry I missed her.”

      “This work you can’t talk about…is she as pretty as Victoria?”

      Though it was totally unnecessary, he couldn’t stop his gaze from going to Neely, settled once again in his chair. She was beautiful, too, much as he wished he could deny it. But so much had gone wrong between them that couldn’t be set right. He couldn’t imagine ever getting beyond the past or reaching for a future, not with her.

      Even though, for a long time, a future with Neely had been all he’d ever wanted. Love. Marriage. Kids. Till-death-do-us-part.

      Death had parted them, all right. Just not in the way he’d expected.

      “I’ve got to go, Shay,” he said abruptly. “Give my best to Easy and Victoria. We’ll try again some other time.”

      Chapter 2

      Neely stood at the living-room window, staring off to the west as the setting sun turned the sky pink, lavender, blue, and every shade imaginable in between. When the darkness began to gradually seep over the colors, she was tempted for one whimsical moment to applaud and call out, “Good job!” and “Do it again!” Of course, she did nothing of the sort. She smiled, though—to herself, for herself—and wished she could grab hold tight of this fleeting serenity and wrap it around her for a little longer. She had so few truly peaceful moments in her life that they’d become dear.

      “Get away from the window. Someone might see you.”

      She didn’t argue with the curt command—didn’t point out that she stood in a darkened room on a dusky evening, or that the blackjack oaks that grew thick as weeds between the street and the yard made it impossible to see that there was even a house back here. She simply moved away from the window and toward Reese.

      She’d offered her help with dinner and he’d turned her down. She’d said she would set the table and he’d told her to go away. Now she stood in the doorway of the brightly lit kitchen, hands clasped behind her back, and watched as he dished up steaks and baked sweet

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