LITMIR.BIZ

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forced herself off the couch and downed the remaining contents of her wineglass. That was it. She wasn’t going to think about…him, or work or anything anymore for fear that her head might explode.

      She craned her neck, watching as Gauge finished the shoveling and headed up the stairs to his place.

      No…she shouldn’t. To even consider going over there would be nothing but stupid.

      Who was she kidding? At that moment it might very well be the smartest decision she’d made in a very long time.

       2

      GAUGE BRUSHED the snow from his old cowboy boots and shrugged out of his jacket and sweatshirt, hanging them on the back of a kitchen chair in his small studio apartment. He’d hoped the physical activity of shoveling would help chase away the demons that had been haunting him lately. And it had. But for how long?

      He grabbed the bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the table and unscrewed the top, taking a long pull from the whiskey, standing still as it warmed his chest and then swirled outward to his cold extremities.

      The apartment was small but nice. He guessed it had probably been renovated in the past year or so. All the appliances and fixtures were new, the furniture unworn and scratch free. Unlike most of the places he was used to staying in when he was out on the road playing with whatever band he’d hooked up with. Or all the motels rooms, shabby apartments and run-down houses he’d shared with his traveling musician father when he was growing up.

      Not that he paid much attention to his surroundings. As far as he was concerned, they were just details. And he probably wouldn’t be staying here except for Nina’s involvement. Nina was one of his partners in BMC, a bookstore/music center/café, and she matched him up with Lizzie Gilbred, the sister of Heidi’s ex, when Lizzie had listed the studio for rent.

      He rubbed his chin and screwed the top back on the whiskey, putting the bottle on the table. It wasn’t that he didn’t like the place. He supposed it was all right. There was just something odd about living in the good part of town. About parking his beat-up Chevy Camaro at the curb where few cars sat, but those that did were BMWs, Mercedes and Rovers. You’d think that he’d be used to the fluttering of curtains as neighbors watched him come and go, but it bothered him on a fundamental level he was loath to ignore. What did they think—that he was going to break in and rape their women? Kill their children?

      He didn’t know the names of any of them. And he’d lived there for nearly four months. Surely there was something abnormal about that?

      Since the places he was used to staying in were shabby, the neighborhoods where they were located tended to be on the grungy side. Usually downtown, crowded with other people that looked like him, where no curtains fluttered because there were usually no curtains. And while he might not stay long in any one place, he always left knowing the names of most of the people around him, and could count more than a few of them as friends.

      Hell, here he’d maybe talked to his landlady a handful of times. And she only lived thirty feet away in the Tudor-style monstrosity she called a house. From what he could tell, she used all of three rooms: the kitchen, the back room with the fireplace and what he guessed was her bedroom on the second floor.

      He could only imagine what her monthly heating bill looked like.

      That’s probably why she or any of the other neighbors weren’t home much. They were too busy working to pay the bills that went along with their lifestyle—like astronomical heating bills.

      Speaking of heat…

      After pushing the arrow and nudging the digital numbers up to sixty-nine degrees on the thermostat, he picked up his acoustic guitar where he’d left it sitting on the edge of the queen-size bed and walked around with it until the baseboard heaters warmed the place. He stopped near the window overlooking the driveway. Already the falling snow was beginning to cover his work. He hit a dissonant chord and automatically adjusted the tension of the wayward string, tuning and testing three times before he was satisfied.

      His gaze was drawn to the back of the Tudor where he could see Lizzie Gilbred spilled across the leather sofa in front of the fireplace. He ran his fingers over the guitar strings, playing the distinctive licks of Muddy Waters’s “Going Down Slow,” the sound making the room feel not so empty. There was a time when he might have brought one of the young women who liked his playing home to warm his bed, but not now. Not since he’d come back to Fantasy, determined to forge a different life for himself.

      Not since he’d fallen for a woman he’d had no right falling for. A woman he could never have. A woman who was now married to his best friend.

      Gauge closed his eyes and dropped his chin to his chest, his fingers moving as if on their own accord.

      There had been times lately when he’d thought maybe returning to Michigan hadn’t been such a great idea. But in his lifetime, the three-year span he’d spent here was the longest he’d spent anywhere. And when he’d left, he’d been even more aware of the hollow loneliness of wandering the country in search of his next gig than he’d ever been before. Partly because he’d gotten a taste of what love, real love, might be like. Mostly because his best friends and business partners, Nina Leonard and Kevin Weber, had been the family he’d never had.

      Until he went and mucked things up.

      He forced all thought from his mind, giving himself over to the music, feeling the blues wash over him, through him.

      A knock at the door.

      Gauge opened his eyes, convinced he was hearing things, because it was a sound he hadn’t heard since moving in.

      Another knock.

      He leaned the guitar against the bed.

      He wasn’t sure what he expected when he opened the door. But it sure wasn’t what he found.

      Lizzie Gilbred.

      Hadn’t he just seen her in her house? What was she doing out in this weather? What was she doing knocking at his door?

      She bounced a couple of times, as if cold, looking smaller somehow in the oversize camel-hair coat she wore.

      Gauge had always had a deep appreciation of women. He supposed it came from not having had a constant female presence in his life. But the opposite sex never failed to fascinate him. Even if that weren’t the case, Lizzie Gilbred would have made a lasting impression on him. It was more than her golden-blond hair and wide, baby-doll-blue eyes. There was an inherent sexiness to her, and he couldn’t help wondering why she covered it up in her strict business suits and pulledback hairstyles.

      He couldn’t help thinking that if she hadn’t been an attorney, she’d have made a great stripper.

      “Can I come in?” she asked, intruding on his thoughts.

      Probably a bad idea in a long line of bad ideas. Just as he appreciated women, he knew them better than they sometimes knew themselves. And he knew that for whatever reason, Lizzie had decided to distract herself with him.

      Then again, his girl-dar had been off a little lately. She could be there to evict him.

      Gauge shrugged and moved away from the door. “Seeing as you own the place, I don’t know that I can stop you.”

      She stepped inside, quickly closing the door after her. She looked around the apartment and then at him. “Am I interrupting something?”

      Gauge tucked his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans. Definitely there to distract herself.

      Where once the thought might have mildly amused him, now he was vaguely disappointed. But never let it be said that he ever turned a great-looking woman away from his bed. And Lizzie was absolutely stunning. She’d let her coat hang open and he appreciated the snug black cashmere sweater and clingy black pants she wore.

      “Am I late with the rent?” he asked.

      She smiled. “No. I

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