One True Thing Read online

  “She’s not particularly neighborly.”

  “Oh, she’s probably just a little shy or busy getting settled in. But she has to eat, and we have plenty of wonderful food. Go on. You be neighborly. Show her how it’s done.” Then Neely gave him a suddenly sly look. “Unless there’s some reason you don’t want us to meet her. Is she pretty?”

  Matchmaking, he reminded himself. She’d tried it a dozen or so times when they’d both lived in Kansas City, with often painful results. She nagged him as much as Reese did, just in a gentler fashion, about giving up the vegetating and getting back to living, and she thought a romance with a pretty woman the perfect solution to his problem.

  So he lied. “She’s old enough to be our mother. This tall.” He held his hand about four feet above the floor. “Round. Wears thick-soled shoes and nerdy glasses. Not my type.”

  Apparently she thought she’d been more subtle because the look she gave him was reproving and the words she said an outright lie. “I’m not trying to get you a date, Jace. I’m talking about inviting a woman who’s new in town to share the dinner your mother so generously made for us. Do you have a problem with that?”

  Not trying to get me a date, my ass. She’d tried to set him up with the checker at the grocery store just last week. Two weeks before that, it had been her secretary’s visiting niece, and the month before that, it had been the new waitress at Shay Rafferty’s café in Heartbreak. Neely wanted to fix his life, whether he was willing or not.

  Scowling, he rose from his chair. “Jeez, she bosses me around in my own house. All right, I’ll invite her to dinner, but she’s gonna say no.”

  “But you’ll feel better for having made the effort,” Neely sweetly called after him.

  After checking out McRae that morning, he had eventually put on a shirt, but he’d never made it to shoes. He winced as he stepped on a rock on her side of the bridge, then again when he walked onto the deck. Where his was sheltered by the cabin from midafternoon on, hers got full sunlight until dusk. The weathered boards were uncomfortably hot underfoot.

  From across the inlet came the sound of his screen door banging—Neely making another delivery to the patio table—so he deliberately stood at an angle that would block her view of the door, then knocked. The Unplugged version of “Layla” was playing inside—the only sound at all until suddenly the door opened a few inches. Cassidy McRae looked none too happy to be disturbed.

  He wouldn’t mind being disturbed a whole lot more.

  She had changed from this morning’s jeans and T-shirt into shorts and a tank top in shades of blue. Her feet were in flip-flops edged with a row of gaudy blue flowers, and her toenails were painted purplish blue. She would have looked depressingly young if not for the glasses she wore. The blue metal frames added a few years to her baby-owl look and made her eyes look twice their size.

  She pushed the glasses up with one fingertip. “Yes?”

  Brown eyes, he noticed. Dark, chocolatey brown, staring at him with only a hint of impatience that made him remember his reason for bothering her. “My mother sent dinner—the best lasagna outside of Italy. Want to join us?”

  “Who is ‘us’?”

  “My cousin Reese and his wife Neely. He’s the sheriff here, and she’s a lawyer over in Buffalo Plains.” He wasn’t sure why he’d offered the extra info. To assure her that they were respectable, which might make him respectable by association?

  She glanced in the direction of the kitchen. Looking over her shoulder, he saw the laptop open on the table, the word processing screen filled with text. Her book? He wondered what it was about, how she sat and pulled coherent thoughts and sentences from her brain and transferred them to the screen. He would rather face a short drunk with a bad attitude than sit at a computer all day trying to be creative.

  “I’m working,” she said at last when she looked back. “I shouldn’t stop.”

  There—that was easy. He could accept her reply and go home. Reese and Neely wouldn’t see her and find out he’d lied in his description. Neely wouldn’t get that evil gleam in her eye and, with her none the wiser, he would save himself a lot of future hassle.

  But instead of saying goodbye and leaving, he shifted to lean against the jamb. “You have to eat.”

  “I’ve got food.”

  “Already cooked and ready to dish up? The best lasagna in the English-speaking world?”

  For a moment her clear gaze remained fixed on him, as if she was wavering. Then she glanced at the computer again and went stiff all over. “I appreciate the invitation, but I can’t accept. I have to get back to work.”

  Definitely no Southern accent. No accent at all, in fact. Had she consciously gotten rid of it, or had she lost it by living in a lot of places?

  “Okay. It’s your loss. You won’t find such good company for…oh, a few miles, at least, the food can’t be beat, and there’s probably something incredible for dessert.”

  “Sorry,” she murmured.

  He was supposed to feel relieved. Neely and Reese would return home, none the wiser about his neighbor. He wouldn’t have to spend the evening hiding any hint that he thought she was gorgeous from prying eyes or have to deal with Neely’s inevitable attempts to get them together. He wouldn’t have to explain why he’d lied when describing her.

  But mostly what he felt was disappointment. It was no great loss, no matter what he’d told Cassidy. Sitting across the table from a pretty woman would have been a nice change from the way he’d spent his last one hundred and eighty-plus evenings. Being tempted to spend his night differently would have been damn nice. But not tonight, apparently.

  When he reached the bottom of the steps, he turned, walking backward for parting words. “If you change your mind, you know where to find us.”

  She gave no response—no nod or murmured thanks or sorry. She simply stood there and watched.

  He was on his own side of the bridge before she finally closed the door.

  Chapter 2

  She watched him leave, unaware of the wistfulness that marred her face. How she would have liked to walk across the bridge with him, to sit down at the small round table and enjoy the cool evening air, the savory aromatic food and the company of strangers. She was tired of being alone, tired of having no friends, tired of having to be on guard all the time. She was tired, tired, tired, tired.

  Besides, she hadn’t had lasagna in a long time.

  Wednesday morning found Cassidy stretched out on the couch, the television turned on but the sound muted. The picture was filled with snow and the static made the audio unbearable—and this was the channel that came in the best. She’d noticed the satellite dish on the neighboring cabin’s roof with some envy while washing the breakfast dishes. Too bad she couldn’t run a cable over there and tap into his better reception, but that would be illegal. Besides, she had no clue how to do such a thing. Inserting a plug into an outlet was the extent of her electronic abilities.

  On the dining table, the laptop made a faint hum as the fan came on. The screen was dark, but if she walked over and moved the cursor, the WordPerfect screen would pop up with the same lines that had been on it last evening when Jace Barnett had knocked. She’d been lying on the sofa then, too, trying to read a magazine but finding concentration too difficult to come by. She had tiptoed to the door, turned down his dinner invitation, then watched until he’d crossed the bridge. After closing the door she’d peeked through the blinds as he’d joined the man and woman on the deck. They had talked and laughed and eaten…and she had watched. Like the little match girl in the story her mother had read her long ago, on the outside looking in.

  Except she was inside looking out. More like a prisoner locked away for her crimes. But the crimes that made her a prisoner weren’t her own. She was the victim, but she was getting all the punishment.

  Unable to stand the flickering TV any longer, she surged to her feet, shut it off, then went to the window. The other cabin was still and quiet. She’d heard a b
oat putt past more than an hour ago, sounding as if it were coming from that way. If Jace Barnett was out on the lake, there couldn’t be any harm in her spending a little time outside in the sun, could there?

  She got a sheet from her bedroom, a pair of sunglasses and a book, and headed outside. After another trip back in for the boom box and a glass of water, she spread the sheet over the grass, settled on her stomach and started reading to the accompaniment of B. B. King.

  It was a peaceful, easy way to spend a morning, with the sun warm on her skin, the soft lap of the water against the shore, the buzz of bees among the wildflowers. Trade the sheet on the ground for a rope hammock and the glass of water for lemonade, and she would be as contented as a fat cat drinking cream in a sunbeam. As it was, she was almost contented enough to doze off. If she wasn’t careful, she would wake up with the sunburn to end all sunburns, and then what would she do?

  Gradually she became aware that the music had stopped. The sun’s pleasant warmth had become uncomfortably hot, and the bees’ buzzing had been replaced by slow, steady breathing…and it wasn’t her own.

  She opened her eyes and tried to focus on the lush embossed floral depiction an inch from the tip of her nose. She had dozed off, using the novel for a pillow, knocking her sunglasses askew. All the moisture had been sucked out of her skin that was exposed to the sun and redeposited in places that weren’t, dampening her clothes and making her feel icky.

  And there was that breathing.

  She lifted her head, sliding the glasses back into place, and saw her neighbor sitting a few feet away. He wore cutoffs, a ragged Kansas City Chiefs T-shirt and tennis shoes without socks, and he looked as if he hardly even noticed the heat. His own shades were darker than hers, hiding his eyes completely, but she didn’t need to see them to know his gaze was fixed on her. The shiver sliding down her spine told her so.

  “Working hard?”

  Hoping the embossed cover wasn’t outlined on her cheek, Cassidy slowly sat up, rubbed her face, then combed her fingers through her hair. “Doing research,” she said, holding up the book, then laying it aside.

  “Checking out the competition?”

  She shrugged.

  “So you write—”

  “Watch it,” she warned.

  “I was just going to say—”

  “I know what you were going to say. It was the way you were going to say it.” She picked up her glass, its contents lukewarm now, and took a sip. “‘So you write romance novels.’ Or ‘So you write trashy books.’ Or ‘So you write sex books.’ Wink, wink, leer.” Her gaze narrowed. “I didn’t tell you I write anything.”

  “Reese did—my cousin. He got it from Paulette.”

  Cassidy was half surprised the real estate agent had remembered long enough to pass the information on. The woman had shown little interest, other than to remark that she was going to write a book someday. Everybody was, Cassidy had learned in her short career.

  “Paulette says you’re from Alabama.”

  “California,” she lied without hesitation.

  “You have Arizona tags.”

  “It’s on the way here from California.”

  He didn’t seem to appreciate her logic. “I can see confusing Alabama and Arizona, both of them starting and ending with A. But Alabama and California?”

  “They both have ‘al’ in them. Besides, when people talk, Paulette listens for the silence that indicates it’s her turn to speak, not for content.”

  “That’s true. She does like to share her vast knowledge with everyone.”

  “Sounds like you know her well.”

  “She’s my cousin, three or four times removed.”

  It must be nice to have family around. She had relatives, too, but she hadn’t seen them in six years. No visits, no phone calls, no letters. It was worse than having no family at all, and so she pretended that was the case. Fate had decreed she should be all alone in the world, and there was no use trying to fight it.

  “Then you’re from around here,” she said, then shrugged when his gaze intensified. “You said yesterday you’d just moved out here a while ago.”

  “I was staying with my folks outside Buffalo Plains.”

  “Why move?”

  “Because I’m too old to live with my parents any longer than necessary.”

  Why had it been necessary? she wanted to ask. Had he lost his job? Gone through a lousy divorce that left him with nothing? Been recovering from a serious illness? Offhand, she couldn’t think of any other reasons an able-bodied adult male would move in with Mom and Dad.

  But instead of asking such a personal question, she asked another that was too personal. “Do you work?”

  Again his hidden gaze seemed to sharpen. “Nope. I occasionally help Guthrie Harris with his cattle, or Easy Rafferty with his horses, but that’s about it.”

  “Easy Rafferty. What a name.”

  “You heard of him?”

  She shook her head.

  “He used to be a world champion roper until he lost a couple fingers in an accident. Now he raises the best paints in this part of the country. He could teach that horse whisperer guy a few things.”

  A rodeo cowboy. She knew nothing about them—had never been to a rodeo or gotten closer to any horse than passing a mounted police patrol in the city—but they were popular in the books boxed up inside. So were Indians of all types, including cowboys. Though she had no trouble picturing Jace Barnett in faded Wranglers, a pearl-snapped shirt and a Stetson, something about the image didn’t feel quite right. She had no reason to think he was lying to her—other than the fact that she usually lied herself—but the man was more than a part-time cowboy.

  “Are you researching this area?”

  She was still imagining him in jeans and scuffed boots, with a big championship buckle on his belt. The question caught her off guard, leaving her blinking a couple of times until her brain caught up. Research, the area, her book—remember? Her reason for being here?

  “Oh…no…not really. I just wanted someplace quiet to write.”

  “And you had to come halfway across the country to find it? Why not just rent a place close to home?”

  He obviously didn’t believe her, and that made color rise in her face. “Oh…well…I mean, the book is set in Oklahoma, but I—I did most of my research from home. On the Internet, you know. But I needed a break from California, and I like to do the actual writing on location.” She shrugged carelessly. “I know it sounds strange, but there are as many different methods of writing out there as there are writers. A lot of us are strange.”

  “Huh.” He put a wealth of skepticism in that one word, but didn’t pursue it. “Where do you live in California?”

  She gave the first answer that came to mind. “San Diego. Actually, one of the suburbs. A little place called Lemon Grove.” She’d been to San Diego once—so many years ago that she remembered little about it besides the beach being closed due to a sewage spill down the coast and the fun they’d had at Sea World. If a visit to Lemon Grove had been a part of the trip, she didn’t remember it, but it was an easy enough name to recall.

  “You live there alone?”

  “Yes.”

  “What about your house?”

  There was a reason she didn’t encourage casual conversation when she found herself with neighbors, she thought with a tautly controlled breath. Too many questions, too many chances for missteps. Not that the consequences were likely to be deadly, but she never knew.

  “I gave up my apartment and put everything in storage,” she replied, deliberately injecting a distant tone into her voice. “Finding a new place to live is easy.” She’d done it more times in the past few years than any sane person should have to endure.

  She stood, slid her feet into her thongs, then carried the book and her glass to the deck. Returning, she shook out the sheet and started to haphazardly fold it. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

  Jace showed no intention of leaving. In
stead he leaned back, his arms supporting him, and stretched his legs out. “Writing must be hard work.”

  “More for some than others.”

  “How long have you been doing it?”

  “A while.”

  “Have you sold anything?”

  “A few books.” After all, a writer who could travel fifteen hundred miles to write a book in a rented lakefront cabin had to have some source of income, right? And it had to be a source that didn’t require eight-to-five workdays in an office somewhere, and to pay well enough to justify the expense of a temporary cross-country move.

  “How many is that?”

  She shrugged.

  “Fewer than five? More than ten?”

  With a roll of her eyes, she pretended to count mentally, then said, “Seven.” It was everyone’s lucky number, and though her life had been utterly devoid of luck the past couple of years, she could pretend like everyone else, couldn’t she?

  “Seven. Lucky number.”

  She smiled thinly. “Seventy will be luckier…but if I don’t get to work, I won’t even see eight.”

  She intended to march into the house then, but he finally moved to get up and she couldn’t resist watching. His legs were long and muscular—runner’s legs, though she couldn’t imagine him summoning up enough energy to jog from her house to his—and he moved with the grace and ease she’d sorely needed for ballet class when she was seven. Instead she’d been the clumsiest student Miss Karla had ever taught and, after falling off the stage during a recital, she had gladly hung up her slippers.

  When he was on his feet, he stretched and his T-shirt rode up to display a thin line of smooth brown skin above the narrow waist of his cutoffs. Her fingers tingled to see if it was as warm and soft as it looked. She knotted them into a fist under the cover of the sheet.

  “The invitation for lasagna still stands,” he remarked.

  “No, thanks. I’m not hungry.” Her stomach chose that moment to remind her that breakfast had been skimpy and a long time ago.

  He grinned. “Are you sure about that? Mom makes it all from scratch—the noodles, the sauce and the garlic bread on the side—and it’s even better the second day.”