One True Thing

by Marilyn Pappano

  The hand belonging to the chin-tapping finger smacked his shoulder lightly. “You must be smitten, or why would you lie to us about her?”

  “Why wouldn’t I? Jeez, Neely, look at the facts—I took a woman to the grocery store because she’d never been to Heartbreak before and we had lunch while we were in town and now everyone thinks it means I’m hot for her. Under those circumstances, I’d have to be crazy not to lie about her.”

  Her head slightly tilted, she studied him a moment before giving in. “I guess.” Then… “Are you hot for her?”

  Define hot, he was tempted to say. But Neely would recognize that for the delaying tactic it was and she would have her answer.

  “Okay,” he said, sliding out from between her and the sofa and heading for the kitchen. “Yes, she’s pretty and blond and young, and yes, I’m…attracted to her.” Attracted wasn’t a word he ordinarily used, but between it, smitten and hot, it seemed the better choice. “Am I going to sleep with her? Maybe. Am I going to get serious about her? No. No way.”

  She followed him to the kitchen, accepting one of the diet pops he kept in the refrigerator just for her. “You can’t live the rest of your life without a woman just because Amanda did you wrong.” She spoke in that sympathetic-but-tough-advice-between-good-friends voice they’d used with each other on more than one occasion. There’d been the time years ago when Reese broke her heart, and the time some lowlife scum had tried to kill her, and when Jace had blown one of the most important cases in his career.

  “I appreciate your concern, but, honey, I have no intention of being celibate the rest of my life because of Amanda. She screwed me, just like the department did, but…so what?” It was over and done with—his career as a cop, his relationship with Amanda. All that was left were some good memories, a whole lot of bitterness and a determination that he wouldn’t join the crowd and screw himself. No more police work, no more protecting and serving, and no more making commitments to a woman until he was convinced beyond a doubt that her commitment equaled or exceeded his own.

  “Then bring your neighbor to dinner Saturday night.”

  He leaned against the counter, his own pop can cold and wet in his hand. “I don’t have to prove anything to you, Neely. You’re my family, not my conscience.”

  “Oh, come on. You said you want to go to bed with her. Taking her out for a nice dinner and pleasant conversation can go a long way toward accomplishing that.”

  “I know better ways to seduce a woman than that,” he said scornfully. “Besides, if I decided to go that route, it wouldn’t be dinner with family. I’d take her someplace in Tulsa or Oklahoma City and do it right.”

  Though for someone as alone as Cassidy said she was—no parents, brothers or sisters, aunts, uncles or cousins—family very well might be the way to seduce her. She struck him as the sort who would place a lot of value on family, whether her own or someone else’s.

  So why didn’t she have one? Why hadn’t she married some guy with siblings and cousins out the wazoo? Why was she thirty-something and still single?

  Not a fair question to ask unless he was also willing to ask its counterpart—why was he thirty-something and still single?

  Because the department had seen fit to sacrifice him for the greater good. Because Amanda had cared more about the uniform than the man who wore it. Because his job had been the most important part of his life. Now that it was gone, there wasn’t much left to take its place.

  If he’d put things into perspective sooner, if he’d made time to get married and have a family, would things be better now…or worse? Instead of losing a career and a prospective wife, would he have lost the career plus a wife and kids?

  “Earth to Jace. Helloooo.”

  Slowly his gaze focused on Neely’s hand, waving lazily in front of his face. She was grinning. “Lost somewhere in the thought of seducing Cassidy?”

  “Far from it,” he said dryly.

  “What about dinner tomorrow?”

  “Do I have to bring a woman?”

  “That’s the price of admission.”

  “Does it have to be Cassidy?”

  “I suppose not,” she said with an exaggerated put-upon sigh. “If you don’t want to bring her, I can always come out here and introduce myself.”

  His matchmaking cousin alone with Cassidy—not a very comforting thought. Neely would tell everything there was to know about him, from birth right up to the day Cassidy had moved in, only she would make him sound better than he really was. Like a real prize.

  He wasn’t anyone’s prize…except in bed, and he didn’t need any help there.

  As far as dinner, though… It couldn’t hurt, as long as he set up a few ground rules with Neely and Reese first. And who knew? Maybe he could learn something new about Cassidy. After all, the sheriff and the lawyer had almost as much experience getting to the truth as he did. Surely, Cassidy, with her lies and evasiveness, wouldn’t stand a chance against the three of them.

  He looked at Neely, waiting expectantly as if she knew he couldn’t turn her down. And he didn’t, at least not flat-out.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  And that was how he found himself on his way to Reese’s house Saturday evening, with Cassidy sitting quietly across the truck. He figured he’d caught her in a weak moment with the invitation, when the book wasn’t going well or the solitude was closing in on her or something. She had automatically turned him down, but there had been such longing in her eyes—the same that had been there when she’d looked at Liza Beth the other day. It hadn’t taken much cajoling at all to get her to change her answer, if not her mind.

  She wore a dress this evening, pastel flowers that ran together in a swirl of soft color, with no sleeves and a hem that flirted with her calves. Her shoes were sandals, and her toenails were painted pale pink. Dark shades covered half her face and silver bracelets jangled on her wrist when she moved it. Other than that, she wore no jewelry, not even earrings.

  She sat primly, legs crossed, hands folded in her lap, gaze on the dirt road ahead. She looked remote, untouchable, yet his fingers itched to do just that. Nothing intimate—just a squeeze of her fingers, a brush along her bare arm. Something to warm her and to remind her that he was there.

  As if reading his thoughts, she suddenly looked at him. “Tell me about your cousins.”

  “You have to be specific, or I could spend the next few days catching you up on their life stories.”

  She was silent a moment before asking, “How did Reese get to be the sheriff?”

  He’d been following in his older cousin’s footsteps, Jace thought with a humorless smile. Of course, he couldn’t tell her that. Not yet. “He went to college on a baseball scholarship, then got drafted by the Kansas City Royals. He was well on his way to becoming the best pitcher to ever step onto the mound when he injured his shoulder. A couple of surgeries and a lot of physical therapy later, he was looking for a new career.”

  “So he just said, ‘I think I’ll be a cop today’?”

  Jace shrugged. “He was already used to wearing a uniform. Adding a gun was no big deal.”

  “And he met his wife through his job?”

  Another shrug. “They were both new in town—he’d just joined the department and she’d just passed the bar.”

  “She defended the people he arrested? Must have been interesting.”

  “It was, for as long as it lasted. They broke up after a year or so, didn’t see each other for nine or ten years, then got back together last year.”

  What he could see of her expression was thoughtful. Did she find it odd that after such a long time apart—and she didn’t know the half of that—two people could put things back together as good as new? If she’d known Reese and Neely when they’d first gotten together, it wouldn’t seem strange at all. In spite of the problems caused by their jobs, they’d been perfect for each other. All those years after they’d separated, Jace had kept in touch with both of them, but he’d nev
er gotten used to the idea of them not being together.

  And now they were.

  Of course, the romance novelist inside her probably found it too romantic for…well, not for words. As she’d told him at the café, words were her job. She probably never ran out of ways to use them.

  Though she could certainly be stingy with them where he was concerned.

  “Does she still defend the people he arrests?”

  “Sometimes. It’s not a problem now, though. He’s grown up.”

  “Did you ever have any desire to be a cop?”

  He kept his gaze on the road, though they hadn’t passed a single car since leaving the cabins. It wasn’t a hard thing to say, Yeah, sure, I was one for seventeen years—or at least, it shouldn’t be. But it would lead to questions—What happened, why aren’t you still on the job?—and in some way, it would change the way she looked at him. She could be part of that segment of the population who didn’t like cops for whatever reason or, worse, she could be like Amanda, who did like them.

  Interchangeably.

  If he slept with Cassidy—or if he didn’t, for that matter—it would be because it was what they both wanted. Not because he’d once been a cop.

  “And give up this life that suits me so well?” he asked, laying on the drawl.

  “Oh, yeah, sleeping until noon, fishing when you feel like it, watching the clouds when you don’t—the life every young man aspires to.”

  The faint censure in her voice rankled. “Don’t forget working when the mood strikes and being thankful when it doesn’t.”

  A blush crept across her cheeks. “I wasn’t criticizing.”

  “Sounded like it.”

  “If this lifestyle suits you, it’s no one’s business but yours.”

  “I know that. It just didn’t sound as if you did.” He waited a moment for the barb to sink in, then asked, “Did you ever hold a real job before you started writing?”

  “I taught yoga for a while, worked as a secretary and was a salesclerk in a gift shop, a shoe store and a one-hour photo store. I’ve been a receptionist for a doctors’ group, a lawyers’ group and a dentist. I worked in a nursery school for a while—” fleeing just before the owner was due to find out that her references were as bogus as she was, Cassidy thought “—and I spent a while longer in a plant nursery. In the past few years, I’ve done everything but wait tables.” And teach school. That was the career she’d trained for. She’d taught fourth grade for four years and loved it.

  Then her world had fallen apart.

  To be more accurate, Phil had torn it apart.

  “So many jobs. Were you looking for new experiences or do you just have a short attention span?”

  She laughed at the idea of seeking out new experiences. Not her. She would have been perfectly happy living a perfectly routine life in the town where she’d grown up. A cozy, modest house a few blocks from her parents’ home, walking to her job at the elementary school while Phil took the train into the city, home in time to grade papers, go over lesson plans and fix dinner, helping their kids with homework and chores, taking them on an occasional vacation that was educational as well as fun—that was the life she’d wanted. The only new experiences she’d wanted were childbirth and motherhood.

  Not widowhood.

  Certainly not being constantly on the run.

  “That laugh isn’t an answer,” Jace remarked.

  “Maybe I was just lousy at everything I tried, or I lack ambition.”

  “Speaking as someone who lacks ambition, I doubt that.”

  She doubted the same about him. There was a lot more to Jace Barnett than met the eye.

  Deliberately she turned the subject back to him. “Are you and Reese close?”

  “Closer than brothers.”

  She gazed out the window, recognizing the Rafferty and Harris ranches as they sped past. A few miles down the road was the Stephens’ place, owned by Shay Rafferty’s parents, and a few miles beyond that was Heartbreak. It was a strange feeling—knowing names, identifying places. Usually she didn’t stay in a town long enough to learn more than the most superficial details about it.

  “Have you noticed,” she began conversationally, “that people say that as if it really means something—about being closer to someone than brothers or sisters? When the truth is, an awful lot of people wouldn’t have anything to do with their family if they weren’t family. If I said I was closer to someone than to my brother, it wouldn’t mean anything at all, because I’m not close to my brother at all.”

  “That makes sense, considering you don’t have a brother.”

  “I have one,” she responded automatically, then heard her own words and inwardly winced. This was a fine time to tell the truth, she chided herself. If Jace had any questions about her honesty, they were answered now.

  But so what? The sooner he found out she was a first-class liar, the better. After all, what could he do about it? Tell his cousin, the sheriff? And what could he do? Reese Barnett would have to have a reason for investigating her, and being on shaky footing when it came to separating truth from fiction didn’t qualify.

  Jace didn’t say anything until he’d brought the SUV to a stop at a dusty, faded stop sign. Then he shifted first his gaze, then his head, in her direction. “I thought you were an only child.”

  She resisted the urge to fidget, to look away guiltily, to blurt out an apology. Instead, just to be perverse, she removed her sunglasses and met his gaze head-on. “No. I said I come from a long line of only children.” That was half true. What she’d actually told him was I’m an only child from a long line of only children. Better some truth than none at all.

  He didn’t look convinced. Hopefully he hadn’t paid close attention to their conversation that day—after all, they’d just been making small talk, saying nothing important enough for him to remember.

  Even though she remembered everything he’d said.

  “You said you have—”

  “No family.” Again, partly true. “I haven’t seen my brother in years. I don’t know what he’s doing, whether he’s married, how his life is going. I don’t even know where he is. He doesn’t count as family.”

  “But you went on to specify no parents, brothers or sisters.”

  “No, I didn’t. I said no parents, no sisters.” Those had been lies, too.

  “You said—”

  “You must have misunderstood.”

  He gazed at her a long time, the expression in his dark eyes making it obvious he damn well hadn’t misunderstood. But instead of forcing the issue, abruptly he looked away, rolled his shoulders as if easing an ache between them, then put the truck into motion again.

  The tension in the air was so thick she could cut it with a knife, if she had one available. Slowly, with great deliberation, she put her sunglasses back on, sliding them to the bridge of her nose, turning the world outside a darkened blue-gray version of its real self. She crossed one leg over the other, then crossed her arms across her chest and wondered what the silent man beside her was brooding about. His fingers gripped the steering wheel tightly. His eyes were steely and as cold as stone as the muscle in his jaw twitched, relaxed, twitched again. He looked like some noble warrior, sculpted in hard marble, his chiseled features smooth and cold yet amazingly perfect, from the broad forehead to the aquiline nose to the sensuous lips and the square jaw that bespoke stubbornness. The soft folds of clothing obscured the hard, muscular planes of his magnificent body and made her wish for the knowledge of how he looked unclothed, with nothing but warm, soft, smooth, bronzed skin stretched over long, solid, powerful muscle and…

  Don’t even think about that, Cassidy warned. No, no, no, no, no. She wasn’t looking for love—or lust—but if she was, he would definitely be the wrong man.

  The dirt road they were following became paved a few blocks before it reached Heartbreak’s Main Street. As Jace stopped to wait for traffic to pass before turning onto the street, she spoke. “If your misun
derstanding bothers you, you can forget dinner and take me home. I don’t mind either way.”

  At least, she wouldn’t mind too much. Granted, once he’d talked her into coming this evening, she had looked forward to it. It was such a man/woman thing to do—have dinner with friends, talk, laugh, return home when the evening was over. Such a normal thing, and she hadn’t done normal in more years than she wanted to remember.

  But she could spend the rest of the evening alone. She was good at it. She could play games on the computer, and when she got tired of that, she could read or even go outside and sit near the water in the warm dark evening, listening to crickets chirp and fish plopping and even wishing on stars. Then she could go to bed early and cry herself to sleep, because, even though it didn’t happen often anymore, the disappointment and discouragement could turn her that blue.

  He drove several blocks before finally glancing at her. “I guess I did misunderstand,” he said in a voice that made it clear he knew otherwise. “Besides, I promised you dinner and entertaining company tonight, and I always keep my promises.”

  The last words stung, as he’d no doubt intended. She kept her promises, too, she wanted to protest. She just hadn’t made any since the day she’d promised herself she would do everything in her power to keep herself alive and to not get anyone else hurt.

  Reese and Neely Barnett lived on the east side of Heartbreak. Their house was set off the road between a stand of blackjacks and a big weathered barn, with a manicured lawn bordered by pasture. Horses grazed in the shadow of the barn, glancing up with a marked lack of interest as she and Jace climbed out of the truck.

  The house itself was relatively new, a log cabin on the outside, elegant and homey on the inside. They were met at the door by Reese, who looked nothing like his cousin but had the same easy, friendly manner as Jace. Closer than brothers, Jace had said. Cassidy could see that for herself. The affection between them was obvious, and neither man seemed the least bit uncomfortable with it. David had never been very good at showing affection for anyone other than the then-current woman in his life, and neither had Phil. This was a refreshing change.