“I wouldn’t advise that. Once the sun goes down, the copperheads come out, and they love warm rocks.”
“Copperheads? Snakes?” She stepped back so quickly she stumbled over his foot, but he steadied her.
“Don’t worry. Their bite’s usually not fatal. It just hurts like holy hell. My mom used to plant great big flowerbeds all around the yard, and she was weeding one day when she reached in and grabbed a copperhead that had crawled in there to get out of the sun. It’s hard to say who was more scared—her or the snake. Now all her flowers are in pots and she pokes around with a stick before she reaches in.”
Cassidy shuddered. “I hate snakes.”
“Most people do. It’s too bad, too, because most of them are harmless. The few venomous ones give them all a bad name.”
She gave him a narrowed look, then turned toward the creek instead. Before she’d gone a few feet, though, she glanced back. “Are there venomous water snakes around here?”
“Water moccasins.” He laughed as she spun around and marched back to the truck. She climbed onto the hood, sat and smiled smugly when he said with feigned disdain, “City girls.”
“Hey, it’s got nothing to do with living in a city. It’s common sense. I lived in a place that had cockroaches as big as small dogs, and I didn’t freak out, but giant cockroaches can’t kill you.”
“Where was that?”
He asked the question softly, hesitantly, as if he didn’t expect an answer—at least, not a straight one. Just as softly and hesitantly, she replied. “South Carolina.” She’d gotten there, one short journey at a time, about a year after Phil died, before she’d realized that subconsciously she was making her way home. Since that was absolutely the one place she couldn’t go, she’d immediately headed west again. Since then she hadn’t gotten closer than five hundred miles to home.
There had been an old folk song about that, hadn’t there? Lord, I’m still five hundred miles away from home.
“Were you researching a book there?”
“Yes,” she murmured as she shook her head no.
He rested his arms on the hood on either side of her legs. “You’re a pitiful liar, Cassidy. Is that even your real name?”
“I told you before, it’s certainly not one I would make up.”
“Yeah, but if you lied to me before, why would I think you wouldn’t lie to me now?”
She waved one hand with a carelessness she didn’t feel. “Those other lies had reasons. Why would I fib about something so basic as my name?”
He shifted his arms until they were pressing against her thighs, shifted his hand until his fingertip hooked in the belt loop on her shorts, creating a slight pressure at her waist, along with a significant heat. “You want to apply reason and logic to perjury?”
“That’s the cop talking again. I think prevarication is a better description of what I do. Untruthfulness. Lying.”
His other hand claimed a belt loop on her right side and he leaned closer. If she was sitting on her car, their position would be almost unbearably intimate, but the SUV had four-wheel drive and stood significantly higher off the ground. Even so, it was more intimate than she’d been with a man in three long years.
“Compulsive lying,” he corrected her.
“It’s not a compulsion,” she disagreed. “I don’t lie because I can’t help myself.”
“Then prove it. Just for tonight, swear you’ll tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God.”
“Reese was right,” she murmured. “Being a cop isn’t what you do. It’s who you are.”
For the second time in a row, a reference to his former career didn’t distract him from his focus. “Swear.”
Swear. The evening was almost over. In a few minutes they would get back in the truck and drive home. He would deliver her to her door, say good-night and go to his own cabin, and she would spend the rest of the night alone. How difficult could telling the truth be for that short time? Besides, agreeing to tell the truth didn’t mean she actually had to tell anything. She could always just refuse to speak.
“Okay,” she said, then raised one hand as if taking an oath. “I swear.”
She expected a question from him, sharp and immediate, but it didn’t come. Instead he leaned closer at the same time his hands moved to her hips and pulled her toward the edge, and then he kissed her. He covered her mouth, stole her breath, made her hot and quavery and suddenly so needy that she literally throbbed with it. He stabbed his tongue inside her mouth, wrapped his arms around her, then lifted her from the hood, holding her tightly, sliding her slowly down the length of his body, holding her steady when her legs were too shaky to do so.
She wanted the kiss to go on forever. Wanted to rip off their clothes and to welcome him inside her right here. Wanted him to take her long and hard and fast and lazy until every minute of loneliness had banished from her soul. Wanted to jerk away and run screaming into the night.
She did none of that. When he raised his head, she dragged in a ragged breath that sounded half-sob, then dazedly tried to focus on him. His features looked hard—and his body felt it—as he rubbed one thumb across her mouth.
A kiss is just a kiss, another old song went. Yeah, right. Except that some kisses left you cold and some curled your toes. Some could make you forget common sense and safety and every means of self-protection you’d ever learned. Some could make you want. Want. Even when you couldn’t have.
Some kisses could break your heart.
There were easily two dozen questions Jace wanted to ask, but he settled for the most inconsequential of them all. “You want to go home?”
“Yeah.”
And he thought about but didn’t ask a variation of the same question. You want to go home with me? If he asked, would she give him the answer he wanted?
There was an air of expectancy between them as he followed the faint trail back to his parents’ driveway, then turned onto the county road. He could take the paved road to Heartbreak and make pretty good time, but tonight he wasn’t interested in making time—at least, not that kind. He was in no hurry to get to the lake, no hurry at all to say good-night to Cassidy, then go home alone.
Since she was apparently waiting for him to take advantage of her pledge of honesty, he asked, “What’s your brother’s name?”
A hesitation, a tightening of her lips, then a response. “David.”
She’d needed a moment to think about that—to debate whether that tidbit could help him learn anything about her. Obviously she’d decided it couldn’t, and she was right. There were probably only a few million Davids in the country, many of them with sisters.
“Is he older or younger?”
“Older.”
“And your sister?”
The same hesitation, though not so long. “Marcy. She’s younger.”
“Did she ever let her hair grow back?”
Her mouth formed a rueful smile. “Not until I’d moved out of the house to go to college.”
He let a mile go by in silence before asking, “Your parents aren’t really dead, are they?”
In her lap, her hands clenched tightly, and her foot, dangling with one leg crossed over the other, tapped anxiously in the air. She was regretting her promise and he’d figured she was about to circumvent it by not saying anything at all when she suddenly exhaled. “No. But they might as well be.”
“Why do you say that?”
She shrugged. “They’re not a part of my life. I’m not a part of theirs. For all practical purposes, I have no parents.”
“They cut you off?”
Another shrug that he could take for yes or no, whichever suited him. He didn’t believe her newly resurrected parents had removed her from their lives. What had she said when they’d talked about Lexy Marshall’s mother taking Hallie’s cash to sever her paternal rights to her daughter? My mother would give fifty thousand bucks to see me. That didn’t sound as if the estrangement had been Mom’s ide
a.
Dad’s, maybe? She’d had little to say about him, beyond the fact that he was a school superintendent. Had he booted her out, and her mother lacked the courage to stand up to him?
“What’s your favorite childhood memory?” he asked, putting aside the topic she clearly didn’t want to discuss in greater detail.
She was silent a long time before smiling. “Sunday dinner. Before we went to church every Sunday morning, Mom would get dinner started—usually pot roast, though sometimes it was roasted chicken or baked ham. As soon as we got home, she would put an apron on over her dress and finish cooking. Marcy and I helped when we were old enough, and pretended to before that. When it was ready, we all sat down in the formal dining room—Sundays and holidays were the only times we used it—and my father would say the blessing while we all held hands—corny, I know—and then we would eat. Maybe it was because we ate in the dining room or we all still wore our church clothes or we were just…together, but it was always the best meal of the week. None of us ever missed Sunday dinner until David went away to college, then I did.”
Jace wondered how many meals she’d eaten by herself since then.
After a time he went on to his next question. “How long has it been since you saw any of them?”
“A long time,” she replied, her voice so soft he could barely hear. “Six years.”
“Because of your husband?”
Finally he’d hit on a question that she grimly ignored rather than answer truthfully, which made the answer pretty clear. Was the guy worth it? he wanted to ask. Worth losing contact with your parents, your brother and sister? Worth having no family for love and support?
Had her family disliked her husband, or had he been the one to force the break? How much would she have to love him to let him get away with that? Either way, now that he was dead, what was keeping her from going home? Pride? Shame?
“His name was Phil,” she said unexpectedly. “He and David were in the same fraternity. That’s how I met him.”
How difficult would it be to locate a school superintendent back east—he believed that much of what she’d told him before—with two daughters, one named Marcy, and a son named David who’d had a frat brother named Phil? Pretty damned difficult…but not impossible. Some Internet time, a few calls to old buddies….
Unbidden, her earlier words echoed in his mind. And if I tell you his name, are you going to get on the Internet or on the phone with Reese…? At the time he’d refused to feel guilty about the hurt that had crossed her face when he admitted he probably would. As he’d told her, when you lied all the time, you had to get used to people not believing you.
But she had reasons for lying, she had insisted—good ones in her mind. And she wasn’t hurting anybody. She was frustrating the hell out of him, but so what? Women often achieved that effect on him without resorting to deception.
The bottom line was, no matter how accustomed he was to being trusted by everyone, no matter how repugnant he found her lies, he had no right to demand the truth from her. They were neighbors. Sort-of friends. Might-be lovers. But nothing more than that. Nothing serious. Nothing permanent.
Nothing that gave either of them any rights over the other.
And that was all he wanted, right? Right.
And maybe more than she wanted.
The official first day of summer arrived with a vengeance. The warm days Cassidy had come to expect gave way to a thermometer reading of eighty-six before the sun had even finished rising, and it kept climbing. By the time she gave up, closed the windows and turned on the small window air conditioner, it was miserably hot and muggy. Welcome to summer in Oklahoma.
Unable to concentrate with the racket from the air conditioner, she shut off the computer and stretched out on the couch where the cooler air washed over her. Her body temperature had dropped somewhere close to normal and she was seriously considering a nap when a knock at the door startled her. She hadn’t heard footsteps, though with the AC running, she wouldn’t have heard a locomotive pulling into the driveway.
Not that there was any reason to be concerned. No doubt it was Jace, since he was the only one who’d ever come here. Oh, except for Neely and Hallie. Or maybe it was his mother, ready for the male-free chat. Or Paulette Fox, wanting to know how things were going.
Making a face at herself for wasting time wondering who it might be when it was easier by far to open the door to see, she did just that. She’d been right the first time. It was Jace.
He looked past her, saw the computer was off and grinned. “Good. I’m not interrupting.”
“Would it matter if you were?”
“I would say I’m sorry.”
“But would you mean it?”
“Sort of. Change into your swimsuit and come out on the lake with me.”
She leaned one shoulder against the jamb and crossed her arms. “To do what?”
“Enjoy the day. Cool off. Get some color.”
Slowly her gaze slid down his body, over arms and shoulders exposed by a basketball jersey that had seen better days and long, long legs that extended past the cutoffs he wore. “You have plenty of color.”
“Yeah, but you don’t. You give new meaning to the word ‘paleface.’”
“I’m not that pale.”
“Pale enough. Go on. Change. I’ll even buy you lunch.”
“Where on the lake can you buy lunch?”
“There’s a little store on the north shore near the public boat ramp that sells gas, bait, fishing licenses and the best barbecued pork sandwiches in three counties. What do you say?”
When she was younger, she’d loved spending hot afternoons at the lake. The nostalgia tempted her almost as much as the prospect of another afternoon with Jace did. Besides, left on her own, what would she do but laze the afternoon away?
Instead of agreeing right away, though, she remarked, “I don’t have a swimsuit.”
“You’re living twenty feet from the lake’s edge and you don’t have a swimsuit? City girl.” Then he shrugged. “So wear shorts and a T-shirt. If you decide to go in the water, you can strip down.”
“Yeah, right,” she muttered as she turned away from the door. Only if you do the same. Though maybe not even then. The sight of him naked might leave her so dazed that she couldn’t do a thing but stare.
Leaving it up to him whether he came in or stayed out, she went into the bedroom and changed into a shorter pair of shorts and a tank of her own. She shoved her feet into canvas sneakers, slathered sunscreen over her arms, legs and face, then returned to the living room, where she got her sunglasses and keys. “Okay, I’m ready.”
After she locked up, they crossed the footbridge and bypassed his cabin for the grassy spot where the john boat rested upside down. The motor, two oars, a couple of life preservers and a small cooler sat nearby.
“I’d let you help me turn the boat over,” Jace remarked even as she bent at one end, “but from time to time, I find a water moccasin curled up underneath it.”
Without missing a beat, she straightened and backtracked a dozen feet, then waited. He flipped the small boat easily, though cautiously, slid it partway into the water, then gestured for her to climb in. After handing everything to her, he stepped in, then used an oar to push away from the bank. It took a little maneuvering to get the motor in place and started, then they headed for the main body of the lake with a soothing putt-putt.
The boat’s top speed was probably a couple miles an hour. Using the life preservers for cushions, Cassidy settled in comfortably, facing Jace, to enjoy the leisurely trip.
“You smell like a piña colada,” he remarked. “Like summer.”
She sniffed the coconut-scented fragrance of the sunscreen. “I always loved summer when I was growing up. Going barefoot, being lazy, staying up late and sleeping in late. Picnics and barbecues and vacations at the shore. Rain feels better when it’s 95 degrees outside, and ice cream tastes better. The sky seems clearer, the stars brighter. For
a few months, it seems that anything is possible.”
“When did you stop growing up?” His voice was steady, calm. He had a talent for asking questions in an unobtrusive way, a subtle nudge to keep the conversation going. Or he could be one-hundred-and-eighty-degrees opposite—aggressive, pushy, demanding. The good cop or the bad one. She wasn’t sure which she preferred.
“I don’t know. Somewhere along the way I realized summer was also a time of beginnings and endings. The end of school, the beginning of college, the end of college, the beginning of a career…. Phil and I got married in August, and he died in July. Beginnings and endings….” She waited for the usual melancholy to slip over her, for the urge to curl up somewhere and weep, but it didn’t come. Oh, there was sadness, certainly, but not the encompassing sorrow she was accustomed to. This sadness was bittersweet, bearable, almost forgettable.
“Do you still love him?”
She sneaked a glance his way, but as if it wasn’t enough that mirrored shades hid his eyes, his head was turned to the left, his gaze on a ski boat off to the west. “I’ll always love him. I don’t believe love dies just because a person does.”
“Maybe it doesn’t just die, but it can damn well be killed.”
Now she openly studied him. He spoke as if from experience—and he probably did. She didn’t know how old he was, though allowing for college and seventeen years as a cop, she figured late thirties. Surely he hadn’t lived that long without falling in love at least once. “Which one was she? Julie or Amanda?”
Slowly he turned until his gaze connected with hers. “Amanda.”
In the past few days it seemed everything reminded her of a song. Amanda, light up my life…. Amanda, who did her duty by coming for Thanksgiving and never intended to visit again. “Was she mean to your parents? Was that why you warned me not to hurt them?”
“Nah. Mom and Dad didn’t like her from the git-go. They were happy when she dumped me a few weeks later. I warned you because they do like you, and I would prefer they didn’t know that you have this nasty habit of not being honest. If they thought you were lying to them every time you opened your mouth, they would be disappointed, and I try very hard to not give them reasons to be disappointed.”
One True Thing Page 17