“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. Instead 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
