house, where he and Lucy, still silent, waited while she locked up—laughable when practically every stick of furniture sat on the front porch—before loading into the Tahoe. Peripherally she watched him fasten his seat belt, then rub his long fingers over the leather armrest as if testing its texture. They stilled as his attention turned to the outside mirrors, automatically adjusting and lowering when she shifted into reverse, then returning to their preset position when she shifted into drive.
His mouth quirked slightly. Remembering that she’d told him Greg had taken everything of value? This truck was worth two, maybe three times the sorry little house and its one-acre setting. Knowing divorce was on the horizon, she’d had the sense to put it in her name only when she’d bought it.
Unable to bear the silence one moment longer, she asked, “Do you work in town?”
“No.”
She’d forgotten one of the rules she’d learned early in her career—no yes or no questions when conducting an interview. “Where do you work?”
He pressed the button that turned on the heater in the seat, then turned it off again before offering a halfhearted gesture to the west. “A few miles over that way.”
“Are you a farmer? A rancher? A housekeeper? A nanny?”
His mouth quirked again. With impatience? “A carpenter.”
“Do you frame houses, make cabinets, build decks?”
Finally he glanced at her and said in the softest of voices, “I see where your daughter gets her nosiness.”
Her face warming, Jayne slowed to a stop. They were at the bottom of the first hill, where a pickup old enough that its faded color could be one of any number was parked sideways across the road.
“Here you go.”
“Thanks.” He opened the door, ignored the running board and slid to the ground. Then he looked back. “Furniture. Tables, chairs, entertainment centers, desks…if it’s wood, I build it.”
Not a carpenter but a craftsman—and a modest one at that. She didn’t meet many modest people in her business. Authors had to believe their work was good or they would never open themselves up to crushing rejection by trying to sell it.
With a nod that passed for goodbye, he closed the door, crossed to his truck with long strides and climbed inside. It might be ten years older than her Tahoe, but the engine started on the first try and revved powerfully, and it had no problem with the mud as he straightened it out, then drove past.
“I like him,” Lucy remarked from the backseat. “He doesn’t treat me like a kid.”
Jayne wasn’t sure he knew how to treat kids. As far as that went, she wasn’t sure he knew how to treat adults either. But maybe it wasn’t all people he had a problem with—just those who invaded his privacy.
Lucy amused herself with a movie on her portable DVD player for the drive into town, while Jayne amused herself with comparing Greg’s stories with reality. Virtually everything about the house was a lie, and based on what she was seeing today, so was everything about the town. A quaint little town, like Mayberry from The Andy Griffith Show? Ha!
Sweetwater was a few blocks of shabby little buildings surrounded by a few more blocks of old houses and, on the outskirts of town, even shabbier businesses. There was a town square, and the downtown buildings were mostly old, mostly built of stone, but that was the extent of the quaintness. The welcome-to-town sign didn’t include a population, probably because people were leaving a lot quicker than they were coming. It looked sleepy and dreary and depressing.
How had she let herself believe that, for once, Greg wasn’t exaggerating?
Because she’d needed to believe. She’d needed a change, and after he’d cleaned out their joint bank accounts, this had seemed the best choice left her.
“Mom, I’m hungry,” Lucy piped up from the back.
So was she, and it appeared they had a grand total of two places to choose from—a diner near the courthouse and a convenience store on the edge of town that sold gas, hunting licenses, hot dogs and sandwiches. She opted for the diner.
Deprived of her DVD player for the walk from their parking space to the diner, Lucy looked around wide-eyed but didn’t comment on the town. Neither did Jayne. She might find it disappointing, but she certainly didn’t want to pass that on to her daughter.
The diner was warm and filled with good smells. Jayne helped Lucy out of her jacket, then slipped off her own before sliding into a booth that fronted the plate-glass window. A twenty-something waitress brought menus and offered a cheery greeting and coffee before leaving again.
“I like Sweetwater,” Lucy announced. “It’s pretty.”
Pretty? Jayne’s gaze darted to the view outside the window. Pretty old. Pretty shabby. It was the sort of place where one of her heroines would end up when everything else in her life had gone to hell and she found herself at rock bottom.
But her life hadn’t gone to hell. It wasn’t as if she had no place else to go. She could have stayed in Chicago. She could have settled anywhere.
But Sweetwater had one advantage over those options—Edna’s house. With no rent or mortgage payments, she’d figured that the savings she’d secreted away would last about eighteen months, barring emergencies, in southeastern Tennessee. That meant no outside job, no trying to work full-time and be a mother full-time and write full-time. She was a fast writer when Greg wasn’t scaring her muse into hiding. In eighteen months she could finish her current book and write two, maybe even three books on a new contract. In eighteen months she could be on her way to getting her career back on track.
That same money wouldn’t carry her through the end of the year in Chicago.
Just that thought gave the town a little brighter gleam.
They ordered hamburgers, and Jayne was all but drooling over the crispy thick-cut fries that came with them when the bell over the door dinged with a new arrival. She looked up to see another young woman, in her early to midtwenties, wearing jeans, a turtleneck under a heavy flannel shirt and boots with thick ridged soles. Despite the lumberjack clothes, there was something amazingly feminine about her, and it had nothing to do with the stylish blond hair or the three pairs of hoops that graced her earlobes.
Sorting through the stack of mail she carried, she called, “I’m back, Carla.”
The waitress appeared in the pass-through window. “How’s your mom?”
“She’s fine.”
“How’s Tyler?”
“Not answering his phone, as usual.”
One of Jayne’s heroines might jump to the conclusion that this lovely woman and Tyler were involved. Truth was, Jayne didn’t care beyond the fact that it would answer her question whether Tyler was antisocial with everyone or just her. Curiosity—that was all it was.
“His new neighbor’s here,” the waitress said with a gesture, and the woman turned to give them a speculative look. After a moment, she started their way.
Jayne dropped her gaze
