One True Thing. Marilyn Pappano

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      I am a writer. I AM a writer. I am a WRITER.

      “So write, damn it!” she muttered under her breath.

      Frustrated, she pushed away from the table and went to stare out the window, refusing to let her gaze stray to the southwest. The bulk of the lake lay to the north, the rental agent had told her. This section was just God’s afterthought, so it had the peace and quiet Cassidy had told her she needed.

      Except for Jace.

      She wondered why nosy Paulette didn’t know he was living next door. Why would he want to live all the way out here? Of course, she’d passed houses along the dirt road on her drive out from Buffalo Plains that morning, but mostly they were ranch or farm houses. Naturally someone who earned his living off the land would live here, too.

      But the lake was surrounded by thousands of acres of woods. No pasture for livestock, no fields for crops and, as far as she could tell, no other means of support. She would certainly never choose such a place if she had to drive into town to a job every day.

      The idea of going to a job every day—the same job—made her melancholy. She’d done that for a lot of years and had never really appreciated it until she’d found herself working for a week here, ten days there—if she was lucky, three weeks someplace else. As soon as she’d learned a job and started to fit in, she’d had to move on. Finally she’d quit fitting in. This time she didn’t intend to even try. She would pass her time here at Buffalo Lake just as she’d passed it at a hundred other places and, when it was up, she would move on, just as she’d moved on from everywhere else.

      Just once, though, she would like to settle down, to call the same place home next week and next month and next year. She would like to think in terms of forever instead of right now, to make friends, to have a life…but that was impossible. Like the shark, if she stopped moving, she would die.

      But knowing that didn’t ease her longing. It made it a little more bearable, but nothing, she was afraid, would ease it.

      Besides death.

      Though Jace had gotten his first official job when he was fifteen, he’d been working years longer. His parents had believed that taking care of the house and the livestock was a family responsibility, so he’d started pitching in as soon as he was old enough. He’d worked his way through college, taken three days off after graduation to move to Kansas City, then gone straight to work for the department.

      He liked not working for the first time in his life. Not having to get up at five-thirty to run before work, not spending more time at the shooting range each week than he did on dates, not dealing with lowlifes and lawyers, not carrying a gun with him everywhere he went. He liked not being a target for scorn and disdain, or for nutcases with weapons, and not spending more time frustrated than not.

      He liked being a bum, sleeping until noon and not seeing a solitary soul unless he wanted. He’d told his parents, Reese and Neely so repeatedly. They didn’t believe him, but that didn’t make it any less true. They thought he was burned out. Brooding. Bored. In serious need of a badge and a gun.

      Burned out? Maybe. Brooding? Nah, he’d gotten over what happened in Kansas City. Now he was just bitter. In need of another cop job? Never.

      What about bored?

      His gaze shifted to the window and the Davison place. Cassidy McRae had pulled up out front around ten-thirty. It was now six-fifteen, and he’d spent way too many of those hours watching the place, even though he hadn’t caught more than a glimpse of her passing a window. It wasn’t as if he didn’t have other things to do, like…clean house. Take Granddad’s old john boat out on the lake and catch some fish for his mother to fry. Drive into town and replenish his supply of frozen dinners. Mow the little patch of grass out front that he hadn’t yet managed to kill.

      But why be productive when he could kick back on the couch and watch the neighbor’s place during commercials on TV? Being curious took little energy and less incentive and, as a bum, he considered the less energy and incentive expended, the better.

      Besides, she was the first woman he’d really looked at since Amanda had moved out of his apartment and his life. She was the first woman he’d noticed as a woman, with all the possibilities and risks that entailed—the first who had reminded him of how long he’d been alone. Granted, he didn’t know anything about her—whether she was married, where she was from, what she did, whether she was aloof because she was shy or preoccupied or disagreeable by nature.

      What he did know was minimal. That she drove a red Honda with Arizona tags and a heavy coat of dust—a two-door that blended in easily with thousands of other little red two-doors on the road. There were no bumper stickers, no college affiliations or radio station advertising on the windows, no American flag or novelty toy flying from the antenna, no air-freshening pine tree hanging from the inside mirror. It was about as unremarkable as a car could get.

      He knew she was far from unremarkable. She was pretty, slender, five-eight, maybe five-nine, with short blond hair and pale golden skin. He hadn’t gotten close enough to identify the color of her eyes, but hoped they were brown. He’d always been a sucker for brown-eyed blondes, especially ones with long legs and full lips and an innocent sensuality about them.

      He knew next to nothing, but affairs and relationships and almost-engagements had been built on nothing more. As long as she wasn’t married, a cop or too needy, he could enjoy having her next door. He didn’t lust after married people, he’d had enough of cops to last a lifetime and enough of people who needed something from him to last two lifetimes.

      He couldn’t help but wonder, though, what had brought her to Buffalo Plains, and why she was staying all the way out here. She’d said she was here to work, but people didn’t come to Buffalo Plains to work. They came for reasons like Neely’s—hiding out from an ex-con who’d thought killing her was fair punishment for his going to prison. Or her sister, Hallie Marshall, escaping a life that had become unbearable. Or Hallie’s stepdaughter, Lexy, who’d run away from home to find the father she’d never known.

      But to work? When any work she could do over there in Junior’s cabin could just as easily be done someplace else? Someplace better?

      Maybe she was hiding, escaping or running away, too.

      He wouldn’t even wonder from what.

      He was debating between SpaghettiOs and a sandwich for supper when the sound of an engine drew his gaze to the window. Reese parked his truck under the big oak nearest the cabin, then he and Neely got out, each carrying a grocery bag. By the time they reached the deck, Jace was opening the screen door. He stood there, arms folded over his chest. “Hey, bubba. Don’t you know it’s rude to drop in on someone without calling first?”

      “We tried to call,” Reese replied, “and all we got was voice mail. You have your cell phone shut off again, don’t you? And you don’t check your voice mail, so you leave us no choice but to drive all the way out here.”

      In spite of his scowl, Jace wasn’t really pissed. Reese was his only close cousin, and they’d been raised more like brothers. They’d been buddies and partners in crime since they were in diapers. They’d gone to school together, kindergarten through twelfth grade, and attended the same university. When a shoulder injury had ended Reese’s pro baseball career, he’d gone into law enforcement in part because Jace was doing it.

      Now Reese was the sheriff hereabouts…and Jace was a disgraced ex-cop.

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