.

me,” Cassidy murmured.

      He pretended not to have heard. “Not that she wouldn’t have lied to you if it meant renting this place. No one’s stayed there in years—not since Junior’s kids put him in the nursing home.”

      “Too bad for Junior.”

      “Nah, he doesn’t know the difference. His mind’s gone. He doesn’t even know his kids when they come to visit—which isn’t necessarily a bad thing.”

      He was probably right, especially when those same kids had seen fit to put their father in a home the minute he’d become trouble. She couldn’t imagine doing such a thing to one of her parents…if she had parents. At least, in the real world.

      Shoving away the thought—the regret—she glanced at Jace. “I’ve got to go. I’ve got work to do.” When he showed no intention of returning to his side of the bridge, she deliberately went on. “That’s why I’m here. Not to relax or make small talk with the neighbors. To work.”

      Her first lie of the day. There had been a time when the only lies she’d told were harmless little fibs. I love the gift… Yes, that dress looks wonderful on you… The cake was to die for… No, you don’t look like you’ve gained five pounds. Those days were long gone. Now the number of lies she told was limited only by her exposure to people to tell them to. Ask the same question ten times and she would give ten different answers. That was how she lived her life these days.

      Correction—that was how she lived, period.

      “What kind of work?” Friendly curiosity again.

      It shouldn’t have annoyed her, but it did. She wasn’t the type to become chummy with someone just because they happened to live in the same building or on the same block. It had taken some time, but she’d learned not to become chummy with anyone. Leaving wasn’t such a big deal if there was no one special to leave behind.

      “The kind that requires a great deal of privacy. Nice meeting you,” she said in a tone that made it clear she’d found it anything but nice. Then she turned toward the house as if she hadn’t just been rude to a friendly stranger. She didn’t look back as she let herself in, and didn’t peek out the window on her way to deposit the computer on the dining table and the suitcase in the bedroom. She did glance toward the bridge when she returned to the car for another load and saw that he’d gone, but not far. He was sitting on his deck in a metal chair that matched her own, a bottle of water in hand, and watching her. She pretended he wasn’t there.

      It was harder than it sounded.

      Within an hour she’d unloaded and unpacked everything. Cheap aluminum pots and pans, cheaper plastic-handled cutlery, an off-brand boom box with a box of CDs. White sheets and pillowcases, a yellow blanket and a blue print comforter. Clothes that came from Wal-Mart, Kmart and Target, shoes from Payless. Her days of upscale retail experiences were long over. She’d been a world-class shopper, and some days she missed it a lot.

      Other days, when she got overwhelmed by the enormity of the life that had been taken from her—twice—she couldn’t care less about shopping.

      With nothing left to do, she walked through the cottage, out of the bedroom, past the bathroom and into the living room/dining room/kitchen. “Well, there’s three seconds out of my day,” she said aloud. Only eighty-some thousand to go.

      Finally she let herself wander to the window. There was no sign of Jace Barnett. Good. Life was safer without the complication of people.

      And lonelier, her inner voice pointed out.

      She turned away from the window and gazed around the room. Her monthly two hundred dollars’ rent included furnishings—sofa, chair, coffee and end tables, dining table with three chairs, bed and dresser. All of it was early-impoverished American, all of it ugly enough to make her wonder what in the world the people who’d created it had been thinking. It was a far cry from the leather, stone and luxurious fabrics of her old home, and for one instant it made her want to cry. It was so shabby. Her life was so shabby.

      This wasn’t the future she’d envisioned for herself twelve years ago, or five, or even three. She’d intended to follow in the footsteps of every blessed female in her family for generations. She’d planned to be so middle-class, married-with-kids, minivan-PTA-soccer-church-on-Sunday average that she would bore to death anyone who wasn’t just like her.

      Odd how easily a little curiosity, greed and bad luck had changed everything.

      Her sigh sounded loud and lonesome in the big room, and galvanized her into action. She fixed herself a glass of instant iced tea, then sat at the dining table and opened the laptop. “I am a writer,” she announced as the machine booted up. “I am a writer.”

      When she was a yoga instructor, she’d practiced affirmations daily, but it was easier to believe I can do this when “this” was nothing more complicated than the Salute to the Sun routine. Writing a book was a whole other business, and one she knew little about.

      “Failure is just another chance to get it right,” she murmured as she clicked on the icon for her word processing program. She had a million such lines. Work is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration… Whether you think you can or you can’t, you’re right… You can’t win if you don’t play the game… Today is the first day of the rest of your life… If you can dream it, you can do it.

      Not one of them helped her when faced with a blank screen. She thought maybe a candy bar would help, so she got up and rummaged through her purse until she found one. Music might help, too, so she detoured past the boom box and put in her favorite Eric Clapton CD. Finding the screen still blank, she decided a few games of Free Cell might get her creative juices flowing.

      Two hours later, the screen bore a heading that read Chapter 1 and nothing else. Oh, she’d typed a few lines, then mercifully deleted them. After the third wipeout, her fingers seemed to pick out keys on their own.

      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