did you hear?” Jace could find out anything he wanted to know about his neighbor with a little effort. But he knew from experience it was better to keep Reese’s mind on something other than him, or the conversation would inevitably drift back to old discussions they were both tired of having.
“Not much. She’s from Alabama, she’s a writer, and she’s working on a book. Wanted someplace quiet where she wouldn’t be bothered.”
Alabama, huh? That wasn’t a Southern accent he’d heard this morning. But living someplace at the present time didn’t mean she’d been born there. He’d lived nearly half his life in Kansas City even though he’d been born and raised right here in Canyon County. Most of the people he knew had gotten where they were from someplace else.
What kind of book was she writing and why had she come all the way to Oklahoma to do it? Surely she had an office at home where she wouldn’t be bothered. And why did she have Arizona tags on her car if she was from Alabama?
He let the aromas from the kitchen distract him for a moment. Tomatoes, onions, beef and cheese…his mother’s lasagna. For an Osage married to an Okie, Rozena made damn good lasagna. That for supper, along with leftovers for tomorrow, was worth putting up with Reese’s bitching.
“Want to eat inside or out?” Neely asked, standing in the kitchen doorway with plates and silverware. When both men shrugged, she made the decision by heading for the door. She returned for a clean sheet from the linen closet, disappeared again, then came back once more for a bowl of salad. “Why don’t you invite your neighbor over for dinner?”
Oh, yeah, that would go over well with Ms. I’m-not-here-to-make-small-talk-with-the-neighbors. Dinner with said neighbor, his cousin the sheriff, and his cousin-by-marriage, who would need only one look at her to start visions of matchmaking dancing through her head.
“She’s not particularly neighborly.”
“Oh, she’s probably just a little shy or busy getting settled in. But she has to eat, and we have plenty of wonderful food. Go on. You be neighborly. Show her how it’s done.” Then Neely gave him a suddenly sly look. “Unless there’s some reason you don’t want us to meet her. Is she pretty?”
Matchmaking, he reminded himself. She’d tried it a dozen or so times when they’d both lived in Kansas City, with often painful results. She nagged him as much as Reese did, just in a gentler fashion, about giving up the vegetating and getting back to living, and she thought a romance with a pretty woman the perfect solution to his problem.
So he lied. “She’s old enough to be our mother. This tall.” He held his hand about four feet above the floor. “Round. Wears thick-soled shoes and nerdy glasses. Not my type.”
Apparently she thought she’d been more subtle because the look she gave him was reproving and the words she said an outright lie. “I’m not trying to get you a date, Jace. I’m talking about inviting a woman who’s new in town to share the dinner your mother so generously made for us. Do you have a problem with that?”
Not trying to get me a date, my ass. She’d tried to set him up with the checker at the grocery store just last week. Two weeks before that, it had been her secretary’s visiting niece, and the month before that, it had been the new waitress at Shay Rafferty’s café in Heartbreak. Neely wanted to fix his life, whether he was willing or not.
Scowling, he rose from his chair. “Jeez, she bosses me around in my own house. All right, I’ll invite her to dinner, but she’s gonna say no.”
“But you’ll feel better for having made the effort,” Neely sweetly called after him.
After checking out McRae that morning, he had eventually put on a shirt, but he’d never made it to shoes. He winced as he stepped on a rock on her side of the bridge, then again when he walked onto the deck. Where his was sheltered by the cabin from midafternoon on, hers got full sunlight until dusk. The weathered boards were uncomfortably hot underfoot.
From across the inlet came the sound of his screen door banging—Neely making another delivery to the patio table—so he deliberately stood at an angle that would block her view of the door, then knocked. The Unplugged version of “Layla” was playing inside—the only sound at all until suddenly the door opened a few inches. Cassidy McRae looked none too happy to be disturbed.
He wouldn’t mind being disturbed a whole lot more.
She had changed from this morning’s jeans and T-shirt into shorts and a tank top in shades of blue. Her feet were in flip-flops edged with a row of gaudy blue flowers, and her toenails were painted purplish blue. She would have looked depressingly young if not for the glasses she wore. The blue metal frames added a few years to her baby-owl look and made her eyes look twice their size.
She pushed the glasses up with one fingertip. “Yes?”
Brown eyes, he noticed. Dark, chocolatey brown, staring at him with only a hint of impatience that made him remember his reason for bothering her. “My mother sent dinner—the best lasagna outside of Italy. Want to join us?”
“Who is ‘us’?”
“My cousin Reese and his wife Neely. He’s the sheriff here, and she’s a lawyer over in Buffalo Plains.” He wasn’t sure why he’d offered the extra info. To assure her that they were respectable, which might make him respectable by association?
She glanced in the direction of the kitchen. Looking over her shoulder, he saw the laptop open on the table, the word processing screen filled with text. Her book? He wondered what it was about, how she sat and pulled coherent thoughts and sentences from her brain and transferred them to the screen. He would rather face a short drunk with a bad attitude than sit at a computer all day trying to be creative.
“I’m working,” she said at last when she looked back. “I shouldn’t stop.”
There—that was easy. He could accept her reply and go home. Reese and Neely wouldn’t see her and find out he’d lied in his description. Neely wouldn’t get that evil gleam in her eye and, with her none the wiser, he would save himself a lot of future hassle.
But instead of saying goodbye and leaving, he shifted to lean against the jamb. “You have to eat.”
“I’ve got food.”
“Already cooked and ready to dish up? The best lasagna in the English-speaking world?”
For a moment her clear gaze remained fixed on him, as if she was wavering. Then she glanced at the computer again and went stiff all over. “I appreciate the invitation, but I can’t accept. I have to get back to work.”
Definitely no Southern accent. No accent at all, in fact. Had she consciously gotten rid of it, or had she lost it by living in a lot of places?
“Okay. It’s your loss. You won’t find such good company for…oh, a few miles, at least, the food can’t be beat, and there’s probably something incredible for dessert.”
“Sorry,” she murmured.
He was supposed to feel relieved. Neely and Reese would return home, none the wiser about his neighbor. He wouldn’t have to spend the evening hiding any hint that he thought she was gorgeous from prying eyes or have to deal with Neely’s inevitable attempts to get them together. He wouldn’t have to explain why he’d lied when describing her.
But mostly what he felt was disappointment. It was no great loss, no matter what he’d told Cassidy. Sitting across the table from a pretty woman would have been a nice change from the way he’d spent his last one hundred and eighty-plus evenings. Being tempted to spend his night differently would have been damn nice. But not tonight, apparently.
When he reached the bottom of the steps, he turned, walking backward for parting words. “If you change your mind, you know where to find us.”
She gave no response—no nod or murmured thanks or sorry. She simply stood there and watched.
He was on his own side