Maybe Moonglow wasn’t such a horrible place after all.

How could it be, when she found herself suddenly so happy here?

“What are you grinning at?” Dan was staring at her, his head tilted quizzically to one side.

“Was I?” She sipped her lemonade, using the glass to hide the smile she couldn’t suppress. You’d have thought she was in Manhattan, about to dine on rack of lamb with a gorgeous investment broker, rather than in Moonglow and about to eat hot dogs with an itinerant handyman.

No. Not just a handyman. Dan. In some strange way, she felt as if she’d known him forever.

It wasn’t like her at all to become so mesmerized, so infatuated, by a man so quickly. Use your head. Slow down, she told herself. Stop, for heaven’s sake.

Only, Molly wasn’t listening. At least, not to her head.

Dear Reader,

The excitement continues in Intimate Moments. First of all, this month brings the emotional and exciting conclusion of A YEAR OF LOVING DANGEROUSLY. In Familiar Stranger, Sharon Sala presents the final confrontation with the archvillain known as Simon—and you’ll finally find out who he really is. You’ll also be there as Jonah revisits the woman he’s never forgotten and decides it’s finally time to make some important changes in his life.

Also this month, welcome back Candace Camp to the Intimate Moments lineup. Formerly known as Kristin James, this multitalented author offers a Hard-Headed Texan who lives in A LITTLE TOWN IN TEXAS, which will enthrall readers everywhere. Paula Detmer Riggs returns with Daddy with a Badge, another installment in her popular MATERNITY ROW miniseries—and next month she’s back with Born a Hero, the lead book in our new Intimate Moments continuity, FIRSTBORN SONS. Complete the month with Moonglow, Texas, by Mary McBride, Linda Castillo’s Cops and…Lovers? and new author Susan Vaughan’s debut book, Dangerous Attraction.

By the way, don’t forget to check out our Silhouette Makes You a Star contest on the back of every book.

We hope to see you next month, too, when not only will FIRSTBORN SONS be making its bow, but we’ll also be bringing you a brand-new TALL, DARK AND DANGEROUS title from award-winning Suzanne Brockmann. For now…enjoy!

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

Moonglow, Texas
Mary McBride

For Anna Greve Sadler—

Oh, Annie! If we only knew then what we know now.

MARY McBRIDE

When it comes to writing romance, historical or contemporary, Mary McBride is a natural. What else would anyone expect from someone whose parents met on a blind date on Valentine’s Day, and who met her own husband—whose middle name just happens to be Valentine!—on February 14, as well?

She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with her husband and two sons. Mary loves to hear from readers. You can write to her c/o P.O. Box 411202, St. Louis, MO 63141, or contact her online at www.eHarlequin.com.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Epilogue

Prologue

“Are you sure you’re a deputy U.S. marshal, Shackelford?”

Tom Keifer, a deputy marshal himself, just one week out of basic training in Georgia, had begun to think he’d taken a wrong turn off Highway T, or that maybe there were two Dan Shackelfords in this backwater county in South Texas. The man standing before him right now didn’t look like any government agent he’d ever seen.

Knowing Dan Shackelford was on extended medical leave, Keifer had somehow expected to find him in a dim back bedroom of a shady little convalescent home, where the injured deputy would be sitting in a wheelchair reading—a serious, thin and rather pale man in leather slippers and pressed pajamas.

That hadn’t been the case.

The address Keifer was given turned out to be a defunct trailer park, and Shackelford looked like a bum, wearing ripped jeans and last week’s whiskers and leaning one arm on the door frame of his dented trailer while his free hand curved around the long brown neck of a bottle of beer. Lunch, no doubt, Keifer thought with some disgust. Judging from the roadmaps of his eyes, he’d probably had the same thing for breakfast.

The young deputy eased a finger under his tight, damp, button-down collar even as he viewed the man’s sleeveless T-shirt with pure disdain.

“Daniel L. Shackelford?” he asked again irritably, actually hoping this derelict would tell him he had the wrong man and point him down the road to the home of a competent, clean-shaven deputy. “Can you confirm your mother’s maiden name?”

“Liggett.” He raised the beer bottle, took a long wet swig, then aimed a deliberate, almost affable belch in Keifer’s direction. “Do you want to see my badge and my secret decoder ring, Junior?”

The young man took a half step back, not bothering to disguise his disapproval. He had the right man, much to his disappointment. “I don’t think that will be necessary.”

“Great.” Shackelford grinned sloppily and leaned a little farther out the door. “Then how ’bout a beer?”

“WITSEC’s been compromised,” Keifer blurted out.

“What?”

“I said WITSEC’s been compromised,” he repeated. “You know. Witness Security?”

“I know what the hell it is.” Shackelford’s expression hovered somewhere between a bleary-eyed Who gives a rip? and a grim-lipped Go on. Tell me more.

“Unidentified hackers broke into the system over the weekend. There’s no telling who or what they were looking for, if anything, and no way to know if they found it. But the Marshals Service has put nearly seven thousand people under protection since the seventies, and they’re all in jeopardy now.”

The man in the doorway let out a low whistle, blinked inscrutably, then took another long pull from his bottle.

“So, headquarters is bringing in every available deputy,” Keifer continued, “in addition to postponing vacations and retirements, and they’re terminating all medical and personal leaves as of today.” He stiffened his shoulders. “Yours included.”

Shackelford hissed an expletive.

“Here.” Keifer shoved a manila envelope through the opening of the trailer’s screen door. “All the information you need is in there.”

Having performed his assignment, the young deputy was eager to leave, to get away from this obvious loser and get on with his own future heroics in the line of duty. He had only contempt for a burned-out, washed-up rummy like Shackelford. The guy had probably never been any good at the job, anyway.

“Any questions?”

“Just one,” Shackelford drawled.

“Yes?”

“Did you say yes, you did want a beer, or no, you didn’t?”

Dan yanked open the lopsided venetian blinds on the trailer’s window. Sunlight strafed the cluttered interior and fell across the letter he had pulled from the manila envelope. The United States Marshals Service emblem was embossed so thick it almost cast a shadow on the page. So did the name on the letterhead. Robert Hayes, regional director. The message below it was handwritten. A familiar scrawl.

Our files are screwed, amigo. Got you a low-priority witness (see attached) living in seized property in Moonglow. Easy duty. She doesn’t even have to know why you’re there. The quieter we keep this, the better, if you catch my drift. Just hang around her awhile, then get your bad self back to the real world.

Bobby

P.S. Didn’t you used to live in Moonglow?

Chapter 1

Molly Hansen had been in Witness Security for nearly a year, but she still woke up every morning as Kathryn Claiborn and had to remind herself that she didn’t exist anymore.

This morning was no exception, except what woke her wasn’t her alarm clock, but rather the clattering of trash cans and a jolt to the side of her house that nearly pitched her out of bed. While she scrambled for her robe, she scrolled through a mental checklist of natural disasters, eliminating each one as soon as it came to mind.

An earthquake didn’t happen on just one side of a house. It couldn’t have been a landslide or a mud slide because this part of Texas was so dry and flat that things didn’t slide; they just sat still and baked. It wasn’t a thunderstorm because the sun was shining. That left only a rampaging bull or a five-hundred-pound armadillo.

Or, now that she was peering out the window into the driveway, a big Airstream trailer about to crash into the side of her house. Again. She grabbed for the windowsill just as the trailer hit. This time the impact brought the curtain rod crashing down on her head.

“You idiot,” she screamed, battling her way out of yards of gathered fabric. “Jerk!” Molly stomped over the fallen drapes, down the hall to the kitchen, and out the back door where the big aluminum behemoth was apparently making a third run at her defenseless little residence.

She reached for the nearest weapon, which turned out to be a hoe, and swung it with all her might at the blundering vehicle, half expecting the hoe to clang on impact like an enormous bell, but instead there was a sickening thunk as the gardening tool sank deep into the metal skin. It worked, though. The trailer stopped, and none too soon, mere inches from the house.

Molly was trying to extract the blade of the hoe when a man stalked down the driveway, yelling at her.

“What the hell were you trying to do?”

“I was trying,” she huffed, still tugging at the hoe, “to keep you from ruining my house, you idiot.”

He stopped a few feet away from her, turned toward the little clapboard bungalow with its warped shutters and peeling paint, studied it a moment, and then said, “Hell, lady. In case you haven’t noticed, somebody’s already ruined it.”

The grin that followed didn’t prompt one from Molly. She was hardly amused. She thought if she could wrest the blade of the hoe from the trailer, she’d like to sink it into this good ol’ boy’s skull. That would wipe the stupid smirk right off his handsome face.

“Jerk,” she muttered, glaring at the hoe again and twisting its handle to no avail.

“Here.” A tan, muscled forearm slid against hers and his fingers curved around the handle just beneath her grip. “Let go.”

“I will not.”

“Let the hell go.” He gave her a shot with his hip that sent Molly careening sideways, then using only one hand, he popped the hoe from the back of the trailer as if it were no more than a butter knife and tossed the implement away.

“That’s some dent,” he mused, crossing his arms and contemplating the damage.

“Well, it matches the rest of them.” Molly snatched up the hoe and held it like a shotgun. “Now, I’ll thank you to get this junkyard special out of my driveway.”

He turned to look at her, his green eyes lazily taking her in from head to toe. “You’re Molly Hansen.”

It wasn’t a question, really. Just a flat statement. But Molly found herself nodding, anyway, as she once again reminded herself that she wasn’t Kathryn Claiborn. At the same time a little kernel of suspicion was forming in her brain. After all, she was Molly Hansen and in Witness Security because her life was in danger. Kathryn’s, anyway. “And you are?”

“Dan Shackelford. I’ve been hired to make repairs on your ruined house, Miss Hansen,” he drawled. “Where do you want me to start?”

He seemed to be studying the roofline now with the same degree of intensity that he had studied her a moment before.

“I don’t want you to start,” Molly said, then increased not only the volume but the adamance. “Do you hear me?”

“Half those shingles look rotten. I’ll bet this place leaks like a son of a gun.”

It did, but that was none of his damned business. The house, as Molly understood it, had been seized from a Honduran drug dealer who only used it to establish a permanent address. The government owned the house. Molly just paid nominal rent, mailed to a post office box in Houston.

“Who sent you?” she demanded. “Who hired you?”

He sauntered to the wall, reached out to flick some paint chips from a board. “When’s the last time this was painted?” he asked over his shoulder.

“How should I know?”

“Been here long?”

“No. Only about…”

Molly’s mouth snapped shut. When she entered the program, they had warned her not to answer even the most innocent of questions. Be skeptical, they had said, especially of strangers too eager to strike up a conversation. If you have any suspicions, don’t hesitate to call.

“I need to make a phone call,” she said, clutching the trusty hoe and locking the back door once she was safely inside.

“So, what you’re saying then, Deputy, is that I don’t have to worry about this Shackelford character? That he really was hired to make repairs?”

Molly was whispering into the phone, her lips practically brushing the mouthpiece. She’d been peeking out the kitchen window at the character in question, but at some point he’d disappeared around the back of the house.

The U.S. marshal on the other end of the line once again confirmed that Dan Shackelford was working in their employ.

“Well, that’s a relief,” she said. “Thank you, Deputy. Oh, and tell Uncle Sam thanks for fixing up my house.”

She put the receiver back in its cradle and let out a long, audible sigh before peering out the window again. The trailer was still hulking diagonally in the drive, but she didn’t see hide nor hair of its owner.

“You need a new lock on the front door.”

The sudden voice behind her had Molly reaching for the hoe again as she whirled around. “How did you get in here?”

“You need a new lock on the front door.” His gaze cut away from her face to take in the rest of the room. “What a pit.”

Molly was less frightened than irritated. “Well, it’s my pit.”

Except it wasn’t, and she was sorely tempted to tell him that her little stone cottage in upstate New York might someday be on the National Register of Historic Places, and that her kitchen—her sweet, cozy kitchen with its big brick fireplace—had already been featured in Early American Homes and Hearth and Home. Only that had been Kathryn Claiborn’s house, and Kathryn was, for all intents and purposes, dead.

Molly looked around at the ancient metal cabinets, the faded red Formica countertop and the scarred linoleum floor. The appliances had probably been manufactured when Roosevelt was president. Not FDR, but Theodore. My God, calling this place a pit was flattering it.

“I’ve been too busy to decorate,” she said lamely.

“Uh-huh.” He was leaning over the sink, jiggling the rusty lock on the window while looking into the backyard.

While Shackelford scrutinized the landscape, Molly scrutinized him. He was about six-two, lean as a greyhound, probably in his mid-thirties, and he needed a haircut desperately, not to mention a shave. New jeans, too. The ones he wore were faded to a soft sky blue, replete with fringed rips. Her gaze traveled down his long, muscular legs in search of the obligatory hand-tooled boots worn by every self-respecting male in Moonglow, only to discover a pair of flip-flops instead. Flip-flops! Oh, well. They went with the ratty Hawaiian shirt, she supposed, and the sunglasses that hung from a thick cord around his neck.

He didn’t look dangerous. He didn’t even look competent! But the marshal’s office had said he was okay.

“Mind if I park my trailer under that live oak back there?” he asked.

“Fine. As long as you don’t drive through the house to get there.”

Molly glanced at the clock above the refrigerator. “Oh, God. I’m going to be late for work.”

“Well, you just go on,” he said. “Don’t worry about me. I expect to have all new locks and dead bolts installed by the time you get home.”

“Home?”

“From work.”

“But I work here.”

“Oh.” He looked confused for a moment, then shrugged. “Then I guess I’ll just have to do my best to stay out of your way, Ms. Hansen.”

“Well, I certainly hope so, Mr. Shackelford.”

Dan slid behind the wheel of his black BMW, then glared in the rearview mirror at the Airstream looming there. He swore roughly. He used to be able to thread any vehicle through the eye of a needle at ninety miles an hour in the dark of night. Now he couldn’t maneuver a goddamned trailer into a cement driveway in broad daylight.

Little wonder Bobby had assigned him the lowest of low-priority witnesses. Kathryn Claiborn’s terrorists, the Red Millennium, had all but blown their own heads off in labs in the U.S. and Beirut and Ireland this past year. As far as U.S. Intelligence knew, there was nobody left for the woman to identify, but they kept her in WITSEC, anyway, just in case. It was easier to put someone into the program than to get them out.

The worst thing that was going to happen to her during this computer crisis had already happened when Dan backed his trailer into her house. And the worst thing that was going to happen to him was discovering once and for all that he was washed-up.

He turned the key in the ignition. Well, hell. He could always make a halfway decent living on the demolition derby circuit. And maybe, if he was really, really lucky, he’d be demolished in the process.

This time he shifted into Drive, easing the ancient Airstream out onto Second Street, then circled the block until he found access through a narrow vacant lot into Molly Hansen’s backyard. After half an hour he had the trailer unhitched, his lawn chair unfolded in the shade of the live oak, and a warm beer in his hand.

It was only nine-thirty, but he felt as if he’d already put in a full day’s work trying to ignore Molly Hansen’s long blond curls and the dangerous curves of her body. He hadn’t been with a woman since…

Damn. He’d promised not to think about that. His nightmares were bad enough. How many times could you watch your partner die because of something you’d done or failed to do or simply overlooked? How long could you try to dream it different, only to have it all turn out the same? The answer, after nearly five months, was indefinitely. He took a long pull from the bottle and let the warm lager slide down his throat. Unless, of course, you overmedicated yourself into besotted oblivion, which was still his favorite place to be.

Not Moonglow, that was for sure. He’d never expected to come back here, to come full circle. Bad boy leaves town. Bad man comes back. Dan closed his eyes. Hell, it seemed there had been nothing in between.

Molly showered, dressed, put on her makeup, took her morning coffee into her tiny back bedroom office as she did every day, then proceeded to spend more time at the window watching Dan Shackelford not working than she spent working herself.

Trust the government to hire a good-looking bum who didn’t know a hammer from a Heineken, she thought, glad it wasn’t her money that was paying him to sit around swigging beer all morning.

For a moment, while she was showering, she’d actually gotten a little excited about the prospect of fixing up this falling-down house. Not that she’d ever really like it, no matter the improvements, but maybe she’d hate it a little less. Now it looked as if any repairs would be accomplished in an alcoholic haze. Her house would probably look worse, not better, once Dan Shackelford was done with it.

All of a sudden Molly wanted to cry, but she wouldn’t let herself. If she started, even so much as a sniffle, there was no telling if she’d ever stop.

“I hate my life,” she muttered, settling once more in front of her computer screen and forcing herself to focus on sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph of the most unrelentingly boring and ungrammatical prose in the history of English composition.

When she’d applied for the position of English instructor at the online university, it seemed the perfect choice for her new persona. It didn’t pay much, but her need for privacy and safety was greater than her need for money. There was nothing to spend it on in Moonglow, anyway. She’d approached the job with her typical determination to succeed, but the challenge of correcting her invisible students’ errors in spelling and grammar had quickly dissipated when she found herself correcting the same mistakes over and over and over again.

“I hate your life, Molly Hansen,” she muttered at the screen. “I hate your cutesy-poo name, too. And I hate your bleached-blond hair. I hate everything about you, including that bum who’s set up residence in your backyard.”

It had all gone wrong so fast that she’d barely had time to comprehend it before she had been whisked into WITSEC. Kathryn Claiborn’s life, the one she had struggled so long and hard to achieve, had literally blown up in her face.

She’d been crossing the campus of venerable Van Dyne College, where she was director of financial affairs in addition to being associate professor of business, taking her usual shortcut through the basement of the Chemistry Department on her way to the Administration Building, when her world had exploded. One minute she was waving a cheerful hello to Dr. Ian Yates and the pale, white-haired fellow by his side, and the next she was waking up in a hospital with bandages on her face and half a dozen federal agents in her face.

Nothing had been the same after that. Kathryn Claiborn had died, giving birth to Molly Hansen. Kathryn Claiborn had been so frightened at the thought of having her throat cut by the white-haired terrorist whom only she could identify that she had willingly abandoned her job, her home, her fiancé, even her very self in order to insure her survival.

“Way to go, Kathryn,” Molly said with a sigh.

There was no way she was going to be able to concentrate on slipshod essays this morning, so she turned off her computer, then went to the window to see if her handyman was still swilling beer. If he was, it wasn’t where he’d been swilling it earlier. His ratty lawn chair was empty.

Molly glanced at her watch. She had a one o’clock appointment for a root touch-up. Maybe, since it was Tuesday and hardly anybody in Moonglow got her hair done this early in the week, Raylene could fit her in a little bit early.

Raylene Earl wasn’t exactly a friend. Unable to disclose anything about her life prior to her arrival in Moonglow, Molly wasn’t in a position to make friends. Of course, that didn’t keep the hairdresser from talking her head off.

Raylene’s hair was pink this week.

“Well, I dunno,” she was saying. “They call it Sunset, so naturally I was expecting something on the gold side. You know, the way the sun sets here in Moonglow. I’m getting used to it now, but lemme tell you, it played hell with my Passionate Pink lipstick and nail polish. I’m wearing Strawberry Frappé now.” She waved a hand under Molly’s nose. “What do you think, hon?”

“I like it,” Molly replied, her typical three words in exchange for Raylene’s hundred.

“Yeah? I dunno. I think it looks like I stuck my fingers in a jam jar or something.” She pursed her lips, studying them in the mirror over the top of Molly’s head. “Buddy says why worry when they kiss just the same, but then what can you expect from a man who wears his skivvies inside out half the time and swears it doesn’t matter?”

“Does it matter?” Molly got in her three words while Raylene dragged in a breath through her strawberry-frappéed lips.

“Of course it matters. Good Lord, Molly, would you want somebody reading your waist size every time you bent over?”

Molly laughed. “I guess not.”

“Not that you’re not a tiny little thing, even if you do persist in wearing clothes that don’t show off your choicest parts. They’re having a sale at Minden’s this week. Thirty percent off everything, if you’re in the mood for a little change.”

“Oh, no thanks.”

What Raylene didn’t know was that Molly had already undergone a change of huge proportions. Kathryn had left behind a closet full of conservative suits and dark, understated shoes. There was no need to replace them. Nobody here wore suits except the banker and the undertaker, and those outfits tended toward odd colors and western cuts. In laid-back Moonglow, most people thought glen plaid was somebody’s name.

Ordering online, Molly had slowly filled her closet with soft skirts, tunics, a few khaki shorts and slacks. It had taken her a while to get the colors right. Kathryn, with her dark hair, light blue eyes and fair skin, was a Winter, who looked best in blacks and whites and true reds. Blond Molly, on the other hand, couldn’t handle Kathryn’s colors. She had no idea what season Molly had turned into, but, to her dismay, she now looked best in shades she’d always detested. Washed-out blues, sherbet hues. So, in addition to hating her life, she hated her clothes.

“Oh, I know what I meant to ask you the minute you came in,” Raylene said as she dabbed more bleach preparation on Molly’s roots. “What’s the deal with the trailer? You got relatives visiting from up north?”

“No. Not relatives. A handyman is doing some repairs on my house. He’s from around here, I guess. At least, that’s what I assumed.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s his name?”

“Shackelford.”

Raylene’s hands dropped to Molly’s shoulders. “Not Danny Shackelford!”

“Well. Dan.”

“Oh, my Lord!” Raylene whooped. “Oh, my dear sweet Lord.”

In the mirror Molly saw a woman she hadn’t yet met come through the door. The hairdresser saw her, too, and immediately called out, “JoEllen, you’re not gonna believe who’s back. Not in a million, jillion years.”

“Who?” JoEllen didn’t look all that interested until Raylene told her the handyman’s name, but once she heard it, she was whooping, too. “Danny Shackelford. If that’s not a blast from the past, I don’t know what is. How long’s he been gone, Raylene? Fourteen, fifteen years?”

“More like nineteen,” Raylene said over her shoulder. “He took off right after old Miss Hannah passed away, and that’s been close to twenty years.” She met Molly’s eyes in the mirror. “How’s he look? You’ll break my heart if you tell me he’s got a potbelly and a receding hairline.”

“He looks fine,” Molly said, lifting her shoulders in a little shrug beneath her plastic cape.

“Fine! Oh, honey, you can do better than that. Now, what is it? Fine as in you wouldn’t kick him out of bed? Or fine as in you’d sell your soul to the devil to get him there?”

JoEllen, the newcomer, chuckled while she poured a cup of coffee. “If memory serves, that wouldn’t be all that hard to do, Raylene.”

“He was pretty wild, I take it,” Molly said, suddenly not all that comfortable with the thought of Dan Shackelford roaming like some feral beast through her house.

“Wild?” Raylene exclaimed. “Well, let me put it this way. If Moonglow had had a zoo, Danny Shackelford would have been the main attraction. Right, JoEllen?”

The two women drifted off to other topics then, with Molly putting in her occasional three words while her thoughts strayed repeatedly to the man lazing under the live oak in her backyard. A sleepy lion on some distant savanna, waiting for a slower, weaker creature to appear.

Dan was putting in the last screw on the new brass lock of the double-hung window in the living room so he had a perfect view of Molly Hansen walking along Second Street on her way back from town.

Her stride was long with her feet turned out slightly, like a ballet dancer. Her skirt swung softly around her shapely calves with each step. What idiot at WITSEC had thought a woman like that would be invisible in a town like Moonglow? She stood out like a diamond in a pile of wood chips.

“God bless it!”

The screwdriver slipped and gouged a chunk out of his thumb. A little reminder from the gods that he was here to do a job, not ogle a pretty blonde from a window. Then, a second later, as if to really drive home their point, the deities pinched the flesh of his thigh between the entrance and exit scars.

“Yeah. Okay. Okay,” Dan muttered, grimacing as he finished tightening the screw on the lock. “I get the message.”

He tossed the screwdriver into the paint-stained toolbox he’d bought early that morning from Harley Cates after it had occurred to him that a handyman couldn’t very well show up without the tools of his trade.

Harley had recognized him right off the bat, which had been more than a bit disconcerting, considering he hadn’t seen the old codger in nearly twenty years.

Dan had dug around in Harley’s barn for a while, deflecting the old man’s questions as best he could.

“How much do you want for this old toolbox, Harley?” he’d asked him.

“I’d ask twenty from a stranger, Danny, but since you’re Miss Hannah’s boy and all, I’ll take fifteen.”

Dan had opened his wallet, relieved to see that he had the fifteen bucks.

“You back to stay, son?” Harley asked, folding the fives and sliding them into his back pocket.

“No, I’m just passing through.”

“Don’t let much grass grow under you, huh? Shackelfords are like that. All but Miss Hannah, God rest her soul.”

Dan looked out the window again now. Molly Hansen was pulling a little grocery cart behind her. He could almost hear Miss Hannah saying, “Don’t stand there like you’ve put down roots, boy. Where’s your manners? Go give that little girl a hand.”

“Thanks, anyway. I can manage.”

“Aw, come on, Molly. I’ve got a bad enough reputation in this town already. What’ll people say if they see me strolling empty-handed while you’re lugging that cart?”

Molly cocked her head. Her handyman was wearing his sunglasses, so she couldn’t see his eyes, but judging from his grin, she sensed they were twinkling. “I just got an earful of that reputation of yours, Shackelford, down at the beauty shop.”

“Oh, yeah? You mean somebody in Moonglow actually remembers me?”

“Sounded to me as if your name is prominently featured in the local Hall of Fame,” she said. “Or was that the Hall of Shame?”

The wattage of his grin diminished a bit. “Well, don’t believe everything you hear. Especially in a beauty shop.”

Molly’s right arm brushed his, and she deliberately maneuvered her shopping cart a few inches to the left, putting more distance between them.

“Who’s still talking about me after all these years?” he asked.

“Raylene Earl.”

“Oh. Damn.”

He whipped off his glasses and came to a complete standstill on the sidewalk.

“Raylene Ford? Then I guess she must’ve married Buddy Earl. I’ll be damned. Is she still…?” His open palms came up in a descriptive fashion.

Ordinarily such a blatantly sexist gesture would have made Molly angry, but knowing the pride Raylene took in her generous endowments, she found herself laughing instead. “She remembers you pretty vividly, too.”

“We had our moments,” he said, repositioning the dark shades on the bridge of his nose, cutting off her view of his deep green eyes.

“I’ll bet you did.”

They were both quiet, caught up in their own thoughts, the rest of the way to the house. Molly couldn’t help but notice that Dan wore a goofy little half grin that she suspected had something to do with Raylene. For some strange reason, she found herself envying the hairdresser for that. Heaven knows, nobody had such fondly amusing memories of Kathryn Claiborn. Not even her fiancé.

She had stopped at the post office after she left Raylene’s, and picked up another letter from Ethan Ambrose, her longtime fiancé. He knew she was under the protection of WITSEC, but he didn’t know where. All of his letters to her from New York were filtered through Washington and Houston before they ever arrived in Moonglow. Molly picked them up each week, read them and put them in a desk drawer. For some reason she couldn’t begin to understand, she hadn’t written Ethan back. She just didn’t know what to say. She just didn’t feel like his Kathryn anymore.

They had reached the end of the driveway and were at the back door when Dan reached into the pocket of his palm-tree-studded shirt.

“Your new keys,” he said.

“Thanks.” Molly was wondering if she should invite him in for a glass of lemonade or something. She chided herself for not picking up a six-pack at the store.

“Guess I’ll knock off for today,” Dan said, already heading for the rear of the house. “See you tomorrow.”

“See you,” Molly said, fitting the shiny key into the shiny new lock, thinking of course he didn’t want to spend any time with her after his work was done. Who did she think she was, anyway? Raylene?

Dan stabbed a fork in the steak and flipped it, taking a moment to appreciate the fine parallel burn marks from the grill. It was the first time in a long time he wasn’t drinking his dinner with a bag of pretzels on the side. Smoke from the fire filtered up through the leaves of the live oak. Too bad there wasn’t a nice little breeze to blow it toward the house, he thought. Who could resist a steak on the grill?

Don’t, he cautioned himself. Easy as this job is, you can’t afford the distraction. You screw this up and it’s so long, Dan. When you were good, you were very, very good. When you went off the rails, you were gone.

He heard the screen door in back squeak open. He wouldn’t fix that, he thought. It was as good as any alarm.

What it signaled now was Molly, coming around the corner and sauntering barefoot across the lawn while the sunset tinted her hair a reddish gold.

“Smells good,” she said.

“Doesn’t it, though?” He jabbed at the steak with the fork. “Just about done, too.”

“Mmm.”

Her deep-throated murmur was so sensual, Dan nearly stabbed himself with the damn fork. He took a swallow of his beer to cool himself off. “There’s plenty here. Want to join me?”

“Oh, I… Well, I just made a Greek salad.”

He thought that was more of a yes than a no, but he didn’t want to press his luck. “They’re selling feta cheese in Moonglow? What is this world coming to?”

She laughed softly. “Would you like some?”

“Bring her on out,” he said.

By the time Molly was back with her big wooden salad bowl and—smart girl that she was—two steak knives, Dan had unfolded a second lawn chair, put half of the steak on each of two paper plates and popped open another bottle of beer. He opened one more when she said that sounded good.

“This is nice,” she said, digging into her steak. “I mean, it’s nice not having to eat alone.”

“Amen to that.”

For a minute, just on the edge of sundown, sharing a good meal with a pretty woman, Dan was nearly feeling human again. And then the big Crown Victoria cruiser with the Moonglow Sheriff’s Department insignia on the door swung into Molly’s driveway.

It figured, Dan thought. You couldn’t come home without a homecoming party.

Molly didn’t like the set of Sheriff Gil Watson’s thick jaw as he lumbered across the lawn, or the half-dare, half-smirk tilt of his lips. The man took his job way too seriously in her opinion. Moonglow wasn’t exactly the South Bronx.

Watson aimed a little nudge of his cap in her direction, mouthed a curt “Howdy, ma’am,” then stuck out one of his huge, hammy hands toward Dan.

“Heard you were back, Danny,” he said. “It’s been a while.”

“Gil,” Dan said. “Looks like you took over your old man’s business.”

Done shaking hands, the sheriff hooked his thumbs through his big black gun belt. “Dad retired five years ago. Just seemed natural then, me taking up where he left off. Folks were used to saying Sheriff Watson.”

“Hell, I know I was. Your daddy picked me up by the scruff of the neck and threw my butt in jail more times than I like to remember.”

There was a brittle edge to Dan’s laughter that was apparently lost on the lawman, but not on Molly. She swore she could feel static electricity coming from the handyman. It almost made the hair stand up on her arms.

The sheriff lifted a hand to run it across his jawline. “Been in town long?”

“Just got in today.”

“Doing some repair work on Miss Hansen’s house?”

“Yep.” Dan shifted his weight and took a long pull from his beer.

“Is that what you’ve been doing all these years?” Watson asked, shifting his considerable weight, too, and somehow looking down at Dan even though the two were roughly the same height. “Working as a handyman?”

“More or less.”

“In Texas?”

“Pretty much.”

“Plenty of work, I’d expect.”

“Enough.”

Molly could almost smell the testosterone. The evening air reeked of it. It was definitely time for a bit of feminine sweet talk.

“We were just having some dinner, Sheriff. Steak and Greek salad. Would you care to join us?”

Watson touched the brim of his hat again. “Oh, no, ma’am. I’ve got evening rounds to make. I just stopped by to say hi to Danny here.” He took a step back, adjusting his gun belt over his ample gut. “I’ll be going now. Nice seeing you, Miss Hansen. Danny, you, too. You keep your nose clean, you hear?”

My God. In all of her thirty-one years, Molly had never actually heard somebody seethe, but that was precisely what Dan Shackelford was doing at the moment. He was hot enough to cook a steak on. She could almost hear his temper crackle, so it surprised her when his voice emerged fairly level and calm.

“See you around, Gil.”

It was only after the cruiser had pulled out of the driveway and moved on down the street that Dan swore harshly and tossed his paper plate with all its contents into the glowing coals of the grill.

“I lost my appetite,” he said.

“Don’t mind him, Dan,” Molly said. “Big fish. Little pond. You know. Watson just likes to make waves. And there’s no shame in being a handyman. God knows we need more of those than self-important lawmen.”

He just looked at her then for the longest while, shaking his head kind of sadly, before he said, “Good night, Molly. I’ll see you in the morning.”

Then he disappeared into his trailer.

Chapter 2

The next morning Molly kept to her usual routine of waking early and getting to her desk by eight o’clock. The regular hours helped keep a sense of normalcy in her disrupted life. And that life promised to be even more disrupted now that Dan was going to be there, measuring, hammering, generally getting in her way, not to mention taking up more of her thoughts than she wanted to admit.

By nine o’clock, she had read and graded six essays entitled “My Favorite Season,” with summer the hands-down winner, in spite of the fact that she had spent half the time looking out the window for signs of life under the live oak.

By ten o’clock, she was worried in addition to being ticked off. Just when was all this measuring and hammering and getting in her way supposed to begin? She wasn’t running a trailer park or a campground, for heaven’s sake, and she certainly wasn’t running a retirement home for handymen, although that looked to be the case.

She poured a mug of coffee, then trudged across the yard and pounded on the Airstream’s door. She stood there, tapping her foot for what seemed like half an hour before the door finally swung open.

“You look terrible,” she said, offering the first words that came to mind when she saw the rumpled hair, the red eyes like flags at half-mast, the stained T-shirt and the ratty boxer shorts with their wrinkled happy faces.

“Is that coffee?”

Molly looked down at the mug she had almost forgotten was in her hand. “Coffee? Oh, yes. It is.”

“Is it for me?”

“Oh. Sure. Here.” She pressed it into Dan’s not-so-steady hand, then watched him swallow at least half of it before she asked, “What time were you planning to start work? I’ve made a list.”

He winced. “A list?”

“Things that really need to be done.” She reached into the pocket of her skirt and withdrew the piece of paper she had scribbled on earlier. “The showerhead in the bathroom needs to be replaced. And the sink drips in there, too. You already know about the roof leaking, right?”

He nodded as he sipped the coffee.

“The wallpaper is peeling in the bedroom, too, but I wasn’t sure if you were just supposed to make structural repairs or—”

“Just give me the list.”

“You probably can’t read my writing. Number three looks like kitchen flower but it’s really floor. There’s a spot near the pantry where—”

“Just give me the goddamned list,” he barked, nearly ripping it out of her hand, then slapping the empty mug in her open palm while Molly stood there blinking.

“I’m sorry,” he said immediately.

“You should be,” she snapped. “I was only trying to help.”

“I got up on the wrong side of the bed, that’s all.”

Molly snorted. “Yeah. The underside.”

“Okay. Look, give me a couple minutes to get cleaned up and then we’ll go over this list of yours and work up some kind of a plan. How does that sound?”

“All right, I guess. Fine.”

“Fine.”

“Fine,” Dan snarled into the mirror mounted over the Airstream’s minuscule bathroom sink where he’d just narrowly escaped slashing his carotid artery while he shaved. “Fine and dandy.”

Posing as a handyman had seemed like a good idea at the time, considering that his official presence was supposed to be kept under wraps. The Marshals Service couldn’t afford to create panic in several thousand witnesses, not to mention the agency’s devout wish to avoid bad publicity. But after installing the window and door locks, Dan realized he’d reached the limit of his do-it-yourself expertise. For somebody who could break down and reassemble just about any weapon ever made, he was at a loss when it came to domestic nuts and bolts. Molly was a smart woman. She’d have his number—zero!—before he could hammer a single nail.

She was a sweet woman, too. God bless her for trying to step between him and that no-neck, ham-handed Gil Watson last night, and then attempting to bolster his wounded handyman ego as if she weren’t some hotshot East Coast financial whiz. If she was miserable here in the armpit of Texas, she was much too gracious to let it show.

He’d been miserable here, but not because he’d been leading some secret, lesser life. He’d been miserable because he had to spend every waking minute proving himself to a couple hundred people to whom the name Shackelford was synonymous with white trash. Catching a last glimpse of his face in the mirror, Dan wasn’t at all sure they weren’t right.

He knocked on Molly’s back door and mumbled another apology when she finally let him in.

“I thought I’d run down to Cooley’s Hardware and pick up some of the things on your list,” he said, digging the paper out of his shirt pocket.

“Let me get my handbag and drag a quick brush through my hair.”

Dan started to tell her she didn’t need to come along, but as he watched the sway of her backside and the soft swing of her hair on her shoulders, he changed his mind. He didn’t even try to convince himself it was because his job was to protect her from unseen terrorists. Hell. As if he even could.

“I’m ready.” She was back, all blue-eyed and smiley, with a floppy straw hat on her head and a big straw bag hooked over one shoulder.

Dan slid his dark glasses in place, pushed his headache to the back of his brain, and said, “Okay. Let’s go.”

Molly had only been in Cooley’s Hardware on Main Street once. Her brain became so overloaded from the narrow aisles with their crammed shelves that she’d left without purchasing what she’d gone there to get. She felt the same today, on the verge of short-circuiting as she wandered along behind Dan who was pitching odds and ends into a shopping cart.

“This place hasn’t changed a bit,” he said, reaching over her head for something on a shelf. “Almost feels as if I never left. Scary.” He feigned a shiver, then lobbed whatever he’d retrieved into the cart.

“How long ago did you leave?” Molly asked, continuing to trail along behind him.

“Nearly twenty years. Hell, a lifetime.”

“Hmm. That young man working at the cash register probably wasn’t even born then. Just think. In the time you’ve been gone, an entire generation has been born, graduated from high school, probably even gotten married and started families of their own.”

Dan must have stopped the cart suddenly because Molly walked right into him, her breath whooshing out in an audible oof.

“Are you trying to make me feel old, Molly?” he asked irritably. “Trying to push me into some kind of midlife, male-menopausal crisis? ’Cause if you are, I can tell you right now you’re doing a bang-up job.”

“No. I wasn’t. For heaven’s sake, I was only…”

But before Molly got another word out, a shrill, very familiar voice called out, “Well, bless my stars and all the planets, if it isn’t Danny Shackelford.”

Raylene Earl was sidling toward them, wearing a pair of the tightest jeans Molly had ever seen, and an orange-and-white striped tank top that did amazing things to her chest. Her breasts sort of preceded her down the narrow aisle, then smushed into Dan when Raylene nearly hugged the life out of him.

“Danny. My Lord,” she exclaimed, stepping back on her spike-heeled sandals. “You haven’t changed one little bit. Not one teensy-weensy bit.”

“Neither have you, Raylene.” His grin wobbled somewhere between downright embarrassment and outright lust.

The hairdresser rolled her eyes in Molly’s direction. “Did you hear that, hon? What a sweet thing to say. But then you always did have a silver tongue, Danny. My Lord. I can’t believe you’re back. Molly said so, but it just didn’t seem to sink in until I laid my very own eyes on you five seconds ago.”

Dan just stood there, seemingly as hard-pressed for the proper response as Molly was. But that didn’t bother a single pink hair on Raylene’s head.

“Look at you,” she said, threading her Strawberry Frappé fingertips through Dan’s hair. “You always did tend toward that scruffy look, didn’t you? You have Molly bring you down to my shop and I’ll give you a trim. I do Buddy’s hair and he likes it well enough. Both my boys, too. ’Course, it’s free so they can’t really complain.”

“So, you and Buddy got married,” Dan said.

“Only ’cause you upped and disappeared.” Raylene giggled and gave a brisk wave of her hand. “I’m kidding. I knew I’d be Mrs. Buddy Earl from the time I was in kindergarten. It just took me till I was nineteen to really settle in to the idea.”

“Is he still the best mechanic in Moonglow?”

“You bet your buns he is. The best in the whole county. He’s got his own garage now and even works weekends on the NASCAR circuit.”

Raylene dragged in a breath and crossed her arms, a nearly impossible feat in Molly’s humble opinion. She shook her pink head in wonderment. “Danny Shackelford. My Lord. So, what’ve you been up to all these years?”

“Oh, nothing. This and that. You know.”

If his answer struck Molly as vague bordering on obscurity, it seemed to make complete sense to Raylene.

“This and that,” she echoed, flinging a long-lashed wink toward Molly. “Probably a little more of this than of that, if I know you. Molly, this man is the world’s greatest kisser. I’m telling you that right now. The best bar none.”

“Jeez, Raylene,” Dan muttered, donning his glasses again and turning up the collar of his shirt as if he wanted to disappear inside it.

“Well, honey, I’d be proud of that, if I were you. I don’t care what your other talents turned out to be. In the smooching department, you were El Numero Uno. Probably still are, too.” She cocked her head. “Is he, Molly? Come on. ’Fess up now.”

“Rrraaayleene.” Molly dragged the woman’s name out to at least four childish syllables.

“Okay. All right. I’m nosy. I admit it. I…”

A deep male voice on the store’s intercom cut her off as it boomed across the aisles, “Raylene, we got that hinge you were looking for up here at the counter.”

“Well, I’d best collect that and get it home while Buddy’s still in the mood to fix my kitchen cabinet. Now, you come into the shop for that trim, Danny. Molly, you bring him in, you hear me? See y’all later.”

“I feel like I’ve been picked up and put down by a tornado,” Dan said with a beleaguered sigh. “Let’s get out of here before she comes back.”

Molly laughed. “Raylene’s got a good heart.”

“I wonder how the hell I ever even managed to kiss a pair of lips that move ninety miles an hour.”

“Well, I guess you used to be faster,” she said, “in the olden days.” Molly grinned in the face of Dan’s dark glare, then chuckled to herself as she again followed along behind him.

“Will that be all for you, sir?” the young man at the counter asked.

“That should do it,” Dan said, hoping his credit card still had a little play in it after he’d been on medical leave at reduced pay for so many months.

“Oh, wait,” Molly said, suddenly appearing with a roll of wallpaper. “We need this, too.”

“That’s just a sample roll,” the clerk said. “I’ll have to call in back for the real stuff. How many rolls do you want?”

Dan could feel himself breaking out in a thin, cold sweat.

“Did you measure?” Molly asked.

“The bedroom? Nah. Didn’t need to. I just eyeballed it.” He leaned casually on the big, ancient counter, trying to speed-read the label on the paper roll and translate centimeters into square feet. This morning’s headache sprang back, full blown. “Gimme twenty rolls,” he told the clerk.

“That’s a lot of paper,” the young man said. “You want a couple buckets of glue to go with that?”

“Sure,” Dan said, pulling his sunglasses down his nose and glowering menacingly over the rims. “And gimme the good stuff. Not that kindergarten paste you people are always trying to hustle. You hear?”

The young man swallowed hard. “Yes, sir.”

It took two trips to haul everything out to his car, and when Dan came out of Cooley’s door the second time, with his arms loaded with wallpaper rolls as heavy as cordwood, he wasn’t exactly astonished to see Gil Watson’s big, shiny black boot up on the BMW’s front bumper.

“This is a thirty-minute parking zone, Danny. ’Fraid I’m gonna have to write you a ticket.”

“That isn’t fair,” Molly called out.

“Sign’s right there.” Gil pointed his pen. “Nice Beamer, Danny. You got the registration slip?”

As a matter of fact, he did, but despite the Texas plates, the car was registered in D.C. and there was no way Dan was going to show it to Gil or anybody else in town. “It’s back at the trailer. Someplace. Hell, I don’t know.”

“But the car’s yours, right?”

Molly scraped her hat off and slapped it against her thigh. “Well, of all the…”

Dan batted her with a roll of wallpaper to hush her up. “Yeah, it’s mine,” he said, opening the trunk, dumping the rolls inside, then slamming it closed. “I saved all my pocket change for a decade, Gil. Worth every damned penny, too.”

“Just checking.” The sheriff ripped a pink copy of the ticket out of his book. “Here. You can pay this any time in the next sixty days down at the city clerk’s office. I’m sure Anita will be right tickled to see you.”

Dan jammed the ticket in his pocket, glaring at Gil’s big backside as he lumbered down the sidewalk. “Fascist,” he muttered just under his breath.

Nearby, Molly looked as if she were about to take a bite out of her straw hat. “I’m going to write a letter to the Moonglow Weekly Press about this,” she said. “It’s just not right.”

“It’s personal, Molly.”

“I know,” she sputtered. “That’s what I mean.”

“Well, I appreciate your wanting to fight my battles for me, but it really isn’t necessary.” He grabbed her hat and plopped it on her head, then opened the passenger side door. “Get in, Rocky. I want to show you someplace special.”

“Where?”

“Just get in.”

Although she’d lived in Moonglow for nearly a year, Molly had never been east of First Street. In fact, she’d just assumed that the town didn’t exist beyond First, and when Dan’s car went flying over railroad tracks, she was even more surprised. She never knew they were there.

“This must be the proverbial other side of the tracks,” she said with a little laugh.

“Not proverbial, Molly, darlin’.” Dan turned the wheel and the car slid to a halt in a rock-strewn, weed-overgrown driveway. “This is the actual other side.”

The dilapidated house by the side of the driveway made Molly’s little bungalow look like a palace in comparison. Here the windows that weren’t boarded up were jaggedly broken. The front porch appeared out of synch with the rest of the house, canting east while everything else canted west. A daylily was growing right up through the porch boards.

“Is this where you lived?” she asked.

“Yeah.” Dan slipped his glasses off, then wrenched his gaze from the house to her. “How’d you know?”

Molly shrugged. “I can’t think of any other reason to come here unless heartstrings were pulling you back.”

“Heartstrings,” he said. “Sometimes I think that was all that held this old place together.”

“Do you want to get out and have a closer look?” Molly asked, her hand already on the door handle.

Dan shook his head. “Too many snakes.”

Molly thought he might as well have said too many memories from the way his mouth twisted down at the corners and the way his knuckles turned white as he gripped the steering wheel. “Tell me,” she said softly. “About the heartstrings.”

“My mother ran off when I was two,” he said, his eyes locked on the ramshackle house. “And after that, my father dragged me around from one oil well to another in Texas and Oklahoma. By the time he died, I was twelve years old and I hadn’t lived any one place for more than two or three months. Then I came here, to live with Miss Hannah.”

“Your aunt?”

He shook his head. “My grandma. Born a Shackelford and died one, and never did bother to get married in spite of my daddy coming along.” He laughed softly. “She said she couldn’t live with a man for more than a couple of weeks without wanting to blow his head off with a shotgun, so she figured she was better off living alone than going to prison.”

“I know the feeling,” Molly murmured. “So, you were twelve when you came to live with her?”

“Twelve going on twenty-one. But she managed to knock a little sense and a few manners into my head.”

“I’ll bet this place was all shiny and spit-polished back then,” Molly said as she watched an armadillo scuttle around a rear corner of the derelict dwelling. She was wishing she could have seen the place back in its prime. Wishing especially she could have seen the boy who was twelve going on twenty-one.

“The county would never give Miss Hannah a proper address,” he said, still staring through the windshield. “That was the bane of her existence. So she made up her own. Thirteen twenty-eight Mockingbird Road.” He laughed. “She wouldn’t accept mail any other way.”

“Stubborn,” Molly said.

“Oh, yeah.”

“And poetic.”

Dan’s eyes drifted closed a moment. When he opened them, the green light there was hard as an emerald. “Miss Hannah died when I was seventeen. I walked out that door and I never came back.”

“Until now.” Thank heaven, she almost added, wondering where that thought had come from.

“Yeah. Until now.”

He reached forward to twist the key in the ignition. “Let’s get out of here.”

What a stupid thing to do, Dan thought as he wrenched the cap from a beer bottle and slung himself into the lawn chair. Piling bittersweet memories on bad ones wasn’t all that bright, and taking Molly out to Miss Hannah’s place was just about the dumbest thing he’d ever done.

What did she care? Kathryn Claiborn had enough of her own bad and bittersweet memories to contend with. She didn’t need to be saddled with any of his, that was for damn sure.

When they’d gotten back to Molly’s house, and while she was whistling and sorting out their purchases in a back room, Dan had picked up the phone in the kitchen and put in a call to Houston.

“Bobby, I can’t do this.”

“Sure you can, amigo. Hell, just consider it a paid vacation. We have no reason to believe the Claiborn woman is in any jeopardy. Far as we know, there’s not a single member of the Red Millennium who hasn’t blown himself up.”

“Bobby…”

“You have to do it, Dan.” Robert Hayes’s voice lost its southern affability and took on a bureaucratic chill. “Everybody else is working double, even triple shifts. You hear me? I’ve already gone to the wall for you, son, but I’m not putting on a blindfold and smoking a final cigarette on your behalf. You got that? If you don’t do this, you’re done. There won’t be anything more I can do.”

Dan twisted the cap off another beer now, thinking it would be easier if he just ran an IV into his arm. Eliminate the middleman, so to speak. The way he was going to be eliminated soon.

Against regulations, Bobby had shown him his psychological workup a few weeks after he got out of the hospital.

The bullet that Deputy Marshal Shackelford took meant nothing to him. It was the bullet that killed his female partner that shattered his confidence. In my considered opinion, without long-term counseling, which Deputy Shackelford dismisses as “voodoo drivel,” he may never regain his former level of confidence, thus making him entirely unsuitable for the duties he is asked to perform.

“Long-term counseling, my ass,” Dan muttered. You either did a job or you didn’t. You withstood the heat or you left the kitchen. If you said you lived at Thirteen Twenty-eight Mockingbird Road, then by God all your mail better be addressed as such or you’d slap it back in the mailman’s bag.

He was glad Miss Hannah couldn’t see him now.

Molly ate her spaghetti dinner at the kitchen counter, keeping an eye out the window as she slurped up the long strings of pasta. She’d called out to Dan earlier against her better judgment.

“Hey! How about some spaghetti for dinner?”

He’d saluted her with his bottle and called back, “No, thanks.”

Somehow, after their visit to town and Miss Hannah’s house, the day had just frittered away. Molly hadn’t gone back to work. God knows Dan hadn’t even started. He’d opened a roll of wallpaper, stared at it thoughtfully, then rolled it back up and gone outside to his lawn chair where he’d been ever since.

But despite his handyman shortcomings she liked him. Really liked him. Maybe she was drawn to his loneliness because of her own. Still, he didn’t seem to have the least bit of interest in her. He hadn’t asked her a single question about herself. Not “Where are you from?” or “What do you do?” or even a silly “What’s a nice girl like you doing in a hellhole like this?”

It shouldn’t have surprised her. She wasn’t a very interesting person now, and probably hadn’t been even when she’d had a life. The most interesting thing that had ever happened to her was getting blown up by a terrorist’s experimental bomb, and that was something she could only discuss when and if she ever got to court, which seemed very unlikely now that the Red Millennium was considered dead as a doornail.

Whoever said that blondes have more fun, she thought dismally, was way off the mark. Dan, on the other hand, seemed to be having fun, swilling beer while slung out in his shady chair. Maybe she’d do that, too. After all, it was her backyard.

She scraped what was left of her spaghetti into the trash can, pulled out the plastic sack and hauled it to the big metal can out back.

“Nice evening,” she called out, getting only a nod in reply.

Maybe blondes had more fun because they were persistent, she thought. Like Raylene. She stood a little straighter, throwing her shoulders back, making the most of her 34Bs, then sauntered toward the trailer.

“Pretty sunset,” she said. It wasn’t exactly an opening Raylene would have used, but she couldn’t quite imagine herself saying, “My Lord, Danny. Don’t you look cute out here all by your lonesome? Want some company?”

Molly cleared her throat. “Want some company?”

At some point, he had changed into a pair of khaki shorts, and when he shifted in his chair, resting an ankle on a knee, she couldn’t help but notice the muscles of his thigh and the long cords of his calves. A little stitch deep inside her pulled tight.

“I’m off the clock, Molly.”

“You’re in my backyard, Dan.”

His mouth slid into a grin as he tipped his bottle her way as if to say touché. That little stitch inside her tweaked again.

“Got an extra beer?” she asked.

He jerked his thumb in the direction of a cooler. “Help yourself.”

She extracted a cold bottle, twisted off the cap and took a long drink. “That’s good,” she said, folding her legs and lowering herself to the ground beside his chair. “I keep forgetting how much I enjoy an occasional beer. Salud.” She reached up to tap her bottle against his.

Dan promptly switched his beer to the other, more distant hand, sighing at the same time and recrossing his legs.

“How’d you get the scar?” Molly asked.

“What?”

“Right there.” She touched her finger to the gnarled tissue on his thigh. “How’d you get it?”

“Staple gun.”

Molly blinked. “What?”

“A staple gun. I was putting down a carpet and I stapled myself to the damned floor.”

She laughed. “I don’t believe you.”

“Okay.”

“How did you get it? Really.”

“I’d tell you,” he said, “but then I’d have to kill you.”

“Right.” Molly took another sip of the cold beer. Be persistent, she told herself. What would Raylene do now? “I’ve got a scar in just about the same place. Wanna see it?”

“No.”

She was already edging up her hemline to disclose the spot where shrapnel from the Chemistry Building basement had supposedly penetrated her leg. The final consensus was that it was a fragment of a Bunsen burner. “Right there. See.”

His gaze drifted almost lazily from her ankle to her thigh, idled there a moment, then turned away. “Nice,” he murmured.

Good God. Her leg felt warmer somehow just from his gaze. Imagine if he touched her.

“Don’t you even want to know how I got it?”

“Nope.”

“Aren’t you even the least bit curious?”

This time his sigh was closer to a growl. “Molly, I’m sitting out here trying to medicate myself into a few hours’ sleep. I’m not in the mood to play Twenty Questions about damaged body parts. Okay?”

“Sorry.” She pushed up from the ground, then furiously whacked twigs and grass clippings from the back of her skirt. Hot tears were stinging her eyes so she didn’t see Dan rise from his chair, but he must have, because the next thing she knew, she was wrapped in his arms and his lips were close to her ear.

“You don’t want this, Molly,” he whispered roughly. “Trust me on this.”

“I wasn’t…”

“Yes, you were.” His embrace tightened painfully around her ribs as his hot breath nearly seared her ear. “Now leave me the hell alone.”

When he practically pushed her away, Molly was hard-pressed to keep her balance. And even though she could hardly see for the tears in her eyes, even though she wanted to run, she and her bruised ego walked slowly toward the house and slammed the door behind her.

Sometime during the night, somewhere between the low trill of the crickets and the high whine of the locusts, Dan thought he heard the insistent ringing of a phone through the open trailer window.

He wrenched up on an elbow, eyed the clock and listened to the sound of Molly’s voice floating through the air.

Who the hell was calling her at three in the morning?

He dropped back on the air mattress, scowling, and let darkness wash over him again.

Molly was slamming around the kitchen the next morning, opening drawers for no reason, slamming them shut again, cursing the slow-brewing coffeemaker, crashing a mug down so hard on the countertop that it broke in her hand. She didn’t even hear the back door squeak open.

“Morning, sunshine.” Dan dropped his toolbox on the kitchen table. “If you’ve got another cup, I could use some coffee.”

She ripped the pot from beneath the brew basket, sloshed the dark liquid into a mug and slapped it down on the table. “There you go.”

“Molly, about last night…”

She held up a hand. “I don’t want to discuss it, Dan. Please. Let’s just pretend it didn’t happen.”

“Fine with me.” He took a tentative sip from the steaming mug. “Who called you last night?”

“What?” She could feel her eyes widen perceptibly. How did he know?

“I heard your phone ringing around three. Who called?”

“Nobody.”

“Somebody,” he countered, eyeing her over the rim of the mug.

“It was a wrong number.”

“Do you always chat with strangers in the middle of the night?”

“The guy was very contrite,” she said. “He apologized. At length.”

Molly couldn’t tell if he believed her or not. Those green eyes could be so cool and inscrutable sometimes. What business was it of his, anyway, that her phone had rung last night at three, or that a man’s raspy voice had asked for Kathryn?

“You seem a little edgy this morning,” he said, slinging a hip on the table. “Anything wrong?”

“Wrong?” she croaked. “What could possibly be wrong? I make a blatant play for every man who comes to do work on my house. Sometimes they respond. Sometimes they don’t.” She lifted her shoulders in an exaggerated shrug. “No big deal.”

Just like the phone call, she told herself. It was no big deal. She probably only imagined that the caller had asked for Kathryn. It made sense. She always dreamed about her old self, and her dream had simply carried over to the caller’s question. The guy had probably asked for Carolyn or Marilyn or somebody. Not Kathryn. It had nothing to do with the terrorists. Anyway, the Marshals Service would have alerted her if anybody was snooping around. They had told her that.

She glared at Dan. “Are you here to work or not?”

He drained the mug and put it down on the table. “Have hammer, will travel, darlin’. Wire Dan. Moonglow.”

Dan was up on the roof with a mouthful of nails when Molly came out the door wearing her floppy hat, with her straw bag hooked over her shoulder. She lifted a hand to shade her eyes when she called up to him. “I’m going into town. Need anything?”

He spat out the nails. “Hang on. I’ll go with you.”

“Oh, that’s okay. I won’t be gone long. You just keep on keeping on.” She gave him a sprightly little wave and started down the driveway.

Dan muttered a curse, shoved the hammer through his belt loop and started a controlled slide down the pitch of the roof toward the ladder. He realized immediately that loose and rotten shingles precluded any notion of control, and the next thing he knew he was hanging on to the guttering for dear life while his legs flailed in empty space.

Okay. Damn. He loosened one hand and reached for the ladder, only to send it sliding down the sidewall to hit the ground with a distinct thud.

“Molly,” he yelled.

“I’m right here, Ace.” Her voice drifted up from below, accompanied by something close to a chuckle. A fairly nasty one.

“You wanna pick up that ladder for me?”

“This ladder?”

“Aw, come on, Molly. I really don’t want to break my neck.” As soon as the words left his mouth, the guttering gave a horrible groan and began to buckle. “Molly, get the goddamned ladder. Now.”

“I’m getting it.” There was panic in her voice now rather than amusement. “Here. Let me just…”

“Dammit. Never mind.”

Dan tried, not all that successfully, to launch himself away from Molly and the useless ladder as he and ten feet of metal guttering came crashing down.

“The last time I saw you, Danny, I think my dad was treating you for a broken nose.” Dr. Richard Pettigrew Jr. shoved the X ray into a slot on the light box and studied the black-and-white picture that emerged. “Well, you’re lucky this time. It’s not broken.”

“Lucky me.” Dan looked at his throbbing ankle. Bullets didn’t hurt half as much, he thought.

“I’ll just wrap it,” Rich Pettigrew said, “lend you a pair of crutches and let you go. You’ll have to stay off of it for a few days, though. Keep it iced and elevated as much as possible. And stay away from roofs.”

Molly flew out of her chair in the waiting room as soon as he angled the crutches through the door.

“Is it broken?” she asked.

“Sprained,” he answered through clenched teeth.

“Oh, that’s good. Well, I don’t mean it’s good. I meant sprained is a lot better than broken.”

“I know what you meant.”

She was fluttering around him like a gnat.

“Look out. You’re gonna make me trip over the damned crutches now.”

She stepped back, hands on hips, her chin thrust up into his face. “Are you implying that I made you fall from the roof?”

Dan hobbled past her. “You just could have been a mite quicker with that ladder, is all,” he grumbled.

He could hear her muttering all the way to the parking lot, mostly about handymen with a pretty snide emphasis on the handy.

“What are you stopping here for?” he asked when Molly pulled into a parking space on Main Street.

“I’ll just be a minute.” She reached around his crutches for her handbag in the back seat.

Dan looked out the window. This stretch of Main Street didn’t have a single store. It was mostly offices, real estate, insurance and—hello!—the telephone company.

“You need to pay your phone bill?” he asked innocently.

“Yes. That’s right. It’ll just take me a second.”

Dan watched her disappear through the door. “People in WITSEC pay their bills through the regional offices, babe. But you don’t know I know that. Who called you last night, Molly? Who?”

Chapter 3

“Here, Hopalong. Take these.” Molly jammed two capsules into his left hand and a glass of water into his right. “And don’t look at me like I’m trying to poison you. They’re pain pills.”

“Shackelfords are suspicious by nature,” Dan said, tossing back the capsules while casting another bleak look at his throbbing ice-packed ankle on Molly’s foot-stool.

She hadn’t said much after their stop at the phone company. She was being a good little witness, keeping her own counsel. He guessed that she’d run into a bureaucratic brick wall trying to find out where that phone call had come from.

“Hand me those crutches, will you?”

“Why?”

“Because I need to go out to the trailer and get something, that’s why.”

“I’ll go,” she said. “What do you want? A beer?”

Dan felt a shameful anger rip through him. It wasn’t even noon, for God’s sake, and she figured he was ready for a bender. What he wanted from the trailer was his gun. He leaned sideways and snagged the crutches himself.

Just as he managed to get them comfortably under his arms, the phone rang. Molly jumped as if she’d just put her foot down on a hot coal, then simply stood there, staring at the ringing hunk of plastic.

“Are you going to get that?” Dan asked.

“I wasn’t expecting a call,” she said nervously, stepping back to put a little more distance between herself and whoever was on the other end of the line. She had every reason to fear the terrorists of the Red Millennium. Did she know that most or all of them were dead?

Dan made a mental note to pick up a caller ID box just as soon as he could get into town. It surprised him that she didn’t already have one, actually. But then maybe the powers that be in the service had told her and assured her that she was safe.

“Do you want me to answer it?” he asked on the seventh ring.

“No. That’s all right. I’ll get it.” She approached the phone as if it were a rattlesnake. “It’s probably a wrong number, anyway. Nobody ever calls me.”

Somebody, baby, Dan thought as he watched her pick up the receiver and whisper a tentative hello. Her whole body relaxed then and she turned to him, smiling.

“It’s Raylene.”

“Good. Give her my love,” he said, gripping the crutches and stabbing his way toward his temporary home.

Inside the trailer he figured that the only way to get his Glock secretly into the house was to put it in a gym bag. As long as he was doing that, he tossed in his toothbrush, too. It wasn’t such a bad idea, spending a night or two close enough to Molly to do her some good if it came to that. It wouldn’t. But what the hell? Being close to Molly had an appeal all by itself.

“Raylene wanted us to join her and Buddy tonight at the Sit and Sip,” she said when he reentered the living room. “I told her we couldn’t because of your ankle.”

“Good move.”

“She said…well, wait a minute.” Molly stood up, slung out a hip and expanded her chest about three inches. “Take care of that poor baby, hon. You hear? We’ll all go two-stepping some other time. Danny used to do a pretty hot two-step. My Lord.” Molly’s Texas twang dissolved into giggles.

“Believe it or not, I did used to do a pretty hot two-step,” he said, trying to juggle the gym bag and the crutches. “Don’t let my current situation fool you.”

“Oh, it doesn’t,” Molly said. “What’s the bag for, Handy Andy?”

“I’m going to sleep in here for a couple nights, if you don’t mind. That way, when I wake, screaming in pain, you won’t have so far to run.”

He was prepared for one of her sharp little barbs, but instead she gave him a look of such sweet sympathy, such warm concern, all of it tinged with such innocent, ineffable longing, that if he hadn’t been on crutches, he might very well have fallen to his knees and begged her to marry him right here, right now.

“You can sleep in my bed,” she said, sending his entire nervous system into a momentary frenzy before she added, “I don’t mind sleeping on the couch.”

“I don’t want to put you out, Molly.”

“You’re not. I’m really happy for the company.” She gave a little shrug. “I probably shouldn’t say so, it makes me sound like such a jerk, but I really don’t have any friends here.”

“Why not?” Dan could have kicked himself. He knew why not. A secret past and an unknown future, that’s why. Plus the service had probably given her that song and dance about not trusting anybody. She probably shouldn’t have trusted him.

“Maybe I’m shy.” She tried to laugh. “Socially challenged, I guess.”

“I can fix that,” he said.

“You can?”

“Sure. Pick up that phone and call Raylene. Tell her we’ll meet them at the Sit and Sip at eight o’clock tonight.”

“But what about your ankle?”

“Well, it could just be a blessing in disguise, you know.” He winked. “This way I can just sit and sip, and I won’t have to two-step with Raylene.”

Dan could still drive since it was his left foot that was injured, and the black BMW pulled into the gravel lot of the Sit and Sip in a magnificent cloud of sunset-colored dust.

Molly had taken pains to dress properly for the honky-tonk, even knowing that whatever she wore would pale in comparison with Raylene’s outfit. Dan told her she looked nice when she slid into the passenger seat, but when his eyes lit on Raylene in her spandex bottom and sequined top, he seemed to be registering more than merely “nice” on his compliment meter. On a scale of one to ten, Raylene was a 36DD. My Lord, Molly thought.

“Well, there you are,” the hairdresser exclaimed. “We thought you’d never get here, didn’t we, Buddy? You remember Danny Shackelford, don’t you? And this is my friend, Molly Hansen.”

While Dan and Buddy shook hands, Molly just stood there, slightly thunderstruck by Raylene’s use of the word friend. Did the outgoing, invincible hairdresser actually think of her that way? She longed to believe it was true, more than just Raylene being Raylene. She needed a friend now, more than ever before.

There was a band on the stage, playing at full country tilt, and no sooner had they all sat down than Raylene was dragging Buddy onto the dance floor.

“You ought to be thanking your lucky stars you sprained that ankle, Danny,” she called back gaily over her sequined shoulder, “or else I’d be dancing your feet right down to the bone.”

“You see,” Dan said, his lips close to Molly’s ear. “I told you it was a blessing.”

When the waitress came to take their order, it was no surprise that she, too, remembered Dan and had her own little bit of Shackelford lore to relate. With the music so loud, it was almost impossible to hear, and Molly only picked up scattered words such as motorcycle and keg and, last but not least, sheriff.

It did surprise her, though, when Dan ordered a club soda with a twist of lemon. She decided he was simply being cautious after taking those pain pills. It was probably a good idea.

An hour later, after both Raylene and Buddy had given her lessons in two-stepping, Molly felt like a sweaty mess as she followed Raylene into the ladies’ room.

“My Lord,” the hairdresser exclaimed when she looked into the mirror. “I think my hair’s turned two shades darker. You think all that cigarette smoke could do that, Molly? Turn a person’s hair from pink to purple?”

“It’s probably just the lighting in here,” Molly said, digging in her handbag for her lipstick and coming up with a roll of mints. “Raylene, could I borrow a little bit of that Strawberry Frappé of yours?”

Even as Molly asked, Raylene was applying it liberally. She answered with her lips pressed to her teeth. “Aw, honey, I don’t know why you’d even bother. I’ve been watching you and Danny. If ever I’ve seen kissing on a man’s mind, it’s on his. You’d only get strawberry all over that cute Hawaiian shirt of his.”

“Kissing?”

“Yeah. You know. That’s when two people put their lips together and start talking without any words.” She rolled her eyes. “Kissing, Molly. My Lord. How long has it been, girl?”

“A long time,” Molly admitted.

“I guess so if you can’t see what I’m seeing.” Raylene blotted her lips, then added another layer of color. “You take my word for it. Your dry spell has come to a screeching halt, honey.” She closed one dark-lashed eye in a wink. “Tonight’s the night, if you know what I mean.”

Oh, God. No, she didn’t know exactly what Raylene meant, and Molly did a panicky search for feet in the nearby stalls in the hope that the whole town didn’t know what Raylene meant, either. Luckily, no feet were visible.

“For pity’s sake, Raylene,” she said, trying to sound worldly and offhand. “The man’s got a sprained ankle.”

Raylene wound her lipstick back in its plastic tube, then snapped the cap on with authority. “Molly, I hope you never meet a man who lets a little sprained ankle keep him down. And I hope you catch my drift.” She gave herself a final, critical once-over in the mirror, seemed pleased with what she saw, then linked her arm through Molly’s. “Well. You ready for another dancing lesson?”

“I hope you don’t believe half of these stories people are telling about me,” Dan said on their way home from the Sit and Sip.

“They’re not true?”

“Well, if you halve the quantity of the booze, and double the times Miss Hannah slapped me up the side of my head, then, yeah, they’re basically true.”

“Speaking of drinks,” she said, “how was the club soda?”

“Like creek water. But I didn’t know what was in those pills you made me swallow, so I didn’t want to take any chances.”

What he meant was he didn’t know if her mysterious caller might emerge from the shadows around the dance floor and two-step Molly into oblivion. Sobriety was a necessary evil at the moment.

“You should probably take another one before you go to bed,” she said. “How’s the ankle?”

“Tolerable.”

Actually, it hurt like hell and the rest of him wasn’t all that comfortable, either, after an evening of watching Molly out on the dance floor, mentally undoing the buttons on her blouse and imagining his fingers running over the hidden scar halfway up her leg.

It isn’t going to happen, pal, Dan kept telling himself. You read her file. What about the fiancé she left languishing in New York? Once she settles in to her new identity, she’ll find a way to reestablish the connection. It was only a matter of time. If she looks at you now with that banked fire in her eyes, just take it for what it is. Getting it on with the handyman. Passing time with the help until her real life resumes.

“I had fun tonight.” She leaned her head back on the seat. “Thanks for taking me, Dan.”

“You’ll get the hang of small-town life after a while. Moonglow’s not such a bad place.”

“I’m beginning to see that.” She turned her head toward him, and he couldn’t help but notice a hopeful shine in her eyes. “Do you think you’ll stick around? I mean, after you’re finished with my house?”

“Probably not.” He turned into her driveway, hoping his terse response had put an end to whatever she was wishing for that had anything to do with him. “Here we are. Home sweet home.”

While Molly worked the new key in the new lock on the back door, Dan glanced at his trailer. Moonlight filtered through the live oak, dappling the Airstream’s dented aluminum skin. For a minute it seemed hard to believe he actually lived in what he had come to think of as his movable squalor. For a moment it was utterly depressing to know it was only a matter of time before he was in residence there again.

It seemed so natural, following Molly into the house, watching her flip on lights and seeing her hair turn different shades of gold, depending on the wattage of the bulbs.

“I changed the sheets,” she said, gesturing toward her bedroom. “And I put some extra pillows out in case you want to elevate your foot.”

“Thanks.”

“The clock is kind of noisy. Just put it in the drawer of the nightstand if it bothers you too much.”

“Okay.”

“Well…”

Only a blind man could have missed the longing that turned her light blue eyes a deeper shade. Dan readjusted his crutches and leaned down to kiss the top of her head.

“Good night, Molly.”

He had a beaut of a nightmare, no doubt induced by the club soda he’d consumed. He and his partner, Carrie Gray, had just taken over escort duty from Deputies Underhill and Roarke. Hector Morales, their witness, was finishing his room service breakfast of steak and eggs, and in no particular hurry to put on the Kevlar vest that would protect his traitorous heart between the hotel and the federal courtroom where he was due to testify in a little over an hour.

As dreams tended to do, the scene shifted suddenly and they were walking down a long corridor, Carrie and Morales in front, Dan just a step or two behind them, his right hand itching as it always did in situations like this, and his brain measuring distances, delineating shadows, processing everything and labeling it threat or inconsequential, friend or foe.

Carrie pressed the down button on the elevator with the pad of her index finger, her long nail making a little clacking sound on the brass plaque behind the lit button. Then all of them—Dan and Morales and Carrie—gazed up at the light panel overhead.

Was that his mistake? Was that the moment when he let down his guard and all of his instincts failed him?

The elevator door slid open. Dan never saw the men, only the muzzle flashes—fierce, perpetual flames—from their semiautomatics. At such close range, those rifles worked with the efficiency of a Veg-O-Matic. In a heartbeat, Carrie and Morales were no longer identifiable even as they fell.

In this edition of the dream, Dan took a bullet in his ankle rather than his leg, but he continued to empty his gun into the open elevator and he put a dozen holes in the bronzed doors after they swooshed closed.

They said a woman fainted in the lobby when those doors opened on the two dead Colombians inside.

They also said that Dan was crying when the first NYPD cops arrived on the scene. Babbling incoherently was written in his file.

But that was never part of his dream.

Molly was glad that Dan was sleeping in. The more he slept, she figured, the less pain he’d have to endure. Also, the more he slept, the less chance she’d have of making a fool of herself again as she had the night before. She’d practically begged the man to kiss her. Now, the morning after, she was relieved he’d turned her down.

While she graded essays, she kept an ear out for the knock she was expecting at her front door. She had promised Raylene to tutor Buddy Jr. in English composition. The boy, it seemed, was mechanically inclined like his father, but unless he passed English and received his high school diploma, there would be no technical school in his future.

“Besides,” Raylene had said, “every hour Buddy Jr. spends with you, Molly, will be one less hour I’ll have to worry about him getting into trouble. He might even take a look at what Danny’s become and realize there’s no future in earning a bad reputation instead of a diploma.”

“There’s nothing wrong with Dan,” Molly had said defensively.

“Well, I didn’t say there was, honey. He’s just not exactly chairman of the board of General Motors, now, is he?”

“Who’d want to be?” Molly muttered at her monitor. Then, a second later, realizing what she’d said, Molly almost laughed out loud.

As an associate professor of business, Kathryn Claiborn had spent the last six or seven years attempting to convince her students that being chairman of the board of General Motors was a worthy, if not the ultimate goal for which to strive. She had lauded the glories of the balance sheet and sung the praises of tax credits, debentures and initial public offerings.

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