“We’ll Tackle The Next Few Items On Your List,” Tucker Suggested. Letter to Reader Title Page About the Author Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Copyright

“We’ll Tackle The Next Few Items On Your List,” Tucker Suggested.

“The missing fiancé, the threat of a mother-in-law invasion and—what’s next? Tires? Glasses? You name it. Least I can do, since we’re family now.”

“We’re what?” Annie asked.

“Gousins-in-law?”

“Loose connections, at the very most,” she said repressively. “Temporary loose connections.”

On the wide front porch, Tucker turned and lifted a hand in careless salute. She watched him stride down the front walk and wondered what there was about the man that made him so impossible to ignore.

Family?

No way. There was something going on here, but for the life of her, she couldn’t figure out what it was. They weren’t really family. On the other hand, they weren’t really friends. Which left...

“Don’t ask. Don’t even think about it,” she muttered, and slammed the door hard enough to rattle the beveled glass panels.

Dear Reader,

Hey, look us over—our brand-new cover makes Silhouette Desire look more desirable than ever! And between the covers we’re continuing to offer those powerful, passionate and provocative love stories featuring rugged heroes and spirited heroines.

Mary Lynn Baxter returns to Desire and locates our November MAN OF THE MONTH in the Heart of Texas, where a virgin heroine is wary of involvement with a younger man.

More heart-pounding excitement can be found in the next installment of the Desire miniseries TEXAS CATTLEMAN’S CLUB with Secret Agent Dad by Metsy Hingle. Undercover agent Blake Hunt loses his memory but gains adorable twin babies—and the heart of lovely widow Josie Walters!

Ever-popular Dixie Browning presents a romance in which opposites attract in The Bride-in-Law. Elizabeth Bevarly offers you A Doctor in Her Stocking, another entertaining story in her miniseries FROM HERE TO MATERNITY. The Daddy Search is Shawna Delacorte’s story of a woman’s search for the man she believes fathered her late sister’s child. And a hero and heroine are in jeopardy on an island paradise in Kathleen Korbel’s Sail Away.

Each and every month, Silhouette Desire offers you six exhilarating journeys into the seductive world of romance. So make a commitment to sensual love and treat yourself to all six!

Enjoy!

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

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The Bride-in-Law

Dixie Browning

www.millsandboon.co.uk

DIXIE BROWNING celebrated her sixty-fifth book for Silhouette with the publication of Texàs Millionaire in 1999. She has also written a number of historical romances with her sister under the name Bronwyn Williams. A charter member of Romance Writers of America and a member of Novelists, Inc., Dixie has won numerous awards for her work. She divides her time between Winston-Salem and the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

One

The note was in the sugar bowl, where he’d be sure to find it. Tucker read it through, swore, shook his head and swore some more. It was the last straw in a week that had been filled with last straws.

“Dammit all to hell, Dad, this had better be a practical joke,” he muttered.

The first straw had been Monday, when one of his subcontractors had gone belly-up. Then on Tuesday, right in the middle of Hanes Mall Boulevard at the height of rush hour traffic, one of his trucks had blown a transmission.

To add to the misery, after a solid week of rain, the entire site was a mud hole. The paving was behind schedule, the framing crew, unable to work, had celebrated by getting drunk, starting a brawl and busting up a bar. Now two of his carpenters were in jail and a third was hobbling around on crutches.

If he thought it would help, he’d get cross-eyed, rubber-lipped drunk himself, something he hadn’t done since his freshman year in college. If he thought it might solve a single one of his problems, he’d go out and buy himself a carton of cigarettes and a fifth of whisky and let nature take its course.

But he didn’t smoke and other than the occasional beer, he didn’t drink, and besides, what good would it do to lock the barn door after the horse had bolted?

He reread the note, which was scribbled on the back of an envelope with a carpenter’s pencil, judging from the smudges. It was short and to the point. “Bernice and I are honeymooning at the Blue Flamingo near Pilot Mountain. Don’t forget to deposit my check on the first. Harold.”

“Ah, for crying out loud, Pop,” he growled. You’d think that at the age of seventy-four, a man would know better than to blow his whole damn social security check on one of these new virility drugs, start trawling the senior citizen circuit, and wind up marrying the first female he could talk into his bed.

Tucker wanted to believe he’d behaved with a little more dignity when his own marriage had ended, if working his buns off to fill in the hours until he could fall in bed exhausted could be called dignity. At least he hadn’t done anything seriously stupid, much less dangerous.

“Dammit, Dad, why’d you have to go and mess up now, just when we were getting back on track?”

Tuck had been barely making it, back when his old man announced his decision to move back home. What with the divorce settlement, child support, school fees and the building business in a temporary slump, he’d felt lucky to find an affordable dump to move into.

Shelly had got the house, along with just about everything else he owned. He’d been too numb to put up much of a fight. The anger had come later, when it was too late. By the time Harold had called to ask about coming back to North Carolina, he’d just begun to realize how empty his life was without a family to come home to.

He’d figured that having his father back home would eat up some of the loneliness that crept up on him when he was too tired to work and too restless to fall asleep.

So he’d paid for a one-way ticket and gone to meet his widowed father at the airport, expecting to see the same man he’d known all his adult life. Gray-haired, bushy-browed, wearing the familiar high-rise khakis with an open-necked dress shirt.

That wasn’t what he got. Baggy shorts and a flowered shirt he could’ve understood. His folks had retired to Florida, after all, and the old man had stuck it out for a few years after being widowed, claiming he liked the sun and the shuffleboard, and even the occasional game of geezer softball.

The Harold Dennis who’d walked off the plane had been wearing faded jeans and a raunchy T-shirt. He’d been sporting a gray ponytail, a scraggly gray beard and one gold earring. Tucker had barely managed to turn a snort of disbelieving laughter into a greeting, but he’d hugged the old guy and told him he looked terrific. What the hell, he remembered thinking at the time—at that age, what harm could there be in kicking over the traces one last time?

Obviously, Tucker thought now, his brain hadn’t been hitting on all eight cylinders. He’d be the first to admit he hadn’t offered much in the way of companionship for a lonely widower, but they’d rocked along together pretty well. Once he’d settled in, Harold had looked up a few old friends, made a few new ones. On the nights when Tucker got home early enough, the two men shared a meal, watched the news on TV or a game if Tampa or the Marlins were playing. Harold was partial to Florida teams.

When the old man had taken to staying out late, Tucker hadn’t thought much about it. Once baseball season was over, he’d joined a square-dancing club, started playing a little bingo. Where was the harm in that? Tuck was just glad he’d made a new life for himself after forty-six years of a good marriage. At least the rented house no longer felt so empty when Tucker came home after a twelve-hour day on the site.

The thing was—and Tucker should have thought about it sooner—the rules had changed since Harold’s bachelor days. There were dangers out there a man his age couldn’t even imagine. He should’ve warned him. Should’ve taken him aside for a father-son talk about scams and women and being too trusting. Reminding him to take his blood pressure medicine wasn’t enough.

Instead, he’d worked right alongside his crews, buried himself in plats, blueprints and the never-ending bookwork, not to mention the constant worries over rising interest rates, rising lumber costs, tightening regulations and the shrinking market for new houses. And wondered how his son was getting along and if Shelly would allow the kid to spend at least part of the summer with his father and grandfather.

Once more Tucker read the brief note. Swearing softly, he crumpled it in his fist.

Bernice. The name didn’t ring any bells. Damned if he wasn’t tempted to say to hell with the whole mess. To hell with old gaffers who didn’t have sense enough to keep their zipper zipped and their annuity safe. To hell with ex-wives who played dog-in-the-manger games with vulnerable kids. To hell with the feds and all the petty bureaucrats whose sole purpose was to hamstring small businessmen in red tape.

While he was at it, he tossed in a few choice words for the weather, and for whoever decreed that a man’s responsibility was to work his tail off while everyone else in his family was off having fun.

Tuck’s fourteen-year-old son, Jay, was away on a fly-fishing trip in Colorado with a school group. His ex-wife, Shelly, was busy squandering her settlement while she looked for another sucker. His father was wearing earrings and love beads and letting himself be reeled in by some bimbo named Bernice.

Loathing self-pity, he briefly considered straddling the old Harley and eating some dust and mosquitoes while he worked the frustration out of his system.

Trouble was, he was a worrier. Always had been. He worried about his son, who was at a vulnerable age. He worried about his partner, who was a great salesman, if little more.

And yes, dammit, he worried about the old man. Here he’d thought they were rocking along in a pretty comfortable rut, with Harold cooking breakfast and Tucker picking up pizza or barbecue on the nights when Harold wasn’t going out.

Tonight, as tired as he was, Tucker had planned to stop by and pick up a six-pack, a pizza, rent a movie and indulge in an evening of quiet debauchery. Just him and the old man.

But first the truck wouldn’t start, which meant he’d had to hitch a ride home, which meant no beer, no video, and no take-out supper.

And now this.

Damn.

He read the note again. Honeymooning? Shacking up was one thing, but honeymooning?

He swore. And then he reached for his leather jacket, stepped into his boots and swore some more.

It took a lot to ruffle Annie’s composure. She prided herself on her even disposition, although lately it hadn’t been as easy to maintain. But then, duty was her middle name.

Actually, it was Rebecca, but her parents used to brag on her sense of responsibility, making her all the more determined not to disappoint them. To that end she’d been valedictorian of her high school class, graduated with honors from college, which had pleased her family enormously. Personally, she’d taken more pride in never having had zits or a bad hair day, but that was something she tried not to think about, as it was both immodest and unbecoming and might even invite an attack of both.

Pride Goeth Before a Fall. She’d heard that little homily all her life. It was one of the pitfalls of being a preacher’s kid. Sometimes she wondered how she might have turned out if her father had been a baker, a banker or a bartender.

Probably just as dull. James Madison Summers had been a well-respected Methodist minister. His wife, equally respected, had taken her role as a minister’s wife seriously. Both of them had prided themselves on being perfect role models for the daughter who’d come along at a time in their lives when they’d given up all hope of ever having a child.

They’d been wonderful parents. Strict, but only because they loved her and wanted the best for her. An obedient child, Annie had worked hard to earn the approval of both her parents and whatever community they happened to be living in at the time, by being a credit to her upbringing.

She’d heard that one, too, more times than she cared to recall. “That Annie Summers is a credit to her folks. Might not be much to look at, but she’ll be a comfort to them in their old age.”

Not until years later, after both parents were gone and Annie, still unmarried with no prospects in sight, had moved into the shabby Victorian house her father had bought after he retired, did she begin to wonder if being a credit was all it was cracked up to be. Unfortunately, at this stage of her life, it had become a habit. She didn’t know how to be anything else.

Cousin Bernice was her own personal plague of locusts. If ever two women were born to clash, it was Annie and Bernice Summers. It wasn’t only the age difference. Annie at thirty-six was a mature, levelheaded, responsible woman who wore a lot of beige, who drank one percent milk, ate whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables and flossed every day of her life.

Bernice, at seventy-one, was a ditzy, certified flake, who dyed her hair orange, padded her bra and thought saturated fat was one of the major food groups. She wore purple-framed glasses with turquoise eye shadow, reeked of gardenia cologne and arthritis-strength linament and considered Jerry Springer the epitome of educational TV.

When Bernie’s dilapidated old apartment building had been demolished to make way for a new stadium, Annie had insisted on taking her in because Bernice was a senior citizen and Annie knew her duty. Besides, they were both alone in the world except for each other, and heaven knows, there was plenty of room in the old three-story house on Mulberry.

Since then, Bernice had done everything she could think of to get Annie to set her up in another apartment, which was out of the question. It wasn’t only the money, although that was a definite consideration. The truth was, Annie wasn’t at all sure Cousin Bernie could look after herself, what with all the scams being perpetrated against senior citizens these days. You heard about things like that on the news all the time.

Which was another thing that drove her up the wall. Television. Annie wasn’t an addict. Far from it. She turned on the set after dinner for whatever was being offered on PBS or the History Channel, or occasionally the Discovery Channel.

Bernice watched all day long. She was hooked on MTV and daytime sleaze shows. She bought herself a cheap boom box, and when she wasn’t watching TV she played the thing at full volume with the bass turned all the way up—or down, as the case may be—claiming her hearing wasn’t what it used to be.

Small wonder.

Lately, with the noise going full blast, she’d taken to doing something with her body she called the macaroni. Annie thought it looked as if she were counting off her body parts to be sure nothing was missing.

And she had a cat. A house cat. The Reverend and Mrs. Summers had never allowed Annie to own a pet, claiming a parsonage was no place for animals. Annie had been meaning all along to get herself a nice, quiet cat from the shelter, but that was before Bernie. Before Zen. Bernie’s tomcat, Zen, was a fat, smelly, evil-tempered beast, half Persian, half coon cat, who delighted in doing his business in the indoor window boxes that lined the sun parlor and sharpening his claws on the upholstery.

Now that it was too late, Annie realized she should have laid out a few house rules right from the first, but she hadn’t. Sweet, docile, dutiful Annie had been taught to respect her elders, and with all her eccentricities, Bernice was still an elder.

So she politely fumed in silence, thought bad thoughts about Zen, who obviously thought them right back at her, and wallowed in guilt over her own uncharitable nature.

But this was too much. Annie didn’t know whether to believe Bernie or not. She was obviously up to something, but marriage?

Absurd. It was probably just another attempt to force Annie to find her an apartment and help her pay the rent. Merciful heavens, it was all Annie could do to keep up with the maintenance and repairs on her own house. She’d have sold the thing long ago except for the niggling feeling that it would be disloyal to her father, who’d been so thrilled at finally owning a house of his own, even if it was a relic in a declining neighborhood.

“Oh, Bernie, why did you have to go and do something so foolish?” she asked the cat, who stared unblinkingly from a pair of malevolent yellow eyes.

She would have to go after her, that was all there was to it. After a long day at school, dealing with the usual bureaucratic headaches, Annie had counted on leaving Bernie to her MTV and settling down in her bedroom study with a pot of tea, a little Mozart and a plate of whole-wheat crackers spread with tahini.

Being head of a family was no easy job, even when that family consisted only of a couple of cousins who had nothing in common except for a single ancestor. So far, she hadn’t even found a way to explain Bernie to her fiancé and his mother.

Four and a half years ago, Annie had gotten herself engaged. Since then she’d been waiting for Eddie to work the wanderlust out of his soul, come home and find a teaching position so they could settle down and raise a real family.

Annie read the note again, ignoring the is dotted with tiny hearts. Ignoring the instructions for looking after Zen, who liked pink salmon, not dry cat food, and four percent milk, not one percent.

Somewhere upstairs a loose shutter slammed against the side of the house. Zen whipped his bushy yellow tail around her ankles and smirked at her. “No wonder you’re such a fat slob,” she told the creature. “I hope you get hair balls.” She still hadn’t forgiven him for uprooting her twelve-year-old geranium.

The Blue Flamingo was north of town on Highway 52. Miles and miles north of town. And it was raining. Annie hated driving in the rain. So did her car. Trust Bernice not to make this easy.

Prove you love me.

Is that what she was saying? Like children acting out in wildly inappropriate ways to get attention? To see if anyone cared enough to haul them back into line?

She’d read reams on the subject of behavioral problems, but as assistant principal she’d never actually been called on to deal with them in person. Mostly she dealt with the mountains of paperwork necessary to the operation of a private day school.

Almost everything Bernie did was wildly inappropriate for a woman of her age. She knew exactly how to get what she wanted, which was probably what this whole exercise was all about. It had taken her less than a day after moving in to learn how to play on Annie’s overgrown sense of responsibility.

“One of these days,” Annie muttered as she backed down the driveway and headed north into the teeth of a cold, blowing rain, “I’m going to do something seriously irresponsible, I swear it.”

The motel was even worse than she’d expected. Totally dismal, practically deserted, it made her want to cry. If there was anything more depressing than wet concrete blocks and scraggly, dead azaleas, she didn’t know what it was. Especially when seen in a drizzling rain under the flickering light of a broken neon sign.

There were six units in all. Bernie’s elderly red convertible was pulled up in front of unit five. Annie took a deep breath and reminded herself once more that when children acted up, more often than not it was to gain attention. And as she hadn’t been as attentive as she might have been, Annie accepted at least part of the blame.

With both her temper and her anxiety tamped down to a manageable level, she swung open the driver’s side door and stepped out just as a motorcycle roared into the space beside her.

“Would you please watch where you’re going?” She glared first at the rider and then down at the muddy water he’d splashed on her coattail and pantyhose.

“Lady, I’m not the one who opened a door without looking to see if it was clear.”

“Well, excuse me, but the parking places are clearly marked.” Annie dug out a rumpled tissue and blotted a gray-spattered shin. She knew all about men who rode motorcycles.

Well, actually, she didn’t. Not personally. Her dentist, a perfectly respectable father of three, owned a Harley. He had more pictures of the machine on his office wall than he did of his children.

But there was nothing at all respectable looking about this man. He could have modeled for Bernie’s favorite poster, the one showing a quartet of grungy, angry young men slouching so that their respective pelvises were thrust forward in a way that was unsettling, if not actually indecent.

Not that his was. Thrust forward, that was.

She snapped her gaze back up to his face to find that he was glaring right back at her, taking in everything from her wet shoes to her soggy silk scarf, her rain-spattered glasses, her wrinkled old trench coat and the hair that was dripping down on her face.

His opinion couldn’t have been more obvious.

All right, so she was damp and a bit disheveled, at least she was decent. His jeans were not only wet, muddy and ragged, they showed every bulge on his body. And if that jaw of his had seen a razor in the past three days, she would be very much surprised. He looked like the kind of man parents of impressionable teenage girls warned their daughters against, and with just cause.

A stick figure done in shades of brown. That was Tucker’s opinion of the woman who clumped past him, lifted a fist and banged on the door of number five, which, according to the zombie in what passed for an office, was registered to a Mr. and Mrs. H. Dennis.

If this was the broad who’d sunk her hooks into his father, then the old man had lost his last marble. Coming up behind her, he said, “After you.”

She glanced over her shoulder, not bothering to hide her uneasiness. “My next-door neighbor knows where I am. He’s a deputy sheriff.”

“Yeah, well mine’s a retired dairy farmer. You going to knock again?”

“Bernice doesn’t have any money. I don’t know what she led you to believe, but—”

“Bernice? You’re not her?”

“She. And of course I’m not.”

“She, her—Lady, there’s no ‘of course’ about it. My father’s in that room with some woman named Bernice, and if you’re not her—”

“She. Your father?”

He reached past her and pounded on the door. “Harold, open up!”

The draperies were drawn, but there were lights on inside, and the sound of TV. They waited together, Tucker and the stick figure. She was almost as tall as he was, but then, she was wearing some kind of ugly thick-soled shoes that lifted her a good two inches above the puddle of rain that had collected in front of the door.

His own boots were wet, caked with mud. So were his jeans. Riding like a bat out of hell, he’d taken back roads and shortcuts, splashing through half the mud holes in the county.

The door cracked open. One faded blue eye under a bushy gray brow peered out over the chain. “Tuck?”

“Pop, what the devil—”

“Now, don’t get your shorts in a twist, Son, everything’s on the up-and-up.”

“The hell it—”

“Bernice, are you in there?” the stick figure called over his shoulder. She was practically draped all over him, trying to see through the crack. She smelled like wet wool and strawberries.

Strawberries?

“You must be Bernie’s cousin, Annie.” The eye in the doorway shifted. The door closed a moment, then opened again minus the chain. “Honey, are you decent? Looks like we’ve got company.”

The furniture was bottom-of-the-line motel, showing both age and wear. One of Bernice’s favorite TV shows was just coming on. Annie called it World’s Tackiest Videos. On the lopsided vinyl table was an unopened bucket of fried chicken and a bottle of domestic—extremely domestic—champagne.

Dead silence persisted for all of thirty seconds, then Bernice emerged from the bathroom holding a plastic glass in each hand, and everyone started talking at once.

Harold moved to his bride’s side and laid a protective arm over her shoulder. On the other side of the bed, Annie and Tucker glared at each other.

Annie got in the first shot. I’m warning you, if your father seduced my cousin with any thought of—”

“Seduced! My father never seduced a woman in his life.”

“Now, Son, you don’t know—”

“And you tell your—your cousin for me that if she thinks I’m going to allow some brass-haired bimbo to feather her nest at my father’s expense, she can damn well think again!”

Annie gasped. “Don’t you—you can’t—”

“No? Try me.” His eyes narrowed on a deadly glint.

“Don’t tempt me,” she shot back, forgetting in a single moment the training of a lifetime. “If you think for one minute some thick-necked Neanderthal with a steroid-inflated ego is going to cast aspersions at my cousin, you can just—”

“What did you call me?”

“If the shoe fits...” She glared at his big muddy boots.

“Now, just hush up, you two. Tucker, I taught you better than that. You’ve got no call to go insulting my wife.” The older man turned to the woman at his side. “Honey, I’m ashamed to tell you, but this is my boy. He’s not a bad sort, once you get to know him, I guess we just took him by surprise. Tucker, say hello to your new mama.”

Annie could almost find it in her heart to feel sorry for the man called Tucker, who looked as if he’d swallowed a mouthful of fish bones. Second cousins were one thing. Father and son were another. She didn’t know who was trying hardest to protect whom, but it had been battle stations from the time Tucker and Annie wedged through the doorway, both determined to rescue their respective relatives.

The older man, dressed in navy blue suit pants and a white shirt, looked as dignified as any man could look wearing an earring, a gray ponytail and matching goatee.

Bernice was at her flamboyant best in a two-piece purple silk suit and fuzzy pink bedroom slippers. There was a wilted bouquet of pink roses on the bed beside a man’s coat and Bernie’s best hat, the one with the rhinestones and white fake fur.

There were tears in her cousin’s eyes. Oh, Lord, if they overflowed, so would the layers of turquoise shadow and navy-blue mascara. No bride, regardless of the circumstances, deserved to be seen with makeup streaking down her cheeks to settle into all the creases.

Annie’s shoulders drooped as the fight went clean out of her. “You’re really married, then,” she said with a resigned sigh.

Bernie beamed and nodded, her clumpy lashes glistening like sweet-gum twigs in the rain. Harold’s chest swelled. He looked from one to the other and his gaze returned to his son. “All right and tight. Had it done this morning. You can be the first to wish us luck.”

Annie looked at Tucker, who looked back at her, daring her to speak up.

“Bernie, it’s not too late,” she said. “There’s a new apartment going up near Clemmons. I thought we might drive out this weekend and look it over.”

Bernie’s lower lip trembled. She gave a little sob. Unfortunately it was the same tactic she’d tried when Annie had brought home a ten-pound sack of dry cat food instead of the salmon filet she’d requested for that damned cat.

Before things could deteriorate further, Tucker spoke up, a sickly smile on his face. “Why don’t we all go out to supper somewhere and talk this over?”

The newlyweds glanced at the bucket of chicken and the bottle of champagne on the table. Bernie looked helplessly at the two glasses she’d just retrieved from the bathroom, and Tucker followed her gaze, seeing bright orange nail polish on liver-spotted hands, a gleaming gold band on the third finger, left hand.

“Okay, so maybe we could just go somewhere where there’s more than two chairs and have ourselves a nice, quiet discussion.”

Harold cleared his throat. “Son, I don’t think you understand. This is my honeymoon. I’ve already made plans for the evening.”

Tucker opened his mouth to argue, thought better of it and shut it again. There was nothing to be gained at this point by hurting his father’s feelings and insulting the female who’d tricked him into marrying her. However, if the old bat thought for one minute that she was going to latch on to his father’s social security, his annuity and his life insurance, she could damn well think again.

“Okay, so why don’t we just sleep on it,” he said, and groaned inwardly as he heard his own words.

Annie said, “I’ll call you first thing tomorrow, Bernie.”

“But not too early.” Bernie looked at her bridegroom and winked, scattering a few flecks of mascara on her unnaturally rosy cheeks. “And, honey—fresh salmon, remember? Canned will do in a pinch if you can’t get fresh, but remember about the milk—four percent, none of that skimmed stuff.”

Tucker didn’t even try to figure that one out. He ushered the beige stick figure outside, feeling as if he’d been trapped on the twelfth floor of a ten-story building.

Without an elevator.

Two

“A thick-necked Neanderthal?” Tucker confronted Annie the minute the door closed behind them.

“Don’t take it so personally, I was upset.”

“With a steroid-inflated ego? What the devil is that supposed to mean?” Sure, he’d gone to college on a football scholarship, but he’d never taken steroids. “Lady, you don’t know the first thing about me. How would you like it if I called you a meddling old maid with all the finesse of a front-end loader?”

She blinked owlishly behind the thick lenses. Something dark and dangerous sparked inside him. “What’s the matter, don’t you recognize the description? Didn’t your mama teach you not to pick flaws in a man’s grammar?” That still rankled.

“I didn’t... Oh, shoot, I guess I did, didn’t I? I’m sorry. It’s probably an occupational hazard.”

Her shoulders drooped. Rain had soaked through in several places. She looked so forlorn he almost relented, but dammit, a man had his pride. “Yeah, well, just don’t push your luck, Annie Summers,” he growled. They had finally gotten around to introductions. “My week started out in the pits and it’s been downhill ever since.”

“Yes, well—” He watched her throat move as she swallowed hard. “That’s hardly my fault.”

“You think I give a damn whose fault it is? In case it escaped your notice, that’s my father—my father in there with that brass-haired, purple-upholstered man trap. She might think she’s got it made in the shade, but take it from me, she’s not going to get away with it.”

“Get away with what? Taking on the care and feeding of some doddering old fool for the sheer joy of nursing him through his second childhood?” She removed her glasses, the better to glare at him. It gave her a vulnerable look, that oddly naked look of people who habitually wore glasses when seen without them.

And then the words sunk in. “His second what?” Muscles clenched from his jaw all the way down to his fists.

“You heard me. You can tell him for me, it won’t do him a bit of good. Bernice doesn’t like taking care of things. I’m the one who has to take care of her cat. She even lets plants die. As for money, all she has is her social security, and he’s not going to get his hands on it.”

“You think that’s the reason he married her? For her money?” Tucker watched her open her mouth and then close it again as she picked her way through a minefield of possible answers. He gave her another dose. “Or maybe she’s smart, like you. Is that it? She’s some kind of a brain? Oh, no, I’ve got it. Pop was blinded by her beauty.” That was hitting below the belt, but dammit, if he didn’t stand up for the old man, who would?

“Bernice is—well, she’s—she has a variety of interests. For one thing, she likes music, and she’s really an attractive woman in her own way.”

“In her own way?”

“She’s, uh—colorful. Bright colors are cheerful to be around.”

His gaze moved over her damp tan raincoat, her clumsy brown shoes and the few wisps of drab brown hair that straggled out from under the wet scarf tied under her chin. He didn’t say a word, but when her defiant gaze fell away, he felt as if he’d just kicked the family pup off the front porch into the rain.

“Yes, well... evidently, your father sees something in her that you don’t.”

“Such as? Name one thing. Besides that godawful purple dress.”

She rammed the glasses back on her face, but he’d caught her out. She couldn’t hide behind them any longer. “You’re being extremely childish,” she snapped.

She had spirit, Tucker would hand her that. “Yeah, it’s part of my boyish charm,” he said with a nasty grin. They were both getting soaked to the skin, neither of them willing to back down an inch.

As he watched her struggle to come up with an annihilating retort, it occurred to him that between the two of them, Annie and her cousin Bernice had managed to punch a few buttons that hadn’t been punched in a long time. Tucker prided himself on being a even-tempered man, both at work and in his personal life. Except for a few outbursts born of sheer frustration, he’d even managed to maintain a civilized front with Shelly. He’d done it for Jay’s sake, but the truth was, picking a fight with his ex-wife had been like trying to light a wet fuse. Shelly hadn’t even cared enough to fight for their marriage. The only thing she cared about was Shelly.

“Yes, well...” She had a quiet voice, but there was nothing weak about it.

“You said that before.”

“You can give your father a message for me. My—that is, Bernie’s lawyer will be in touch tomorrow. Tell him—tell him he’d better not try to leave town.”

“Are you by any chance threatening my father?”

Long, straight nose in the air, she dived into her car, slammed the door and ground the starter a few times until the engine turned over. Torn between frustrated anger and reluctant admiration, he watched as she scratched out of the parking lot and headed south.

“Lawyer, my sweet ass,” he growled as he caught up with her and roared past, a few minutes later. He’d been taken to the cleaners by the flock of buzzards Shelly had hired to pick his bones. Damned if he was going to stand by and see the same thing happen to his father.

Annie pressed the heels of her hands against her aching eyes the next morning and wondered what the downside of retiring at age thirty-six would be, aside from a severe lack of funds. Terminal boredom, probably. After spending hours last night alternately worrying about personnel problems at school and worrying about Bernice, she’d fallen asleep just as the sky was turning gray and woken up with one of those headaches that was impervious to feverfew and even acetominophen.

Yesterday had been endless. Three teachers on maternity leave, an outbreak of head lice, plus the latest mandate to come down from Washington, to be translated from bureaucratese into something even her boss, with his limited vocabulary, could understand. And of course, there had been Bernie’s surprise elopement yesterday.

Annie had promised herself she’d try again to get in touch with Eddie and see if they couldn’t meet somewhere. Asia. Africa. The moon. As engagements went, hers was extremely unsatisfactory. Sometimes she wondered why she even bothered to hang on to the pretense.

In the beginning she’d done it because it was all she had, or was ever likely to have, but that was before Bernice. Before she’d spent one more in a long line of restless nights, trying to peel back the layers of Annie Summers in case there was something underneath it all—heaven only knew what—that would explain why a lifetime of doing the right thing had brought her to a point where she couldn’t think of a single good reason for continuing to do it.

Except for the year she’d broken her leg in two places and the year she’d come down with a bad case of food poisoning, she’d earned perfect attendance records at school and Sunday School, simply because it was expected of her.

Outstanding grades? She’d worked hard to earn them because it was expected of her. Graduated with honors from an all-girl college for the same reason. Camp counselor, scout leader—she’d done the whole bit.

“It’s up to you to give back to your community, because of who you are,” her father had drilled into her from the age of pigtails, pinafores and piano lessons. Dutifully, she had obeyed, without ever wondering until it was too late just who Annie Summers was supposed to be. She’d done, and she’d been, and she’d given the very best she could do and give and be, sacrificing—

Well, not sacrificing a whole lot, if you didn’t count not being able to stay out late or date the boy she’d been dying to date in high school. Not that he’d ever asked her, but he might have if she’d had the courage to give the right signals.

As if she’d even know how to send a signal. At the age of thirty-six, she was engaged to a political activist who was determined to go out and save the world from hunger and decadent capitalism before he came home and settled down to carve out his own slice of the pie. She hadn’t heard from him in almost six months. But then, Eddie had never been a very good correspondent.

Some love life. So where did she get off, trying to manage Bernie’s love affair? Telling her she shouldn’t run off and marry a man because he might try to take advantage of her? Maybe they were taking advantage of each other. Taking advantage of whatever time they had left for whatever mutual pleasure it provided. If she was still waiting for Eddie by the time she was Bernie’s age, she might even start looking around for a lonely widower herself.

“Get off my feet, you noisy old tomcat.” She kicked aside the covers, dislodging the cat who had taken up residence on the foot of her bed sometime during the night, purring his fool head off and scratching his various itches.

Bleary-eyed, she made it to the kitchen to put on the kettle for tea. Glancing outside, she saw that the rain had stopped, but the clouds still hung dark and heavy and sullen. “Story of my life,” she muttered to the cat, who had decided to wrap his tail around her ankles to see if he couldn’t trip her into falling headfirst into the refrigerator. Unthinkingly she reached down and scratched him behind his ears.

By focusing on the morning paper while she ate her standard breakfast of fruit, tea and whole-grain cereal, she almost managed to avoid thinking about her immediate problems. To put things into perspective, there was always Washington, China and the Middle East.

The phone waited until she was halfway through brushing her teeth to ring. She caught it on the forth ring and gargled, “Hewwo?”

“Annie? This is Bernice, are you all right?”

“Of course I’m all right, if you don’t count having to swallow a mouthful of toothpaste. Where are you? What happened? Do you need me to come get you?” Bernice’s old junker was inclined to be temperamental.

“Why would I need you to do that?”

“Well, I don’t know, I only thought—Bernie, it’s barely eight o’clock in the morning, what’s going on?”

“Well, now that you mention it, you could do me a favor if you’ve got time. You said you were going to call, didn’t you?”

Annie patted her bare foot and waited. Bernie’s demands were never straightforward. “It’s Saturday. I’ve got time. If you want to try and get the whole mess annulled, I’ll meet you wherever you say, and I promise not to ask any questions, all right?”

“I don’t want to get anything annulled. Besides, it’s too late for that. And believe me, Harold doesn’t need any of that Vigaro stuff, either.”

“Any what?”

“You know. It’s been all over the news since last year.”

“Bernie, what on earth—no, don’t tell me, I don’t even want to know.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, I knew you’d be like this, you always are.”

“Like what?” Annie wailed, gesturing wildly with her toothbrush. “I’m not being like anything, just tell me what you called about, please!”

“You’re just waiting for a chance to say you told me so, aren’t you? You’re just like your father always was, you know that?”

It was on the tip of her tongue to deny it, but this was not the time. “Bernie, what are you calling about?” she asked with as much patience as she could muster. “Like Daddy? I’m nothing at all like Daddy. Daddy was the sweetest, kindest man alive.”

“Maybe, but he could be a real pain in the rear end.”

“So can I. What’s your point, Bernie?”

“It’s about Harold’s boy.”

“Harold’s what?”

“You met him yesterday. Tucker. He was here the same time you were, don’t you remember?”

“I remember,” Annie snapped. She remembered all too well. The memory had a lot to do with why she’d spent so many fruitless hours peeling back the layers of Annie Summers, trying to find out if there was anything worth salvaging under all those years of conditioning.

“Yes, well, Harold’s been trying to call him, but he doesn’t answer his phone, and—”

“You want me to go see if he’s all right? Bernie, have you lost your mind?”

“Oh, he’s probably all right—I mean, why wouldn’t he be? But the thing is, Harold forgot his blood pressure medicine, and he can’t remember Tucker’s mobile number, and it’s not listed, so since you don’t have to go to school, would you mind driving out to where he’s working and asking him to bring it out to the motel? Harold says it’s probably on the kitchen windowsill.”

Annie rolled her eyes. From the sun parlor came the sound of dirt being scratched onto the tile floor. “Why can’t Harold go get his own medicine?” Her jaw was tightening up again. Tension always did it to her.

“Well, because he can’t, that’s all. Do that for me, Annie, and I’ll never ask you for anything again, I promise.”

“What about your cat?”

“I’ll take him off your hands just as soon as Harold and I find a place to live.”

Annie wasn’t at all sure she wanted to get rid of her cousin, or even her cousin’s cat. Somebody in the Summers family had to take responsibility for the flakier members, and she was obviously elected. Eddie would just have to understand.

Which was how she came to be splashing through a muddy construction site, dodging ruts and panel trucks, and knocking on the door of a brown metal trailer some forty-five minutes later. Somewhat to her surprise, the sign on the door said Dennis Construction. Which Dennis? Father? Son? Both?

Not that it mattered.

When the door was flung open, she nearly tumbled down the mud-slick step. “Oh, for God’s sake, now what?” Tucker Dennis exclaimed plaintively.

“Don’t take your nasty temper out on me, I’m only here to do your father a favor.”

“Yeah, sure you are. If you can pry your cousin’s hooks out of his hip pocket, that’ll be favor enough to suit me.”

“Fine. I’ll tell your father’s wife you refuse to take him his blood pressure medicine. Do you know the name of his physician, just in case?”

“What blood pressure medicine?” He opened the door wider and muttered, “You might as well come inside.”

Annie did, but only because she wasn’t sure he wouldn’t grab her by the arm and yank her inside if she refused. He had that look about him.

The interior was no more inviting than the exterior. A stack of boxes in one corner. A dull green file cabinet, a gray metal desk, a scarred draftsman’s table and two tan metal chairs. If you didn’t count the red mud that had been tracked inside, the only bit of color to be found was in the row of hard hats that hung over a small rusty refrigerator—two white, a blue, an orange and a yellow—and a feed store calendar on the opposite wall.

“You might as well sit down.” He waved her to one of the two worn oak chairs. “I’ve got a few things to say to you.”

“The medicine.”

“In a minute.”

She took a deep breath and tried to remember the lessons of a lifetime, but nothing in all the years she’d spent among decent, civilized people had prepared her for dealing with a surly, motorcycle-riding construction worker in an ugly metal trailer out in the muddy middle of nowhere.

So she sat. Back straight, ankles crossed and hands resting one of top of the other on her lap. But no amount of outward composure could prevent the color from rising to stain her cheeks.

Tucker flexed his fingers, stiff from hours of clutching a pencil and years of working with his hands. Incipient arthritis. Wet weather didn’t help. He studied the woman seated across the desk from him, reluctantly revising his earlier opinion. She wasn’t as old as he’d thought yesterday, nor quite as plain. But her raincoat was every bit as ugly as he remembered it and so were her shoes. Nor had her disposition undergone any miraculous overnight transformation.

“So what is it you want me to do?”

“Go home and get your father’s medicine and take it to him. I suppose.”

“You suppose?”

“That’s the message I was given. You didn’t answer your home phone, and your father couldn’t remember your mobile, so Bernie called me to pass on the message.”

“Harold knows how to reach me here.”

She shrugged. “All I know is what I was told. If you’re too busy to be bothered, then I’ll call Bernie and tell her—”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, just hang on a minute will you?”

Annie hung on. Just barely. She was cold. Her head still ached, and there was something about the man that set her teeth on edge. As a rule, she reacted to people on an intellectual level. There was nothing faintly intellectual about her reaction to Tucker Dennis. She felt like grabbing him with both hands and shaking him!

“I can turn up the heat if you’re cold.”

“Thanks, but I won’t be here long enough.”

He shrugged. “Your call. I thought I saw you shiver.”

Outside, the rain began to drum down on the metal, making it impossible to carry on a normal conversation. Annie winced as her headache reacted to the noise.

Raising his voice over the roar, Tucker yelled, “Okay, I’ll go as soon as the rain slacks off.”

“What?” She took off her glasses and pressed the heels of her hand into her eyes, and he was struck all over again by how vulnerable she looked without them.

Yeah, sure she was. Vulnerable like a baby copperhead, which was about twice as lethal as an adult specimen.

“I said—” Instead of repeating himself, he stood, moved around behind her and nudged the controls of the gas heater. She wasn’t wearing her scarf today. With her head lowered, about four inches of bare neck showed between her collar and the wad of damp brown hair knotted at the back of her head. Her skin looked as if it had never seen the sun.

“Headache?” he asked, his voice sounding gruff even to his own ears.

The impression of vulnerability disappeared along with the sliver of bare nape as she raised her head and squared her shoulders. Tucker thought of the way his father used to massage his mother’s shoulders when she had one of her tension headaches. He wondered who massaged away this woman’s pain. Or if anyone did.

And then he wondered why the hell he was wondering.

By the time Annie drove off a few minutes later, the rain had let up. Even so, the going was treacherous. She slithered twice on the mud-slick road, telling herself she’d done all she could do. If Harold’s blood pressure shot sky-high, it was his son’s fault, not hers. She could hardly break into his house and get the stuff herself. Didn’t even know where he lived.

All the same, she was relieved when she slowed down to turn onto Highway 52 to see one of the trucks with the Dennis Construction logo on the door pull away from the construction site. Evidently the man possessed some vestigial sense of responsibility.

Ruffian was the term that came to mind. That had been one of her father’s favorite descriptions. He’d attached it to hardened criminals, aggressive drivers and the kids who trampeled the parsonage flowerbeds. She hadn’t heard anyone use it in years.

“Oh, God, Annie, you’re a walking anachronism,” she muttered.

The school secretary, all of twenty-two years old, would have said—had said, in fact on more than one occasion—“Get a life, Annie.”

Good advice. Annie had done her best, only her best didn’t seem to be good enough.

Three

The marriage was perfectly legal. The bride and groom were both of age and of sound mind, although there was some slight doubt about that last part, at least to Annie’s way of thinking.

Tucker’s, too. He left her in no doubt of his opinion when he showed up to collect Bernie’s spare reading glasses a day or so later.

“About time you got home,” he growled. He’d been waiting when she’d driven up, tired, hungry and burdened with a stack of books, two sacks of groceries and the dry cleaning she’d picked up on the way home.

She shot him a look that said it all. Her headache might be gone, but as usual the last day of the term had been utter chaos. And now, with Bernie’s situation, any hope of getting away for a few days was gone. “If your father thinks he’s landed in a bed of roses, he just might be in for a surprise. Bernie’s not the easiest person to live with.”

“That I can believe.” He looked as if he wanted to say more, but thought better of it. Instead, he took the dry cleaning from her, followed her inside and looked around for a place to deposit it. She indicated the coat tree that stood between the glass-paneled door and the entrance into the front parlor, never mind that no one had parlors these days. Her house did. Two of them, front and sun. One had leaky windows, the other a cracked ceiling.

Her toe struck one of Zen’s toys, a pair of small brass balls linked together by a dangling tab, and she kicked it aside, too tired even to pick it up and toss it into his basket. She liked animals, truly she did, but this particular creature took a diabolical delight in irritating her. “All right, what is it this time? Your father forgot his corn plasters?” she asked, resigned to having to wait a few more minutes before she could change into her robe and slippers, brew herself a cup of strawberry tea and zone out, as the schoolkids put it. Whatever it meant, it sounded like just what she needed. Nirvana.

“Your cousin needs her glasses.”

“The last time I saw her she was wearing her glasses.” Annie removed her own and closed her eyes momentarily. It didn’t help. When she opened them again, he was still there.

“I only know what she said.”

“Do you suppose she means her reading glasses? She never wears those in mixed company.” Drugstore magnifying glasses, they were stronger than her purple-framed bifocals. The only time she wore them was when she was studying the TV Guide so she could highlight her weekly selections with Annie’s yellow marker.

“So call her and tell her that. She’s been trying to reach you all day.”

“She knows very well how to reach me. This is the last day of the school term. I was there all day. She could’ve called the office and left word.”

He shrugged. The man had shoulders like a road scraper. “You’re a teacher?”

“Assistant principal.” He knew that. He was just trying to irritate her. Refusing to be irritated, she stood there, books in one arm, two sacks of groceries in the other, while he looked her up and down. Whatever he was thinking, he had better sense than to say anything, but it was painfully clear that his opinion was not particularly flattering.

“Oh, all right. Wait here and I’ll see if I can find them.” She dumped the books on the hall table and stalked off toward the kitchen, where she deposited the two sacks of produce. Apples and collard greens, probably the last of the season. Feeling like a criminal, she’d broken open the bundled leaves in the store and selected only the young, tender ones, telling herself it was no different from selecting unblemished apples, and anyone with a grain of sense did that.

He was right behind her. “Would you mind hurrying? This is my son’s night to call, and it’ll take me an hour at least to run out to the motel.”

Tough turnips, Annie wanted to say, but didn’t. She could think of several things she’d like to say, but didn’t. Instead, she rummaged in all the places a pair of reading glasses might be lurking. Bemie wasn’t known for her orderliness, nor her predictability.

“Would you mind looking in the drawer in the hall table?” It was the last place they’d be, but she needed some breathing room. Men like Tucker Dennis took up more than their fair share of space.

His son? He was married?

Not that it mattered one way or another. All the same, she was somewhat surprised. He hadn’t struck her as a domestic animal when he’d roared up on that monster bike of his, scowling from here to Sunday, with a week’s growth of whiskers meant to impart an I-can’t-be-bothered-to-shave attitude.

Since then, he’d shaved. Come to think of it, his jaw had been only lightly shadowed the day she’d driven out to his construction site to pass on the message about the blood pressure medicine. He might not be a genuine, dyed-in-the-wool ruffian, but he was obviously the next best thing. Or the next worst.

“I don’t suppose...”

Her heart flopped over and she spun around, slapping a hand over her chest. “I didn’t hear you.”

“Sorry. Wet boot soles don’t make much noise.” He held up a pair of gold-framed specs that had been right there in the same drawer when she’d moved into the house. Uncertain what to do with them—tossing them in the trash seemed heartless, as her father had considered them worth keeping—she’d left them where she’d found them.

“No, those aren’t the ones. Bernie’s are round, with dark brown plastic frames and a pink pearl hanger.”

“A pink pearl what?” He reached over and righted the plastic sack of apples just as it started to tumble.

“You know—one of those stringy things that hang around the neck so you don’t lose your glasses.”

“So how come they’re lost?”

Amazing. The man actually smiled. It was fleeting, but nice while it lasted. “If you’ll wait a minute, I’ll run upstairs and look in her room.”

“I’ll put away your apples. These plastic bags aren’t very stable.”

She was tempted to say, “Whatever,” a response that was heard a lot around school, and not just from the students. As in she would do whatever it took to get out of this mess. Whatever it took to get him out of her house.

But she didn’t. Annie simply wasn’t a “whatever” kind of woman.

“I found them,” she called out from halfway down the stairs a few minutes later. “And would you mind taking Bernie her mail, as long as you’re going out there anyway?”

Tucker had dumped the fruit into the bowl on the table, helping himself to one of her apples. He was studying the snapshot of Eddie holding a naked brown baby and squinting into the sunlight. She’d stuck it on the refrigerator in a magnetic frame as a constant reminder of a man she found all too easy to forget.

He took the mail, glanced at it absently, and said, “AARP, Special Olympics and an International Male catalog. Do I need to get her to sign for it?”

“Yes, why don’t you do that?” Her eyes took on a steely glint, and Tucker told himself he deserved it. His company manners had deteriorated since his divorce.

“Sorry. Any messages?” He shoved the mail into his hip pocket and waited for her to have the last word. He knew her type. She’d manage to have it, anyway.

“Just one. You can ask your father how long he plans to keep my cousin in that disreputable place.”

“Why? Has she been complaining? Funny, she looked pretty comfortable last time I saw her.”

“Bernie’s never been one to complain.” He lifted an eyebrow at that. “That doesn’t mean your father didn’t get her there under false pretenses.”

“You think he ensorcelled her?”

“He en-what?”

“It means—”

“I know what it means!”

“Yeah, well—I read it in one of my son’s comic books.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

“Hey, don’t knock comic books. You’d be amazed at what you can learn from those things.”

She rolled her eyes, and even behind the lenses, he couldn’t help but notice their size, clarity and color. He wondered if she ever wore contacts and decided she wasn’t the type. That would suggest vanity. Whatever her faults, vanity probably wasn’t one of them. About all she had to be vain about, so far as he could see, was a pair of world-class ankles, and she ruined the effect of those by wearing ugly platform shoes.

She held out the glasses, and he took them and started to ram them into his pocket along with the mail, then thought better of it. “I don’t suppose you have a case for these things?”

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