Dear Mattie,

My little girl is growing up. You probably think that I haven’t noticed, and it’s true that I don’t really want to face it, but can you blame me? You’re all I’ve had since your mother died. I can’t believe I would even have survived the loss without my darling daughter. But I know that I can’t hold you too close. Somehow I have to learn to let you go. Otherwise, I’m sure to lose you. How could I bear that? Already I wonder if I know you sometimes. I ask myself, is that my girl beneath all the makeup and the wild hair? Then I do something foolish, and the young lady who puts me in my place has an uncanny twinkle in her eye, and there’s my Mattie, droll and sweet and loving. I miss her sometimes, and yet I know that we have to find our way together to a new kind of relationship, adult to adult. Be patient with me, Mattie. I’m trying. I’m praying for help. The one thing I beg you always to remember is that I love you and always will.

Dad

Most Wanted Dad
Arlene James

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ARLENE JAMES

says, “Camp meetings, mission work and church attendance permeate my Oklahoma childhood memories. It was a golden time, which sustains me yet. However, only as a young widowed mother did I truly begin growing in my personal relationship with the Lord. Through adversity He has blessed me in countless ways, one of which is a second marriage so loving and romantic it still feels like courtship!”

The author of more than sixty novels, Arlene James now resides outside Fort Worth, Texas, with her beloved husband. Her need to write is greater than ever, a fact that frankly amazes her, as she’s been at it since the eighth grade! She loves to hear from readers, and can be reached at 1301 E. Debbie Lane, Suite 102, Box 117, Mansfield, Texas 76063, or via her Web site at www.arlenejames.com.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter One

It was rude. It was nerve-racking. It was decidedly unneighborly. To an inveterate smoker who hadn’t had a cigarette in nine hours, it was utterly unbearable. No one had answered the door when she had knocked, not that anyone inside that house could have heard anything above the racket booming from what must have been a very impressive set of stereo speakers.

Amy clenched her teeth and pushed her hands through her hair. The new neighbors hadn’t been in the house next door a full week yet; she hadn’t even laid eyes on any of them, and already she was regretting that they’d ever moved in. She covered her ears with her hands, wondering how anyone could label that shrieking din “music,” and considered her alternatives.

She could sit here in her own home huddled in misery, and slowly go insane. She could have a smoke. She could go somewhere else. She could call the police.

No course of action held any appeal, but the last seemed the least objectionable, since it didn’t require her to actually get dressed and leave her house at two o’clock in the morning. In truth, the idea would have been no less offensive if it had been two o’clock in the afternoon. Amy liked staying home. She liked her TV programs. She liked her solitude. She liked her cigarettes. But smoking was not an option, however much she wished it was. She had promised her little niece, Danna, that she would quit, and for some reason, a promise to Danna seemed inviolable. Moreover, it was a reason that Amy did not wish to explore or clarify. After all, children had no place in her life. She and Mark had decided that long ago. Mark.

Mark would have known how to handle this situation without resorting to the police. Mark would have strolled over there and charmed the socks off whoever had the audacity to crank up that stereo to such deafening levels. Mark would have had the culprit humming Sinatra and lip-synching Streisand. Mark…who had been her life, who had suffered and died, leaving her so very alone.

It had been over two-and-a-half years since his death, and everyone told her that she was supposed to “be over it” by now, but she missed him still. And yet, something had changed. For a long time she had considered her purpose in life to grieve her husband. Before that she had known that her purpose was to be with him, to make him happy. Now she didn’t know what she was supposed to be about. She only knew that the blaring music from next door was about to split her skull, that she was going to go mad if something wasn’t done and that it was up to her to do it, because Mark was gone forever. She reached for the telephone. Moments later she was explaining the situation to a dispatcher at the Duncan Police Department.

“That’s right, the next to the last house on the end of the street…. No, there’s nothing on the other side, just an empty field, and the racket is coming from the last house…. Yes, and please hurry. I’m not feeling well…. No, I don’t need an ambulance, just some peace and quiet…. Thank you.”

She hung up and leaned forward, elbows on knees, sighing. Her head was pounding. Maybe if she could clear her mind the pain would go away. But when she tried to block all thought, her world became one throbbing ache. She reached instead for the memories that had so often sustained her, memories of the vibrant, charismatic, exciting man who had singled her out for his attention shortly after she’d graduated from high school and had promptly become the center of her universe. For a moment those memories shimmered before her mind’s eye as golden and bright as ever. But then they began to darken and change, bringing her instead the sight and sound and smell of the sickroom during the long, downward slide of her husband’s health, leaving him broken and dulled, a mere shell of his former self—fragile, thin, pale…querulous, resentful, difficult….

She shook off such thoughts, feeling them disloyal. She wouldn’t blame him. She wouldn’t. He had been dying, after all, and he had known it. How could he have been anything but resentful? Who could have expected him to remain his old cheerful self when his body had become that of a stranger? And if he had blamed her…Well, he hadn’t meant it. She had not put that cancer in his brain, and she had cared for him as tenderly and lovingly as any wife could have. He hadn’t known what he was saying. He hadn’t even realized that he was hurting her with his accusations and complaints. She wouldn’t remember him like that. She wouldn’t! Desperately she searched for a distraction, and suddenly the blasting, frenetic music that had only minutes earlier been the bane of her existence became her salvation.

Surging up to her feet, she let righteous anger rise within her. She was going over there to give that cretin a piece of her mind even if she had to beat the door down to do it! Throwing her bathrobe on over the boxer shorts and T-shirt that served as pajamas, she marched toward the door. But just as she wrenched the door open, a police car cruised down the street and braked to a halt in front of the house next door. A tall, powerfully built man in a Duncan City Police uniform stepped out from behind the wheel and strode straight into the offender’s house without so much as a knock. Amy was first shocked and then smugly pleased. Obviously she hadn’t overreacted at all. In an instant the music shut off and blessed silence ensued. Feeling vindicated and relieved, she closed the door and sat down to await the officer’s report.

Evans stormed into the house, appalled at the din emanating from his very own home. He strode across the narrow entry hall and into the spacious living room, stepping over his daughter on the way to the elaborate stereo system that he had purchased only last Christmas. She rolled over onto her back as he passed, then sat up on the floor as he silenced the noise with a flick of his wrist.

“You’re home early.”

“I’m not home! I’m on a call, thank you very much! Cripes, a disturbance call at my own house! What are you trying to do, get me fired two days into a new job?”

Mattie bit her lip, her emerald green eyes suddenly wide and childlike beneath the heavy kohl makeup. Evans winced at the sound of his own voice, at the look on her face, at the whole blasted situation. This was supposed to be a new start for them, a way to coax back the little girl that cloaked herself in the rebellious indifference of a modern Chloe. He still cringed when he thought of his little girl with that…that…musician.

Evans shuddered, remembering the freak with whom his sweet, generous Mattie had declared herself in love. The only hair on that buffoon’s head had been a long, ragged ponytail sprouting from his crown. He’d plucked his eyebrows into a Satanic arch and decked himself with chains that hung from rings piercing his ears and nose, and the only thing he’d worn on his back had been an electric guitar. The very idea of his Matilda being in love with that had sent him scurrying for a new position as far from California as possible. He’d lucked into quiet, middle-class, conservative Duncan, Oklahoma, almost immediately, and he’d accepted a demotion in rank, a pay cut, and the worst possible work shift in order to come here. He’d told himself that Mattie would adjust, but so far she’d merely glowered and grumbled and experimented with absurd new shades of color for her lovely, hip-length black hair. Tonight the overtones came in somewhere between purple and burgundy. While he was trying to decide on the exact shade, Mattie’s practiced indifference conquered her vulnerability.

“I don’t care one way or another about your silly old job,” she announced, flopping over onto her belly again and picking up the magazine she had been perusing.

For an instant Evans saw red, but then he tamped down the anger and dredged up as much fatherly concern as he could at the moment. “Maybe you don’t care about my job,” he said, “but I assume that you still care about me.”

She sent a slightly crestfallen look over her shoulder, then shrugged, but her voice was soft with emotion when she said, “You’re my father, aren’t you?”

He went down on one knee beside her and ruffled her hair as he’d done so often, before she’d started rinsing it with absurd colorations and stiffening it with starch. “Happily, I am,” he said, softening his own tone.

She bowed her head. “I didn’t think anyone would care. There doesn’t seem to be anyone around.”

“It’s a quiet street,” he admitted, “and when you’ve lived your whole life one on top of another, I guess it takes some getting used to, but we do have neighbors, and they’re entitled to sleep nights. Speaking of which, why don’t you go on to bed now so that you can get up and have breakfast with me when I come home in the morning?”

She made a noise of disgust. “And spend the rest of my day sitting up alone or tiptoeing around trying not to disturb you? No thanks.”

He closed his eyes and began counting slowly to ten. He knew it was a difficult situation, but it wouldn’t be forever, and she needed to keep to a conventional schedule. School would be starting soon, and he didn’t want her senior year to be more difficult than it had to be. From what he’d seen of the kids around town so far, she was going to have some trouble fitting in as it was. She certainly didn’t need to show up every morning dead tired and bleary-eyed. But now was not the moment to raise the issue. He got to ten, took a deep breath and opened his eyes. “Maybe there’s something interesting on cable,” he suggested. “Or maybe you’d like to start reading that book on local history that I bought—”

“I’ll try the cable,” she said abruptly, pushing up onto one elbow and reaching for the remote control.

Evans smiled to himself. Score one for reverse psychology. At least he’d gotten the hang of that lately. To think that it had all been so easy once! Mattie had been the light of his life since the day she’d come into this world, and he had once been the center of hers, but he supposed it was natural for her to shift her interests elsewhere. She was seventeen, after all.

Seventeen! Soon she’d be eighteen, and then would come high school graduation and college, he supposed, followed by independence and one day even marriage. As always, when he thought of Mattie leaving him, he felt a vague sense of panic, a flash of the old grief, but it was unfair to think that way and he knew it. She was his daughter, and daughters grew up and left their fathers’ homes for lives of their own—eventually. It wasn’t a happy thought, though.

His gut clenched every time he thought of Mattie leaving him for good. He’d be utterly alone then. It wasn’t as if he didn’t want to fall in love again, he just couldn’t seem to find the right woman. He shook away the thought and turned his mind back to business. He wasn’t just the father or the homeowner here. He was also the officer of record, and as such, he had duties.

He dropped a kiss onto Mattie’s discolored head and pushed up to his feet. “I have to go,” he said. “I’ll check on you in a couple of hours. Try to get some sleep please.”

She mumbled something indecisive and fixed her attention on the television screen. Evans walked toward the entry, then paused and turned back.

“By the way, the complaint came from next door.”

She rolled onto her side and propped her head on the heel of her hand. “Really? You mean somebody actually lives there?”

“I told you someone did,” he reminded her. “She’s pretty reclusive, apparently, but she’s in there.”

Mattie wrinkled her nose. “Probably some old crone who came in during the land rush.”

“Whoever she is,” Evans remonstrated mildly, “we have to get along with her. She’s a neighbor, and you know what the Good Book says about neighbors.”

Mattie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, love thy neighbor, and all that stuff.”

“Exactly. Now behave yourself.”

She mumbled again, and he had the feeling that he didn’t really want to know what she’d said. “See you later, sweetheart.”

“See ya.”

“And keep the door locked,” he called from the entryway.

“Why should I?” she came back. “I thought we were living in the Garden of Eden here.”

“There is no Garden of Eden anymore,” he told her under his breath, and he locked the door himself when he went out, just to make sure. Then he turned his attention to the house next door and took a deep breath.

Amy switched off the television and got to her feet, thrusting her arms into the sleeves of her bathrobe again as she moved toward the door. She was prepared to be gracious and properly thankful. She was shocked, instead, to find a wildly handsome stranger in the uniform of a city police officer standing on her doorstep. His cap was tucked under his arm, leaving exposed a headful of thick, inky black hair that glistened in the porch light.

He consulted the clipboard in his hands. “Mrs. Slater?”

“Yes.”

The clipboard went the way of the cap, then he was extending a hand. “I’m Officer Kincaid, ma’am, Evans Kincaid, and, um, I live next door.”

Next door? Amy’s mouth fell open. “Oh, my goodness.”

He nodded apologetically. “My daughter lives with me. She’s seventeen, and you know how seventeen-year-olds are about their music…. Well, anyway, we hadn’t seen anyone around this place and she…she thought the place was empty, so…”

Amy had to close her mouth before she could make a reply, and the very idea that she might be gaping at this handsome man for any reason other than outrage was, well, outrageous. “The house is not vacant!” she snapped. “I’ve lived here four years, I’ll have you know.”

“Yes, ma’am, and she was making entirely too much noise,” he said calmly. “My apologies.”

“Well, I should think you would apologize,” Amy huffed, feeling inexplicably disturbed, “leaving a child completely unsupervised like that.”

“She’s not exactly a child,” Evans returned. “Her mother was only about six months older than Mattie is now when I married her.”

Amy hadn’t been much older than eighteen when Mark had swept her off her feet, either, but she heard herself saying snidely, “I expect it’s too much to hope your child bride might be able to control her own daughter, then.”

Leaf green eyes suddenly blazed, a muscle flexed in his finely sculpted jaw, and even in the dim light on the porch, she could see dull red pulsing beneath his bronzed skin. It occurred to her that she had, indeed, gone too far, but rather than feeling fear or even shame, she felt an odd exhilaration, a kind of thrill, as she watched him master his anger. Breathing through his mouth, head slightly bowed, shoulders squared, he very deliberately took control of the emotion so obviously flooding him. In mere moments that sleek, dark head came up and the angry color receded, leaving behind only the flash of fire in yellow-green eyes.

“My wife is dead,” he said bluntly, “and my Mattie is as fine a young lady as you’ll ever find walking God’s green earth! Sometimes playing her music too loud doesn’t mean she’s out of control! Now, I’ve apologized, and Mattie will, too, at a more appropriate time. If that’s not good enough for you, I suggest you press charges. I’ll call another officer to take care of it for you if that’s what you want. You just say the word.”

Amy blinked at him. She hadn’t actually thought of pressing charges. It was just a stereo played too loud. No unauthorized party had been going on, after all. But pride wouldn’t quite let her back down, not in front of this proud, handsome man. She lifted her chin. “I’ll think about it and let you know.”

Those green eyes flashed bright. “You do that. Good night, then, ma’am.”

“Good night.”

She practically closed the door in his face, then gasped at her own impudence. She couldn’t think what had come over her! The poor man probably wanted to strangle her, and him a police officer, no less. A widowed police officer. Widowed. They had that in common, at least. She shook her head suddenly. Well, what of it? He might be good-looking, and he might have a quick temper—which he controlled admirably—but what difference did that make if he couldn’t even control his own daughter? Without even realizing what she was doing or why, Amy put Evans Kincaid out of mind, choosing instead to concentrate on the daughter. She wasn’t thrilled about having a wild teenager living next door without proper adult supervision. The sanctity and peace of her home were all she had left, after all. Was it too much to ask to be able to hear her own television set in her own house? In the middle of the night, no less! Oh, this was not going to work. She could already see that this just would not work, no matter how handsome, er, widowed he was.

Evans forked eggs into his mouth and reached for his coffee cup. Correction, milk cup. His daughter had decided that coffee would only keep him awake, and she was probably right about that. He was having enough trouble adjusting to this new schedule as it was, but it took real concentration to keep from making a face as he swallowed the white liquid. Across the table from him, Mattie nibbled on dry toast and sucked her milk through a plastic straw with a ridiculous number of curls and loops in it. He remembered buying her that straw at one of the amusement parks in Southern California. How old had she been then? Nine? Ten? Younger than twelve, for sure, because she had been twelve when her mother had died.

Had it been five years already? Or was it closer to six? Yes, definitely closer to six, for his little girl would be eighteen in October, and this was already the middle of August. He himself had seen forty in June, which meant that Andie would have been thirty-seven in May, though to him she would always be eighteen. She hadn’t changed one iota from the sweet, loving girl whom he had married during his senior year in college. Even on the day that drunk driver had jumped the median in his truck and skidded through the crosswalk to knock his Andie all the way through the intersection, she could have passed for a teenager. He wondered what she would have been like now. Certainly not like that crab next door.

Next door.

There was a feud sizzling there, and he had to find a way to defuse it before it exploded in his face. It was the last thing he needed, being new on the job. He sighed mentally, suddenly feeling very tired and every day of forty. He put down both fork and cup and pushed away his plate, looking at his daughter. As usual, she sensed his regard almost immediately.

“What?” she asked, looking up.

“You have an apology to make, young lady, and there’s no sense in putting it off.”

She was clearly shocked, her mouth dropping open. “You’ve got to be kidding! It’s the crack of dawn!”

He glanced at the clock on the front of the wall oven behind her head. “It’s eight thirty-five. The whole world’s up.” He pushed his chair back. “Come on, let’s get it over with.”

“Aw, Da-ad!”

“The sooner it’s done, the sooner we can get some sleep.”

“Rats!” Mattie grumbled, but she got to her feet, slinging her long hair over one shoulder.

Evans frowned at the spiked bangs, but he said nothing. Why comb out the bangs and leave the black eyeliner and the ghost-pale makeup? At least the dark red lipstick had worn off, along with the other makeup that made her look like a vampire. But he knew better than to say so. She’d simply accuse him again of not wanting her to grow up—and she’d be right, darn it.

He opened the back door and marched her through it, then off the porch and across the yard to the fence gate. It was already warm. He could hear a lawn mower farther up the street, but he doubted that would last long. Soon the day would blaze with three-digit heat. He’d been warned about these Oklahoma summers, and everything he’d been told was true. Not having to wear starched khakis in the heat of the day was the only good thing about working the night shift. On the other hand, it would be sundown before he could get to his own lawn, maybe tomorrow. It could go one more day.

The gate swung open easily beneath his touch, and he took pride in its smooth movement. It was one of the first repairs he’d made about the place. He liked to keep things in good shape, himself included. They walked side by side down the narrow drive, his late-model pickup truck safely locked inside the detached garage.

“This is dumb,” Mattie said sullenly. “If she was up at two o’clock this morning, she won’t be awake yet.”

“She will if she’d been in bed for a while before you woke her at 2:00 a.m.”

Mattie wrinkled her nose as they turned onto Mrs. Slater’s lawn. “But how do you know that?”

“Well, for one thing, she was wearing a bathrobe and, I presume, night clothes when I called on her.”

Mattie didn’t appear to want to argue with that, settling instead for a shrug. “What if she works? She’ll be gone already.”

“In that case,” he said, stepping up onto the front porch, “you’ll have to make this short walk again this evening.”

Mattie mumbled something under her breath. He caught and ignored the word stupid, not wanting to know whether it had been applied to him, their new neighbor or Mattie herself. He rapped smartly on the door, then pushed the doorbell for good measure. While he was waiting, he looked around at the front of the house. There was a brick loose in the border on the empty flower bed at the front of the porch, and several nails had pulled out of the soffit, leaving the underside of the eave—which needed painting—looking dilapidated. He could see a bit of flashing hanging down at the edge of the roof, too, and one of the window screens was torn. The place definitely needed some work.

Mrs. Slater was either single or married to a remarkably uncaring man.

The door opened, revealing a plump woman with short brown hair who obviously did nothing to enhance her appearance. Her hair was uncombed, her clothing unkempt, none of which detracted from her pretty face. In fact, her eyes were quite stunning, and then he realized he was staring down into them.

“Oh. Ah, I, um, hope we haven’t caught you at a bad time.”

She pushed a hand through her hair. Her eyelashes were golden, he noticed, and her eyes a very bright, very clear blue. She hid a yawn behind her hand. “Don’t you sleep, Officer…?”

He tamped down a spurt of irritation. “Kincaid. Evans Kincaid.”

“Ah, yes. Kincaid. And this, I suppose, is your daughter?” She gave Mattie a swift once-over, her own delicate features arranged in a frown of obvious disapproval. “You’re letting the air-conditioning out,” she said, turning away. “You might as well come in—now that I’m up.”

Mattie shot him a smug look, which he glowered over before pushing her inside and pulling the door closed behind him. The odor of stale cigarette smoke immediately assailed him. He cleared his throat, forestalling a cough, and saw that he was standing in the living room. Mattie had her hand over her mouth and nose but dropped it when he signaled her to do so. Mrs. Slater pulled a blanket and a pillow off the couch, making room for them to sit, which they did, side by side. Mrs. Slater pulled the belt of her robe a little tighter and slid over the arm and into the seat of a recliner positioned directly in front of the TV.

“I’d offer you some coffee, but I don’t have any made yet,” she said, sounding anything but apologetic.

“That’s all right,” Evans quickly assured her. “We’re about to hit the hay ourselves, so coffee’s the last thing we need right now.”

“Oh, right,” she said, “the late shift.”

For a long, awkward moment, silence reigned, then Evans nudged Mattie as surreptitiously as possible with his elbow. She swallowed, revealing her nervousness, and sighed. “I’m real sorry about waking you up last night,” she said in an endearingly small voice.

Amy Slater flashed a decidedly joyless smile. “Well, to be honest with you, the music didn’t wake me. The problem was that I couldn’t hear my television…and I had a terrific tension headache.” She grimaced and blurted, “I’m trying to quit smoking.”

Evans felt an absurd sense of relief. “Well, that explains it,” he said brightly. She immediately took umbrage, her spine suddenly ramrod straight, her nails digging into the arms of her chair. They were attractively long, he noticed, and painted pale pink. They gave her hands a graceful, feminine look. He wondered if she painted her toenails, too, but before he could look to see if her feet were bare, she was taking him to task with her tongue again.

“If you’re implying that the music wasn’t too loud, I have to object. My windows were rattling over here!”

“Oh, come now, it wasn’t quite that—”

“It was every bit that bad!” she insisted, sliding to the edge of her chair. “It’s a wonder that child can still hear!”

Evans strangled a sharp retort, wanting to tell her not to speak of his child as that child. Instead, he heard Mattie telling her quite calmly that she was no child, period.

“And I don’t have to stay here and be insulted!” she concluded, getting smoothly to her feet.

Mrs. Slater followed her up. “I didn’t insult you! I merely said—”

“Sit down!” Evans barked, surprised when Amy Slater promptly popped back down into her chair. Mattie, at whom his order had been aimed, first folded her arms then gave him a belligerent glare before complying. Evans gulped down further orders and leaned forward, elbows on knees, as he reached for a reasonable tone.

“The music was too loud,” he said flatly. “Whether it was as loud as you imply or not, it was too loud. We apologize. Let that be the end of it.”

“Fine,” Amy snipped, lifting her nose and turning her face away.

Evans set his back teeth. “What else would you have us do, Mrs. Slater? There were no physical damages that I can repair, no monetary losses to be incurred. We have apologized. Now, can’t we get along as neighbors should?”

Amy waved a hand dismissively. “I’m not the one who tried to blow the neighbor’s house off its foundation.”

Evans closed his eyes and began to count, then abruptly gave up and took to his feet. “Fine! Let’s go, Mattie. We’re obviously wasting our time here.”

Mattie jumped up and followed him to the door. He went out of it and didn’t look back, Mattie at his heels. He’d really wanted to get along. He had tried to get along. Well, so much for good intentions! It was just his luck to move in next door to a hardheaded woman in the throes of a nicotine fit. When he heard the slam that indicated Amy Slater had the gall to be angry at him, he clenched his fists and kept walking. He didn’t dare comment to Mattie, because if he did, he’d soon be shouting, and that would solve nothing. What he did instead was to fix his mind on the day ahead.

He was going to take a cold shower and crawl into bed for a few hours. That would cool off his temper as well as his body. After a very late “lunch,” he’d take a look at that squeaky hinge on the garage door and tinker with the idle on his pickup. Then he’d watch a little TV, stretch and go for a run as soon as the sun set. After that, it would be time to get ready for work. All in all, a relaxing, enjoyable day. He wondered what Mrs. Slater would be doing with her time. Nothing useful, if the condition of her home was any indication. It was none of his business, at any rate. The best he could do from now on was to keep his distance. Stubborn woman! If she’d played her cards right, she could’ve had her house fixed up in the name of neighborly cooperation, but no, she had to be a shrew. Well, it was no skin off his nose. He had plenty to keep him busy as it was. Her house could fall right down around her for all he cared.

But it was a shame that they couldn’t at least be amicable neighbors.

It was a real shame.

Chapter Two

Amy was toweling her hair dry when she heard the first knock. Who on earth? she wondered. Her sister and brother-in-law, Joan and Griff Shaw, were out of town for several days so Griff could ride in the rodeo, and they always took Danna with them during the summer. Amy’s parents hadn’t said anything about coming down from Oklahoma City; they rarely left home anymore. Her best—and if she were honest, only—friend, Ruthie, should have been at work. She was of half a mind to ignore it. After all, who else could it be except some solicitor or…No, he wouldn’t, not after the way she’d treated him and his daughter this morning. She sighed, pondering again her reaction to her new neighbor. What was it about him that made her want to jump up and run in the opposite direction? It had to be simply a matter of bad timing. He’d come along just when she was trying to quit smoking. Yes, that was undoubtedly it.

Her caller proved persistent, so much so that she finally stuck her head out of the bathroom door and shouted, “Just a minute!” Grumbling, she pulled on denim shorts and a worn, white T-shirt, tugged a comb through her hair, and went barefoot to the door. She couldn’t believe it when she opened up and found that it was, indeed, him standing there. He wore running shorts, a skimpy sleeveless “muscle” shirt and athletic shoes without socks. The man was obviously in fine physical shape. His lower arms and legs, she noticed, were dusted with fine black hairs, and so, too, she suspected, was his upper chest. For some reason that seemed strangely…erotic. Mark, she recalled, had been inordinately proud of his full head of sandy brown hair, but he’d hardly sported a hair on any other part of his body. Now why would she compare the two of them?

“I was hoping that we could start over,” Evans Kincaid was saying.

Amy shook her head to clear it, a movement that Kincaid interpreted as a refusal of his truce. He rolled his eyes, threw up his hands and started to turn away. Impulsively Amy reached out to stop him. This morning’s fiasco could be laid squarely at her feet, after all. “Don’t go,” she said, her hand clamped down over his forearm.

Surprised, he looked at her hand, then lifted his head to beam upon her a smile so bright that it was blinding. “Well, all right.”

She snatched her hand away, suddenly feeling ridiculously shy and disheveled. Her hand crept up to her drying hair. “Um, maybe you’d better come in.”

He stepped inside and closed the door. “Now what?” she wondered, unaware that she’d spoken aloud until he chuckled.

“Ah, how about a cool glass of water?”

“Oh. Right.” Now she was laughing. “Come on back to the kitchen.” She signaled for him to follow and turned away to pad across the living room, past the dining suite, and into the hall. She pulled the door to her bedroom closed, not wishing him to witness its clutter, then turned left into the kitchen. “Actually, I have some iced tea if you’d prefer that.”

“Tea would be great.”

She opened a cabinet door, realized there were no clean glasses there and went to the dishwasher, hoping she’d remembered to run it. Thankfully she had, though she couldn’t remember exactly when that might have been. Taking the tea pitcher from the refrigerator, she dropped a few ice cubes into the glass and poured it full. “It’s already sweetened. Would you like some lemon?”

He shook his head, then sipped the tea and promptly nodded. “Guess I’d better have lemon, after all.”

“Too sweet?” Her mother had always told her that she made syrup, not tea.

He nodded apologetically. “A little.” Obviously it was a lot too sweet.

She rummaged in the refrigerator for a lemon, eventually finding a few dried up slices in a tiny bowl. Biting her lip, she closed the refrigerator and suggested that he might prefer water, after all.

“Oh, this is fine,” he said unconvincingly, whereupon she snatched the glass out of his hand and dumped its contents into the sink. Quickly she rinsed the glass, filled it partway with water and carried it to the freezer for a couple of ice cubes.

“Thank you,” he said when she handed him the glass of water. “May I take a seat?”

“Of course.”

He pulled out a chair at her dinky kitchen table and sat down. “Won’t you join me?”

She pulled out another chair and sat.

He ran a fingertip around the lip of his glass. “I, um, thought perhaps that if we got to know each other a little better we could, ah, get along.”

Amy passed a hand over her eyes. “I get along just fine with all my other neighbors.”

“Are any of them teenagers with only one parent and that one of the opposite sex?”

Amy grimaced. “No. Actually there isn’t another soul on this whole block under fifty.”

He grinned. “I know. It was the deciding factor in the purchase of my house.”

She gave him an openly curious look. “Want to explain that?”

He nodded. “Actually, I do.” He sipped from his glass and set it down again. “I hoped this neighborhood would have a…calming effect on my daughter. You see, Mattie was just twelve when her mother died.”

“Tough age,” Amy muttered.

“Very. She was an early bloomer, deep in the throes of puberty. We were very close, Mattie and I, from the day of her birth. I couldn’t wait to have a child. Neither could Andie. In fact, we were married in October and Mattie was born just a year later.”

“I take it there were no others,” Amy commented lightly.

He sighed. “Nope. We always intended to have another, but Mattie was just everything we could have possibly asked for, and we didn’t want her to share her early childhood with a sibling. We always had it in the back of our minds to have another when she started school, but then Andie started thinking about going to college—I think I told you that she was only eighteen when we married. Anyway, I thought she ought to have the chance to go, so when Mattie started school, so did Andie, and, well, she loved it, so much so that after she finally got her bachelor’s degree, she started in on her master’s. She always said we’d have that second baby before she hit forty. But she hardly got past thirty.” He stared at his glass, watching the condensation bead on the outside. “She was crossing the street to her car after class and some hopped-up frat pledge jumped the median and mowed her down.”

“I’m so sorry,” Amy said gently.

He nodded, keeping his gaze on his glass. “I couldn’t believe it. It was the worst thing that ever happened to me, but Mattie…She and her mother were practically inseparable just then. She was suddenly becoming a young lady, and Andie was so good with her. To tell you the truth, I was feeling kind of left out. They were always giggling together and trying on makeup and God knows what all. And suddenly Andie’s gone.” He shook his head and sat up straighter in his chair, finally lifting his gaze. “Mattie’s a good girl, Mrs. Slater, but she’s been through a lot. Losing her mother sort of knocked her off kilter, and she doesn’t seem to have ever really gotten back in balance. She’s going through this stage right now, rebellion, I guess, and there was this boy back in California…” He told Amy about the rocker, which explained Mattie’s rather bizarre style of fashion. “Actually, the whole scene was pretty rough out there, gangs and all. When I conceived this notion of moving her out of that climate, I went to my pastor,” Evans said, “and he agreed that it might be best. Turns out that he’s from Oklahoma, and he has a brother on the force here in Duncan, and the brother had mentioned that one of the captains here was leaving. Well, it seemed heavensent. So here we are.”

“I take it the move was rather sudden,” Amy surmised.

“Yeah, too sudden maybe.”

“School will start soon,” she told him. “Mattie will make friends.”

“I know, I know. And I’ll eventually get off this horrible shift, so we can have a real home life again. The new man always starts at the bottom of the totem pole, you know. The original captain on this shift got promoted when the guy I actually replaced left.”

“So you got the ugly shift.”

“Right. But it’s not too bad, really. Things are real calm in Duncan compared to the suburbs of L.A.”

“I can just imagine.”

He grinned. “Yeah? Have you ever lived in a big city?”

“Actually, I have. I grew up in Oklahoma City, and Mark and I lived in Houston for a while.”

“Mark?” He made the question in his voice sound utterly innocent, but those leaf green eyes were anything but. She got a taste of what a criminal suspect must get when being interrogated by Officer Kincaid. Oddly, she didn’t find the experience unpalatable.

“My husband,” she said, then heard herself adding, “my late husband.”

“Oh,” he said, shifting forward in his seat. “Then you’re widowed, too.”

“Yes,” she admitted, her tone closing the door on further inquiry. One dark brow quirked upward at that, but he was a man who could take a hint, apparently, for he said not another word, which was good. Or so Amy told herself. Her relationship with Mark was much too precious to be trotted out for examination with everyone who walked through her door. So why did she feel this niggling sense of disappointment?

Maybe she just needed to talk about Mark, but if so, she’d do her talking to Ruthie. Ruthie had appreciated Mark; she’d been half in love with him herself by the time he became ill. If no one else close to her seemed to have understood him, well, that was their loss. At any rate, she didn’t intend to discuss the matter with another man, not this one, anyway. That being the case, she decided to get the conversation back on the proper track. “What happened this morning was my fault,” she said flatly. “It’s the smoking—or rather, the not smoking.”

“I’m sure it’s very difficult,” he said consolingly.

“It certainly is.”

“But it’s a good thing,” he added quickly. “Giving up cigarettes is a very positive move.”

“I hope so,” she muttered doubtfully.

“What made you decide to quit?”

She grimaced. “I don’t know. Well, actually, yes, I do. I have a little niece named Danna, and her parents put her up to bugging me about it. At least, I think they did. They’re big health nuts these days, which is pure irony considering who her father, uh, stepfather is. His name’s Griff Shaw, the bull rider. Maybe you’ve heard of him?”

“Griff Shaw! No kidding? Heck, yeah, I’ve heard of him. Fancy that, Griff Shaw’s your brother-in-law. I’ll have to remember to tell Mattie that. But, uh, what’s this irony business about?”

“Well, before Griff married my little sister, Joan, he was a first-class lush.”

“Really? He’s an alcoholic then?”

Amy wrinkled her nose. “No, nothing like that. He was just wild, you know, partying all the time.”

“Ah, the celebrity life-style.”

“Something like that.”

Evans Kincaid cocked his head to one side. “It’s always struck me odd how these pro athletes sabotage themselves sometimes. I mean, you’d think they’d do everything in their power to protect their primary assets, which logically would be their bodies.”

“I suppose,” Amy said pensively. “I never really thought about it.”

“Hmm, on the other hand, though,” Evans went on, “our bodies are of prime importance to all of us, not just the pros. That’s why I never could understand why people would subject themselves to the abuse of drugs and such. I mean, if you want a good high, why not exercise? It feels great, and it’s healthy.” He shook a finger at her, his eyes alight with the glow of inspiration. “Come to think of it, a regular exercise plan might be just what you need to help you get over the craving to smoke, and it’ll help with the weight gain, too.”

Amy’s mouth fell open. He’d as much as told her she was fat, as if she didn’t already know. “You rat! What makes you think I care what you think of me?”

He blinked at her. “I beg your pardon?”

“Are you this insensitive with your suspects? I suppose a little exercise would take away the urge to steal or lie or cheat or…or…whatever!”

He was gaping. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“I’m talking about that cheap crack about my weight!”

“What crack? All I meant was that a lot of people worry about putting on weight when they quit smoking.”

“I heard what you said! Oh, just get out of my house!” She jumped to her feet and slammed her chair up under the table.

Evans was still gaping, but he got up and gave his chair the same treatment she had given hers. “Of all the touchy, loony dames! Lady, you take the proverbial cake!”

Amy pointed toward the living room, arm rigid, face livid. “I suggest you take your leave through the proverbial door, boor, and don’t bother coming back with one of your lame apologies!”

“Oh, don’t worry!” he told her, wild-eyed. “I won’t be apologizing this time! Any apologies due this time are yours!”

“Ha! I’ve done all the apologizing I intend to do, period. Now get out!”

“My pleasure,” he said, sneering, “and from now on, if you want to talk to me, call the police!”

“Out!” she screamed, but she was talking to an empty space, a fact to which a slamming door attested.

He wasn’t gone three seconds when she covered her face with her hands and began to cry. The moment she realized what she was doing, she sniffed up the tears and determinedly bottled them inside of her. She wouldn’t cry over a snide remark by a cad like Evans Kincaid. Heavens, she couldn’t even remember the last time a man had made her cry.

“For Pete’s sake, Amy, what are you trying to do, kill me? Do you want me to die?”

“You know I don’t!”

“Then be a little more careful. I’m only your husband, after all.”

She shook away the memory. That didn’t count. Mark hadn’t known what he was saying. It was the illness talking, the pain. Evans Kincaid was just being hateful when he’d said she was fat. Mark would never have said anything so personal.

“You aren’t going out like that, are you? What if someone I know sees you?”

Well, of course, Mark commented from time to time. It was his right as a husband, after all, and any comments Mark had made about her appearance he had made for her own good, out of love. Evans Kincaid was just being mean when he’d said what he’d said, no matter how innocent it might have sounded to a third party. Anyway, even if he hadn’t actually said that she was fat, he’d certainly implied it. Just because he was built like the Rock of Gibraltar he thought he could make snide remarks about everyone else. So what if she’d put on a few pounds? It was her business. She folded her arms and huffed, trying to hold on to her outrage, but reason was slowly returning, and with it came the knowledge that she had again made a fool of herself. She closed her eyes, seeing herself as Evans must see her, a plain, pudgy, high-strung, pathetic excuse for a woman.

She wanted to run next door and beg his pardon, but she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction. What difference did it make, anyway? He was never going to give her another chance, and why should she care? He wasn’t anything to her, nothing at all, and that’s the way it should be. But for some reason she wanted to crawl back into bed and pull the covers over her head. Why not? What else did she have to do?

It was going on midnight when she realized that the music she was hearing was not part of the television program she was watching. A quick muting of the volume on the set told her unequivocally that the sound was coming from the Kincaids’. It wasn’t as loud as before, but it was definitely too loud. Amy chewed her lip, wondering what her best course of action might be. Should she let it go and hope it didn’t happen again, or ought she try to nip this thing in the bud before it went any further? She hated to go through another scene with Evans Kincaid, but maybe if she moderated her replies this time, if she didn’t let him get to her, they could have a reasonable conversation—and maybe she could even find the words to apologize again.

She went to the phone, but this time she looked up the non-emergency number and left a personal message for Captain Kincaid, saying that his next-door neighbor was calling to suggest that he swing by his house to take care of a certain situation there. She hardly had time to go over in her mind what she would say to him, when he pulled up in the police cruiser. He slammed his door with his usual gusto and stalked into the house. The music shut off, and a few moments later she heard him and Mattie shouting at one another. After some minutes another door slammed, and Amy thought for certain that he would be on her porch at any moment, but he didn’t come.

Amy went to the dining room window and stared out at the house next door. The police cruiser was still parked in the drive, but the house was now dark and silent. A movement of shadow against the yellow light of the Kincaids’ front porch told her that Evans was there, perhaps on his way to the car. A moment of indecision passed before she hurried into the living room, thrust her feet into a pair of thong sandals that she kept by the door and went out. The thong broke on one shoe as she was going down the steps. Thoroughly disgusted, she kicked off both sandals and hurried across the dark yard. She had turned down the Kincaids’ drive toward the street when she heard what sounded like a man groaning. Stopping in her tracks, she held her breath listening.

“Oh, God,” he was saying, “what’s happening to us? I prayed and prayed before making this move, and I really thought it was the right thing to do, but now I don’t know. I can’t even talk to my own daughter anymore. Our next-door neighbor hates us. The shift I’m working doesn’t seem to leave time for much of anything else. I don’t know what to do now. You have to help me, Lord. I don’t seem able to do this on my own. How I wish Andie were here—or someone….”

Amy quietly turned and walked back to her own house, feeling small and ashamed and utterly selfish to be so disturbed by something as common as music played a little too loud, when people like Evans Kincaid had real problems, problems so deep that he prayed about them on his front porch in the middle of the night.

Our next-door neighbor hates us.

She bowed her head as she recalled those words. Her sharp tongue and personal sensitivity had given him that notion. Indeed, what else could he think when she jumped all over him for every innocent remark he made in her presence. She was too ashamed to apologize, but she made up her mind to be a good deal more pleasant in the future—provided he ever spoke to her again. She couldn’t blame him if he didn’t. In fact, she’d be amazed if he did.

It was ninety-five degrees in the shade, and she wanted to get home in time for the early-evening news, so of course her six-year-old domestic sedan overheated while she was waiting at the red light at the intersection of 81 and Main. Making matters worse, she had just come from the grocery store and could already hear her cottage cheese spoiling, her lettuce wilting and her new low-cal frozen dinners melting. So much for the new diet. Naturally, she was in the inside lane, intending to turn left onto Main Street when a high, whining noise first alerted her to the problem, and that was exactly where the car engine died. She knew the moment she lifted the hood that the problem was well beyond her scope of experience and knowledge. In fact, all she could do was slam the hood down again to keep boiling water from spewing in every direction.

She was standing in front of the car, watching the water from her radiator roll down the street, while other cars whizzed by and an attendant from a nearby service station watched from the doorway of his business. She supposed she’d have to walk over there and ask his advice, though how she could get her car into his service bay was beyond her. It would have to be pushed backward, going in the wrong direction on that side of the street. And pushing that heavy, full-size sedan was certainly more than she could ever manage alone. She didn’t see any other alternative, however—until a red, late-model, one-ton pickup pulled up in the lane behind her, and the tinted window on the driver’s side silently lowered.

“Blow your radiator cap?”

Amy looked at Evans Kincaid’s handsome face and felt her heart drop. “Hi. Um, I don’t know. It seems to be coming from behind the radiator.”

He nodded and drew back inside. For a moment she thought he would leave, now that he knew who the motorist in distress was, but then the hazard lights on the pickup truck began to blink, the door opened, and Kincaid stepped out onto the curb. He was wearing a red-and-white ball cap and black sunshades, faded blue jeans without a belt and a plain white T-shirt with the tail tucked in. On his feet were black, round-toed cowboy boots. He carried an open cola can in one hand and a rolled up length of leather in the other. As he drew near, Amy could see that he needed a shave. He was the best-looking and the most welcome thing she’d ever seen. He hadn’t even done anything, and she felt inordinately grateful.

“Let’s take a look,” he said. “It ought to be blown out by now, judging by the size of that puddle.”

He seemed to know exactly what he was doing, for he handed her the can, walked to the driver’s door, opened it, ducked inside and pushed the hood release. He took the can back as he strolled around to the front of the car and lifted the hood. Amy could hear a high-pitched whine and see a tiny fountain of water spewing up.

“Hose,” he said succinctly. “It’ll have to be replaced.”

Amy wrung her hands at that news. “How am I going to do that?”

“No problem,” he said. He tilted his head back and took a long drink of the cola, then crushed the empty can in his hand. “Wait here,” he said, thrusting the rolled piece of leather at her, “and hold this.”

It was inordinately heavy, and she realized as he strolled back toward his truck that some sort of tools were rolled up inside. She held the bundle in both hands and stood there perspiring on the side of the road while he disappeared through the opened door of his truck. After several minutes, he emerged again and walked back toward her.

“Okay,” he said, “it’s coming.”

“What’s coming?” She looked up into the opaque black lenses of his glasses.

“The hose and enough antifreeze to replace what’s on the ground.”

For a long moment she could only stare. “How on earth did you manage that?”

He shrugged. “I used my car phone to call a fellow I know at one of the parts houses in town. Hope you can pay for it when it gets here.”

She bit her lip. “Suppose he’ll take a check?”

Evans Kincaid grinned. “Oh, I think we can persuade him. It’s not like he couldn’t find you if it bounced.”

“I guess not,” she muttered, “living next door to a cop.”

He tilted his head. “Has its advantages.” She opened her mouth to say she was aware of that fact, but he turned and walked away, saying, “Next order of business is to clear this street.”

While she watched, he went to the light pole at the side of the intersection, inserted something from his pocket into a metal box mounted on the side and moved something. The light began to blink red in all directions, bringing traffic to a complete halt. Everything happened quickly after that. Suddenly there were three young men pushing her car through the intersection and onto the parking lot of a car wash. Evans pulled his truck up beside it. The traffic light was reset, and the normal flow of traffic resumed. The man from the parts store came and took Amy’s check without the slightest hesitation, saying that from the looks of the puddle in the street, she had diluted her antifreeze too much. She nodded, wondering how she had managed that, then watched as Evans flushed out the radiator with a water hose borrowed from the car wash before exchanging the new radiator hose for the busted one. When that was done, he poured half a container of antifreeze fluid into the radiator, filled the container with water and emptied the whole of it into the system.

“Now then,” he said, fixing the cap in place and lowering the hood. “Next time it needs more fluid, you mix two parts antifreeze and one part water and put that in. You don’t just add plain water. Understand?”

“I think so.”

“Has it been getting hot fairly often?”

“Occasionally.”

“And when it did, you put plain water in it,” he stated matter-of-factly. “That’s how it got too diluted.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” she told him meekly.

“If it happens again, you may want to look into having your thermostat replaced,” he advised. Wiping his small wrenches clean with a handkerchief from his back pocket, he slid them back into the proper pockets, rolled up the leather case and tied it closed. “That ought to do for now.”

Without another word he walked over to his truck and got in. Amy hurried after, catching the door before he could close it.

“Evans!”

He slid his shades off and dropped them into a console between the bucket seats. “Yeah?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I mean, I’m sorry for…well, for everything, and thank you for helping me out today. I don’t know what I’d have done if you had passed me by—and you had every right to.”

He dropped his gaze. “Well, I just always figured that neighbors were supposed help out one another.”

“You’re right, of course,” she told him softly. “I’ve behaved terribly. I hope this means that you’ve forgiven me.”

He flashed her a grin. “I always forgive pretty ladies.” He settled himself behind the wheel then, while her mouth hung open, he said, “I’ve got to run. Got to shave off this sandpaper before I report to the station.” He rubbed his jaw.

She backed up, and he closed the door. Only as the truck was moving did she think to call out, “Thank you!” She doubted that he heard her. The truck had already wheeled out into the street and was accelerating through a green light. In another moment it disappeared over a slight rise in the street.

She stood in the parking lot, her groceries ruining in the back of her car, and wondered if he’d realized what he’d said. He didn’t really think she was pretty…did he?

Chapter Three

Amy stared at the open pack of cigarettes on the coffee table and imagined herself slipping the filter tip between her lips. She could almost smell the oily fragrance of the flame as she struck the lighter. She could almost feel the swirl of smoke expanding in her lungs, the shiver of nicotine euphoria that seemed alternately to tighten then relax her skin. She closed her eyes and pulled again, shocked to feel pressure on the tip of her little finger rather than the soothing inhalation of smoke. With a groan of disgust, she jerked her hand from her mouth and thrust it through her hair as the hard twang of a rock guitar throbbed through the night. Was it her imagination again, or had the volume been cranked up another notch?

Sighing, she leaned forward on the couch, laid her forehead against her knees and folded her arms over the back of her head. Why was she doing this? Why in blue blazes didn’t she just pick up the phone and get Kincaid to come home and take care of this insanity? But she already knew the answer to that. She didn’t want to fight with him anymore. She owed him for fixing her car that afternoon…and he had implied that he thought she was pretty, darn him. But that was just casual talk, the sort of thing an attractive, confident man tossed about whenever a woman was around.

Still, she couldn’t help wondering how long it had been since any man had commented favorably on her looks. Even Mark hadn’t been given to easy compliments. That being so, she would treasure them all the more, he had told her, and of course, Mark was right, which meant that she was being an idiot about this. No meaningless compliment was worth enduring the nerve-jangling blasts from the house next door. She had to do something before she started climbing the walls. It was bad enough to want a smoke at this time of night. No one should have to endure this screeching nonsense on top of that.

She got up off the couch, full of righteous indignation, and marched toward the door. On the way she did something she never did, she glanced in the gold-framed mirror on the living room wall, the one Mark’s aunt had given them. She shuddered at what she saw. Her hair had grown limp with perspiration. Her cheeks were reddened from being out in the sun, and she had no eyebrows or eyelashes at all. Had she been walking around like this all the time? Maybe she didn’t have anybody to impress, but it didn’t hurt to take pride in one’s appearance. In fact, someone had recently told her that it was healthy to do so. Her sister maybe? It didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she not go out this way, no, not even to put that little freak next door in her place.

She made an about-face and marched straight into the bathroom. By the time she rinsed and dried her hair, slapped on a little foundation, brushed color on her lashes and brows—which turned out to need a little plucking—and stroked on some lip gloss, the music from next door was threatening to break the glass in the windows. What on earth did that child think she was doing? She was practically begging for trouble. Well, trouble was on its way.

Head high, Amy stomped out of the house. This time when she glanced in the mirror, she gave herself a congratulatory nod. Maybe she wasn’t drop-dead gorgeous, but at least she was relatively well groomed. She walked across the lawn and Kincaid’s drive, then onto the grass in his yard and up onto the porch. She couldn’t help noticing that the lawn was clipped and edged. Moreover, the grayish-blue-and-white house was freshly painted and in good repair. The welcome mat was clean, and the porch light was free of insect remains and cobwebs. Somebody had been busy. It was a wonder, though, that the windows weren’t in shards and the roof bouncing a foot or so above the walls. How did that kid stand it?

Without bothering to knock, Amy tried the doorknob. It turned freely, and she pushed it open, shouting, “Mattie? Mattie!”

Her hands over her ears, she hurried through the graceful entry and into the living room. Her feet sank into lush softness as she stepped onto the pale gray carpet. A quick scan of the room showed her two things, an impressive stereo system arranged on shelving mounted on one wall and Mattie curled up in a ball in big, comfy club chair, her arms wrapped around her head. Amy launched across the room and started hitting buttons and dials until blessed silence descended. The relief was almost physical.

“Oh, you’re home,” Mattie said sullenly and lifted her head, which showed definite highlights of green around the face this night. The shock on that face when she saw Amy rather than her father, coupled with the black and green makeup on her eyes and the coral lipstick on her mouth, was downright comical. “What are you doing here?” she asked Amy.

“Saving your hearing. What in heaven’s name did you think you were doing?”

Mattie stuck her chin out at a belligerent angle. “You can’t just walk in here,” she insisted.

Amy chuckled. “Like you’d have heard me if I’d knocked, especially since I screamed for you before I came in.”

Mattie glared. “Where’s my father?”

“I wouldn’t know. Why do you ask?”

Mattie’s eyes grew round and shimmering. She’s lonely, Amy found herself thinking.

“Didn’t you call him?” she asked Amy.

“No, I didn’t call him. I figure he has enough to do at the moment, keeping the city safe from delinquents like you.”

Suddenly Mattie’s eyes were flowing with tears. She ducked her head on a strangled sob. Amy melted like butter in summer sunlight. “Hey, now, I was only kidding.”

“I’m not a delinquent! I’m not!” Mattie sobbed.

The poor kid’s misery pulled Amy across the room. Soon she was standing beside the big jewel-toned chair. “I said I was only kidding. Listen, I won’t say a word to your father, I promise.”

“Oh, swell!” Mattie snapped, lifting her head and swiping at tears. “Just let him ignore me, see if I care!”

Amy’s freshly drawn brows rose straight up. “Is that what this is all about? You wanted me to call him, didn’t you? You wanted him to come home.”

Mattie instantly sobered and matured. “Don’t be silly. I was just enjoying my music. I don’t know why everybody makes such a big deal about it.”

Amy folded her arms, smirking. “Right. You always enjoy your music with your ears covered.”

The child was back, eyes wide, chin wobbling. “I—I just fell asleep, that’s all.”

“Yeah? Well, that’s some trick. Maybe you could market your secret to a grateful world of insomniacs.”

That wobbling chin jutted up stubbornly. “Why are you being so mean to me?”

Amy dropped her jaw in comic outrage. “Me, be mean to you? Have I tried to burst your ear drums? Have I filed public nuisance charges? Have I purposefully blasted you out of your own house?” The operative word, and they both knew it, was purposefully.

Mattie dropped her chin to her chest. For some time she said nothing, and Amy sensed that this was a moment when she ought to keep her own mouth shut. Even when Mattie began to quietly cry, Amy kept her silence, and finally Mattie came out with it.

“I don’t know what the matter is with me. I don’t really want to go back to L.A. To tell you the truth, it really wasn’t much better. I just get so lonely sometimes.”

Amy felt an instant, unexpected kinship with this odd girl. If anyone understood loneliness, Amy did. She resisted the uncommon urge to lay a hand on Mattie’s head and said, “I suppose that’s to be expected, but you’ll get used to it.”

“Get used to being lonely?” Mattie said with some surprise.

Amy was taken aback. Had she really said that? Was that what she’d done, resigned herself to loneliness? She shook her head, as much in answer to her own thoughts as Mattie’s. “What I meant to say was that you’ll get used to living in a new place a-and that in a couple weeks you’ll make some new friends and—”

Mattie threw up her hands and uncurled, sending both feet to the floor. “You’re talking about school, but school is so lame! I wouldn’t even go if I didn’t have to.”

“Well, you do have to,” Amy said, sounding for all the world like her own mother, “so why don’t you make the best of it? You might be surprised.”

“Don’t you understand?” Mattie said desperately. “I need more than school chums!”

“That’s right,” Amy said. “You need an education.” Mattie snorted inelegantly at that, and Amy found herself feeding her the same line adults always fed teenagers. “You can’t do anything without an education.” Mattie pressed her mouth into a thin line as if refusing a dose of bitter medicine. Amy rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Don’t you have any plans, any dreams? What do you want to do with your life?”

Mattie shrugged. “I don’t know. I just know that I’m not going to find what I need in some high school.”

“Just give it a chance,” Amy urged.

“I need something more than most kids my age,” Mattie went on. “I need…”

“A mother?” Amy asked softly. Boy, did she know how it felt to need someone who just wasn’t there and never would be.

Mattie got a faraway look in her eye, a look tinged with sadness and laden with memories, a look that spoke volumes about her feelings for and need of her mother, but then she shook her head. “It’s even more than that,” she said huskily. “See, Mom’s always with me.” She tapped her chest. “She’s in here, and nothing can ever take her away. In fact, you could say that she’s more ‘with me’ than Dad is most of the time.”

Aha, thought Amy, we come to the crux of the problem. And she knew just what to do about it, but it wouldn’t do to be too obvious. She put her hands on her hips and looked around her, noting the neatness and cleanliness of the room. Not only did it look clean, it felt clean, even smelled clean, and yet it had a comfortable, homey feel about it. Maybe she ought to move halfway across the country, she thought wryly, but something told her that there was more to it than that. “On second thought,” she said, keeping her face as expressionless as possible, “I really don’t think I can just let this go by. Maybe you’d better show me where the phone is.”

Mattie’s expression was one of confusion. Amy could see that having her father brought home was what Mattie wanted, but the fact that the homecoming was apt to bring acrimony now mattered to her when it hadn’t before. Then the confusion cleared, and Amy saw real regret…and pride. Mattie wasn’t about to beg her not to call. Instead, she lifted a hand and pointed across the room to the formal dining area. “Through there to the kitchen. It’s on the right side of the door.”

Amy nodded her thanks and went off on her own into the other part of the house. The kitchen was larger and brighter than hers and spotless. A bowl of fruit sat in the middle of the table, and decorative tea towels were draped over the handles of the double wall oven. The place smelled of cinnamon and coffee, just as her mother’s kitchen had always done. You didn’t get that by moving.

She turned to the telephone and lifted the receiver. Several numbers were listed on the interior pad beneath. Beside each was a single boxed digit. Evans’s work number was the first. Amy pushed the star button and the number one. When the other party answered, she explained merely that she was Evans’s next-door neighbor and that she needed to speak to him. When the man on the other end of the line asked if she wanted to be “patched through,” she said that she did. Seconds later she was talking to Evans Kincaid himself.

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