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Contents
Prologue
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Prologue
Mary Ellen Barnett slammed the car door, hitched her wedding gown to her knees and hiked up the porch steps into the kitchen. Without a pause for breath, she locked the door, pulled the curtains, flipped open the oven and switched on the gas.
Suicide was for cowards, but that didn’t bother her—she’d been an ace pro coward for years. Truthfully, she was feeling more murderous than suicidal, but that was irrelevant, too. She’d had it. Really had it. Being jilted at the altar wasn’t the first time she’d made a humiliating fool of herself, but it was positively the last.
The sickly sweet gas fumes invaded the small, closed kitchen quickly. Too quickly. Cripes, they were making her gag. She’d never manage to kill herself off—at least not before throwing up.
Impatiently she jerked off the gas, snapped the oven door closed and stormed outside.
There had to be another way. Yanking off her long white veil, she plopped her fanny on the porch steps and inhaled gulping lungfuls of fresh air.
A balmy breeze drifted off the Georgia coast. The blasted evening was damn near breathtaking. In any normal Christmas season, the weather would be obligingly cold, damp and dreary. Not this year. The wind drifted through her hair, as soothing as a caress, as soft as a whisper. The stars were just coming out, backdropped against a velvet sky and a dreamer’s crescent moon.
The night was so disgustingly wonderful that it was darn near impossible to concentrate on doing herself in, but Mary Ellen was furiously, stubbornly, bulldog-determined. How many times had she made embarrassing, mortifying, humiliating mistakes? Millions, that’s how many. The flaws in her character were unfixable. God knew, she’d tried. And though her self-esteem and self-respect were nonexistent at the moment, she’d never lacked for imagination. The trick was simply applying her fertile mind to effective suicide methods.
She stuck her chin in her palm. Minutes passed. As violently and tenaciously as she focused on morbid thoughts...self-destructing just wasn’t going to be that easy.
Gas was out. Car crashes were no good, either—there was too much risk of hurting someone else; she’d die before hurting anyone else—and if she screwed up and failed to take herself out, she could end up a vegetable on machines that someone had to take care of. That was out of the question. Hanging was even less palatable—somebody would be stuck finding a gruesome scene. The time-honored traditional method of slitting one’s wrists had that same unfortunate glitch and anyway she hated—really hated—the sight of blood.
She concentrated harder.
Poison struck her as a stupendous idea, but the thought of drinking drain cleaner was too repulsive to stomach. Swallowing enough pills to go to sleep was the easiest out, but there was an inherent problem with that method, too. She’d always been as healthy as a horse. The only medicine laying around was a little PMS stuff, and since that was a regular plague, there were only a few pills left in the bottle. Somehow she didn’t think taking six tablets was going to get the job done.
Drowning was a possibility, but awfully tough to pull off. She could swim like a fish. Starvation? Mary Ellen rolled her eyes to the sky. That’d never work. She’d been born with the appetite of a lumberjack. If there was food around, for absolute sure, she’d never have the self-control to turn it down.
She scowled. There had to be some way. A suicide method that she couldn’t bungle. A way that left no mess and looked like an accident—everyone in town knew she was distraught and distracted after that debacle tonight in the church, so a careless accident would be understandable. She didn’t want anyone blaming themselves. She’d never deliberately hurt anyone.
But damnation, there didn’t seem to be a method that fit all the criteria.
The more she thought about it, the more she came to the unavoidably nasty conclusion that—blast and hell!—she was just going to have to live.
That morose thought barely registered before an alternative took its place. She could run. If she was cowardly enough to consider suicide—which she certainly was—there was certainly no reason to sweat any scruples about running away from her problems. No one would miss her. Like removing a thorn or a bee stinger, it would be a relief to everyone if she were gone. She’d been a Class A problem from the day she was born, especially for those she loved. And living down this latest fiasco and humiliation would be far easier if she were removed from the picture.
The idea of running gained momentum like a tumbleweed gathering speed in a high wind. She could do it. Disappear. Become someone else. Go someplace where no one knew her or had any idea what a disastrous mess she’d made of her life.
Positively it had to be a place with no men—she’d made a fool of herself for absolutely the last time over that half of the human species—but that tiny detail presented more of a challenge than a problem. There had to be someplace in the continental United States that had no men.
She just had to find it.
One
Steve Rawlings pushed open the door to Samson’s and stomped the snow off his boots. The sudden warmth and light made his eyes sting. He yanked off his gloves and hat and automatically headed for the far booth in back. As he expected, the bit of a bar was packed. There was nothing to do on a bitter, blizzardy Monday night in Eagle Falls—except drink and indulge in a little male bonding over a football game.
The Lions were playing on the black-and-white over the bar. The picture was fuzzy—TV reception was typically nip and tuck in this isolated corner of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Also, typically, beer was flowing freely. A few heads turned when Steve walked by. None of the men nodded or asked him to pull up a chair. He’d probably have keeled over from shock if they did. His work automatically gave him the popularity of a piranha with an infectious disease. He was used to it. So far, the guys had given him a wide, wary berth, but there were no overt signs of hostility. Hell, he’d been some places where people greeted him with a shotgun.
Blowing on his cold hands, he slid into the worn pine booth. The windchill factor was a mean subzero. He’d been working outside for the better part of six hours. His boots were caked with ice, his hands too numb to function and his stomach was growling with hunger. Stiffly he unzipped his parka and pushed the coat off his shoulders. His head was bent when he heard the soft, feminine magnolia drawl. His eyes shot up.
There were women in Eagle Falls. Just not many. The total local population couldn’t be more than a few hundred—summer cottages and hunting cabins were all boarded up by this time of year, and even the timber industry shut down in the dead of winter. Permanent residents were few. The area attracted wilderness lovers, loners, and for sure some families, but mostly people who chose to march to a different drummer. There were no lone women, for the obvious reason that there was spit little to appeal to a woman alone.
And especially a young woman like her.
She stood out like a rose in a pen of bulls. There wasn’t a line on her face—she couldn’t be thirty—and wearing boots, she stood maybe five foot six. A cap of glossy hair framed her face, mink brown, worn short and smooth. Classic beauty was the wrong label. Cute was more like it. Real cute, honest cute. Her nose had a sassy tip, her chin had a dimple and a slash of dark brows arched over huge, startling blue eyes. Her mouth was small, naked of lipstick, as pink as a petal and shaped like a bow.
Steve rubbed the circulation back into his cold hands, studying the rest of her. Her clothes were straight L.L. Bean, a flapping flannel shirt worn over a black turtleneck sweater and jeans. The clothes looked new, the jeans still stiff, her boots unscuffed. Still, the denim fabric faithfully cupped the curve of a truly delectable fanny, and a man would have to be both blind and brain-dead not to notice how unforgettably she filled out that turtleneck.
He couldn’t imagine what she was doing here.
Samson, the owner of the bar, was getting up in years and was plagued with arthritis. Steve understood why the old codger had hired help, just not how she fit in. Conceivably she’d waited tables and tended bar before, but he doubted it. Frowning, he watched her awkwardly handling a heavy tray. Her clumsy juggling of the beer mugs suggested a total lack of experience at the job.
When her hands were full, Fred Claire took advantage and patted her behind with a wink for the other guys. Brick red color skated up her cheeks. A mug of beer started to tip and spill. The tray clattered to the table.
Steve scratched his chin. He had a sixth sense for trouble. Honing and fine-tuning that instinct was an automatic requirement with his work. In this case, he didn’t smell trouble. Nothing about her attire was deliberately suggestive, but if she thought she could escape the guys’ attention in this place, she had to have a dreamer’s fantasy life. Most of the men were middle-aged, a fair slug of them married—hardly Lothario types, but hell, she was a testosterone-arousing package of new, young, female and good-looking. The boys giving her a rush was as predictable as conflict in the Middle East.
Rowdy laughter echoed from the crowded table by the door. Fred and his cronies had clearly been drinking for several hours now, and they were all making a teasing fuss over the spilled beer. Rafer claimed loudly that there was a wet spot in his lap that he’d sure appreciate her helping him with. The others snickered at his wit. The splotches of color on her cheeks darkened to the hue of a raw burn.
She was still flustered when she glanced up and spotted him. As soon as she escaped that table, she headed over and flipped open her order pad. “I’m sorry you had to wait. What would you like?”
“Coffee. And a couple of steaks if Samson’s still got any in back. Rare.”
She scribbled the order with her head tucked down, paying no attention to him until she suddenly glanced up. “A couple of steaks?” she echoed.
“A couple. As in two,” he affirmed.
She looked at him then. With him sitting down, she had no way of knowing he was six-three, but her gaze flickered over his rangy frame and broad shoulders. She wasn’t the first woman to check him over. It wasn’t Steve’s fault he was a hard man to ignore—he had no vote in his genetic inheritance—but his height and linebacker build made it tricky to hide in a crowd. His jet black hair, blue eyes and ruddy, clear skin added up to striking looks that had an embarrassing habit of attracting female attention. Most women took a second look.
Not her. After that quick shot at his face and shoulder span, her eyes dropped. Fast. She promptly wrote down “two” and underlined it. “I can see it’ll be an uphill job filling you up. I’ll nuke a couple of potatoes. And I think there’s still a piece of apple pie in back—”
“That’d be great.”
“You want your coffee black or with cream?”
“Black’ll do.”
“Okay. I’ll be back as quick as I can.”
She spun around, not once looking at him again—but he’d had more than enough time to do a prowling close-up of her. Once the flush climbed down from her cheeks, her skin was as pale as ivory. Her voice was a velvet Southern drawl, soft, feminine and as vulnerable as everything else about her. The tag on her shirt read “Mary Ellen.” If Mary Ellen was looking for men, she’d positively picked the right place. Winters were long and lonesome in this neck of the woods, and she couldn’t find a higher male-to-female ratio outside of Alaska. Still, the image of man hungry didn’t work at all. Her posture was as stiff as a poker, her expression a mirror of nerves and wariness, and those incredible eyes of hers were as skittish as a newborn colt’s.
He watched her take another order—standing as she had at his booth, careful to keep from pinching and patting distance, not looking any of the boys in the eye—and then she disappeared into the back. A masculine bellow echoed through the room when the Lions fumbled the ball. Samson shot out from the kitchen, his white hair standing in spikes, waving a spatula, to armchair coach with the rest of them.
Steve rolled his shoulders, mentally blocking out the football game and the noise and his curiosity about the waitress, too. She wasn’t his problem. Heaven knew, he had problems of his own. The smoky warmth of the bar was slowly unthawing his frozen bones, and weariness was starting to hit him in waves. If his stomach hadn’t been pit-empty, he’d have driven straight to his trailer and six straight hours in bed. His body was used to being pushed, and this snow squall was no worse than a hundred he’d seen growing up on a Wyoming ranch, but the cold and exhaustion combined had been killers today. Weariness was dogging him as relentlessly as a shadow.
He didn’t know his eyes had closed, yet they must have, because the aroma of fresh coffee suddenly startled him. The steaming mug was sitting in front of him, hotter than the devil’s breath. Mary Ellen had come and gone without his hearing her, but he could see her now, dodging around the room, serving fresh pitchers of foaming beer, ducking under the TV so she didn’t block the view. Someone called out, “Sweetheart? Darlin’, we desperately need you over here.” He saw her jaw clench and that cherry color shoot to her cheeks again.
If there was a woman less suited to working in a bar, he couldn’t imagine one.
Over the next hour, she came to his table three times. She never said a word, never looked at him, but she kept his coffee filled; she served his steaks blood-rare with potatoes and trimmings he’d never asked for, noticed when he’d leveled that, and came back with a fat slice of apple pie heaped with ice cream. She didn’t hover—hell, she didn’t even ask what he wanted—but she took better care of him than a mother hen.
Steve couldn’t help but notice that her quiet competence around him was a direct contrast to her behavior around the other men. He’d always had a gift with wild critters—animals instinctively trusted him. But women were a distinctly different species. The lady didn’t need any great perceptive skills to realize that the other men treated him like a pariah. For most women, that would be a steer-clear clue that he was a man to be avoided, and with his height and size, the last instinct he usually aroused in females was security. Yet she treated him as if she’d instantly labeled him “safe,” no one who was going to cause her trouble. Although that was certainly true, it made her behavior around the other guys downright bewildering.
He wolfed down a bite of pie, watching Fred Claire try to cop another feel. A bowl of peanuts skittered when Mary Ellen jerked back.
Steve forced his attention on the pie. Samson’s specialty was apple pie; the apples were heavy on the nutmeg and cinnamon, not too much sugar, the crust as flaky as his own mother’s. Delicious. No reason at all for a lump to lodge in his throat. There was nothing going on at that far corner table by the door that he needed to think or worry about.
He wasn’t bosom buddies with Fred—or anyone else in Eagle Falls—but those particular people were regulars at the bar. He’d seen them often enough to have their measure. Fred’s brush cut was clipped shorter than a marine’s; he favored dressing in army fatigues, playing weekend war games, flashing a lot of weapons and coaxing anyone who’d listen into talking about his conspiracy theories. Maybe he wasn’t the average Joe, but basically he was harmless, a lot of big talk but no action.
A raucous snicker of masculine laughter echoed across the room.
Steve didn’t lift his head. She wasn’t really in trouble. There wasn’t anything tricky or difficult about handling Fred. Either a smile or a scolding would have put him—or any of the boys—in their place. By taking their teasing so seriously, it was the same as begging for more. Any woman who had an older brother or chose to work around men would surely know that. The boys had had too much beer. They were feeling their hormones. Nobody was going to ignore her if she kept rising to the bait.
He was on the last bite of pie when she whisked over and slipped the bill under his plate. She’d bitten her bottom lip a bruised red. The look around her eyes was pinched and drawn. Still, her magnolia drawl had a winsome shyness. “I’ll be back if y’all need change,” she said.
She’d already moved on before Steve had the chance to dig into his back pocket for his wallet. Change was no problem. He smacked the bills on the table, more than enough to include a walloping tip—which she’d earned. That easily, he told himself, she was completely off his mind. All his attention was focused on getting home. Already he could picture the double bed in his trailer, slipping between the sheets buck naked, burrowing into the warmth of a down comforter. Nothing was quieter than a night in the north woods, and the hot meal had pushed him over an edge. He was dizzy-tired, gut-tired, darn near mean-tired.
He could have sworn he wasn’t still watching her. Yet when he reached back for his parka, his eyes seemed to be peeled across the room, because he saw the exact moment when Fred hooked an arm around her waist.
She wasn’t carrying a tray that time, but she wasn’t expecting the pass, either. She landed with an awkward plop in Fred Claire’s lap. Fred said something—undoubtedly some kind of vulgar compliment, because it made the other men guffaw. She was trying to scramble off him. Fred was trying to keep her pinned.
Steve muttered an exasperated “Hell” under his breath and lurched to his feet. He didn’t need this. He had troubles of his own, and getting along with the good old boys in town was integral to resolving those troubles. But dammit, her face wasn’t flushed this time. It was stark white. Even from yards away, he could see her expression wasn’t just flustered or embarrassed, but downright, outright scared.
He stalked over, his step so quiet that no one even realized he was there—until he reached over and plucked the lady off Fred’s lap.
“Hey,” Fred objected.
It took a second to steady her. For that instant his hands were on her waist, he felt the supple warmth of her body and caught the vague drift of a subtle, feminine scent. His libido stirred, with a punch of sexual awareness that he’d never expected—but it didn’t last long.
“Hey!” Fred snarled again, nearly tipping the table when he jerked out of his chair.
Steve had no time to release an aggrieved masculine sigh. No question, when a man asked for trouble, he got it. Fred had been drinking for how many hours? His leathery face had a beer flush and the adrenaline of rage was flashing in his eyes. Steve grasped him by the shirt collar, quick. “I’m going to worry about you driving home after all that drinking,” he said calmly. “Wouldn’t you say that a good friend would help you sober up?”
Chairs scraped across the plank floor. As if a bomb had dropped, there was suddenly no sound in the room except for the blare of the Lion’s announcer on the boob tube. No one attempted to get in the way as Steve propelled Fred toward the door. There was no reason for anyone to object. It was the best entertainment anyone had enjoyed that night—short of watching one small woman get picked on.
The wind had finally died, but the air was colder than a witch’s heart when Steve yanked open the door. The icy air slammed straight into his lungs. It was dark out, but the fresh foot of snow had the sharp, bright gleam of sequins. He released Fred’s collar, bent down, scooped up a handful of snow and washed Fred’s face with it. His intuition was correct. The method helped Fred sober up right quick. The other man threw a punch. He got his face washed a second time for that asinine move.
“Where I come from, a man doesn’t pick on someone smaller than him. Only bullies do that, and I never met a bully yet who wasn’t a coward. Now, you got that message, or you want to discuss it a little while longer?”
Apparently Fred was in the mood for an in-depth discussion, although the subject of bullies never came up again. He let loose a string of four-letter words, including extensive commentary about Steve’s mother, her preference for combat boots and the shaky sexual preferences of his father. He didn’t throw another punch, though.
“Look, you’re drunk,” Steve said quietly. “Damn stupid to fight when you’re drunk. When you sober up, if you’re still looking for a fight, you come pick on me. I’ll take you on, if that’s what you really want. Just leave the lady alone, you hear me?”
Fred seemed to feel that comment required another wordy dissertation on his character, values and manhood—or lack thereof. It took an enormous amount of wind and hot air before he ran out of insults. Steve listened patiently the whole time. The Japanese had always understood that once a man lost face, he became an enemy. No man forgot being humiliated. Steve let him get the last word in for the same reason he hadn’t leveled the little hothead in front of his cronies inside. He wasn’t looking to make an enemy out of Fred Claire—or anyone else in Eagle Falls. He just wanted Ms. Blue Eyes left alone.
Once Fred’s windup insults ran down, Steve waited, studying his face. The begging-to-fight fire was dying in his eyes, the adrenaline settling back down. Fred was just plain cold, shivering violently in his shirtsleeves, snow dripping from his face and down his neck. A few minutes in subzero temperatures had a way of equalizing everything, even challenged male egos and bad tempers. Fred was no longer having fun.
Steve took one last look at his face. And walked away.
* * *
Men. Since the only thing Mary Ellen wanted to avoid was that particular half of the human species, it seemed the height of irony that she’d landed in a nest of the vipers. Of course, her specialty was screwing up. She never made small mistakes. Her forte had always been the big, classic, mortifyingly embarrassing-type boners.
She stuffed her hair under a stocking cap and grabbed her ski poles. Inhaling a lungful of crisp clean air, she reassured herself that moving here had been the best thing that ever happened to her. True, she’d misjudged the population of men. Equally true, she’d failed to consider the teensy problem of money. In her wildest nightmare she’d never anticipated having to work in a bar, but there’d simply been no other job around.
Still, her shift at Samson’s didn’t start until four in the afternoon. Her day was free until then. All her day hours were free.
She pushed off, her cross-country skis forging a fresh track in the new snow. Wonders surrounded her. Raised in the South, she’d never dreamed of snow like this. The rolling pine woods were deep, peaceful, quiet. Where sunlight shot down, the new snow laid on the emerald branches like a white satin glaze. A scarlet cardinal caught her eye. A soft-furred bunny scampered across her path.
She didn’t know where she was going. Didn’t care. She hadn’t misjudged how soul renewing this isolated area would be. There were endless acres of woods and wilderness to explore. Her rented cabin was an idyllic retreat for a woman planning to live as a hermit-monkess. There was no family around for her to disappoint. No town looking over her shoulder, waiting for her next I-told-you-so screwup. And although the Freds and the Georges and the Ben McCreries were giving her fits at the bar, during the day she didn’t have to even see a human being with a Y chromosome unless she wanted to. And there was positively no man appealing enough to tempt her aggravatingly impulsive heart.