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  I was smiling. “I’ll send the check and all the particulars,” I said, then took down her name and address and hung up. I called my publisher. I was going to buy the house in her name so no one in Cole Creek would know it was me.

  I knew I couldn’t leave town until after the twenty-seventh of April when I had to pay the blackmail-reading, so I occupied myself by reading about North Carolina. The realtor called me back and said that old Mr. Belcher would give me the house furnished for another dollar.

  That took me aback and I had to think about why he’d do that. “Doesn’t want to move all his junk out, does he?”

  “You got it,” the realtor said. “My advice is not to take the offer. There’s a hundred and fifty years of trash inside that house.”

  “Old newspapers? Crumbling books? Attic full of old trunks?”

  She sighed dramatically. “You’re one of those. Okay. You got a house full of trash. Tell you what, I’ll pay the dollar. My gift.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  The twenty-seventh was a Saturday, and I spent three hours answering the same questions at Mrs. Attila’s ladies’ luncheon (chicken salad) as I had everywhere else. My plan was to leave for Cole Creek early Monday morning. My furniture was to go into storage and I planned to take just a couple of suitcases of clothes, a couple of laptops, plus a gross of my favorite pens (I was terrified that Pilot would discontinue them). I’d already shipped my research books to the realtor to hold for me. And Pat’s father’s tools were on the floor of the backseat of my car.

  At the luncheon Mrs. Hun told me that Jackie Maxwell was getting married the next day. Smiling-—and trying to be gracious and amusing—I asked her to tell Jackie that I’d bought a house in Cole Creek, and was spending the summer there, where I’d be researching my next book, and if Jackie wanted the job, it was still open. I even said she could ride with me when I left on Monday morning.

  Mrs. Free Books smiled in a way that let me know I’d missed my chance, but she agreed to relay my message to Jackie.

  On Sunday afternoon I was shoving my socks into a duffel bag when there was a hard, fast knock on my door. The urgency of the sound made me hurry to answer it.

  What I saw when I opened the door startled me into speechlessness.

  Jackie Maxwell stood there in her wedding dress. She had on a veil over what looked to be an acre and a half of long dark hair. The last time I’d seen her her hair had been about ear length. Had it grown that fast? Some genetic thing? And the front of her dress was…well, she’d grown there, too.

  “Is the research job in Cole Creek still open?” she asked in a tone that dared me to ask even one question.

  I said yes, but it came out in a squeak.

  When she moved, the dress caught on something on the porch. Angrily, she snatched at the skirt and I heard cloth tearing. The sound made her give an evil little smile.

  Let me tell you that I never want to make a woman so angry that she smiles when she hears her own wedding dress rip. I’d rather—truthfully, I can’t think of anything on earth I wouldn’t rather do than be on the receiving end of anger like I saw in Ms. Maxwell’s eyes.

  Or was this after the ceremony and she was now Mrs. Somebody Else?

  Since I wanted to live, I asked no questions.

  “What time should I be here tomorrow?”

  “Eight A.M. too early for you?”

  She opened her mouth to answer but the dress caught again. This time she didn’t jerk it. This time her face twisted into a frightening little smirk, and she very, very, very slowly pulled on that dress. The ripping sound went on for seconds.

  I would have stepped back and shut the door but I was too scared.

  “I’ll be here,” she said, then turned and walked down the sidewalk toward the street. There was no car waiting for her, and since I lived miles from any church, I don’t know how she got to my house.

  At the street sidewalk, she turned left and kept walking. Not a person or child was in sight. No one had come out to see the woman in the wedding dress walk by. I figured they were as scared as I was.

  I watched her until she was out of sight, then I went inside and poured myself a double shot of bourbon.

  All I can say is that I was real glad I wasn’t the man on the receiving end of that anger.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Jackie

  I decided I was never going to tell anyone what had passed between Kirk and me just before the wedding ceremony. The organist was playing that march, the one that was my cue to start walking down the aisle, and Jennifer was on the other side of the door, pulling on the knob and hissing at me, but I wasn’t moving. I was sitting there with my wedding dress billowing out around me in a life-of-its-own heap (I’d punch it down, then, like bread dough gone wild, it would rise again) and listening to Kirk’s tearful story.

  The tears were his, not mine. I don’t know what he expected from me. Did he actually think I’d do as he asked and “forgive” him? Did he think I’d kiss away his manly tears, tell him I still loved him bunches and heaps, then walk down the aisle and marry him?

  Yeah, right. As his wife, I’d be legally responsible for half the debt he was telling me that he’d incurred.

  No, thanks. The fact that he’d lost all my savings, the tiny inheritance my father had left me, and that now all I owned were my clothes, my camera equipment, and my dad’s books, didn’t seem to bother him. Kirk held my hands in his and, sobbing, told me that he’d get it all back for me. He swore it. On his mother’s grave. On his deep love for me, he swore he’d pay me back.

  It’s an odd thing about love. When someone you love cries, your heart melts. But when someone you don’t love cries, you look at them and think, Why are you telling me this?

  And that’s how I felt at seeing Kirk cry: nothing. I felt nothing at all except rage at his presumption. And rage at how he’d finagled the local bank president (his cousin) into helping clean me out. “It was for you, Pumpkin,” he told me. “I did it all for you. For us.”

  Wonder when he’d been planning to tell me? If one coincidence after another hadn’t happened, I wouldn’t have found out about my empty bank account until after I was his wife. Then what could I have done?

  For that matter, what could I do even if I wasn’t married to him? Sue? Now that’s a good idea. Kirk’s father was a judge. Maybe I’d get my almost father-in-law on the bench in the case. Or one of his father’s golfing buddies.

  No, I knew that all I could do was cut my losses and get the hell away from him and his relatives as fast as possible. Yesterday, Jennifer’s mother had laughingly told me that Ford Newcombe had said the job was still open, that he was leaving on Monday for Cole Creek, and that I could ride with him. At the time, I’d just smiled and shook my head. While watching Kirk cry and beg me to forgive him, I decided to take the job.

  There was a backdoor to the little anteroom—the room where brides and bridesmaids are supposed to giggle in happy anticipation—and I walked out of it. Outside, I grabbed one of those tall, steel sprinklers out of the lawn and wedged it through the door handles to give myself a few moments before Kirk ran after me.

  By the time I reached Newcombe’s house (so ordinary and inexpensive that the townspeople said, “Is he trying to pretend he’s poor? That he’s just like us?”) I hated that big fat white dress. And I hated the hair extensions Ashley and Autumn had talked me into. And I especially hated the padded bra they’d put on me.

  When I got to Newcombe’s house, I could see that he was dying to ask me a thousand personal questions but I didn’t explain anything to him, nor did I plan to. I wanted to keep it on a business level between him and me. And I was glad he wasn’t handsome, because the way I was feeling about sexually attractive men, Lorena Bobbitt was my personal hero.

  After I left Newcombe’s I went back to the little rental house that I’d shared with my dad. Kirk’s father owned the house, which is how I met Kirk. As I stripped off that hated dress and pulled on jeans and a