Lovers And Other Strangers

“Thank you.” Kelly cleared her throat. “As I was saying, a black pickup pulled in.”

“A mean-looking black pickup,” Shannon reminded her helpfully.

“And a man got out of it.”

“Elvis?”

“Rhonda recognized him right away,” Kelly continued, ignoring the interruptions.

“If he was wearing one of those spangled jumpsuits, I wouldn’t think that would be very hard.”

“It was Reece Morgan.”

“In a spangled jumpsuit?”

“He was wearing jeans, a black T-shirt and black boots.”

“No sequins?” Shannon asked, disappointed.

“Rhonda said he looked mean.”

“She thought his truck looked mean, too.” Shannon reminded her.

“Rhonda does sometimes let her imagination run wild,” Kelly admitted. “But however he looked, we at least know he’s back in town.”

“Unless it’s really Elvis or Paul McCartney,” Shannon murmured wickedly.

Kelly shook her head. “Rhonda wouldn’t have been nearly as interested in one of them. She said it was definitely Reece Morgan. They were in the same class. She said she’d have known him anywhere.”

Shannon shook her head, her soft mouth twisting in a half smile. Until she moved to Serenity Falls, she’d never lived in the same place for more than two or three years. She couldn’t imagine what it felt like to have lived in the same town your whole life, to be able to recognize a classmate from twenty years before.

“I never really thought Reece would come back here,” Kelly said.

“His grandfather left the house to him. It seems reasonable that he’d want to go through everything himself.”

“From what I’ve heard of his relationship with the old man, it doesn’t seem likely that Reece would come back looking for mementos,” Kelly said, shaking her head. “Everyone says they were pretty much oil and water.”

“Is this the same ‘everyone’ who saw Paul McCartney eating oats at the health food store?” Shannon asked dryly.

“It was barley, and even Frank says they didn’t get along.” Frank was Kelly’s husband. “He was a couple of years younger than Reece, but he knew him pretty well since Reece and Frank’s older brother were friends. He says Reece’s grandfather was a flinty old bastard.”

“I can’t argue with that description,” Shannon said, thinking of the old man who’d lived in the house next to hers. Tall and spare with a military bearing that made no concessions to age, he’d offered her a brief, rather formal welcome when she first moved in. For the next four years, their contact had been limited to an exchange of hellos if their paths happened to cross at the mailboxes. In all that time she couldn’t ever remember seeing him smile or even look as if he knew how.

“If Reece has come back to stay, you’re going to be living next door to him,” Kelly said, giving her a speculative look.

Shannon had no trouble reading the expression in her friend’s eyes. She shook her head. “Forget it. I am not going to spy on the man just to satisfy your curiosity.”

“No one said anything about spying,” Kelly said, all injured innocence. “But living next door to him, you’re bound to get to know him.”

“I lived next door to his grandfather for four years and the only thing I know about him was that he put out the neatest piles of trash I’ve ever seen. I think they were color coordinated.”

“Reece doesn’t sound like the type to color coordinate his trash.”

“It’s been twenty years since anyone in this town has seen him. He could have changed.”

“From hellion to neatnik?” Kelly wrinkled her nose. “Doesn’t sound likely.”

“Anything’s possible.” Shannon dropped the index cards on top of the calendars, scooped them all into a haphazard stack and thrust them at Kelly. “Here. Make yourself useful. Feed these into your magic machine and give me back a schedule.”

“Aren’t you in the least bit curious about Reece?” Kelly asked as she took the papers. “I mean, what if he’s an escaped felon or something?”

“Right.” Shannon’s tone was dry as dust. “If I were an escaped felon, I’d make it a point to hide out in the one place where everyone knew me, in the one place the police would be sure to look for me, in the one place where I couldn’t possibly hide my presence. And I’d drive into town, in broad daylight, driving a mean-looking truck, wearing a spangled jumpsuit and buying barley at the natural food store.”

“You’re getting your celebrities mixed up,” Kelly pointed out, grinning. “Reece was driving the truck but he wasn’t wearing a jumpsuit and no one has seen him eating barley.”

“It’s only a matter of time.” Shannon waved one hand. “By the end of the day, the rumor mill will probably have him arriving in a spaceship complete with bug-eyed aliens for escort.”

Kelly laughed. “We haven’t had any alien sightings around here since Milt Farmer gave up corn liquor and found religion.”

“With Reece Morgan returning, can aliens be far behind?” Shannon’s smile lingered as she moved toward the front of the shop to wait on the customer who had just entered.

Despite herself, she couldn’t help but wonder about her new neighbor. After everything she’d heard about him, she was more than a little curious to actually meet the man in the flesh. The image in her mind was a cross between a young Marlon Brando and the Terminator. What a disappointment it was going to be if he turned out to be a plump, balding accountant.

Chapter 2

Groaning, Reece rolled over and opened his eyes. This must be what it felt like to spend a night on the rack, he thought, as he inventoried an assortment of aches and pains. The last time he could remember sleeping in a bed this uncomfortable, he’d been an unwilling guest in a South American prison.

Blinking the sleep from his eyes, he stared up at the water stain on the ceiling directly over the bed. If he squinted a little, it was a dead ringer for the outline of Australia. He contemplated it with some regret, thinking of wide beaches, cold beer and tall, tanned Aussie girls in very small bikinis. Now there was the perfect place for working through a midlife crisis. What on earth had made him decide to come back here—where he’d spent the most miserable years of his childhood?

It was all a matter of timing, he thought as he rolled out of bed and slowly straightened his aching spine. The news of his grandfather’s death had come at a time when he was reevaluating his life. A rainy night, a slick road, and he had regained consciousness in time to hear the paramedics weighing his odds of making it to the hospital alive. With the distance provided by shock, he’d pondered the irony of dying in a car wreck. He’d lived with the possibility of his own death for a long time, but he’d always assumed it would come in a more spectacular form—a bullet, a knife sliding between his ribs, a car bomb maybe. It seemed supremely ironic that death should come in the form of something as mundane as having a tire blow out.

He eventually limped out of the hospital minus a spleen and fifteen pounds, neither of which he’d needed to lose but he wasn’t complaining. As the doctor had told him several times, he should consider himself damned lucky to be alive at all. It wasn’t the first time he’d scraped past death by the skin of his teeth. In his line of work, it was something of an occupational hazard, and he’d lived with the possibility for so long that he didn’t even really think about it anymore. But there was something about nearly waking up dead because of a car wreck that had made him stop and take a long, hard look at his life. Maybe it was the mundanity of it—the reminder that his death could be just as meaningless as anyone else’s. Or maybe it was spending his fortieth birthday alone in the hospital—the sudden realization that half his life was over that made him question what he was going to do with the rest of it.

It wasn’t a real midlife crisis, Reece thought as he pulled clean clothes out of his duffel bag and walked, naked, to the bathroom down the hall. In a real midlife crisis, you did stupid things like quit the job you’d had for the past fifteen years, let go of the apartment where you’d lived for almost as long, and had an affair with a woman half your age. He met the eyes of his reflection in the dingy mirror over the bathroom sink.

Hell. Two out of three and the most boring two, at that. Maybe he should have kept the job and the apartment and just gone for the affair. His mouth twisted in a half smile as he pushed back the shower curtain. Midlife crisis or temporary insanity? Looking at the grudging trickle of tepid water that seemed to be the best the shower had to offer, Reece wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.

Shannon knelt on the lawn next to the flower bed and tugged halfheartedly at a scraggly patch of dichondra that was matted around the base of a rosebush. Generally, she gardened on the “survival of the fittest” philosophy. Any plant that couldn’t survive a little competition was welcome to move to someone else’s flower bed. She had neither the time nor the inclination to pamper delicate plants, and she tackled the weeds only when it began to look as if they were going to overwhelm the flowers.

She sat back on her heels and eyed the patch of ground she’d cleared. The weeds weren’t really all that bad but it was such a beautiful day that it seemed a shame to spend it indoors. In early November, summer’s heat was gone and the winter rains had not yet begun. The air was dry and warm and the nights were cool enough to be refreshing. Closing her eyes, she turned her face up to the sun, savoring the warmth of it against her skin. No matter how long she lived in southern California, she didn’t think she’d ever learn to take this kind of weather for granted.

“Good way to end up with skin cancer.”

The tart comment made Shannon jump and she stifled a curse when she realized who had interrupted the peaceful morning. Edith Hacklemeyer lived across the street. A short, thin woman on the far side of sixty, she was a retired English teacher who filled her days with gardening, quilting and offering unwanted advice to anyone who crossed her path. She was an unimaginative gardener, a mediocre quilter and a tireless busy-body. Since she was both a neighbor and a customer at the shop, Shannon felt obligated to remain on amicable terms with her.

“Beautiful day, isn’t it?” She chose to ignore the remark about skin cancer. One of Edith’s less appealing characteristics was her ability to find the bad in everything and everyone.

“We need rain,” Edith said, frowning at the crystal-clear sky.