Bobbie was not wrong about that, any of it.

But I was too busy thanking God for the full-time job. Tim’s life insurance policy had been used up on my Mustang, Kate’s car and taking a whack off the mortgage because of the down payment I put on the house. It had also gone out the door with the move. I had his pension, which helped, but not much.

I’d put the money I made on selling Tim and my house into savings for the girls’ college. Tim’d had to pay off student loans forever and he wanted the girls to have their college paid for. We’d been saving but we didn’t have near enough for the two of them. I thought Tim would have wanted that, the house we’d bought together, fixed up together and lived in together as a family being sold and the money paying for the girls’ future. Using that money from our house was like him and me giving it to them and I liked that idea and figured Tim would too.

Even with a low mortgage and no car payments, I still had a teenager driving and insurance was a bitch. Utilities, groceries for three people and we were living in a small town but it was part-farmers, part-blue collar and part-affluent. The affluent part meant all the kids tried to keep up with the Joneses with designer gear, jeans, purses, shoes, the right makeup, the important accessories like MP3 players and cell phones. Hell, Keira’s cell phone bill, considering she texted seventeen thousand times a day, nearly broke the monthly bank even though I told her time and again not to do it.

Bobbie paid pretty well considering, and she had full benefits for full-time, which was more important. Her garden center was enormous, the biggest in three counties and everyone went there. She sold it all, lawn furniture, craft and hobby stuff, pet supplies, not just plants. But I worked the plants, I was good at it, always was and spring was coming. Even with the snow, it was getting close to gardening season and things, always steady, were definitely picking up for Bobbie.

I turned on my street, deep in my inspection of the roads which, I noted with some relief, had been mostly cleared. The spring snow was wet and sloshy, not icy, thank God. Kate would get home okay.

I took in a relieved breath and it caught in my throat when I saw the shiny, black, new model Ford pickup in Joe Callahan’s driveway.

“Shit,” I whispered on my exhale.

I drove passed it, turned into my drive and parked under the awning that came out from my two car garage. The previous owners had torn down the one car garage and put in a two car one with a double awning at the front. This worked since the garage door opener didn’t work and I didn’t have the money to replace it and I further didn’t enjoy cleaning snow off my car.

The previous owners had also built an extension all along the back of the house. This meant we had an extra bedroom with full master bath and an open plan study that ran off the living room/dining room area. Most of the other houses on the block had extensions too. And two car garages or the garages had added awnings. They also had built on back decks (our place did too, again along the back of the house) or above ground pools or playsets. You name it, it was there. It was a family neighborhood, established, middle-middle income folks or old-timers who’d been there for ages and stayed there because their mortgage was paid off. Families just starting out or couples who liked where they lived so, when they needed more room, they just built on. Yards were huge, there was plenty of room and anything they did, they did it house proud so it only upped the standard for the entire neighborhood.

The only house that had no add-on, except a back deck, was Joe Callahan’s. It was still a two bedroom crackerbox, kitchen, dining room/living room and two bedrooms with a full bath.

I’d been lucky to find a place on that street.

Lucky, except for Joe Callahan.

I went into the house, dumped my purse and headed back out.

I needed to shovel. Part of living in that neighborhood was taking care of it. You shoveled. Joe Callahan’s neighbors on his other side, Jeremy and Melinda, cleared Joe’s front sidewalk part of the time, the other part I did it. It wouldn’t do for anyone to let down the ‘hood and since Joe wasn’t there, someone had to do it.

No way I’d do it that day, though. No way in hell. He could shovel his own damned walk.

I went out to the garage and grabbed my leather work gloves and the snow shovel.

You could say I pretty much missed Tim a lot. When I was in a fight with Keira which was too often and Tim used to be able to handle her better than me, definitely Daddy’s little girl then again they both were. When Kate would get wound up by an assignment, an assignment that was something she could do no sweat, but she wanted to do it perfectly, better than any kid in the history of kids could do and Tim could settle her down too. When I was in bed at night, alone and wanting more than my vibrator to take care of business, wanting Tim’s hands, his mouth, his cock and, maybe more than all those, the sweet nothings he would whisper in my ear.

And when I had to shovel the freaking snow.

I started at the front stoop and made my way down the walk that led to the drive, the snow heavy and wet but at least it was easily removed. I was shoveling a line down our drive, which would take for-freaking-ever to clear, thinking of the price of Bobbie’s snow blowers and how much my discount would be and if she’d put them on an end of season sale when Colt’s GMC pulled into his drive.

Feb Owens and Alec Colton were pretty famous. I’d known them before I moved in and I’d known what happened in that town before I’d moved there. It was sick what happened to them, that serial killer obsessing on Feb and Colt and killing people that Feb knew. Everyone knew about it, it made national news and she was so gorgeous, and Alec Colton so hot, that made the story bigger news.

But I found shortly after moving in that they were cool. They were also happy. It was like that whole deal didn’t touch them. At the time I moved in, she was at the end stages of pregnant and they’d been high school sweethearts, separated by something I didn’t know and finally back together.

I’d married my high school sweetheart so I got that, totally, their happiness. Then again, Tim got me pregnant at seventeen so I kind of didn’t have a choice.

Still, I wouldn’t have chosen anything else. Not then, not ten years later, not until someone shot him and even then I would have still chosen Tim. I would have just chosen Tim having a less dangerous job. And I definitely would have chosen not to get served what I got served after.

I shoveled and watched Colt swing down from his truck.

Then I stopped shoveling when he turned my way and called, “Hey Cal.”

My body turned to stone.

“Yo,” a deep voice said from right behind me.

Stiffly, I turned and stared at Joe Callahan standing right there, this close behind me. I hadn’t heard his approach. He was wearing jeans, a black thermal and his black leather jacket. In the daylight, as gray as that daylight was, he was different. The sinister was gone. The only thing left was the rugged and interesting.

“Hey Violet,” Colt called and I stiffly turned back.

“Hey Colt,” I called to him and watched February, carrying their little boy, Jack, coming out of their house and her head was turned to see who Colt was talking to.

“Wow!” she yelled. “Hey Cal!”

“Feb,” Joe Callahan’s voice rumbled.

“You in town awhile?” Colt asked, taking Jack from Feb and expertly planting the baby in the crook of his arm while his other arm slid along Feb’s shoulders.

“Nope, leave tomorrow,” Joe Callahan answered.

“Got time for a beer at J&J’s?” Colt asked.

“Yep,” Joe Callahan answered.

“Vi? What about you?” Feb asked me.

I’d been to Feb’s bar, J&J’s Saloon, a half a dozen times. Her family ran it which meant I met them too. It was a nice place. It had been around awhile so it was worn in, the kind of joint you liked to stay and drink a few. Everyone in town hung there and Feb’s family made you feel welcome.

I liked having a drink there, shooting the shit with Feb, who was nice, and her brother Morrie, sister-in-law Dee, and Mom and Dad, Jackie and Jack, who were all just as nice as her.

Still, there was no way I was going when Joe Callahan was going.

“Thanks, I have something on,” I answered.

“Another time,” Feb called, I nodded, they both lifted a hand in farewell and headed toward their house.

“Later, Cal,” Colt called.

“Yeah,” Joe Callahan called back.

I went back to shoveling, deciding I’d pretend he wasn’t there.

This effort failed when his big hand curled around the handle of the shovel.

I stayed bent to my task but tipped my head back to look at him.

“How you doin’, buddy?” his voice rumbled, it was a soft rumble and not pissed off or post-drama that involved a Hollywood movie star, it was a lot different and my stomach, for some strange reason, pitched.

“Can you let go of my shovel?” I asked.

His answer was to pull the shovel out of my hands.

My stomach pitched again, this time for a different reason, slightly afraid and I straightened and turned to him.

“Can I help you with something?” I asked.

“Your name’s Violet,” he told me.

“Yes.”

“Violet,” he repeated quietly.

“Yes,” I repeated too, not liking him saying my name quietly because I kinda did like his rumbly deep voice saying my name quietly.

He took a step into me and I stood my ground. He couldn’t exactly cause a scene in my driveway, not with Colt home across the street. Joe Callahan might be big, and he might even be bigger than Alec Colton, but I figured no one messed with Colt. It might get ugly but it’d be a fair fight.

Joe Callahan’s neck bent so he could look down at me and he started speaking as if we’d been having a long conversation, I’d been asleep the first part and woke up during the middle. “She makes six million dollars a movie, two movies a year, four times that in foreign endorsements for everything you can imagine, hair shit, ice cream, you name it, they pay her enough, she sells it.”

He was talking about Kenzie Elise.

I had absolutely no interest in this and started to tell him this fact. “Joe –”

He cut me off. “Anywhere she goes, people ask for her autograph, take photos of her, grovel and do shit you wouldn’t believe just to get her attention. Because of all that, she’s so far up her own ass it’s a wonder she can see. Problem is, she’s got a lot of company up there.”

“I don’t care about this,” I told him.

He continued talking like I didn’t even speak. “I don’t shit where I live normally. She played me, I had no fuckin’ idea she was what she was until I got played then I wanted no part in that.”

“I think I got that,” I reminded him of the fact I was there while he made that point to her.

“It happened once, once was enough. The sex was shit, buddy.”

“I got that too.” And that was an understatement, I definitely got that.

“She gets no for an answer never. It doesn’t happen to her. She gets what she wants when she wants it, always. She wanted me. She’d been playin’ games like that to get my attention for six months. It was affecting my work, which I was not thrilled about, but I could deal. That night, she invaded my home. Stole my keys, had one made, found out where I lived and came in uninvited, playin’ her games. Uncool.”

I had to admit, he wasn’t exactly wrong, this was uncool. I knew this. I knew this better than he could understand. I knew exactly how uncool this was.

That didn’t change the fact that he humiliated her to the point of making her scramble around on the floor in a teddy to pick up her stuff and walk into the cold night to gather her clothes from the snow. That kind of humiliation was extreme and uncalled for.

Before I had the chance to explain this to Joe Callahan I heard cars approaching and I looked up to see Kate’s little, white Ford Fiesta followed by a bright yellow pickup coming down the street.

Joe and I stepped off the drive into the snow of the yard as the two cars pulled into the drive. Kate and Keira got out of the Fiesta but I was staring at the strapping, tall boy-man who folded out of the pickup.

Keira skipped through the snow to me and she did this quickly.

“Hey,” she said and I tore my eyes from the strapping, tall boy-man to see my last born staring up at Joe Callahan looking like she was gazing at whoever was her current boy band heartthrob (and I didn’t know who that was, Keira went through crushes like she did clothes which was to say swiftly and at random).