She climbed the stairs to the church doors with the glare from his headlights lighting her way. When she reached the top, she slipped the key in the lock and let herself inside. The church enfolded her. Dark, empty, lonely.


She spent the next day on the drink cart without getting fired, something she regarded as a major accomplishment, since she hadn’t been able to resist reminding a few of the golfers to dump their freaking beverage cans in the recycling containers instead of the trash bins. Bruce Garvin, the father of Birdie’s friend Kayla, was particularly hostile, and Meg suspected she had Spencer Skipjack’s interest in her to thank for her continued employment. She was also deeply grateful that news of her fake declaration of love for Ted didn’t seem to have spread. Apparently last night’s witnesses had decided to keep quiet, a miracle in a small town.

She greeted Birdie’s daughter, Haley, when she went into the snack shop to get fresh ice and replenish the beverages in the cart. Haley had either taken in the seams on her employee’s polo shirt or traded with someone smaller because the outline of her breasts was on full display. “Mr. Collins is playing today,” she said, “and he’s big on Gatorade, so make sure you have plenty.”

“Thanks for the tip.” Meg pointed toward the candy bar display. “Mind if I take some of these? I’ll toss them on top of the ice and see if they sell.”

“Good idea. And if you run into Ted, would you tell him I need to talk to him?”

Meg sincerely hoped she didn’t run into him.

“He’s turned off his cell,” Haley said, “and I’m supposed to do his grocery shopping today.”

“You do his grocery shopping?”

“I run errands for him. Mail packages. Do things he doesn’t have time for himself.” She lifted some hot dogs out of the steamer. “I think I told you I’m his personal assistant.”

“That’s right. You did.” Meg concealed her amusement. She’d grown up around personal assistants, and they did a lot more than run errands.

When she got home that evening, she opened the windows, glad the need for secrecy was gone, then took a quick swim in the creek. Afterward, she sat cross-legged on the floor and examined some unclaimed costume jewelry she’d gotten permission to take from the club’s lost-and-found box. She liked working with jewelry, and the glimmer of an idea had been poking at her for the last few days. She retrieved a pair of ancient long-nosed pliers she’d found in a kitchen drawer and began taking apart an inexpensive charm bracelet.

A car pulled up outside, and a few moments later, Ted wandered in looking sloppy and gorgeous in navy slacks and a wrinkled gray sport shirt.

“Ever hear of knocking?” she said.

“Ever hear of trespassing?”

His open shirt collar revealed the suntanned hollow at the base of his throat. She stared at it for a moment too long, then jabbed at the jump ring attached to the bracelet’s clasp. “I got a text message from Lucy today.”

“I don’t care.” He moved deeper into the room, bringing with him the nauseating scent of undiluted goodness.

“She still won’t tell me what she’s doing or exactly where she is.” The pliers slipped. She winced as she pinched her finger. “All she’ll say is that no terrorists have captured her and I shouldn’t worry.”

“Repeat. Don’t care.”

She sucked her finger. “Yes, you do, although not in the way most abandoned bridegrooms would care. Your pride’s injured, but your heart doesn’t even seem bruised, let alone broken.”

“You don’t know anything about my heart.”

The need to be disagreeable wouldn’t let go, and as she once again dragged her eyes away from that odious open shirt collar, she recalled a tidbit she’d picked up from Haley. “Don’t you think it’s a little embarrassing for a man your age to still live with his parents?”

“I don’t live with my parents.”

“Close enough. You have a house on the same property.”

“It’s a big property, and they like having me nearby.”

Unlike her own parents, who’d booted her out the door. “How sweet,” she said. “Does Yummy Mummy tuck you in at night?”

“Not unless I ask her to. And you’re not exactly in a position to make Yummy Mummy cracks.”

“True. But I don’t live with mine.” She didn’t like him looming over her, so she uncoiled from the floor and wandered toward her only piece of living room furniture, the ugly brown upholstered chair Ted had left behind. “What do you want?”

“Nothing. Just relaxing.” He meandered over to a window and ran his thumb along one side of the frame.

She perched on the chair arm. “You have a tough life for sure. Do you actually work? I mean aside from your so-called mayor’s job.”

Her question seemed to amuse him. “Sure I work. I have a desk and a pencil sharpener and everything.”

“Where?”

“Secret location.”

“All the better to keep the women away?”

“To keep everybody away.”

She thought that over. “I know you invented some kind of whiz-bang software system that made you a gazillion dollars, but I haven’t heard much talk about it. What kind of job do you have?”

“A lucrative job.” He gave a quick, apologetic tilt of his head. “Sorry. Foreign word you wouldn’t understand.”

“That’s just mean.”

He smiled and gazed up at the ceiling fan. “I can’t believe how hot it is in here, and it’s only the first of July. Hard to imagine how much worse it’ll get.” He shook his head, his expression as guileless as a saint’s. “I was going to put in air-conditioning for Lucy, but I’m glad now that I didn’t. Adding all those fluorocarbons to the atmosphere would have kept you awake at night. Do you have any beer?”

She glowered at him. “I can barely afford milk for cereal.”

“You’re living here rent free,” he pointed out. “The least you could do is keep beer in the refrigerator for company.”

“You’re not company. You’re an infestation. What do you want?”

“This is my place, remember? I don’t have to want anything.” He pointed the toe of a scuffed, but very expensive, loafer toward the jewelry laid out on the floor. “What’s all this?”

“Some costume jewelry.” She knelt down and began to gather it up.

“I hope you didn’t pay real money for it. Eye of the beholder, I guess.”

She gazed up at him. “Does this place have a postal address?”

“Sure it has an address. Why do you want to know?”

“I want to know where I live, that’s all.” She also needed some things sent to her that were packed away in her closet back home. She found a scrap of paper and wrote down the address he gave her. She nodded toward the front of the church. “As long as you’re here, will you turn on the hot water? I’m getting tired of cold showers.”

“Tell me about it.”

She smiled. “You can’t still be suffering from the effects of Lucy’s three-month sexual moratorium?”

“Damn, but you women sure do like to talk.”

“I told her it was stupid.” She wished she were evil enough to pass on the news that Lucy had already taken a lover.

“We finally agree on something,” he said.

“Still . . .” She returned to putting the jewelry away. “Everybody knows you can have any brainless woman in Wynette. I don’t exactly see what your problem is finding sexual companionship.”

He looked at her as though she’d just joined the Idiots Club.

“Right,” she said. “This is Wynette, and you’re Ted Beaudine. If you do one of them, you’d have to do them all.”

He grinned.

She’d intended to annoy, not to amuse, and she took another swipe. “Too bad I was wrong about you and Torie. A clandestine affair with a married woman would answer your problem. Almost as good as being married to Lucy.”

“What do you mean by that?”

She extended her legs and leaned back on her hands. “No messy emotional crap. You know. Like real love and genuine passion.”

He stared at her a moment, those tiger eyes inscrutable. “You think Lucy and I didn’t have passion?”

“Not to be insulting—okay, maybe a little insulting—but I sincerely doubt you have a passionate bone in your body.”

An ordinary mortal would have been offended, but not St. Theodore. He merely looked thoughtful. “Let me get this straight. A screwup like you is analyzing me?”

“Fresh viewpoint.”

He nodded. Contemplated. And then he did a very un–Ted Beaudine–like thing. He dropped his lids and gave her a wicked eye-rake. Starting at the top of her head and sliding down her body, lingering here and there along the way. Her mouth. Her breasts. The apex of her thighs. Leaving hot little eddies of desire behind.

The absolute horror of not being immune to him hurled her into action, and she jumped up from the floor. “Waste of effort, Mr. B. Unless, of course, you’re paying.”

“Paying?”

“You know. A big wad of twenties on the dresser afterward. Oops . . . I don’t have a dresser. Oh, well, there goes that idea.”

She’d finally managed to annoy him. He stalked into the back room to either turn on the hot water or blow the place up. She sincerely hoped it was the former. Not long after, she heard the back door close, and a few moments later, his car pulling away. She was strangely disappointed.


The foursome teed off the next day. Ted and Torie playing Kenny and Spence.

“I had to go to Austin yesterday,” Spence told Meg, “and every time I saw a beautiful woman, I thought about you.”

“Jeez, why?”

Ted gave her a surreptitious poke. Spence threw back his head and laughed. “You’re something, Miz Meg. You know who you remind me of?”

“I’m hoping a young Julia Roberts.”

“You remind me of me, that’s who.” He resettled his straw Panama on his head. “I had a lot of challenges in my life, but I always faced them down.”

Ted whapped her on the back. “That’s our Meg, all right.”

By the time they reached the third green, she was wilting from the heat but still happy to be outside. She forced herself to concentrate on being the perfect caddy, along with shooting Ted adoring glances every time Spence got too cozy.

“Would you stop that!” Ted said, when they were out of earshot.

“What do you care?”

“It’s unnerving, that’s all,” he complained. “Like being trapped in an alternate reality.”

“You should be used to adoring glances.”

“Not from you.”

It was soon evident, even to Meg, that Torie was a highly competitive athlete, but on the back nine, she suddenly began missing putts. Ted never lost his easy charm, not until he was alone with Meg when he confirmed her suspicions that Torie was doing it deliberately. “That was barely a three-foot putt,” he groused, “and Torie lips the cup. Spence could be around for weeks. Anybody who thinks I’m going to let him win every match is crazy.”

“Which is obviously why Torie missed that putt.” At least someone other than herself understood Spence’s ego. She glanced around for the most recent head cover she seemed to have misplaced. “Concentrate on the big picture, Mr. Mayor. If you’re determined to destroy the local environment with this project, you need to be more like Torie and work harder to make Spence happy.”

He ignored her jab. “Look who’s talking about making Spence happy. It wouldn’t hurt you to be nicer to him. I swear I’m going to stage a public fight with you so he knows exactly how unrequited your passion for me is.”

He put a long wedge shot on the green, tossed the club at her, and stalked off.

Thanks to Torie, Spence and Kenny pulled off a one-hole victory. Afterward, Meg headed for the ladies’ locker room, which, technically, employees weren’t supposed to use, but since it was equipped with a vast array of personal-care products sadly missing from her own collection, she used it anyway. As she splashed her heat-flushed face with cold water, Torie joined her at the sink. Unlike Meg, the heat didn’t seem to have affected Torie, who merely pulled off her visor to refasten her ponytail, then looked around to make sure the locker room was empty. “So what’s really between you and Ted?”

“What do you mean? Haven’t you heard the rumors about how I drove Lucy away so I could have him for myself?”

“I’m a lot brighter than I look. And you’re not a woman who’d fall for a guy who basically hates your guts.”

“I don’t think he hates me as much as he did. Now it’s more your run-of-the-mill loathing.”

“Interesting.” Torie shook out her long hair, then gathered it together again.

Meg grabbed a washcloth from the pile by the sink and ran it under the cold water. “You don’t seem to hate me, either. Why is that? Everybody else in town does.”