“Call an exterminator,” Tanya said.

Maddie had called an exterminator and he couldn’t get to her house for a month.

“Be careful who you call,” Lisa warned. “Car penters and exterminators work on Miller time around here and they have a habit of just up and leaving at three o’clock.”

“I take it three o’clock is Miller time.”

“Pretty much.” Lisa’s mother-in-law called her name and she grimaced. “Excuse me.”

“Better her than me,” Delaney uttered as Lisa walked away.

“I could give you the number of someone who might actually arrive when he says he will.” Mick popped the top to his Red Bull. “And stay until the job is finished.”

“Have your husband or boyfriend take care of your mice problem,” Tanya suggested.

She looked at Tanya and suddenly didn’t get a nice neighborly vibe. The energy had changed since Mick had walked onto the deck. She wasn’t sure, but she guessed that Tanya wasn’t going to be her new B.F.F. “Don’t have a boyfriend and I’ve never been married.”

“Never?” Tanya raised a brow as if Maddie were a freak, and Maddie would have laughed if it wasn’t so ridiculous.

“Hard to believe, isn’t it?” she said. Tanya need not worry. The very last man on the planet she would ever get involved with was Mick Hennessy. Despite his nice abs and killer happy trail. “I’m such a great catch.”

Mick chuckled and took a drink of his Red Bull. Through the darkening shadows of nightfall, she could just see the laugh lines creasing the corners of his blue eyes as he looked at her over the silver can.

She smiled back and decided it was past time to change the subject. “Did you have to toss Darla out of Mort’s on her bare behind?”

He lowered the can and sucked moisture from his bottom lip. “Nah. She behaved.”

“Are women still tossing their panties?” Delaney asked.

“Not as much. Thank God.” Mick shook his head and grinned, a flash of white against the dark. “Believe me, tossing drunk, half-naked women from my bar isn’t as fun as it sounds.”

Maddie laughed. Never in a million years would she have thought she’d find Mick Hennessy so utterly likable. “How often does that happen?” Then again, he was his father’s son.

Mick shrugged. “Mort’s used to be a really wild place before I took over, and some people are having a hard time adjusting.”

“They’ve never adjusted to Jackson’s Texaco taking over for Grover’s Gas and Go, and that was about six years ago.” Delaney drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “My feet are killing me.”

“Fire in the hole!” Louie yelled seconds before sending up another barrage. Maddie spun around and her gaze flew to the rockets soaring straight up.

Behind her, Mick’s deep laughter was almost drowned out by the rockets’ pop-pop-pops. When she turned back, he’d moved to help Delaney find a chair. Tanya trailed after them and Maddie wasn’t sorry to see her go. The woman had gone from perfectly pleasant to bitchy over a man, something Maddie had never understood. There were other available men on the planet, why get all uptight over one? Especially if that one had a reputation for never getting involved. For loving and leaving. Not that Maddie ever held that against anyone. She didn’t understand women who got so attached so easily. After a few dates or good sex, they were in love. How did that happen? How was that even possible?

Sofie Allegrezza and her friends moved to the railing beside Maddie for a better view of her father’s fireworks show. Maddie set her glass on the railing and watched Louie load up the three big mortar tubes. She’d never needed a man in order to feel good about herself or to make her life complete. Not like her mother.

“Fire in the hole.” This time there was an audible whoosh seconds before the three rounds shot from tubes and exploded with three loud booms. Startled, Maddie jumped back and collided with something solid. A pair of big hands grabbed her arms as green, gold, and red bursts of fire rained down toward the lake. “Sorry.” She turned her head and looked up into the shadows resting on Mick’s face.

“Not a problem.” Instead of pushing her away, he held her right where she’d landed. “Tell me something.”

“What?”

He lowered his face and spoke just above her ear. “If you’re a great catch, why haven’t you been caught?”

His warm breath touched the side of her head and slipped down her neck. “Probably for the same reason you haven’t.”

“Which is?”

“You don’t want to be caught.”

“Honey, all women want to be caught.” His hands slid to her elbows, then up again, bunching her sweatshirt. “All women want a white wedding, picket fence, and a baby maker.”

“Have you met all women?”

She thought she felt him smile. “I’ve met my share.”

“So I hear.”

“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear.”

“And you shouldn’t believe all women want you for their own personal baby maker.”

“You don’t want me for your own personal baby maker?”

“Shocking, isn’t it?”

He laughed. A low rumble against the side of her head. “You smell good.” Against her back, she felt him draw in a deep breath.

“German chocolate cake.”

“What?”

“I smell like chocolate cake body scrub.”

“I haven’t had chocolate cake in a long time.” She’d been mistaken about his handshake being like the best sex she’d had in years. This, his soft breath in her hair and his hands on her arms, was practically orgasmic. Which she figured made her particularly pathetic. “You’re making me hungry,” he said next to her ear.

“For cake?”

His hands slid to her shoulders, then back down to her elbows. “For starters.”

“Uncle Mick,” Travis called out as he stood. “When are the town fireworks going to start?”

Mick looked up. His hands tightened a fraction,

then dropped to his sides. “Any minute,” he answered and took a step back. As if on cue, several enormous booms shook the ground and the night sky lit up with huge bursts of color. Sofie Allegrezza pushed play on her small sound system and Jimi Hendrix’s sonic guitar wailed “The Star Spangled Banner” into the night. Forest critters scrambled for cover as around the lake fireworks exploded from the beaches, competing with the town’s pyrotechnic eruptions.

Welcome to Truly. The original shock and awe.


“Did you have fun, Travis?”

A huge yawn came from the other side of the dark truck. “Yeah. Maybe next year I can blow off bigger fireworks.”

“Maybe, if you stay out of trouble.”

“Mom said if I stay out of trouble, I can get a puppy.”

Mick turned the Ram into Meg’s driveway and pulled to a stop next to her Ford Taurus. A dog was a good idea. A boy needed a dog. “What kind of puppy?”

“I like black ones with white spots.”

Lights burned from within the house and a single bulb lit the porch. Together they climbed out of the truck and walked up the front steps. It was close to eleven-thirty and Travis’s feet were dragging. “How long do you have to be good?”

“For one month.”

The kid couldn’t stay out of trouble with his mother for one week. “Well, just watch your mouth and you might make it.” He shoved his keys into his pants pocket and opened the door for his nephew.

Meg sat on the couch in her white nightgown and pink fuzzy robe. Tears shone in her green eyes as she looked up from something she held in her hand. A forced smile curved her lips and dread settled on Mick’s shoulders. It was going to be one of those nights.

“Did you see the fireworks, Mom?” If Travis noticed, he didn’t seem bothered.

“No, honey, I didn’t go outside. But I heard them.” She stood and Travis wrapped his arms around her waist. “They were huge!”

“Did you behave yourself?” She placed her hand on her son’s head and looked over at Mick.

“Yes,” Travis answered, and Mick confirmed it with a nod.

“That’s my good boy.”

Travis looked up. “Pete said maybe I could spend the night and his mom said, ‘Some other time.’”

“We’ll see.” Like their mother, Meg was a beautiful woman, with smooth white skin and long black hair. And as with their mother, her moods were unpredictable as hell. “Go get your pajamas on and get in bed. I’ll be in to kiss you good night in a minute.”

“Okay,” Travis said through a yawn. “Good night, Uncle Mick.”

“Night, buddy.” An almost overwhelming urge to turn away pulled at Mick and he actually took a step back. Away from what he knew was to come and toward the cool night air.

Meg watched her son leave the room, then she held out her hand and opened her palm. “I found Mom’s wedding ring.”

“Meg.”

“She took it off and left it on her nightstand before she went to the bar that night. She never took it off.”

“I thought you weren’t going to go through her things anymore.”

“I wasn’t.” She closed her hand around the ring and bit her thumbnail. “It was packed away with Grandmother Loraine’s jewelry, and I found it when I was looking for her four leaf clover necklace. The one she used to wear all the time because it brought her luck. I wanted to wear it to work tomorrow.”

God, he hated when his sister got like this. He was five years younger than Meg, but he’d always felt like the older brother.

Her big green eyes looked across at him and her hand fell to her side. “Was Daddy really going to leave us?”

Hell, Mick didn’t know. No one knew but Loch, and he was long dead. Dead and gone and in the past. Why couldn’t Meg leave it alone?

Maybe because she’d just turned ten a few months before the night their mother had loaded a snub-nosed .38 and emptied five chambers into Mick’s father and a young waitress by the name of Alice Jones. Meg remembered a hell of a lot more about that night twenty-nine years ago when their mother had killed more than Loch and his latest lover. More about the night their mother had put the short barrel into her own mouth, pulled the trigger, and killed more than herself too. She’d blown apart the lives of her two children, and Meg had never really recovered.