From as far back as he could remember, the Shore View Diner had smelled the same. Like grease and eggs and tobacco. The diner was one of the last places in America where a person could have a cup of coffee and a Camel or Lucky Strike, depending on his or her poison. As a result, it was always filled with smokers. Mick had tried to talk Meg into working someplace where she wasn’t likely to get lung cancer from secondhand smoke, but she insisted that the tips were too good to work anyplace else.

It was around two in the afternoon and the diner was half empty when Mick entered. Meg stood behind the front counter, filling Lloyd Brunner’s cup of coffee and laughing at something he’d said. Her black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and she wore a bright pink blouse beneath a white apron. She looked up and waved at him.

“Hey, there. Are you hungry?” she asked.

“No.” He took a seat at the counter and pushed his Revos to the top of his head. “I was hoping you could get off early.”

“Why?” Her smile fell and she set the coffee carafe on the counter. “Has something happened? Is it Travis?”

“Travis is fine. I just wanted to talk to you about something.”

She looked into his eyes as if she could read his mind. “I’ll be right back,” she said and walked into the kitchen. When she returned, she had her purse.

Mick rose and followed her outside. As soon as the door to the diner swung shut behind them, she asked, “What is it?”

“There’s a woman in town. She’s a true crime writer.”

Meg squinted against the bright sun as they walked across the gravel lot to his truck. “What’s her name?”

“Madeline Dupree.”

Her jaw dropped. “Madeline Dupree? She wrote In Her Place, the story of Patrick Wayne Dobbs. The serial killer who killed women and then wore their clothes under his business suit. That book scared me so much I couldn’t sleep for a week.” Meg shook her head. “What is she doing in Truly?”

He slid his sunglasses down to cover his eyes. “Apparently, she’s going to write about what happened with Mom and Dad.”

Meg stopped. “What?”

“You heard me.”

“Why?”

“God, I don’t know.” He raised a hand, then dropped it to his side. “If she writes about serial killers, I don’t know what she finds so damn interesting about Mom and Dad.”

Meg folded her arms across the front of her apron and they continued to walk. “What does she know about what happened?”

“I don’t know, Meg.” They stopped by his truck and he leaned a hip into the front fender. “She knows Mom shot that waitress in the head.” His sister didn’t bat an eye. “Did you know that?”

Meg shrugged and bit her thumbnail. “Yeah. I heard the sheriff tell Grandma Loraine.”

He looked into his sister’s eyes and wondered what else she knew that he didn’t. He wondered if she knew that their mother hadn’t killed herself right away. He supposed it didn’t matter. She was taking the news better than he’d expected. “Are you going to be okay?”

She nodded. “Is there anything we can do to stop her?”

“I doubt it.”

She leaned back into the driver’s-side door and sighed. “Maybe you can go talk to her.”

“I did. She’s going to write it, and she doesn’t care what we have to say about it.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah.”

“Everyone is going to start talking about it again.”

“Yep.”

“She’ll say bad stuff about Mom.”

“Probably about all three of them. But what can she say? The only people who know what really happened that night are dead.”

Meg glanced away.

“Do you know something that happened that night?”

She dropped her hand. “Just that Mom had been pushed too far and she killed Dad and that waitress.”

He wasn’t so sure he believed her, but what difference did it make twenty-nine years later? Meg hadn’t been there. She’d been home with him when the sheriff had arrived at their house that night.

He looked up at the clear blue sky. “I’d forgotten that the waitress had a little girl.”

“Yeah, I can’t remember her name, though.” Meg returned her gaze to Mick. “Not that I care. Her mother was a whore.”

“That wasn’t the girl’s fault, Meg. She was left without a mother.”

“She was probably better off. Alice Jones was cheating with our father and didn’t care who knew. She flaunted their relationship in front of the whole town, so don’t expect me to feel sorry for some nameless, faceless orphan girl.”

Mick didn’t know if there’d been any flaunting, and if there had been, he figured their dad had to take the majority of the blame, since he’d been the married one.

“Are you going to be okay with this?”

“No, but what can I do about it?” She adjusted her purse on her shoulder. “I’ll survive, just like I did before.”

“I told her to stay away from you and Travis, so I don’t think she’ll be bothering you with questions.”

Meg raised a brow. “Is she going to be bothering you with questions?”

There was more than one way a woman could bother a man. And don’t come here and think you can tell me what to do. I really don’t give a damn if you like it or not. I’m going to write the book. She’d been mad and obstinate and sexy as hell. Her big brown eyes had gotten kind of squinted at the corners just before she’d slammed the door in his face. “No,” he answered. “She won’t be bothering me with questions.”

Meg waited until Mick’s truck pulled out of the parking lot before she let out a breath and raised her hands to the sides of her face. She pressed her fingers into her temples and closed her eyes against the pressure building in her head. Madeline Dupree was in town to write a book about her parents. There had to be something someone could do to stop her. A person shouldn’t be allowed to just…just ruin lives. There should be a law against snooping around and…digging into someone’s past.

Meg opened her eyes and stared down at her white Reeboks. It wouldn’t be long before everyone in town knew about it. Before they started talking and gossiping and looking at her as if she were liable to go off at any time. Even her brother sometimes looked at her as if she were crazy. Mick thought he was so good at forgetting the past, but there were some things even he’d never been able to forget. Tears clouded her vision and dropped on the gravel by the instep of her shoe. Mick also mistook emotion for mental illness. Not that she really blamed him. Growing up with their parents had been an emotional tug-of-war ending in their death.

A second truck pulled into the parking lot and Meg raised her gaze as Steve Castle opened the door of his Tacoma and got out. Steve was Mick’s buddy and manager of Hennessy’s. Meg didn’t know much about him, other than he’d flown helicopters in the army with Mick, and there’d been some sort of accident in which Steve had lost his right leg beneath the knee.

“Hey, there, Meg,” he called out, his deep voice booming across the lot as he moved toward her.

“Hey.” Meg hurriedly wiped beneath her eyes, then dropped her hands to her sides. Steve was a big guy and shaved his head completely bald. He was tall and broad-chested and so…so manly that Meg felt a little intimidated by his size.

“Having a rough day?”

She could feel her cheeks get hot as she looked up into his deep blue eyes. “Sorry. I know men don’t like to see women cry.”

“Tears don’t bother me. I’ve seen tough Marines cry like little girls.” He folded his arms across the dogs playing poker on the front of his T-shirt. “Now, what’s got you so upset, sweetheart?”

Meg usually didn’t share her feelings with people she didn’t know, but there was something about Steve. While his size intimidated her, he also made her feel safe at the same time. Or perhaps it was just because he’d called her “sweetheart,” but she opened her mouth and confided, “Mick was just here, and he told me that there’s a writer in town and she’s going to write about the night our mother killed our father.”

“Yeah. I heard about that.”

“Already? How did you find out?”

“The Finley boys were in Hennessy’s last night talking about it.”

She raised a hand and chewed on her thumbnail. “Then I think it’s safe to assume the whole town knows, and everybody is going to be talking about it and speculating.”

“Nothing to do about that.”

She dropped her hand to her side and shook her head. “I know.”

“But maybe you can talk to her.”

“Mick tried that. She’s going to write the book no matter what we think about it.” She looked down at her shoes. “Mick told her to stay away from me and Travis.”

“Why avoid her? Why don’t you tell her your side of things?”

She looked up into his eyes and the sunlight bouncing off his shiny head. “I don’t know if she’d care about my side.”

“Maybe, but you won’t know that unless you talk to the woman.” He unfolded his arms and rested one big hand on her shoulder. “If there is one thing I know, it’s that you have to confront something head-on. You can get through anything if you know what you’re facing.”

Which she was sure was true and very good advice, but she couldn’t think past the weight of his hand on her shoulder. The solid feel and the warmth of his touch spread to her stomach. She hadn’t felt warmth from a man since her ex-husband. The men in town talked to her and flirted with her, but they never seemed to want more than a coffee refill.

Steve slid his palm down her arm and grasped her hand. “I’ve wondered something since I moved to town.”

“What’s that?”

He tilted his head to one side and studied her. “Why you don’t have a boyfriend.”

“I think the men in this town are half afraid of me.”

His brows lowered over his eyes and then he burst out laughing. A deep booming laugh that lit his face.