Maddie cut the Mercedes’ headlights and the darkness pressed in on her. She ignored the apprehension in her chest as she got out of the car and walked up the steps and onto the wraparound porch lit up with numerous sixty-watt bulbs. She wasn’t afraid of anything. Certainly not the dark, but she knew bad things did happen to women who weren’t as aware and as cautious as Maddie. Women who didn’t have a small arsenal of safety devices in their shoulder bags. Things like a Taser, Mace, a personal alarm, and brass knuckles, just to name a few. A girl could never be too careful, especially at night in a town where it was difficult to see your hand in front of your face. In a town set smack-dab in the middle of dense forest where wildlife rustled from trees and underbrush. Where rodents with beady little eyes waited for a girl to go to bed before ransacking the pantry. Maddie had never had to use any of her personal safety devices, but lately she’d been wondering if she was a good enough shot to zap a marauding mouse with her Taser.

Lights burned from within the house as Maddie unlocked the forest-green door, stepped inside, and flipped the deadbolt behind her. Nothing scurried from the corners as she tossed her purse on a red velvet chair by the door. A large fireplace dominated the middle of the big living room and divided it into what was meant to be the dining room but what Maddie used as her office.

On a coffee table in front of the velvet sofa sat Maddie’s research files and an old five-by-seven photograph in a silver frame. She reached for the picture and looked into the face of her mother, at her blond hair, blue eyes, and big smile. It had been taken a few months before Alice Jones had died. A photo of a happy twenty-four-year-old, so vibrant and alive, and like the yellowed photograph in the expensive frame, most of Maddie’s memories had faded too. She recalled bits of this and snatches of that. She had a faint memory of watching her mother put on makeup and brush her hair before leaving for work. She recalled her old blue Samsonite suitcase and moving from place to place. Through the watery prism of twenty-nine years, she had a very faint memory of the last time her mother had packed up their Chevy Maverick and the two-hour drive north to Truly. Moving into their trailer house with orange shag carpet.

The clearest memory Maddie had of her mother was the scent of her skin. She’d smelled like almond lotion. But mostly she recalled the morning her great-aunt had arrived at the Roundup Trailer Court to tell her that her mother was dead.

Maddie set the photo back on the table and moved across the hardwood floor into the kitchen. She grabbed a Diet Coke out of the refrigerator and unscrewed the cap. Martha had always said that Alice was flighty. Flitting like a butterfly from place to place, from man to man, searching for somewhere to belong and looking for love. Finding both for a time before moving on to the next place or newest man.

Maddie drank from the bottle, then replaced the cap. She was nothing like her mother. She knew her place in the world. She was comfortable with who she was, and she certainly didn’t need a man to love her. In fact, she’d never been in love. Not the romantic kind that her good friend Clare wrote about for a living. And not the foolish, mad-for-the-man kind that had ruled and ultimately taken her mother’s life.

No, Maddie had no interest in a man’s love. His body was a different matter, and she did want an occasional boyfriend. A man to come over several times a week to have sex. He didn’t have to be a great conversationalist. Hell, he didn’t even have to take her to dinner. Her ideal man would just take her to bed, then leave. But there were two problems with finding her ideal man. First, any man who just wanted sex from a woman was most likely a jerk. Second, it was difficult to find a willing man who was good in bed rather than who just thought he was good. The chore of sorting through men to find what she wanted had become such a hassle, she’d given up four years ago.

She hooked the top of the Coke bottle between two fingers and moved from the kitchen. Her flip-flops slapped the bottoms of her feet as she walked through the living room and passed the fireplace to her office. Her laptop sat on an L-shaped desk shoved up against the wall and she flipped on the lamp clamped to the hutch of her desk. Two sixty-watt bulbs lit up a stack of diaries, her laptop, and her “Taking Names and Kicking Ass” sticky notes. Altogether there were ten diaries in various shapes and colors. Red. Blue. Pink. Two of the diaries had locks, while one of the others was nothing more than a yellow spiral notebook with the word “Diary” written in black marker. All of them had belonged to her mother.

Maddie tapped the Diet Coke bottle against her thigh as she gazed at the top white book. She hadn’t known they’d even existed until her great-aunt Martha’s death a few months ago. She didn’t believe Martha had purposely kept the diaries from her. More than likely she’d intended to give them to Maddie someday but had completely forgotten. Alice hadn’t been the only flighty female on the Jones family tree.

As Martha’s only living relative, it had been up to Maddie to settle her affairs, see to her funeral, and clean out her house. She’d managed to find homes for her aunt’s cats and had planned to donate most everything else to Goodwill. In one of the last cartons she’d sorted through, she’d come across old shoes, outdated purses, and a battered boot box. She’d almost tossed the battered box without lifting the top. A part of her almost wished that she had. Wished she’d spared herself the pain of staring down into the box and feeling her heart shoved into her throat. As a child she’d longed for a connection with her mother. Some little something that she could have and hold. She’d dreamed of having something she could take out from time to time that tied her to the woman who’d given her life. She’d spent her childhood longing for something…something that had been a few feet away in the top of a closet the whole time. Waiting for her in a Tony Lama box.

The box had contained the diaries, her mother’s obituary, and newspaper articles about her death. It had also held a satin bag filled with jewelry. Cheep stuff, mostly. A Foxy Lady necklace, several turquoise rings, a pair of silver hoop earrings, and a tiny pink band from St. Luke’s Hospital with the words “Baby Jones” printed on it.

Standing in her old bedroom that day, unable to breathe as her chest imploded, she’d felt like a kid again. Scared and alone. Afraid to reach out and make the connection, but at the same time excited to finally have something tangible that had belonged to a mother she hardly remembered.

Maddie set her Coke on the top of her desk and spun her office chair around. That day, she’d taken the boot box home and placed the silk bag in her jewelry box. Then she’d sat down and read the diaries. She’d read every word, devouring them in one day. The diaries had started on her mother’s twelfth birthday. Some of them had been bigger and taken her mother longer to fill. Through them she’d gotten to know Alice Jones.

She’d gotten to know her as a child of twelve who’d longed to grow up and be an actress like Anne Francis. A teen who longed to find true love on The Dating Game, and a woman who looked for love in all the wrong places.

Maddie had found something to connect her to her mother, but the more she’d read, the more she’d felt at loose ends. She’d gotten her childhood wish and she’d never felt so alone.

Chapter 2

Mick Hennessy slipped a rubber band about a stack of cash and set it next to a pile of credit card and debit receipts. The sound of the electric coin sorter sitting on his desk filled the small office in the back of Mort’s. Everyone but Mick had gone home for the evening and he was just balancing the tills before he headed that way himself.

Owning and running bars was in Mick’s blood. Mick’s great-grandfather had made and sold cheap grain alcohol during Prohibition and opened Hennessy’s two months after the Eighteenth Amendment was repealed and the spigots once again flowed in the United States. The bar had been in his family ever since.

Mick didn’t particularly care for belligerent drunks, but he did like the flexible hours that came with being his own boss. He didn’t have to take orders or answer to anyone, and when he walked into one of his bars, he had a feeling of possession that he’d never felt with anything else in his life. His bars were loud and raucous and chaotic, but it was a chaos he controlled.

More than the hours and feeling of possession, Mick liked making money. During the summer months, he made tons of money from tourists and from the people who lived in Boise but owned cabins on the lake in Truly.

The coin sorter stopped and Mick slid stacks of coins into paper sleeves. An image of a dark-haired, red-lipped woman entered his head. He wasn’t surprised that he’d noticed Maddie Dupree within seconds of stepping behind the bar. It only would have surprised him if he hadn’t noticed her. With her beautiful smooth skin and seductive brown eyes, she was just the sort of woman who drew his attention. That small mole at the corner of her full lips had reminded him just how long it had been since he’d kissed a mouth like hers and worked his way south. Down her chin and the arch of her throat to all the soft places and sweet parts.

Since his move back to Truly two years ago, his sex life had suffered more than he liked. Which sucked. Truly was a small town where people went to church on Sundays and married young. They tended to stay married and if not, looked to remarry real quick. Mick never messed with married women or women with marriage on their minds. Never even thought twice about it.