He turned from the window, his unsmiling face masking a thousand hidden emotions. "I know. Don't nag me, Liz."

"If I don't, who will? My ex-husband pulls that on me, and for days after the boys visit

him, I'm the bad guy around home. Nothing I can do or say is right. The boys keep saying, but Daddy does this, and Daddy lets us do that. Sometimes I want to tell them, If you want to go live with your father, go."

He sighed. "Maybe I wish that's what Nancy would say."

"Do you?" she asked quietly. A man with your life-style-her expression seemed to say-what would you do with a fourteen-year-old daughter?

"That house is so big and so damn empty it echoes."

She assessed him silently for several seconds before adding softly, "When you're in it alone."

Surprisingly enough, Tommy Lee had the grace to blush. His relationship with Liz was unlike any he shared with any other women. They were aware of each other's availability, and a fine sexual tension hummed between them at moments like this. Yet they both understood that if it ever snapped, she'd lose the best job she'd ever had-and the friendship of a man whose life-style she should abhor, but for whom she instead felt a great deal of pity, because she could see beyond the ceaseless chasing to the loneliness it masked.

Liz pulled away from the door frame. "You wanted me to remind you that you were going to meet at eleven this morning with the people from the city about the zoning regulations on that apartment complex." The tension eased and they became merely boss and employee again.

"Thanks, Liz."

He watched her pink dress disappear around the corner and wondered what he lacked that he couldn't marry some nice woman like her and settle down companionably and work toward building a home with some permanent love in it, and think about approaching old age. Wasn't one woman enough for him?

His eyes swayed back to the window. Across the street and half a block away he could see the corner of the First State Bank of Russellville, the one Rachel's daddy ran, the one Tommy Lee shunned in favor of taking his business to the town of Florence, twenty-three miles away. He lit a cigarette without even realizing he was doing it, then sat mulling.

Staring at the bank, he thought, One woman would have been enough for me. But only one.

On his way to the eleven o'clock meeting at City Hall, Tommy Lee slowed the Cadillac to a crawl as he passed Panache, but nobody was about. When he emerged from the meeting with the assurance that the zoning restrictions had been lifted and the plans for the new apartment complex could go forward undeterred, he paused at the curb beside his car to light a cigarette and glance southward along the street. From here he could see the sign above the door of her store. A woman came out. Tommy Lee squinted, but from this distance couldn't tell if it was she or not. He sprinted around the car, hurriedly backed out, and made an illegal U-turn in the middle of Jackson Avenue, keeping his eyes riveted on the figure walking along the sidewalk ahead of him. He slowed as he pulled abreast, but even before he passed the woman, he realized it wasn't Rachel.

You damn fool, Gentry, you're acting the age of your own daughter! But the disappointment left him feeling deflated.

Back at the office, when he'd exchanged necessary messages with Liz, he went inside, flung the building-code regulations on 49 his desk, then moved to the window behind it.

Again he studied the bank, a burning cigarette hooked in the curve of a finger, forgotten. The smoke curled up and he took a deep drag while his eyes remained fixed on the building a half-block away. Then he anchored the cigarette between his teeth, crossed to the door, and closed it.

Liz looked up in surprise, frowned, but decided it was none of her business.

Tommy Lee reached for a ballpoint pen and wrote the telephone number on a yellow legal pad-he knew it by heart. He stared at it through the smoke that drifted up past his nostrils. His heart seemed to have dropped into his guts. His palms were sweaty and his spine hurt. After a full minute, he thrust the pen onto the desktop and wilted back into his chair, trying to calm his breathing. Come on, Gentry, what're you scared of? How many women have you called in your life? How many have refused you?

He reached for the phone, but instead his hand veered to the pen. He grabbed it and wrote the number again. Twelve times he wrote it… in the same spot… until it was pressed into eight sheets of the tablet.

The cigarette had burned low and he stubbed it out absently, reached for the phone, and actually picked up the receiver this time. But after five seconds he slammed it down without dialing, then ran four shaky fingers through his gray-black hair. Lord a'mighty, he hadn't faced anything this nerve-racking in years.

He grabbed the phone and punched out the numbers too quickly to give himself a chance to change his mind.

"Good afternoon, Panache."

Dammit, why couldn't she have answered?

"Is Ra-- Is Mrs. Hollis there?"

"I'm sorry, she's not. Can I help you?"

"No, thank you. I'll try again later."

He slammed the phone down as if it had bitten him. Then he sat with his face in his palms, shaking so hard his elbows rattled against the desktop. He dropped his forearms flat against the blotter, head drooped, while he sucked in huge gulps of air. Then his palms pressed his cheeks again and eight fingertips dug into his eyes beneath his glasses. You're insane, Gentry. Plumb nuts. What the hell would you have said if she'd answered?

But after two hours he felt less crazy and decided to give it another try. He went through the same ritual again, only this time he made sure he had a cigarette lit when he dialed, to steady himself.

"Good afternoon, Panache."

Goddammit, doesn't Verda ever go home? "Is Mrs. Hollis there?"

"No, I'm sorry. I don't expect her in today. Is there anything I can do?"

"No, thank you. I'll call again tomorrow."

"Can I tell her-was

Tommy Lee slammed down the receiver in frustration. No, you can't tell her anything! Just get the hell home so she'll have to answer her own damn phones!

When Tommy Lee lurched from his chair and flung the door open, Liz's head snapped up. But he only stormed past, throwing over his shoulder, "I won't be in till morning." A moment later tires squealed outside, and she shook her head.

Tommy Lee Gentry was a land developer. He knew every acre of every section of land within a

radius of fifty miles around Russellville. He'd owned the land on which Owen Hollis had built his house, had subdivided it into lots, contracted for the installation of improvements, then resold the lots to the builder who'd eventually put up the brick house where Rachel and Owen had lived. It was on the eastern edge of town in a hilly, wooded area called Village Square Addition, but there was nothing square about it. The streets curved and curled around the natural undulations of the land, making it highly desirable property lacking the dreary severity of rigidly perpendicular streets.

Hollis had done right by her, if the house was any indication. It was a rambling U-shaped thing of peach-colored brick, hugging a swimming pool in its two out-stretched arms. It had a hip roof that deeply overhung arched fanlight windows trimmed with eave-to-earth Wedgwood-blue shutters. At the base of each window an azalea bush formed a precisely carved mound, while between them the warm brick walls sported espaliered Virginia creepers, trained into faultless Belgian fence designs by a weekly gardener. At each corner and beside the center door, Chinese holly bushes stood guard while the shaded yard bore lush magnolias and live oaks, with not a fallen leaf to be seen anywhere. On either side of the house a high box-cut podocarpus hedge blocked out the sight of the backyard, overlapping at one point to create a hidden entrance, like that around a tennis court.

Tommy Lee knew the exact summer they'd had the pool put in. He'd been up at City Hall looking through some files when he'd come upon their application for a pool permit. As he approached the house now, he wondered if she might possibly have taken the day off and what she'd say if he simply presented himself at her door unannounced.

But in the end, he chickened out. Use your head, Gentry. She's only been a widow for a week.

He drove on by, made a U-turn in a circle at the end of her street, then left the area with a long lingering study of her house on his way out.

Once on the main road again, he angrily loosened his tie. Damn. He'd had such good

intentions of trying to make it through one night without any liquor. But he needed a drink worse than ever. Stinkin' dry Baptist county! He'd have to make the run up to Colbert County to buy his booze tonight.

He bought enough to get him through the weekend without having to make the trip again. Then he stopped and ate a fat filet mignon with all the trimmings, and hit the road again armed with an after-dinner drink in a plastic glass. He passed his office by rote, checking it cursorily before heading home. He timed his run, tossed out the empty glass just before the last turn, as usual, and pulled up before his black front doors showing a record time of eight minutes.

He gave a roaring rebel yell to celebrate.

But a minute later, when he entered the house, his jubilant mood vanished. The place was just as silent as ever, and just as disorderly. Even more so, for more garments had been added to the collection strewn across the sofa. I should clean it up. But for whom?