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      ARLENE JAMES

       says, “Camp meetings, mission work and church attendance permeate my Oklahoma childhood memories. It was a golden time, which sustains me yet. However, only as a young widowed mother did I truly begin growing in my personal relationship with the Lord. Through adversity He has blessed me in countless ways, one of which is a second marriage so loving and romantic it still feels like courtship!”

      The author of more than sixty novels, Arlene James now resides outside Fort Worth, Texas, with her beloved husband. Her need to write is greater than ever, a fact that frankly amazes her, as she’s been at it since the eighth grade! She loves to hear from readers, and can be reached at 1301 E. Debbie Lane, Suite 102, Box 117, Mansfield, Texas 76063, or via her Web site at www.arlenejames.com.

      Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter One

      It was rude. It was nerve-racking. It was decidedly unneighborly. To an inveterate smoker who hadn’t had a cigarette in nine hours, it was utterly unbearable. No one had answered the door when she had knocked, not that anyone inside that house could have heard anything above the racket booming from what must have been a very impressive set of stereo speakers.

      Amy clenched her teeth and pushed her hands through her hair. The new neighbors hadn’t been in the house next door a full week yet; she hadn’t even laid eyes on any of them, and already she was regretting that they’d ever moved in. She covered her ears with her hands, wondering how anyone could label that shrieking din “music,” and considered her alternatives.

      She could sit here in her own home huddled in misery, and slowly go insane. She could have a smoke. She could go somewhere else. She could call the police.

      No course of action held any appeal, but the last seemed the least objectionable, since it didn’t require her to actually get dressed and leave her house at two o’clock in the morning. In truth, the idea would have been no less offensive if it had been two o’clock in the afternoon. Amy liked staying home. She liked her TV programs. She liked her solitude. She liked her cigarettes. But smoking was not an option, however much she wished it was. She had promised her little niece, Danna, that she would quit, and for some reason, a promise to Danna seemed inviolable. Moreover, it was a reason that Amy did not wish to explore or clarify. After all, children had no place in her life. She and Mark had decided that long ago. Mark.

      Mark would have known how to handle this situation without resorting to the police. Mark would have strolled over there and charmed the socks off whoever had the audacity to crank up that stereo to such deafening levels. Mark would have had the culprit humming Sinatra and lip-synching Streisand. Mark…who had been her life, who had suffered and died, leaving her so very alone.

      It had been over two-and-a-half years since his death, and everyone told her that she was supposed to “be over it” by now, but she missed him still. And yet, something had changed. For a long time she had considered her purpose in life to grieve her husband. Before that she had known that her purpose was to be with him, to make him happy. Now she didn’t know what she was supposed to be about. She only knew that the blaring music from next door was about to split her skull, that she was going to go mad if something wasn’t done and that it was up to her to do it, because Mark was gone forever. She reached for the telephone. Moments later she was explaining the situation to a dispatcher at the Duncan Police Department.

      “That’s right, the next to the last house on the end of the street…. No, there’s nothing on the other side, just an empty field, and the racket is coming from the last house…. Yes, and please hurry. I’m not feeling well…. No, I don’t need an ambulance, just some peace and quiet…. Thank you.”

      She hung up and leaned forward, elbows on knees, sighing. Her head was pounding. Maybe if she could clear her mind the pain would go away. But when she tried to block all thought, her world became one throbbing ache. She reached instead for the memories that had so often sustained her, memories of the vibrant, charismatic, exciting man who had singled her out for his attention shortly after she’d graduated from high school and had promptly become the center of her universe. For a moment those memories shimmered before her mind’s eye as golden and bright as ever. But then they began to darken and change, bringing her instead the sight and sound and smell of the sickroom during the long, downward slide of her husband’s health, leaving him broken and dulled, a mere shell of his former self—fragile, thin, pale…querulous, resentful, difficult….

      She shook off such thoughts, feeling them disloyal. She wouldn’t blame him. She wouldn’t. He had been dying, after all, and he had known it. How could he have been anything but resentful? Who could have expected him to remain his old cheerful self when his body had become that of a stranger? And if he had blamed her…Well, he hadn’t meant it. She had not put that cancer in his brain, and she had cared for him as tenderly and lovingly as any wife could have. He hadn’t known what he was saying. He hadn’t even realized that he was hurting her with his accusations and complaints. She wouldn’t remember him like that. She wouldn’t! Desperately she searched for a distraction, and suddenly the blasting, frenetic music that had only minutes earlier been the bane of her existence became her salvation.

      Surging up to her feet, she let righteous anger rise within her. She was going over there to give that cretin a piece of her mind even if she had to beat the door down to do it! Throwing her bathrobe on over the boxer shorts and T-shirt that served as pajamas, she marched toward the door. But just as she wrenched the door open, a police car cruised down the street and braked to a halt in front of the house next door. A tall, powerfully built man in a Duncan City Police uniform stepped out from behind the wheel and strode straight into the offender’s house without so much as a knock. Amy was first shocked and then smugly pleased. Obviously she hadn’t overreacted at all. In an instant the music shut off and blessed silence ensued. Feeling vindicated and relieved, she closed the door and sat down to await the officer’s report.

      Evans stormed into the house, appalled at the din emanating from his very own home. He strode across the narrow entry hall and into the spacious living room, stepping over his daughter on the way to the elaborate stereo system that he had purchased only last Christmas. She rolled over onto her back as he passed, then sat up on the floor as he silenced the noise with a flick of his wrist.

      “You’re home early.”

      “I’m