For our friends Cynthia Burton and Terry Sosebee

      Contents

       Cover

Praise

       Title Page

       Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

       Five

       Six

       Seven

       Eight

       Nine

       Ten

       Eleven

       Twelve

       Extract

       Copyright

One

      Michelle Godfrey felt the dust of the unpaved road all over her jeans. She couldn’t really see her pants. Her eyes were full of hot tears. It was just one more argument, one more heartache.

      Her stepmother, Roberta, was determined to sell off everything her father had owned. He’d only been dead for three weeks. Roberta had wanted to bury him in a plain pine box with no flowers, not even a church service. Michelle had dared her stepmother’s hot temper and appealed to the funeral director.

      The kindly man, a friend of her father’s, had pointed out to Roberta that Comanche Wells, Texas, was a very small community. It would not sit well with the locals if Roberta, whom most considered an outsider, was disrespectful of the late Alan Godfrey’s wishes that he be buried in the Methodist church cemetery beside his first wife. The funeral director was soft-spoken but eloquent. He also pointed out that the money Roberta would save with her so-called economy plans, would be a very small amount compared to the outrage she would provoke. If she planned to continue living in Jacobs County, many doors would close to her.

      Roberta was irritated at the comment, but she had a shrewd mind. It wouldn’t do to make people mad when she had many things to dispose of on the local market, including some cattle that had belonged to her late husband.

      She gave in, with ill grace, and left the arrangements to Michelle. But she got even. After the funeral, she gathered up Alan’s personal items while Michelle was at school and sent them all to the landfill, including his clothes and any jewelry that wasn’t marketable.

      Michelle had collapsed in tears. That is, until she saw her stepmother’s wicked smile. At that point, she dried her eyes. It was too late to do anything. But one day, she promised herself, when she was grown and no longer under the woman’s guardianship, there would be a reckoning.

      Two weeks after the funeral, Roberta came under fire from Michelle’s soft-spoken minister. He drove up in front of the house in a flashy red older convertible, an odd choice of car for a man of the cloth, Michelle thought. But then, Reverend Blair was a different sort of preacher.

      She’d let him in, offered him coffee, which he refused politely. Roberta, curious because they never had visitors, came out of her room and stopped short when she saw Jake Blair.

      He greeted her. He even smiled. They’d missed Michelle at services for the past two weeks. He just wanted to make sure everything was all right. Michelle didn’t reply. Roberta looked guilty. There was this strange rumor he’d heard, he continued, that Roberta was preventing her stepdaughter from attending church services. He smiled when he said it, but there was something about him that was strangely chilling for a religious man. His eyes, ice-blue, had a look that Roberta recognized from her own youth, spent following her father around the casinos in Las Vegas, where he made his living. Some of the patrons had that same penetrating gaze. It was dangerous.

      “But of course, we didn’t think the rumor was true,” Jake Blair continued with that smile that accompanied the unblinking blue stare. “It isn’t, is it?”

      Roberta forced a smile. “Um, of course not.” She faltered, with a nervous little laugh. “She can go whenever she likes.”

      “You might consider coming with her,” Jake commented. “We welcome new members in our congregation.”

      “Me, in a church?” She burst out laughing, until she saw the two bland faces watching her. She sounded defensive when she added, “I don’t go to church. I don’t believe in all that stuff.”

      Jake raised an eyebrow. He smiled to himself, as if at some private joke. “At some point in your life, I assure you, your beliefs may change.”

      “Unlikely,” she said stiffly.

      He sighed. “As you wish. Then you won’t mind if my daughter, Carlie, comes by to pick Michelle up for services on Sunday, I take it?”

      Roberta