Chapter 2

      Matthew Harper’s alarm blared at him from the kitchen counter of his ancient blue trailer. God, he had the hangover from hell. He’d slept with the cat from hell on the mattress from hell in a trailer that was hotter than hell. The air-conditioning had bummed out months ago, which shouldn’t have mattered since Jerry Keith should have had his new house built way before May. Hell, J.K. had sworn he’d be finished way before March. But little brothers weren’t so hot at keeping their promises.

      Sweat rolled off Matt’s forehead. Hell and damnation, but the heat was fierce! The sun was barely up, and the sheets were plastered to his damp body. So was his crazy cat. Tonight after work he was definitely installing his new window unit.

      He’d have time since Carol had broken their date for tonight—broken all their dates for that matter, even their date to the Spring Fling. When he’d said he wasn’t ready for marriage, she’d broken up with him—period.

      The phone began to ring, but he fought to ignore it. Nobody in Red Rock but a lunatic or a bothersome woman who wanted an engagement ring would call a man before he had his coffee. He let the phone ring and tried not to listen when his machine picked up.

      “Matt, this is Lula Snow. I need a big favor. It’s about Jane. Pick up.”

      Jane? Lula? Carol he could handle. But it was way too early for a man with a hangover to wrap his mind around the Snow women.

      Beads of perspiration rolled off his forehead. For the first time he realized his baby brother, Jerry Keith, who was also his unreliable building contractor, had been right on when he’d advised him they should finish the house first and build the garage last instead of vice versa.

      What about a freak hailstorm? A man had to house his car, not a car really, a Porsche Carrera GT.

      “An air-conditioned garage for a toy?” J.K. had taunted.

      “For my baby. For my wheels. She’s a real racing machine.”

      Hell, maybe if he’d listened to his brother, he wouldn’t be sleeping on this lousy couch in his lousy, ovenlike, hunting trailer, suffering phone calls about Jane from Lula.

      Maybe he should have said yes when Carol had demanded marriage. She was perfect for him. Beautiful, complacent, smart, and smart enough to hide it. Other men envied him when he took her out. Jane, on the other hand, wore glasses, hid her figure and flaunted her intelligence. She had a bad habit of holding on to grudges, too.

      As he thought about Jane, which he’d been doing a lot lately, a vision of her lovely mouth, not Carol’s, arose in his mind’s eye to taunt him. The mouth, a familiar demon, was huge and red and absolutely luscious.

      Next, that male organ he normally took such immense pride in arose underneath the sheets and said, Hi, here I am, darlin’, to the giant mouth. It didn’t take much guessin’ to know what that excitement was all about.

      “Damn!”

      Never drink too much when you’ve got to go to work the next morning.

      He’d been so happy last night when he’d gotten home and seen Jerry Keith along with a full crew at the house actually hammering and nailing, he’d invited the guys to dinner. No sooner had he started grilling thick slabs of beef when Carol had called to ask if he’d forgotten their date. He’d apologized and asked her over to have dinner with the guys. She hadn’t liked that. Somehow she’d launched into the subject of marriage. The rest was history. Or rather they were history.

      Which was why he’d sat out on the big flat rocks on his land with the guys until all hours watching his pet armadillo, Dillard, dig for grubs in the moonlight. They’d all gotten to bragging about women, telling dirty jokes and drinking—mostly drinking. Everybody had wanted to hear the old story about how he and Jerry Keith had snuck up on the Snow girls right when they’d been tanning their legs behind their house that fateful afternoon the year he’d asked Jane to the Spring Fling. Too bad for him the girls had started spraying each other with hoses and Jerry Keith had grabbed his camera and started snapping pictures. But if Matt lived to be a hundred, he wasn’t likely to forget how good Jane had looked with that wet cotton plastered against her breasts.

      He rubbed his head where it hurt. The trouble with being a bachelor was the time gap when there wasn’t a good woman to nag you into living sensibly. Carol would have stopped him on beer number three.

      All of a sudden the damn alarm clock had his brain throbbing so hard he could have sworn it hopped off the counter straight into his skull. Jane’s red mouth dissolved into the mists of his mind. Groaning, he jammed pillow number three over his head, rolled over onto Julie Baby, who stuck several claws in his chest. When he screamed, she jumped from the bed to the lamp, knocking it over and shattering the bulb.

      “Damn your hide, cat!”

      Although he wasn’t much on rules, a man should know better than to sleep naked with an untrustworthy female whose nails were too long.

      Matt sat bolt upright and glared at Julie Baby, who stared back at him serenely. Did cats ever blink? Growling, Matt threw a pillow at the clock, which hit the floor and mercifully died beside the jagged bits of lightbulb.

      The phone rang again.

      Lula again.

      Later.

      The trailer, what he could see of it from the tattered couch, would’ve made a pig oink with pride. The sink overflowed with last night’s dishes. The garbage can brimmed with several days’ stinky leavings.

      Later. After he got the window unit installed and washed his Porsche tonight, maybe he’d vacuum. Even he could see it was time.

      The phone stopped ringing. Lula didn’t leave a second message.

      If and when Jerry Keith ever got his ranch house finished, Matt intended to be neater. The trashed trailer, which was supposed to have been temporary lodging, would go back where it belonged—to his hunting lease.

      The trouble was Jerry Keith was bad about working for other people instead of for him.

      “Have to build clientele. Marketing. That’s your game, ain’t it, Big Bubba? You’re up for director of market research, am I right? Same as Jane Snow? Afraid she’ll beat you?”

      Matt knew he’d been way too patient with the brat, but his kid brother did have a few things on his plate—a pregnant wife, for one thing.

      At least with no AC and open windows, Matt could hear doves cooing outside and a whippoorwill. The faint breeze that smelled of cedar and grass nearly lured him outside, only the phone rang again, and he picked up.

      “Lula,