End of report. Mason scratched his chin and thought. Nothing sinister here. The guy was no tycoon, but he apparently also wasn’t a destitute bum. He owned an old vehicle—a van he probably used for gigs for his band. He owned his own house. It wasn’t a mansion, but it probably wasn’t a chicken shed either.

He scowled and closed the file. Nothing of interest here. Annajane was her own woman. If she wanted to marry an itinerant musician and spend the rest of her life living in a log cabin on a dirt road, driving around in a beat-up Aerostar van with him, that was her right.

The question that had been nagging at him ever since he’d left her earlier that evening was, Why? Why Shane Drummond? Why Atlanta? Why now?

And more important, why did he care so much?

12

Annajane sighed as she opened the door to the loft. She hated living in chaos. Half-packed boxes littered the floor and covered every surface in the living room. She knew without looking that her sink was piled with unwashed dishes and her bedroom floor covered with clothing. This was not like her. Not at all. She had let things get away from her. She picked her way through the boxes and went into the bathroom, where she stripped and tossed everything, except her bracelet, into the trash.

When she emerged from the shower wrapped only in an oversized towel, she pushed aside a stack of unfolded laundry and collapsed onto the bed. Her head still hurt. She was tired, and worried about Sophie. But mostly, she was worried about her own screwed-up emotions.

How could this happen? How could she possibly be falling for Mason Bayless again? And what could she do about it?

Forget it. Forget him, she vowed. Think of Shane. Of her new life. And get the hell out of Passcoe.

She could still make a clean break. By the end of the week, she would, by God, finish packing and get everything loaded in the rental van. By next Saturday, she’d be moving into her own studio apartment in a close-in Atlanta neighborhood. She would be with Shane, who was good and true and loved her without reservation.

And I love Shane, too, she thought fiercely. I do. I really do. Shane is my future.

And the Monday after the move, she would start her first day of work at the ad agency. She’d be so busy, there’d be no time to think about everything she’d left behind in Passcoe.

She found a clean T-shirt and pair of jeans among the jumble of clothes on her bed, got dressed, and got busy.

For three hours, she worked feverishly, packing up a lifetime’s worth of belongings. The quicker she got it done, the sooner she could see Passcoe—and the Bayless family—in her rearview mirror.

Annajane abandoned any semblance of order or organization in her packing. Emptying kitchen cupboards, she dumped spice containers in with dishes, cookware in with cookbooks.

She took grim satisfaction in assembling the flattened cardboard boxes, filling them, and then snapping a length of shipping tape across the intersecting flaps to seal them shut.

From the kitchen she moved into the living/dining room. She positioned a box in front of the bookcases and began unloading the shelves with a long sweep of her arm. A slip of paper escaped from one of the books and fluttered to the floor.

Stooping to pick it up, Annajane froze. It was a picture, an old snapshot of her and Mason, arms wrapped around each other, sitting on the front steps of the lake cottage.

She sank to the floor and studied the photo. They looked so young! Her hair was in a ponytail, and she wore a pink polka-dot halter top and white shorts and was sunburned, with a bad case of raccoon eyes from her sunglasses, and her mouth was wide open, in midlaugh. Mason was tanned and shirtless, his sunglasses obscuring his eyes, but his smile was wide and matched her own. The picture was undated, but she knew it had to be from their first summer together, when she was only nineteen. Funny, she remembered that top, bought on sale at the Gap for six bucks, but she couldn’t remember the circumstances surrounding that picture. Most likely it had been taken by Pokey.

There were no other photos of them together. Annajane had burned them all, the day her divorce was final. They’d made a nice blaze in a rusty old grill in her mother’s backyard at Holden Beach. How, she wondered idly, had this picture survived the fire?

Not that it mattered. She stood up and tucked the photo back into the book, but instead of dumping the book back in the box with the others, she walked into her bedroom and placed it on her nightstand. Thinking better of it, she put it under her pillow.

Then she picked up the phone and called Shane. His voice, when he answered, was husky.

“Oh no,” Annajane said softly. “You were asleep. I thought you’d just be getting in from your gig. I’m sorry. Go back to bed. I’ll call you in the morning.”

“No, no,” Shane said. “Don’t hang up, baby. It’s fine. I wasn’t even in bed. Must’ve just dozed off in front of the television. What time is it?”

“Past three,” Annajane said.

“What are you doing up so late?” Shane asked. “Something wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said quickly.

Liar. Liar. Liar. Her subconscious taunted her even as she spoke the words.

“I just needed to hear your voice,” she said, and that part was true.

It was his voice, deep, honeyed, and southern as sorghum syrup that had melted her heart the first time they met.

She’d gone down to visit her mother at Holden Beach back in September. After two lo-o-o-n-g evenings of watching Wheel of Fortune and Golden Girls reruns, in desperation one night, after Ruth went to bed at nine, she went out for a drive. She’d seen the Holiday Inn sign and noticed they had a lounge, and since her mother was a teetotaler and didn’t keep any liquor in the house, she decided to go in and get a drink on the spur of the moment.

The Sandpiper Lounge, as it turned out, was the happening nightspot for locals. A band called Dandelion Wine was playing to a packed house that night. Annajane sat at a table near the bar, slowly sipping a glass of wine. The band played mostly bluegrass, with a little country and rockabilly, which she was surprised to discover she enjoyed. There were two long tables close to the stage, both of them packed with women, maybe two dozen, who all seemed to know each other and the band. The women seemed to range in age from early twenties to early sixties, but they were drinking and having a great time, singing along to every song, whooping and clapping at their favorites. The lead singer and Dobro player seemed to be their favorite.

And why not? He was tall and lanky, with a mop of satiny deep brown curls and the dark, gorgeous eyes of a poet. He had dimples, and just a hint of five-o’clock shadow, and he wore a faded plaid flannel shirt and jeans with worn-out knees.

When he’d start in on a song, the women whooped and called his name, “Shane! Shane!” He’d look up, smile shyly, and maybe treat them to a playful wink, but mostly he sat on a battered wooden barstool and played and sang.

Annajane had never believed any of that stuff she’d always heard about women falling for musicians. Until she met Shane Drummond.

She supposed she must have heard the song before, probably at those long-ago family reunions at her aunt’s cabin. “On the Other Hand” was an old country standard, he told her much later, and it had been covered by greats like George Jones, Keith Whitley, and George Strait. But she’d never heard the song about a married man tempted to cheat like she heard Shane sing it that night.

His voice was deep and true and fine, and he managed to wring emotion from every word, and as his long slender fingers plucked at the Dobro, she wondered if he was singing to her and for her.

“I called you twice, earlier,” he said now, sounding puzzled. “Didn’t you get my messages?”