“Hey!” It was a man’s voice, coming from only inches away. Next came the sound of heavy metal clinking against the driver’s side door.

Annajane jumped. A beam of bright yellow light blinded her momentarily.

“What the hell?”

She dove off Mason’s lap, scrambled onto her side of the front seat, grabbed desperately for the shirt, which seemed to have been swallowed up in the bowels of the Chevelle’s floorboard. The glare was unblinking, unforgiving. She squeezed her eyes shut.

“Mason? Mason Bayless? Is that you? How the heck are you?”

The tape was abruptly shut off. The sudden quiet was deafening.

“It’s me, Grady,” Mason drawled. “How ’bout turning off that flashlight, and giving the lady here a little privacy, huh, buddy?”

Annajane did not dare lift her head. Mercifully, the light was snapped off, and she somehow managed to pull the shirt over her head with trembling hands.

In her mind, the red blinking light had transformed itself into neon foot-high letters flashing out Damn. Damn. Damn. And then the words morphed into something worse. Cheater. Cheater. Cheater.

“Maybe you could put the shotgun away now too, huh?” Mason said.

Shotgun? Why not kill me now? Annajane thought. Put me out of my misery.

She inched as far away from Mason as she could get, keeping her face averted from their clueless interloper.

“Sorry about that, Mason,” Grady Witherspoon said with a chuckle. “Gail heard music coming from down here, so I came out to investigate. Since the weather turned warm, we’ve had kids coming out here, drinking, smoking dope, raising hell. I wouldn’t care that much, but last week somebody went ripping through my patch of spring greens, mashed everything flat. Kale, radicchio, arugula. Total loss. You believe that? The gun ain’t even loaded. I just wanna scare the little pissants off before they do any more damage.”

“Totally understandable,” Mason said easily. “I apologize for the disturbance. My bad. We’ll just be going now.”

But before he could start the Chevelle’s engine, Grady Witherspoon craned his neck, walking all the way around the car until he stood just inches from Annajane.

“Don’t I know you?” he asked, studying her face with interest. He snapped his fingers. “I got it! Annajane. Annajane Hudgens, right? My little sister used to babysit you when you were just a kid.”

She thought her head would explode from shame.

“Hello,” she said weakly, wishing the earth would open and swallow her whole.

Finally, Mason started the car. Grady Witherspoon gave them a friendly wave. “Bye now. Tell your mama I said hey, Mason, will you?”

Mason threw the car in reverse. “I’ll sure do that.”

19

Mason finally glanced over at her once they were back on the paved road. “You okay?”

Annajane buried her face in her hands. “No.”

“Hey,” he said softly, reaching for her hand. “It was just a kiss. Kinda embarrassing that Grady walked up and surprised us like that. But it was a long, long time coming. I’m not sorry it happened. Only sorry that we had to stop.”

Annajane jerked her hand away from his. “We do have to stop! What we just did was not okay. It’s called cheating. And I won’t do it. I can’t. You’re engaged to another woman. I’m engaged to Shane.”

“Allll right,” Mason said slowly. “Take it easy. Don’t get so worked up. You’re getting way ahead of yourself here. Look, Annajane, maybe this, what just happened back there, it was inevitable. Maybe it’s time we stopped avoiding each other and start thinking about us. Like we used to be.”

Annajane felt her phone vibrating in her pocket. She took it out and glanced at the readout. It was Shane. Talk about timing. She let the call roll over to her voice mail and tried to think rationally about her situation.

She was suffused with shame and guilt and, yes, desperate happiness. Ten minutes ago, she’d been weak and willful. If Grady Witherspoon hadn’t arrived when he had, she would have willingly climbed into the backseat with Mason. Her hormones had betrayed her, and she’d betrayed Shane. How could she hurt Shane the way Mason hurt her all those years ago?

“There is no us,” Annajane said.

Mason looked at her incredulously. “You’re telling me you didn’t enjoy what happened back there at the farm? That it means nothing to you?”

“Yes,” Annajane said. “That’s what I am telling you.”

“You’ve got a funny way of showing it,” Mason muttered.

“That’s not the point,” Annajane said, feeling wretched. “What we just did … that was bad … it wasn’t right. You were mad at Celia, and I was, I don’t know, I guess, maybe just feeling vulnerable and sentimental. For the way we used to be. What happened back there, it was just … revenge. And horniness.”

“What?” he exclaimed, nearly swerving off the road.

“We have no right to be alone together like this,” she continued. “I admit, I still have … feelings for you. I guess I always will. But there was a reason we split up. It was ugly and awful. We patched things up, yes, and figured out how to go on with our lives, separately, but I can’t pretend, Mason. Our divorce nearly killed me.”

Mason’s hands gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles turned white. “If you’ll recall, I never wanted the divorce. That was your idea. I just gave you what you wanted.”

Annajane felt the bile rising in her throat, all the old pain stirred up again. “What I wanted was a marriage based on honesty, but that’s beside the point now. And it’s been so damned hard to make myself give up and move past all that, to move forward. But the things that ended our marriage were real. And as much as I care about you, I can’t go through all that again. There’s no going back.”

“Annajane,” he started, then stopped, shook his head. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe nothing has changed. You didn’t trust me then; you won’t trust me now.”

“You cheated,” she exclaimed. “And maybe I could have gotten past that, if you’d just told me the truth.”

“I did tell the truth,” Mason said through gritted teeth. “I never, ever cheated on you. You talk about honesty, but if you were honest with yourself, you’d admit you had some responsibility, too, for our breakup. The first time things didn’t go your way, you just took off and ran home to your mama. Who I’m sure helped you figure out what a crappy husband I was. Marriage is a two-way street, you know. You talk about trust, but you never did trust me.”

The headlights of an oncoming car lit up Mason’s face—his jaw was clenched, his eyes unblinking. She’d seen that look before, and it harkened back to the bad old days when their marriage had come unraveled. What had she been thinking? The answer, of course, was that she’d done just what he’d urged her to do—she hadn’t thought at all.

“You’re right,” she said finally. “It wasn’t all you. There’s a reason we’re not together anymore. We were just too different then. And now the gulf has only widened. It’s idiotic to think we could make it work again. It’s just too late. I’m sorry, Mason. For everything. Then and now.”

“Unbelievable,” he muttered. “All this fuss over a damned kiss.”

The silence was overwhelming. He punched the button on the tape deck, forgetting what they’d been listening to earlier in the evening. When their song came on, he silently cursed and punched the stop button.

The ride back to town was interminable.

Finally, Mason pulled the car up to the curb in front of her loft. He left the motor running and didn’t bother to come around and open her door. She’d barely closed the door before he gunned the Chevelle’s engine and screeched away down the dark street.

20

Celia dropped her bag and water bottle on the bench outside the tennis court. She sat down and squinted up at the Monday morning sky. Puffy white clouds floated overhead, and the temperature was already warming up. She unzipped her hot pink Nike jacket and bent down to retie one of her shoes. What with all the wedding planning and hoopla, she hadn’t played tennis in weeks. It would feel good to get out on the courts and work up a sweat.