Free One Good Man by Alison Kent

glass. “I am, but weather always makes for easy conversation.”
    For a moment, she was silent, then she sighed with a deep resignation. “Easier than asking why I can’t sleep?”
    Or telling her what was keeping him awake. He nodded, sipped the Jim Beam and let it warm the parts of him left cold by the thoughts that had driven him from bed.
    Jamie stretched out her legs, spread her toes, then bent to brush away something he couldn’t see. “I don’t lose a lot of sleep anymore over…everything. At first, I didn’t think I’d ever sleep again. I had a prescription that helped. Or it did once my doctor upped the dosage a couple of times.”
    “Made for some fuzzy days I bet.” He sat forward, his wrists on his knees, looking away from the smooth skin of her legs toward her detached garage and the moon shining in the windows there.
    “Time was a big blur for months. I couldn’t go back to school. I couldn’t work. I did good to eat and bathe myself, though it took a while to care enough to do even that.” She brought her glass to her mouth. “I honestly don’t think I would’ve come out of it if my mother hadn’t been with me.”
    She’d been so young, a kid, really. A very young woman at most. Either way, she’d been a girl who’d needed her mother, and had been lucky to have one so devoted. “She sounds pretty amazing.”
    “You have no idea.” Jamie sat straighter, stretching her back, left then right, popping her spine before she leaned back against the frame of the screen door. “She did all of it herself, the taking-care-of-me stuff. Making sure I got through.”
    He’d known from her file that her father had split about that time, but didn’t know the why. The way she said it…“Was it too much for your dad…what happened to you?”
    “Something like that. I guess.” She lifted her glass, and stared at the contents where the moonlight glinted off the amber liquid. “It’s always been weird the way he bailed.”
    “How so?”
    “He’d been a perfect dad my whole life, though somewhat taciturn, I guess. He helped with my science homework and showed me how to fix a flat on my bike. Oh, and how to run the lawn mower.”
    “The lawn mower?”
    “I was the son he never had, taking care of a lot of things around the house while he and the seasonal workers handled the ranch chores.”
    Kell found himself chuckling. “Terry, my baby brother, got the same treatment. Except in reverse.”
    “How so?”
    “My mother was determined one of her children would cook. Terry was the youngest, left behind when Brennan and I were in school, so he had a lot of one-on-one time with Mom.” He stared down at the concrete step between his feet, his bare soles soaking up the stored heat from the day. “It seems to have stuck.”
    “He’s a cook?”
    “He owns a restaurant. A pub. In Houston. Not sure he still does much cooking, but he has. And he can.”
    “Runs in the family then.”
    “The steaks?” He shook his head. “That’s bachelor food. Steaks, burgers, eggs. Nothing but the basics.”
    She was quiet for the next couple of minutes, not drinking, not moving, just sitting, letting the night wrap them in its cloak, letting the darkness keep them rooted, letting the heat of the drink lull them into a sense of easy comfort until the solitude finally loosened her tongue.
    “Have you always been a bachelor?”
    “I’ve never been married, if that’s what you’re asking.”
    “Why not?”
    He guessed she was waiting for him to tell her he’d never found the right girl. Wasn’t that usually the reason? And while it was true, it wasn’t the whole story of why he was alone. “I haven’t had the time to invest in a relationship. Not that sort of time.”
    “That sort of time? What do you mean, that sort of time?” She leaned across him to snag the bottle from where he’d set it on his side of the steps. Her unbound breasts, firm, full, brushed his knees. “You make it sound like a