Free Pecan Pie and Deadly Lies (An Adams Grove Novel) by Nancy Naigle

either since he’d been awake most of the night anyway thinking about Kasey. How she fit in with the band last night, just like she had last year. So easy. Like they’d been friends forever.
    He stepped off the bus and took the back path around to the patio to see if she was up yet. Through the back windows, he could see her at the kitchen table sipping something from a mug the color of milk chocolate. She looked fresh in a light yellow sweater set and faded blue jeans. Her blonde hair hung straight past her shoulders, and although he couldn’t see her eyes from here, he knew them to be about the color of the mug she held between the palms of her two hands.
    He tapped on the back-door glass.
    She looked up.
    “Mind if I join you?” he asked and motioned through the glass panes.
    “Not at all.” She waved him inside. “Jake’s getting his stuff together so I can take him to school.” She nodded toward his supersize coffee mug. “That must hold the whole pot.”
    “Better part of it. Gets you from point A to B without a refill. How’d you sleep last night?”
    “I slept like a baby.”
    “I never know if that’s good or bad.” He slid into the chair across from her. “I wondered if the diesel of the generators was going to bother you.”
    “I slept great. Didn’t even hear them. This house must be pretty well insulated. Even when the farmers have their equipment in the fields harvesting next door we can barely hear it.”
    “Well, that’s good. So how’s that feisty grandmother of yours doing these days?”
    “Grem’s been kickboxing Father Time, but he’s winning. He’s stolen most of her memories now too. I’m not sure how much longer we’ll be able to continue in-home care. She’s having more bad days than good. The last time I was there she called me “Georgie” the whole time. I have no idea who that is, but I played along.”
    “That’s got to be hard for you.”
    “Yeah, it is. It’s hard to watch someone who was always in charge become frail and confused. Plus, she’s the only real family I’ve got around here besides Jake. Once I got married I never gave it a thought that I might be without Nick someday.”
    “At least you’ve been married. Most guys my age have already been married at least once. I thought it was going to happen with Lou all those years ago, but it didn’t, and then I focused on my music. Once my music took off the women who came into my life were not really the marrying kind. They were… interesting, to say the least.”
    “Maybe you didn’t let the right ones in.”
    Maybe it’s because I’ve never met someone like you
. “I’m pretty sure of that. It was easy to get swept into the crazy thrill of it all. But lots of my friends from that period are getting divorced, and not just divorced, but nasty-divorced. Maybe not meeting anyone was a blessing.”
    “Don’t say that. Marriage is good. One of these days you’ll meet the right partner and you’ll know it. Everything will just fall into place and you won’t waste a second sealing that deal.”
    And why am I getting ready to go to Raleigh when I know I’d rather be here with you?
He wanted to open his mouth and say it. Ask her if there was a ghost of a chance for him to be a part of her life, but he couldn’t do it. If she said no, he didn’t think he could take it. Safer to keep quiet. “Sometimes my life can be complicated.”
    “Same here. I’m no picnic. My job had me on the road, and that can be a problem for some relationships. But Nick understood me, and he trusted me. He got it that some days I’d just get in my car and leave to take pictures and not come back for twelve hours. He didn’t get mad. Didn’t get jealous. Didn’t get all pouty. He had an appreciation for my work and our times apart were torture but when we were back together… there was nothing sweeter.”
    “Do you think you’ll ever have it again? Scott seems pretty interested in you.”
    She took a deep breath