Free A Man to Hold on to (A Tallgrass Novel) by Marilyn Pappano Page B

scotch on the counter, took a candy bar from her snacks cupboard and a can of pop from the fridge, and promised herself she’d eat better for lunch.
    The only good thing about Monday was that it was always followed by Tuesday, and that meant the weekly meeting of the Tuesday Night Margarita Club. It was the highlight of her week. Going out partying Friday night and Saturday night and polishing off the scotch for dinner last night were the lowlights.
    Grimly she acknowledged, as she locked up and headed down the stairs, she’d had lower moments. There were still depths she could sink to, but she’d avoided them this past week. Who knew how she’d do with the upcoming one?
    Jessy hated her customer-service job at Tallgrass National Bank. She’d told her friends so often, and yet hadn’t done anything about it, that they didn’t take her seriously anymore. It was just all so routine. Open accounts, close accounts, make transfers, set up automatic withdrawals, answer the same questions over and over with a smile and not even a hint of the frustration that lived inside her, then repeat again and again. About the best thing she could say for the job, in fact, was that it was convenient, seeing that the bank was only a few hundred feet from her apartment. Close enough to walk in heels, in good weather and in bad, in sickness and in health…
    “Get a grip, Jess,” she murmured as she pushed open the door that led onto Main Street. The morning was so bright that she automatically reached for her shades, muttering a curse when she realized she’d left them upstairs and had no time to go back for them. Thanks to the extra hits on the snooze button, she was going to be late as it was, only one of the many things her supervisor held against her.
    A breeze tousled her hair as she headed toward the intersection of Main and First. Oklahoma, wind, plains…it wasn’t often the air was really still. She liked the wind, though. Liked the weather: the hundred-plus-degree range in temperatures, the hard pellets of winter ice, the fat flaky snows, the unforgiving summer sun, the furious storms, the delicate but too short springs and falls.
    Oklahoma weather reminded her of herself: extreme, ever-changing, rarely doing anything halfway.
    She said hello to everyone she passed on the way: the regulars headed to work, the early shoppers, the unfortunate folks with early appointments. As much as she disliked work, she loved the building where she did it. It stood on the southwest corner of the main intersection in town, two stories built of sandstone chipped into 8-by-12-inch blocks, with sections of smooth concrete arching above the windows and doors and wrapping around the corners. It dated back to the first year of statehood—1907—with the year chiseled above the main entrance, and every large window was topped with a leaded-glass panel that scattered light inside in prisms that danced on wood floors and marble counters.
    When she’d first started working there, she’d taken hundreds of pictures, both inside and out. She had even gone to the roof and hung over the edge for upside-down shots of the cornices circling the top floor. She’d documented the building thoroughly, always when it was empty. She didn’t care much for people in her photographs.
    Jessy breezed through the leaded-glass double doors with their polished brass push-bars, across the vestibule and through another more elaborate set of doors into the lobby. All of her co-workers were at their places, including Mrs. Dauterive, her supervisor, who scowled at her from her office. Giving her a smile and a wave, Jessy hurried to the break room, stuck her pop in the fridge, and shoved half of the candy bar into her mouth, chewing quickly, before she went to her desk in the northwest corner of the lobby.
    “You’re late.”
    She stashed her purse in the bottom drawer of her desk before giving Mrs. Dauterive another phony smile. “I’m so sorry. I was halfway down the