A Man to Rely On. Cindi Myers

and on Toni. The part of her heart that had once belonged to her handsome husband was now empty and cold. She wasn’t sure she had the strength to risk ever trusting a man again.

      Which made her reaction to Scott that much more suspect. Maybe her sudden desire for him fell into the same category as nervous laughter at funerals and the sensation of wanting to jump when standing on the balcony of a tall building—involuntary, misplaced emotions or misfiring synapses. In a way it was comforting to realize her body was still capable of feeling attracted to a man. And Scott was, after all, good-looking and charming.

      But it would be a long time before her mind was ready to let a man into her life. And when it happened, it would be somewhere a long way from Cedar Switch, Texas. Her time here was merely an interlude while she regrouped, refreshed her finances and prepared herself for a new life, one far removed from either her glamorous days in Houston, or a childhood here in the sticks she’d spent twenty years working to forget.

       CHAPTER FOUR

       T HE RINGING PHONE woke Scott the next morning at 6:30. “Have you seen the front page of today’s Houston Chronicle? ” a raspy voice demanded.

      Scott sat up on the side of the bed and rubbed his eyes. “Marcus, is that you?” He checked the bedside clock. Apparently the real estate mogul was an early riser.

      “Your picture is on the front page of the Houston paper, all cozied up to Lamar Dixon’s infamous widow.”

      The words had the same effect as dunking his head in a bucket of ice water. “What?”

      “I didn’t know you knew Marisol Dixon,” Marcus continued. He was a man who preferred asking questions to answering them.

      “She’s using the name Marisol Luna now,” Scott said. “She’s listed her house with me.”

      “I thought that River Oaks mansion was sold to pay her legal fees.”

      “She has a house here in Cedar Switch. She inherited it from her mother.”

      A crackling sound, like paper being rattled, reached his ears. “Since when do real estate agents cuddle up to clients in the backseat of cars?”

      Marcus should have been a tabloid reporter. He made one innocent gesture sound so lurid. “She was ambushed by a reporter and a photographer in the Bluebonnet Café yesterday when my dad and I were there eating lunch,” he said. “We helped her get away from them and gave her a ride home.”

      Help Marisol hadn’t been particularly grateful for, he reminded himself.

      “And now half the state thinks the two of you are involved.” Even this early, Marcus sounded as if he’d been drinking straight bourbon and smoking cigars for hours.

      “I don’t care what they think,” Scott said. Phone to his ear, he leaned over and grabbed a pair of jeans off the back of the chair he’d flung them across before crawling into bed last night and began to pull them on.

      “Well, I care!” Marcus’s shout startled Scott so much he almost dropped the phone.

      “I’m not involved with Marisol,” he said. Yes, there had been that moment when their eyes had locked in the café yesterday. In that briefest instant he’d felt the heat of desire and possibility arc between them once more.

      A possibility that would go unfulfilled. Marisol was leaving town. And he was staying here, out of trouble.

      “You’d better not be involved with her,” Marcus growled.

      Scott stiffened. “Even if I was, what difference would it make?” he said. “She was acquitted of the murder charges.”

      “Acquitted! All that means is she had good lawyers. It doesn’t mean she was innocent.”

      Scott froze in the act of zipping the jeans, his hand tightening on the receiver. “Marisol did not murder her husband,” he said, struggling to keep his voice even.

      “And you know this how? Were you there?” Marcus’s voice was a gravelly sneer.

      “Of course I wasn’t there.” He finished zipping the jeans and began to pace. “I watched the trial and the prosecution clearly didn’t have enough evidence to convict her. Besides, she had nothing to gain by her husband’s death, and everything to lose. She did lose everything, which is why she moved back here and got a job waitressing in a café.”

      “Maybe she’s just waiting for all the hubbub to die down, then she’ll go away and spend the millions she’s hiding from the government.”

      Scott took the receiver from his ear and stared at it. He was tempted to ask Marcus if he also believed in UFOs, alien abduction and other bizarre theories.

      Marcus laughed again, a harsh, barking sound. “Don’t you get it? It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference what you think or even what the truth is. For the better part of a year, Marisol Dixon was the woman people loved to hate—the rich bitch socialite who offed her husband, the highest paid player in NBA history. Just because some jury said she didn’t do it doesn’t mean people believe it.”

      Scott knew a thing or two about being tried and found guilty in the court of public opinion, but Marcus’s cynicism about Marisol annoyed him. “Thanks for letting me know about the picture in the paper,” he said. “I’ll lay low a few days and it will all blow over.”

      “And stay away from Marisol whatever-her-name-is.”

      “She’s a client. If she wants to talk to me, I can’t avoid her.”

      “Maybe you shouldn’t have her as a client, then.”

      “What are you saying?”

      “I’m saying that I hired you to represent my interests in this new development. The buyers I’m courting here are high rollers from Houston and Dallas—the kind of people who think the worst of a social climber like Mrs. Dixon. If they think you’re associated with her, then that reflects badly on me.”

      The fact that Marcus had hired him to sell a bunch of golf course lots didn’t give him the right to dictate who Scott could and could not associate with. He would have liked nothing better than to tell the man so, but that desire came up against hard reality. Those listings from Marcus were Scott’s ticket back to both solvency and respectability. If he lost them, he may well lose his last chance to redeem himself.

      “I took a big risk hiring you,” Marcus reminded him. “Don’t make me regret it.” Or you will regret it was the unspoken codicil. Marcus had ruined people with better reputations than Scott who had gotten on his wrong side. He wielded the power that came with his wealth with all the subtlety of a war club.

      “I promise not to do anything that would fuel any rumors about my association with Ms. Luna,” Scott said stiffly. “Ours is strictly a business relationship.” That was all that would ever be between them, but he would not—even at Marcus’s insistence—refuse to do the one thing he could do for her, that is, sell her house.

      “See that you don’t. And keep Sunday open for me. I’ve got a group of investors coming down from Houston to look at the development. I think they’ll be good for at least one lot each, maybe more.”

      “I’ll be here,” Scott said. “I’ll let you go now. Goodbye.” He hung up before Marcus could think of any more orders to give him. He sat on the side on the bed, heart thudding hard in his chest, the familiar feeling of wanting to escape almost overwhelming. Drugs had provided that kind of escape once, a floating euphoria that made all his problems disappear.

      But he was stronger than that now. He could cope. He stood and went into the bathroom, where he chose a bottle from the medicine cabinet and shook out a single, small pill. He hated he’d traded one drug dependence for another, but a methamphetamine habit and the subsequent recovery had left him with a lingering anxiety disorder he kept under control with the help of a prescription and a meditation practice the Buddhist director of the treatment