Marilyn Pappano - One True Thing

As soon as the words were out she inwardly grimaced. That was dumb. If she knew little about writing books in general, she knew nothing about writing historical books. The only history she was intimately familiar with was her own, and it had always been fairly innocuous…until six years ago. Then it had gotten interesting. Three years after that it had become movie-of-the-week material. Now it was boring and lonely, but tempered by the certain knowledge that it could all blow up at any moment.

Baseball, her father liked to say, was a game made up of long stretches of tedium broken by brief spurts of excitement. It was an apt description of her life.

“I don’t read much,” Ginger said, “but I always thought it would be cool to write a book. Of course, I just barely squeaked through senior English, and I don’t have a clue what I would write about, and really I don’t think I have what it takes. I can’t even bring myself to write a letter from time to time, so I think a book is pretty much out of the question.”

That was something else Cassidy had learned in her brief “career”—not only was everyone planning to write a book someday, but they equated completing a four-hundred-page novel with writing a one-page letter to Grandma. It was as if they defined write in its simplest form—putting words to paper—and never acknowledged the difference between that and telling a logical, compelling, cohesive story.

She had learned the difference all too well in her past few days at the computer.

Ginger read out the total of her purchases and Cassidy handed over three twenties. She glanced up as Jace moved to her side again, but he wasn’t looking at her. Instead his gaze was on her open wallet. The wallet where a Wisconsin driver’s license was half revealed behind an old photograph. Abruptly she snapped the wallet shut, accepted her change and dropped it, coins and all, into the bottom of her purse.

“See you, Jace,” Ginger said, then added to Cassidy, “Nice meeting you.”

Cassidy murmured something appropriate—she hoped—then followed the bagger toward the door, Jace right behind her. Her jaw was clenched as she waited for him to say something about the license, but when he finally spoke, the subject was harmless.

“You like to fish?”

The relief that rushed over her was enough to weaken her knees. It must have been the photograph he’d seen and not the driver’s license, or surely he would be questioning her about it. He’d never hesitated yet to ask whatever came to mind, and surely a license in a different name from a different state would rouse a curiosity too strong to resist.

“I don’t know,” she replied, hoping her tone was as casual as the question deserved. “I’ve never tried.”

Naturally that wasn’t entirely true.

There had been the time with her dad, when she’d impaled a fish hook in her foot and required a trip to the emergency room to remove it. And the time with her brother, David, when she’d knocked his precious hand-tied lures overboard and he’d tossed her after them. And the time with Phil, trying to impress him by removing the ugly creature she’d caught quite by accident from its hook. It had latched onto her finger the way Liza Beth had claimed Jace’s, and in her resulting hysteria, that time it had been Phil who’d gone overboard. Not surprisingly, none of the three had ever invited her fishing again.

“It’s not a bad way to spend an afternoon. We’ll give it a try sometime…when you don’t mind being distracted.”

She frowned at him and saw he was giving her a sidelong look and grinning. He was entirely too handsome when he grinned, with all the mischievousness of a boy run wild…and all the sexiness of a man full grown. It made her want to blurt, How about now? Thankfully she managed to keep the words inside and politely said, “That sounds like fun.”

And for once, she thought as she climbed into the truck and turned the air-conditioner vents her way on full blast, that was the honest truth.

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