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Excerpt:

He stopped his truck just shy of the front portico and stepped out on the clean concrete drive lined with azalea and rose beds. From there, it was a short walk up three tiers of steps, across a wide porch furnished with white wicker and potted plants to the front door.

An ornate, porcelain bell perched beside the gold door handle, and a horseshoe knocker hung heavily in the door’s center. He chose the knocker.
Instantly, a small woman with frizzy, gray hair cracked the door about eight inches, narrowed her eyes, and scanned him from his Stetson to his new boots, made just for him by Patti-Pie Murphy.

“I’m...” he started to introduce himself.

“I know who you are.” The frizzy haired woman snorted. “Miss Tiffany said I was to keep an eye out for you. Yep, she said I’d know you when I saw you. You probably don’t remember me, seeing as how we never met face to face. But I remember all those nights at Texas Glory when you snuck up the road to see Miss Tiffany, all quiet like. You ain’t changed none, still got that cocky walk. You may as well come on in. I suppose you got to do what you got to do.”

Corey’s thoughts ricocheted around his head as if he’d received an uppercut to the jaw. His confidence of two minutes ago teetered as he stepped through the door the woman widened for his entrance.

“You just remember, Miss Tiffany is a lady. You treat her as such. As for that boy, it’s about time you showed up. He’s a handful, needs his...well, he needs a man to corral him a might. You do right by him too. The library is the door on your left. Miss Tiffany is waiting for you.”

His intentions, clear as fresh water this morning, were now as murky as the liquid in his scum-covered cattle tank.

The sassy woman ambling across the spacious foyer had managed to do what the Texas Correctional Institution had not—intimidate him. More than that, he felt guilty, as if he were late in delivering an apology or something.

After mentally rattling off a few choice words, he removed his hat and headed for the door on his left. He pushed it open with more force than he’d intended and startled the woman seated behind the large, mahogany desk. She rose to her feet and nodded her head in a silent greeting.

She was all elegance and grace, a Texas lady too good for the likes of him. Her daddy’s sentiments echoed through his head.

“Hello, Corey.” Her throaty voice spread over him like warm butter. “I’ve been expecting you.”

The familiarity of her smooth, southern tone pricked, as if barbed, when he remembered how many days and nights he’d lived on just the memory of it. He resented her calm graciousness, her social politeness, and most especially, the unspoken distance imposed in her manner.She had no right treating him like a stranger. The least she could do was fake an ounce of remorse or guilt. A little begging for his forgiveness would be more in order. Did she honestly think he was going to stand there and play lap dog to her princess act? Now was as good a timeas any to set her straight.

“How do you think your social set will take to the news that you passed off my kid as one of their own? I’m thinking it will hit every news channel in four states, maybe more.”

He watched her face flush pink, and then settle back to a pale, translucent ivory. She stepped to the side of the desk and rested a trembling hand on its corner.

“Please come in, Corey. Take a seat. Mrs. Stewart will be bringing coffee any moment. After that, we can talk without interruption.”

Her response proved how much she had changed, inside where it was hard for a man to detect. The girl he remembered would have run for cover at a remark like the one he’d just handed her. This was no girl. She was a mind-numbingly beautiful woman whose warm smile made him feel like a bad-mannered fool. With a small turn of her hand, she indicated one of the leather, wing back chairs in front of the desk. He followed the gesture with his eyes, taking the time to take in the room’s dark, masculine furnishings. It was obvious that this had been her husband’s domain when alive. No woman would set herself against such surroundings by choice. Especially, if she realized that a petite, blonde-haired beauty dressed in yellow pants and white blouse would look like an ornament, a daisy perhaps. He reigned in his errant thoughts.

“Thanks for the offer, but I’m not here to have tea, Princess.”

“It ain’t tea, young man.” The voice came from behind him, and then passed him to sit a serving tray on one of the side tables. “It’s strong black coffee. The kind that’s good for keeping a man’s tongue civil, if you know what I mean.”

Mrs. Stewart arched her brow and gave him a look just like the one his mama had often used when he was a boy. That look was better than a bucket of water for putting his fire out.

“Thank you, Mrs. Stewart,” said Tiffany.

“You’re welcome, Miss Tiffany. I’m sure your gentleman caller will mind his manners and have that coffee you offered him. Isn’t that right, boy?”

Corey scowled at the gray-haired witch and moved to seat himself in one of the chairs offered earlier. He heard the click of the door as it closed behind the witch, a click that sounded a lot like the automatic lock on his prison cell had. How appropriate, he thought. The tough old woman would have made a good yard boss.

“Do you still take cream and sugar in your coffee?” asked Tiffany.

“No.”

“Black it is then,” she said as she handed him his cup.

“Would you like a tea cake? Mrs. Stewart makes them fresh every Sunday. They’re really very good.”

“No.”

He was disappointed when she took her previous seat behind the oversized desk. Why it mattered he didn’t know, and he sure wasn’t going to dig around to find out.

“You’ve changed, Corey. Not in looks, but you carry an intense...”

“Cut the niceties. Say what you mean. I know how I look. Prison has its own way of giving a man a new look. Does the convict persona make you nervous, Mrs. Covington? I suppose it’s not the look you’re used to, but that’s too bad because it’s permanent.”

She didn’t wince; it was going to take more than a surly attitude to shatter her icy veneer. Because of her hands, he knew it was a veneer. She had always clasped her hands together when she was anxious. When she had been his girl, he used to soothe that anxiety by opening her fingers one at a time, kissing them, then kissing a trail up her arm. That was no longer an option. Another fact that shouldn’t have mattered, but did.

“I was going to say, that you carry an intensity you didn’t have growing up. You were always so reckless and carefree. I suppose, after this length of time, it is not surprising that we are little more than strangers.”

How could she sit there and call him a stranger? If she wanted to forget the true nature of their relationship, he was just the man to remind her.

“Princess, you can never be a stranger to me. You want to know why?”

Blue eyes widened with wary caution while her head slowly nodded her assent.

“No man gives a girl her first time in the bed of his pickup and then calls her a stranger. Baby, you’re dreaming if you don’t think I remember every silken inch of you.”

Feminine neck muscles tightened as she tossed her head back, and her shoulders trembled with the effort to control tiny, ragged breaths. Maybe it made him a bully, but watching her veneer visibly crack evened the scales of justice a little in his mind.

“There is no reason to be crude, Corey.”

“You haven’t begun to see crude, Mrs. Covington. If I don’t get some satisfactory answers, what you’ve termed crude is going to sound like your mama’s prayers.”

She froze as if she’d just walked on a rattlesnake. Good, he thought. He wanted her unnerved. Maybe then, she could better understand what a boy of eighteen felt when they shuffled him into the adult population of a Texas prison.