Carolina Moon

thick. “Nothing. Dwight’s mistaken. I’ll go get the box.”
    “Don’t know why she’s so hell-bent to keep it secret,” Lissy commented, when Tory rushed into the storeroom. “After all, it’s not like either of them’s married or anything. Of course,” she added with a smirk, “I guess the idea she’s rolling on the sheets with Cade after being back here less than a month doesn’t go with that quiet, proper-lady attitude she’s painting herself with.”
    “Oh?” Cade’s business was Cade’s business, Faith told herself. But she’d be damned if she’d let this little cat claw at him. “Don’t quiet, proper ladies have sex?” With a viciously bright smile, she tapped a finger on Lissy’s belly. “I guess that bump you got there’s from eating too much chocolate.”
    “I’m a married woman.”
    “You weren’t when you and Dwight were bouncing around in the backseat of the secondhand Camaro his daddy bought him when he lettered in track.”
    “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Faith, you did plenty of bouncing of your own back then.”
    “Exactly. That’s why I’m damned careful where I aim my stone if I get an urge to throw one.” She signed her check with a flourish, then picked up the mate to her new earring.
    “All I’m saying is that for somebody who’s barely back in Progress and who’s been doing God knows what all these years, she sure has latched on to a Lavelle mighty fast.”
    “Nobody latches on to a Lavelle until we want them to.” But she was going to think about this. She was going to think about it good and hard.
    Tory was tempted to close up as soon as she nudged her two unexpected customers out the door. But that would have thrown her off schedule, and given Lissy’s foolish gossip too much importance.
    She worked on her stock another three hours, systematically pricing, logging, and arranging. The manual labor and the tedium of paperwork kept her from brooding.
    But the drive home gave her ample opportunity.
    This was not the way she intended to establish herself in Progress again. She wasn’t going to tolerate, not for one minute, being the focus of town gossip. The way to quash it, she told herself, was to ignore it, to rise above it.
    And to keep her distance from Cade.
    None of that would cause her any problem at all.
    She was used to ignoring wagging tongues, and over matters a great deal more vital than some trumped-up romance. She certainly didn’t have to spend any time with Cade Lavelle. She barely had, in any case. A couple of meals, a movie or two, maybe a drive. All harmless occupations where they’d just happened to go together.
    From now on, she’d just go alone.
    And that, she thought, was that.
    It might have been, if she hadn’t spotted his truck at the edge of a field.
    She told herself to drive by. Really, there was no point in stopping, no reason to discuss it. It would be much more sensible to continue home and let the entire foolish matter die a natural death.
    And she kept seeing the hungry, predatory gleam in Lissy’s eyes.
    She jerked the wheel, pulled to the side of the road where the grass was choppy and thick. She was just going to mention it, that was all. Just mention that Cade should shut the hell up and stop talking about her with his idiot buddies. This wasn’t high school, damn it.
    Piney Cobb took a long, contemplative drag from the last Marlboro in his pack. He’d watched the station wagon swerve to the shoulder, watched the woman—damn if it wasn’t the little Bodeen girl, all grown up—start her march to the field, and he kept watching as she aimed her feet between the rows and kept on coming.
    Beside him, Cade stood studying the day’s work and the progress of the crop. Boy had funny ideas if you asked him, but those funny ideas were working. It was none of his never mind, anyway. He got paid all the same whether he sprayed hell out of the crop, or babied it with cow shit and ladybugs.
    “Could use another good rain like we had the other night,” Cade mused.
    “Could.” Piney scratched his grizzled chin, pursed his lips. “What you got here’s a good three inches higher than the traditional fields.”
    “Organic cotton grows faster,” Cade said absently. “Chemicals stunt growth.”
    “Yeah, so you’ve said.” And so, despite Piney’s doubts, it had been proven true. It made him think maybe, all in all, college educations weren’t all bullshit.
    Not that he’d say so right out loud. But it was