"Don't get me wrong," he said as we lounged, my feet resting on his chest. "I like having s.e.x at your place just as much as I like having s.e.x at mine. But is there a reason you don't ask me over for nons.e.xual reasons?"

I chewed my lip, considering. The truth was I was afraid of extending too many invitations Monroe's way because I didn't want to come across as one of those needy divorcees he was so afraid of. I figured letting him do the inviting kept me from overstepping his precious boundaries. And I liked having my own s.p.a.ce. It was sort of like having my own little tree-house, when I wanted to be alone, I could pull up the rope ladder and hide out. Besides, Monroe had better DVDs at his place.

But letting him know that I'd put that much thought into this probably would have weirded him out. So, instead, I said, "Well, there is the chance you'll find that voodoo altar in my closet..."

"Nice," he snorted, flicking my ankle lightly, just enough to tickle.

"What happened to 'You may be my favorite person ever because you don't attach strings to s.e.x'?" I asked, flailing my feet out of his reach.

"One, that's a pretty broad paraphrase. And two, maybe I would like to attach a string or two. Like a meal or a movie or a meal."

I rolled my eyes. "You don't want to cook your own dinner, do you?"

He shook his head. "I'm not a proud man."

Since Monroe didn't give me a laundry list of ingredients, food groups, and regional cuisines he refused to consume, I decided to stretch my culinary muscles a bit with a Mexican feast of enchiladas with a three-pepper sauce. Judging by the way Monroe clutched at his throat and ran for my sink after taking his first bite, I may have overdone it a bit.

"Are you okay?" I cried as he downed his third gla.s.s of water.

A mile-wide grin split Monroe's sweaty, glistening face. "That was awesome! Hit me again."

"I don't know if I should," I said hesitantly, sc.r.a.ping the pepper sauce off of my own portion. Darn Mama and her unreliable "dash of this, pinch of that" recipes.

"I can't even feel the burn anymore. I think my tongue has gone into shock," he a.s.sured me. "I haven't had Mexican food like this since the roach coach that parked outside our precinct office got closed down by the health department."

"Have you stopped to think maybe comments like that are why I don't invite you over?" I asked him. "Would you do me a favor and take a preemptive Pepcid or something before you explode? They're by my laptop."

"You keep your antacids by your laptop?"

"That's usually where I'm sitting when I need antacids." I speared a forkful of nonsaucy enchilada and pointed my fork at him. "I've seen the bobblehead collection you keep by your laptop for inspiration, buddy. Don't judge me."

I heard Monroe shuffle around papers on my desk, looking for the illogically small medicine bottle. "Hey, Lace, what is this? 'My hope for this holiday season is for Tony to develop a debilitating case of ringworm."

Oh, c.r.a.p.

Monroe was holding a stack of the sample newsletters I'd been putting together from Maya's case studies. He read aloud, "Jordan insisted that we both shower before we had s.e.x, otherwise, he couldn't 'rise to the occasion.' And then, of course, we showered after we had s.e.x. After a while I figured out that s.e.x with Jordan wasn't worth all that showering. The environmental impact alone was shameful. Lacey, what are these?"

"It's just a ..." I found that I was embarra.s.sed to try to explain it to Monroe, which couldn't have been a good sign. I took a deep breath. "Maya, the girl with the cranial accessories, she thinks we can make a killing publishing newsletters like the one I wrote about Mike for angry divorcees across the country. People give me their information, I write the newsletters for them, they mail them out. Maya's already got enough orders to keep us busy for a while. The profit projections -"

"Have you lost your mind?" Monroe demanded.

"I'm not in love with your tone right now," I told him.

"Why would you want to do this?"

Monroe's voice seemed to rise in decibel level with every sentence. The mirth of just a few moments before had completely evaporated. I tried to choose my words carefully, keeping my tone as even as possible. "Because apparently I'm really good at it. And there are all of these women out there who need me. They're angry and humiliated and hurt and they need a voice. And that's something I can give them. I can help them and get paid handsomely to do it."

"And how much good did your newsletter do for you?" he asked. "Did it make you happier? Make you feel better? Did it do anything but make your situation worse?"

"It brought me up here. It brought me to you, so it couldn't have been all bad."

"What if some woman sends you information, you send one of these things out, and it turns out she's wrong? That her husband wasn't cheating and she's sent out an announcement calling him a 'd.i.c.kless wonder'?"

"Maya has a legal waiver that would protect us if that happened," I said, realizing how lame that sounded even as the words left my lips.

"Well, I'm sure you'll sleep better at night, knowing that you helped destroy a marriage, but you're protected."

"Why are you so angry with me? Why the h.e.l.l do you care so much whether I tinker with a stupid writing project? How is this so different from writing a book?"

"Writing a book doesn't drag other people down with you. You did your damage with your newsletter. You accepted it and I thought you'd moved on. But now you want to repeat the same mistake over and over again. How could you be happy wallowing in anger and bitterness every day, feeding into people's need to hurt the ones they used to love? What kind of person would do that?"

It was the disdainful look on his face that did it. The mad flutter of my heartbeat and my immediate instinct to make it right, apologize, take it back. The curl of his lip and tone in his voice that said I was "in trouble." I'd seen that look on my father's face, heard the tone from Mike. I did not need another man supervising me or protecting me from myself.

"I'm sorry, am I only supposed to write what you say I should write?" I asked, rising from my chair. "This is none of your business, Monroe. Who the h.e.l.l do you think you are?"

"So what I have to say doesn't count?" h demanded. "It doesn't matter that I think it is a huge mistake?"

"I didn't say that. I just don't need you telling me what to do, what's an acceptable way to live my life and what's not. I've already had that. I don't want another husband. I don't even want a relationship. That's not what this is. This is - I don't know what it is. But what we're doing doesn't give you the right to boss me around."

"So this isn't a relationship to you?"

"No. This is great," I insisted. "This is exactly what I need right now. Spending time with someone who is funny and nice and really good in bed. No strings. No complications. You're a guy. I thought you'd be thrilled that I don't want to get all emotionally involved! I thought we had some sort of unspoken agreement."

As soon as the words left my mouth, I wanted to swallow my tongue. I sounded just like Mike, seeing the relationship the way I wanted to, d.a.m.n the other person's feelings. Taking what I wanted and giving little back.

"How exactly is that not supposed to insult me?" he asked softly. He looked genuinely hurt, which made me want to apologize. But the damage was done. Anything I said now would just sound like I was placating him. Instead, I balled up my fists and concentrated on the pressure of my fingernails digging into my palms. "I haven't asked anything from you, Lace, because I know you're not ready to give it. But you can't just declare that this isn't real because you don't want to put a label on it. And you're only going to be able to use Mike as an excuse for so long. Don't make me pay for his mistakes." He shook a handful of the sample newsletters. "Don't make all of the men in America pay because your husband was a philandering idiot."

He dropped the papers on my desk and headed for the door.

"Monroe, can't we just sit down and talk about this?" I asked, gesturing to his chair, his empty plate. "Don't just walk out."

"I think I've lost my appet.i.te," he said and slammed the door behind him.

22 * Flashing the Harvest Moon.

The Harvest Moon Festival was the only truly community-oriented event in which the citizens of Buford partic.i.p.ated. There were plenty of summer events for the tourists: the Strawberry Festival, the Fourth of July Jamboree, the Annual Redneck Regatta. But the Harvest Moon party, held on the second Sat.u.r.day of October, was something the locals did just for themselves. I suspected it was to celebrate the departure of the annoying summer people.

The festival stemmed from an annual effort to help the community's poor prepare for winter. Only now, instead of hunting deer and turkeys to stock underprivileged pantries, local residents helped charities by funneling them cash through carnival games, rides, and truly unhealthy food.

One silence-filled week after our disastrous dinner, Monroe stuck the flyer for the festival on my screen door as a sort of apology gesture, along with my own little pocket recorder for taking notes while I ran. I know that a crumpled, badly formatted sheet of neon orange paper and an electronic gadget shouldn't bring a grown woman to tears, but being released from my own personal guilt-h.e.l.l was so much better than getting flowers or jewelry.

When I speculated that the world wouldn't end just because someone was mad at me, I was wrong. It did feel like the end of the world knowing that Monroe was angry with me. I was more depressed, more emotional, than I had been after leaving Mike. Food had no taste. Nothing I read, nothing on TV appealed to me. All I could do was write and sleep. I wrote pages and pages about Laurie's heartbreak, her hope at meeting Mac, the sheriff of the tiny town where she settled. I felt like I had damaged something important, and somehow writing it down would keep me from losing it entirely.

I must have started for my front door a hundred times, holding the k.n.o.b and trying to find exactly the right words to tell Monroe that I was sorry. But some unlikely combination of shame and pride kept me from opening it. Yes, I felt bad for making Monroe feel unappreciated or cheap. But I couldn't help but resent the idea that he was practically commanding me not to write the newsletters, even if he thought he had my best interests in mind. I'd fought too hard to start making my own decisions. I wasn't ready to hand over proxy votes just yet. I was afraid of ending up right back where I started.

That ugly orange flyer was like a pardon from prison. The minute I found it, I practically ran across the yard, even though I had no idea what I was going to say. How exactly did this work? Did I speak first? Did he? How did you apologize for half of an argument? Before I could knock, Monroe opened the door.

He cleared his throat. "I'm sorry."

Well, that was easy.

"I'm sorry, too," I said. "I shouldn't have -"

"I'll go first," Monroe said.

"No, I should go -"

"Lacey, just let me," he said. "I shouldn't have come down so hard on you. I can't tell you what to do. I want you to find your voice as a writer and ... I guess I took it a little too personally when you started working on something else. I still think the newsletters are a horrible idea and that you could do so much more with your talents. But I could have said so without hurting your feelings -"

"Well, you had a point and sometimes, obviously, I don't see things unless I'm smacked over the head with them," I admitted. "I'm going to rethink the whole letter thing. If it's going to cause problems between us ... I think I just got overexcited at the prospect of something I could do well. There aren't a whole lot of tangible things that I'm good at -"

"I don't want you to think that way," Monroe said, interrupting me. "I'm sorry if I've been coming off as condescending or overbearing -"

"I'm sorry I called you all those horrible, vile names," I told him.

His brow furrowed. "You didn't call me names."

"Well, you weren't here for it, but, trust me, I did. And I'm sorry. Right now, besides my brother, you're the best friend I have."

"Same for me. If s.e.x is going to complicate that, maybe we can cool down for a while."

"Whoa, whoa," I exclaimed, holding my hands up. "Let's not get crazy."

A wide grin split Monroe's face, his relief palpable. "Oh, thank G.o.d, because I was totally bluffing."

We spent most of the evening apologizing. In a baby step toward a more normal relationship, Monroe suggested we go to the festival. He said it combined his two great loves, deep-fried Twinkies and Tilt-A-Whirls.

He was a deep and complex man.

The truth was, I needed to get out of the cabin. Even without the Monroe-based guilt weighing on me, I was spending so much time on the computer, I was starting to get a laptop-shaped burn mark across my thighs. It wasn't just the ma.n.u.script marathons. Despite my a.s.sertions that I would rethink the letters, I was still tinkering with Maya's case studies. She sent me a new batch every few days, each time offering me increasingly attractive salary packages.

The stories made my experience seem like a particularly bland episode of The Brady Bunch. There was a woman named Alice whose husband had moved out of their house one T-shirt at a time for a month until there was almost nothing left of him in their home. He'd moved in with a co-worker who he'd been working on "projects" with for the last six months. Alice had even called her his work wife. What embarra.s.sed Alice the most was that she hadn't noticed anything was wrong. Her husband had removed everything that was important to him out of the house, and she'd missed it. So I wrote a "change of address" announcement for the husband.

Please forward all mail to Carl Finley at his new residence at 3379 Jackson Street, where he will be living with Robin, the woman he's been sleeping with for the last six months. Most of you will be relieved to know that you don't have to help Carl move because he slowly but surely moved his stuff out of the house over the last month so his darling wife wouldn't notice anything was amiss. While Alice was busy calling hospitals to see f her husband had been injured in a car accident, Carl sent his mother to tell Alice that her marriage was over ... and that she wanted her heirloom china back.

On an unrelated note, Alice will be hosting a bonfire this weekend.

Carl left behind his precious collection of Elvis memorabilia.

I'm not going to say the money wasn't a motivating factor or me. But frankly, it was easier to vent on unfaithful husbands than to keep building my story. And it made me feel helpful, I guess. Like I was doing some sort of service for these women, helping them. And it made me feel a little less crazy for doing what I'd done.

On the other side of my professional conundrum, Monroe was already preparing me for "selling myself" as a writer, which sounded uncomfortably similar to prost.i.tution. He said the most important step in getting published was finding a good agent. He'd offered to send my stuff to people from his agency, but that made me uncomfortable. I didn't want people in the publishing industry doing me favors just because I happened to be sleeping with a bestselling author. That felt like something Beebee would do. I wanted to know that my writing was genuinely good, that it might sell. So I refused his help. Monroe lovingly called me "a stubborn pain in the a.s.s," but he also gave me the address of an internet database of literary agencies so I could find my own. He said it took him a year and forty-nine rejections before he found an agent. I hadn't even finished the d.a.m.n thing yet and it seemed like it was going to be more work to sell it than it was to write it. The thought of it exhausted me. And I just wasn't sure if I was up to being rejected again and again.

Monroe talked about writing as if it were something that just happened, like he sat down at the computer and the words just appeared somehow. He acted like he didn't have anything to do with it.

"It's like these people are living in my head, telling me their stories," he said as we traversed the festival fairway.

"Some people consider that a mental illness," I told him, sipping homemade apple cider, which I suspected might have been made in an old oil drum.

As much as I enjoyed my little hermit's retreat, it was nice to be out among people, even if most of them were five-year-olds whining for balloons. I liked walking through the crowd with Monroe, his hand at the small of my back, making me feel linked, but not led. n.o.body seemed to recognize me with my Wildcats cap pulled low over my face, and if they did, they didn't care enough to say anything. The air had just enough nip to it to make me appreciate the smell of churning peanut oil and wood-smoke. I had eaten my weight in kettle corn, lost five dollars at the dart booth, and had bought a ridiculous frog-shaped paperweight made of painted rocks. Overall, I considered that a productive afternoon.

"And lately, my antagonist doesn't seem to be speaking to me," he said. "I want the reader to be creeped out by her actions, but I don't want to make her a caricature. I want her to be human, but not sympathetic."

"So basically you're afraid of alienating your female readers with psycho crushes on you," I mused.

He nodded. "Yes."

"Well, the best way to get a woman to dislike a character would be to give your cop a nice, normal girlfriend, then have your crazy girl do something that endangers her, but doesn't actually hurt her. Girlfriend is separated from cop either because she's afraid or he breaks up with her to protect her, then by chapter twenty, they're reunited."

"You're trying to make me into a romance writer, aren't you?" he said, narrowing his eyes at me.

"It wouldn't hurt to chick-ify your books by about ten percent."

"I'll take that into consideration," he said.

"It's flattering that my opinion matters to you, despite the fact that I've only read one of your books," I told him.

"Wait, I thought you were reading Drunk Tank Duets?"

"I knew you'd catch that." I grinned.

"You're not nearly as funny as you think you are," he told me. "Well, what about you? How goes Laurie's search for personal-fulfillment-slash-personal-renewal?"

"It's progressing. I'm still having a hard time reconciling the idea that other people might read this. There are things that I want to say about marriage, about husbands, about s.e.x, but I keep editing myself because I'm afraid of offending people or grossing them out."

"Lacey, I'm pretty sure you've already crossed that bridge," Monroe said. "I don't think there's much you can write at this point that would shock people."

"Good point," I admitted, frowning at him when he dug his hand. into my kettle corn. "Hey, hey, popcorn thief!"

"You need to learn to share," he said, popping the oversweet popcorn into his mouth.

"You need to learn to ask," I told him, giggling as he reached around my back to take another handful from the bag.

Over his shoulder, I saw Hap Borchard coming our way, sipping from a large blue bottle of homemade root beer. He saw me, smiled, and waved.

"Okay," I breathed and tried to talk without moving my lips as we approached. "Be polite, but not your normal engaging self. If he starts to tell a story, I will fake an anaphylactic reaction to the cider and you carry me to the infirmary tent."

"You're a.s.suming I can carry you after all that kettle corn," Monroe muttered, dodging when I reached out to smack him.

"Nice to see you out and about, Miz Lacey," Hap Borchard said.

"Mr. Borchard!" I exclaimed in a sweet tone that had Monroe double-taking. "It's nice to see you, too. Is Mrs. Borchard here with you today?"

"She's over at the craft booths, buying some geegaw for the yard. Lord knows we don't have near enough concrete critters on our lawn."