“The poor mouse was.”

“Yeah. He must’ve gone peacefully, though. Saved me from having to trap him. Or get a cat.”

She tilted her head and took him in from his hair to the scuffed toes of his shoes. “You don’t strike me as a cat person.”

“I’m not. But I’m not a mouse person, either.”

She smiled.

“Which are you?” he asked. “Cat person or dog person?”

“I’m fonder of dogs.”

“I haven’t seen one around.”

“Jasper is allergic.”

“Too bad.” He turned more toward her, tipped his head to one side, and gave her the same assessing treatment she’d given him. Nodding toward her glass of wine, he said, “Red over white?”

“Yes.”

“Tropical climes or cold?”

“I was brought up in Charleston.”

“Tropical then.”

“Right.”

“Star Wars or Star Trek?”

“Star Wars.”

He stroked his chin. “Let’s see, what else? I already know chocolate over vanilla. Land over sea.”

“My turn. I know very little about you, not even the basics. You don’t talk much about yourself.”

He spread his arms wide. “My life is an open book.” He glanced across the lawn toward the apartment. “So to speak.”

“Will your novel reveal aspects of you?”

“Undoubtedly. It’ll be subconscious, but some of me will probably sneak in there.”

“Then in order for me to know you better, I’ll have to read it.”

He arched an eyebrow. “You want to know me better?”

Realizing she’d stepped into a trap of her own making, she repositioned herself in the rocker as though reestablishing boundaries. She took a sip of wine. “Yesterday on the boat, you were stingy with your answers to Elaine’s questions.”

“Hard to get a word in edgewise when talking to Elaine.” He hoped that would put her onto another track. It didn’t.

“See? That’s a perfect example of how you deflect any discussion about yourself. Why?”

He raised his shoulders. “There’s nothing interesting to tell.”

“I don’t believe you, Drex.”

“Believe it. Even I am bored with me.”

She smiled at his quip, but she wasn’t dissuaded. “Let’s begin with where you grew up.”

“If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me.”

“You were raised by wolves.”

He laughed. “Not quite. But actually, the guess isn’t too far off.”

She raised her wine stem to her mouth and took another sip, holding his gaze, letting him know with her eyes alone that she was going to persist until he told her.

He weighed the risks, thought to hell with it. He would go for broke. “Alaska.”

She lowered her wineglass, her surprise evident. “You were born there?”

“No. We moved up there before I turned three. I stayed through high school.”

“It’s a long way from there to here.”

He snuffled a laugh. “Longer than you can imagine.”

“I wasn’t talking about the geographic distance.”

He met her gaze. “Neither was I.” Their stare held, and he was the first to look away. He shook the remaining ice cubes, drained the bourbon, and set his glass on the table. He thought that would be the end of it, but Talia wasn’t finished yet.

“Where did you live?” she asked. “The town.”

“Nowhere you ever heard of, and never for very long in any one place. We were migratory.”

“What did your parents do for a living?”

“My dad worked on the pipeline. That’s why we moved a lot. We lived in some places so remote, I’m not sure they were on the map.”

“Life couldn’t have been easy.”

“Wasn’t. Hard work. Long hours. Isolation.”

She looked at him as though expecting him to continue and expand on that. When he didn’t, she said, “Was there anything to recommend that lifestyle?”

He gave her a wry grin. “For dad? Hard work. Long hours. Isolation. And the pay was good.”

“He left you an inheritance. Jasper told me.”

He drew his feet in and leaned toward her. Squinting one eye, he said, “It seems I’ve been the topic of a lot of conversations between you and Jasper. Any particular reason why?”

“No. Just curious.”

“Huh. I rarely arouse that much curiosity in people.”

She squirmed in her seat, raised her wineglass as though to drink from it, then changed her mind. “Based on your description of your upbringing, it sounds like a very male-dominated environment.”

“It was.”

“Your mother was okay with that? With the frequent moves, the isolation?”

He gave her a long look before saying quietly, “My mother never set foot in Alaska.”

Her lips parted with surprise, and she seemed about to ask another question, when Jasper’s voice came from behind them. “The minute my back was turned.”

Chapter 8

Jasper’s voice startled Talia. What was left of the wine in her glass sloshed as she left the rocking chair to meet her husband halfway. Although Jasper’s tone hadn’t been one hundred percent teasing, she responded as though it had been.

“You caught us red-handed.” She took the grocery sack from him and kissed his cheek. “Thank you for making the run.”

“You’re welcome.” He returned her kiss. Then, “Drex,” he said, smiling and motioning toward the empty highball glass on the table. “Looks like you need a refill.”

“I wouldn’t say no to one. Let me pour yours while I’m at it.”

“Thank you.” Just then the microwave dinged. Jasper turned toward the kitchen. “What’s that?”

Talia laughed. “It’s called a microwave. Great invention. Not the abomination you’ve called it.”

“That’s a matter of opinion.”

“Well, you’ll be able to form another opinion soon. Drex has cooked the corn.”

Drex poured Jasper and himself each a bourbon, then joined him and Talia in the kitchen, where they were making final preparations for the meal. With the same amount of fanfare as he had used to put the corn in the microwave, he pulled on a pair of oven mitts and demonstrated how to get the ears out of the husks.

“Whack off the end with the silk.” He severed it from the cob with one hard chop with a butcher knife and had a bloodthirsty desire to plunge it into Jasper’s heart. “Hold it upside down by the stalk. Annnnnd, out it slides, clean as a whistle.”

Talia applauded. “I’ll get the butter.”

She set the small dining table on the porch and placed lit citronella candles around. Jasper grilled the burger patties on a smoker that probably cost more than Drex’s car.

Jasper kept one eye on the burger patties, the other on Drex, following his every move, which made Drex wonder if he’d given away his increased antagonism. He decided to test the waters. Drink in one hand, the other in his front pants pocket, he strolled over and joined his host at the grill.