She heard a truck go along the road, and glanced out to see a big black pickup truck pass by. So he was back. Their closest neighbor was Gabriel Brandon. Michelle knew who he was.

She’d seen him for the first time two years ago, the last summer she’d spent with her grandfather and grandmother before their deaths. They’d lived in this very house, the one her father had inherited. She’d gone to town with her grandfather to get medicine for a sick calf. The owner of the store had been talking to a man, a very handsome man who’d just moved down the road from them.

He was very tall, muscular, without it being obvious, and he had the most beautiful liquid black eyes she’d ever seen. He was built like a rodeo cowboy. He had thick, jet-black hair and a face off of a movie poster. He was the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen in her life.

He’d caught her staring at him and he’d laughed. She’d never forgotten how that transformed his hard face. It had melted her. She’d flushed and averted her eyes and almost run out of the store afterward. She’d embarrassed herself by staring. But he was very good-looking, after all—he must be used to women staring at him.

She’d asked her grandfather about him. He hadn’t said much, only that the man was working for Eb Scott, who owned a ranch near Jacobsville. Brandon was rather mysterious, too, her grandfather had mused, and people were curious about him. He wasn’t married. He had a sister who visited him from time to time.

Michelle’s grandfather had chided her for her interest. At fifteen, he’d reminded her, she was much too young to be interested in men. She’d agreed out loud. But privately she thought that Mr. Brandon was absolutely gorgeous, and most girls would have stared at him.

By comparison, Roberta’s friend, Bert, always looked greasy, as if he never washed his hair. Michelle couldn’t stand him. He looked at her in a way that made her skin crawl and he was always trying to touch her. She’d jerked away from him once, when he’d tried to ruffle her hair, and he made a big joke of it. But his eyes weren’t laughing.

He made her uncomfortable, and she tried to stay out of his way. It would have been all right if he and Roberta didn’t flaunt their affair. Michelle came home from school one Monday to find them on the sofa together, half-dressed and sweaty. Roberta had almost doubled up with laughter at the look she got from her stepdaughter as she lay half across Bert, wearing nothing but a lacy black slip.