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money,” she murmured absently.
    “Pardon?”
    “You’re out of work, Buck, you can surely understand how hard it is to not have enough money. But we used to have too much of it in this family. Gramps stopped trying when he lost it. And Angela—only new clothes and stereos make her feel secure. My parents were killed on a boat that cost more than I make in ten years. Money…it sours people, confuses them…you can’t know,” she said bitterly. “My husband, too, was destroyed by it. Hal had more money than he knew what to do with. I tried to make our marriage work, but there just wasn’t anything there. It was always solve every problem with money…” She hesitated. “You’re different, Buck. I’m not trying to make something out of what happened in the library, so don’t…worry. I’m not a clinger; I know you’re about to walk out of my life, and that’s fine. But I’d like to tell you…”
    “Loren—”
    The gravelly voice sounded disturbed, but she thought she understood. “No. I don’t want to embarrass you. But you’re real, Buck. You’re not corrupted by that moneyed world… Sometimes I feel like a character in a Tennessee Williams play, trying to keep up this house when I know I can’t, caring for Gramps and Angela—”
    “Stop it, Loren.”
    She stood on tiptoe and kissed his mouth softly, barely noticing the sudden rigidity in his shoulders. “You haven’t got money, and I love you for that. I don’t want a love affair, and I haven’t the time or energy for it if I did. Just thank you, Buck. I needed your particular brand of man this evening, and you came through better than anyone I’ve known in a very long time.”
    They had reached the end of the driveway now, and she extricated herself from his hold.
    “You’re dismissing me,” Buck said, his tone almost amused.
    She nodded, smiling softly. “Good night, Buck.”
     
    The next morning Loren pulled on an old pair of jeans and an equally old dark sweatshirt and tied a bandeau around her hair. The thrilling agenda for this Saturday included washing windows and scrubbing the kitchen floor. All morning as she rubbed at the windowpanes with cleaning fluid, she kept seeing her reflection, the wildly curling hair around the bandeau, the raggedy shirt, her face a smooth cameo without makeup, all fresh-eyed and smiling. She looked ten years old. She didn’t care. The smiles just kept coming, over absolutely nothing.
    She didn’t expect to see her giant stranger again. She didn’t want to see him. But that bizarre one-time encounter had left her feeling strangely lighthearted, as though her responsibilities had suddenly diminished, and her problems had become a little less monumental than they’d been the day before.
    By one o’clock, she had a rag in her hand and a bucket of soapy water on the kitchen floor. Her jeans were damp at the knees when she stopped working for a minute and inadvertently glanced out the kitchen window. Frowning, she saw a gray pickup pull into the yard with Leeds printed on the side. Buck stepped out of the truck, wearing coveralls and carrying a package in his hands, and stalked toward the house with all the determination of the dominant male bulldozer that he was.
    All Loren’s lazy smiles of the morning abruptly died. As he reached the door, a kaleidoscope of emotions rushed through her, none of which she quite knew what to do with. “Buck, what on earth are you doing here? I hope you didn’t steal the truck?” Loren accosted him as she half opened the door. His eyes turned that dark jade she’d seen when he was angry in the bar yesterday; he was staring at the bucket on the floor and then at her ragged blouse and damp knees.
    “Obviously, I must have borrowed it for the day.” She frowned, lips compressed, not opening the door any farther. He gave a sigh that sounded like a pent-up north wind, waiting for her to let him in.
    “Look,” she started carefully, “you must have misunderstood. I