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his bed every night. He had been married to Edith for ten years, and for the first four he’d wondered if she had emasculated him completely with her position of power in their marriage. Then he had renewed his affair with Arlene, right after her second divorce. It had started out as nothing but a good time for both of them. Somewhere along the way, they had gotten serious.
    They’d been secret lovers when they were teenagers, but he had known he could never marry her. They were from different sides of the Chickasaw River. His parents would never have accepted a girl like Arlene. Now he wished he had told his parents and the whole town to go to hell. He wished that he’d had the balls to defy his family. If they had married and left Noble’s Crossing twenty years ago, Arlene’s two kids would be his, and they wouldn’t have to sneak around to be together.
    There were times when he thought he really had the guts to ask Edith for a divorce, but then he would remember all her beautiful money. The old bat would chew him up and spit him out in little pieces if he ever left her, especially for someone like Arlene Vickery Cash Motes Dothan, a three-time divorcee who came from the other side of the river.
    For now, he was trapped in a loveless, childless marriage. He would have to wait a little longer, until he had enough money stashed away so he, Arlene and her two kids could leave Noble’s Crossing and never look back. By the time Edith found out about what he had done, it would be too late for her to do anything about it.
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    Driving along Magnolia Avenue in broad daylight for the whole world to see, Johnny Mack wondered if he was a fool. His last memory of Rich Man’s Land, as the locals often called this area, had stuck in his mind for fifteen years. As much as he had tried to forget everything and everyone associated with Noble’s Crossing, she had been the one and only thing he’d never been able to forget. She had saved his life that night—the night some good ole boys, headed by Buddy Lawler, had beaten him senseless behind the Nobles’ house, tossed him into the Chickasaw River and left him for dead.
    He wondered if she still lived on Magnolia Avenue. Had she gone home to her mother after the divorce? Of all the women he had known in Noble’s Crossing, of all the women who had played a part in his life back then, it never ceased to amaze him that Lane Noble was the one who haunted him to this day.
    Not Sharon Hickman, despite the friendship and hot sex they had shared. Not grande dame Edith Graham, who had bedded him as an act of revenge against her husband. And not even Mary Martha Graham, with all her pale strawberry blond beauty and her heartbreaking sadness.
    Why Lane Noble? Lane Noble Graham. The mother of a boy who might be his son.
    She had been a smart, quiet girl with the kind of looks a guy wouldn’t notice. But he had noticed her. He’d noticed how different she was from her friends, those snobby little blue-blooded debutantes. When around their social set, the others never had acknowledged their acquaintance with him, although sooner or later he had fucked them all. But Lane, whom he’d never touched, always had a shy smile and a warm hello for him.
    The night Kent Graham had stood on the sidelines, watching while Buddy Lawler and his cohorts beat the hell out of him, Johnny Mack had known in his gut that they meant to kill him. And he would have died that rainy September night if shy, sweet little Lane Noble hadn’t found him on the riverbank, after he had dragged himself out of the cold, deadly water.
    Johnny Mack slowed briefly in front of the Noble home, a house built before the Civil War and occupied by the Noble family for six generations. He had spent three days and nights in that house, fifteen years ago. Lane had hidden him away, nursed him back from near death and given him the only good memories he had of Noble’s Crossing.
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