“I didn’t realize I was quite so repulsive, Gret,” she said. “So sorry you had to suffer.”

Gretchen sighed and wiped her eyes with her fingers. Then she opened the fridge—ever entitled—and took out a bottle of wine and poured herself a glass. “Want one?” she asked.

“Sure,” Posey answered, sitting at the table. Shilo flopped at her feet with a groan and offered his belly, which she rubbed with her foot.

“So, here’s the thing,” Gretchen said quietly, handing Posey a glass of wine. “When I finally found something that was good and exciting and fresh… I mean, I can’t tell you how it felt, the first time Dante kissed me, Posey. Like the whole world was new. You have no idea.”

“Oh, I do.” At Gretchen’s dark look, she added, “Not with Dante, though. I never— We never had a real connection.”

“When I found out you were with him first, Posey, I just…lost it. I just felt like… I don’t know. The runner-up. Again.” She paused. “I’m sorry I outed you to Max and Stacia.”

“On my birthday,” Posey added.

Gret sighed. “Yeah. Bad timing.” She took another sip of wine. “It’s just been hard,” Gretchen whispered, tears falling once more. “My life came crashing down around me, and coming back here, seeing you so…adored, your parents, the boys, that chubby kid—”

“Brianna.”

“Whatever. You’re lucky, Posey. You love your job, everyone likes you, and you have that god in your bed at night.” She blew her nose.

“Actually, we broke up,” Posey said.

Gretchen’s face brightened. “Really?”

“Don’t look happy, you pain in the ass.”

Gret grimaced. “Sorry. I am, Posey. He seemed like he really liked you.”

“Well, not enough, I guess.”

Gretchen’s perfect nose wrinkled. “Your supper’s burning,” she said.

Sure enough, smoke was coming out of the oven. “Crap,” Posey muttered, looking in. Dang, she’d forgotten to take off the plastic wrap.

Gretchen grinned. “You said you didn’t want help,” she said. “Don’t worry. I’ll whip something up.”

A half-hour later, Posey was eating the best omelet of her life—herbs and some exotic cheese left over from Gret’s month here—laughing as her cousin told a story of her own cooking disasters on the air. “No wonder that stupid show didn’t get any ratings,” Gretchen said thoughtfully. “I just don’t think America really wants to know how to deep-fry pork rinds.”

“More for us,” Posey said. “Even if they do take ten years off your life per serving.”

Gretchen smiled. Then she gave Posey a long look. “Think we can be friends? Even if you are a weird little junkyard dog who dresses like a man?”

Posey smiled. “You bet, Gret. Even if you are a pretentious diva obsessed with her own boobs.”

They clinked glasses and sealed the deal.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

“DAD? ARE YOU OKAY?”

Liam looked up from the strut he was installing. “Oh. Hi, Nicole.”

His daughter didn’t come down to the garage much…certainly not since the cold war that began when he grounded her. The past two weeks had been filled with Nicole either ignoring him or whining that, seriously, he had to lift the ban on Facebook, texting, cell phone and friends, which only made him more and more tense.

His daughter gave him that baffled look she’d perfected around age twelve. “Dad, I’ve been standing here for, like, ten minutes.” Her voice echoed off the walls of the garage.

“Sorry. What do you need?”

“I just thought we could hang out.”

He looked down, not sure he wanted her to know how much he’d missed her. “That’d be great.” Why the lessening of hostilities, he had no idea, but such was the way of the teenager. The knot that had been living in his gut lately loosened. “You hungry?”

“Not for any of that crap you have in the vending machine.” She gave him a pitying look—fathers, such idiots—and took an apple out of her backpack, along with a thick red book and a notebook.

“Geometry?” he asked.

“Physics. It’s easy, though.”

“Because you’re smart.”

“Thanks, old man.” She smiled—Emma’s smile—and it caught him in the heart. When Nicole had her first fever at four months old, she would only sleep if he rocked her, and even so, only in fifteen-minute installments. On the third day, Emma had come in from school, seen them both dozing in the rocking chair and said, “That baby is holding you hostage.”

Hadn’t stopped since.

Liam had received the letter from the Tates’ lawyer this week, gone to Allan Linkletter, who assured him that the odds of him losing full-time custody of his child, who was almost old enough to be emancipated in the eyes of the law, were very small.

They just weren’t small enough. The Tates had a lot of influence in the old-boy world around here. Liam could afford a good lawyer, that wasn’t an issue, but what if the judge was an old crony of George’s? What if Liam had slept with the judge’s daughter in high school?

Just last night, Liam had bolted awake from a recurring dream…Nicole calling him from far, far away, asking if he’d come get her. In the dream, he’d jumped on the Triumph and headed toward her, only to realize he didn’t know where she was. Then the dream changed, and it was Cordelia he was supposed to pick up. But she’d been waiting a long, long time, and by the time he got there, she didn’t remember who he was.

It felt like he hadn’t smiled in a lifetime. The slow evaporation of his wife’s love, the wasting sickness and endless, bleak months that followed, Nicole’s grief, then the accident and all its consequences…and now this. Now his damn in-laws and all their drama.

That little window with Cordelia seemed impossibly bright. The idea that a couple of weeks ago, he’d had someone to kiss, someone who made him laugh, someone who fell asleep against him as they watched a movie on the couch…someone who had told him not to sell himself short…that seemed like it had happened to someone else.

Best not to think of it.

“You have a game tonight, right, Dad?” Nicole asked.

Ah, crap. “That’s right.” A game against Cordelia’s team, no less. So much for not thinking about her.

“Can I come and watch?” Nicole asked.

“Sure.”

“Daddy, you seem sad,” Nic blurted, her own eyes filling.

“Oh, no, honey. I’m fine.”

“Do you miss Mom?” Her voice sounded so small.

“You bet.” He missed her, all right. He’d been missing her for a long, long time.

“Tell me something nice about her,” Nicole said.

It was something he’d done the first year or so after Emma died. Every day, he’d tell Nicole a story about her mom. The sweet things, the funny things, the normalcy that, before marriage, Liam had only ever seen on TV—pancakes on the weekends, family movie night, dinner together, every day. No matter how mundane the story, Nicole loved hearing about her mom—the way Emma insisted that they all floss nightly. The hot-water bottle on which she’d drawn a smiley face. The way she’d leave notes under Nicole’s pillow if she had to go away on business.

Then, when the story was over and Nicole was in bed, Liam would write that story in a notebook, his hand cramping, his head aching from the effort of keeping the letters where they should be. But when the day came for Nicole to leave home, he’d give her those notebooks, and she could take a piece of her mother with her, recorded in her dad’s careful handwriting, like a shield against the world.

“Okay.” He took a deep breath and told Nicole about seeing Emma for the first time. How the light shone on her hair, how her laugh floated across the courtyard. He couldn’t take his eyes off her, that beautiful, perfect girl who seemed to glow from inside, and when she’d finally looked over at him, she smiled, and all the other sounds fell away.

Nicole’s face was glowing when he finished. “That’s so romantic, Daddy,” she said softly.

Liam didn’t answer. He’d described that meeting a hundred times, and while he’d told his daughter what he’d seen and heard, he never did tell her how it felt. Because when Emma Tate had met his eyes, it felt like every bad thing Liam had ever done—the fights and suspensions, the petty crimes that had landed him in juvie, the many girls he’d led on and slept with, the beers and the drag racing—all of that was about to be forgiven. That this perfect, radiant girl was some kind of angel about to change the soul of no one from nowhere, to see him as someone worthwhile, more than the hot guy with the bad rep, one small misstep away from being just like every other loser his family had ever produced.

But Emma didn’t change him.

Nicole was the one who’d done that.

But still, that moment—that golden moment of seeing the girl who’d become his first love—it had been…amazing. A shimmering, perfect moment.

Another memory came to him—Cordelia’s face as they sat on the blanket under the pines at the old estate. Her big, dark eyes had been soft…and trusting, too.

Nice job, idiot. She sure as hell won’t ever look at you that way again.

“Dad?”

He cleared his throat. “Yes, babe?”

“You can say no, but…I just want an answer, okay?” Nicole squeezed her ring finger, her signature for nervousness. “The prom’s this Saturday.”

Ah. Hence the thaw.

“Dad, it’s okay if you say no. I screwed up, I know it. And there’ll be other proms. I just need to let Tanner know one way or the other.”

No. Don’t grow up. Stay with me. You’re all I’ve got.

“I want you home by eleven,” he said, his voice uneven. If you’re not home by eleven, I will call the police, the fire department, the National Guard and the SWAT team. I will find that boy, and if his hands are on you, I will rip off his head and drink his blood. I will bury his body where even the vultures won’t find it, and I’ll—

“Oh, Dad,” she breathed. “Really? I can go?”

“Yeah. Do your homework.”

Liam turned back to the strut and tapped it gently into place. The lump in his throat didn’t go away.

JUST BEFORE THE game on Tuesday, Posey girded her loins and went to her parents’ house.

“Oh, it’s you,” her mother said by way of greeting. “I thought you forgot where we lived, it’s been so long. Not a phone call, not a visit. I thought you were in the hospital. What’s it been, a month?”

“It’s been two weeks, Mom,” Posey said with weary patience. “And I did call. Twice.”

“Messages on that machine don’t count.”

Where was the more amenable parent? “Is Dad home?”

“He’s at Guten Tag. Come in. Are you hungry? I just made bockwurst.”

“Got any cake?”

Stacia narrowed her eyes. “Yes. Have you eaten supper?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“Liar.”

Posey smiled, and her mother relented enough to step back from the door and let her in. Two minutes later, she was sitting at the kitchen table, eating apple kuchen.

“Gretchen and that horrible Italian man are back together,” Stacia announced.

“I know.”

“Well, I guess I’m the last to know everything.” She sat heavily, the cutlery rattling as her bulk hit the chair. “So. How are you?”

“I’m okay, Mom.”

“Still with that Liam?”

That Liam. Funny. “Nope, not anymore.”

Stacia frowned. “Why?”

“Oh…he’s got some issues to deal with. His daughter. Stuff like that.”

“Well, he’s an idiot if he doesn’t want you.”

Posey’s eyebrows lifted. “I thought you wanted him for Gretchen.”

“We did. I did. I don’t know. I pictured you with…someone else.”

“Who?” Posey asked.

Her mom sighed. “I don’t know. Someone perfect. A prince, maybe. A prince who also cured cancer.” She smiled reluctantly. “No one’s ever good enough for your little girl. You’ll see someday.”

Motherhood seemed far, far away. But she could picture feeling that way toward Brianna. Yes. Brianna’s future boyfriend would have to watch his back. Made her understand where Liam was coming from. But she wasn’t here to talk—or think—about Liam. She said nothing else, knowing the best way to get her mother to talk was to wait her out.

The fridge cycled on with a wheeze. A catbird sang from the clothesline. And…bingo.

“Posey, listen,” Stacia said, her pale eyes suddenly wet. “I—I have to tell you something. A couple of things, really.” Her hands twisted together, and she gave her head a little shake. “We—your father and I—we had a daughter before you. When Henry was five. She came too early, and they couldn’t save her. She only lasted an hour.”

Stacia’s face scrunched up, and without a thought, Posey got up and wrapped her arms around her mother’s solid shoulders.

“I’m so sorry, Mom,” she whispered, tears slipping out of her eyes. Even though Posey had known this fact her whole life, Stacia had never spoken of it. For a long moment, she just hugged her mom, breathing in the smell of baking and Suave shampoo. “I’m so, so sorry.”