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Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

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One Night In Boston

Copyright © 2007 by Allie Boniface

Cover by Dawn Seewer

ISBN: 1-59998-536-5

www.samhainpublishing.com

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: July 2007

One Night in Boston

Allie Boniface

Dedication

For my parents, who taught me to love language, and for my fifth grade teacher, Mrs. Stokoe, who was the first person to tell me I’d be a writer someday.

10:00 a.m.

“We’re out of time.” Maggie Doyle stared at the clock in panic. Nausea danced in her stomach. Her head thrummed as she buried her fingers in her hair. Ten o’clock. Ten-oh-one. Friday. June thirtieth. It might as well be the end of my life, she thought. After tomorrow, everything changes. Her eyes blurred with tears, and the world slipped under water.

“What?” Neve Weatherby, office manager of Doyle Designs, stopped typing. “What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

“They’re taking it all,” Maggie said. She could barely get the words out. Something burned inside her chest. Was that her heart actually breaking in two? “The house. And the business.”

Neve stared up at her boss. “Who is? The bank?”

The interior designer nodded. Twenty-four hours. That’s how long until the Bay Bank of New England began the foreclosure process on her house and home business, according to the icy-voiced woman Maggie had just hung up on. Fishing a piece of paper from her back pocket, she reread the latest email from her attorney.

The bank will not enter into a payment plan unless you demonstrate assets equal to the amount owed…if you cannot complete your missed mortgage payments, the bank will not adjust your future payment schedule…unfortunately, foreclosure is the next step…please contact me ASAP to discuss other options…

She closed her eyes, rubbing one temple. What other options? Filing for bankruptcy? She’d lose her business. Selling the house? She’d have nowhere to live. Robbing a bank? She tugged at a curl. That would be about the only option worth exploring.

Neve’s narrow brows drew together. “Wait a minute. Can’t you offer them some sort of compromise? Could we come up with a couple thousand dollars? Would that stop the foreclosure?”

Maggie yanked up a bamboo blind so hard it snapped from its frame and fell at her feet.

“How? I owe them something like fifteen thousand dollars.” Uttering the words stung her. “We can’t come up with any more money. You and Andrew are living with your parents, for God’s sake. I haven’t paid you in over a month—”

“I told you I could wait a little, until the business got back on its feet.”

Maggie continued as if Neve hadn’t even spoken. “And I sure as hell don’t have any cash lying around. I cleaned out my savings account last month.”

She kicked at the blind. “No one in this town has an extra dime. I was the one stupid enough to think I could make a living here. I was the one crazy enough to think that Hart’s Falls might actually need an interior designer.”

“They do.”

“They did.” Tension squeezed Maggie’s shoulders, turning muscle and tendon into wire cables that pinched the nerves at the back of her neck.

“What did your attorney say?” Neve tugged at the makeshift handle on the mini-fridge beside her desk. Out came a bottle of ginger ale, half-full, no bubbles.

“Same thing she always says. If I can come up with the money for the last three months, the bank will work with me. If I can’t, then...” She couldn’t finish. Then the house goes up for auction, and I lose it. For good.

It didn’t matter that her rah-rah-voiced attorney said the foreclosure process could take months. Maggie didn’t want to sleep in a house that only half-belonged to her, a house that one morning she might wake up to find inhabited by a fresh-faced family who lugged cardboard boxes into the spaces where her life had been. Once the whole ugly process began, little pieces of her sanity would slip away like crumbling sidewalk under her feet.

“What about selling the house?” Neve asked. “I mean, then you could get money to pay off the bank, and at least you wouldn‘t lose the business. You could rent a place for a while, work out of there.”

“I don’t want to.” Little-girl stubborn, Maggie dropped her head, studying the stitching on her jeans. How could she sell the white two-story with the wide front porch after she’d poured so much time and energy into making it her own? How could she leave?

She’d loved the sleepy hamlet of Hart’s Falls, Rhode Island, since the day she drove through, nearly five years ago. She loved its historic buildings, its tree-lined central avenue. She loved its collection of residents, from the Portuguese single father across the street to the lesbian couple who’d opened a bicycle repair shop down by the Methodist Church. The ache inside her chest cracked and spread.

“I don’t want to sell the house,” she said again. “I don’t want to pay rent to anyone else. I did that for three years in Manhattan.”

Neve nodded, resting a cheek in one palm. “Have you thought about marrying a millionaire?”

Maggie almost laughed, real laughter, not the fake kind she‘d been pretending to call up from her gut for the last couple of months. “Sure, that’s the best idea I’ve heard so far. Got any suggestions? I don’t think millionaires grow on trees around here.”

“You could go up to Boston. There must be some cute, rich guys there. Or put an ad on the Internet. Join one of those singles’ dating groups.”

“Yeah, I can just picture my profile,” Maggie said. “Desperate redhead, thirty, seeks single male with unlimited funds to rescue her from bankruptcy. Can offer a two-bedroom house with interior design business included. That sure would reel ’em in.”

A memory washed over her. She’d had the chance to marry into money, loads and loads of it, years ago. Of course, back then, Maggie hadn’t cared at all. Her college boyfriend could have made her queen of the world, or thrown his entire legacy down the drain, and it wouldn’t have changed a thing. She hadn’t wanted to be with him for his money or his name. She only loved the way he spun the earth beneath her feet, the way they fit together, the way he made her feel normal after so long.

Everyone else treated me like I would break, after the operation, she remembered. He just made me feel like a regular person. Attractive. Whole. She felt her cheeks redden and pressed the backs of her hands against them to stop the rush of blood.

We thought it would last forever. We made promises to each other, the kind you make when you’re twenty or so and think the rest of your life is easy to sketch out. We watched the moon move across the sky and talked about where we’d be in twenty or forty or sixty years. We made plans. We made love. We held on until we thought nothing but the splitting of the earth could pull us apart.

Stupid, Maggie told herself. Young and stupid, that’s all we were. Because at the last minute, she split them apart herself. She let all her old ghosts convince her that they would never work together. She gave in to the insecurity that made her feel all edges and angles inside the smooth sophistication of his world. She let the hollowness inside her swell until there was nothing to see but darkness. She told a lie and let him go, and he walked away.

Maggie traced the rim of her coffee mug, letting the broken edge dig into her fingertip until it hurt. God, how she missed him sometimes. How she missed the two of them together, that rhythm of a relationship, a simple waltz of days that took you through the light and the dark but always with someone holding fast to the small of your back. Steadying you. Spinning you. Loving you. She hadn’t met anyone like him in all the years since. Sometimes it seemed like she never would again.

If I hadn’t let him go, then maybe today I wouldn’t be indebted to the bank. She tossed her head and flame-red curls tumbled around her shoulders. I wouldn’t be wondering how to pay my mother’s nursing home bills. I wouldn’t be lying awake at three in the morning, wondering why I let the best thing in my life walk away ten years ago.

But if she’d stayed with him, sooner or later he would have found out her secret. He would have discovered the lie she’d told from the very beginning. He would have peeled her open one day to find her missing pieces. I did the only thing I could. I couldn’t tell him the truth, not about that.

Neve started a fresh pot of coffee. “Did you eat anything this morning?”

“I don’t have time. Or an appetite.” Maggie sank onto the worn velour loveseat in the corner and tried to steady her soul.

You only have one choice. The voice prickled at the back of her skull, the way it had all night and all morning. Only one way to get the money. She pulled at a loose thread in her shirt and tried to ignore the voice. Bad enough she wasn’t getting any sleep. Bad enough her clothes hung on her five foot frame, making her resemble a damn middle schooler on the wrong side of puberty. Now Maggie could add growing dementia to her list of ailments, since her brain had been splitting into a variety of personalities lately and working against her in the wee hours of dawn. Maybe Alzheimer’s runs in the family, she thought.

“What about Bradley Torrance?” Neve asked.

“What about him?”

“Didn’t you two go out a few weeks ago?”

“Yeah.” Maggie thought of the corner table the brawny farm equipment wholesaler had reserved at the local Italian restaurant. She thought of the bottle of wine he’d selected from the list of four, the dollar he’d given her to feed into the jukebox, the way he’d forked pieces of chocolate cake from her plate.

“He’s a nice guy.” Neve poured a cup of coffee, left it black, and handed it over. “Not to mention good-looking. And he took over his father’s business the week after he graduated from high school. It’s grown twice as big since then.”

“Forget it. I’m not going out with Brad again just so he’ll feel sorry for me and pay off my debts.” The thought made Maggie cringe.

“You know, it takes time to get to know someone,” Neve went on, sounding more like a forty-year old woman than the girl just three years out of high school that she was. “You should give him another chance. It doesn’t happen overnight.”

Ah, but that’s where you’re wrong, Maggie wanted to say. Things can happen in an instant. Life can change forever in the space it takes to draw a breath. And everything—everything—can turn upside down in just one night.

Silence settled inside the former parlor that she’d painstakingly gutted and redesigned from the bottom up. Den, half-bath, kitchen in the back: she’d decorated all the rooms on the first floor of the house, imagining four years ago that they might serve as examples of the work she could do. Meanwhile, the second floor became her sanctuary, with the business below like a humming heart, inspiring her. Driving her. Keeping her alive.

I did all right, the first year or so. But between her student loans and her mortgage and her little Ford Escort dying once and for all, she’d slipped behind. A replacement car, even used, brought another monthly payment. Property taxes inched their way up. Moving her mother into Elmhurst House had set the last nail. Even an ordinary assisted-living facility, with none of the frills of the places up in Boston, ran over a thousand dollars a month. The small pension left by Maggie’s stepfather covered barely half the cost.

The long hand on the clock slid its way toward the six, and the hairs along the back of her neck stood at attention. Twenty-four hours. That’s how long I have until I lose it all. The voice returned, a mosquito buzzing about her temples. She’d turned it over fifty different times and fifty different ways inside her head. She’d explored every other avenue she could think of and she knew the voice was right. She didn’t see a way out that didn’t involve Dillon Murphy, the stepbrother she hadn’t seen or talked to in five years. Maybe six. She had to find him. She had to ask him for help.

The thought made her sick to her stomach.

As the telephone rang, Maggie slumped farther down in the loveseat. “Let the machine get it.”

“We opened at ten.”

“I know.” But she was afraid that if she put her lips to the receiver, her throat might just open up. Then the sobs would pour out, flooding the room until she floated away on her sorrow. Wouldn’t exactly be good for business.

“Hello, and thank you for calling Doyle Designs. We’re either hard at work or out of the office right now, but leave us a message and we’ll call you right back.”

Maggie held her breath, trying to guess who it might be.

It wasn’t the bank. Or a bill collector. Or the gravelly-voiced nurse from Elmhurst House.

“Yes, hello.” A deep male voice rumbled and coughed into the machine. “This is Carl Anderson, vice-president at Bullieston Software Development up in Boston. I’m interested in speaking with you about the possible purchase of your property. Our company is planning an expansion into Hart’s Falls, and we’ve been looking at several homes in the north neighborhoods down there. I understand that you might be open to discussion. I’m going to leave my cell phone number as well as the main office number here. Please call me when you can.”

He rambled off ten numbers, paused, then another ten, and came to an abrupt halt before clearing his throat and hanging up.

“What was that?” Neve asked.

“I have no idea. Play it again.”

But the message didn’t make any more sense to Maggie the second time around. Bullieston Software Development?

Her eyes widened. Wait a minute. Had this company talked to the bank? Did they already know that she was in trouble? She sighed. Of course they did. Companies like that did research, right? They sniffed around and looked into records and found out which poor souls were in danger of losing their homes. Then they snapped them up for a fraction of their worth.

“It’s one of those big Boston corporations, you think?” Neve said after a minute. “There are so many of them trying to come into town and buy real estate. Andrew was telling me about it.”

Maggie almost smiled. How long had it been since the Weatherby wedding? Six months? Seven? And still Neve blushed like a schoolgirl when she mentioned her new husband. Maggie supposed it was charming, really, even though the thought of marrying one’s high school sweetheart at the age of twenty-one was as foreign a concept to her as swimming the ocean from Manhattan to Madrid.

She drew a random pattern on her thigh with one forefinger. She didn’t want to sell the house, not to a software company. Not even to the guy down the street. But what choice did she have? If she didn’t come up with the money, she’d lose everything.

If she didn’t come up with the money…

Maggie pushed herself to a stand. Enough feeling sorry for yourself. Figure out a way to find it. Figure out a way to pay back the bank. No matter what. She wound her hair into a tight ponytail at the back of her neck. To get the money, her best bet was still to find Dillon. And to find Dillon, she needed to start with her mother, however daunting the thought. Maggie swallowed. Facing down Alzheimer’s, that slippery monster that reared and roared when you most wanted it to shut up and go to sleep, wasn’t exactly the way she wanted to spend her morning. But again, the voice buzzed, you don’t have a choice.

“Take messages from anyone who calls,” she said. Then she turned into her workroom and locked the door behind her.

*

Maggie punched the Play button on her stereo and scrunched down into her favorite recliner. Jon Bon Jovi, heartthrob extraordinaire and love of her life since the eighth grade, crooned the opening bars of “Livin’ on a Prayer”. She reached for her lighter and lit a clove cigarette, letting it burn in the ashtray beside her. Though she’d given up smoking almost a year ago, sometimes she still craved the sweet smell and the kick of a Kretek clove cancer stick.

Picking up her cell phone, she pressed the first of the saved numbers. She leaned back and followed the cigarette smoke on its hazy journey up the wall, toward the ceiling, and out the screened windows. Maggie sighed. For an instant, she wished she could ride the smoke, just journey up to the clouds and turn to vapor. I wish I could disappear. Forever.

“Elmhurst House.” The receptionist chirped her familiar welcome, breaking into Maggie’s daydream. As always, she had the urge to reach through the phone and grab the girl around the throat, to stop that cheerful voice before it uttered another inane syllable. “How may I direct your call?”

“Fourth floor, please.”

“Certainly. Just a moment.” Soft rock faded in and out as Maggie waited for the transfer.

“Fourth floor, Nurse Keller.”

That’s more like it, Maggie thought. Celia Keller, shaped like a battleship with a voice to match, fit Maggie’s mood much better most days. The steel-haired, steel-gazed head nurse never bothered with pleasantries, never dawdled in residents’ rooms to make small talk with their visitors or lingered on the phone to discuss the weather. She got straight to the point, good or bad. Maggie liked that.

“Ms. Keller, it’s Maggie Doyle. I’d like to stop by and visit my mother this morning. In about an hour or so.”

“Regular visiting hours are from ten to eight, as you know.”

Maggie stared at a bare patch on her wall. I need to repaint that, she thought. I missed it, somehow, in the sunlight. Or the shadows. Either way, I’ll—

“Ms. Doyle? Are you still there?”

“How is she today?” Maggie asked in lieu of a response. She needed to know before she got there. She needed to prepare herself.

Nurse Keller cleared her throat, sounding a little like the engine of a big-block Chevy revving up for a drag race. “She’s been sitting in the parlor for the last hour or so. Not too talkative today, but she’s awake and out of bed. I’d take that as a good sign.” Her voice remained noncommittal, not revealing much of anything. Maggie supposed when you worked in a place like Elmhurst House, you couldn’t get too attached to any one person on any given day.

“All right. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” The nurse’s words sounded stiff. “We’ll see you in a little while, then.”

Yes, you will. Maggie hung up the phone and uncurled herself from the chair.

Standing in front of the mirror, wondering if it mattered whether or not she changed her shirt or did her hair, she tried to imagine the world inside her mother’s head. She tried to picture the cast of characters from the past who had taken up residence there. Maggie pulled at the corners of her eyes, but the tiny wrinkles didn’t disappear. God, she’d never even heard of early-onset Alzheimer’s before three years ago. She certainly hadn’t imagined the way it could twist a life into something unrecognizable.

At first, her mother had joked about losing her car keys or driving all the way to the salon and forgetting her purse. She blamed her failing eyesight for the fact that she put away her socks in the basement freezer. She told Maggie that the reason she called her daughter Diane sometimes was because she’d always wanted Maggie’s middle name to be that instead of May.

I wanted to believe her, Maggie thought as she took out her ponytail, parted her hair and pulled a brush through it. The snarls hurt. I wanted to accept every excuse she gave me. After John died, I thought living by herself made her lonely. God help me, I thought she made up half her problems just to have something to talk about when she called me every night.

The telephone call after eleven on a sleety November night had changed all that. Maggie had driven home, four hours without stopping, to find a woman she didn’t recognize curled up in the fetal position, whispering names Maggie didn’t know and had never heard before.

Some of the doctors tried to find environmental reasons for it, personal triggers for her mother’s dementia. Some simply pointed to chemical changes in her mother’s brain, as if Hillarywere a specimen to be analyzed, more a subject and less a person. All charged more than Maggie’s meager health insurance policy or Hillary’s pension could cover. In the end, it didn’t matter what had altered her mother. Elmhurst House, the only assisted-living facility within fifty miles of Hart’s Falls that Maggie could afford, became Hillary Doyle’s new home. They’d packed up everything one weekend, put the shabby Poughkeepsie house on the market, and driven straight to Rhode Island. Her mother didn’t speak one word the entire trip.

Maggie usually visited on Sunday afternoons. Sometimes Wednesday evenings. Now she had to make the twenty-two mile trek under a blazing morning sun, with fingers crossed that her mother would remember Dillon and the things she’d told Maggie about him, some three or four years ago.

Dillon came to visit this weekend. He’s moving back East, he says. I’m glad. Maybe he’ll visit more often…

You know, your brother is doing well for himself. Finally got away from that partner who was stealing half the profits…

Dillon called yesterday. Wanted to treat me to a weekend up in Boston. Said his business is taking off, that he picked up a couple of rich clients who want to hire him for the whole summer…

Maggie catalogued the things she knew about her brother—her stepbrother, really, no relation except in growing up under the same sagging roof. One: after spending some time wandering around California and Oregon, doing odd jobs, he’d found his way back East. To Boston, maybe, or someplace close by. Two: he owned his own company, or had at one point. And three: this company was successful enough to attract elite city spenders. She ticked off the positives on her fingers and hoped they might outweigh the negatives circling her brain.

He doesn’t live in Boston.

His business went belly-up years ago.

He never even started one to begin with.

Maggie stared out the window, at the lilacs and hyacinths and lily of the valley blooming in her backyard. She’d planted them all, taken gardening books out of the local library and urged the flowers to take root and bloom for her. She found, after the first few visits with her mother, that she needed something else to tend to. She needed bright faces that responded to the sun and the rain and her voice talking to them. She picked at a chip in the wooden sill, blinking back tears that had snuck up on her. Darn it. I don’t even want to say goodbye to my gardens.

She rubbed at her eyes. Well, I won’t worry until I get there, she thought as she slipped her bare feet into flip flops. Until I see Ma. Until I hear what she has to say. She grabbed her purse, vintage patchwork and suede with a clasp that didn’t always work, and headed for her car. Only if she doesn’t remember me, only if she doesn’t have a clue about where I might find Dillon, will I panic.

Only then.

11:00 a.m.

Jack Major wrapped his fingers around a pencil and struggled not to break it in two. Behind him, framed in the windows of the top-floor meeting room, Boston’s skyline speared the heavy, gray clouds. He pulled at his tie and tried to remember if he had any aspirin left in his desk.

“…and so most of the reports confirm that the Hart’s Falls location is the best one for our southern branch,” the vice-president of Bullieston finished. He wiped his brow and glanced at his superior, a nervous squeak in the final syllable of his report.

Jack didn’t speak. The back of his neck burned with impatience. Around the table, three junior VPs waited, adjusting their collars and trying not to meet his gaze. The heater whined, sending a stale draft of warm air into the room. For late June, the morning was cool, almost ominous, in its threat of rain. Jack spun the Rolex on his wrist and wondered if he’d have time for lunch.

“Zoning?”

“Not a problem. The properties we’re looking at are in a commercial area. North end of Main Street, easy access to the interstate.”

“How many can we get?”

One of the other VPs shuffled through a file folder. “Two for sure. Both single-story houses. Both rentals, currently empty. Talked to the owner yesterday, who’s more than willing to unload them to us.”

Jack nodded. With any luck, the buildings would be gone before summer’s end, and Bullieston Software could move ahead with the office complex that its board of directors had planned.

“There’s a third possible property, adjacent to the other two,” Carl Anderson went on after a moment. “It’s a larger piece, on almost an acre of land. But that one’s on hold for the moment.”

On hold. Jack didn’t like those words. They meant delay. Difficulty. Pressure from the Board. He rubbed his chin and stared at the table. Waves of tension rolled through the room.

“Has anyone talked to the owner about selling?”

“Apparently the first floor of that house has been turned into an interior design business,” Carl said, “with the owner living upstairs. I did make a call this morning…” He trailed off and reached for a pitcher of water, spilling a little as he poured himself a glass. “I hope that she’ll get back to me sometime today.” He cleared his throat and wiped the corners of his mouth.

“She?” For the first time in a long five minutes, Jack slid his gaze from the notepad where he’d been jotting ideas, pictures, threats.

“The designer. The owner. She’s in arrears. Behind on—ah—three mortgage payments, I believe. The Bay Bank is about to begin foreclosure, so I don’t think she’ll have any choice but to sell the place.” The man checked his notes again. Sweat dotted his temples.

Jack cracked his knuckles, relieved. This wouldn’t be as difficult as he’d imagined. “Then it should just be a matter of talking to her and getting the paperwork in order. Right?”

Carl stared at his boss. “Ah, yes. Right.”

Jack closed the file. “We don’t need to spend any more time on this. I’ll expect an update Monday morning.”

The vice-president scratched something on a piece of paper.

Jack’s gaze swept the room. “I don’t need to remind you all that we’ve spent the last year researching locations. Done multiple financial analyses. Spent umpteen hours driving up and down the interstate between three different states.” He slapped a flat palm against the wood of the enormous meeting table. Everyone jumped.

“We have well over ten million dollars invested in these expansion plans. I don’t want any glitches in the next few weeks. None at all. That includes getting this third property.” He aimed the last remark straight at Carl before turning to the map on the wall.

Bullieston had signed the papers on a three-story building in Wildwood Lakes, New Hampshire, last week. Now the Board wanted a modest but key location in Hart’s Falls, Rhode Island. With satellites to the north and south of its Boston hub, the multi-million dollar software company was poised to become one of the leading industries in the northeast. As CEO, Jack Major had no intention of letting anything stop the expansion plans.

“Carl, spend the rest of the afternoon on the telephone if you have to. I don’t care how many times you have to call, or how many messages you have to leave. Convince this woman that she’d be a hell of a lot better off selling to us and saving her name than packing her bags once the bank starts foreclosing.” He rose, and the five other men hurried to scrape their chairs against the floor and stand as well. Nodding, they waited as Jack strode from the room.

A murmur of conversation rose behind him, but he didn’t care. He could imagine what they might be saying about the acquisition, about him. Having been promoted to the company’s top position two years ago at the age of thirty, Jack knew he had his doubters. His critics. He also knew they were far too afraid of him, and of the conservative board of directors, to breathe a word of discontent out loud. If some minor hang-up like a stubborn small businesswoman stood in the way of the company’s progress, he had no doubt that those five men in the room behind him, directors of their respective divisions, would walk across coals in their bare feet to make the acquisition happen.

A wry smile crossed Jack’s face as he marched into his corner office. The power of his position and the influence he wielded never failed to please him. From the womb, he’d been groomed for it. The Major bloodline, well grounded in Boston, demanded it. Everything he’d done since leaving home at eighteen, every step he’d taken and every goal he’d set, had led him to this point. He’d planned it. Earned it. Worked his way through college at the top of his class, earned himself a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford, and landed on the fast track to corporate success soon after returning to the States.

A glimpse of his reflection in the wall of windows revealed a square jaw and cleft in his chin, both courtesy of his father’s English heritage. His broad shoulders and long legs, good for tackling on the football field back in school, matched his father’s as well. Only the light green eyes and jet-black curls reminded Jack of his mother: part Native American, part Irish, five-foot nothing and full of a quiet fire.

That reminds me, thought Jack. I owe Taz a phone call. According to the two messages left on Jack’s private voicemail last week, the youngest of four Major brothers was back from his charity trip to Honduras and needed a favor. Jack shook his head. He loved Taz, but how the guy had managed to dodge the family legacy of big business and fast living still amazed him. Well, Taz always did march to a different drum, he thought. I guess that’s the one thing he got from Mom.

Cracking his knuckles, he fished through his top drawer. He still needed that aspirin. Jack loosened his tie and pulled his thoughts back to the acquisition. To the present. To the light blinking on his private telephone line.

Just past eleven in the morning and she’d already called his office twice. Licking his lips, preparing for the worst, he reached for the receiver.

“Paige? Hello, sweetheart. What’s wrong now?”

“The invitations.”

He rubbed a damp palm on his knee. A familiar ache set in around his temples. Meetings with the board he could handle with no problem. Disgruntled clients and impatient department heads posed no challenge. But Paige? Beautiful, successful Paige Webster, partner at Crohn and Sawyer Legal Firm and Jack’s fiancée as of last month, had a way of turning him inside out with two words.

“What about them?”

“The engraver isn’t sure he can meet with us this afternoon.” Tension strung her words into long, slippery syllables.

“We had an appointment with him?” Jack rubbed his temples, waiting for the aspirin to kick in.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Fingernails tapped impatiently on the other end of the line. “You forgot?”

He tried a different tactic. “Can’t you handle meeting him without me? You know all about that stuff.” And I don’t care, he almost finished. “I trust you,” he said instead.

Paige said nothing.

“Tell you what,” he went on. “We’ll meet at Jacque’s for lunch. Talk about it. I’ll look at the samples, tell you what I like, and then you can make the final decision.”

“I only have about a half-hour.” Her voice softened a degree.

“How’s the case?” He changed the subject.

“Don’t ask.”

He chided himself for upsetting her. He shouldn’t blame Paige for getting uptight about the wedding plans, really. She had enough to deal with, prosecuting one of the biggest murder cases on Boston’s docket in recent history. She worked eighteen hours a day, barely ate or slept at all, and here she was trying to plan the city’s most lavish wedding on top of everything else.

Unlike Jack, Paige had worked her way up from a modest childhood, putting herself through college and law school by waiting tables and slinging drinks to Boston bigwigs. To make junior partner at one of the top firms in the city at such a young age—well, she’d proven that she could match Jack step for step on the career ladder.

And he admired his fiancée’s drive, her work ethic, her refusal to settle for less than the best. Beautiful and brainy, Paige matched him perfectly in a half-dozen ways. He only wished she’d slow down every once in a while. Enjoy the engagement. He’d even tried to convince her to use a wedding planner the way some of their friends had, just to free up some time. But she’d fired two within a matter of days, insistent that she could do a better job than either of them.

“Is one o’clock all right for lunch?” Jack said. “I’ll call ahead for a table.”

“Fine. And get something in the back, if you can. I don’t want to sit by the window and have half of Boston staring at me while I eat.”

Jack kind of liked watching the world walk by on the street outside. He liked studying the coeds in their low-cut jeans, the ample-bellied construction workers, professors in tweed coats who muttered Byron under their breaths. The sights of the city he loved refreshed him. They reminded him of the world outside his corporate office. Still, he supposed Paige had a point. She spent so much time in the public eye, criticized in the newspaper or misquoted on the local news, that a fragment of anonymity every now and then was the least he could do for her.

“Bye, babe.” She hung up before he could answer.

“Goodbye,” Jack said to the air. The clock on his desk, an elaborate creation from the Museum of Modern Art, flipped silver squares in a delicate pattern as it turned to eleven forty-five. Outside his door, the secretaries’ voices rose in laughter.

“Oh, I know what I’d do if I won the lottery,” he heard one of them say. “I’d fly straight to Vegas and gamble it all away.”

“No, you wouldn’t!” said another, sounding shocked. “All that money, and you’d waste it on—”

Jack stopped listening. Las Vegas. Now there was an idea. Maybe he could convince his fiancée to forego all the pomp and jump on a jet. They could spend a weekend in a glitzy resort, maybe invite some close friends to come along, and tie the knot there in the middle of the Nevada desert. It sure would save them a few thousand dollars, not to mention six months’ worth of headaches and arguments.

But even as the thought scratched his brain, Jack dismissed it. She’d never go for it. Paige, an only child, wanted a traditional ceremony. She wanted the ten bridesmaids, the ice sculptures, the fireworks over the bay. She’d turned thirty-five a couple of months ago and he had made her wait far too long for a proposal in the first place. Finally, gentle nudging from his father, who wanted grandchildren in the worst way, and a realization that they were the last of all their friends to settle down, had made him pop the question. Plus, a Webster-Major marriage wouldn’t hurt either of their careers. Considering all that, he doubted a shotgun affair in Vegas would measure up.

The clock flipped again, this time sliding a square, steel twelve into the space where eleven had been. Jack barely noticed.

Las Vegas.

One corner of his mouth twitched. My God, I almost forgot. The memory he’d buried a lifetime ago, the one he took out and dusted off only when he had too much to drink, blazed into his mind. For a minute, that memory erased the office, the lunch reservation, the Hart’s Falls acquisition.

One night in Vegas, longer ago than he cared to remember, everything in Jack Major’s life had changed. A giddy airplane ride, a sleepless twenty-four hours, a low-budget hotel room on the Strip, and his heart had been broken with so much violence that weeks later, he still wasn’t sure what had happened. That single night, and the morning after, had crushed him. It had crippled him. It had wrung his heart clean of every emotion he‘d ever believed in. And for a while, Jack pointed to that experience as the moment that divided his life in two.

Before and After Vegas. Before and After Her. Twenty-four hours, and everything changed. Twenty-four hours, and he went from a college senior heady in love to a man setting his sights on Wall Street and swearing off women forever. Jack’s jaw set as he forced the memory away. Well, no use remembering now. He’d traveled a lifetime since then. He’d moved on to other jobs, places, lovers, possibilities. That night was gone, just a memory, and so was the boy he used to be.

He picked up the telephone and dialed the number for Jacque’s Café.

*

Across town, the voicemail at Spectacle ‘Scapes hadn’t stopped taking messages all morning. Dillon Murphy wound two fingers around the thick mop of dark blond hair at his neck and pulled it into a ponytail with a practiced motion. Pencil in one corner of his mouth, he studied his calendar, a dog-eared black notebook. He couldn’t wait until his secretary came back from vacation next week. The office, the bills, even the coffee went to ruin without her.

He checked the board beside the door. He had two guys over in Newton working on a walkway and another three starting a set of gardens for the mayor. With his partner, J.J., home taking care of a new baby, Dillon had to head over to the west side himself. He needed to finish up an estimate for a couple looking for a refurbished lawn and gardens. He grabbed a pair of wrap-around sunglasses and strode outside.

The squat brick building housing Spectacle ’Scapes faced the Charles River, a prime location just outside the city limits. He slowed for a minute and glanced up at the green and white sign above the door, the window boxes along the front, the stamped concrete porch, and the clean, narrow walkway. He straightened the collar on his monogrammed polo shirt, made sure the tail was tucked into the tight black jeans he always wore, and pushed the sleeves up above his biceps. The tail of a red and orange python tattoo crept down his left shoulder, but he didn’t worry about hiding it. Women seemed to like it; guys usually admired it. Dillon stole a look at the sky and frowned at the storm clouds rolling in.

Some called the Boston landscaper charmed. Some called him plain lucky. Others called him brilliant, a thirty-one year old horticultural genius. Most everyone who knew Dillon, however, admired him for the company he’d built from the ground up. Six years ago, he’d been driving around in a beat-up Chevy with a few well-worn tools in the bed and ratty homemade business cards in his pocket. He’d spent more days than he could remember knocking on doors and mowing lawns to get by. Today, Dillon hauled his six-foot, four-inch frame up into the roomy cab of a special edition Ford pickup truck, lettered on the side with his company’s green and white logo. A trailer in matching colors, housing a quarter-million dollars’ worth of equipment, sat locked in the adjacent garage.

“Hard work,” he’d answered once, when a reporter asked him his secret. Wrong answer, apparently. The young woman, doing a piece on the city’s young entrepreneurs, had frowned at him. People didn’t want to hear that anything worthwhile took buckets of sweat, he realized later. They want to believe I grew up with money, or that I inherited a million dollars from a crazy uncle, or that I’m some kind of felon with cash stuffed under my bed. A work ethic like Dillon’s, which meant you didn’t rest until your customers were happy, or you lived on leftovers and worked three jobs if you had to, didn’t sit well with the majority. He knew that now. It still didn’t bother him.

He turned up the radio as he pulled into traffic. When you come from nothing, he thought, you’ve got nothing to lose. He’d always loved working outdoors, always loved making green things sprout from the earth. Discovering that he had a talent for the business side of landscaping had just been a pleasant surprise.

Dillon programmed the couple’s swanky Wellesley address into his navigation system. A few seconds later, the automated voice instructed him to turn left at the next light. He obliged, tapping along on the steering wheel to Lynyrd Skynyrd singing “Sweet Home Alabama.”

His cell phone rang. Wresting it from its leather holster on his hip, he checked the ID screen.

“Hey, J.J. How’s the kid?”

“Sleeping, eating, and pooping, that’s about all.” The other partner of Spectacle ‘Scapes laughed. “Where you headed this morning?”

“West side. Guy called for an estimate yesterday.”

“Ellis Casterline?”

Dillon stomped on the brake as some idiot in an Aston Martin tried to squeeze in front of his truck. “Yeah.” He swore in aggravation and tapped on the horn. As much as he loved Bostonians’ bottomless pockets, the congestion of downtown he could do without. “How’d you know?’

“Heard the message come in.” J.J. made a hushing noise, a sound totally uncharacteristic of the swaggering, beer-drinking buddy Dillon knew. He bit down hard to keep from making a comment on J.J.’s balls taking a vacation since the baby had arrived.

“Yeah, well, it sounds like a good job,” Dillon said. “He wants the entire backyard redesigned. Couple of acres of gardens, walkways, double-level patio for entertaining…”

J.J. returned to the phone, tough-guy voice back in place. “You know who Casterline is, right?”

“Wouldn’t know him if I ran over him. Why?”

J.J. whistled, long and loud. “One of the top ten richest guys in the city, man. Stockbroker, I think. Has a private jet, couple of vacation homes. You get this contract wrapped up, you can count on it paying our bills for the next year. Better than that, though, he’ll tell all his friends about us. Easy Street, baby.” J.J. whooped, setting off a fresh spell of wailing from the newborn. “Shit. Anyway, good luck.”

Dillon found the tree-lined street and turned at a wrought-iron gate that read “Regency Way.” He squinted at the numbers on the brick mansions in front of him. Jesus, J.J.’s not kidding. “Hey, I’ll talk to you later, man. You up for going out tonight?”

“Thought you were goin’ to the Deveau Ball downtown.”

“I’m gonna stop by for an hour or two, do a little networking.” Dillon slowed and flicked on his right turn signal, easing alongside the curb in front of number fifty-seven. It was one of the largest houses on the cul-de-sac. “I’ll be outta there by ten.”

“All right, give me a call later on, then.”

“See ya.” Dillon slipped the phone back onto his hip and reached for his clipboard. He spent another minute or two taking in number fifty-seven’s circular drive, the three-story house, gazebo, brick walkways curving around to the back. His practiced eye assessed the place at over three million, easy. Probably closer to four or five. A familiar shiver of excitement crept into his blood. Though Spectacular ’Scapes had several high-end accounts, the prospect of landing another made Dillon feel like a kid stealing candy from the corner store. He wasn’t sure he’d ever feel any different.

Pushing open the door, he slid to the ground, long legs taking a stretch and size-twelve feet clad in leather work boots taking their time as they walked to the doorstep. He stopped halfway there to examine some white hydrangeas. Nice job, he thought, looking at the mature trees and bushes planted around him. Whoever did the original landscaping here knew his stuff.

“Hello, there.” The lilting female voice jerked his attention back up again. Standing in the open door of the house stood a slender young woman. “Are you here to meet with my parents about the landscaping?”

He tried to nod. He meant to answer. But as his gaze fell upon her, he couldn’t speak at all. Dillon Murphy, never at a loss for words, jammed both hands into his pockets and stared at the girl. Eighteen, maybe twenty at the most, she stood there blushing in the morning light. One hand rested on her hip as she dropped her eyes and flirted without saying a word. He’d seen the smile and the pose a hundred times on a hundred different women in and around the city. It wasn’t the flirting that struck Dillon speechless.

It was her hair.

Red spiral curls framed eyes the shade of the ocean at dawn. She’d stuck most of it into a bun atop her head, but stray curls fell down across her forehead and neck. That hair… He’d only known one other girl with hair like that, fire-engine red, dangerous-when-you-got-too-close hair. In another life. In another place. Something heavy struck at Dillon’s heart, and a fist reached into his stomach and threatened to bring up his breakfast.

Maggie Doyle.

Maggie.

Mags.

Oh, God.

In his mind’s eye, the out-of-control curls framed another face, this one damp with tears. Damn him if her last words didn’t come back to him too angry, sorrow-laden, old beyond her years. He tried to close his ears against them and failed. One fist opened and closed, and his fingernails scraped at the clipboard he still held.

He hadn’t talked to his stepsister in almost six years. He hadn’t seen her in longer than that. Didn’t mean he’d forgotten about her; Jesus Christ, far from it. He’d just tried to respect the space she wanted after… well, after the operation.

Dillon let out a long breath. After spending most of his adult life trying to atone for a teenage mistake—and failing—he’d put everything about Maggie out of his mind for good.

Today, it looked like she wasn’t going to stay there.

Noon

Clutching her purse, Maggie climbed the steps leading to Elmhurst House. Flowers and shrubs along the sidewalk and chintz curtains on the windows and doors did their best to give the place a cheerful air. Still, the brick looked shabby in places, and weeds jabbed their unwelcome fingers through the asphalt parking lot. The sign above the door needed a new coat of paint. A vacant-eyed man sat in one of the porch chairs. He nodded as Maggie passed, but whether it was a greeting or simply the accent to a beat inside his head, she couldn’t be sure.

She signed in at the front desk and took a visitor’s pass. Then she made her way to the back parlor, her mother’s favorite room in the spacious residence. A nurse Maggie didn’t recognize stood near the door, head bent close to an elderly woman in a wheelchair. Maggie scanned the space, taking in the wing-backed chairs, the dusty piano in the corner, and the prints of beaches and birds that hung on the walls. The air, heavy with perfume and the smell of stale medicine, made her throat close up. She took her time, letting her gaze fall on the details of the room though she knew them by heart.

Hillary Doyle sat in the far corner of the parlor, facing the window. Maggie deliberately took the long way around the room and tried to work up her courage. She patted her sides and smoothed imaginary wrinkles from her clothes. Halfway there, she stopped to rescue a vase teetering too close to a table edge. Still, she arrived at her mother’s side too soon.

“Hi, Ma.”

The thin woman with bobbed auburn hair didn’t answer. Her eyes stared ahead, unblinking. Lips moved with little pats and puffs as she chewed on words without letting them out. Bare feet poked from beneath a wrinkled denim dress. Every fingernail on one hand was painted in pale pink polish. The other five fingers remained bare, with nails chewed down to skin and cuticles stained with dried blood.

Oh, God. Please let her know who I am. Today of all days, I need that. I need her.

“Ma? It’s Maggie.” She laid a hand on her mother’s arm.

At the touch, Hillary started and pushed her hair back from her forehead. She turned toward Maggie with a small jerking motion. Then a strange light began to glow in her face. Her cheeks pinked. Her lips curved up. It was as if a switch had flipped somewhere in the wiring of her mother’s brain. No matter how many times she saw it happen, it still astounded Maggie that her mother could be confused one moment and her old, sane self the next.

“Maggie! You caught me on a bad day.” Hillary brushed at a damp spot on her dress with an embarrassed laugh. “I spilled iced tea down the front of myself at breakfast.” The words were careful, deliberate, as if she were snipping them off like thin bits of thread. But they were coherent, to Maggie’s relief. Coherent and lilting in the gentle cadence she remembered from childhood. The sliver of fear inside her heart fell away.

“This is lovely, you know,” her mother went on. She gestured toward the window. “Just lovely.”

Maggie wasn’t sure if she meant the visit or the morning or the view of the lawn outside. Or the color of the curtains. Or a memory running around inside her mother’s head. But she smiled all the same. “It is, isn’t it?” Maggie pulled a chair close and let her purse slide to the ground. One nervous foot bounced on the faded carpet.

“You’re early today.”

“I know. And I’m sorry I didn’t let you know sooner that I was coming. It was…sort of last minute.” She hid one hand beneath her leg and crossed her fingers that the next few minutes would be easy. That her mother wouldn’t slip off to a private world halfway through the conversation.

“Ma, I wanted to ask you a couple of things. About Dillon.”

Hillary’s eyes moved down toward her lap, where her fingers moved in random patterns. “He was such a good-looking man.”

Maggie might have argued with that on another day, but she nodded and hurried on. “Do you know where he is now? Is he still living in Boston?”

The woman began to sniffle, and a single tear rolled down to the tip of her nose, where it balanced without falling. “I miss him so much.”

“Me too,” Maggie lied. “That’s why I wondered if you knew where I could find him.”

“Oh, sweetheart,” Hillary said, with such sadness in her voice that Maggie wanted to cry herself. “I thought you knew. He’s gone.”

Maggie froze. “What do you mean, gone?” She can’t mean dead. She can’t mean that. I would have heard something. Someone would have found me and told me.

Hillary’s gaze found Maggie’s and held it. “He died. On October eighth. In a car accident.”

Maggie let herself breathe again. “That’s John you’re talking about. Your second husband.” He drove himself into a telephone pole after one of his nightly stops at Lester’s Bar and Grill, she added silently. Eight years ago.

Hillary began to cry. Her shoulders shook and tears ran down both cheeks. She made no sound.

“I’m sorry,” Maggie said, not sure whether she was angrier with herself for upsetting her mother or for not directing the conversation in the right way. She patted Hillary’s hand and waited for the crying jag to pass.

The clock above the unused mantel struck twelve-thirty, and Maggie shifted in her chair. She had so much to do, so much to take care of, and no time. Never any time. She dug a tissue out of her purse and wiped away her mother’s last tears.

“Do you remember Dillon? John’s son?”

Hillary’s eyes watered again, but the tears stayed where they were. “Of course I do. Troublemaker, that one was. I was so glad when he made it out of school without killing himself on his motorcycle.”

Maggie grinned. Now they were both talking about the same person. “Yeah. Do you know where he is now? You told me once that he’d moved back East, started a business.”

Hillary frowned. “Yes. I do remember that. That was so long ago, though.”

Please remember, Ma, Maggie willed. Remember something. Anything. She waited.

Hillary’s fingers scratched at her collarbone, pulling the dress away from her pale skin. “It’s hot in here.”

Maggie’s took her mother’s hands in both of hers. “Tell me about Dillon. What kind of business did he start?”

The switch flipped again. Calm, clear eyes focused on her daughter as Hillary spoke. “A landscaping business, of course. I can’t remember what he called it. Something silly. Something that rhymed…or…I don’t know. I told him to change the name, but I don’t think he ever did. Stubborn man, you know. Like his father.”

Maggie felt sweat dribbling down her spine. She didn’t want to talk about Dillon, the person. She didn’t want to think about him as having emotions or personality traits that could get under your skin. She didn’t want to remember the crinkles around his eyes or the way his hair flopped down his back. She didn’t want to recall the way he’d teased her and let her tag along until she got too big and it embarrassed him to admit he had a kid sister. She didn’t want to think about him at all, except in the sense that maybe he could bail her out of her financial troubles. She didn’t want a brother again. She didn’t need one. She just needed someone with a few thousand dollars. Someone who owed her a favor. Dillon did.

“Is he living in Boston?” But Maggie had waited too long. Hillary turned back to the window, where she stared with a gaze so ferocious that she might have been watching the second coming outside or the end of the world. For all Maggie knew, she probably was.

“Ma?”

But the conversation was over. Hillary hummed under her breath and said nothing else.

One corner of Maggie’s mouth twitched in frustration. She stood, kissed her mother goodbye, and let herself out the back door, dropping her visitor’s pass in the torn cardboard box. A landscaping business, huh? It was small, but it was something. Maggie pulled out her cell phone as she slid into her car. Thunder rumbled a warning above her as she put the Honda into gear and headed for home.

“Neve? Do me a favor. Get a listing of all the landscaping businesses in Boston. Suburbs, too.” She’d start there and work her way out. “Print it out for me. I’ll be back in twenty minutes.” She skidded through a yellow light and headed toward Hart’s Falls, muttering a prayer under her breath and eyeing the clock with every turn she made.

*

Twenty-seven minutes later, Maggie careened back into the gravel drive of Doyle Designs. She turned off the engine, swigged a warm diet soda left over from yesterday, and picked up her cell phone again. She had the other number programmed in, as well. Unfortunately. Clutching the receiver in a hand slippery with sweat, she punched the button and waited for the Bay Bank manager to pick up. She had to buy some time. Even a day or so.

Through the front window of her house, she could see Neve hunched over the keyboard, peering at the computer screen and downing ginger ale. What’s wrong with her? Maggie wondered, pressing her cheek to the phone. Is she getting sick? Now that she thought about it, Neve had been looking rather pale the last couple of days. God, she hoped her assistant wasn’t coming down with some sort of late-spring flu. She needed everyone in her corner right now, all the moral support she could muster.

Maggie slid out of the car and glanced at the farmhouse across the street. There, the six-year-old Carvalho twins played in the yard, ponytails coming loose and blowing in the wind. She fluttered her fingers and the girls waved back, four baby starfish splayed in hello. The pain that stung Maggie every now and again spread through her chest. Children. How she would have loved to have them, someday, but—

“Mrs. Doyle? How may I help you?” A deep, raspy voice broke into her thoughts. Thankfully.

“It’s Miss,” she corrected, before she realized that she should probably be more respectful to the man who held her only chance at avoiding foreclosure. She cleared her throat and tried again. “I mean, I’m not married.” If I were, if I had a second income, do you think I’d be in this situation? “Anyway, the reason I called is that—”

“Yes, I have your file in front of me.”

Uh oh, Maggie thought. He sounds too cool. Too professional. Her heart dropped a notch.

“And I have to say, you’re not a prime candidate for an extension. Not at this point. Not from what I can see.”

Maggie took a deep breath. “Let me explain,” she began. “I can make the payments. I can. I just need a little time to get the money together. I’m a designer, see, and I have a lot of projects out right now, but…”

“Miss Doyle.” His voice was firm. Quiet.

She traced a spot of peeling paint on the door panel. She knew what he was about to say.

“I’m sure your lawyer has explained your options to you. Looking at your tax records and your income statements for the last six months—”

“It was a rough winter,” she interrupted. But she knew he didn’t care. His job was to run a bank. To collect mortgage payments. To take away homes and businesses, even dreams, if he had to.

“Well, I can appreciate that,” the man said, sounding almost human for a moment. “But for our bank to work out an amended payment schedule, we need to have your last three months’ mortgage payments in full. Plus the current one, which is due…”

She could hear him shuffling papers.

“…ah, today, actually. If you were up to date, see, then we could make changes for the future.”

The future. Maggie would have laughed if her heart hadn’t ached so. She could barely see through the next twenty-four hours, yet this man was talking about weeks, months, years of her life that he could change with a single signature in his sterile Boston office.

“I understand.”

He cleared his throat. “Your attorney has notified you of the full amount owed, I believe? Including late fees, it totals fifteen thousand, four hundred and eighty dollars. Do you…ah…have that money?”

She wound two fingers into her hair and tugged at the curls. “Yes,” she said suddenly. “I mean, I will have. By this time tomorrow.” What are you doing? a bodiless voice screamed inside her head. Why are you telling lies? It will only get you into deeper trouble. Rain began spattering onto the back of her neck as if God himself were shaking a finger at her sin.

“Really?” The bank manager’s voice brightened a little. “Well, in that case, we might be able to do something for you. If you can wire the money to the bank by tomorrow, I can put a stop on the foreclosure proceedings.”

“You’re open on Saturday?” she asked in a tiny voice.

“Our main branch is, yes. Until one,” he said again.

“Okay,” Maggie answered. “Then that’s what I’ll do. I’ll have it to you by tomorrow. I promise.”

He switched her over to a secretary who gave her a long list of numbers, including the precise amount she owed and directions for wiring the money up to Boston. Maggie jotted it all down on an envelope she’d grabbed from her glove box and said a swift goodbye.

One o’clock, huh? She stared at her reflection in the car’s side mirror. A round, freckled face stared back at her, with too-thin lips and crazy red hair, the bane of her existence. She’d often wondered if her temperament followed the fiery color of her curls, if she hadn’t had any choice but to be stubborn and odd and independent from the moment she’d popped into the world almost thirty years ago.

Well, no turning back now. I’ll find Dillon between now and then if it’s the last thing I do. She smoothed the tangles at her temples and straightened. She’d call up whatever businesses Neve had found so far. She’d scour the Internet, she’d call Information in all fifty states, she’d do whatever she had to do to locate her stepbrother and get herself out of this mess.

Maggie marched back into the house, rain slicking the backs of her legs. She headed into the front office with a litany of questions circling her brain. I need that list. I need a map of Boston. I need you to find out if anyone named Dillon Murphy is listed in the phone book up there. But the words died on her lips. She barely had time to say hello to Andrew Weatherby, barely had a moment to register that his truck had been parked outside and she hadn’t even noticed, when a white-faced Neve collapsed on the loveseat in front of them.

*

Neve saw Maggie pull into the driveway like a wild woman, same as always, and made a mental note to remind her boss that suicide probably wasn’t the best way to escape foreclosure.

“Will she be able to get the money?” Andrew’s voice, smooth as dark honey, warm and homey and all hers, slid over her as he walked into the office. He ducked his lanky frame under the top of the doorframe.

She rose and went to him, winding her fingers through his and breathing in his scent, Ivory and Old Spice and sawdust from the jobsite. “I don’t know. I hope so.” She leaned into his chest and tried to find comfort there.

“Here’s that salami on rye,” Andrew said after a minute, fishing the cellophane-wrapped sandwich from the inside pocket of his coat. He chuckled. “Don’t know how you can stand that stuff.”

Neve grinned. “I told you, I just had a craving last night. I can’t remember the last time I ate salami either, but—“

The door flew open then, with Maggie on the other side. Neve was just about to point to the list of nearly one hundred landscaping businesses on her desk when a sudden head rush left her woozy. She reached for the arm of the loveseat to steady herself. Not again, she thought. Not now. Her breath came in short gasps, and pinwheels of light spun on the walls as she fought for composure. Andrew wrapped his arms around her, catching her as she fell, and Neve let herself cave into the safety of him.

*

Shadows moved against the back of her eyelids. A hum rose and fell in the distance, a rushing of waves, a foreign sound she couldn’t identify. A moment later, she realized that it came from somewhere inside her own ears. Neve rolled her head from side to side.

“She’ll be fine,” she heard Andrew say as she opened her eyes. He sat beside her on the loveseat with one arm looped around her.

Maggie stared at the two of them, shadows settling into the faint lines around her eyes. “You’re sick, aren’t you?” she said. “That’s why you’ve been drinking ginger ale and looking like you were going to pass out all morning. Well, you should go home, then. Andrew can take you. Get some rest, and—”

“She’s not sick,” Andrew interrupted. He patted his wife on one leg and moved to the sink in the corner, where he ran cold water over a fistful of paper towels. He handed them to Neve, who took the cool compress with relief and laid it over her eyes.

“She’s pregnant.”

Neve choked, a small sound in the suddenly-silent room, and she thought her breakfast might come up. You weren’t supposed to say anything. She slid a glance toward her boss. I told you we needed to wait. But she couldn’t really blame him. Andrew was thrilled, almost giddy, at the thought of becoming a parent. So was she. You couldn’t hide joy like that, Neve thought. It spilled out and colored the world when you least expected it to.

“What?” Maggie broke the silence. “You’re—” Her eyes widened until the moon could have slipped inside them. “Are you really?”

With shaking fingers, Neve patted her cheeks with the paper towels and nodded. “I just—I didn’t want to tell you. Not quite yet. Until I was a little further along.” She burst out in tears. “Sorry. I’ve been doing that a lot lately.”

Maggie leapt across the room and hugged her, spewing congratulations. She wound her arms around Neve’s neck and patted the still-flat belly. For just a minute, she looked like her regular old self, without bills or an ailing mother or her own loneliness to think about. Neve thought maybe it would be all right, after all. Then she saw the look, the one she had feared: a quick, subtle darkening deep inside Maggie’s pupils, a twitching at the corners of her mouth, the rapid blinking of pale eyelashes. She’d wanted to avoid that look at all costs. It was the reason she hadn’t told her boss in the first place, nearly one month ago when she and Andrew found out for sure.

*

“It’s called HPV,” the doctor said across the desk. A nineteen-year old Maggie sat in the chilly, fourth-floor office clutching a worn leather purse as her roommate waited downstairs. They had a study session back on campus in fifteen minutes, and this follow-up to the gynecologist was just routine after some abnormal test results. She thought.

“What?” She leaned forward, glancing at the clock on the wall behind the middle-aged woman. “What’s that?”

The doctor removed the half-glasses that perched on her nose and folded her fingers together, lining them up like that old game of church-and-steeple that Maggie remembered from childhood.

“It’s a virus, a sexually transmitted disease,” she explained. “A fairly common one. It affects approximately sixty percent of people who are sexually active. Recently, some research has been done on developing a vaccine to prevent it, but…”

Maggie’s mind filled in the blanks. No vaccine existed. Not yet, anyway. She was out of luck on that one.

“In any case,” the woman went on, “most people’s immune systems take care of the virus and they’ll never know they had it. Occasionally, people contract a strain that’s tougher to get rid of. Young women, especially, seem vulnerable to those.”

“Is that what I have? One of the—” Maggie stumbled, not sure of the right words. “One of the tougher ones?”

The doctor opened Maggie’s folder. It was marked in various places with orange and yellow circles, stickers placed next to scribbles. Her finger rested on a typewritten lab result with letters and numbers Maggie tried in vain to read upside down. “Yes. That is what you have. One of the two strains that can cause cervical cancer, as a matter of fact.”

“Cancer? I have cancer?” All the air left the room. Saying the word seemed to stretch Maggie’s mouth to distortion. She felt a terrible ache inside the pit of her stomach. Her fingers closed into fists of panic, creating tiny half moons as her nails dug into soft flesh.

I’m nineteen, she wanted to say. I don’t have cancer. I can’t. I don’t have time, first of all. Why, she had finals in another week, a weekend at the Jersey shore planned with her girlfriends, and a brand-new boyfriend who’d invited her to a party that night. She didn’t have cancer. It had to be some kind of mistake. They’d mixed up the results at the lab. Or she was dreaming, back in her dorm room, and she’d wake in another minute to a day void of doctors and exam rooms and tests.

The doctor shook her head. “We don’t know if it’s cancer right now. The chances are low, especially for someone as young and healthy as yourself. We’ll do a biopsy and go from there.”

Maggie closed her eyes and tears slipped down her cheeks. The doctor pushed a wad of tissues into her hand and she pressed them to her face.

“As I said, we don’t know anything at this point. The good thing about this kind of cancer is that, in most cases, the cells grow fairly slowly.”

But Maggie wasn’t most cases, as it turned out, and she didn’t do anything slowly, especially develop cancer. Which is why six weeks after staring at the doctor in disbelief, and three weeks before her twentieth birthday, she found herself lying on a stretcher, doped up for surgery. As she lay there, staring at the ceiling, she turned over a word in her mind that she’d barely heard, let alone considered, a year earlier.

Hysterectomy…

The O.R. nurse wheeled her down the hallway.

Hysterectomy. Hysterical. Switch a few letters, and they’d be the same word, she thought. That’s why doctors used to cut women open a hundred years ago, to take out the thing that drove them mad.

Yet the only thing Maggie could think of, before the surgeon with the kind eyes did the same to her, was how she couldn’t imagine that removing her womb would make her feel less mad or less angry at Dillon. He was part of the reason she lay there, after all. She’d never forget what had happened that night four years earlier, even if they removed all the cancer and she lived to be a hundred and ten. She’d always see him in the center of her memory, walking down the hallway and closing his door.

He was sleeping, her stepbrother, he was Goddamn-fucking sleeping, when the monsters came to life and she had no one else to save her from them.

1:00 p.m.

Jack dashed off the last sentence of his email. There. Now the board of directors had a heads-up about the situation in Hart’s Falls. If Carl couldn’t manage to get a verbal agreement from the home owner today, and the papers signed by early next week, Jack would drive down there himself to close the deal.

He ran a hand over his head, mussing the curls and knowing Paige would finger them back into place. With a glance at the clock, he cursed.

One o’clock.

He grabbed his jacket, mumbled to his secretary that he’d be back in an hour, and dashed past the elevator doors. He took the stairs two at a time all the way to the ground floor. The wind caught his breath, stole it from his throat the minute he stepped onto the sidewalk, but he barely noticed.

Paige hated to be kept waiting.

Hands shoved deep into his pockets, eyes slit against the unusual early summer gale, Jack crossed against the light and turned left. One look at the bank clock on the corner told him all he needed to know. Almost ten minutes late. He hurried on, regretting the whole idea of meeting Paige for lunch in the first place. Neither of them could afford time away from the office; he should have simply agreed to meet her at the engraver’s and been done with it. Distracted, he stepped off the curb and nearly lost a foot to a cab speeding through a yellow light. A horn blared and a woman beside him squawked a warning. He jumped back just in time.

“Dammit!”

Thirty seconds later, the light turned red, and Jack hurried across the street and into Jacque’s Café, a cozy bistro and the newest place for Boston’s upscale crowd to lunch. He looked around.

“Sir?” The hostess, a young woman with thick fake eyelashes, stepped from behind the kiosk. Buttons strained across her chest and stretched the pink fabric of her blouse into dangerous puckers. “May I help you?”

“Table for Major. I’m meeting someone.” Jack kept his eyes away from the pink puckers and pretended to study the specials board.

“A woman—tall, blonde?”

He nodded.

“Right this way.”

He shrugged off his jacket and followed her, letting his eyes adjust to the half-light of the café. They passed a collection of small round tables, a few booths, and the hallway leading to the restrooms. In the very back corner of the restaurant sat Paige. His heart gave a little flip.

Even unsmiling, with lines of tension etched around her mouth, Jack’s fiancée lit up the room. With blonde hair styled neatly around her face, pale blue eyes, and a figure that still fit into the cheerleading skirts she’d worn in high school, the city’s star criminal attorney was one of the most attractive women he had ever known. That she was brilliant, successful, and a tigress in the bedroom didn’t hurt their relationship any. From the moment they’d met through a mutual friend, Jack had thought Paige Webster a perfect match for him. She turned heads in a crowd. She knew the stats of every Red Sox pitcher in recent history. She could make grown men cry on the witness stand. And she made a mean veal piccata.

As Jack bent down and kissed her, he reminded himself again of his luck in finding such a suitable woman to marry. He slid into his chair and picked up a menu. In fact, the only thing he wished for sometimes was that she’d crack. Show a tender side. Reveal her vulnerability. Sometimes—most times, if Jack was really honest with himself—he felt as though Paige would do just fine in life with or without him. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Once in a while, he liked to be needed.

“Sorry I’m late. Lost track of time.”

“Hope that doesn’t happen on our wedding day.” She smiled, as though to make it a joke. Jack wondered if it really was.

“I already ordered for you,” she continued. “Clam chowder and whatever the sandwich special is today. Hope that’s okay.”

Jack didn’t say anything. He didn’t mind the chowder, though he wasn’t really a sandwich guy. “It’s fine.” Cracking his knuckles, he bumped one knee against the table as he tried to get comfortable.

“Here,” Paige said and reached into the large leather purse at her feet. Out came a thick binder, decorated with flowers and lace. She passed it to him.

“What’s this?”

“I’m thinking about calla lilies instead of roses.” She sipped at her seltzer and gestured at the half-dozen yellow notes stuck inside. “I marked some pages for you to look at.” Reaching over, she brushed some errant curls from his forehead and patted them back into place.

Jack flipped through the book, wondering if the centerpieces on page nine were supposed to look different from the ones on page sixteen.

“They look nice. The lilies, I mean.” He pulled at his collar. Why couldn’t they just fly off to Vegas? Or even some island and swap vows on the beach? Did they really need to spend thousands upon thousands of dollars on pedestals and ice sculptures and miniature tuxedoes for her boss’s twin nephews, serving as ring bearers?

Jack knew he could afford the ritziest wedding the city had seen in decades. More important, he knew Paige wanted it. But unlike his father or his fiancée, pomp meant little to him. Money was useful, certainly, as a tool to carve out a comfortable life. If necessary, it could be a weapon to wield in the world of big business. But on a personal level? Spending hard-earned cash on silly things and material items just to keep up appearances left Jack cold. He didn’t need to release two hundred doves at his wedding to show the city how much money he had. Most of the city already knew. It made no difference to him one way or the other.

Maybe I am like Mom after all, he thought suddenly. She never needed fancy china on the table. She served steak on plastic plates, and it tasted just the same. Invisible fingertips trailed up his spine. Funny the pieces of you that traced back to your parents. The stuff in the mirror was easy to see. The details under the skin and buried in the soul emerged differently. Jack rubbed his chin, sorry all over again that he wouldn’t dance with his mother at the wedding. God, how he missed her sometimes.

“You really like them?” Paige looked worried. “But what about the favors? What goes with lilies? Almonds or candles? Or both?”

Jack’s stomach growled. “Either is fine with me.” Fine. The best he could come up with.

Paige settled back in her chair as the waitress brought their food. “I don’t know.” She set her napkin on her lap and nibbled at leaves of watercress.

He took a long sip of clam chowder and burned his tongue. “Ow! Shit.”

Paige drew her brows together in disapproval and shook her head. Jack suddenly wished he’d ordered a good, strong cocktail, but she probably would have disapproved of that too. Growing up on the outside of Boston’s social circles, Paige had since honed a keen awareness of propriety. Appearances mattered. Behavior mattered. In fact, as far as she was concerned, what you looked like in the public eye counted for just about everything.

“…so will you have time to stop at the dry cleaners after work today?”

“What?” Distracted, Jack took another gulp of soup and burned himself for a second time.

“I was hoping you could pick up my red dress. The Vera Wang.” Paige finished her salad and signaled their waitress to bring the bill. Out came her company credit card, shiny and silver in the half-light.

“That’s all you’re eating?”

“It’s all I have time for.” She signed her name with a flourish and looked at Jack with sad, tired eyes.

His heart melted a little.

“I told Stefan I’d meet him for a drink after work.” Not exactly true. He’d yet to make the phone call to his best friend from college, though he’d been meaning to for well over a month. “But if you really need me to get the dress—“

“No, it’s okay. I guess I can have one of the girls at the office run out.” She reached for her coat and stood. At nearly six feet tall in high heels, she struck an imposing figure. The busboy stopped and stared from the next table over, and Jack didn’t blame him. “Don’t forget we’re going to the Deveau Charity Ball tonight.”

He froze.

“Oh, honey, you didn’t.” Paige clucked her tongue. “Please tell me your tux is dry cleaned.”

“It is.” That, at least, was true. “Where is it this time?” The Deveau Ball was held every year on the last Friday in June and had become the premier summer event for Boston’s upper class. Marty Deveau, owner of a multi-million dollar investment company, threw a lavish party each year to raise money for a variety of the city’s charities. Once known as a pompous playboy with too much money, since his marriage a dozen years ago the prestigious Mr. Deveau had become the darling of the media and a hero to Boston’s underdogs.

“The Hotel Victoria.” Paige wrapped a silk scarf around her hair. “Eight o’clock.” She flipped open her cell phone and scanned for messages, frowning. “But I may be a little late. I have a deposition this afternoon, and I had to reschedule a meeting for six.”

So maybe I can stall a little, Jack thought. He stood to say goodbye. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy the party scene; he appreciated celebrating the warm weather along with the rest of the city. And he was the first person to make donations to charity. It was just that everyone seemed so stuffy at these fancy events, so made up. They postured for the cameras and talked in sound bites, fully aware they were fodder for the next day’s social column. Jack shuddered. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had an honest conversation at the Deveau Ball or gone home without a blasted headache.

“I’ll call you,” Paige said, and brushed a kiss across his cheek. Her perfume, floral and familiar, hung in the air over him. For an instant, his groin throbbed with wanting. Jack watched as she pushed open the door, bent her head against the wind, and marched in quick, short steps down the pavement. At the corner she raised two fingers, and a cab stopped at once. She slipped inside and was gone.

Jack sat back down and checked his watch. Almost two. An entire afternoon stretched out before him, filled with telephone calls he didn’t want to make and meetings he didn’t want to schedule. To top it all off, he had to end the day by sticking himself into a monkey suit and making small talk. Great. Just great. With one hand he punched buttons on his cell phone until he found the right number.

“Stef? Hey, it’s Jack. Yeah, yeah, I know. So how ’bout tonight? I don’t know—say five-thirty at Cecil’s Pub?” He watched a young couple stop for a kiss on the corner. Arms wrapped tightly around each other, they leaned in, closed their eyes, and ignored the whistles of people walking by. Jack shook his head. He’d never been one for public displays of affection. He couldn’t understand why people couldn’t save the pawing and groping for the bedroom. He turned away as Stefan came back on the line.

“Good. I’ll see you then. Yeah, you owe me a game. Better practice up.”

*

“So that’s it, then?” The man with the graying temples and muscular forearms signed his name and pushed the paper back across the table. “You’ll start next week?”

Dillon checked his calendar. “Shouldn’t be a problem. Either my partner, J.J., or I will be here Wednesday morning. Maybe Thursday, depending on the weather.”

Thunder rattled the windows of the library where they sat.

Ellis Casterline snuffed out the end of a cigarette and shook his head. “Not your partner. I want you. Don’t care how good your buddy is. You’ll be overseeing the work.”

“Well, sir—” Dillon began, careful of his words. He didn’t want to blow a job that looked to net several thousands of dollars in profit, but he also had a business to run. Since that last radio interview, seemed like everyone wanted Dillon himself on site at all times. He did his best to please, but sometimes that couldn’t happen. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t be in two—or four or six—places at one time.

The man held up a palm. “I don’t want to hear any excuses. You’re the one I read about in the Globe, the one Cassie and Ronald Weinberg recommended. If it takes more money for you to be here in the flesh, then so be it. I want the best.” He leaned in and Dillon could smell tobacco mixed with some kind of cologne. Jabbing a finger into the air, Casterline went on. “And you’re the best, from what I’ve been told. Let’s not play games and pretend you have to work me in to some kind of schedule. My wife is throwing me a retirement party in four months. I want these grounds looking like the White House. Better, in fact. Can you do that for me?’

Dillon glanced down at the long list they’d generated over the last hour. Custom paved walkways, ornamental trees, pond with waterfall…

“Yes, sir,” he said, erasing any doubt from his voice. He held out his hand, which the guy shook, too hard. “You’ll see me later next week. I’ll call and confirm the day before.”

“Very good.” Ellis Casterline lit another cigarette. “I’ll look forward to it, then.” He picked up his telephone, and Dillon took that as the cue to leave. He made his way past shelves of books, all coated in a fine dust, and hoped he could find his way back to the front door. Jesus, but these mansions had more hallways and side rooms than their owners knew what to do with.

As soon as he pushed open the library door, the redhead appeared again. Must have been waiting right around the corner, Dillon thought. She cocked her head and sent him a smoldering look. White shorts showed off tanned legs. Ample cleavage peeked from beneath her bright yellow polo shirt. Willow, she’d said earlier as an introduction, as she slipped her warm hand into his and purred the word up at him. Like the tree.

“I’ll get you back to the front door,” she said. “Unless you’d like a tour of the rest of the house.” She paused and let innuendo fall from her words.

Dillon cleared his throat. Last thing I need is for Casterline to think I’m after one of his little girls. “Um, no, just the front door would be fine. Thank you.”

She shrugged and tucked her hand through the crook of his elbow just the same. “Suit yourself. Maybe next time.”

They paused on the front porch, watching as splatters of rain began to fall. Dillon checked his clipboard and was about to take off when a beat-up Dodge Shadow rattled by the house and pulled into the driveway next door. He raised his eyebrows as the car belched to a stop. That guy selling something? Or just lost? He couldn’t imagine a vehicle that looked more out of place on Regency Way and meant to say so when Willow whistled at the tall, slim man that unfolded himself from it.

“Hi, Taz!”

She knows him?

The guy didn’t say much, just “Hello yourself” as he flashed a grin from a full-bearded face. He loped up the steps of number Fifty-Nine, a slightly smaller version of the brick estate where Dillon still stood, and disappeared through the front door.

“He lives there?”

Willow nodded. “That’s the Majors’ place. They’ve been there forever, twenty years at least. They were one of the first homes in this development.” She sighed. “That was Taz. He’s the youngest.” Her eyes cut back toward the driveway and she ran a finger along her bottom lip. “God, I always had such a crush on him.”

Dillon stifled a laugh. Who didn’t you have a crush on?

“Then there’s Will, Aaron, and Jack. Four boys. Jack’s the oldest. He’s…God, probably over thirty now.”

“What kind of name is Taz?”

“Short for Tanzili. A family name, I think.” Willow’s voice dropped a little. “We used to see them a lot, when we were kids. My two older brothers played ball all the time with Jack and Aaron.” She shrugged. “After Mrs. Major died, things changed.”

Dillon shifted his feet, uncomfortable.

“She was so nice,” Willow went on before he could make a move to leave. “Everyone on the block liked her. She was the one, you know, who’d always be home during the day, who’d be making cookies for all the kids. She helped us build a fort in their backyard once. And she had the coolest stories about animals and princesses and the stars and stuff.

“When she got cancer, all the boys just fell apart. Taz and Jack especially. She died—I guess it’s been four or five years ago, now. Mr. Major changed after that, got really depressed and wouldn’t talk to anyone for a while. It’s too bad.”

Dillon shook his head. He supposed everyone had sadness in their past, troubled memories that bided their time and rattled the bars of their cages occasionally to let you know they were still there. “Well, guess I’ll be going.”

Willow slid her gaze from Dillon’s brows to the tips of his work boots. “I’ll see you around,” she said. “Next week?”

Dillon nodded instead of answering. Crossing the yard in a few giant steps, he leaped into his truck. He shook the water from his hair and stuffed the damp paperwork into his folder. Damn. Women get bolder and bolder these days. What happened to a little bit of subtlety? He wiped his face. Best thing he could do was put the truck in gear and leave, pronto. He ran his fingers over the gearshift. It wasn’t Willow’s overt sexuality that had his pulse racing. It was the way she reminded him of someone else. The way she’d not only started up the rattling of a cage but nearly torn the lock right off it.

Maggie, I’m sorry. I didn’t know he was in the house. I swear I didn’t…

Dillon shook his head, hard. He glanced at his watch and then up at the windshield, where rain now beat mercilessly. With this weather, there was no way he’d be able to start on the Mercer property across town. One thing about the landscaping business, you couldn’t outsmart nature or make deals with the devil, no matter how many deadlines awaited you. He turned the key and the truck’s engine roared to life. Back to the office, he thought. At least there I can catch up on some invoices and make some calls. And maybe if he got far enough away from this house, and the young woman standing on its front porch, he could forget about the redhead from the past she reminded him of.

He reversed direction and headed for the highway. He turned up the radio and tried to sing along. He counted the seconds between thunder and lightning. He listened to a commentary on the sorry state of the Red Sox. But none of it worked. Despite his best efforts, Dillon’s mind returned again and again to his stepsister and the last time he’d seen her, with anger flashing in her eyes and that hair flying everywhere. As if even the ends of her curls radiated emotion. Now, even years removed from the moment, it caused him such guilt and regret that he had to remind himself that it hadn’t been his fault. Not really. Her illness, her operation, her loss had stemmed from someone else’s mistake.

But I could have stopped it, he thought. If only I’d known, I could have stopped it from happening in the first place. I could have saved her, protected her the way I was supposed to. Blood related or not, brothers are supposed to do that for their little sisters. No, Dillon hadn’t been the real villain all those years ago, but he’d stood by while it happened. In Maggie’s mind, he knew, that was the same.

2:00 p.m.

Maggie stared out the back window of her workroom as she chewed on a thumbnail. The heads of her poor flowers bowed under the storm, petals damp and crushed, leaves lost. She wished she could hold up their tender blossoms and funnel them strength to withstand the wind and the rain. Hell, she wished she could do that for herself, right about now. She looked back at her desk and the list of landscaping businesses that Neve had found online. Ninety-eight listed just in the city of Boston. That didn’t include any of the suburbs. Ninety-eight? Maggie wanted to cry.

She sank to a seat and drummed her fingers on the desk. Her gaze fell on a bright red Christmas card, one she’d pulled from the back of a file drawer the other day. The scrawl inside she knew. Too well. He’d signed her birthday cards with that same squiggle, autographed the tree fort they built together one summer, forged a note to school so she didn’t get in trouble when she skipped and went to the mall. She’d recognize that handwriting anywhere, the way it swooped to the left at the beginning of words and tailed off at the end to nothing. A lump grew in Maggie’s throat until she had to turn away to draw a breath.

I should have kept in touch with him. It would make the next twenty-four hours a lot easier. This holiday card from almost six years ago was the only reminder she still held of her stepbrother. She couldn’t believe she’d kept it after all this time, but it must have gotten stuck in a box of papers from college. She remembered the anger, the sadness, with which she’d first read it, tracing the words that wished her a merry winter season. Does he think this makes up for what happened that night? Does he think it changes what I lost?

What the doctors had taken that long-ago day had healed. Only a small scar remained on her abdomen. But different scars marked her soul now. Deeper ones. Because the day Maggie left the hospital, she’d emerged as someone different, someone less whole, less sure, less herself.

She knew Dillon meant well. He probably wanted to show her he still cared, still felt sorry, still wanted to make her world right. But years of silence couldn’t be mended by a card in the mail.

She turned it upside down and stuck it under some junk mail. Maggie forced herself to remember what her mother had said about the name of his business. Something that rhymed. Or something that, for whatever reason, seemed silly to Hillary. Not a good name for a business. Maggie tucked her hair behind both ears. Okay, she knew her mother well enough to weed out a few. Pencil in hand, she went down the list, crossing out as she went and hoping against hope that she wasn’t deleting the very business she needed to call.

A-Plus Lawn Care

Beautiful Greens

Smith and Sons Landscapers

Maggie laid down her pencil and recounted. Eighteen names now had black lines through them. “Eighteen? That’s it? You’ve got to be kidding me.”

There’s got to be a better way. If Dillon was working in Boston, then maybe he was listed in the yellow pages. Or the white pages. Or something. If he was such a hotshot businessman, maybe she could find some mention of him in an article or a link on someone’s website. Christ, maybe he has his own website. It was worth a try, anyway.

She started up her computer and waited for the screen to kaleidoscope into view. Steadying her gaze on the screen, she opened a search engine. Dillon Murphy, she typed with trembling fingers. Thirty seconds later she realized she was holding her breath.

Thirteen possible matches. Maggie almost didn’t want to look. Running a finger down the screen, she eliminated the first ones inside her head.

“Local mountain biker Dillon Murphy advanced in yesterday’s race…”

“Dillon Murphy slam dunks to win the Student-Faculty Scholarship game…”

“Dr. Dillon Murphy presents her findings on molecular research…”

“Dillon Murphy named Boston’s Young Entrepreneur of April...”

Maggie stopped. She read the last one again and then clicked on the link.

Dillon Murphy, owner of Spectacular Scapes, was named the Boston area’s Young Entrepreneur of April. The program honors the city’s brightest new businessmen and women who have demonstrated outstanding vision, leadership, achievement, and social responsibility. Murphy is responsible for the transformation of lawns and landscapes in and around the city…

As Maggie finished the brief article, perspiration broke out on her upper lip. Spectacular ‘Scapes, huh? Maggie grabbed Neve’s list. There it was, close to the bottom.

She looked back at the article. Was it possible? Had her stepbrother really become an award-winning businessman? She stared at the screen, as if Dillon himself might glide through it. One leg bounced up and down as nerves took over, and she pressed a palm against her knee, trying to still it. Only one way to find out… Reaching for her cell phone before she lost her nerve, she dialed eleven numbers and closed her eyes.

The phone began to ring.

Maggie almost hung up. If Spectacular ‘Scapes was in fact Dillon’s business, if he answered the phone himself, what was she going to say after all this time? How was she going to dance around everything that had happened, all the years that had sailed by since the last time she’d seen him? Her thumb moved to cut the connection. I should think of something reasonable and convincing, she thought. I should call back when I have a plan. She didn’t think blurting out Hi, Dillon, I know it’s been a while but do you think you could loan me fifteen thousand dollars? would be her best opening.

The line beeped, and a recording came on and saved her. “Hi, you’ve reached the office of Spectacular ‘Scapes. Please leave us a message, and we’ll get back to you. Have a great day.”

Maggie frowned. It wasn’t Dillon’s voice—it wasn’t a male voice at all—but she supposed that didn’t mean anything. Could be a secretary, or a co-worker. She hung up without saying a word.

Now what? She couldn’t just leave a message. What if it wasn’t him after all? What if he didn’t return her call? What if he waited until Monday to check his voicemail? She needed to talk to her stepbrother as soon as possible. Really, she needed to see him, to explain face to face what she was asking him for and why.

Eyes back to the clock. Two-fifteen and counting. No other choice, the voice inside her head began chirping. If you can’t reach him on the phone, then you have to go to Boston and try to find him.

“I can’t,” she said aloud.

You have to, the voice answered.

Maggie rubbed her temples as the headache began to win again. She stared at the dots of lights behind her eyelids and thought she could probably count thousands. Fifteen thousand, four hundred and eighty, to be exact. She peeled open her eyes and ran a finger down Neve’s list, checking the address. If she got in her car now and sped the sixty miles north, she could be in Boston by four o’clock or so. Maybe sooner. But he’s not in his office, the voice reminded her. Where will you find him? What if you can’t find him? What if he’s done for the day? What if he’s on vacation for the next two weeks?

“Well, someone must be there,” she said. “Right?”

But she didn’t know if that was right at all. She didn’t know if landscapers kept regular hours. She didn’t even know if they kept regular offices, or just machines in empty rooms that picked up calls while their owners planted flowers and shrubs.

“Damn!” She slapped the flat of her hand against the desk. Why did she have to do this all by herself? Why couldn’t she think of one other person besides poor Neve to help her shoulder the efforts?

Maggie froze as an idea struck her. “Eden Fife,” she said out loud. “Jesus, why didn’t I think of her sooner?” For the last year and a half, Maggie’s former college roommate had manned the phones at one of Boston’s top law firms. She was also a member of a half-dozen social groups in the city. Maggie grabbed her cell phone again. If anyone can help me find Dillon, it’s Eden. That woman has connections most people only dream of.

She thumbed down through her phone book, hoping she hadn’t deleted Eden’s work number in some mad fit of clearing out last month.

Eden — Home.

Eden — Work.

Thank God. She dialed and prayed it wasn’t lunchtime or quitting time or some other kind of formal-office-ritual time up there. Please answer. Please.

“McGrath, Lyons, and Yearwood.” The voice, crisp and professional, with just a hint of Virginia gentility, picked up on the second ring.

“Eden? It’s Maggie.”

The voice sucked in a breath. “Mags? Really?”

“Really.”

“I haven’t heard from you in ages. Y’all all right down there?” Though Eden had lived in the north for over ten years, at times her Southern drawl still dripped like honey. To Maggie it spoke of times gone by, of carefree college days, of endless nights of studying and pizza breaks and swearing never again over the guys who broke their hearts.

“Hi. Yeah, I’m all right.” She tried to remember how to have a normal conversation before leaping into desperation.

“Well, it’s been too long. I miss you. What are you doing with yourself these days?”

“Um…surviving.”

Eden paused and Maggie could almost see her friend cocking her head to one side. Blonde hair would fall like a curtain across her face as she weighed the words. “What is that supposed to mean? Are you in some kind of trouble?”

Maggie took a deep breath. “Actually, I’m trying to find someone up there in Boston. I was hoping you could help me.”

Eden laughed, a throaty sound that made Maggie long for days of margarita-drinking, whistling at the guys playing football outside their window, studying until midnight and then driving to the harbor just to listen to the waves.

“You are too much, Mags,” she said. “It’s a guy, isn’t it? You met a guy and he hasn’t called you back and so you want me to track him down. Sure, I’ll do it.”

I wish, Maggie thought. “It’s not a guy,” she said. “Not the way you mean, anyway.”

“So what exactly are we talking about? Who do you need to find?”

Maggie said the name she hadn’t spoken aloud in years. “Dillon Murphy.”

“Your stepbrother?”

She expected Eden’s surprise. In all the years of their friendship, she’d mentioned Dillon exactly twice: once before the operation, and once eighteen months later, after breaking up with the one man she’d wanted to spend her life with. Both times, sobs had virtually obscured her words, so she wasn’t sure Eden remembered much of what she’d said. But the agony, the blame, the heartbreak behind the tears—that had been pretty apparent, Maggie guessed.

“Mind if I ask why?’

“How much time do you have?”

“Not enough, from what it sounds like. Okay, save the details for later. How soon do you need to find him?”

“As soon as I can. I’m pretty sure he owns a landscaping business up there. Spectacular ‘Scapes. I called, but all I got was the machine.” She took a deep breath. “Listen, I’m going to drive up. Today. I’ve got to figure out where to find him. If he’s not in his office, I don’t have any idea where to start looking.”

“I’ll see what I can find out.” Eden rustled some papers in the background. “When will you be here?”

“Maybe four or so? If traffic isn’t too bad.”

“Call me when you get into town. And I’ll call you back if I hear anything between now and then.” Eden paused. “Are you sure there isn’t anything else I can do to help? Do you need money?”

Maggie shook her head, surprised that it had taken her friend nearly ten minutes to guess the truth. “No. But thanks for offering.” Though Eden worked as executive assistant to one of the top defense attorneys in the city, Maggie was sure that her posh little apartment, designer clothes, and the zippy red sports car she drove more than sucked dry her weekly paycheck. No, finding Dillon was the most practical answer. She could only hope.

*

Dillon swung his pick-up truck into the space marked “Reserved” and dodged raindrops on his way inside the office. Flipping on the overhead light, he settled himself into the chair behind his computer. Two of his guys had stopped by, judging by the paperwork lying on his desk and the half-full pot of coffee. He poured himself a cup and stuck it in the microwave to warm up. Scanning his appointment book, he mentally rearranged the jobs for sunnier days.

Rained more this month than any other June I can remember, he thought. When he was a kid, summers seemed to stretch out with sunshine from dawn to dusk. Any rain that passed through came and went in the time it took to run inside and have a snack at the kitchen table. He ran a finger down the list of jobs he’d had to reschedule just this month: six. Not good. Fatigue, helped by the previous night’s tequila shots, pinched the back of his neck and squeezed his temples. Dillon flopped into a slouch and closed his eyes for a minute.

The memory slipped inside his mind’s eye before he could shoo it away.

*

“Dillon, will you make me one?” Her voice, too big for her tiny, ten-year old frame, bounced across the room to him.

“Nope. Go away.”

“Please. I won’t bother you again for the rest of the day. I promise.” In an instant, his kid sister Maggie was pulling a chair up next to him, leaning both elbows on the table and staring at his sandwich like she hadn’t eaten in a year.

“Yeah, right. In an hour you’ll be bugging me to let you play in the fort with me and Jimmy.” At thirteen, he knew he should pretend to be too old to talk to little girls or make them sandwiches. Still, down deep, he sort of liked Maggie. He liked the way she followed him around, the way she only let him apply her Band-Aids, the way she sat curled up next to him on the couch when they watched television at night. At least when Dad married this time, Dillon had gotten a sister out of the deal. That was pretty cool.

“Please, Dillon.” She refused to let her mother trim her bangs and crazy curls fell into her face. He laughed; he couldn’t help it. And when he put down his sandwich to take a long drink of milk, she snatched it from his plate and ran into the living room, giving it back only when he caught her and tickled her until she squealed.

*

Dillon’s eyes flew open as the telephone rang. Jesus, he thought, where did that memory come from? He ran a palm over his forehead and found it damp with perspiration.

“Good afternoon, Spectacular ‘Scapes, may I help you?” The words came out in one long, ragged sentence.

A woman cleared her throat and said, “Yes, hello. I’m interested in getting an estimate for a flagstone patio?”

“Sure, go ahead.” He grabbed a notepad and jotted down the woman’s address and phone number. At least the rain hadn’t chased away potential clients. He’d just have to find a way to work them all in.

“Could I ask you another favor?” the woman went on.

“Sure.”

“Well, I’m the vice-president of the Women’s Horticulture Club of Greater Boston. Would you be interested in donating any items to a charity auction we’re holding next month? You know, like a landscaping consultation, or a lawn treatment, or…”

“Ah, I’m not sure…” Dillon wasn’t very good at this part of the business, schmoozing to get his name splashed across the paper. J.J. usually handled publicity.

“It’s a tax write-off, of course, and all our proceeds go to the local shelter for battered women.”

Well, I’ll sound like a real schmuck if I say no to that. “Could you let me talk to my partner and get back to you?”

“Of course,” she answered. “We’ll be putting together the list of donations through next weekend.” She paused. “Incidentally, I’ll be at the Deveau Ball this evening. Will you be attending? Maybe we can talk a little business while we’re there.”

Dillon cleared his throat. “Actually, I plan on it...” He’d almost forgotten.

“Wonderful. Well, I’ll make sure to find you while I’m there, then. Have a good afternoon.”

“You too,” Dillon mumbled as he replaced the receiver.

Rubbing one thumb against the nub of his ponytail, he closed his eyes. Against his will, his imagination replayed that morning’s conversation with Ellis Casterline’s daughter. What was her name? Wilma? Willow, that was it. Might as well be Maggie Doyle, though.

God, he didn’t want to think about his sister today, didn’t want to remember. But it was almost as if today, he couldn’t think of anything else.

*

Still a little stoned from the weed they’d smoked earlier that night, Dillon and his buddy huddled in the shadows by the mailbox. They shared the end of a butt and laughed. One glance at the light slipping through Maggie’s first-floor window told him his kid sister was the only one still up. Sam followed Dillon’s gaze and whistled under his breath.

“You sure got a cute sis.”

“Shut up.” Dillon elbowed his friend. “I‘ll kill you if you even think about it.”

Sam didn’t answer, just shrugged and grinned as he finished the cigarette and toed it out in the gravel of the driveway. “Mind if I use your bathroom?” He jerked his thumb toward the Murphy’s front door.

Dillon frowned. “Can’t you take a piss out here?” If his dad caught him sneaking anyone in after curfew again, he’d be grounded until graduation.

“It’s not pissing I gotta take care of.”

“Yeah, all right, whatever. Just make it fast and keep your mouth shut.” Dillon tiptoed around the shrubs, up the drive, and opened the door with a silent, practiced motion. Together they made their way through the dark foyer and past the kitchen, leaving all the lights off. Sam knew where the toilet was; he’d been to the house a half-dozen times. Dillon crept to the bottom of the staircase and listened. Nothing but his father’s snores so far. Good thing.

“Hurry up,” he hissed, following Sam toward the hallway that led to the downstairs bedrooms. He hooked his thumbs in the loops of his jeans, leaned against the wall, and kept one eye focused on the staircase.

Halfway down the hall Sam stopped

Maggie’s door opened a few inches, and her round, freckled face peeked out.

“Hey, Maggie.”

Dillon jabbed his friend in the back, but Sam ignored him.

Maggie’s eyes flicked back and forth from her stepbrother to Sam Knight, captain of the football team and president of the senior class. A flush rose in her cheeks and she opened her door all the way.

“What are you guys doing?” It was a whisper, a laugh, a biting of the bottom lip. Clad in an over-sized t-shirt and a pair of Dillon’s white tube socks, she leaned in the doorway and stared at Sam.

“Came by to say hello,” Sam said. He ran a hand over that buzz cut that all the girls at school seemed to drool over and edged his way closer.

That was enough for Dillon. Grabbing Sam by the arm, he hauled him into the kitchen. “Stay away from my sister. I mean it. You even look at her wrong, I’ll send your ass into next year.”

Sam shrugged, a good-natured grin still on his face. “Hey, I was just saying hi.” He raised both palms as if proclaiming his innocence and shuffled into the bathroom.

Dillon glanced over at Maggie, who still stood in her doorway. The smile had left her face, and she shot him a glance he could read as plain as day: I’m fine, older brother. Stop worrying about me. Don’t hang around my room and play cop.

He sighed and ignored her. She didn’t get it. Somehow, over the last year, Maggie had turned from an annoying little kid with a head of crazy hair into this slender thing with curls falling down her back and a figure that filled out every damn thing she put on. Shit, she had no idea how the guys at school reacted to that.

I should warn her, Dillon thought. I’ve got to tell her to be careful, let her know what guys say, the way they think. I can’t always be around to watch out for her. Tomorrow, he told himself. I’ll drive Mags to school and give her a heads-up.

Two minutes later, the toilet flushed, and a bleary-eyed Sam emerged. “See ya later,” he whispered.

Dillon nodded and turned toward his own room, down the hall from Maggie’s. Sam knew enough to lock the door behind him. He knew to let the screen door ease shut rather than squeal with a jolt. Dillon didn’t watch his friend disappear into the night shadows. He didn’t wait to hear Sam’s jalopy start up for the two-mile drive home. Instead, dozy from the weed and the late hour, he slipped off to bed. His eyes closed before he reached the pillow.

Not once did I think anything would happen.

Not once did I think I should have stayed and played chaperone.

It wasn’t my fault. Sam was gone. The door was locked.

It was only the next morning that Dillon found out the truth.

*

On his way back from lunch, Jack stopped at the huge mahogany desk outside his office.

“Suzie, what’s my calendar look like for next Wednesday?”

The ample-bosomed woman in her early forties fluttered her lashes at him. No secret around the office that the CEO’s secretary had a schoolgirl’s crush on her boss. In her tight sweaters and heavy make-up, she preened and posed each time he walked by.

“Let me see.” Swiveling her chair to the computer behind her, she typed a few keys and hummed. Frosted blonde hair bobbed as she did so.

“Conference call with Les Axeman at noon. Other than that, nothing scheduled.”

“Okay. Leave the rest of the day free, if you can. I might have to make a trip down to Rhode Island.” He hated to think about wrapping up the purchase himself, but sometimes Carl turned soft when he had to make cutthroat deals face to face. Jack would save mid-week for the mop-up just in case.

Suzie nodded and her artificial nails clicked against the keys. “No problem.”

Jack knocked a thank-you on her desk and moved away.

“Goin’ to the ball tonight?” Her voice followed him.

His neck tightened. For almost an hour, he’d forgotten. “Oh. Yes.”

“Well, have a marvelous time, and tell that beautiful fiancée of yours to relax and enjoy herself for once. If she don’t, some other woman might just swoop in and steal you away.” She winked. “You know what I mean.”

Jack thought he heard the assistant on the other side of the room bite back a chuckle. He smiled. Some other woman steal him away? He couldn’t imagine that happening. What Paige wanted, Paige got. Raising a hand behind him, he disappeared into his office, leaving a giggling Suzie behind him.

Behind the closed door, Jack took a moment to stretch, trying to will away the knots in his neck. He ignored the pile of messages on his desk, the prospectus that needed perusal, the blinking inbox icon on his computer. Turning his back on it all, he stared out at the Boston skyline. Steel spirals pierced the graying sky, mixed with stout, brick historic buildings that had witnessed modern growth around them. A few blocks to the left stretched Faneuil Hall, with its fantastic blend of eateries and shops. Farther off, invisible to his eye but not his heart, lay Boston’s beloved Fenway Park. This year’s Red Sox team looked about the same as in years past: scruffy, scrambling, falling behind in the standings and fighting to work their way back up. You could almost set your calendar by the ebb and flow of their season.

God, he loved this place.

Jack sank into his deep leather chair. Back to work. He had a good three hours ahead of him, at least. Opening his emails, he scanned them quickly. He fished a pen from the top drawer and jotted down some notes for his four o‘clock meeting. He wondered how late that one would run. He’d told Stefan five-thirty at Cecil’s Pub, but that had been a long shot, and his college buddy knew it. If Jack made it there by six, he’d be lucky.

His private line rang.

Christ, not again. He waited a beat before picking up. Hadn’t Paige told him at lunch that she’d be busy all afternoon? He couldn’t imagine she had a free minute to call him for the third time that day.

“Hello, sweetheart. Is everything alright?”

“Well, no, not, even close,” she began. He could tell by the tightness in her words that she was in classic Paige work-mode, shooting orders to everyone in her office and drinking nonfat lattes by the gallon.

He chose his response carefully “Is there anything I can do?” Offering help sometimes soothed her.

“No, no, of course not.” She shouted something in the background. “But I’m going to be late tonight, probably nine or ten at least.”

“That’s fine.” Then I can have a couple more beers with Stefan. Perfect.

“That’s not what I needed to tell you.” Breathless, she rushed on. “I told Marty and Ginny you’d be there by seven.”

“What?”

“Cocktails are at seven and dinner at eight.”

But I’m going to be having my own cocktails, across town, Jack wanted to say. I don’t need to drop ten bucks on a martini when Stefan and I can get two-for-one drafts and play a game of darts.

“…plus Nina and Drake from the office downstairs are going, and I mentioned you’d meet them there.”

Jack tightened his grip on the pen and watched the silver squares on his desk clock slip into place: solid, heavy, like the noose he felt around his neck sometimes. He let out a long breath before responding. “I can’t make any promises, but I’ll do my best.”

“Thank you.” Paige’s voice lost its edge and sounded relaxed for a fraction of a second. “And one more thing.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to fax over three of the packets from the bands I’m interviewing next week. For our reception. Silverado is the most expensive, but I’m not sure their selection is exactly what we’re looking for.”

What are we looking for? Jack wondered. Good dance music? Big band tunes to make the parents happy? Love songs from the eighties? “I’ll have Suzie watch for them.”

“Thanks. Just take a look and tell me what you think. We can talk about it this weekend.”

Jack could hear the sound of shuffling papers and ringing telephones. Paige’s voice rose again, stress stringing it out in the upper octaves.

“I’ll let you go, then,” he said. “See you tonight.”

“I love you.”

The words startled him. He and Paige didn’t throw them around casually, not like other couples he knew who said hello and goodbye and what’s-for-dinner-babe-I-love-you every day. No, he and Paige had decided in a rational conversation years ago that those words were better left reserved for the bedroom. Or for New Year’s Eve or the occasional airport farewell. No need to use them everyday so that they lost all meaning. Trouble was, Jack found, that if you never said them at all, they became rusty from disuse.

“Love you too,” he mumbled into the receiver, feeling uncomfortable and wondering why.

Emails forgotten, meetings pushed to the back of his mind, Jack stared at a space above his door. Beyond the crown molding that framed the ceiling, he saw instead himself, at twenty-one years old. Without knowing where the memory came from, and without caring where it might lead, he let himself follow it.

Jack crossed campus with Stefan and a couple other guys from the fraternity. Past the groups of girls settled on the grass, pretending to study. Past the academic buildings and the library. Past Washington Square and the traffic that zoomed by. Late April sun beat down, unusual for early spring in New York, but Jack welcomed its heat on the back of his neck.

Coming in? Stefan asked.

In a few minutes. He jabbed a thumb to the left, past his dorm, toward hers.

Oh, yeah. His friend grinned. See you in an hour or two. And tell her I said hi.

Jack flipped his best friend the bird and broke into a jog. Football could wait. A beer with his buddies could wait. Studying—hell, that could wait all weekend. Now, he only wanted to see his girl. His love. The one he planned to propose to, someday. And no one knew, not even Stefan. Jack had just woken up one morning last week and known with a capital K that she was the one he wanted to wake up with every day after that. Up two flights of stairs, a turn to the right and there he stood, outside her door. It was covered with tinsel decorations left over from Christmas and a picture of the two of them, half-shadowed and happy and wound around each other. He raised his hand to knock, and—

“Sir?” Suzie’s voice pulled Jack back from the past. “The fax from Paige just arrived.”

Jack turned too fast and his hand smacked against the arm of his chair. “Ow! Dammit!” He cursed a few more times for good measure, though he wasn’t sure if the pain in his wrist or the memory hurt more.

“Thanks, Suzie. I’ll be right out.”

Silly, he told himself. He shook his head and chased away the picture inside his mind. It’s been ten damn years. It was a college romance, for God’s sake, the sort of thing you outgrow and dismiss when it doesn’t work out. Forget about it. About her. Don’t go running after ghosts and stirring up trouble.

Jack forced himself to listen to Suzie. To flip through pages of price quotes. To think about bouquets and invitations and wedding bands. And to remind himself about the man he was now and not the one that he had been, a child really, all those years ago.

3:00 p.m.

Maggie had changed her shoes, brushed her teeth, and was halfway out the door when Neve called her back.

“It’s Eden again.”

Maggie stopped in the hallway, not knowing whether that was good news or bad. She tucked the receiver under her chin and tried to stop the trembling in her fingers. “That was fast. Did you find him?”

“Not exactly.”

Her shoulders sagged. The bubble of hope jumping around inside her drooped a little, and she plopped onto the antique bench beside the front door. Maggie studied her fingernails. She didn’t realize how much she’d been counting on her friend to perform a miracle.

“But I did get a lead,” Eden went on.

“And?”

“He’ll be at the Deveau Ball tonight. I called a friend and asked her to check the guest list. You know, just in case he was a big enough deal to get invited.” She cleared her throat. “He is. Mags, he’s worth a lot of money. Really. If that’s what you need, I don’t think you’re gonna have any problem.”

The what? A ball? Maggie shook her head. “I’d rather just try his office. Less complicated. Less public.” She stood up again. “I’ll call every hour until he answers. I’ll come up there and wait on his doorstep, even.”

Eden clucked her tongue. “Come on, Mags. How practical is that?”

“Well, what the hell is this ball you’re talking about?”

“The Deveau Ball? Girl, don’t you ever read the papers? It’s a big charity event that goes on every June. All the biggest names around the city show up, donate gobs of money to charity, and get smashing drunk. Or dance on top of tables in their bare feet. Or go home with someone they’ve just met. It’s usually a great time.”

“You’ve gone before?” As if Maggie had to ask.

“Last two years. Our firm gets some tickets.” Eden paused. “So what do you say? You go to the ball, you’re practically guaranteed to run into him. I can get you an extra ticket.”

Maggie scrunched up her shoulders. A ball? No way. She had no desire to face down her stepbrother in front of hundreds of Boston’s elite. “There’s got to be another way. Somewhere else I can find him. What about his home address? Can’t you find out where he lives?” She heard her voice turn scratchy with panic. I sound like a stalker. Still, she couldn’t help herself. She needed to see Dillon now, she needed to talk to him now, not later tonight at a stupid charity event. She couldn’t wait that long.

“Mags, give it some thought. You can still come up here this afternoon, and I’ll still see if I can find a number where you can reach him. Maybe you will catch him at his office. I mean, it’s pouring here right now, so I’m pretty sure he’s not out planting hedges somewhere.” She laughed a little. “But just in case…”

Maggie traced the pattern of her hallway’s faux marble tiles with a toe. A ball? The biggest names around the city? Confronting her stepbrother in front of them all? She couldn’t imagine the horror of such a scene. It sounded like a warped Cinderella story, fleeing straight to the palace to save herself instead of running like hell in the opposite direction. Glass slippers, fairy godmothers, a gorgeous gown…she didn’t have any of the right props. She didn’t even have a Prince Charming.

Still, she closed her eyes and tried to picture it: her in a dress of some sort. Dillon in a tux. An enormous room. Lights, music, pretentious guests. Ten years of awkward memories between them, casting shadows on the night as she tried to borrow enough money to save her business and her sanity. But what happens when the clock strikes twelve in this scenario? “Just think about it,” Eden said. “I still think it’s your best shot.”

Maggie took a long breath. She didn’t have much choice, did she? She barely had twenty hours before the bank filed the first foreclosure papers. The way it looked, Prince Charming wasn’t going to ride up on his white horse and whip out a checkbook anytime soon. What else did she have to lose?

“Okay, fine,” she said, envisioning the storm ahead and deciding to march into it all the same. “I’ll do it. I’ll go to the damn ball. Just tell me where and when.”

*

Neve jumped as Maggie rushed back into the office, muttering and jangling her keys. She thought she heard something about dresses and shoes. That couldn’t be right. “What’s going on? What did Eden say?”

Maggie slowed down long enough to fish a rubber band out of a desk drawer and wind it around her curls. “The Deveau Ball. Up in Boston. Ever heard of it?”

Neve shook her head. She’d never even been out of Rhode Island.

“Apparently it’s some big charity event that happens every summer. It’s tonight. And I’m going to it.”

Neve sat back in her chair and tried to process. That look in her boss’s eyes, the manic one that meant Maggie was ready to fling herself over the edge of sanity, scared her a little. She’d seen it only a couple of times before, right as Maggie launched herself into a no-sleep, work-for-days frenzy. Neve swept her bangs to one side. With all the loose ends here in Hart’s Falls, why would Maggie be going to Boston for an evening of fun?

“Um…can I ask why?”

Maggie stopped in the middle of the room as if she’d forgotten where she was. “Why what?”

“Did you say you’re going to a ball tonight? In Boston?”

Maggie nodded, eyes already focused on something else. “Dillon is going to be there.”

Dillon. That name again. Neve pretended that she hadn’t heard Maggie repeating it through closed doors the last couple of days. Dillon who? He wasn’t a client or a bill collector, as far as she knew. And she remembered names better than anyone. A relative? An old boyfriend? Neve couldn’t begin to guess. She only knew that Maggie seemed to be tying every last hope to the guy. “Is he someone who can help you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.” Maggie sank onto the arm of the loveseat. “Dillon is my stepbrother.” The ragged edge of adrenaline in her voice faded. Her spine curved. One flip-flop dangled from her toes, nails painted midnight blue.

“I didn’t know you had any other family besides your mom.” Neve settled her chin into one palm. This was news.

“Dillon’s not family, not really. His dad married my mom when I was seven. He was nine. We got along well enough when we were kids.” Maggie tugged on a loose curl and tried to smooth it into her crooked ponytail. Sadness slunk across her face, looking for a crevice in which to stick. “Not so much after high school, though. You know how it is. Things happen. People grow apart. I haven’t talked to him in a long time. Six years, probably.”

“Wow. Do you miss him?”

Maggie focused her gaze on Neve for the first time since she’d started talking about him. She frowned as if the question didn’t make any sense.

“My mom mentioned a while back that he’d started a business. I went to see her today to find out if it was true.”

“Is it?” The list of landscapers, Neve thought.

Maggie nodded. “I guess he’s doing well, according to Eden. Got himself on the guest list for this fancy ball, so that’s where I’m headed.”

Relief found a home inside Neve’s heart. “You think he’ll loan you the money? You’ll be able to pay the bank and keep the house?”

“That’s what I’m hoping. I don’t have any more time, so this is my last chance. I promised the bank I’d have the money by tomorrow.”

Neve squirmed in her chair, and the broken springs hitched a little under her weight. “But what happens if your brother can’t get you the money by then?”

“Stepbrother,” Maggie corrected. “Well, if I can’t find him, or if he won’t loan me the money, then I’ll call that software company and see what they’ll give me for the house. The bank is going to start foreclosure on Monday anyway. It’s not like I have anything more to lose.”

“Oh.” Neve didn’t know what to think. “So where’s the ball?”

“Um…I have no idea. Some hotel downtown, I think. Eden’s getting me a ticket.”

“What are you going to wear?”

Maggie rubbed her nose. “God, I don’t know.” She frowned, as if she hadn’t thought past the next few minutes. “I’ll borrow something from Eden, I guess.” The light went out of her eyes. “What the hell am I doing? What am I thinking?” She buried her face in her hands. “There’s no way this is going to work. The whole thing is a stupid idea.”

Neve rose and went to Maggie, patting her on the back. “Stop it. Of course it’s going to work. Eden said he’s on the guest list, right? So I’m sure he’ll be there. And when he sees you, he’ll probably be so surprised and happy that he’ll want to loan you the money before you even finish asking.”

She made her voice strong so Maggie had no choice but to listen. Comforting, organizing, directing people from their sadness back into the practical tasks of living, was what Neve did best. She’d managed this office since the day after she graduated from high school. She had no intention of letting it, or its owner, fall apart now. One hand crept to her abdomen.

Maggie sniffled and raised her head. “You think?”

“It’s better than sitting here hoping that the trees in the front yard are going to start growing money, right?”

“God, I knew there was a reason I hired you. I’d have lost my sanity three years ago if it weren’t for you.” She stood up, clinging to one of Neve’s hands. “Come with me.”

“What?”

“Tonight, to the ball. I’m sure Eden can get an extra ticket.”

“Oh, I couldn’t.” The words caught in Neve’s throat. She waved her hands and pointed to the desk, the phone, the calendar on the wall. “Someone has to stay here.”

“Why? We’ll close up early. If this whole crazy idea doesn’t work out, next week we won’t even have a business to worry about. No reason to sit here until five o’clock.” Maggie’s voice broke. “Please. I need someone with me. I can’t do this by myself.”

“What about Eden?”

“She doesn’t know what’s going on with the business. And I don’t want to tell her all the awful details. I just want to find Dillon, have him write me a check, and leave.” She clasped her hands below her chin, like a child begging to stay up ten more minutes. “Please, Neve. Say you’ll go. I need someone on my side.”

“I…well, I’m not sure I have anything to wear.”

“Neither do I.” Maggie glanced at her watch. “Shoot. Maybe I should get something here in town, before we go. Is Bev’s open today? She owes me a favor after that redesign I did last summer. Told me to call her if I was ever in a pinch.” She tried to grin, but it slipped off her face. “Guess this would be a pinch, huh? Do you want me to pick up something for you?”

Neve shook her head. She couldn’t afford such a favor. “I probably have an old bridesmaid’s dress at home. I could check.”

The color came back into Maggie’s face. “Does that mean you’ll go?”

Neve nodded, tickled about the prospect of a road trip, even if it was for such a serious reason. “I’ll go.”

“Then I’ll run over to Bev’s right now.” Maggie looked at her watch again, and her lips moved as if she were counting seconds and forming a plan. “I’ll have to call Eden back, let her know what we’re doing. Why don’t you head home, find something to wear, and meet me back here? If we leave by four-thirty, we should make it up to Boston before six.”

“Okay.” Neve patted her hands together in excitement. She couldn’t wait to go home and look through her closet. She knew she shouldn’t be happy, shouldn’t be celebrating Maggie’s dilemma, but she couldn’t help it. A fancy ball and a night out in the big city — wait until she told Andrew!

“I’ll see you later,” she said, but Maggie was already out the door.

*

Normally, Maggie could reach the other side of Hart’s Falls in under ten minutes, but with the rain pouring down, it took her double that. She turned her wipers to high and did her best to avoid the water streaming from the ditches and puddling in the low spots. She wondered if the storm would let up before evening. The clouds overhead, heavy and ominous, didn’t promise much. Her mood turned blacker.

What am I doing? Am I really going to some ball on the off chance I might run into Dillon? And on the off chance he might actually agree to loan me almost sixteen thousand dollars? Tears welled in her eyes. Apparently that’s exactly what she was doing, because she’d run out of options. She’d lied to the bank. She’d stopped paying her loyal employee. She’d even begged Elmhurst House for an extension on her mother’s monthly rent. It might be crazy, but the Deveau Ball was Maggie’s last chance to save her home and her business.

As she approached the town’s main intersection, the lights of Hart’s Falls Medical Center pierced the gray afternoon. She slowed as an ambulance careened into its parking lot. Two nurses ran out into the rain. The building, only a few years old, boasted some of the most up-to-date facilities in the state. It had even recruited top doctors from hospitals up in Boston. But Maggie had never set foot inside, with the exception of one visit with her mother last fall, and she had no intention of ever returning on her own. Even the flu that kept her bedridden for nearly a month last winter, even the ten pounds she lost and the blood she threw up, couldn’t convince her to visit a doctor.

Hospitals, doctors, nurses—they only meant one thing to Maggie. Sam. That night. And all that happened after.

*

“How come I never see you at school?” Sam leaned closer to Maggie and pressed one elbow into the pink and yellow pillows on her bed. He’d knocked on her door a few minutes ago, sexy and smiling and smelling like Polo.

She let her eyelids flutter downward a little, the way the popular girls at school did when they talked to their boyfriends. “Well, we take different classes, for one.”

“Mmm.” He ran the back of his hand along her bare leg. Maggie shivered, enjoying his touch even though it frightened her a little. She still couldn’t believe it. This was Sam Knight, Mr. Drop-Dead Gorgeous himself, sitting in her bedroom on a school night. Smiling at her. Touching her. The entire cheer squad would have given their perfect complexions to trade places with her and she knew it.

“That’s too bad,” he whispered. “’Cause you’re amazing.”

She smelled alcohol on his breath, and something else—weed, she guessed— as he bent down and kissed her.

Maggie’s toes pushed into the comforter and one palm pressed against the stuffed bear that she’d wedged into the corner between bed and wall. Sam’s tongue met hers and they darted and twisted around each other. So this is what Sherry and Daria mean when they say that a guy who knows how to kiss can practically make you forget your own name…

Sam raised a hand and pushed her hair from her face. His thumb rubbed her cheekbone so softly she could swear he left the mark of each fingerprint whorl against her skin. Sherry and Daria vanished.

“Maggie…” Sam’s hands were all over her then, beneath her t-shirt and in her hair and at the small of her back. She felt her nipples grow tight, felt his fingers on them, and wasn’t sure the pleasure or the panic swelled faster inside her chest.

“Sam, wait.” Suddenly, she didn’t know if she was ready for this: his desire, his masculinity, his overwhelming presence in her room and in her bed. It scared her. It thrilled her. She wanted to run away from him. She wanted to dive under the covers with him. She wanted someone to explain what was happening. From nowhere, this want had welled up inside her, from a place she never even knew existed. Maggie pulled away. She had only kissed two other boys, after all, and had only gone to second base with Lenny Wilkins, one night last summer.

Sam Knight was nothing like Lenny.

“What’s wrong?” His voice, heavy and breathless, whispered close to her ear.

“I just—” Maggie wished suddenly that Dillon was awake, that he was paying attention and could hear her heartbeat through the walls. She wished he could sense she was in over her head.

“Maggie, I won’t do anything you don’t want to do.” Sam’s voice was kind and comforting, even as he eased her shirt away from her shoulder and made little sucking noises along her collarbone.

She believed him for a while, until the hours slipped away, and by the time morning poked inside the windows, it was too late to undo what had happened.

*

The steering wheel spun out of control in Maggie’s fingers, and only the blaring horn of the truck behind her startled her back to the present.

Goddammit. She steadied the wheel and clutched the tan vinyl bumps so tightly she thought all ten fingers might break. She hadn’t relived that night in years. She hadn’t let herself. Looking back only woke the monsters up again. But now the stress of the day, the idea of seeing Dillon again, the image of nurses in a rainstorm, had sent her tumbling back through time. Back to her childhood. Back to the nightmare.

Forget it, Maggie ordered herself. It wasn’t your fault. You didn’t know what you were getting yourself into, not until it was too late. Sam was drunk and stoned and a seventeen-year-old jerk. He only wanted one thing. You just made a mistake.

But Dillon…there was the heartbreak. Because Dillon had been a seventeen-year-old jerk too, drunk and stoned and sleeping across the hall. He should have known better. He should have waited for Sam to leave. He should have locked the door behind his friend. He should have stayed to watch over her. That was what older brothers did, right?

Hers hadn’t. Somehow, it didn’t matter that Dillon had beaten Sam within an inch of his life the next day. It didn’t matter that Sam went to prom two months later with a scar under one eye and a noticeable limp. Sitting in that chilly doctor’s office in Manhattan four years later, scarred by a disease that would eventually take the one thing that made her a woman, Maggie had needed someone to blame. She’d only been with one guy, ever. Sam. The disease was his fault. The operation could be traced back to him. Back to that single night, when her stepbrother’s best friend stepped across the threshold of her bedroom.

But since Sam had drowned at the local swimming hole the night of his high school graduation, and since Maggie couldn’t bear to look in the mirror and blame herself, the only person left to blame was Dillon. So she did.

*

“What about this one?” Maggie stumbled out of the dressing room, poured into a black dress so tight she could barely breathe.

Beverly DuPree, owner of the only upscale clothing boutique in Hart’s Falls, shook her head. Willowy, square-jawed, somewhere between forty and sixty-five, the woman wore flared black pants and a matching turtleneck sweater. Three thick gold chains hung around her neck.

Maggie glanced into the three-way mirror. “Too tight, right? I look like the hooker who’s supposed to jump out of the cake.” She tugged at the strapless bodice, trying to find an ounce of space in which to draw a breath. “What else do you have? Anything that might have the comfort of a sweatshirt? Or a pair of pajamas?”

Maggie tripped back into the cubicle and grunted as she did her best to squirm her way out of the black sheath. She recalled the only other time she’d gone to a black-tie event. Right after college, when I was living in New York and working for Delilah’s Design Factory. She’d agreed to a blind date with Delilah’s nephew, an up-and-coming broker from the East side, thinking it might be fun to mingle with the rich and famous. Instead, she’d ended up spending most of the night standing by the hors d’oeuvres and watching her date flirt with the bartender. The male bartender, by the way. The pomposity and pretension of the entire evening had sent shivers clear through her and she’d sworn never to waste her time like that again. She couldn’t believe she was about to sell her soul and do it again.

She slung the sequined dress onto its hanger and pulled on her tank top and jeans. Barefoot, she headed back into the showroom and made her way to an aisle they hadn’t yet tried. She pawed through the size 2’s, hope fading as slinky black dress after slinky black dress passed through her fingers. If these were her only choices, she might as well wear the turquoise monstrosity left over from her second cousin’s wedding.

“What about this one?” From the far corner of the dress shop, Bev beckoned.

Maggie stood on tiptoe and peered around a mannequin. The shop owner pointed to a swatch of deep green poking from between the blacks and navies on the rack. “This one. It’s perfect for you. I should have thought of it before.”

Crossing two fingers in her mind, Maggie walked over. She parted the dresses, pushed the others away, and took a look. Wide, sleeveless straps slid to a vee-neck that was neither offensive nor prudish. At the waist, darts of fabric gathered and puckered, then smoothed to a long skirt that swayed just a little at the bottom. And the color! Emerald satin rustled in her hands, a dark green like the forest after a rainstorm or pine trees at dusk. The material caught the light and deepened as she moved the dress this way and that.

Oh, I really hope it fits, Maggie thought a minute later, as she pulled it over her head in the dressing room and drew up the side zipper. For a minute she didn’t open her eyes, didn’t want to know. And then she did.

Amazing how something inside her could still feel like a little-girl-princess every so often when the right dress or the right guy came along. Not that I’ve met anything close to the right guy in years. She turned toward the mirror. To be honest, she hadn’t had time for romance since she opened her business. Nor had she really had the heart, not when every guy she met reminded her of the one she’d given away. And who could match up with a memory?

“Wow.” Even with the messy bun atop her head and the familiar, freckled road map along her bare arms, Maggie almost didn’t recognize herself. On the hanger, the dress was beautiful. On her, draped to her toes and fitting in all the right places, it became something breathtaking. Maybe Cinderella will make an appearance tonight after all.

Bev appeared behind her, and the look on her face matched Maggie’s thoughts. “It’s perfect.”

And it was.

“I’ll be the only one there in green,” she hedged as she smoothed the fabric with calloused hands.

“So?” The woman curled a lip, as if black were out of vogue this season.

“Okay, then, this is it. Thanks, Bev.”

“It’s my pleasure. I owe you, anyway. My profits went up fifty percent after your redesign last summer.”

Fifteen minutes later, with the dress over one arm and a brand new pair of three-inch heels in the crook of the other, Maggie headed back out into the rain. This time, she vowed to take a different route home, to avoid the medical center and any lingering memories it might call up. Hopping into her Honda, she turned on the radio and searched for a good, loud rock song to drown out the chatter inside her head.

Thick white plastic in the backseat, hiding a gown. A fuzzy memory of a stepbrother she’d once adored. A heavy heart, squeezed tight with nerves and anticipation. Her world now seemed to focus on those three things and nothing more. Maggie swallowed and fought back growing fear. Never before had the ticking of the clock held quite as much meaning, quite as much power, to change the rest of her life.

4:00 p.m.

Jack’s cell phone buzzed, and he raised a finger to stop Suzie, who was in the middle of giving him the latest calendar updates.

“Yeah.”

“Hey, big bro. You busy?”

Taz. Jack smiled and spun in his chair. “Always.” He eyed the stacks of paper on his desk and the file folders in his secretary’s lap. “It’s okay, though. I can take a minute. So you’re back in town? Where are you staying?”

“At the house.”

Jack nodded. He avoided his childhood home in Wellesley as much as he could, but then he had other places to sleep at night, places that didn’t conjure up memories of loss and sadness. Taz didn’t, unless you counted that jalopy he drove around. Jack didn’t. Taz might.

“How was Honduras?” He stared at the rain.

“Rough. Lotta people need a lotta help down there. I’m going back in the fall.”

Jack wasn’t surprised. The bleeding heart of the family, Taz had a way of seeking out the strays, the weak, and the sick. He and Mom had that in common. Drumming his fingers on the arm of his chair, Jack wondered what Taz was up to in the meantime. Why the midday telephone call? The four brothers usually only contacted each other around the holidays, after downing too many glasses of eggnog. Never in the summer. Never at work. He set his teeth and waited.

“So, listen,” Taz went on. “I’m setting up a memorial for next week. At the house. Just a few people, plus family. Dad hasn’t committed yet, but I figure he’ll agree to it if you and I push hard enough.”

Memorial? What the hell are you talking about?

Suddenly all the memories came crashing back. Jack cleared his throat to choke back a lump of emotion he didn’t have time for. He didn’t need to look at the calendar to know that sometime next week, the month would slip from June into July. July second, to be exact. Today’s rain would clear by then, because sticky summer heat and unforgiving sunshine always accompanied the anniversary of their mother’s death. Jesus Christ, I can’t believe it’s here again. He shook his head. Most times, he just tried to work through the day, with a visit to the cemetery and a phone call to his father, where they both muttered the usual meaningless sympathies.

“Jack? You still there?”

“I’m here.”

“We talked about putting a special garden in the backyard, remember? Thought this might be the year for it.”

A garden? Yeah, he remembered something about that. “Why now?” Jack heard the sound of his office door closing and glanced up. Well. Sometimes Suzie did display tact, after all.

Taz didn’t answer Jack’s question for a minute, and silence hung between them, darkness colored with question marks. “It’s been five years.”

Jack’s knee jounced up and jarred his desk. A paper cup of cold coffee tumbled to the rug, and sticky brown liquid curled into a wet spot under his chair. Five years? When the hell had that happened? Couldn’t be. Impossible. It was only two years ago, three at the most, that he’d stood at Mom’s bedside and wrapped her fingers inside his.

“It hasn’t been five years.”

“Of course it has.”

Jack tossed the cup into the trash and rubbed at the wet stain with one toe of his wingtip shoe.

“You’d just taken that VP job at Bullieston,” his brother went on. “You’d finally gotten up the nerve to ask Paige out, after spending way too much time moping around over—”

“Okay. Yeah. I remember.” Jack didn’t want to hear his brother say her name. That name. The one from college. The one from Vegas. The one from forever ago that had resurfaced more in the last three hours than the last three years.

“So you’ll be there?” Taz asked again.

Jack rolled his head from side to side. Neck joints popped. Shoulders too. Do I have a choice? “All right. Just let me know when. Did you call Will and Aaron?”

“Not yet.”

He nodded, anxious to get off the phone. Thinking about Mom…well, all it did was remind him of the person he’d once been. The adolescent trying to figure himself out, while she baked him fresh cookies. The college graduate trying to mend a broken heart, while she rubbed the back of his neck and told him one day he’d feel whole again. The corporate whiz boasting about his promotion, while she narrowed her eyes with a warning to keep both feet on the ground. At every turn, a memory of his mother, and with it a memory of the man he used to be. Since she’d left, he’d turned into someone else. Someone different. Someone he didn’t always like to see in the mirror. Jack muttered a goodbye and stuffed the phone into his pocket.

Pressing the intercom, he barked, “Suzie, get in here.” Back to work, he told himself. The rigor of a daily routine was the best cure for any kind of ailment. Sadness and tears were weakness, and emotion betrayed you. Say what you would about Jack Major, he wasn’t a weak man. He wasn’t soft. He wasn’t easily swayed.

Not anymore.

*

Dillon locked the office door behind him and climbed into his pick-up. With messages returned, bills paid, and a call to the dry cleaner to see that his tux was ready, he had no reason to spend any more time at the office. Rain doesn’t look like it’s letting up, he mused. He peered through the windshield. Might as well beat rush-hour traffic home. On Friday evenings especially, the gridlock in and around Boston turned nasty early on. Though the townhouse he’d bought last year was a mere twelve miles away, at the wrong time it could take him up to an hour to reach it. Not today, I hope. Waiting for a break in traffic, he found J.J.’s number on his cell and gave his partner the lowdown on the Casterline plans.

“I told you.” J.J. whistled, long and low. “Won’t have to work for the rest of the summer on that profit.”

That’s where we differ, thought Dillon. He couldn’t sit still if his life depended on it. He wouldn’t stop working even if he won the lottery some day. He enjoyed it, bottom line, especially the part of his job that pushed him outside into the sun, where it was just him and the earth and the project taking shape under his hands. J.J., Spectacular ‘Scapes’ computer whiz and smooth talker, filled in the company’s spaces, especially when it came to PR. He was happy enough to work for the business but happier still for the occasional day off or winter let-up. Today, though, Dillon agreed with his partner on one thing: landing a contract like the Casterline one was cause for celebration. “You still want to grab that drink later?”

“Sure. Junior goes down around eight or so, and Samantha’ll be home by then, so we can go out for a quick one.”

Dillon caught himself before he laughed out loud. Never thought I’d hear you say that, buddy. In J.J.’s former life, a quick one had meant going out for Happy Hour and making it home before dawn.

Things sure do change, Dillon thought, pulling out of the parking lot. Not that he’d mind having that some day, a wife and kids to come home to. He just wasn’t ready for it now.

“Dillon? You still there?”

“Yeah. Sorry.” He turned the wheel sharply and merged into traffic. “How ‘bout I swing by around ten?”

“Sounds good.”

Static filled the line and chopped up their conversation, so Dillon dropped his cell on the seat and waited as the line of cars inched forward.

Things sure do change…

*

Maggie threw some deodorant and lip gloss into a carry-on bag that had seen better days and dashed downstairs. “I’m ready,” she announced, heading down the hall. Her dress and shoes waited in the car. She’d double-checked the directions and filled the tank with gas. She’d even thrown in a road map for good luck. She was ready to go, ready to face down whatever waited for her in Boston, ready to—

She stopped halfway inside the office.

In the middle of the room, still wet from the rain outside, Neve stood with her arms around her husband’s waist. Her forehead pressed against his chest. He stroked the back of her hair. Neither one spoke. Maggie tried to tiptoe in reverse, to give them a little more privacy, but they’d already heard her. At her approach, they pulled apart with the reluctance of new lovers. Andrew’s arm dropped to Neve’s waist and she leaned into it. The room hummed with happiness.

Damn, but Maggie envied them.

“Hear you’re taking my wife on a little adventure,” the lanky carpenter said. He grinned, and a hairline scar along his jaw deepened.

“I guess you could call it that.”

Neve pinked. “It’ll be fun. I mean, I know we just need to find your brother, but—“

“Stepbrother,” Maggie corrected.

Neve’s expression changed a little. “Okay, stepbrother. Anyway, I was thinking that once we find him, and once you talk to him and get things straightened out…well, maybe after that we can stay and dance a little. I mean, as long as we’re there.”

That’s the last thing I want to do, Maggie almost said, but she bit back the words. She didn’t even want to go in the first place. Neve couldn’t wait to get there. Maggie wondered how it was possible that two people could look through the same looking-glass and see the world so differently.

“You feeling okay?” she asked, wanting to change the subject.

“Fine right now.”

“Brought her another salami sandwich,” Andrew said. “She’s had these weird cravings the last couple of weeks. And Neve said you didn’t eat any lunch, so here.” He held out a small square package, wrapped in cellophane. “Ham and cheese. Tomato, no mayo.”

Maggie’s favorite. “Wow. Thanks.” As if on cue, her stomach growled. She tried to remember why she’d forgotten breakfast that morning and why she’d thought that two bags of popcorn would make a good dinner last night. She dropped her bag on the floor, opened the wrapper, and took an enormous bite of the sandwich, savoring it.

“I’ll take these to the car.” Neve gathered up a small duffel and a plaid garment bag. As she moved past Andrew, her fingers brushed his wrist, a hello and goodbye and I-love-you all at once. She didn’t look up at him, did nothing more than touch him as she moved by in the rhythm of an errand, but his body turned toward hers instinctively as she did so.

“No, I’ll get them.” He took them before she reached the door and brushed the small of Neve’s back as he lifted the bags away.

God, I miss that, Maggie thought before she could help herself. The gestures, the shared seconds that mean nothing to the people around you and everything to the person you share them with.

“The two of you met in high school, right?” she asked, though she knew the answer.

Neve nodded.

“And you really never dated anyone else? Never even when you were on a break? Or taking some time off?” The emotional devotion of being with one person forever never failed to amaze Maggie. She loved hearing the fairytale, loved knowing that it could happen to real people, though sometimes it twisted her heart the wrong way. Once she thought she’d had the fairytale too. Turned out she was wrong.

Neve’s cheeks reddened. “I know what people say, that you’re not supposed to date just one person—”

“But we always knew,” Andrew shrugged. “We never needed to be with anyone else.” He laid a hand on the back of Neve’s neck. “I guess we were just lucky.”

More than you know, Maggie wanted to say.

“Well, I gotta get back. Just wanted to bring your stuff and say goodbye.” Andrew pulled his wife close for a kiss, and they both leaned in, making it last.

Like they won’t see each other for a month, Maggie thought, instead of just a few hours. With a heavy sensation inside her chest, she turned away. She fumbled for her keys and tried not to wonder when, or if, she might ever feel that way about someone again.

5:00 p.m.

Jack typed furiously. One last email and he could leave the office. Thanks to the cancellation of his three o’clock conference call, he’d managed to finish everything up in the last couple of hours. Maybe he’d make it to Cecil’s before six after all. He grinned and pictured Stefan already there, warming a chair and saving a table. Jack shut down his computer and glanced at the clock. He could almost feel his fingers wrapped around a dart.

“Suzie, I’m leaving.” He paused by the secretary’s desk and scanned the three message slips she handed him. Nothing important, he decided.

“Have fun tonight.” She winked and laced slim fingers beneath her chin.

“I will. Be good to those kids of yours.”

Jack headed for the elevators. Outside, he was surprised to find that the wind hadn’t died down much. Rain pelted the back of his neck, and he bent his chin as he waited for a cab.

“Cecil’s Pub. Over on Sudbury.”

The cabbie grunted and wove the vehicle through rush-hour traffic, narrowly missing a bus and a minivan. Jack tried not to flinch. Brushing the rain from his hair, he calculated the distance between the bar and his apartment. Though he’d moved most of his things into Paige’s townhouse last month after the proposal, he’d kept his own place on the other side of the city. His tuxedo was one of the few pieces of clothing still hanging in that closet.

“Why don’t you let the lease run out?” she’d asked one morning over coffee.

“I will,” he’d promised.

But he kept forgetting to call and give notice.

Truth was, Jack didn’t really mind keeping the apartment he’d called home for six years. Affording the rent wasn’t a problem. Plus, it gave him a place to crash after a late night at the office or when Paige needed some sleep without him snoring beside her. He ignored the tickle in the back of his mind that suggested maybe there was another reason he hadn’t yet given it up.

It’ll take me an hour or so, he thought, to get in a shower and make it to the Hotel Victoria by seven. That left him about fifty minutes for darts and beer. Never enough time. Not for the stuff you really want to do.

Up ahead, the bar’s blue sign flickered, with its second C missing. The cabbie veered across two lanes of traffic and braked at the corner. Jack felt his stomach meet his throat and was glad he hadn’t eaten much for lunch. Tossing a ten over the seat, he muttered a thank-you and pushed open the door.

The minute he stepped inside, Cecil’s Pub wrapped its blue-collar appeal around him. A few guys clad in work boots and jeans hunched up at the bar, sleeves pushed way back. They watched the replays from last night’s game and pounded their fists against the smooth, scarred strip of wood. Whistles punctured the air. Two college-aged waitresses wound their way between the tables, carrying trays above their heads with beer mugs and baskets of chips. Red Sox and Celtics paraphernalia hung on every wall. Jack breathed in the aroma of the place, a mix of the kitchen’s deep fryer and sweet, spilled lager running down the drain behind the bar. A fixture in the neighborhood since the early forties, Cecil’s attracted the city’s laborers as well as its college professors and upper-management execs. My kind of place, he thought, as he always did when he had the time to stop by.

Jack looked around. There. In the back. From a corner table, Stefan raised a frosty mug. Long ash-blond hair flopped into his eyes, leftover from his San Diego boyhood though he’d lived on the East Coast since college. Long legs stretched out beneath the table as he tried to adjust his six-foot two-inch frame. From the grin on Stefan’s face, Jack suspected his college buddy had been there awhile.

“Good to see you, man.” He clasped Stefan’s hand.

“Likewise.” Stefan reached for the pitcher and filled a second mug. “You made it out of the office before six.”

“Yeah. Can’t believe it.” Jack settled himself into the opposite chair. “Been here long?”

Stefan shook his head. “Twenty minutes, maybe.” He crossed one ankle over the other and sent the third chair at their table flying. “Oops.”

Jack grinned. Grace and coordination had never been Stefan’s top qualities. Didn’t seem to matter much with the women, though, as he recalled.

“So where’s Paige? Still working?”

“Of course.” The dark beer slid down Jack’s throat, warming him in the right places. It pushed away the nerves of the day and the eternal night stretching out ahead of him. Thank God. “She’s got a big case.”

Stefan grinned. “When doesn’t she? Every other week, I open the newspaper and see her quoted in there.” He winked. “If I’m really lucky, they publish a picture, too.” Behind them, the door creaked open again, and his next words were almost lost in the sound of stools scraping up to the bar. “I figure you’re one of the luckiest guys in Boston, snagging a bombshell like that. Still can’t believe she agreed to marry you.”

Jack heard luckiest guy and bombshell and shook his head. He supposed most of Boston would agree with his friend.

Stefan rested knobby elbows on the table. “What’s with you? Trouble in paradise?”

“’Course not.” Jack stood and headed for the dartboard in the bar’s back corner. “C’mon. You owe me a game.”

“What, so I can beat you into humiliation again?” Stefan rose and knocked his head into a hanging light. “Thought you had enough last time.” He flagged down a waitress, a cute, curvaceous thing of nineteen or twenty, and spent a few obvious moments admiring the package while he tried to decide between shots of tequila and Jagermeister.

Jack grinned, entertained. Ten years out of school, and Stefan hadn’t changed in the least. Two different guys, from two totally different worlds. Only thing that brought us together in college was a couple of business classes. Yet they’d managed to remain friends, even after all this time. You couldn’t help but like the guy, he thought, like a big dopey dog that made you grin even as you tripped your way around him.

They’d gone in different directions after school, though, and only hooked up again a couple of years ago. While Jack climbed the corporate ladder, Stefan managed to find himself a mid-level insurance job that paid the bills but left him enough time to chase women and make every Red Sox home game. He drove an SUV that had seen better days and rented an apartment from a ninety-year old widow in the suburbs. And he made it clear to every woman he met that he had no intentions of settling down anytime soon. Poor Stefan, Paige and her friends whispered behind his back. He’s going to be forty and alone.

Jack doubted that. So far, Stef seemed to be having the time of his life. And what was so wrong with being a bachelor at forty, anyway? Some people spent their entire lives searching for the right person. It was better than settling down with the wrong one. He took a quick drink and tried to ignore the dart just left of center that Stefan had thrown on his first attempt.

“So when’s the big day?”

The question caught Jack off guard, and his hand jerked and spilled his beer a little.

Stefan laughed. “Sorry.”

“Sure you are.” Jack shook his head at the waitress, refusing the shot that she’d brought back. “All for him,” he said, pointing at his friend.

“Aw, come on. Let loose a little.” Stefan tipped back his head and downed the tequila. “For old times’ sake.” He aimed at the board and took his next shot. Dead on.

Those old times I could stand to forget, Jack thought. A few too many nights in college had started like this one. At thirty-two years old, he could no longer afford the morning-after consequences. “I’ll pass.” He checked his watch. “I can only stay a little longer, anyway.”

Without even looking, Stefan let loose his final dart. It kissed the edge of the first. “You’re kidding.”

“Sorry. We’re going to this charity thing tonight.”

“The Deveau Ball?”

“That’s the one.”

“Fancy.” Stefan raised the second shot in a toast to his friend. “Have a good time.” Jack said nothing, staring instead at the board and the throws he had to make to save face. There. First one square in the center.

“Nice.” Stefan nodded. “So am I gettin’ an invitation to your wedding or what? You still haven’t told me when it is.”

Jack aimed a second time. “October. The fourteenth, I think. Maybe the fifteenth. It’s a Saturday, I know that much.” He grimaced as his next throw arced wide.

Stefan chuckled and rubbed a hand over a grizzled chin that hadn’t seen a razor in a couple of days. “Man, you’re supposed to be happy about this. Semi-involved. You don’t even know the day you’re walking down the aisle?”

“Actually, I have it on authority that the less I say, the better. I think as long as I show up, I’m in the clear.” Jack looked over. “But speaking of the wedding, I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”

“Sure, I’ll be your best man.”

“Groomsman, actually. Had to promise Taz he could do the best man honors. But thanks. That’s one more thing I can check off Paige’s list.”

Stefan leaned against the wall, hands wrapped around his beer mug. “Jack?”

“Yeah?”

“I gotta tell you, I thought you’d be more excited about this. About marrying one of the hottest women in the city. Not to mention one of the richest, I’m guessing.”

Jack took his final shot, already knowing he’d lost again. “I’m excited.”

“Sure you are.”

The two sat back down. Jack checked his watch again. I should get going, he started to say. I’ve got to head home, take a shower, get dressed. But something else came out instead.

“Sometimes I think maybe I should have waited.”

Stefan raised his eyebrows as he split the last of the pitcher between them. “To get married? Why?”

Jack was instantly sorry he’d said anything. “It’s a big step, you know?”

“Don’t you love her?”

“Sure. Of course.” He made himself think of Paige when she wasn’t working, when she wasn’t all tensed up. When she slept in on the occasional Sunday morning, curling that warm, sleek body around his. Or when they went to a ball game and she tucked her hand inside his. In those moments, he could recall the woman he’d fallen in love with. There you are, he’d think, and feel the rush of attraction that had started it all. Plus, he supposed he did like the idea of starting a family, of playing catch with his son or videotaping his daughter’s ballet recital. It’s a package, Jack told himself. You take it all, the up and downs, the amazing moments that steal your breath away and the ones that punch you right in the gut. Even the nights you roll over and wonder who you’re lying next to. Even those are part of the package.

He only wished he could count those nights on one hand instead of two.

“Well, she sure waited long enough for you to ask her,” Stefan went on. “Most women would have left after a couple of years. You two have been together—what? Three years?”

“Almost five.” Jack finished his beer. “Yeah, I know. I just didn’t realize how crazy women got about weddings. Everything has to be perfect. She worries about stuff I’d never even think of. Favors and flowers and the color of envelopes…”

Stef grinned. “Come on. All women are like that. It’s like some kind of feminine ritual. All you gotta do is stand it for a few months. Then you’re married and you’ve got security and regular sex for the rest of your life.”

Jack laughed.

“Unless you’re still not over the other one.”

“What?” His chin snapped up.

“You heard me.” Stef’s gaze followed the waitress as she sauntered by their table.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Okay. Suit yourself.” Stef looked back at Jack. “But don’t forget that I was there. I was the one who held your head when you were puking into a bucket trying to forget her. I was the one who made excuses to your parents about why you looked like shit at graduation. And the one who heard you say you’d never get married. Ever.”

“I was twenty-two. Gimme a break.”

“You still think about her?”

“No.”

“Liar.”

Jack shrugged. “So what if I do? I’m still marrying Paige. It doesn’t have anything to do with her.”

“If you say so.” Stef finished his beer and circled the empty mug around the table, leaving rings of wetness on the warped wood. “You know Paige is made for you, right? I mean, the two of you…you’re like the Kennedys or something. Your wedding’s probably gonna be featured in the Globe, for Christ’s sake.”

Jack didn’t say anything. I know she is. I know we make a good couple, the right kind of couple. Paige was terrific, tailor-made for him. So why did he have to work so hard sometimes to convince himself of that?

He reached for his coat. Outside, twilight had descended on the city, and the wind tossed raindrops into the haze of the streetlights. He slapped his friend on the back and tossed a twenty onto the table. “Thanks. We’ll have to do it again. And I’ll call you about the wedding stuff. When we’re getting fitted for the tuxes and all that.”

Stef’s face fell. “You’re kidding? You mean I gotta wear a tux? What’s wrong with what I’ve got on?” He spread his arms wide, looking down at his khaki pants and button-down shirt with feigned puzzlement.

Jack laughed, forgoing a response, and made his way toward the exit. Groups of two and three pushed their way inside every few seconds, seeking respite from the storm and filling the place with raucous conversation. He wished he could stay. He wanted just another hour to be this person: Stefan’s best friend, beer drinker, dart thrower, regular guy from Boston. Instead, he waved goodbye to his buddy, who’d stopped by the jukebox to chat up the waitress some more. Then he ducked his chin and headed out into the rain, already counting the hours until it would all be over.

*

“There it is.” Trying to keep her car on the road, Maggie glanced down at the address for Spectacular ‘Scapes, written on a tiny scrap of paper in her lap.

“For goodness’ sake, give me that,” Neve said through clenched teeth. A horn blared on their right as Maggie swerved back into her own lane. “You’re going to get us killed.” She grabbed at the paper.

Maggie wormed her way across traffic and into the small, empty parking lot. Four slots plus one marked “Owner Only” lined up beside her. Puddles filled them all. She leaned against the headrest and stared at the one-story building. Is this really Dillon’s? It wasn’t much to look at: compact, no-nonsense, with a simple vinyl-lettered sign hanging above the door. Neat displays of flowers and bushes lined either side of the walkway. But the fact that it might belong to her stepbrother, the gawky kid who used to sneak smokes outside her bedroom window, took her breath away. I can’t believe he did something like this. Can’t believe he grew up and got his head together. She tried to match the awkward teen she remembered with a man capable of creating the business that sat before her.

“It looks nice,” Neve offered. “Think anyone’s still here?”

“Doubt it.” Maggie slid from the car and hurried up to the front door. She knocked and then tried the knob. It was locked, which she’d expected from the dark windows. Cupping her hands against the glass, she peered inside at a spacious office. She could make out a couple of desks, some file cabinets, and a drooping plant in one corner. It could use a woman’s touch, she thought. Hell, it could use a designer’s touch. But she wasn’t here for that.

Turning, she stood on the stoop a moment longer and hugged herself against the brisk wind that had set in. I can’t believe I’m here. I can’t believe I’m in Boston. More than that, I can’t believe Dillon is too.

A tiny voice scratched at the back of her mind. Is it all that surprising, really? Maggie had told herself over and over again that the move to Hart’s Falls, the choice of that town out of a thousand others, was merely a practical decision. It reminded her of home, only prettier and less oppressive. It was quiet and accepting, a perfect place to put down roots and grow a business. If it was within an hour’s drive of Boston, well, that was just a coincidence. Besides, she’d always been drawn to the hum of big cities, and when you grew up along the Hudson River, you only had your choice of so many. New York was too big, D.C. too far away.

But there was another reason you chose Hart’s Falls, wasn’t there? the voice insisted.

A picture of Dillon at thirteen or fourteen years old replaced the gray drizzle in front of Maggie. Boston, that’s the coolest city there is, he’d said one afternoon. His chin jutted out with that ridiculous spray of hair he refused to shave. I’d live there if I could live anywhere in the world.

How do you know? she’d asked, looking up from the floor of his bedroom. Lying on her back, she stared at the ceiling, fascinated by the mural Dillon had drawn above her. Endless vines and arms and faces stretched from wall to wall.

My dad took me there once. For a ball game.

I was eleven then, Maggie remembered, and I thought he was about the smartest person I knew. If Dillon said Boston was cool, then it was. Period.

She shivered. Maybe she really had tucked away that childhood recommendation, only to haul it out years later. Maybe the reason she’d moved to Rhode Island really did go all the way back to her stepbrother. She shook her head. Or maybe it’s just coincidence. She refused to believe the other reason, anyway, that her heart had another motive for leading her to this city, one that didn’t have anything to do with Dillon at all.

Neve leaned out her window. “Anyone there?”

Maggie ran back to the car. “It’s closed.” She punched Eden’s work number into her cell phone.

“McGrath, Lyons, and Yearwood. How may I direct your call?”

“Eden, it’s me.”

“You’re in town?”

“Just.”

“Listen, meet me at my place. Where are you now?”

Maggie recited the address.

“Okay, so just take a left and get onto...” Eden rattled off a set of directions, which Maggie repeated twice.

“Got it.”

“Buzz me when you get here. I’m up on the third floor.”

“Okay. Did you—” Maggie chewed at a thumbnail. “Did you find out anything else?”

“Working on it. I’ve got a friend who knows somebody who might have dated him. I’m trying to see if I can get his cell number from her.”

“God, that would be great.” Then I could avoid the ball altogether.

“Gotta go,” Eden said suddenly, and the line clicked off.

Maggie stared at the rush hour traffic streaming by. “Hang on,” she said, and squeezed in front of a Lexus. They headed downtown into the heart of it all.

6:00 p.m.

“Mags!”

The slow Southern voice Maggie would have recognized on the moon. Eden Fife pushed open the door of her apartment before they had a chance to knock. Gorgeous, blonde, and smelling like the expensive perfume Maggie remembered from college, Eden wrapped her friend in a hug.

“Good to see y’all.” She gave another little squeeze. “It’s about time.”

Maggie felt unexpected tears rise up. Damn emotions. Always hit her at the wrong time. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and took a long look at her friend. “God, you look terrific.”

Eden laughed, exposing a slight gap between her two front teeth. She put one hand on a hip and pursed her lips. “Some things never change, right?” Clad in a black camisole and a pair of fleecy pants with the waistband rolled down, she ushered them in.

“This is Neve,” Maggie introduced as she peeled off her raincoat. “My office assistant. The one who keeps me sane.”

“Nice to meet you.” Eden tucked her arm through Neve’s and kissed the air beside the young woman’s cheek. “Thanks for keeping Mags from going off the deep end.”

“I do my best.”

“Here.” Eden led them into the kitchen, draping wet coats over chairs as she went. She poured a glass of Chardonnay and handed it to Maggie. “Thought you might need this.” She fished something out of a basket on the countertop. “And here—” She handed over a small envelope. “Tickets. For tonight.”

Maggie blinked. “Thanks. I think.” But wrapping her hand around the envelope set her nerves on fire. Though she’d spent the last hour preparing for this, steeling herself for the confrontation, now that she was actually here with tickets in hand, she wasn’t sure she could go through with it.

Eden’s gaze leveled on Maggie. “Are you planning on telling me why you’re so desperate to find Dillon?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ll bet.” Eden cupped her palm against Maggie’s cheek. “You look like hell, by the way.”

“Gee, thanks.”

“Well, you do. You’ve lost like ten pounds since the last time I saw you. When’s the last time you got any sleep?”

“Don’t ask,” Neve chimed in.

Maggie felt herself redden. Nothing like being stuck in a room with the two women who knew her best. “Um…” she began, trying to think of an explanation.

But Eden had already turned away. “Your turn.” She offered another glass of wine to Neve.

“No, I—” One hand drifted in the direction of her belly. “I can’t. I’m pregnant.”

Eden raised her eyebrows, and her glance slid to Neve’s middle. “Well, aren’t you the cutest thing? Congratulations.” She pulled open the refrigerator and stuck her head inside. “I think I have some ginger ale in here somewhere.”

“Oh, it’s okay, really.”

But Eden had already filled a third wine glass from the Schweppe’s bottle. “Here you go. Bottoms up.”

As her two friends chatted, Maggie leaned against the counter. She looked around the kitchen, every inch decorated with roosters and red barns. Country style, typical Eden. To her right lay the living area, with a blue-and-white bathroom beyond, and she could just see the bedroom, which looked as though it had space for little more than a queen-size bed and a dresser. Small but expensive, Maggie thought, missing her house in Hart’s Falls already. Still, the view is terrific. Even in the gray of a steady downpour, Boston’s skyline sparkled through the wide living room windows. Lights pierced the dark as apartment balconies and stadium spotlights cast a glow for miles. It reminded anyone who looked that the city never really slept, just slipped into something more comfortable as evening turned to night.

“So,” she said, looking at her watch. “How soon can we get to the ball?”

Eden started on a second glass of Chardonnay. “Well, no one will be there before seven. Cocktails first, dinner at eight, music ‘til whenever the crowd decides it’s had enough.” She changed the station on the radio and tuned in an eighties band. “It might be light, for a while, you know. Sometimes people don’t show up until the party’s really going.” She cleared her throat. “I don’t know when your brother’ll get there, Mags. It might be a while.”

Maggie didn’t want to hear that. She couldn’t wait all night. She didn’t have the time or the patience. “Stepbrother,” she said, almost without thinking.

Bruce Springsteen faded away. Eden cocked her head. Neve traced an invisible line on the counter.

“Why do you do that?” Neve asked.

“Do what?”

“‛Stepbrother. He’s my stepbrother.’ You always correct people when they call Dillon your brother.”

“And you get this look on your face,” Eden added. Her mouth turned collagen-injection large through the wine glass she held up for emphasis.

“So what?” Maggie stiffened. “It’s true. He isn’t my brother. He’s not related to me.” But you did call him your brother, at first. You didn’t stop calling him that until after that night. For a few years, you were so thrilled to have Dillon around that you paraded him to school for showand-tell. Remember?

Maggie’s fingers tightened around the stem of her glass. Of course she remembered. That was the whole problem. If she could forget, maybe she would still be speaking to him. Maybe they would be sharing cranberry sauce on Thanksgiving or emailing each other dirty jokes on a daily basis. And the biggest maybe of all is that maybe I wouldn’t be in the trouble I am if I’d just gotten over it a long time ago.

She looked at the floor. But how did you get over something like that? How did you forget the moment when the one person you trusted the most let someone else tear you apart?

He’s my stepbrother because he walked away when I needed him, she wanted to tell her friends. But she didn’t think they’d understand.

“I have to get dressed.” Maggie put her empty glass in the sink and stumbled toward the bathroom, hoping the wine wouldn’t turn her stomach before the night even began.

*

“Maggie? Are you feeling any better?”

She pulled the sheets over her head, against the slanted afternoon light that slipped through her curtains. She didn’t answer her mother.

No. I’m not. Even though you let me stay home from school today. Even if you let me stay home the rest of the year. Maggie stuffed her face into the hot space between pillow and quilt and tried not to breathe.

Another knock. “I’m taking an extra shift at the hospital tonight, but Dillon’s here if you need anything, okay?”

Dillon. Yeah, right. Maggie’s stomach turned and she leaned over and retched into the wastebasket beside her bed. Her nose ran, and she wiped it on the sheets. On the floor beside her lay the t-shirt she’d been wearing last night. The t-shirt that Sam had slipped over her head while he whispered into her ear.

She retched again. The door opened, and her mother’s face appeared in the crack. “Oh, sweetheart. Can I get you anything before I go?”

Maggie forced herself onto one elbow. “Maybe a glass of water?” she croaked.

Her mother glanced at her watch as she brushed something from her green hospital scrubs. “I’m running late. I’ll have Dillon bring it in for you. Try and get some sleep, okay?” A second later she was gone, without a step inside or a closer look, without a hand on Maggie’s forehead or a sweep of her daughter’s bedroom.

She didn’t even notice, Maggie thought. The whole room pulsed with a mistake, and her mother hadn’t even blinked.

She flipped over in bed. God, even though she’d showered twice today, she could still smell Sam in her hair. She could still feel him on top of her. She’d wanted to scrub him from her as soon as he snuck out, but it was almost three in the morning, and she hadn’t dared. She’d just lain in her bed, staring at the ceiling, until her mom and step-dad left for work and she could cry in the shower undisturbed.

“Mags?” This time it was Dillon knocking at her door.

“Go away.”

He pushed open the door anyway, and though she kept her eyes squeezed shut, she could hear him walking toward her.

It’s your fault, she wanted to say. She mouthed the words. She counted them on her fingers. She waited for them to ricochet around the room and fall onto her chest, breaking her heart into slivers too small to mend. It’s your fault.

She didn’t realize she’d said them aloud until she opened her eyes and saw the sweat beads dotting Dillon’s forehead. He set down her glass of water with a shaking hand.

“My fault? What the hell are you talking about?” He moved the back of one hand across his running nose. “How the hell is anything my fault?” She saw a cut over one eye, a bluish tint underneath it, a tear in the collar of his favorite shirt. “Do you know what happened today? Do you know what Sam was saying? Do you have any idea what kind of trouble I got myself into?”

She knew. She’d heard about it from two different friends, who’d already called her and whispered in hushed, gossipy tones.

…beat up Sam Knight, in the parking lot after lunch…

…never seen your stepbrother like that…

…principal suspended him for five days…

Mortified, Maggie had made up a story, pretending not to know what might have set Dillon off. But tears of embarrassment slipped down her cheeks. Everyone knows, she thought. Everyone at school will be talking about it for a week.

“What happened last night?” Dillon whispered. “Jesus, when I heard that asshole running his mouth today, I thought he was lying. Making up stories, you know. I just wanted to shut him up. I didn’t believe any of it.”

She didn’t say anything. How could she? Where would she begin?

He took a deep breath, as if he were sliding down a wave and gasping for air. “It’s true, isn’t it? What Sam said — he was here with you, wasn’t he?” Dillon’s voice brimmed with anger and incredulity and, worst of all, disappointment. His hands turned into fists. Maggie saw open sores on the backs of two knuckles and looked away.

“I didn’t ask him to stay,” she managed to say.

He sank onto the bed beside her. Neither one spoke. The air in the room, heavy with tension, settled onto their shoulders. “Mags, did he rape you?” The words came out as a ragged whisper. “Tell me.”

Rape. Maggie squirmed. It was an awkward word, an awful one, a single syllable that meant violence and tears and coming apart at the seams. She tried to remember the things they’d learned about it back in middle school health class, but she could only recall her friends passing notes and the boys in the back corner making armpit farts.

Had Sam raped her? He hadn’t clapped a hand over her mouth and pinned her down. He hadn’t pulled off her clothes with rough fingers and made her swear not to tell anyone. She hadn’t said no. But she hadn’t said yes either. She hadn’t said anything at all, except frantic little mumblings inside her head. She’d pushed at his chest, trying to make him see that she wasn’t ready. But maybe he’d mistaken that for passion, or something else.

“I don‘t think so.”

“What do you mean, you don’t think so? He either did or he didn’t. And if he did, tomorrow I’ll finish what I didn’t today.”

“I didn’t ask him to stay,” she began again, trying to sort it out. “But I didn’t tell him to leave, either.”

Dillon’s voice broke. “I didn’t know he was still here. I swear to God, I didn’t. But why didn’t you—why didn’t you say something? Do something?” He fell silent and picked at a loose thread in her comforter.

“Why didn’t I do something?” she seethed, fresh tears starting. “Why didn’t you? If you weren’t so stoned, you would have heard him come back down the hall. Why did you go to bed? Why did you bring him inside in the first place? Why are you friends with a jerk like that?”

Why?

Why?

Why?

Staring at her sheets, she fired the word at Dillon over and over again, until he turned gray and stormed from the room. On his way out, he slammed her door so hard that the next day, her stepfather had to replace both the hinges. Maggie didn’t care. She hated Dillon. She resented him. Most of all, she blamed him. And at the same time, she loved him and wanted him to say it would all be okay. She wanted to crawl inside his embrace. She wanted him to comfort her. Only it was too late now, because she could barely wrap her own arms around herself without feeling all the ways that Sam had changed her.

Down the hall, she heard Dillon vomit and felt glad.

*

Maggie stared into Eden’s bathroom mirror in dismay. She was out of practice dressing up, playing Cinderella, or caring about the way she looked in a gown. She barely knew what feminine looked like or felt like anymore, she’d dressed in jeans for so long. Casual clothes were safe. They didn’t invite problems, be it a nylon run or a passing comment from a construction worker. But this? She didn’t know what to do with this, a dress that was supposed to cling and sway and—

Knuckles rapped on the other side of the bathroom door. “You okay in there?”

Maggie took one more look at herself and yanked at the knob. “I guess.”

“Wow.” Neve’s face lit up. “You look—”

“Amazing,” Eden said from the bedroom, where Maggie could see she’d wiggled herself into a skin-tight navy blue sheath. “Love the dress, Mags. Great color.”

She sighed. “Thanks. I think.”

Eden reached into a bag on her dresser. “Here.” She held out a wand and a tube of something.

“What’s that?”

“Makeup. You should wear some.”

“Really?”

“You need some color tonight. No offense.”

Maggie narrowed her eyes, doubtful, but she took the mascara and lip gloss anyway. She hadn’t worn a lick of anything on her face since college. She never saw the point when all it did was run or crease or fall off before the day was through. She didn’t really see the use in covering anything up, either. What you saw was what you got. She’d once known a woman who set her alarm clock an hour before her husband got up in the morning, just so she could have her face arranged when he saw her each day. Maggie always wondered about the moment he finally caught her in nothing but skin. Would he recognize her? Would he still know the woman he’d married? Or would he prefer the mask instead?

Eden’s earlier words rang inside her head. You look like hell.

Maggie imagined she probably did. She’d always worn her emotions, from grief to angst to triumph, square in the middle of her face. She tried to take an objective look in the mirror. Tonight, it appeared as though she stood on the edge of a precipice, terrified by the thought of the fall but ready to take the leap if she had to. Bags darkened her eyes, and she had to struggle to find a smile.

Eden’s right. She wasn’t sure the two tiny tubes in her hands could work a miracle, but she figured it was worth a shot.

Funny, she thought a few moments later, that squinting one eye shut to apply mascara could bring her straight back to the days of fraternity parties and Ladies’ Night bar hopping. She frowned. Maybe you weren’t ever as removed from the past as you liked to think.

“Maggie!” Neve materialized behind her again, brown eyes wide.

“What? It’s too much, isn’t it? I knew it.” She screwed the wand back into its base. “Here. Hand me a tissue. I’ll get rid of some of it.”

“Like hell you will.” Neve slapped a hand over her mouth as soon as the words came out. “Sorry. Didn’t mean that. But you’re a knockout. The guys won’t be able to stay away from you.”

“I’m not going to the ball to pick up a guy.”

“Although it wouldn’t kill you,” Eden called from the living room. “You’ve been single for far too long.”

“Tonight’s not about my love life.”

Eden ran a hand through her long blonde locks. “Darlin’, every night should be about your love life.”

“God, you never change.” Maggie searched for her shoes.

“What’s wrong with that?” Eden’s expression soured. “What’s wrong with having a little fun? Life goes on, you know. Just because you stopped having a social life, wouldn’t give any guy the time of day after what happened in Las Vegas—” Her mouth snapped shut before she finished the sentence. She marched to the kitchen and began running water over their empty wine glasses.

Neve stood in the middle of the apartment with her mouth hanging open. Confusion knitted her brows together. “What is she talking about? What happened in Vegas?”

Maggie sighed. “Don’t ask.”

The water stopped. “You haven’t told her, have you?” Eden said. “Your best friend in that pip-squeak town, and you haven’t even told her.”

“Told me what?”

Maggie dropped her eyes. Don’t bring it up, she thought. I can’t stand another memory. Not tonight. Not about him.

But it was too late.

*

“It was a mistake.”

Oppressive Nevada sunlight anchored twenty year-old Maggie Doyle to the ground. It pressed down on the back of her neck. It pierced her scalp. It sliced her vision into puzzle pieces of white. She swallowed to keep herself from taking back the words and stared past his shoulders. Her jaw twitched, and she ran her tongue over the tip of her teeth in an effort to keep the tears at bay.

How could shoulders do that, anyway? How could you look at something that was just bone and muscle and skin, meaningless apart from the pulse that beat underneath it, and feel breathless at the thought of never touching it again? Would his wrist have the same effect on her? His crooked nose? Maggie wrenched her gaze away from his shoulders and the broad chest below them, away from his face and the pained, confused expression. She focused instead on a battered Chevy pick-up parked beneath the sign that read “Mystic Motel—Lowest Rates on the Strip.”

“What did you say?”

She repeated the words without looking at him. She paused, then added a sentence or two more to fill the emptiness. Some small part of her hoped that he’d take her by the arms, shake her, tell her she was wrong. But he didn’t.

“That’s what you want?”

“It’s best for both of us. We’re too young.” And I’m too broken.

*

“He would have stayed with you forever, you know,” Eden said, as Maggie trailed off. “I’ve never seen a guy so pathetically in love.”

Maggie shrugged as her story wound to its pitiful end. There was little more to say. She’d walked away first, closing her eyes against his goodbye, and that was that. The day was gone, the night a memory, and ten years had somehow slipped by since.

“It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t give him what he wanted.”

“You mean children?” Neve asked, breathless. She perched on the edge of the loveseat.

“He didn’t care about that,” Eden said.

“Of course he did. Or he would have, after awhile. Everyone does. Besides, his father never would have approved. Marrying someone who can’t have kids—” It wasn’t an option, she finished silently.

It didn’t matter how much they’d loved each other. The vows they made in the middle of the night couldn’t chase away the thought that Maggie Doyle would never be good enough, not for someone like him. She’d meant to tell him the truth—about her operation, about her family, about the scars in her soul—when they first started dating. She’d wanted to. But days slipped away and turned into a year. Then two. And how could you bring up a secret like that after months and months of falling in love? After endless nights of skin against skin, of watching the sun trade places with the moon and thinking you knew everything about the person who lay next to you? How could you just say, Oh, by the way, I’m missing half my insides, and if you were planning on having children with me, well, sorry, but it won’t ever happen?

No, better to let him go, to let him think she’d changed her mind, than reveal the real reason she couldn’t spend forever waking up beside him.

Maggie reached for her shoes and grabbed her purse. It seems like all I’ve done the last few years is say goodbye to the things I want to hold on to. Well, not this time. I’m not losing the house or Doyle Designs. Not after everything else. She had no time left for memories. No time for regrets, careful plans or perfect wording. Right now, she needed to go to the ball. She needed to find Dillon. She needed to convince him to loan her the money and then get it to the bank as fast as she could. Everything else, memories included, would have to be shoved to the far recesses of her mind, where they belonged if you couldn’t do anything with them, anyway.

Maggie pulled on her designer heels and reached the door before either of the others. “Come on. Let’s find Dillon and get this over with.”

7:00 p.m.

Jack stuck one finger inside his collar and yanked. Bowties always strangled him.

“Here you go.” The cabbie eased around Hotel Victoria’s circular drive and lined up behind two limousines.

“Thanks.” He handed the man a generous tip and stepped out into pouring rain. What a night for the ball. Hunched over, trying to avoid the rain and getting soaked anyway, Jack hurried to the front door. Light poured out from the grand entranceway where women in long gowns tiptoed next to their tuxedoed dates. He could hear the band warming up.

“Good evening, Mr. Major.” Three women, all bottle blondes, overly made up, and trying to pretend they weren’t pushing forty, gushed over Jack as he approached the ticket table in the lobby. One of them he recognized from a charity event last winter.

“Hi, Nina. Drake with you tonight?”

The woman sitting in the middle, revealing a good two inches of overly tanned cleavage, flicked her hand toward the ballroom. “Somewhere inside. Probably talking horse racing.” Her eyes moved over his shoulder and back. “Where’s Paige?”

“Working late.” He resisted the urge to run a hand through his hair. “Have a ticket for me?”

“Of course.” She pulled out a piece of parchment and tore it in half. The bottom went to Jack; the top she tossed into a glittery ball on the table beside her. “For door prizes later,” she explained, lacing her fingers underneath her chin. Her eyes moved across his torso and dropped to his crotch.

Jack felt his stomach turn and wondered if the bar beer had caught up with him already. “Thanks.” He stuck the ticket stub into his pocket and entered the ballroom.

The Hotel Victoria, one of Boston’s newest establishments, catered to the city’s elite, and its owners had spared no expense with its design and construction. Three stories high, the place featured two large ballrooms on its main floor and six other, smaller rooms upstairs. Besides hosting corporate parties and charity events, it also boasted an impressive selection of wedding packages. The basic one started somewhere around seventy-five dollars a plate, and the “Ultimate” topped out at a cool two hundred and fifty. The only reason I know that, Jack thought as he looked around, is because Paige brought home their brochure a few months ago. Thank God the wait for the room she wanted was over a year. With her biological clock ticking loudly, she’d made it clear that she had no intention of waiting that long to tie the knot.

Still, as Jack stepped through the huge double doors, he had to admit that the place was impressive, with its gilt crown molding and crystal chandeliers. Velvet curtains broke the enormous space into subtle, intimate corners, and he spied an atrium in the back filled with fruit trees and flowers. Tables draped in cream and burgundy framed the hardwood dance floor, and though a few couples sat scattered at them, most of the early guests had drifted in the direction of the two bars across the room. Jack joined them.

“Double bourbon on the rocks, please.”

“Eight-fifty.” The bartender slid the glass across the bar, filled with too much ice for Jack’s taste.

“Jack Major?”

He turned at the familiar voice and was relieved to see Sherry and Tom Clinton at a table nearby. Good friends from his early days at Bullieston, Tom had started there as an ad executive but moved on to open his own company. And Sherry’s a pro bono attorney, if I remember right.

“Good to see you.” Tom raised his glass. “What’s it been, a year?”

“Has it?” Jack eased his way into a chair. “Too long, then.” He glanced at Sherry’s empty glass. “Need another? What are you drinking tonight? Wine?”

“Just water.” She blushed and patted something under the table, which Jack realized a second later was her very pregnant belly.

“Oh, geez, I had no idea. I’m sorry.” He felt like an idiot. “Well, congratulations.”

“Thanks.” Tom grinned. “Another seven weeks and I’ll be a father.”

The enormity of that thought, and the notion that he and Paige would probably follow suit in a year or so, caused a spasm of unexpected nerves inside Jack’s chest. Fatherhood was part of the master plan, yes. But was he ready for it?

“I hear congratulations are in order for you too,” Sherry said. “When’s the big day?”

Christ, I really should have checked with Paige so I could answer that question without sounding like a fool. “October fifteenth.”

Jack scanned the crowd as the band started up, counting the people he knew and making a list of the ones he really wanted to talk to. He caught sight of his father over in the far corner, with ten or twelve paunchy, pasty-faced men jammed at a table meant for eight. Doug Major held a drink in one hand and an unlit cigar in the other as he chattered with his country club buddies. Typical. Jack’s shoulders hunched up around his ears. He supposed he should go over and say hello. Maybe mention something about the memorial Taz wanted to plan. He knew Paige would want him to make the rounds anyway, do a little networking and show his face around the room.

Instead, he fiddled with a piece of bread, finished his bourbon and polished off two glasses of water. He listened to Tom and Sherry debate baby names. He let the hand on his watch count off twenty minutes. Finally, Jack gave in to guilt and his sense of duty. Taking the long way around the ballroom, he worked his way over to his father’s table, stopping every few feet to shake hands, laugh about the weather, or accept congratulations on his upcoming wedding. By the time he reached his father’s corner of the room, he was exhausted and out of sorts.

“Jack!” Doug Major scraped back his chair and stood, an even six feet and two hundred and twenty-five pounds—all of it muscle, thanks to daily tennis matches and personal training sessions. His skin glowed with the even orange of the tanning bed and his teeth shone an artificial white. His hair plugs, barely noticeable in the dim light, filled in the wide white vee of forehead Jack had looked at for as long as he could remember.

Guess everyone deals with loss in different ways. To look at his father, you would think the guy had won the lottery five years ago, rather than lost his wife to cancer. If you asked him about Mom, he’d probably come up with some glib comment about surviving the storm and coming out stronger on the other side. Then he’d go home and climb so far into a bottle that he wouldn’t find the other side of morning until sometime next week.

Jack tried to resist the urge to judge his father. He knew that his own method of coping, of cultivating the perfect life with the perfect wife, just represented a different avenue of escape. Taz traveled to third world countries. Will partied. Aaron got married and took on the biggest mortgage and SUV he could find. The busier we all stay, and the more we avoid the house and Dad and each other, the easier it is to forget what we lost. Pathetic, Jack knew, but the only way the Major men knew how to deal with conflict was to stay the hell away from it.

Jack’s father raised his highball and took his son by the shoulder. His eyes, already bloodshot, matched his rosy cheeks.

“Good to see you, son. Paige coming?”

“Later on.” He made his way around the table, shaking hands with each of his father’s drinking buddies. “Frank, good to see you. Alex, Ellis.”

“When’s the wedding?” Max Friar, president of one of the largest banks in the city, lit a cigar and puffed.

“October.” Doug answered before Jack had a chance to. “And not soon enough, am I right, son?”

Jack smiled. “That’s certainly what my fiancée would say.”

Frank Sullivan, owner of several real estate agencies in and around the city, guffawed. “Not you, though, huh? Getting cold feet? Changing your mind? Not looking forward to the old ball and chain dragging you down?”

A waitress stopped by, and Jack ordered another drink along with the rest of the table. Wouldn’t be strong enough, not even close, but it might take the edge off of the next ten minutes.

“That’s not what I meant,” he said as he forced a laugh. “Sure, I can’t wait to get married. Paige is a wonderful woman. I’m lucky to have her. In fact—”

“My son always did know how to pick them,” his father interrupted. “That woman is smart as a whip, let me tell you. And good-looking—” He whistled in appreciation. “She’ll give me some damn attractive grandchildren.”

“That’s the truth,” Max agreed, his double chins bobbing. “What’d you have now, Doug? Couple-a granddaughters?”

“Three,” Doug said. “Pretty little things, but I’m waitin’ on a boy, tell you that much.”

“Got to carry on the Major name, right?” That came from Alex Cifonelli, a computer mogul who’d retired last year at the age of forty-nine.

Jack’s father nodded, his head bouncing up and down as if attached to a rubber band. “We‘ve been here in Boston since the Tea Party. The city wouldn’t be the same without Majors.” He lit his cigar and Jack pushed back his chair. He hated the smell. Always had. And his father knew it.

“Did you hear?” Doug went on. “Aaron made partner at Anderson last month, and Jack—” he reached over and pounded his son on the back— “I don’t have to tell you how he and Bullieston have taken the entire East coast by storm.” He guffawed as he brandished the cigar, but the laugh turned into a mucous rattle halfway through. Doug whipped out a handkerchief and spat a thick wad into it.

“Just wish Will would get rid of that pharmaceutical sales job,” he continued. “He can do better than that. Taz, well, I can’t even keep track of what cause he’s bleeding for this time.” He blew a smoke ring across the table.

Jack had had about enough. “Dad, it’s been nice,” he lied. “I’ve got a lot of people to talk to tonight. I’ll call you next week.”

His father barely looked up, waving a hand in what might have been goodbye or a dismissal. Jack was never quite sure.

He glanced at the line behind the bar, which was shorter now that most of the guests had occupied the tables or ventured onto the dance floor. A sea of black filled most of the room, the color du jour for any party, he supposed, though here and there he caught sight of a brave soul who’d donned red or a muted pastel. As one giant mass the guests moved around the room. They shuffled to the music, following pre-determined lines, as the men exchanged handshakes and the women air-kissed each other’s cheeks.

Jack looked at his watch. Almost eight. Another hour until Paige appeared, and then he could only guess how long she’d want to stay. Sometimes the Deveau Ball went well into the morning hours. He stifled a yawn and visited the men’s room. Washing his hands, he glanced into the mirror. Though he hated wearing a tuxedo, he had to admit that this one, a tailor-made gift from Paige last Christmas, looked terrific. He straightened his tie and smoothed his curls, hoping they’d behave for the rest of the evening. Though Paige had argued just last week that he needed a haircut, he’d balked. He hated the way close-cropped hair made him look twice his age and half his weight. It was the one thing they fought about on a regular basis.

Back in the ballroom, Jack cracked his knuckles and made his way to the bar. A soda this time, he decided, or he’d be under the table by midnight.

One woman stumbled into him as she left the dance floor. “Oops! Sorry.” Her words slurred, and she hung onto his arm and swayed for a moment. He gritted his teeth and helped her find her balance, closing his nostrils against cloying perfume. “There you go.” Behind him, someone laughed.

Jack turned to find the closest exit. He needed to take a walk outside and get some air. But something across the room, someone near the entrance, stopped him. A curve of neck, a shimmer of skin that looked familiar. Was that…? He shook his head. Ever since you saw Stef tonight, you’ve been thinking about her. Stop it.

He meant to keep moving toward the door. He meant to shove it open with an elbow and take a lap or so around the hotel. He didn’t even care about the rain; he just needed an out. But his head turned as if it didn’t even belong to him. Jack froze. Can’t be. I’m seeing things. He took another look, just to be sure, at the woman who hesitated in the doorway. Wearing some kind of amazing green dress. Glancing around like she wasn’t sure where she was.

Then the floor tilted beneath Jack’s feet and his breath caught in his throat. He tightened the grip on his glass, blinked, and looked a third time. He must be hallucinating. Ten years had passed since she’d said goodbye and broken his heart. He’d moved on. So had she. There was no way on earth, no reason why, Maggie Doyle should be standing in the ballroom of the Hotel Victoria.

Except she was.

*

His last errand finished, Dillon leaped over puddles on his way to the truck. Rain soaked him to the skin. All I want is a long, hot shower. He hauled himself behind the wheel and flipped on his lights. A shower and a shave.

Traffic had slowed, with most of the commuters home to the suburbs by now, he imagined. He watched the lightning carve jagged patterns as he wound his way across the city. Twenty minutes later, he turned into Patriot’s Way Drive, which splintered off in three directions after the first hundred yards. He took the first fork on the left, the one leading to the new section of townhouses, and a quarter-mile later, pulled into his covered parking spot.

Dillon fished out his keys and took the steps to the second floor two at a time. Thunder rumbled a warning as he stepped inside his two-story end unit. He gave himself a good shake, and water flew everywhere. It dappled the full-length mirror in the foyer, the side table holding piles of mail and magazines, the expensive Oriental carpet his ex-girlfriend had convinced him to buy. Unlacing his boots, he left them by the door, then peeled off damp socks and tossed them in the direction of the laundry room. Helena, his cleaning woman, would probably curse at him in Portuguese, but she’d get over it. He chuckled. She always did.

His stomach growled, and he made his way into the kitchen. Off came the polo shirt. Dillon draped it over the nearest chair. The lights flickered a little and he slowed. If the power goes out before I get a shower…

He didn’t suspect his fridge held much in the way of food, but he stuck his head inside all the same. Two six-packs of beer, some cold cuts, a loaf of bread, and three or four take-out containers. Dillon grabbed a beer and left the rest. Unbuttoning his jeans, he checked the messages on his machine: one from J.J., one from his accountant, one from a woman he’d met in a bar last weekend. None important enough to call back tonight. He leaned against the counter and took a long swig. Then another. He headed for the master bath, where he turned on the shower and let the steam rise. Maybe if he got the water hot enough, it would scald the memories out of him once and for all.

Why the hell couldn’t he stop thinking about Maggie today, anyway? It was almost as if she’d ridden in on the tail of a lightning bolt and decided to stay for the duration of the storm.

*

“Is Mags all right?”

Dillon called the minute he heard about the operation. She hadn’t told him, of course. At nineteen and twenty-one, they no longer talked about things held close to the heart. It was only by chance, by calling home from a temporary job down in West Virginia, that he’d gotten the truth out of his stepmother.

“She didn’t want anyone to know,” Hillary explained.

“But I’m family. I’m her brother, for God’s sake.”

“I know…”

She didn’t know at all, that was the problem. As far as Dillon could figure out, Maggie hadn’t told anyone about what had happened with Sam, not even her mother. He was the only other person who knew that a few foggy hours on a spring night had changed everything in Mags’s life.

And God, it pained him every time he thought about that night. Tight-lipped and red-eyed, Maggie had wandered around the house for weeks like it was her fucking tomb. When she finally joined the land of the living again, she looked at Dillon like he was something she’d stepped in on the way home from school. He knew that she held him responsible, that she blamed him for Sam being in the house that night. Hell, he supposed in some way he held himself responsible too. He could have sworn Sam left. He would have put his hand on a Bible and affirmed it in court. But what could he change after the fact?

“She’ll be fine,” Hillary was saying. “They took out some lymph nodes and tested them. No sign of cancer there…” The thickness of tears filled her voice. “…so she won’t need chemo or radiation. Not right now, anyway. Thank God.”

Thank God.

He sent flowers that afternoon, and a card the next day. He called a few times, too, but by then Maggie had returned to college, and her silence told him everything he needed to know. Four years after it happened, she still thought he was her fallen knight in armor, the hero who looked the other way on the night she needed him most. She still thought Dillon should have been able to see through walls and read her mind.

And because he couldn’t, after awhile he gave up trying to make amends.

*

Dillon stepped into the shower and welcomed the steaming water. I tried so many times. He’d kept in touch with his stepmother for a while, even after his father died in the wreck. He sent her emails every so often, and called when he couldn’t get home for Christmas, but part-time landscaping jobs and an itch to travel kept him away most of the time. The chill that grew between him and Maggie didn’t help things either. She ignored him for the most part, the couple of times he did come back. Holidays became a game of who could fill the silence with the worst kind of joke, or who could leave soonest after all the gifts were opened. After she finished college, she found a place in Manhattan. He hadn’t seen her since.

Dillon scrubbed from ear to toe. Turning off the water, he reached for a towel and wrung water from his hair. He took his time drying off, savoring the clean feeling, and was reaching for his razor when the power went out. An explosion, an echoing boom, reverberated off the walls of the townhouse. Then everything fell silent.

“Shit.” He dropped the towel and, naked, made his way to the master bedroom, where he fumbled in his dresser for a pair of boxer shorts. From across the room, he stared out the enormous windows that normally looked onto a tree-lined avenue of upscale residences. Nothing. No glimmer of light as far as he could see.

“Transformer must-a blown.” He pulled open the drawer in his bedside table and felt around for the small flashlight he kept there. “Hope the batteries work.”

They did. Dillon followed the pencil-thin beam of light and wound his way back into the living room. A wall of windows should have framed the Boston skyline. Instead, they reflected back the edges of his own furniture, a mirror of black. If he looked hard enough, he could see a smear of white in the distance. Most of downtown, anyway, still had electricity. But from Dillon’s vantage point, it looked as though most of the eastern neighborhoods lay in total darkness. Ten or twelve square blocks, at least. Gonna take the power company a while to tackle this one.

He padded into the kitchen. He didn’t really mind. While the food at the Hotel Victoria would have been worth a few hours of his time, he wasn’t going to lose any sleep over missing some drunken conversation with a few Boston bigwigs. A sandwich on the couch and a good long nap would fill up his evening hours just fine.

Looked like this year, Dillon wouldn’t be heading to the Deveau Ball after all.

8:00 p.m.

“I’m going to throw up,” Neve whispered, clutching Maggie’s arm.

“You are not.” She squeezed her friend’s elbow in reassurance.

Eden waved at someone in the crowd. “I’ll be right back. Promise.” She slipped through a side door and vanished.

Great, Maggie thought. How on earth do I tackle this? Which way first?

She took a deep breath and looked around. Chandeliers glowed above them. Music, provided by some kind of tuxedoed orchestra in the back corner, filled the cavernous ballroom. The murmur of polite greetings hummed around them. Maggie took it in slowly, one detail at a time. Men shook hands too hard. Women gushed and puckered their lips to peck at the air beside each other’s cheeks. Everyone looked perfect, gloriously beautiful, but behind their costumes they also seemed hollow, almost brittle, as if someone touched them they might shatter and reveal the everyday faces they wore.

Maggie squared her shoulders. “Come on. I need a drink.” She resisted the urge to begin knotting her hair into a ponytail. Instead she shook her head and let the full length of it fall down her back. Her shoes, the perfect height and not too dangerous after all, brushed the hem of her dress. As they moved through the door, a few men glanced her way. They eyed Maggie with approval before being yanked back to conversations by their wives. She ignored them all.

“Wow,” Neve said, glued to Maggie’s right arm. “I mean double-wow. I’m out of my element here.”

Maggie stopped in the middle of the dance floor, next to a couple trying to waltz and doing it badly. She took Neve by both arms. “You are not. You look terrific. You’re every bit as intelligent and witty and kind and attractive as anyone here. You’re better than they are, actually. You still have your soul.” She narrowed her eyes. “Most of these people probably sold theirs years ago, just so they could afford to be seen in a place like this.”

The smile pasted on Neve’s face relaxed a little.

“Let’s just worry about finding Dillon and then get the hell out of here.”

“What does he look like?”

Maggie tried to think how her stepbrother might have aged. She tried to imagine how the years might have cut wrinkles into his skin or stooped his shoulders. Had he chopped his hair short? Gotten gray around the temples? Followed through on his threat to cover both arms with tattoos? All she could conjure up was a skinny eighteen-year old with guilty eyes. She’d have to guess at the rest.

“Tall. Six-two or so. Squinty eyes, sort of hazel. Dirty blond hair. He used to wear it long, past his shoulders. I don’t know about now. If he still works out, then he’s muscular, really cut.” Always did care about the way he looked in the mirror, she thought. He and Sam, regulars in the weight room after school. The image of them together brought bile to the back of her throat.

Neve nodded. “Okay. I’ll start looking.”

“Ma’am?” A waiter slowed beside them. “Champagne?”

Maggie grabbed a glass. “Oh, yes.” Her heart hadn’t stopped its choppy rhythm since Eden handed over the keys to the valet guy. Sure, she’d attended one or two fancy charity events, back when she was working in New York. A thousand years ago. But in places like this, where every other woman wore skin-tight black and a half-pound of make-up, where they all voted Republican, joined the Junior League and pretended to love their husbands while they had affairs on the side, a red-headed single Democrat in a deep green dress flopped around like a tubby salmon on shore.

Maggie forced her nerves away and took two scallops wrapped in bacon as a waitress skimmed by. “You hungry?”

Neve shook her head. “Not really.”

Maggie looked around the room. Already, her head ached from the effort of smiling, of pretending not to stare at anyone who resembled her stepbrother, of rehearsing the words she’d say when she finally saw him again.

The music stopped for a minute as the band took a break. Conversation swelled. Cocktail forks clinked against fine china. Glasses rang as people toasted each other. A tape of jazz music took the place of the band, and despite her heavy heart, Maggie’s toes tapped inside her shoes. A tall man with shaggy hair brushed by them, and she studied the curve in his spine until she was sure it wasn’t Dillon.

Neve pulled on her arm. “Someone’s staring at you.”

“What? Where? Is it him?”

“I don’t think so.” Neve nudged her. “Over there.”

Maggie turned and looked, not sure if she wanted to see Dillon or not. She thought she was prepared. She thought she was ready. But whatever words might have come out of her mouth fell away. She stopped breathing. Something jumped inside her chest.

“It’s not him,” she whispered. Yet she couldn’t stop staring.

“Well then, who is it, and why does he keep looking over here? He’s cute, and he’s been watching you for the last five minutes.”

He would have stayed with you forever, you know.

It doesn’t matter. I couldn’t give him what he wanted…

Maggie tore her gaze away. She’d made a mistake, that was all. Her eyes had mixed up her brain and spliced in a photograph of a long-gone love, and though she’d thought for a moment that she recognized the man, she knew she was wrong. She had to be. Because if Jack Major were standing in the Hotel Victoria ballroom, if the one man she’d given her heart to had somehow reappeared on this rainy evening, she might as well find a place to hide right this minute. She couldn’t do it again, not tonight of all nights. She couldn’t see him. She couldn’t talk to him without remembering the last time they’d touched and she’d felt herself break into a million little pieces at their goodbye.

Memories tangled inside Maggie’s head. For the first time all day, thoughts of Dillon vanished. A decade of heartache and sad, slow mending filled the space of a few seconds slipping into place. Against her will, she looked again. She watched him and saw the struggle on his face that she imagined mirrored hers. Then Jack walked toward her, and she searched for the right kind of smile. She searched for the lie that would say she’d forgotten about him, about them, about what she’d hoped for all those years ago and what she’d finally learned to live without.

Jack crossed the room almost before he realized what his feet were up to. As if a string stretched from his heart to the woman in the green dress twenty feet away. She stared at him as if she were seeing a ghost. He had no idea what he’d say. Wasn’t even sure, for a brief minute, if it was her at all, except for the shock in her eyes that probably looked a lot like his own. The crowd surged around them, and for a minute he lost her.

“Jack! Hey, good to see you here.” A rough arm pounded him on the back, and he turned, annoyed. Armand Stevenson, one of the vice-presidents heading up to the New Hampshire office, offered a hand. The scent of whiskey panted close to Jack’s face as the guy leaned in for the shake. “Quite a night, huh? What a place! Gina kept telling me I‘d be impressed, but I never…”

Jack tried to meet Armand’s piggy-eyed gaze, tried to listen to him chatter on about mergers. But his eyes kept going back to the place where he’d seen her. “Listen, let me catch up with you later on,” Jack said. “Buy you a drink, take Gina for a spin around the dance floor.” He tipped his head and moved away, leaving the guy to spew whiskey breath behind him.

For a brief moment he couldn’t find her, and all he saw was black. Where is she? Tell me I didn’t imagine it. Tell me she didn’t leave. Tell me—

The crowd by the door moved a little, and a flash of emerald satin nearly blinded him. Mags. Wow. After all these years.

A few more steps and he was there, standing beside her. He breathed in the scent that made him a little dizzy and wondered how he could have forgotten the color of her hair. “Maggie Doyle.” Her name, rich on his tongue, were the only words he could manage. Still they sounded like they belonged to someone else because he hadn’t said them anywhere except inside his head for nearly a decade.

Her mouth fell open, as if she hadn’t expected him to say anything, hadn’t expected it to be him at all. He knew how she felt.

“This is a surprise.” That’s it, casual and easy. He fought the emotions tumbling inside him.

She said nothing. After a long moment, she actually began to back away, and Jack thought she might run from the room. The young woman standing beside her stared. Her gaze moved from Jack to Maggie and back again. “You two know each other?”

He took advantage of the moment to regain his composure. “Hi. Jack Major. Maggie and I went to college together.” Pause. “A long time ago.”

“Neve Weatherby.” The woman smiled and nudged Maggie. She shook the hand Jack offered her.

Maggie, however, continued to gape at him until Jack thought maybe he’d left some marinara sauce on his chin or forgotten to shave. He felt himself redden.

“What—how—” Her cheeks flamed. A look he couldn’t read crossed her face. “What the hell are you doing here?” She raised her hands to her hair, and for a moment he wondered if she’d wind all those curls up on top of her head, the way she used to when emotions got the better of her.

“I—it’s a big charity event,” he said, confused. Wasn’t that why she stood here too? “You work in the city, you pretty much get an invitation.” He paused again. “I could ask you the same thing. Didn’t even know you lived in Boston.”

“I don’t.” She wiped her hands on the skirt of her dress and cleared her throat.

Silence fell between them, heavy and awkward.

“So you were just in the neighborhood and decided to stop by?” He tried a joke.

She dropped a glance at her watch. “I guess you could say that.”

Jack hunched up his shoulders. Who the hell was this woman? Not the lover who used to curl up naked next to him and count stars through his dormitory window. Not the coed who used to dare him to climb out on the library balcony, or race the cops, or make snow angels in Central Park after a storm. That Maggie had life and light; she walked the razor-thin edge between should and shouldn’t and teased him with a grin he could never resist. Now she stood before him looking like all the rest of them. Missing something. Frightened of something. God, he wanted to grab hold of her, shake her, embrace her, drive that empty look from her eyes.

“Listen, can I get you a drink? We could grab a seat, catch up for a few minutes.”

An eternity passed before she answered. “Jack, I’m sorry. I—I came here to see someone else. I can’t socialize. I’m not—I don’t have time. It‘s good to see you, but...” Her gaze roved over his face, beyond his shoulder, searching the room.

“Maggie, wait.”

She didn’t even register that she’d heard him. With a hand on her friend’s elbow, she turned, and he guessed she would have left until a sweep of blonde moved between them. Jack took a step back as he recognized the face. Eden Fife. Jesus, I should have guessed. She wrapped her arm around Maggie’s waist and shot him a glance that read as half-surprise, half-warning.

“Jack Major! How long has it been?” Leaning over, she kissed the air next to his cheek. “I might have imagined you’d be on the guest list.”

“Nice to see you again, Eden.” Feels like a damn college reunion. And not in a good way. Uncomfortable, he stuffed both hands into his pockets. Behind them, the band settled into place and struck up a lively rendition of “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.”

Eden pulled Maggie aside, leaned in, and whispered something. They both cut a glance his way, and Jack was reminded of the two of them back in school. Doubles, Eden and Maggie, twins from another time, the way they shared secrets, threw parties until dawn, studied together, ate together, broke hearts together.

Maggie Doyle. He couldn’t believe it. After Vegas, he’d lost track of her, though it hadn’t been for lack of trying. He’d always imagined that she’d moved somewhere far away, across the country or maybe to the other side of the globe.

First he gave her time. Silence. Space. Then he tried to call her after he went away to England and he thought enough weeks had passed. But she never returned his messages. He tried email. Cards. Didn’t hear a thing. After awhile, he gave up and moved on, burying the relationship and telling himself it was better in the past. Only problem was, it had a nasty habit of not wanting to stay there. The last few hours had shown him that, plain as day. Jack thought of Paige and winced, guilty.

“So you and Maggie went to NYU?” Neve asked.

He nodded. “I was two years ahead of her, but it’s not that big a school. You get to know most people after awhile.”

Neve gave him a curious smile. “What was she like, back then?”

A corner of his mouth curved up. The question stirred all kinds of memories. Maggie dancing half-naked under a full moon. Maggie trying in vain to resist his advances as they studied together for finals. Maggie daring him to fly to Las Vegas on a moment’s notice to celebrate his upcoming graduation. Maggie weeping and telling him that the best thing for them both was to forget it ever happened.

Jack pulled at his tie and wondered how to answer. “Pretty crazy, to tell you the truth. One of a kind. So you two are friends?”

“We work together,” Neve explained. “I work for her, actually. She owns—”

Maggie was back before she had a chance to finish. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to leave you two alone.”

Neve blushed. “We were just talking about—”

“The past,” Jack interjected as the band shifted into a slow ballad. Couples fused together as the lights dimmed. From the corner of his eye, he could see waiters serving salads to the far tables. Suddenly, a sense of urgency swirled about him, a need to hold onto the moment before dinner and Paige and the rest of the night took Maggie away from him. He wanted to know more about her. He wanted to know where she’d ended up. He wanted to know how she’d done for herself after all this time. He wanted.

“Dance with me,” he said. He hardly heard the words come out of his mouth, didn’t know they had until Maggie’s jaw snapped shut. “Just once. For old time’s sake.”

In slow motion she shook her head. “Oh. Jack, I just…I can’t. I’m sorry. Like I said, I’m only here to see someone. For business.” She cocked her head. A tentative smile passed across her face and fell away, as if the very thought of touching him again pained her down deep. “And to be honest, I’m not sure I can do that again.”

“Do what?”

She motioned to the space between them. “Us. You and me. Even if it is only a dance.” She paused. “You know what I mean.”

He opened his mouth to protest, but before he could plead his case, she backed away. The crowd surrounded her and in another second, Maggie was gone.

Jack stood in the middle of the dance floor, unsure of what had just happened. He scowled, angry with himself for asking, angrier with her for refusing. Disappearing in that green dress was the only woman who’d ever had the power to make him feel like he was slipping down a hill at breakneck speed, like he was skating on ice that might crack at any second. He didn’t like that feeling, that loss of control. He’d never felt it before meeting Maggie, and he sure as hell hadn’t looked for it after leaving her. He preferred ease, comfort, predictability: all the things he had with Paige.

So why he went after Maggie in that moment, why he set into place the events that tumbled together that night, he could never really explain. He only knew he didn’t have a choice.

“Wait.” Jack pushed through the crowd, catching her as she and Neve walked into a smaller room off the main one. He reached for her arm and wrapped his fingers around smooth, freckled skin. Something unexpected tingled in his wrist.

“Jack, please.” This time, fire jumped in Maggie’s eyes, and she pulled away from him.

He took a step back, palms raised. “Sorry. Geez. I just wondered…you still didn’t tell me what you’re doing here. If you‘re not living in Boston, I mean.”

“I did too. I’m looking for someone.”

“A guy?”

She smiled for the first time and put her hands on her hips. Against his will, Jack noticed the swell of them and remembered the way his own hands used to fit there.

“Why do you want to know? Jealous?”

“Maybe.” Suddenly he was. “Can’t we just talk?”

“About what?” She glanced at the guests still streaming through the doors behind them. “About your life now? Mine?” She laughed a little. “Believe me, you don’t want to know.”

“I just—”

“Ah, Jack,” she said, her voice softer this time. “It’s too late to play catch-up. Too late to pretend we can be friends.”

“Why?”

She waited. Swallowed. Ran a hand over her brow and closed her eyes for a long moment. “I’m not sure I have the energy.”

“But—”

Eden appeared out of the crowd again, this time with a stocky, dimpled guy in tow. She ignored Jack. “Listen, Mags, Jarod here talked to Dillon a few days ago and says he was definitely planning on coming. But now the whole east side of the city’s lost power—”

“Meaning what?” Maggie’s voice climbed an octave.

Eden patted her friend on the shoulder. “Meaning he might be running late, that’s all. Don’t freak out. He’ll show.”

Jack frowned. Dillon. Who the hell was that? The guy Mags was there to find? Not her date, that was for certain, or else he’d be standing beside her. Then who? Jack didn’t know what else to say, and the longer he stood there, the more like an idiot he felt.

“Mags, it’s good to see you again,” he said, interrupting the women’s conversation. “If you change your mind about that dance, I’ll be inside.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

On impulse, he drew closer, bending until his lips brushed her ear. “You look terrific,” he whispered.

“Um…thanks.” She laid one hand on the lapel of his jacket, for a moment only. But it was long enough that for the next hour, all Jack could feel was the imprint of Maggie’s fingertips on his heart.

“I have to go,” she said.

This time Jack did let her walk away. Yet as she vanished into the crowd, with Eden and Neve beside her, something twisted inside him, a sort of yearning mixed with anger, regret, and something else he couldn’t quite identify.

Just when he’d gotten his life where he wanted it, just when his future as CEO and devoted husband seemed clear, the redhead from Jack’s past, the ache from another life, showed up again. He hadn’t planned for this. The mixed-up thoughts in his head he couldn’t deal with. The longing below his navel he couldn’t control. All he wanted to do was talk to Maggie. All she wanted to do was get away from him.

What the hell was he going to do now?

9:00 p.m.

Maggie stood in the middle of the dance floor and fought for stillness she couldn’t find. This isn’t happening to me. It can’t be. Her fingers fluttered against her skirt. How big is this world, where I look for Dillon in one place and find Jack there instead? She ignored the music and the couples moving around her. That cold feeling passed along her arms again, the chill that had set upon her in front of Spectacular ‘Scapes. This time she couldn’t ignore it.

You moved to Hart’s Falls because of Jack.

That’s not true, she argued back.

Wasn’t it? Hadn’t some part of her been waiting for this moment, since the day she looked at the map and traced the highway from Rhode Island to Boston? Hadn’t she imagined him lying in bed, staring at the ceiling, fifty miles away? Didn’t part of her want to be close to him after everything that happened?

“No.” Of course not. That was silly. That didn’t make sense. “No.”

She didn’t realize she’d spoken the word aloud until Neve waved a hand in front of her face. “No, what? Maggie? Are you in there?”

Of all the people she had to run into tonight, it had to be him. Him. She looked for a place to sit down before she fell over.

Jack Major: dark-haired, sexy without speaking a word, kind in the right ways, rough around all the best edges. The man who’d made her realize that falling in love was like jumping off a cliff. The man who made her crazy. The man who made her want to fly. The man who promised to love her forever, right before she broke up with him because the secret inside her was bigger than the two of them and all their love put together. This man had just been standing two feet away from her, smiling down with that sensual smile and thinking she was going to dance with him as if nothing had ever happened.

She wanted to scream.

Jack and Maggie. Maggie and Jack. It had been the two of them, inseparable, as soon as they met on NYU’s campus. Parties, hand in hand. Classes, side by side. Coffee in a local diner or a stroll down Times Square. It never mattered where they went or what they did, as long as they were together. Eden dated five or six fraternity brothers in the same two-year span. And Stefan? Maggie wondered what had happened to Jack’s closest friend from school, a laid-back guy with heavy-lidded eyes and a slow, sexy smile. He’d never settled down either. Most of their friends had dated around, falling in and out of love the way college students do.

But we were different, Maggie thought, and sadness thudded against her heart. We knew too soon. Fell too hard. And I didn’t know how to deal with the consequences.

“Are you okay?” Kind, sweet Neve hovered close beside her.

Maggie ran her fingers, damp with perspiration, through her hair. “I’m fine.” But she took her friend by the wrist and steered her in the direction of the Ladies’ Room. “I need some air.”

“That was him, wasn’t it?” Neve asked after they pushed their way inside.

Maggie stared at her hands as she washed them furiously. She didn’t answer. She couldn’t.

“That was the guy from college. From Vegas. The one you and Eden were talking about earlier.” Neve adjusted her dress and waited as Maggie dried every last drop of water from her hands. Twice.

A group of women walked in, giggling. Their eyelids drooped from the mascara caked onto their lashes.

“So I told him to get lost,” one said as she applied a thick coat of lipstick and peered into the mirror. “I told him it would take more than some flowers to make up for what he did…”

Maggie pretended to inspect her own makeup as the women cooed and rearranged their faces.

“Did you see what Stella is wearing?” another said. “I wouldn’t be caught dead…”

After a few long minutes, the women exited.

Maggie sank onto an ottoman and kicked off her shoes. “Yes. That was him.”

“Wow.” Neve plopped down opposite her. “He’s really good-looking.”

Maggie rubbed her instep. “I know.” Why hasn’t he changed? Why didn’t he get fat, or gray, or paunchy around the jowls? Why does he still look so damn perfect? She stared at her own reflection in the wall of mirrors beside them and wondered what Jack had seen there. The girl of twenty? The woman of thirty? The lines around her eyes, or the question marks inside them?

“What does he do for a living?”

“I have no idea. He’s probably a very rich businessman. That was always his plan, anyway.”

“Really? He doesn’t seem like a snob. Like some of them, I mean.”

Maggie shook her head. “No, he doesn’t.” Jack never had been like that, despite his last name and the reputation attached to it. When she’d known him, he had just been a regular guy. He was nice to everyone, the sort of person who worked really hard and dreamed big dreams and didn‘t care about the money his family came from. He’d always wanted to make it on his own. He refused a scholarship to his father’s alma mater. He turned down an entry-level position in a family friend’s business and chose to study abroad instead.

I want to do my own thing, make my own decisions, he said one night, as he traced circles on her bare stomach. I don’t ever want people to say I made it because of my father. Or his money. Or my goddamned last name.

Maggie wondered if Jack had finally sold out, though. What else would he be doing in a place like this?

“So? How do you feel about him? Do you still—”

“No. Of course not.” Maggie answered before Neve finished the question, in part because hearing it out loud might make it harder to lie. “We’re different people now. God, it was ten years ago. Things change.”

But it hadn’t felt that way when she’d seen him. In fact, part of her wondered if they’d somehow fallen back through time, rewound the heartache and arrived back at the moment when every minute they spent together was magic. Because in just a few minutes of talking with Jack, something had stirred inside her. A tingle at the base of her spine had worked its way up to her throat and down to the soles of her feet until she’d felt like she was on fire, the way she used to. The way just smiling at Jack across a room, knowing he belonged to her in a million little ways, had lit her up. How is it possible that those things don’t die away? How can it be so easy to feel that way again?

Maggie shook it off. She couldn’t afford to indulge a thought like that, not tonight.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. She reached down and pulled her shoes back on. “I’m not here to spend time with Jack.” A red spot, sore and puffy, had already begun to bloom at the base of one heel. Great. Blisters. Just what I need, pain inside and out.

“Come on. We’re not going to find my stepbrother in the women’s room, that’s for sure.” Just find Dillon, she reminded herself as they made their way out. Stay away from Jack at all costs, and find Dillon. Then get the hell out of here.

“There you are!” Eden glided across the room. Her hair fell across her brow in sheets of gold. “Are you okay?”

Maggie wondered how to answer that. Okay. It was the most mundane word in the English language, as far as she was concerned. It meant nothing at all, but when you used it to answer a question, everyone accepted it. No one looked beneath it. No one asked what you really thought or felt.

“I guess.”

Eden draped an arm around Maggie’s neck. “I didn’t know Jack would be here. Really. Don’t let him upset you. It’s not worth it.”

Easy for you to say. Maggie leaned into the weight of her friend’s arm for support. “Dillon isn’t here yet, is he?”

“I don’t think so.” Eden paused. “Mags, how much money do you need?”

She started. “What do you mean? I don’t need — I’m not asking—”

“Stop it.” Eden unwrapped herself. “Listen, it’s not a big deal. I asked Neve what the hell the rush was about, you coming up here tonight to find your brother.”

Stepbrother, Maggie corrected silently.

“She told me your business was in trouble. Why didn’t you just say so? There are plenty of people I can borrow money from.”

“Forget it.” But even as Maggie spoke, part of her wanted to give in and say yes. Could Eden really help her? Could she really borrow that kind of money? How tempting, to know that circling the ballroom right now were people rich enough to write that check without blinking an eye. Fifteen thousand, four hundred and eighty dollars. That kind of cash—it probably meant nothing to them. They wouldn’t miss it no matter how long it took Maggie to repay. Still, she hesitated. She didn’t want to owe her best friend. She didn’t want money or the slippery details of debt to come between them. It was easier to talk money with someone you didn’t have a relationship with.

“It’s not that simple,” she said. “I need it by tomorrow.”

Eden shrugged. “Not a problem.”

“You can get your hands on fifteen thousand dollars in the next twelve hours?”

“That much?” Eden’s eyes widened, and she paused for a second. “Maybe. Kurt at the firm owes me a favor. Let me ask.” She was gone before Maggie could protest any further.

“Really, maybe she can help,” Neve said, her tone apologetic. “That way you won’t have to spend the rest of the night worrying about finding Dillon. Or not finding him. Or figuring out how to ask him…” She looked at her toes. “I’m sorry I told Eden about the foreclosure. I just wanted to help.”

“Oh, hell, it’s okay,” Maggie said. Okay. Covers everything, right? “Maybe she can get the money. I should just be grateful for that.”

Neve swished her skirt from side to side. “Then we could stay a little bit longer. Dance, maybe.”

She looks like a girl at the prom, Maggie thought. The clock on the wall read almost 9:30 but what Maggie really wanted to do was drive home and sink into her mattress, not paste a smile on her face and dance the night away. Another hour or two, she told herself. Neve came up here with you. Let her have her music and her ball and her big night with Boston’s high society. I’m sure she’ll be ready to leave by midnight. Maggie found a vacant spot near the wall and told herself to deal with it.

“Excuse me.” One of the men at the table nearest them leaned over to Neve. He looked close to seventy, Maggie guessed.

“Would you do me the honor of a dance?” He patted the arm of the elderly woman sitting beside him. “My wife is feeling under the weather this evening.”

Maggie thought Neve might fall over with pleasure. “I’d love to!” She glanced at Maggie. “You’re okay here? I’ll just be a few minutes.”

“Of course.” Maggie smiled as her friend took the man’s wrinkled hand and followed him onto the dance floor. Leaning back, she watched the dancing couples spin by, counting how many women she saw in black, how many in gloves and how many bare-handed, how many with fake eyelashes and how many with fake cleavage. I wonder how much a boob job goes for these days. Even better—I wonder how much money people here have spent on plastic surgery. Total. She tried to do the math in her head, men versus women, and tried to imagine the most common knife job for each.

Breast implants? Definitely.

Botox and collagen injections? Absolutely.

Nose jobs, eye lifts, liposuction? Probably a few.

And the men just dye their hair and suck in their stomachs, she thought, biting back laughter.

“We need to talk.” Jack appeared from nowhere, sliding his way behind the tables to where she stood.

Maggie’s eyes closed for a second. Oh, Jack, don’t do this me. “No, we don’t.” She tried to back away from him, but the wall gave her about an inch of wiggle room. “I told you—I can’t—just leave me alone, please.”

“No.” He set his chin in that stubborn way she remembered. “You never returned any of my calls. Why?”

I was trying to heal, you idiot. I was trying to get over you. Exasperated, she crossed her arms over her chest. “You want to talk about this? Now? Why? It’s been ten damn years.”

“Exactly.” He stood his ground and waited.

Maggie rolled her eyes. Unbelievable. “Okay, fine. Why didn’t I call you? You were in England. Remember? And I was in New York. What were we going to do, have a conversation at two in the morning?”

“That’s just an excuse.” His voice was measured and controlled though underneath she thought she sensed rising anger. “I wouldn’t have cared what time it was, or—”

“Jack, it was over.” She let out a long breath. Why does it still hurt to think about this? To talk about it? “I didn’t return your calls because I didn’t have anything to say.”

“Over?” His eyebrows hit the ceiling. “Over? No, it wasn’t. Not for me. Not then.” Jack’s eyes blazed as his mouth came close to hers, until she thought the words slipping from his lips might burn her neck. “And I don’t think it was over for you, either. You know what I think?”

Oh, I can’t wait to hear this.

“I think you didn’t call me because you were too scared to admit that you still had feelings.”

Dammit, don’t look back and think you know what I was going through.

“You don’t—you have no idea—” he continued when she didn’t answer. Raking both hands through his hair, he turned his back for a minute, and Maggie thought he might walk away from her once and for all.

“What were you planning on saying?” Maggie asked. “‘Let’s get back together?’ ‘Let’s give it another try?’”

Jack turned and stared at her, eyes dark.

“That decision—it was the right one.” She worked to keep her voice steady. “It wouldn’t have worked out any other way.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. Come on. Think back. You had everything ahead of you.” Maggie dropped her chin. “You didn’t need someone back in the States.”

“That’s bullshit, and you know it. I asked you to come to England with me. I wanted—”

“I know what you wanted.” She had to stop him. She couldn’t relive the conversation all over again. “But there were things about me you didn’t know back then.” There. She’d said it. “Things you still don’t know.”

He shook his head, and impatience filled his eyes. “‘Things’? Like what?”

“I…I can’t explain. It just wouldn’t have worked out between us. We were too young, anyway.”

“I wasn’t.”

Maggie wound her skirt between her fingers, exhausted. “Well, I was. End of story.”

He stared at her for a long moment. “Dance with me.”

“What? You’re crazy. No.”

Jack took her hand. “Listen, forget about Vegas, okay? You’re right. It’s over.” He shrugged. “But here we are, and it’s been a long time, so…why the hell not? One dance between old friends doesn’t have to mean anything. Or make up for anything.” He pulled at his collar and looked uncomfortable.

“Oh, hell,” Maggie said. “Fine. One dance. Then will you leave me alone?”

“I promise.”

It was a mistake from the start, and she knew it.

In slow motion she watched as his hand wrapped around hers, as if following a memory that hadn’t died but just slumbered for a long, long time. The music swelled, and they slipped into a space on the hardwood. Mingling into the other couples, they found a rhythm, their rhythm, after a moment or two. I didn’t forget how we fit together, Maggie marveled. I didn’t forget how all our edges match up in the right places. And neither did he. Warning bells went off inside her head, but she ignored them. She’d meant what she’d said—it was over, a long time ago—but it was so easy to slip back into Jack’s embrace, even after all these years. So easy to like the way her chest met his. So easy to remember the way his fingers closed around hers and felt like they belonged there always.

Damn. She lowered her gaze and tried to remind herself what she was doing at the ball in the first place. Dillon, remember? The money. The foreclosure. She counted to ten. She scanned the room, hoping and not hoping to see her stepbrother cross the threshold. But against her will, she leaned into Jack’s embrace and let him carry her to the music. Suddenly, she wondered what moment in the night would be harder: having to leave his arms when she saw her stepbrother, or having to stay there and risk falling back into a place she’d left years ago.

Her hand shifted on his shoulder. Say something, she thought. Make conversation. Don’t turn to mush like a girl at a high school dance.

“So what kind of business did you end up in?”

Jack pulled back slightly, and Maggie found space to breathe. “Well, I came back to the States…” He cleared his throat. “…after Oxford. Got accepted to the MBA program at Boston University and, after that, found a job working for a new company here in town.” He passed over the details without much embellishment. “You?”

“I opened my own business.”

His brows rose. “Good for you, Mags.”

“Well, not so good these days,” she confessed. “I’m in up to my ears in debt.”

He frowned. “Sorry to hear that. Anything I can do to help?”

She held her breath. No. Double no. I didn’t care about his money back then. I sure as hell don’t want it now. Jack is the one person I can never, ever, be indebted to.

“No. But thanks for the offer.”

“So where are you living? Around Boston?”

“Small town in Rhode Island.”

“Nice area.”

“I know.” She wondered how much longer she could make small talk.

Jack drew her closer again. His hand tightened around her back, and waves of desire pulsed along Maggie’s spine. Oh, God. I’m in trouble.

She tried to think of bills she needed to pay or designs she needed to work on. She tried to remember the number of the Bay Bank, the colors of the lilies in her backyard, the price of gas at the pumps. Anything to keep her mind off the fact that being this close to Jack was throwing her into emotional chaos. The song, an endless rendition of “Stairway to Heaven,” carried them around and around, and with every sweep, his strong chest met hers. With every chorus, his chin brushed her forehead and his hand tightened around her own. Maggie tried to remember how to breathe normally and failed. She closed her eyes and willed herself to hold on until the song ended. Then she could leave. She could put some distance between them. She could escape, because apparently her emotions were about to betray her. She could—

The song ended. Finally.

“Thank you.” Before Maggie could stop him, Jack had brushed a kiss against her cheek, sliding his mouth down next to hers before pulling away. Ten thousand fireworks went off inside her skull.

She stepped away like she’d been stung.

“Ah, Mags.” He shrugged in defeat. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have. It’s just…” He waved a hand at her, indicating the dress, the hair, her face. “You look terrific. And it’s so damn good to see you again.”

He ran one hand over his hair, messing it up. “Can we take a walk?”

She didn’t answer.

Jack pointed to the arboretum beyond the bar. “Just to talk. Please.”

Maggie wasn’t sure what to say. This didn’t feel like a good idea. Still, maybe he was right. Maybe getting things out in the open, once and for all, would remove the heavy band from her heart. Maybe she could forget Vegas and everything she’d lost there. Then she could move on. With a wave to Neve, who looked like she was having the time of her life, Maggie followed Jack across the room and through a small door near the restrooms she hadn’t noticed before.

“Wow.” Inside, a hush met them. Maggie looked around at the glass walls and ceiling. Tall trees arched above them. A variety of small trees and plants grew around them. All were thick with leaves and smelled like the heavy scent of summer. Outside, the rain continued to fall, a still, silent background. On the opposite side of the glass, the ball-goers danced, oblivious. She wandered around the space, not speaking. Jack sat on a bench and cracked his knuckles, the way he used to, she thought, when he was nervous. Or upset.

After a few minutes, she stopped pacing and sat beside him. “I never thought I’d see you again.”

He chuckled. “That’s an understatement.”

Maggie began to wind her hair into a knot.

“Don’t.” Jack raised a hand to pull her fingers away. “I thought you might have cut it short. You threatened to, you know.”

“We threatened a lot of things back then.”

“We were kids.”

“You make it sound like it was a hundred years ago.”

“It feels like it was.”

Is that regret in his voice? she wondered. Sadness? A resignation to the march of time?

Mere inches separated them, and the fabric of her dress brushed the one hand he pressed to the bench. “I wish things could have turned out differently,” he said, shifting and moving closer to her. “You have no idea how much I missed you after I got to London.”

Maggie nodded. She looked at her toes, the floor, the collection of flowers by the door. After a long minute, she dared herself to meet his gaze again, to fall into the memories that lay there and return the desire Jack wasn’t bothering to hide. The lights from the ballroom cast shadows inside the arboretum; the music, muted, floated inside.

“Mags, I…” He stopped. Raised one hand to her face. Ran his thumb across her bottom lip. And kissed her again.

Noses bumped. Breaths quickened. She pulled away. “I don’t think…”

But the draw of memory was too strong.

Jack placed both hands on Maggie’s cheeks, and she gave herself up to him. Their tongues twisted in pleasure, seeking, finding their way, filling hungry spaces between them. She gasped, feeling as if he’d slipped inside her and turned her inside out. One hand made its way from her cheek to her throat, down one bare shoulder and then lower, where it rested on a breast that ached for his touch. Maggie’s toes curled inside her shoes. Nipples rose under the memory of his caresses. She let her hands roam across his face, through his hair, plucking at his lapel and pulling him closer.

Ten years of lost passion spilled from them both. A whimper escaped her lips as Jack moved his mouth to her earlobe and down one side of her neck. He whispered something into the hollow of her throat, burying his face in her hair. For a crazy moment, she wanted to tear off her dress, peel away his tuxedo, feel his bare skin against hers and remember the way they’d moved together a hundred times. A monumental ache consumed her.

And if the door behind them hadn’t opened just then, Maggie was sure she would have lost herself in Jack’s embrace for the rest of the night.

10:00 p.m.

A throat cleared. Jack jerked away. His mouth left the smooth skin of Maggie’s neck and his hands fell from where they lay buried in her hair. His mind whirled and the throbbing in his groin prevented him from forming any kind of coherent thought. Shit, he felt like he was sixteen again, caught in his girlfriend’s basement with one hand up her shirt and her mother standing on the stairs. He smoothed one palm over his lapel, not daring to look at Maggie. Whoever it was, whoever stood in the doorway, he’d deal with. He’d think of something to say, or some excuse to make everything all right. He always did.

Eden. Of course.

Jack felt the flush rise on his cheeks. Their old college friend leaned just inside the doorway. A knowing expression darkened her smile. She glanced from Jack to Maggie and back again. “Well. Time doesn’t heal all wounds, apparently.” Eden glanced back through the glass. The rest of the partygoers still whirled to the music, fifty feet away and completely unaware.

Jack felt Maggie inch away from him, trying to put space between them on the narrow concrete bench. He stole a glance her way, in time to watch her tuck her hair behind her ears in a nervous gesture he remembered from years past. He wondered if her heart had slowed at all. His sure hadn’t.

“Eden, listen.” He wasn’t sure how much she’d seen. Or what she’d tell. He was damn sure she knew about his engagement to Paige, though. The whole city did. He dropped his head, at a loss for what to say. A stranger, he could lie to. A business acquaintance, he could convince to keep quiet. But Eden? Any fib he’d try to tell, she’d look right through him and laugh.

Jack studied his palms. The bottom line was that he’d screwed up, big time. He wouldn’t blame Eden if she told Paige flat out that she’d caught him with another woman. Most of the women he knew in Boston stuck together that way. They revealed secrets. They told tales and dug in their nails for the hashing and rehashing. A sharp pain stabbed him just below the breastbone. Problem was, Maggie wasn’t just another woman. She was the one who’d gotten away. The one he’d never really recovered from. The one who sat beside him now, waiting for him to speak.

“Some of the guests have been asking about you.” Eden sank to a seat on the bench opposite them. “Neve is worried you’d disappeared,” she said to Maggie. “Thought maybe you’d come up with some other crazy way of finding Dillon and—”

With that, Maggie jumped up. Don’t go, he wanted to say. Wait a minute. Let’s figure out what just happened here. But she only mumbled something he couldn’t make out. A rustle of green, a banging of the door, and the room turned cold again. Empty.

Eden eyed Jack and hummed a tune he didn’t recognize.

“What exactly are you up to, Major?” Her voice, low and throaty, carried a note of warning.

He rubbed the back of his neck and stared at the ground. Near the door, the thick roots of two trees wound so tightly around each other that he couldn’t tell where one ended and the next began. “I don’t know,” he said after a minute. “I sure as hell didn’t plan for this to happen.”

“Don’t go down that road again.”

“Hey, we’re both adults,” Jack replied, hackles rising.

“Maybe you are.” She didn’t let him continue. “But you have a fiancée. A big-time job. You’re living a whole different life than back in college.” She crossed slim legs and pursed her lips, studying him. “A lot has changed since NYU. What the two of you had—it’s gone. Over. Maggie’s not here tonight to see you.”

Jack’s jaw tightened, and he gripped the stone bench with both hands.

“So don’t go kissing her in the corner, leading her on and making her think you can just pick up again where you left off. Or make up for lost time. Or have an affair on the side while you go on planning the wedding of the year like nothing’s changed.”

“I would never—how dare—”

She softened a degree. “Listen, I was there, Jack. I remember what happened. I know maybe you’re feeling like there’s something still left. Something still unfinished between the two of you.” She paused. “But it was a long time ago. Let it go.”

Jack shook his head. He didn’t care how long ago it was. He didn’t care that Eden might be right. In kissing Maggie again, in touching her and breathing her in, he’d glimpsed a part of himself long put away. A part of himself pushed to the side after years of forging his way in the corporate world. Six years ago, when he first met Paige, he’d figured that grown-up relationships came with a different set of emotions. He’d figured that love meant steadiness and responsibility. Not tumultuous passion. Not heartache that kept you up at night. It was what I needed back then, he thought, to get off that damn roller coaster Mags always had me on.

Yet with one kiss tonight, he’d fallen through a loop in time. He’d remembered how he used to feel—like he was flying and grounded all at the same time. Like he could scale any mountain and then slide down the other side into Maggie’s arms. Like he would willingly walk across hot coals just to fold himself inside her embrace and rock together with her until the sun came up. God, I missed that.

A flash of guilt slapped Jack across the face. What the hell was he going to do now? What was he going to tell Paige?

Eden rose and glided back to the door, reading his mind. “She’s here, by the way. Arrived about ten minutes ago. And she’s been looking for you.”

A sour taste rose in Jack’s mouth, a combination of guilt and regret and the beginning of an explanation all at the same time. He straightened his tie. He wiped the edges of his lips, steeled himself for the inevitable, and stood. He’d figure something out. He’d think of what to say to his fiancée. Anyway, whatever happened now, he had it coming.

The rush of noise caught him off guard as he re-entered the ballroom. For a moment Jack stood apart from the crowd, gaining his bearings and surveying the area. From this vantage point, all he could see was a whirl of black on the dance floor and a few tipsy guests stumbling into one another. A couple of familiar faces smiled over at him and he nodded in return, though his lips felt stiff as he plastered on a smile. Jack flexed his hands in and out of fists and waited as the music died. Spotting a break in the crowd, he worked his way through the tables toward the main entrance. A little fresh air, that’s what he needed, to cool his cheeks and silence the voice inside his head.

Paige found him before he’d gone ten feet. “Where on earth have you been?”

She curled into his right arm, hanging on like he was her damn life raft or something. She smelled, he noticed, like the heavy designer perfume she always wore for these events. Her dress was new, some sort of shiny black thing that he didn’t recognize. Guess she hadn’t gotten the red one from the cleaner’s after all. Ropes of pearls looped around her neck, and she’d twisted her hair up on top of her head.

She looked gorgeous, as always, flawless and current despite the late hour and the long day she’d put in. Jack, on the other hand, felt restless and rough, like all his polish had rubbed off and he stood naked in the middle of the ballroom. He bent to kiss her cheek, but his gaze moved beyond her shoulder, casting about the room and looking for a swath of green satin. Nothing. Nowhere. Something stuck in his throat and he tried in vain to swallow it away.

Paige nibbled at his earlobe. “Come on,” she said in a tone that left him no choice but to oblige. “There are some people I want you to meet.”

*

Jack resisted the urge to check his watch and see how much time had passed. He had no idea where Maggie was. He didn’t dare go and look for her. Instead, he stood in the ballroom without saying a word as the tenth woman bent over Paige’s outstretched hand and shrieked.

“It’s gorgeous! How many carats?”

“Two,” Paige answered with a small, smug smile in his direction, as if he’d had anything to do with picking it out. “The wedding band will have just over another full carat.”

The woman, no one Jack knew, cooed up at them both. He nodded hello and goodbye, a short, tight jerk of the head, and they moved on.

“Oh, there’s Sarah and Leslie, from the gym.” Paige pointed at two lanky women across the floor. Both were thin and muscular in a way that Jack found entirely unappealing. “I haven’t had a chance to say hello to them yet.”

Must be the only people here tonight you’ve missed, he thought.

In less than an hour, Paige had spoken to more people than he had at the last two balls put together. Jack rolled his shoulders and willed away the tightness. He supposed he’d have to put up with the same kind of social posturing at their wedding. And at next year’s ball, as a newly married couple. And at the million other events lined up in his life as a result of putting that ring on her finger. His head ached at the thought.

Paige trotted over. She caught her gym friends at the edge of the dance floor and together they laughed about something that had happened in spin class. The women pawed at her diamond, ran admiring hands over her dress, and shot Jack knowing looks before ignoring him altogether.

He murmured an excuse and slipped off to the bar. There, he ordered another double bourbon and then, with Paige still preoccupied, snuck into the men’s room. He set his drink on the counter and stared into the mirror. Looking back at him from the glass was a guilty man with brooding eyes, a man who accused him of infidelity, a man who damned him. A man who dared him to go after Maggie.

Abruptly, Jack yanked on the faucet and let the hot water run until it burned his hands. Two men he didn’t know came in, used the toilets, and left without saying a word. He stalled for another five minutes, finished the bourbon, and left the empty glass on the counter as he made his way out.

Just in time.

“Shit.” Jack swore under his breath as the band moved into a sultry rendition of “At This Moment.” It was one of Paige’s favorite songs. He’d tried to explain to her once that the lyrics, about loss and breaking up, didn’t exactly make for a good love ballad. She said she was putting it on the play list for their wedding reception just the same.

For a moment, he didn’t see her anywhere, and he thought he might have a chance to slip outside and get his head straight. He wouldn’t even mind the nasty weather. But then she appeared from nowhere and encircled his wrist with one small, strong hand. “Let’s dance.”

What else could he do? They moved onto the floor, finding a spot and stepping to the beat. His fingers felt awkward around her waist, and as he lost himself in the music, a lump grew in his throat.

Maggie. Mags. That fiery hair. That smile. Smooth skin under his touch. Classic rock playing as they made love in his dorm. Vegas. A mistake. A goodbye. Then nothing. Faster and faster the memories tumbled inside his head, until he thought they might explode into the room. For a moment he pictured his soul spreading itself onto the walls in rich color, exposing Jack and Maggie’s entire history to everyone at the ball.

“Jack?” Paige’s hand tightened on the back of his neck. “What do you think?”

He looked down at his fiancée. “I’m sorry. What?”

She dropped his hand and stepped away, though the song had barely begun. Her nostrils flared. “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said all night.”

Jack stiffened. I’ve heard it all, he wanted to answer. Every last word. I know where you want to honeymoon, what you want engraved on our rings, the kinds of wine we should serve with dinner. The truth is, I don’t care about it. Any of it. Something clicked into place as he watched Paige’s mouth move without hearing the words that came from it.

His engagement was a sham. His life with Paige was a substitute for the thing that really mattered, that he’d let escape all those years ago. Amazing. He’d been skating along all this time, content in a relationship without complexity or color. He’d convinced himself that he was happy without risk, without passion, without that bottomless depth of devotion that he’d once felt with Maggie.

That he felt still, with Maggie.

“What’s going on?” The lines around Paige’s eyes deepened, and her mouth pushed into a pout. “Why are you acting like you’re a thousand miles away? Something happen at work?”

I’m just tired, Jack started to say, and ready to go. He meant to say that, anyway, as she stood there waiting for a response.

“I can’t do this anymore,” was what came out instead.

Paige’s features pinched together in a frown. “You can’t do what? Dance with me? Make conversation with my friends? I’ve been working since six o’clock this morning. I’ve waited all day to enjoy myself tonight. At the very least, you owe me a good time.”

It’s always about you and what you want, isn’t it? Jack marveled that he’d listened to Paige speak for almost five years and never noticed the lack of music in her voice.

“I’m not talking about the ball.”

She inhaled, and squares of light glittered inside her pupils. “You better not be saying what I think you’re saying.”

There was that tone again: impatient and demanding. It was what made her a stellar attorney, Jack realized, but not the person he wanted to spend his life with.

“Paige, I’m not sure that—” What did he mean to say? I’m not sure that we should get married? That you’re the woman for me? That I can stand here for another minute and pretend to enjoy this ball? He hadn’t ended a relationship since his days of graduate school and he’d forgotten how awkward and unpleasant it could be. No words sounded right.

An expression he had never seen before crossed her face, a combination of disbelief and irritation and calculation, as if she were trying to figure out which move came next. “Are you breaking up with me?”

Just say it, he told himself. Like a Band-Aid. Tear it off in one clean pull.

He couldn’t. “There are some things I need to take care of. I can’t really explain now. I’ll try to—” I’ll try to make sense of it later

She stopped him before he could finish. “After midnight on a Friday night, there isn’t anything you have to take care of that can’t wait until Monday morning. I can assure you of that.” Hands on hips, she waited.

This time, he didn’t say anything.

Two circles of pink began to glow in Paige’s face. Her eyes widened. “You son of a bitch. Is there someone else?”

“Of course not.”

“Then what the hell is going on?”

Jack took a step back. One foot. Two. He stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I just need some space,” he said. “Some time to figure things out. I’m sorry. I should have told you sooner.”

“Damn right you should have.” She dropped her voice and glanced at the couples around them. “The Deveau Ball isn’t exactly the place to tell your fiancée you’re not sure you want to marry her.”

But Jack had never been surer of anything in his life. He edged away.

Paige stared at him. “We aren’t through talking about this. Don’t you walk away from me. Don’t you dare leave me standing here.”

Jack dropped his gaze and turned, pushing blindly through the couples still pressed against each other. Guilt ran up the back of his neck and jumbled his brain. What was he doing? Paige would never forgive him for this. Ever.

He didn’t care. Nor did he care what the city’s rumor mill might churn out by this time tomorrow. Closing his ears to her voice behind him, Jack stumbled through chairs, past tables, in the direction of the bar and the curtains beyond. He wasn’t sure where he intended to go. Just away. Outside. Or back into the arboretum. Or even inside the depths of a janitor’s closet, for God’s sake. Just someplace where I can be alone. He was almost to the rear exit, just a few more steps, when he heard a female voice, close beside him.

“Jack?” Low, sultry, it came from somewhere in the darkness to his left.

Shit. He didn’t want to talk to anyone else; he was so incredibly tired of making chit chat with people he saw once a year. Cracking his knuckles, he turned and put on his game face just the same.

Eden. He should have guessed. That woman managed to turn up in every wrong place. She stood near the exit, holding a lit cigarette. Smoke wound from her fingertips up to her face, creating a hazy portrait smudged gold and navy blue in the half-light. “Had enough?” She tilted her head back and slid a long glance up his torso. “You look like you’ve been through the ringer.”

She raised the cigarette to her lips and inhaled, a languorous movement that called to his mind the screen sirens of old. On anyone else, Jack couldn’t stand the sight or smell of cigarettes. On Eden, with her long fingers and heart-shaped mouth and razor-sharp cheekbones, it looked almost glamorous.

“Where’s your fiancée?”

The word ate into him. “Probably cursing me out.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Did you tell her about Maggie?”

“I didn’t have to.” He cleared his throat. “Besides, that’s not the reason…I mean, not the only reason…”

She flicked a bit of ash into a planter near her feet. “Sure it isn’t.” She lifted one shoulder, a slow shimmy of bare skin that made Jack recall Eden and Maggie back in college, sunning themselves on the quad with bare shoulders and legs shining up into the sky.

He dug one toe into the floor and studied the laces of his shoes. “Is she…is she involved with someone?”

“Maggie?”

Of course Maggie.

Eden inhaled again before answering. “I don’t think that’s any of your damn business. She would have told you herself if she wanted you to know.”

Irritated, he took a step closer. “I‘m not going to hurt her.”

She blinked up at him, and a sort of laugh escaped her currant-red lips. “How on earth can you make a promise like that?”

How could he answer? What could he say?

He jerked his chin in the direction of the dance floor. “Listen, Paige and me—it’s over.”

The look on Eden’s face was less surprise and more odd admiration. “Really?”

Close enough. I’m sure she won’t take me back, and I don’t want to go. “That’s why I need to see Maggie. To tell her—”

“What? That you’re still in love with her? That you’re going to whisk her away from her life? That everything will be just like it was back in college? Tell me, Jack—what if Maggie doesn’t feel that way about you anymore? What if she just wants to move on? Why can’t you let the past alone?”

Frustration wormed inside him. Jack took Eden’s arms in both his hands, in a gentle gesture that held the ache of a college boy with his heart half-healed. Looking down into her face, he fell all the way back into memory, all the way down that long slide into the Jack-who-used-to-be.

“Because she was my wife.”

*

“Which casino should we go to first?” Maggie twirled in the middle of the sidewalk, pointing first to Caesar’s Palace, then to the MGM Grand. “Maybe Mandalay Bay? Or the Venetian? Ooh, look, they have a show…”

Jack wrapped his arms around her and scooped her up. “We’re only here for twenty-four hours. You might have to pick and choose.”

She buried her head against his chest and nuzzled his neck with kisses. “I want to do everything.”

He laughed out loud. “I know you do.” Releasing her, not wanting to, he turned and waved at Eden and Stefan. The two friends stood a few feet away, watching an elaborate fountain outside the Bellagio. Jack shook his head. Las Vegas. What a place. He’d never been west of the Mississippi, but Mags had closed her eyes, dropped her finger onto a map, and declared that Vegas would be the perfect place to celebrate his graduation.

I wouldn’t have cared if she picked southern Utah, Alaska, or the moon, he thought. If Mags is with me, that’s all that matters.

She wound her fingers through his. “Let’s go to the Mirage. I want a fruity drink.”

“Sounds good to me.”

Eden and Stefan wandered over, arms draped loosely around each other’s waists in the comfortable manner of ex-lovers and friends. They’d had some kind of encounter last year, Jack remembered, but to their credit, both had taken the breakup in stride.

At the bar a few minutes later, the four friends raised their glasses.

“To graduation,” announced Jack.

“And friendship,” Eden added, with a sideways glance at Stefan. She leaned over and planted a kiss on Maggie’s cheek.

“And love,” Maggie chimed in. With one hand on Jack’s knee, she clinked her daiquiri glass against the others.

Yeah, to love, thought Jack, downing his beer. And everything that follows after.

*

“I think I’m a little drunk.” Maggie leaned against Jack, her eyes slits against the bright bar lights.

He rubbed the top of her head and glanced at his watch. Almost two in the morning. Damn, but time went fast, especially when you didn’t want it to.

“Where are Eden and Stef?” she whispered into his shoulder.

“Stef’s playing craps, and Eden’s playing a guy over by the roulette table.”

Maggie giggled. “I’m glad we came.”

He kissed her ear. “Me too.” God, he felt so filled up by her, as if every part of his life had been gray and dull before Maggie. He dreaded their goodbye at the airport next month. Even though he’d spent his entire college career working toward a Rhodes Scholarship, the thought of actually going to London and leaving his girlfriend behind made his chest split in two. We’ll have holidays, he tried to reassure himself, and maybe when she’s done with school she’ll come over for the last year and stay with me. Jack hadn’t told anyone his true plan yet: he meant to ask Maggie to marry him, this Christmas, maybe, or on her birthday in the spring. Then it wouldn’t matter how far apart they lived. He could stand any amount of miles, any amount of time, knowing that Mags waited at the end of it.

He slid off his barstool and helped her down.

“You know what would be funny?” She looked up at him.

He recognized the glint in her eye that meant her mind was spinning an adventure. “What?”

“If we got married out here.”

His mouth dried up. “What did you say?”

They neared the casino’s wide glass doors, and Maggie gestured outside. “There’s, like, fifteen wedding chapels in one square mile. Wouldn’t it be funny if we went back to New York and told everyone we’d gotten married out in Vegas?”

He didn’t answer for a minute. Stone sober, he looked down at her, then back at Eden and Stefan, then out at the small white building down the street. The sign outside it read “Elvis Weddings Available Here.”

“Yeah,” he said after a long minute. “That would be funny.”

*

Morning sunlight streamed through the cheap motel blinds, and Jack winced. Flipping over, he buried his face in the pillow and tried to go back to sleep. He heard a toilet flush and a door open and close.

“Jack?”

He rolled over again. “Yeah?”

Maggie sat down on the bed beside him, eyes red and cheeks white. “What is this?”

For a minute he wasn’t sure what she was pointing at. With her hands spread on the sheet, she stared at her fingers. He frowned. “The bed?”

She didn’t even break a smile. “No. What is this?” With a shaky right hand, she traced the silver band around her left third finger.

Truth slammed into his brain, and Jack sat straight up. He’d forgotten. For a few sleepy hours, he’d forgotten all about it. He glanced down at his own left hand. A matching band, slightly wider, circled his own finger.

“Did we—” She stopped as panic broke up her voice. “Tell me we didn’t.” Her gaze darted around the room, taking in the half-empty bottle of champagne on the bureau, the wilting white roses, the videotape labeled “Maggie and Jack.” She stared again at her finger, then at his. “Oh, no.”

Oh, no? That wasn’t the reaction he’d hoped for. Jack took a deep breath. Maybe they had been hasty. Maybe they should have waited. But they could still have a ceremony back East, couldn’t they? Mags could wear a white dress and have a regular line of bridesmaids. She could pick out whatever cake and flowers and music she wanted. He’d do anything for her; God knows his family had enough damn money to throw her whatever wedding she dreamed of. All he cared about was that she belonged to him. That they belonged to each other. Jack and Maggie Major. He smiled at the thought of it.

“This was a mistake.” She began to pace around the tiny room, moving from bathroom to window in five or six steps. She bit her bottom lip as tears streaked her face.

A mistake? Fear striped his insides. “Mags, wait a minute.”

It was your idea in the first place, he wanted to say, but he knew that wasn’t fair. She’d had too much to drink and been swept away by the excitement of the city. Had he taken advantage of her? Of the situation? Jack refused to believe it. She’d stood next to him at the little altar and looked up into his eyes. She’d said the words and kissed him with such ardor that he’d believed she knew exactly what she was doing.

Now doubt began to set in.

Before he could say anything else, Maggie had pulled on a t-shirt and shorts and disappeared from the room. Jack leapt out of bed, searching for clothes. Rifling through his bag, he pulled out a pair of jeans, stuffed his feet into old sneakers, and followed her. At the edge of the parking lot, he caught up to her. She stood staring out across a line of hedges behind the motel.

“It was a mistake,” she said again. She didn’t meet his gaze, just continued to look into empty space.

Jack’s heart thudded down around his knees. He thought she loved him. He thought she felt the same way about the future that he did. Had he gotten it wrong? He didn’t speak. He had no idea what to say.

After a long minute, she turned to face him. Her mouth turned down at the corners, and when he tried to read her eyes, he saw emotions he couldn’t decipher. “We shouldn’t have. It’s just—I’m not ready. You’re going halfway around the world in a few weeks.”

“I want you to come with me.”

“Jack, I have two years of school left. I can’t follow you to England.”

“You could transfer. You could study there with me. Or we could just wait until you graduate. Two years is a hell of a long time, but it isn’t forever.”

She shook her head. “We’re too young.”

His frustration grew. What was she saying? “Don’t you love me?”

When she looked up at him again, he thought the pain in her eyes might shatter him. “That isn’t the issue. Of course I love you. More than you’ll ever know.”

“Then it wasn’t a mistake.”

She straightened, shaking off the hand he put on her wrist, and in the next second she changed to a Maggie he had never seen before. Her face closed. Her eyes darkened. Her shoulders squared. “We were drunk. It was a mistake. And we need to get it annulled as soon as possible.”

Annulled…

Her words cut into him, deep and final. He followed her gaze across the desert, watching as the sun warped the sand into liquid gold in the distance. Maybe that’s the way life really is, he thought. Maybe it always looks better from far away. It’s when you get up close that you get burned by the truth. He closed his eyes.

“If that’s what you want.” He couldn’t bear to look at her.

“It’s best for both of us.”

Jack didn’t agree, not with any of it, but he let her go. He let Maggie walk across the parking lot. He let her find an attorney who could process the paperwork that day. He let her sleep on the flight home, and he let her have the space she said she needed when they arrived.

It was the biggest mistake he’d ever made.

11:00 p.m.

Maggie stood in the enormous foyer of the Hotel Victoria. She clenched her elbows in her palms, hugging herself, and tried to burn away the sensation of Jack’s hands in her hair. She tried to ignore the tingling in her lips and the memory of his tongue exploring places it shouldn’t have. She couldn’t. She could barely draw a full breath. Her legs wobbled beneath her, those precious new shoes doing nothing to keep her steady. She felt as though she’d been set on fire, with emotions of every shape and color rippling under her skin. Dammit, Jack. Why now? Why tonight? Why after all this time?

Outside, the rain collected in puddles and splashed against waiting taxis. Lightning scorched the sky every few minutes, and weak thunder continued to bounce off the buildings. Car lights shone through the wet glass as Maggie stared into Boston’s darkness. A police car streaked by, followed by an ambulance. A more morose night in June she couldn’t remember.

“Dillon’s not coming,” she said after a minute. “He would’ve been here by now.”

“Maybe he’s caught in traffic,” Neve said.

Maggie shook her head as a stone settled on her heart. I knew this was a bad idea. I knew he wouldn’t be here. All she wanted to do now was give up and go home. She’d played her last card, done her best to think of a way to get the money, and it hadn’t worked out. Worse, she’d run headlong into a shadow from the past, someone who reminded her of all the things she still didn’t have in her life. Passion. Stability. A second half to match up with. Damn.

Well, forget it. Maggie squeezed her eyes shut for a second. Nothing she could do about it now, except move forward. In the morning, she’d call that software company and see what kind of offer they would make her for the house. At least that way, she could keep her business. Maybe. If she had any clients left. I wonder if I can work out of my car. I wonder if I can live in my car. The thought depressed her beyond belief.

“There you are.” Eden strode into the foyer, a glass of wine in each hand. “Hiding out?” She offered Maggie a glass. “Here. Thought you might need this.”

“I‘m not hiding out. Just getting ready to go.”

“Why? Because of Jack?”

“No, because I’m tired. And because this whole idea was a mistake. Dillon isn’t here, and it’s stupid to stay and wait for him.” And because if I see Jack again, I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep my hands off him. I can’t go down that road again. I just can’t.

Eden clicked her tongue. “Forget about Dillon. Didn’t I tell you I could get the money? I talked to Kurt. He’s making a couple of calls.” She looked at the slender gold watch on her wrist. “Speaking of which, I should find him and see what’s taking so long.”

Maggie’s hopes yo-yoed up again. “Really?” She wondered for a moment just who this Kurt guy was, and what Eden had promised him in exchange for the fifteen thousand dollars. The foyer door opened, and a small group of guests hurried in out of the rain. Maggie glanced at the car she’d already asked the valet to pull around. Her five-year old Honda with the dent in one door sat just beyond the hotel’s canopy, sandwiched between a BMW and a Lexus SUV. It doesn’t belong here. Neither do I. But she supposed she should tell the valet to wait a few minutes longer, just in case Kurt Whoever-He-Was did come through with the money.

“I’ll be right back,” she told Neve.

Maggie stepped into the rain. Maybe I really can keep the house. Maybe I can borrow the money and work out some kind of payment plan with the bank. And if I do get everything squared away, I’ll make changes. I’ll do things differently. I promise. She wondered exactly who she was making promises to—herself? Neve? A vague future? Or the big guy upstairs? She decided she couldn’t worry about the details.

She’d get an accountant and straighten out all her finances, so she didn’t ever end up in this situation again. She’d move Mom into the house with her, hire a nurse or something. That had to be cheaper than a full-time home, right? And Jack…well, if she could get through the next few minutes without seeing him again, she could leave and pretend tonight had never happened at all. She could relegate the dance, the kiss, and the memories stirring inside her to the dark corner of her heart where secrets stayed safely tucked away. Maybe she’d give Bradley Torrance another try. Or ask Andrew to set her up with one of his buddies.

With possibilities whirling in her mind, Maggie didn’t see the taxi come whipping around the hotel’s circular drive. She didn’t hear Neve’s cry of warning behind her. She only focused on the smudge of streetlights down the block as she walked toward the valet stand. She didn’t realize she’d stepped off the curb. She didn’t hear the horn. She didn’t feel the rush of air.

She would have walked directly into the path of the errant vehicle if Jack hadn’t wrapped his arms around Maggie, if he hadn’t pulled her out of the way and caught her when her legs gave out beneath her.

“What the hell are you doing?” His voice was rough, almost angry. Jack yanked Maggie back onto the sidewalk so hard that her heels dragged across the wet cement. A horn blared past them. One elbow twisted awkwardly behind her back. Rain dotted her dress and she felt Jack’s breath on her neck.

“I’m okay. Take it easy.” She struggled to stand on her own and found that her legs were shaking. “What happened?” She couldn’t put it together for a minute. Her heart jack hammered inside her chest, and she put one hand on her breastbone to try and calm it.

“You almost stepped in front of that cab is what happened.” Jack pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and mopped his forehead. “Jesus Christ, you scared the hell out of me.”

Maggie looked around. The valet attendant stared at her. A few faces peered through the glass of the hotel doors. Ten feet away, a dark-skinned man climbed from behind the wheel of his cab and glared in her direction. God, what a mess I make. Everywhere I go.

She turned back to Jack. “What are you doing out here?”

“Looking for you.”

“Stop.” She tried to move away, even as he reached gentle fingers toward her face and pushed wet strands of hair from her eyes.

“What, you thought jumping in front of a cab was easier than talking to me about what happened in there?”

Nothing happened in there, she wanted to say. Just a mistake. She opened her mouth but couldn’t seem to get the words in the right order.

“Mags, are you trying to scare us all to death?” Eden squirmed past Jack and took her friend by the arm.

Maggie blew out a long breath. “I guess. Just wasn’t paying attention.” Gooseflesh broke out on her bare arms and she shivered.

“Come on. You need a drink.” Eden wrapped an arm around Maggie’s waist.

“No, really, I’m—”

“Well, I do, anyway, and at the very least, you’re going to sit there and watch me drink it.” Eden steered her back toward the hotel, rattling off sentences Maggie barely heard. A pale-faced Neve waited for her inside the foyer. Jack lagged behind, and she thought she heard him apologizing to the cab driver.

Back in the hotel, Maggie sank into the first chair she saw. Eden dashed to the bar. Neve tapped a single fingertip against her bottom lip, and worry creased her face. Maggie tried to rub away the hot spears of pain jabbing through both temples. She let herself relax against the chair, let the smooth velvet melt against her bare back. Then Jack stepped into the foyer with a funny, tender expression on his face, and she lost her breath all over again.

I can’t talk to him about this. I can’t. That near miss? That was a sign if ever I saw one. I might as well get struck by lightning, or have a plane write the words Go Back Home across the sky. I’m not supposed to be here. The universe worked in mysterious ways, she always told Neve. It let you know which direction you were supposed to take, in case you ever got stuck. You just had to pay attention to the signs.

Jack walked over to Maggie and put a hand on her shoulder. She felt herself bend under the weight of it, felt the pulse that jumped from his skin to hers. I didn’t mean it, she was about to say. I didn’t know what I was doing. But before she could utter a word, a tall blonde walked into the foyer, mouth set and blue eyes icy. She looked as though she belonged on a magazine cover, Maggie thought at first, with all that hair and a designer dress and a body to match. But when the woman got a little closer, Maggie changed her mind. Unlike the models on the newsstands, this woman looked irritated. Cold. Empty-eyed. As though she might tell the photographer what he was doing wrong just before she ripped the camera from his hands and took the pictures herself.

Maggie waited for the woman to push open the door, to step out into the night and disappear. A few guests had already begun to trickle out. But she didn’t. Instead, she approached Jack.

“Paige, this isn’t the time.” He pulled his hands away from Maggie as if he’d been burned. His voice was low and impatient.

Paige? He knows her? Maggie re-crossed her legs and tried to shrink into the fabric of the chair. What the hell was going on here?

“We aren’t finished talking.” The blonde’s nostrils flared as she spoke.

“I am. I don’t want to do this now. Not here.”

Maggie tried to decipher the tone in his voice, the looks flashing between them. A business partner? Doubtful. His date? A barb of jealousy dug into her soul.

Jack cleared his throat, and Paige turned. She looked at Maggie and Neve. “I’m sorry. Have we met?” Her voice turned a fraction less icy. “Are they clients of yours?”

“Ah, no.” But he didn’t introduce them.

“Well, hello there.” She didn’t wait for Jack to say anything else. “I’m Paige Webster.” She raised two fingers in a sort of hello, a half-greeting as if they weren’t important enough to warrant anything more. “Nice dress, by the way,” she added, indicating Maggie’s gown, but Maggie thought she caught in her voice that tone of pretend that women use when they’re lying. “You’re the one who jumped in front of a car?”

Jumped? She makes it sound as if I did it on purpose. Maggie’s jaw twitched. “That’s not exactly what happened.”

Paige slunk closer to Jack, covering the distance between them as if she were on oiled casters. “Well, my fiancé always did like to rescue people,” she said, wrapping her arm through Jack’s. He didn’t move. “Good thing he was outside, I guess.”

My fiancé…

Maggie’s fingers closed around the arms of the chair. She opened her mouth and tried to sip in oxygen. Behind her, she thought she heard Neve make a squeaking sound. The room spun a little, and Maggie felt as though she might slip out of the chair and wind up on the floor, a puddle of something.

“Your—um—” She stuttered and fought for composure. Her glance moved from Paige’s perfectly painted face to Jack’s, which had turned a shade of dead-fish gray. You’re engaged? Oh, Jack, you son of a bitch.

She managed to form a sentence. “Actually, Jack and I went to school together.”

“Really? I wouldn’t have pegged you as an NYU girl.” Paige tilted her head and smiled, as if she’d just figured out a secret. “Did he break your heart back then? He tells me he was quite the playboy in college.”

Maggie wound her hair into a lopsided ponytail. Her fingers felt stiff. “Oh, no, nothing like that,” she lied. “But he was always the life of the party. I didn’t realize he’d gotten engaged.” She allowed herself to look at Jack for a brief second and wished her gaze would lance him straight through the heart. “Congratulations.” Standing, she struck a pose that she hoped suggested indifference. “Thanks again. I’ll try not to jump out in front of any more cabs tonight.”

But before she could order her feet to move, Jack spoke, his voice thick with emotion. “Paige, I’ll meet you back inside. Maggie and I were just catching up.”

Liar. I’ve just done all the catching up I want to do with you. Ever.

Paige put her hands on her hips and looked from one to the other. “Fine. I need a drink, anyway.” She stared at Maggie for another minute before slipping back into the bustle of the ballroom.

“Mags, listen—”

Maggie slapped him before he could finish.

“Ow.” He rubbed his jaw, which Maggie noted with satisfaction was turning a sort of Cabernet red. “Okay, I deserved that.”

“How could you?” She couldn’t get out more than a whisper. “Why didn’t you just tell me?” Tears filled her eyes, and she blinked furiously to keep them at bay. Screw the money. Screw the house, and the business, and the bank. If Maggie escaped with her sanity and a shred of dignity, she’d consider the night a smashing success.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said. “I should have. But it’s not what you think. She’s not my fiancée.”

“Really? Does she know that?” Maggie spun away, heading for the door. Let me keep it together until I get to the car. She hoped the valet had left it running.

Eden hurried back into the foyer. “Where are you going? I thought you were waiting to see—”

“Forget it,” Maggie said over her shoulder. “Never mind. It doesn’t matter. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

“But—”

Maggie kept on moving, hoping Neve would follow. “But nothing.”

“Wait.” That was Jack. “Please. Let’s talk.” He followed her outside. Maggie handed her umbrella to Neve, but the wind twisted it inside out and in two seconds it had blown from her friend’s hands down the block. Figures, Maggie thought. Neither one of us can catch a break tonight.

She tried to jam her arms into the raincoat she’d borrowed from Eden, but she almost tripped on her damn high heels for the tenth time that night. With trembling fingers, she wrapped the belt of the coat around her waist like armor.

“Maggie, let me explain.”

“Explain what? That you forgot to mention you had a fiancée?”

He winced.

“Jesus, Jack, did you think I wouldn’t find out? Did you think you could ask me to dance and just pretend the rest of your life didn’t exist?” Her voice broke. “You can’t kiss me like that and then tell me you have someone else to go home to. And you can’t stand there now and think you can explain it all away.” She began to hiccup. “We’re leaving.”

“It’s not what it looks like.”

She didn’t let him finish. Taking Neve by the hand, she hurried toward the Honda, still parked in its lonely spot near the other exotic vehicles. A gust of wind chilled Maggie down deep, and she stepped into a puddle that splashed water halfway up her legs. She barely felt it.

Behind her, she thought she heard Jack say something else, but she didn’t trust herself to turn around or listen. She handed her last five-dollar bill to the valet attendant, jumped inside her car and pulled the door shut, ripping two of her fingernails. Beside her, shivering in the damp night air, Neve bundled herself into the passenger seat. Maggie thought she saw the dark shape of Jack on the sidewalk behind them, but she ignored him. She pulled away from the hotel so fast she spun her tires on the wet pavement. She didn’t care. Anything to get away.

“You okay?”

Maggie wiped her cheeks. She wasn’t sure if the wetness on them came from rain or leftover tears. Maybe both. She shook her head at Neve. She didn’t want to talk about it. Not until they were about fifty miles away and she could scream at the top of her lungs. Why had she let Eden convince her to come to the ball? Why had she run into Jack Major after all these years? Was the universe that desperate for a joke on her behalf?

One of those new contemporary singers crooned on the radio. She snapped the knob to the left, and it stopped with a squawk. At the corner, she slid through the stop sign and fishtailed into traffic, ignoring the horn and the angry shouts on her left. Just let me get home, she thought, her insides pretzeled up so tightly she was surprised she could still breathe.

Suddenly Maggie became aware of sirens wailing around them. As she looked around, she saw cones set up along the street to mark missing pavement and knee-deep puddles. Up ahead, blinking red lights broke the darkness, and she realized she was driving straight into a traffic jam. Branches hung from splintered trees, and windowless buildings surrounded them. Darkness everywhere. Power outages, her brain told her. While she’d been tripping merrily down Memory Lane back at the ball, a massive storm had swept the rest of the city. Only now that they were in the middle of it did Maggie realize the extent of the destruction.

“Maggie?”

“We’ll be fine. Just give me a minute.” She glanced down a couple of side streets, but without a sense of the city’s layout, especially at night, she didn’t dare take a detour. The cars ahead of them began to slow as a trail of taillights blinked through the precipitation. Thirty miles an hour. Twenty-five. Fifteen. The traffic became a slow-motion conga line, each following the tracks of the one ahead. Miles from the city limits, flooding and stranded vehicles had turned Boston’s streets into a giant parking lot.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” She’d finally decided to leave, and now she couldn’t even get out of town.

Maggie’s cell phone rang.

“Do you want me to answer it?” Neve asked.

Maggie shook her head.

But Neve had already picked it up and checked the incoming number. “It’s Eden.”

“Go ahead, then,” Maggie said. She let a Cadillac pull in front of her.

“Hello? Hi, it’s Neve. No, we’re—” Neve glanced at Maggie. “Where are we?”

“Damned if I know.”

“About a mile or so from the hotel. We ran into traffic. It’s pretty backed up out here.” Neve didn’t say anything for a minute, just nodded. “Let me ask her.” She put the phone down on her lap. “Want to stay at her place tonight?”

“No.”

Neve lifted the phone and then put it down again. “You’re sure?”

Maggie rubbed her forehead and willed the cars ahead of her to move. “Yeah.” I don’t want to risk seeing that lying son of a bitch again. And anywhere in Boston is too close to Jack.

Neve nodded. “Okay.” She listened for another minute. “Eden said she talked to Kurt, and if you still need the money, he could have it for you by Monday morning.”

Monday morning? That’s too late. Hell, tomorrow past noon is too late. “Forget it.”

Neve murmured something into the phone and hung up. “She said to call if we change our minds.”

Maggie had no intention of changing anything, least of all her plan to get out of Boston as fast as possible. She shook her hair free from the ponytail. The car ground to another halt and she put it into park this time, taking a moment to loosen the strap on her shoe. Already, the arch of her foot ached from the stop and go effort of working her way through traffic. As they waited, a siren went screaming by them, a police car squeezing through as it responded to something in the darkness up ahead.

Maggie’s neck tightened. She glanced at the dashboard clock: a little after twelve. Almost seven hours in Boston, and she hadn’t accomplished a single thing. She hadn’t found Dillon. She hadn’t found a way to get the fifteen thousand dollars. Worst of all, she’d run into the one person who still haunted her dreams. She’d danced with him. She’d kissed him, for God’s sake. She’d let herself try out the feelings that hadn’t died after all, only to find out he belonged to someone else.

A space opened up in front of them, and she jammed the car back into drive. Through the next light, around a bend, and two lanes became one. The car ahead of her swerved, and Maggie braked and skidded to the right. Neve whispered a prayer under her breath.

“We’re okay.” The Honda straightened out, its tires found a spot on the road to grip, and they crept forward again.

“This is really a mess,” Neve said.

For a minute, Maggie wasn’t sure she meant the line of traffic in front of them or the scene in the hotel she’d left behind her. Both seemed pretty bad to her. Tangles, no matter where you looked. All she knew was that she needed to keep moving forward. She held onto that thought with a single-minded focus and tried to swallow away the lump in her throat.

“Maggie?”

“We’ll be fine.” She tried to sound confident. “There’s probably an accident or a stopped vehicle up ahead, and once we get past that and onto the highway, it’s only fifty miles back to Hart’s Falls. The rain’s stopped, anyway.” She tried not to notice the vast puddles on either side of them, the sections of road they crossed that lay under water. Every once in a while, the car hydroplaned on the slick street, and she hoped they’d make it home without an accident.

“You’re sure you’re okay?”

“Fine,” Maggie said again. “I’ve driven in worse conditions than this.”

“I wasn’t talking about the weather.”

She chose not to answer and glanced at her gas gauge instead. Thank goodness she’d had the unusual foresight to fill her tank before leaving town earlier that evening. The orange stem hovered just below Full. Turning the radio back on, she searched the AM stations, hoping for a travel report or some clue to the problem.

“…traffic conditions are slow both in and around the city…”

No kidding.

“Travelers should use caution when traveling in flooded areas and find alternate routes to avoid accidents on Tremont and Washington Streets, as well as Harrison Avenue.”

Maggie peered up at the street sign just ahead of them. Tremont. Of course.

So close. So far. And nowhere, nowhere to go to escape the turmoil inside her head. She counted the streetlights, dark orbs around them, and tried to calm the pain in the center of her chest. Despite her best efforts, her mind returned again and again to the moment in the foyer. To Jack’s fiancée. His betrayal. Her heart breaking apart at the realization that she still ached for him. Tears trickled down her cheeks, surprising her. She wouldn’t have guessed she had any left to shed.

A memory from their first summer together stole its way inside her head. She didn’t even have enough strength to push it away.

*

“Hi, Mom.” Maggie stood on the front stoop, one hand wrapped in Jack’s. Wild rose bushes twined around their feet and saturated the air with thick perfume. They’d decided to stop by at the last minute, delaying their return to school after a long weekend at the shore.

“Maggie! Jack! What a wonderful surprise!” Hillary smiled at her daughter and the tall man standing beside her. She pulled them both close for a hug.

“Sorry we didn’t call. It was a last-minute thing.”

Hillary waved a hand as she ushered them inside. “Please. You never have to call if you’re coming home. You don’t do it enough,” she said over her shoulder. “Dinner’s just about ready. John’s staying late at the office tonight, so I‘m glad someone’s here to eat all this food. I always make too much.”

“Mom, you don’t have to feed us. Really.” Maggie let Jack’s fingers go as he ducked into the hall bathroom to wash up. She joined her mother in the kitchen and swiped her finger around the edge of a batter bowl. “But it does smell great.”

“It’s just chicken and potatoes. And brownies, if you leave me any batter.”

Maggie smiled and finished filling the brownie pan. Home isn’t so bad every once in a while, she thought. She hadn’t been back since Christmas, though, and before that, Labor Day. It didn’t matter that it took less than two hours to drive up to Poughkeepsie from the city. At school, she might as well be a million miles away. School was safer, anyway. Too many memories within these walls. She shivered a little in the warm kitchen.

“Your brother called last weekend,” Hillary said, as if reading Maggie’s mind.

Maggie set the table and didn’t answer. Stepbrother, she thought to herself. Not my real brother. No connection to me. No reason for me to keep track of what happens in his life anymore.

“He’s got himself a job out in southern California, painting houses for the summer. Sounds like good-paying work.” Hillary pulled the chicken from the oven and set it out to cool. “I wish you’d call him once in a while.”

Maggie fished in the refrigerator for two Cokes and didn’t answer. She wouldn’t know where to begin with Dillon. It had already been almost a year since she’d seen him. How did you pick up a conversation after everything that had happened? Did you just start somewhere in the middle, as if you’d never stopped talking? Or did you start from the beginning? Did you work your way back into the give and take of small talk and then move on to larger things? Things that hung in the air between you, intangible but so real they pressed against you and exhausted you with the effort of ignoring them?

She bumped the door closed and leaned against it for a minute. “Jack and I spent the weekend at the shore.”

Hillary turned, wiping her hands on her hospital scrubs. “And it looks like you had the time of your life.”

Maggie felt her cheeks redden. “We had fun.”

Hillary crossed her arms and smiled. “I think you had more than fun. Every time I’ve seen you these past few months, you’ve been glowing.” Her eyes moved toward the hallway as the bathroom door opened. “You know, Jack is a wonderful man. He’s grounded, and smart, and seems to know what he wants out of life. If he makes you this happy all the time, then hold onto him. He’s good for you, in all the right ways. Don’t let him go.”

I don’t want to, Maggie wanted to say. But it’s hard sometimes. There are things I still haven’t told him. Difficult things. Painful things. The things that might make him want to leave.

Hillary shot her daughter a knowing glance as Jack walked back into the kitchen.

He’s good for you, in all the right ways. Don’t let him go…

*

Well, I had to, Maggie thought. With one finger she traced the path of the rain as it spilled down her window. I didn’t have a choice. And I can let him go again. No big deal.

Yeah, right.

She swallowed and scrubbed at her cheeks. She couldn’t think about Jack right now. She had to get herself and Neve home in one piece. She had to make arrangements to sell the house. She had to pay off the bank and find another place to live. She had to figure out how to keep Doyle Designs running.

Most of all, she had to push emotional imbalance to the back of her mind and pretend that her insides weren’t turning to jelly with every hour that marched on to morning.

Midnight

“I still think you’re making a mistake,” Eden said. She wrapped her coat around her shoulders as they stood in the foyer and watched the rain.

“I know you do.” Jack pulled his phone from his breast pocket and thumbed through the saved numbers. Though it was late, past twelve, he had no doubt Stefan would still be up, romancing a woman or watching TV. “But like I said, I have to try.”

Maggie had belonged to him, and he to her, all those years ago. Seeing her again had only made him realize the emptiness she’d left behind her on that dusty Vegas morning. The emptiness he’d tried to fill with England and Bullieston and Paige. The emptiness that had seemed a little smaller tonight in the moments that he’d danced with her and listened to her laugh. Never before had this need pushed him forward, this force that urged him to do whatever it took to get her back again.

You were almost right, Mom, he thought, when you told me I’d find someone to fall for again. But I waited for it to happen when it already had. I didn’t need to fall in love again. I never fell out of it.

Eden touched him on the shoulder with a tenderness that surprised him. “Well, I suppose there’s something to be said for pure desperation in the face of true love,” she said. “Hope you can convince her to listen to you. You know how Maggie is.”

He did.

She brushed her fingertips to her lips and tossed him a kiss before slipping back into the ballroom. “Good luck.”

He mouthed a thank-you as he waited for his friend to pick up.

One ring. Two. Jack began to lose hope. Three rings.

“This better be good,” Stefan grumbled into the receiver. Some kind of jazz music blasted in the background.

“Stef.”

“Jack? What the hell are you doing?” The music changed from deafening to merely loud. “Thought you were supposed to be at the Deveau Ball tonight.”

“I am.”

“You’re calling me from there? What, did they run out of shrimp? Need someone to go to the store for another keg?”

Jack cut through the bullshit small talk. He didn’t have time. “Listen, I need a favor. A big one.”

“Okay, shoot.”

“I need to borrow your Lincoln.”

“Now?” Jack heard rustling and the sound of a window creaking open. “Half the streets in the city are flooded.”

“That’s why I need it.”

“Hey, no problem. That beast can get through anything. Remember when I took it up Mount Washington last summer? Jesus, I thought it was going to—”

“How soon can you be here?” Jack interrupted the story he’d heard three times.

“Hey, everything all right? You’re not sick or something, are you?”

“Nope. Just need to borrow your truck.”

“You gonna tell me why?”

Jack pulled off his bowtie once and for all and shoved the damn thing inside his pocket. Something like hope and possibility began to glimmer inside his chest. “How much time do you have?”

*

He chose to stand outside, braving the wind, rather than wait in the foyer and chance Paige hunting him down. Jack blew on his chilled hands, grateful that the rain had finally stopped. Every few minutes, the door behind him opened, and guests hustled to their waiting cars or hurried to taxis. For the most part, he kept his eyes averted. Twenty minutes had passed since he’d hung up with Stef. Shouldn’t be much longer now.

And then what? the voice inside him challenged. What exactly do you have planned? He knew Maggie was headed south, back to her home in Rhode Island. She wasn’t going to hang around Boston one minute longer than she had to. That’s what she does, remember? She runs. As fast as she can. Well, this time he wouldn’t let her. This time wasn’t going to be like Vegas. He’d learned his lesson.

Thank God he’d watched her jump into that blue Honda Accord and memorized the license plate before she drove away. He hadn’t gotten the name of the town she called home, but he was hoping he wouldn’t have to get much outside Boston before he caught her, anyway. He’d follow the main streets and do his best to find her before she made it to the interstate.

Ten minutes later, Stefan’s black Lincoln Navigator, with a scuffed front fender and the muffler hanging low, swung around the circle. Jack’s best friend grinned from behind the wheel, and he flashed a peace sign as he slid to a stop. Jack smiled when he saw what Stefan wore: a pair of baggy black jeans, a blue oxford shirt, and a wrinkled Red Sox tie beneath a well-worn leather jacket.

“Here you go.” He deposited the keys into Jack’s hand and gave his friend a hearty pound on the back. “Can’t believe Maggie’s back in town.” He paused. “How does she look?”

“The same. Better.” Jack didn’t trust himself to talk about it.

“Well, good luck, man. You’ve got a full tank of gas, so she’ll go a ways. Keep an eye on the gauges; sometimes she likes to heat up in this weather.”

Jack nodded, not really hearing. “Thanks. I owe you one.”

Stefan eyed a group of women huddled inside the foyer. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll keep myself occupied, take a cab home. Just call me tomorrow and let me know how you make out.” He whistled. “Jesus, Maggie Doyle, huh? Never would have thought it.”

“You and me both.”

Before Jack could say another word, Stefan had slipped inside and made his way to a redhead standing alone by the coat check.

Jack crossed to the Navigator and climbed into the driver’s seat. He checked the mirrors, moved the seat up an inch, and popped it into Drive. On impulse, he tuned the radio until he found a station playing classic rock. The disc jockey announced they were in for twelve straight hours of it: Aerosmith and Def Leppard, with the occasional Springsteen thrown in. Jack grinned. It was, he thought, the kind of station Maggie would have listened to. He pointed the vehicle south, toward the state line.

Adjusting the SUV’s headlights from bright to dim, he kept a safe distance from the other cars on the road. Despite the nasty conditions, despite the taillights up ahead that signaled a traffic entanglement, something in Jack’s blood jumped. She was out there. Close by. All he had to do was find her. He took a deep breath. If he tried hard enough, he could still smell Maggie’s perfume, something light, like flowers. He could still feel her hair in his fingers, still taste her mouth on his. God, if he had to drive through pelting rain all night, he meant to hold her and tell her all the things he’d never said.

The Navigator fishtailed a little, and Jack jerked the steering wheel back to center. A steady beeping broke into the rock music, and a recorded voice spewed out a weather report. His fingers tightened around the wheel as he listened.

“…a travel advisory has been issued for the entire city of Boston and its surrounding areas, into northern Rhode Island. Many low-lying areas are flooded, and several streets in the greater Boston area are being shut down until they can be cleared for safe travel. Drivers should remain off the roads if at all possible for the next two to four hours…”

Stay off the roads? Forget it. Jack continued to drive. He’d build himself a goddamned ark if he had to, just to stay afloat and catch up with her. He glanced at his watch. How far had Maggie gotten in forty minutes? How long would it take him to find her? The vehicle rolled along, splashing through puddles but gripping the road with no problem. He thanked whatever God was up there that Stefan owned this brute of an SUV, unlike most of the yuppies in the city who zipped to work and home in two-seater sports cars.

A steady stream of music resumed on the radio, and he tapped both thumbs in time to the Stones’ “I Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” A sudden flash of memory hurtled him back to the summer after graduation. He’d been packing his bags for England, still stunned from what had happened out in Vegas, and the radio in his dorm room had been playing some sort of twenty-four hour tribute to the band. Funny how back then, every stupid song could remind him of her. Even the Stones. Especially the Stones.

Jack’s cell phone buzzed inside his breast pocket. Startled, he almost veered onto the shoulder of the road. He slowed the vehicle to a crawl and let his voicemail pick up. With one hand on the wheel, he fumbled inside his pocket with the other. The phone vibrated once more, indicating a message, and then fell silent. He glanced at the screen and tossed it onto the seat beside him.

Two minutes later, it buzzed again, an angry mosquito demanding attention. The display screen lit up for the second time. Paige. Can’t she ever just let something be?

Of course not, he answered himself. That’s why she’s a dynamo in the courtroom. That’s why she’s number two or three on the city’s list of Most Successful Women under Forty. That’s why you agreed to marry her, remember? It had seemed to make sense at the time, the way she presented the argument for their marriage in a neat little case, all wrapped up with supporting evidence.

He massaged his forehead with one hand and let the voicemail pick up again. He’d deal with that mess later. Tomorrow. It was over, anyway. It had been for a long while. This time, she’d have to listen to what he wanted. She’d have no choice.

Jack stared up ahead, where the faint, steady glow of taillights appeared. God, he hoped he could find Maggie. He had no clear idea, of course, how he was going to accomplish that. But he’d figure it out. With her, somehow, it had always been simple. Put them together, anywhere at all, and the chips fell into place. When they fought, it was about small, silly things. And when they loved, well, it was like the proverbial earth moved under his feet. She’d tamed him. She’d changed him. She’d made him feel like he was taller, stronger, smarter, a better person, just by wrapping one small arm around him as they walked across campus. The minute he’d touched her back at the ball, he’d fallen all over again, in a quiet undulation of memory and desire.

She’s the woman I love. The woman I’ve always loved.

Jack turned up the volume on the radio. How had this happened? How had one night, just a few hours, changed everything? Yesterday afternoon, he’d been an engaged man, halfway down the aisle with flowers and babies on the brain. And now? Now he’d made one of the most impulsive decisions of his life. Now he was single all over again. Yet his chest felt light for the first time he could remember. His jaw, so often clenched, loosened. Jack felt alive. Like he could touch the moon. Like he could run a mile in under a minute or swim the English Channel without stopping to take a breath.

All because he was chasing a memory down a highway at one o’clock in the morning.

*

The blue Accord crept forward at a snail’s pace as Maggie negotiated washed-out spots and police blockades. All the stoplights they passed blinked a steady yellow. The cars took turns at each intersection; traffic from the side streets wove into the main line and made it longer with every block. Officers with blank faces stood on the corners, waving them on. The radio, broadcasting mostly static, crackled with music and travel reports. After awhile, Maggie turned it off.

“Can I ask you something?”

The question startled her. She’d thought Neve was sleeping.

“Sure.”

The young woman turned in her seat, face yellow-white in the moonlight. “What really happened with you and Jack out in Las Vegas?”

Maggie cleared her throat. She should have guessed this question would pop up sooner or later. “It was like I said. He was going to England to study and I was two years behind in school. It didn’t make sense for us to stay together. So we broke up.” The lie sounded convincing, she thought. She’d practiced it enough in all the years since.

“I know. You said all that before. But there’s one thing I still don’t get.”

Maggie wasn’t sure she wanted this conversation to continue.

“You flew out there to celebrate his graduation.”

“And his winning a Rhodes scholarship.”

“Right. And you’d been dating for how long?”

“About a year and a half.” Actually, it was a year and seven months. And a few days. Not that I was counting, and not that I remember.

“So overnight, in the middle of this celebration, you just decided that you shouldn’t be together.”

“Pretty much.”

“But you loved him, right?”

Maggie squirmed. “I was twenty. What did I know? It was a college romance. When we talked about where things were going, we thought it was better to end it then. Before an ocean got between us and the whole thing ended six months later anyway.”

The tires jolted across uneven pavement, rattling her nerves.

“Eden said he would have stayed with you forever,” Neve said in a quiet voice.

“Yeah? Well, Eden’s a romantic. She believes in Prince Charming and happy-ever-after and all that crap.”

“You don’t?”

“I believe in reality. In calling it like it is.”

Neve didn’t speak for a minute. Maggie supposed she was turning things over her mind, in that slow, deliberate way she had. “He didn’t know about the cancer or your operation, did he?”

Maggie didn’t answer. No. He didn’t. It was the one thing she’d never told him. The one thing that made her the person she was, and she’d left it out of every conversation she and Jack ever had. On purpose. How could someone like that, a rich city guy descended from relatives on the Mayflower, match up with Maggie Doyle, a middle-class girl with no money and no family name and, worst of all, no way to pass one on?

“And that’s why you broke up with him? You didn’t think he’d understand?” Neve’s voice sounded pained. “Guys aren’t all that shallow, you know. If he really loved you, he would have understood. He would have—”

“It was more complicated than that,” Maggie interrupted. “It wasn’t something we could have talked about, or planned for. He wasn’t just my boyfriend. I couldn’t warn him about what he was getting himself into, two or three or five years down the road.” She paused. “Jack was my husband. For about twenty-four hours, anyway.”

*

“Which casino should we go to first?” Maggie twirled in the middle of the sidewalk, pointing first to Caesar’s Palace, then to the MGM Grand. “Maybe Mandalay Bay? Or the Venetian? Ooh, look, they have a show…” She stopped beneath an enormous neon sign and read it out loud. She wanted to take it all in, every last sight.

Jack wrapped his arms around her and swooped her up. “We’re only here for twenty-four hours, you know. You might have to pick and choose.”

She buried her head against his chest and nuzzled his neck with kisses. “I want to do everything.”

He laughed out loud. “I know you do.”

She slid to the ground and wound her fingers through his. “Let’s go to the Mirage. I want a fruity drink.” It had been a good idea after all, this trip out West. She wasn’t sure at first, but Jack seemed to like the idea, and Eden and Stefan hadn’t needed any urging at all.

Maggie had wanted something to distract her, to get her mind off the fact that Jack would be leaving in less than a month. She hadn’t been surprised at all that he’d been named a Rhodes Scholar. She knew he would make a terrific businessman someday, the way he planned. Just like his father.

A little butterfly of fear jiggled in Maggie’s stomach. She’d thought about it so many times, but she still hadn’t found a way to tell Jack about her operation. When they’d met in the spring after her recovery, she hadn’t thought she needed to. She didn’t think their relationship was headed down the road to forever. When she realized it was, when she woke up one morning and knew she’d gotten in over her head, the thought of confessing had terrified her. And in the last few months, when Jack looked at her, she saw in his gaze an earnestness that hadn’t been there before, a sobriety that scared the hell out of her.

He’s thinking about marriage…

She’d put the thought out of her head. She couldn’t bear it. She’d met Jack’s parents only once, but his father had made it clear from the start that he couldn’t wait to become a grandfather and pass on the family name. That, of course, was the one thing Maggie couldn’t do for Jack.

Which is why this trip has to be perfect, she thought. Just in case it’s the last time we’re together…

At the bar a little while later, the four friends raised their glasses.

“To graduation,” announced Jack.

“And friendship,” Eden added. She leaned over and planted a kiss on Maggie’s cheek.

“And love,” Maggie chimed in. With one hand on Jack’s knee, she clinked her daiquiri glass against the others. Whatever else happens, Jack Major, you will always be the greatest love of my life.

*

“I think I’m a little drunk.” Maggie leaned against Jack and squinted against the bright bar lights. Her head spun when she tried to stand up, and she wondered how many daiquiris she’d had.

He rubbed the top of her head and glanced at his watch. “It’s almost two,” he said. “Want to go back to the motel?”

“Where are Eden and Stefan?”

“Stef’s playing craps, and Eden’s playing a guy over by the roulette table.”

Maggie giggled. “I’m glad we came.”

He kissed her ear. “Me too.”

Exhaustion weighed down her limbs, but she didn’t want to leave, not yet. Time went by too quickly. She wanted to savor every moment of it, even this: a few quiet seconds on a bar stool next to the man she adored.

She looked outside, amazed at how bright the Strip remained even after midnight. Casinos, restaurants, souvenir shops and wedding chapels dotted both sides of the street. She sat up straight. A crazy idea struck her. Funny the things that almost made sense when you had too much to drink. “You know what would be funny?”

He cocked his head at her. “What?”

“If we got married out here.”

His expression changed. “What did you say?”
Maggie gestured outside. “There’s, like, fifteen wedding chapels in one square mile. Wouldn’t it be funny if we went back to New York and told everyone we’d gotten married out in Vegas?” It wouldn’t ever happen, and probably no one would believe them, but it would be fun to try and fool some of their friends back home. She laughed as she imagined the looks on their faces.

“Yeah,” Jack answered after a long minute. “That would be funny.”

*

Maggie woke suddenly, as if out of a bad dream. Her head ached, and she pulled the sheet over her face. Should’ve known better, she told herself. You can’t have more than two drinks without turning into a complete lush. She reached for the glass of water she remembered placing beside her bed.

Something felt wrong. Maggie sat up all the way and looked around the room. Small, with faded blue wallpaper and a crooked table in the corner, it was the only room they’d been able to find on such short notice. But that wasn’t it. She didn’t care what the motel looked like, or even what it smelled like, backed up to a twenty-four hour Chinese restaurant. She ran a hand over the bra and panties she still wore, the lavender lace ones Jack had bought her last Valentine’s Day. She stopped, raised her left hand to her face and stared.

What the hell is that? It looked like a wedding ring, slid firmly into place on her third finger, but it couldn’t be.

Wouldn’t it be funny if we went back to New York and told everyone we’d gotten married out in Vegas?

“Oh, shit.” Maggie clapped a hand over her mouth and glanced over at Jack, who still snored beside her. As quietly as she could, she slid out of bed and tiptoed to the bathroom. Closing the door behind her, she stared into the mirror and fought back tears.

We didn’t get married. Please tell me we didn’t. She stared at her hand until her eyes crossed and everything blurred.

I can’t marry Jack. Maggie sank onto the toilet seat and pulled some paper off the roll to blot her face. Life sucked. Life was totally unfair. Every ounce of her desire belonged to him. Every part of her wanted to marry him. She dropped her head into both hands. But she couldn’t. Jack wasn’t meant for her, a little girl from upstate New York who was missing half her insides. He came from money and power and prestige. He didn’t brag about any of those things, but they were part of who he was, and Maggie didn’t fit into that world. Never would. Never really wanted to.

Plus, she’d lied to him. Or rather, she hadn’t told him the complete truth about her past. Once he found out, he wouldn’t want to be her husband. He wouldn’t want to be married to someone who’d kept such an awful secret from him.

My husband…she tried out the word on her tongue. Solid and scary, she thought. The tears started up. Well, there’s only one solution. I knew it was only a matter of time before we broke up. Better now than later, I guess. The thought made her nauseous, and she bent over the sink until she was sure she wouldn’t lose last night’s dinner.

Maggie stared at the doorknob. You can do this. Just walk in there and tell him it was a mistake. You were drunk. So was he…wasn’t he? It doesn’t matter. He’ll understand. He’ll know it’s the right thing to do. She steeled her nerves and pulled open the door.

“Jack?”

He rolled over. “Yeah?”

Maggie sat down on the bed beside him, careful to keep a few inches between them. “What is this?” Hands spread on the sheet, she stared at her fingers.

He frowned. “The bed?”

“No. What is this?” She traced the silver band.

He sat up and rubbed his eyes. She glanced down at his left hand. A matching band, slightly wider, circled his own third finger.

“Did we—” She stopped and tried to steady her voice. Her gaze darted around the room, taking in the half-empty bottle of champagne on the bureau, the wilted white roses, the videotape labeled “Maggie and Jack.”

“We didn’t really get married last night, did we? Tell me it was a joke, or that I’m having a dream. Or something.”

He continued to stare at her, not saying a word, and she knew it wasn’t a dream at all. Pieces of the night began to come back to her. A small, white room. A tall bearded man smiling down at them. Piped-in music filling the space, and the overwhelming smell of flowers. She began to pace around the tiny motel room.

“Mags, wait a minute.”

I have to get out of here. I have to think. Before Jack could say anything else, she pulled on a t-shirt and shorts and fled. Outside, in the littered parking lot, the morning sun shone down without mercy. Where was she supposed to go? In her flip-flops, she trudged across the pavement to the chain link fence at the back of the property. On the other side, beyond some sad, drooping hedges, ran a highway. Past that, the Nevada desert stretched out as far as she could see. Even at six in the morning, traffic hummed. Life never really stopped moving, she supposed. Maggie chewed at a fingernail and wondered if holding her breath would halt time. Or better yet, spin it backwards, so she could undo the huge error she’d just made.

Footsteps approached. “Mags, what’s going on?” Jack’s voice, quiet and confused, pained her. She didn’t turn around because all she wanted was to fold herself into his embrace. It took everything she had to keep her distance. This would be a thousand times harder if he touched her. If he kissed her.

“It was a mistake,” she said. She didn’t meet his gaze, just continued to look into empty space. Heat pressed down on the back of her neck. She swallowed to keep herself from taking back the words. She turned in time to see his eyes turn from light green to something darker, something sadder.

“Listen, we shouldn’t have. It’s just—I’m not ready. You’re going halfway around the world, and—”

“I want you to come with me.”

“I can’t.”

He paused, her chin jutting out a little at her refusal. “You mean you don’t want to.”

Oh, Jack. It’s what I want more than anything. But there are things you don’t know. I wish I could tell you about the part of me I lost when I was fifteen. I wish I could tell you about the operation that changed me when I was nineteen. Maybe if she just came out and told him everything, he’d forgive her. He’d tell her it was okay, that he’d still want her to be his wife. But she couldn’t bear to look into his eyes if he changed his mind, so she lied instead. In the end, it seemed easier.

“I have two years of school left. I can’t just follow you to England.”

“You could transfer. You could study there with me. Or we could just wait until you graduate. Two years is a hell of a long time, but it isn’t forever.”

“We’re too young.”

“Don’t you love me?”

Oh, God, you’re killing me. “Of course. More than you’ll ever know.” She straightened, shaking off the hand he put on her wrist. She needed to say the next words as fast as she could. “Listen, we were drunk. It was a mistake. We can’t get married now. It doesn’t make sense. Let’s just get it annulled as soon as possible.”

She wanted Jack to stop her, to say something, to take her by the arms and shake her until she changed her mind.

“If that’s what you want,” he said instead, looking at his feet.

“It’s best for both of us. We’re too young.” And I’m too broken.

*

From the corner of her eye, Maggie watched as Neve’s jaw fell.

“Yeah. That’s what happened.” She couldn’t bear to recall the way Jack had looked at her, happy and hopeful, while they stared at the matching silver rings on their fingers.

She shifted in her seat. “He actually believed we could have worked things out.” She shrugged. “I knew we couldn’t. There was this huge lie hanging between us, and it was all my fault. I couldn’t have him find out years later that I’d trapped him, that he was married to a wife who couldn’t give him kids. So we got an annulment.”

“You never told him the real reason why?”

“I couldn’t.” That was the end of the story, plain and simple, Maggie thought.

Sometimes, it’s easier to break things off and leave certain secrets in the darkness. Some lies are easier to tell than others. “It was a mistake,” rolls off the tongue less painfully than “I can’t have children” or “I’m sorry I never told you in the first place.” So we choose the lies we tell, the lies we’ll live by, and we move on. We move apart. We find new lives and try not to make the same mistakes again.

The only trouble was, she’d never really found a new life. She’d never really found another Jack. Seeing him tonight made Maggie fear she never would.

1:00 a.m.

Exhaustion dragged at Maggie’s bones. She tried to keep her eyes open, but her lashes fluttered and fell against her cheeks. All she wanted was her bed and her lavender-scented pillows, even if it was one of the last nights she might sleep on them.

She braked as they headed into another long line of cars. They’d made it a half-mile or so before encountering another flooded section of road. This one looked twice as wide as the last. Police cars had parked here and there with their lights flashing, and a couple of officers stood out in the rain directing traffic. Maggie waited for the pick-up in front of her to wind its way around to the far right side of the road. Though he had to drive onto the sidewalk, he made it. Just follow his lead, she told herself, and keep the wheel steady. She pointed her Honda in the same direction and prayed that water wouldn’t lap the bottom of her low-slung car.

A horn beeped behind her. She ignored it. Another stupid city driver, probably trying to cut in. Well, you can wait your turn. We all want to get home tonight. Especially those of us who might not have a home after tomorrow. The horn beeped again, longer this time. Maggie frowned and glanced in her rear view mirror. She couldn’t see much in the dark, but she could guess who sat behind her: some puffed-up businessman in his SUV, demanding that she move out of his way. Her middle finger twitched and she had an urge to raise it straight out the window. Another series of beeps. Maggie gritted her teeth. What the hell was this guy’s problem? There was only one way around the roadblock, and she was next in line. Back off, idiot.

“What’s wrong with him?” Neve turned and peered behind them.

“I don’t know. It’s like he’s the only car on the road.”

Well, she’d be through the flooding in a moment, and then he could pass her on the shoulder if he was that desperate to get by. Maggie touched her toe to the gas pedal and held her breath. Easy does it. Don’t even think about that guy behind you.

But before she had inched forward more than a few feet, she heard a door open and shut. Footsteps marched in her direction.

Did he just get out of his car? Is he coming up here? A flutter of panic started in her chest. Maybe it wasn’t a businessman at all. Maybe it was some kind of killer who took advantage of the night’s chaos to prey on innocent women. Did she have mace in the glove box? Had she put her thick-handled umbrella in the back seat? Should she call 911?

Maggie tried to calm down. There were cops everywhere in sight, after all. No one was going to break into her car on a major city street. Not tonight. She glanced into her side mirror, but she couldn’t see anything except a tall shape moving her way. Maybe he needed help. Maybe he had someone else in there, a sick kid or a wife in labor or something. Maybe—

Someone tapped on her window. Maggie rolled the glass down an inch. “Can I help you?”

“I certainly hope so. I’ve spent the last hour trying to find you.”

That voice…

Maggie’s stomach flipped over. Jack—of course Jack, no one else would be crazy enough to come after her in a storm—stood outside her window. She let her gaze move up and drink in that torso she knew by heart, the broad chest, the strong arms. With his shoulders hunched up to his ears, hands jammed into both pockets, Jack leaned against her car. His curls blew a little in the wind. Two circles of red burned in his cheeks and he shivered, but when he caught her eye, he smiled.

He’s actually standing out there smiling at me.

Maggie thought she should probably roll up the window, but her fingers remained glued to the steering wheel as if they belonged to someone else. To some other idiot who couldn’t think of anything except the words He came after me, over and over again. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t even look away. All she could feel was electricity jumping between them and carrying her back through all the years.

“Who is it?” Neve leaned over, trying to see. “Oh…”

Maggie barely heard her. God, I’m in trouble. She stared at the open want in Jack’s face. She couldn’t keep her eyes off him. He leaned down even closer and she could smell his cologne. It made her want to reach over and touch him, rub her thumb over the spread of stubble on his chin. It made her want to taste him again.

Stop it, she ordered herself. Roll up the window. Drive away, before it’s too late. He was engaged, she reminded herself, this idiot who’d come running after her. Whatever he had to say was hours too late. Years too late, really. She couldn’t go down that road again. She couldn’t let herself fall.

“I’m sorry you wasted your time,” she finally said as she fumbled for the window control. “I don’t have anything to say to you. Go back to the ball. Go back to your fiancée.” She spit out the word through the last little crack before she closed the window all the way. But Jack didn’t go away. He didn’t even move. Instead, he began to tap at the glass. Maggie turned on the radio and ignored him. Blondie blasted into the car, singing about the tide being high but still holding on. Yeah, but for how long? she wanted to ask the rock singer. How many years do you wade through and wait? How much life do you sacrifice?

She stepped on the accelerator, ready to move the car forward whether or not Jack still clung to the side of it. But a cop stepped in front of her and held up a palm. Maggie’s hopes dropped for a second. All I want to do is get out of here. Please. Then she thought again. Maybe the cop had stopped her because Jack was standing in the middle of the street. Maybe he was going to come over, ask Jack what the hell he was doing, tell him to mind his own business and get on home. She hoped so. Jack might listen to an authority figure. He sure wasn’t going to listen to her.

She slapped the car into neutral and revved the engine, trying to scare Jack off at the same time she tried to send the traffic cop a telepathic SOS. Hello? Don’t you see this guy standing here next to me? Arrest him. Throw him in the backseat of your car. Do something. He’s disturbing the peace. He’s disturbing my peace.

But the police officer only stood there in the middle of the street, his hand suspended as if on a string. For a long two minutes he made her wait, as an ambulance pulled out from an alleyway. He barely looked in their direction at all. And Jack didn’t look like he was going anywhere.

“Mags, open up.” Jack’s voice came through her window despite the wind and the rock ‘n roll.

Neve giggled. “He’s sure making a fool of himself for you.”

“I don’t care. It’s not going to win him any points.”

“Come on. Why don’t you give him a chance?”

“Because he’s engaged. And because I have too many other problems in my life to deal with right now.”

Maggie spun the radio knob again, searching for a song that would drown out his voice, a song that would make her forget this mess rather than examine it. She found Queen’s “Another One Bites the Dust,” turned up the volume and sang along. She didn’t care that probably half the cars on this side of the street could hear her off-key warbling. Better than to hear the pounding and the keening of a heart half-broken.

Jack’s voice, and his tapping on her window, stopped. Finally. Maggie let out a breath. The cop flipped over his hand, two fingers called her forward, and she put the car into gear. But then the back passenger door opened, and Jack slid inside.

“What the—” she sputtered, twisting around. “Get out of here. Get out of my goddamn car.”

“Nope.” Jack folded up his legs accordion style and shook his head. One strong hand reached over the seat, touching her shoulder. “Mags, listen to me.”

“No.” Like a child she pulled away from him, though she could still feel the outline of his fingers pressed against her skin. She liked it. She wanted it. She desperately tried to fight it. His presence inside the tiny car, larger than life, fogged the windows immediately. He didn’t say a word. Yet when Jack looked at Maggie in the rear view mirror, all she wanted to do was fall into his gaze, dive down deep and find a place to float within him. She reached for a curl to tug at. Damn. Forget the ball. Forget Dillon. Forget even Neve sitting beside her. In another minute, she’d be back there, wrapping herself around Jack. She couldn’t help it. Put the two of them together and fireworks lit up the world. Ten years sure hadn’t changed that.

“I…um…” Neve stared at her lap. “Maybe you two need to talk. Without me around.”

“Good idea.” Maggie put the car back into Park and jabbed a thumb at the hazard light button on her dashboard. She shoved her door open and wrapped her skirt in one hand.

“Where are you going?” Jack writhed around in the cramped backseat, trying to push open the door and follow her.

“Neve, I’m sorry,” Maggie called over her shoulder. “I’ll just—I’ll be back in a minute. Move the car if you have to, over by the sidewalk. I’ll find you.”

She thrust herself into the darkness and started walking. She didn’t know what she planned on doing at one o’clock in the morning on a wet city street. Nor did she know where she planned on going. Just away.

This is crazy, you know, a voice hummed inside her head. Jack’s only ten steps behind. He’ll catch up with you. Touch you. Talk to you while you watch his mouth move and imagine it on the ridge of your collarbone.

Maggie pulled the borrowed raincoat tighter around her shoulders and kept walking. She didn’t get far. Behind her, she could hear Jack swearing under his breath. Ten seconds later, he grabbed her by the elbow. She didn’t stop moving. He didn’t let go. On they went across the street, tromping through puddles and ignoring the water that splashed up around them.

“Stop running away from me.”

“I’m not running.”

“You always run.”

She didn’t answer, furious.

“Don’t you want to talk about what happened back there?”

“No.”

“You can’t tell me that kiss didn’t mean anything,” Jack said. His breath came in little pants. “It sure as hell did to me. I wasn’t just passing the time until Paige showed up, you know.”

That name hurt her, bit into her with a grotesque pain. Maggie stopped walking, her arm limp. Her neck ached and her teeth chattered. Jack was right; she couldn’t outrun him. There was no place to go.

“What difference would it make if it meant something?” She lifted her chin and met his gaze with a challenge. “It’s been ten years, Jack. We’re different people now.”

He took another step closer, wrapped both hands around her arms, and stared at her so intently that Maggie’s face warmed, despite the damp night chill.

“I’m not. I’m the same guy you fell in love with. The guy who wanted to spend the rest of his life with you. A few years and a job doesn’t mean I’ve become someone else. Not in that way.” He pounded his chest. “This is the same. This—the heart you broke. The guy you left without a decent explanation.” Anger rippled through his voice.

“Is that what this is about?” Maggie felt eyes on them and could have sworn she heard car windows easing down as their voices carried. “You’re still mad about Vegas?”

“I’m not mad. But you never gave me a chance to tell you what I wanted. You never knew what I was thinking that morning. You just made your decision and that was that. We got the annulment because you wanted it. Not because I did.”

Maggie couldn’t have this conversation. And she couldn’t revisit that decision. “Well, what do you want now?” she shrugged. “An apology? Then I’m sorry. I’m sorry I didn’t let you say whatever it is you wanted to, that morning. I’m sorry I went through with the whole thing at all. In fact, I’m sorry we went to Las Vegas in the first place.” She stepped back and pulled her arms from his grip. “There. You’ve got your apology.”

But to Maggie’s amazement, tears began to fall, bittersweet drops that slipped down her face. Why, oh why, couldn’t she keep it together for longer than a few minutes between crying jags? Every time she’d turned around tonight, the waterworks flipped on again. Anyone who didn’t know her would think she was a basket case. She ran her tongue over her bottom lip and tasted salt.

Jack began to laugh.

“Stop it.” With frantic fingers, Maggie rubbed at her face. “Stop laughing at me.”

But he didn’t. Taking one step back as if to measure her from a distance, he continued to chuckle. His deep baritone filled the air, and with it floated the smooth, complicated scent of him, the one that sometimes still woke her from dreams. Her knees weakened.

“God, I love you.” He gazed down at her. “You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved. I just didn’t realize it until I saw you again.”

“But—” Stop. Don’t say that to me. Not again. I can’t take it. I can’t—

Jack pulled Maggie to him. His hands found her snarled hair, her damp cheeks. One tender thumb rubbed away the glimmers of sadness on her skin. His fingertips wandered across her closed eyelids and lost themselves somewhere at the back of her neck. His tongue sought the warmth of hers, the acquiescence, the want she knew he tasted there.

His words, a rough whisper, slipped between her lips. “It’s you I want, Mags. It always has been.”

“Jack…” She had no idea what she meant to say or whether she meant to utter anything at all. It was almost a prayer, or a sigh of relief. A feeling of coming home after a decade of wandering. She stopped struggling and let herself lean into him.

Around them, horns beeped, and Maggie thought she heard a whistle or two. Celebration? Approval? She didn’t care. Every inch of her ached for nothing more than to slip between the sheets of some warm, still bed with Jack and make up for the lost years of a love she’d never gotten over. She pressed her palms against his chest, then let them drop and circle his waist. She pulled him closer. She kissed him again. She breathed him in and made unspoken promises that echoed the ones they’d made to each other so many years ago. Please don’t let it be a dream. Please just let it go on forever.

God, she tasted so good. Jack’s mouth moved down Maggie’s neck. He felt her pulse flutter under his tongue and wanted to make her weak. He didn’t care that misty rain had started to fall on them again, or that around them fists pounded on horns like people were watching some kind of movie in the middle of the street. Hell, let them. This was his girl. She would always be his girl. Jack’s hands moved under Maggie’s coat, cupping the small of her back and sliding downward. Satin rustled under his touch.

“Um…” She made a noise close to his ear.

“What?”

“We left Neve sitting in the car.”

Jack turned. “Oh. Right.” But he didn’t want to let her go.

A curl of Maggie’s hair brushed his cheek, and he fingered it. This was right, then, the way it was supposed to be. All the rest of his days were meant to be with her. After a long moment, they turned back toward the car, dodging puddles as they retraced their steps.

“Stay with me tonight.”

She looked up at him. “I can’t. I have to get back home. And Neve—”

“I know.” He wound his fingers through hers. “Tomorrow, then. And the next night. I’ll come to your place. Or you can stay up here. Or—”

“Whoa, lover boy.” Her face darkened. “There are a lot of things I have to take care of.”

“Then I’ll help you.”

“That’s not what I meant. I don’t need your help.”

“Mags, why are you so stubborn?”

She smiled but didn’t answer. Instead, she looked past him, up to the sky. The next time she turned back, her face had changed. “Did you mean what you said before?”

“What?”

“It’s really over with your fiancée?”

Jack nodded. A dull ache started up in his gut. Guilt probably, or maybe regret at waiting so long to make the decision. “I should have called it off a long time ago. I just—” He faltered, still unsure how he’d gotten so swept up in living a life with Paige. He supposed that was how things happened. Months and years passed. Promises were made. Sand slipped through the hourglass before you knew it. “I just didn’t have the guts to tell her until tonight.”

They neared the car, and he let his hands rest on Maggie’s hips for a minute. He pulled her close and let her feel what she did to him. What she always did to him. “Tell me something,” he murmured.

“What’s that?” Her words drifted away as he caressed her breasts, thumbing sharp nipples that taunted him through smooth green fabric.

“What does your license plate stand for?”

“Hmm?” Her back arched into his touch.

He thought about telling her that the vanity plates on her car were the only way he’d found her. Too many Hondas on the road, and blue looked like black and dark green in the darkness. But the Rhode Island plate with its odd collection of letters had given her away. Thank God.

“I just wondered what D-D-S-G-N stands for.”

Maggie reached for the door handle. “It’s the name of my business. I don’t usually spend money on something so silly, but Neve thought that I should celebrate. I got them for my one-year anniversary.”

“What kind of business did you open?” There was so much he wanted to know about her, so many spaces in the catalog of Maggie he needed to fill in.

“It’s a—” She swung open the door and lost her balance, falling against him as she slipped.

“Whoa!” They both went down hard. Maggie’s elbow thumped against the side of the car.

“You okay?” Jack reached for her.

“I think so.” But the look on her face suggested otherwise. She rubbed her arm and winced.

“You’re sure?”

“I’ll be fine,” she said. “It’s just…my dress. It’s ruined.” She scrambled up and tried to wipe herself with both hands. Her fingers trembled.

“I know a great dry cleaner here in the city.” He tried to reassure her. “I can take it there if you want.” Then he remembered that the place was right around the corner from Paige’s townhouse. And the red dress Paige had asked him to pick up after work probably still hung on their racks, sheathed in plastic. Something stuck in his throat. For the first time, Jack wondered how many fragments of his life would change now, how many pieces would have to shift. On tentative feet, he felt himself skating into a new existence.

“Is that yours?” Maggie pointed at something that had fallen onto the ground between them.

Jack glanced down. “Oh. My business cards.” The sterling silver case, another gift from Paige, glinted up from the dark pavement.

Maggie bent to retrieve it. The case had flipped open, and a few of his cards fell out. She scooped them up and ran a thumb over the engraving. “Nice.”

“Thanks.”

She paused and peered down at the black script on the top card. Curls tumbled into her face, and she pushed them back with an impatient hand. Biting her lip, Maggie looked up at him, her eyes shining with some emotion he couldn’t identify.

“Bullieston? That’s the name of your company?” Her words came out slowly, and with edges that didn’t make sense to him, like sandpaper working its way across bare knuckles.

“Yeah. It’s a software development company.”

“I know.”

He cocked his head and studied her. “You’ve heard of it?”

She laughed, but it wasn’t a good sound. “You could say that.” She dropped the case into his outstretched hand. “You’re the company that wants to buy my house.”

For a moment, Jack didn’t understand. “Wait…you’re the woman in Hart’s Falls? With the interior design business?” His glance shot again to the letters on her license plate. “You’re kidding.” Some kind of weird, inexplicable vortex seemed to slow the air around him.

“Do I look like I’m kidding? Some guy called my office yesterday afternoon to ask me about it.”

Jack rubbed both hands across the top of his head, trying to ease a growing ache there. “That would be one of my vice-presidents.”

Anger sliced across her face. “You’re trying to…that’s the kind of business you run? The kind that tries to take advantage of small business owners? The kind that cares more about money than—”

“Stop it. You don’t know anything about my company.” How dare she judge him? How dare she presume to understand the complicated decisions he made every day? And why on earth would she turn down a reasonable offer for a piece of property she was going to lose in a few days anyway? Hadn’t Carl told him the bank was foreclosing? If that was true, then Maggie couldn’t afford any other choice. Could she?

Just like Vegas, a voice at the back of his skull whispered. She’s making a decision without even considering the consequences. Without taking a moment to wonder if anyone else is involved.

“Listen, from what I know, the bank is foreclosing on you anyway. Right? You’re up to your neck in mortgage payments—”

“Tell me something I don’t know.” Her face closed. “It still doesn’t mean I have to sell it to you. I can come up with the money.”

“I doubt that,” Jack replied, hating the tone in his voice. Could he bully her into selling? Of course he could. He had friends in every high place one could name. But it’s Mags. How could he buy out her business and take away her home? Yet how could he sacrifice his last six months’ worth of work for a single person?

Jack scrubbed his face with both hands. How did we get here? How did we get from making up, from making a future, to fighting about it in less than five minutes?

Maggie’s eyes widened, like glittering emeralds lit from within. A long sigh rippled out of her. “I should have known that’s what you were after. Well, you can stop all the acting now, because you know what? You’re right. I probably will end up selling the house because I can’t afford any other way out. I can’t buy off the bank, or ask a couple of friends for a loan over martinis, or pretend to be in love with someone who’ll ride in on his white horse and save me.”

Stunned, Jack stood there without saying a word.

“That’s what’s going on, isn’t it?” she continued. “You’re trying to get me into bed so you can convince me to sell Doyle Designs…probably for some ridiculous amount, when it’s worth twice that—”

“You think I came after you tonight for a business deal?” Amazement bubbled up inside his chest. “You think I kissed you, broke off my engagement, followed you into the dead of night so I could convince you to sell your house? That’s really what you think of me?” Jack felt as though someone had socked him a good one, right across the jaw. Lacing his fingers, he rested his hands on the back of his head and stared up into space. He thought if he didn’t, he might hit something.

“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised,” he continued, speaking to a lone star that peeked through the clouds. “You’ve never been one to compromise or think about the bigger picture. You’ve never been one to back down, to say I’m sorry, to listen to what anyone else had to say. Never sacrificed one ounce of what you wanted for anyone else.”

She slammed one hand against the roof of her car. From the corner of his eye, he thought he saw Neve’s wide-eyed face looking out through the windshield.

“You think I don’t know about sacrifice? About giving up what I wanted so someone else could be happy? You still don’t get it, do you? You think everything happened out in Vegas just because I was being selfish.”

Jack took a step back. “Well, you got what you wanted, didn’t you? The minute you woke up with that ring on your finger, you were out the door, looking for an annulment. And you got it. Didn’t matter what I had to say.”

She began to cry. Streaks of mascara striped her face, and she rubbed her nose. “You idiot. I didn’t get what I wanted. I gave up the thing I wanted. For you. I gave up everything for you.”

Maggie was talking in riddles now, and he was beyond exhaustion. What on earth had she given up for him? After the fiasco in Vegas, she’d gone back to New York and taken up with her last two years of college like he’d been just a ripple in the endless sea of what-Maggie-wanted. “What are you talking about?”

She slumped, half-in and half-out of the car. Resting her head against the doorframe, she looked up at him with eyes so wide, so sad, he thought he could see every star in the universe reflected inside them.

“Jack, I can’t have children. Not ever.”

“Wait a minute.” He shook his head. “What?”

“I had a hysterectomy when I was nineteen.” Her voice dropped, and he had to strain to hear her. “A few weeks before we met. I know I should have told you, but…”

“You’re—you what?”

“That’s why we couldn’t stay married. It’s not fair to you. It wasn’t then, and it isn’t now. And that’s why this—” she waved a listless hand in the air— “all this, whatever it is, can’t go anywhere between us. I can’t give you what you want, what you deserve. It can’t start up again.”

“But how—” How do you know what I really want? he was going to say.

She didn’t say another word or let him finish. Instead, she slipped back into the car and closed the door in the middle of his sentence. The rain grew heavier, soaking his collar. Horns beeped, and a police officer waved him out of the street. Jack tried to protest, to explain, but it didn’t matter. This time, when Maggie put the car into gear and pulled away, he didn’t stop her.

2:00 a.m.

Oh, God. I told him the truth. I finally told him.

Maggie couldn’t look back. She couldn’t bear to see Jack standing there with that look of disbelief on his face. Hands clenched around the steering wheel, she made her way down one city block. Then another. Cars spaced out and her speed climbed to thirty-five. Good. If she could keep driving, keep her mind focused on the road, she might be okay.

She’d finally revealed everything, told him the one thing she’d always tried to hide, and he’d reacted just as she always thought he would. The expression that darkened his smile, the horror in his eyes, was worse than if he’d reached out and struck her. And the way he backed away from her…Maggie wanted to die. Some part of her was glad she’d kept the secret for so long. If Jack had looked at her that way back in college, she might just have swallowed some pills and ended it all. He was the one person who kept me together, the one person who made me feel like I belonged to the human race.

Ten years ago, she wouldn’t have known how to deal with his rejection. Now, she could handle it. She had to. With everything else jumbled up in her life, Jack’s opinion couldn’t rank anywhere higher than five or six on her priority list. Not number one, certainly. That still belonged to the bank.

Which brought her back to the issue of selling her house. To a company that Jack ran. Maggie let out a little chirp of bitter laughter. Of all the companies jockeying for space in tiny Hart’s Falls, the one trying to beat the bank and buy her out had to belong to her ex-boyfriend. To her ex-husband, if you wanted to get technical. The irony of it made her skin ache. Maggie sighed. She didn’t have room inside her head for all the emotions. She couldn’t sift through them to separate Jack the ex-lover from Jack the CEO. Yet that was the way her life seemed to work. Move away, take baby steps forward, build a new life, only to find that the center of it all, like a big black magnet, drew her straight back to the past.

“Maggie?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” She flipped on the wipers as rain dripped down. Weak lightning flashed.

She began counting seconds. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Five. Ten. Another block rolled by, and a sign announced four more miles to the interstate. Thank God. Fifteen. Twenty. As they left the city center, everything turned hazy, and visibility shrank. Maggie cut her speed. The radio station turned to static, and Neve fussed with the dial.

Up ahead, a traffic light blinked. Yellow, Maggie’s tired brain registered as they neared the intersection. Yellow. That means I have the right of way. The cross street has blinking red. She slowed down a little, but she didn’t bother to look. They hadn’t seen another car for the last five minutes. With her mind on Jack, the house, and the bank, she didn’t see the sedan speeding down the side street toward them. She didn’t hear its tires squeal. She didn’t see its headlights sweep into their path.

Until it was too late.

Maggie braked, but not soon enough. The other driver swerved, but not quickly enough.

Metal thundered against metal, and the car spun out of control. The sound of breaking glass filled Maggie’s ears. Her head snapped backwards and the force of the impact ripped her hands from the steering wheel. Somewhere on the edge of her awareness, she thought she saw Neve pressing her hands against the door as if to fend off attack as the weaving sedan caught the Honda square in the passenger side and drove them all the way to the opposite sidewalk.

*

A policeman approached Jack, who remained standing in the middle of the street. Cars weaved around him, with some drivers beeping their horns and others offering less kind gestures through open windows.

“Sir? I’m going to have to ask you to move your vehicle.”

He turned. “Sorry?”

The officer pointed a thick finger. “Your Navigator. It’s blocking traffic. Are you having mechanical problems?”

The corners of Jack’s mouth twitched as he considered the question. Mechanical problems? No. Emotional, messed-up, heart-tugged-upside-down problems? Yes. I’d tell you about them too, if I could wrap my head around them.

“No,” he said after a long minute. “No problems with the truck.”

“Then I’ll advise you to head on home. Streets are flooded, traffic lights out, quite a few accidents around the city. You’d best call it a night.”

Jack nodded, not really listening. Maggie’s last words kept floating around in his skull, looking for a place to land.

I can’t have children…not ever…

I can’t give you what you want…

That’s why she left me? That’s why she wanted the annulment? A band tightened around his temples. Why didn’t she just tell me the truth?

Jack stumbled backwards and reached into his pocket for the keys. How do you make that kind of decision when you’re twenty? How do you know in five or ten or thirty years which things you’ll want, and which you’ll give up? With all that had happened in the last four hours, Jack couldn’t imagine not having Maggie in his life. Nor could he imagine not having a family. He’d always pictured kids, two or three of them running up and down the stairs, clutching at his legs, making him crooked paper Valentines and Father’s Day cards. His mom had devoted her life to making a safe and solid home for the four Major sons, full of warmth and good smells and spaces where you could figure yourself out. He wanted that too. He’d never worked through the when and the why and the how the way he knew a lot of women did. He’d always just assumed it would happen.

But what happens when you never have the choice at all?

How had Maggie dealt with it? How had she kept that kind of secret for so long? Jack recalled all the times he’d curved his body around hers and tickled the back of her neck with his breath. Did she lie awake after he fell asleep, staring at his walls and missing the children she’d never have? Did she listen to him talk about the future and change his words inside her head? Did she stare at mothers and babies on the subway and then go home and weep? Or had it become simply part of who she was, like a callus or a scar from a long-ago injury? How the hell, by the way, did you heal from something like that?

Jack tried to remember something Maggie might have said back then, a hint she might have dropped about a secret of that magnitude. He couldn’t. And he wondered how well he’d known her all along.

Thoughts of all sorts followed him as he crawled back into the dark of the borrowed SUV. Without bothering with the seatbelt, he made his way to the first open parking spot he found, a block away, and sat.

Why didn’t she ever tell me? Longing for something he couldn’t identify swept over him, and Jack closed his hands around the steering wheel. He tried to pin down a single feeling and couldn’t. He tried to sift through memories and failed. Everything swarmed around him: pain and frustration and anger and loss, confusion and resentment and most of all, love, ballooning over him despite its ragged edges and kinks. He dropped his head and closed his eyes. He wished he knew which choice to make. But he didn’t.

*

Maggie had never understood when people talked about terrible things happening in slow motion. She couldn’t see how the seconds might slow, how the air could squeeze the life right out of you as time smashed to a halt. If you were staring down a speeding train, wouldn’t you feel as though the world were rushing in at a thousand miles an hour? If you were that close to death, wouldn’t it feel like all your time was running out? Slow motion didn’t make sense.

But that was exactly what happened when the other car hit them. Everything stopped, even the movement of the air around her. Her hands remained frozen in the ten and two positions on her steering wheel, until it ripped itself away from her and the rough, hot fabric of the air bag rushed out instead. Neve’s body flopped like a rag doll, sideways and back. The building across the street moved toward them as their car slid sideways. Maggie heard a guttural sound, like an animal struck, and for a minute she wondered if they’d hit someone standing in the street. When it stopped, though, and her own throat burned, she realized the wail had come from her. Without even knowing, she’d opened her mouth and made some kind of inhuman sound.

The car ground to a halt. Everything quieted. Something warm ran down Maggie’s cheek. She tried to move her feet, but they felt wedged into place. Under something? Against something? She couldn’t figure it out. She looked past the deflated airbag, through her windshield. Something wasn’t right. Something looked…off. It took her a full minute to realize that her car had ended up nose-first inside the metal stanchions of a bus stop. Maggie turned to Neve and couldn’t fix her brain on what she saw: a darkness that spread onto the passenger seat and down to the floor.

“Neve?” Maggie’s voice came out as a croak “Are you okay?” When no answer came, she reached shaking fingers toward her friend. She found a pulse, but barely. “Can you hear me? Neve?” Darkness rushed in, heavy and frightening. Everything dimmed.

Sometime later, maybe five minutes, maybe fifteen, Maggie heard sirens somewhere far away. She stared through a shattered window and realized it was the only sound, besides her own terrified breathing, she could make out.

3:00 a.m.

Maggie tried to sit up and look around, but it hurt too much. Somewhere close by, she thought she heard the mumbling of voices.

“Hello?” The word was unintelligible even to her own ears. She might not have spoken it aloud at all. Neve didn’t move. No one came to look inside the car. Maggie’s cheeks felt hot and she wiggled the fingers on both her hands to make sure she still could.

Anxiety tightened her stomach into a ball. For a minute, she thought she might throw up. She sensed the urge at the back of her throat, the upheaval of everything inside her needing to find a way out. She tried to draw a full breath, tried to find some oxygen inside the broken car. The feeling passed, after a minute. She swallowed and forced her eyes to focus.

Everything hurt: her neck, her back, her bottom lip where she’d bit it upon impact. Her shoulders. Her wrists. Even her ankles, which she suspected she’d sprained by trying to press two imaginary brake pedals through the floor. Worst of all was the immense pain that ricocheted inside her skull. It grew with every passing second, turning the edges of her world fuzzy and taking away all color, so that everything appeared beige and brown.

Beside her, Neve made a sound and moved her head. Summer-squash strands of hair fell across her cheeks.

“Neve?”

This time the young woman moaned. Her eyelids twitched. Her hands moved in the direction of her belly, like small starfish seeking the waves.

Oh, no. The baby.

Maggie scrabbled at the key still in the ignition. She reached for the door handle. Then the window crank. Anything to get out of the car and find some help. But her fingers felt heavy, thick, ineffective. She pushed at the door. It didn’t budge. Then she saw that her side of the car was wedged against one of the bus stop supports. The hood of the car, accordioned toward the windshield, blocked her view of anything else. She looked at the passenger side door: damaged as well, bent at the hinges and split from end to end. Ragged edges gaped open, exposing the vein-like wires underneath. Glass lay scattered across their laps, the floor, and the dashboard. Maggie reached up to scratch her temple and found shards of it in her hair.

Someone knocked on the roof of the car.

“Hey. You in there. You okay?” A face appeared at her broken window, that of a kid Maggie placed in his early twenties. He wore a red and yellow striped shirt with an alligator sewn onto one pocket. Its tail was loose, she noticed. The guy’s right cheek was bruised and puffy, and an open gash on his chin oozed blood. Red-rimmed eyes squinted down at her. His breath, thick with liquor, caught her off-guard. You son of a bitch, she wanted to say. You ran that light. You’re drunk. You’re… But her lips wouldn’t work.

“Lady?” This time he reached a hand inside the window and touched her on the shoulder. “You in shock or something?”

“Call the police,” she whispered. “Call 911.”

He nodded. “My buddy already did.”

Your buddy? For the first time, Maggie saw another guy sitting on the curb a few feet away. His skin looked gray-green, and as she stared at him, he pitched forward. Head between his knees, he retched.

The face at Maggie’s window disappeared.

“Hey, Rog, hang in there.” Striped shirt jogged back to the curb and squatted beside his friend.

Sharp pain continued to radiate in both of Maggie’s temples and stars speckled her vision. Her eyes closed, and all of a sudden she felt one hundred years old. The two men on the sidewalk, the fractured car around her, a silent Neve beside her, all disappeared. Traffic whined somewhere in the distance but it was as if everything were removed a degree or two. Nearby voices became cartoon bubbles in her head.

It’s funny where the mind goes, Maggie thought as she floated in the blackness. Straight back to the moments you’ve never really left behind. Beyond Jack. Beyond college. Back to the moment that started it all, to the turn in the path that separated Maggie from everyone else. Memories came flooding in minute by minute, slippery things with tails that closed in on her and made her see. Made her realize. Made her remember all the things she’d wanted so much to forget.

Instead of a Boston city sidewalk, instead of a mess of mangled metal, she saw him again: ten-year old Dillon, tickling her in the den. Thirteen-year-old Dillon, stealing her training bra out of the laundry and showing it to his friends. Sixteen-year-old Dillon, giving her rides to school when she didn’t want to take the bus. Seventeen-year-old Dillon, standing in her doorway with bloody fists and trying to explain how he’d defended her honor.

It was ironic, really, that she’d come to Boston in the midst of one heartache and found another. She’d thought she was seeking a favor from a stepbrother, but maybe she was really seeking forgiveness from him. That’s where the healing needs to begin, she realized in her fog. Not with Jack. With Dillon.

All the anguish, all the years of blame, all the ways she’d tried to find someone else to fasten her heartache on, it came down to this. This understanding that you couldn’t go back and fix things or change things. You couldn’t hold your breath or hide under the covers. The sun always rode its white horse over the horizon, announcing another morning. Mistakes might be your fault or someone else’s, but at the end of it all, blame only drove a wedge between the people who meant the most to you. So you could live with your anger, you could hold on with cramped fingers to the pain that devastated you or you could muddle on and do the best with what the new hours brought.

A disease. An operation. A new love. A new job. An ailing mother. A broken heart. A ball. A chance to try again.

“It wasn’t his fault,” she tried to say aloud, but it felt as though the words only ran through her mind. It wasn’t Dillon’s fault, what happened that night. I blamed him for not protecting me, but I shouldn’t have. He didn’t know.

“It wasn’t his fault,” she said again.

She heard a chuckle, a deep, jolly sound that seemed out of place considering the time of night and the circumstance. “Well, why don’t we leave that up to the police to decide? Try not to move.”

Maggie started anyway, and her shoulders spasmed against the seat. She didn’t recognize the voice or the hands moving about her face and neck. “What—”

“You’ve been involved in a car accident.”

She tried to swim back up from the mess of dreams that fuzzed her brain. The hands went away for a minute and shadows moved outside the car window. Her gaze swept the sidewalk. Striped shirt and his friend had vanished. In their place stood a paunchy middle-aged guy and a young, thin woman. Both wore some sort of dark-colored uniform with a collection of equipment belted to their waists. EMTs, Maggie thought after a minute, thinking of the television show she watched on Tuesday nights. Emergency Medical Something-or-Other. She furrowed her brow. Technicians. The word came to her after a minute of thinking.

As if each one of her senses were taking its time coming back into the conscious world, she heard more voices and a siren whining somewhere close by. Her peripheral vision widened, and Maggie became aware of an emergency vehicle parked just beyond her wrecked Honda. Past that, a police car. No, two. She realized that her seatbelt still pinned her down, and she fumbled with the clasp to release it.

“Neve!”

“Is that your name? Or your passenger’s?” The EMT appeared again in her window. He seemed kind, Maggie thought, and she liked the way he smiled at her, without panic or concern in his eyes. As if they had just met on a sunny street and were exchanging pleasantries.

“It’s hers.”

“Can you tell me your name?”

“It’s Maggie. Maggie Doyle.”

“Do you remember what happened?”

Of course she did. And she’d tell him all about it, over coffee sometime after he got her out of the mashed piece of metal. But that wasn’t the important thing. There was something else she needed to say, something else the kind-faced man needed to know. She reached for his wrist. Fine black hairs tickled her fingertips.

“Neve’s pregnant.”

At that, the man’s expression did change. Bushy gray eyebrows rose. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”

Maggie watched him trot over to the young female EMT with a sort of limp in his gait, as if one leg were shorter than the other. He jabbed his thumb toward the car while the woman fumbled for the radio at her hip. A police officer approached them both and pulled out a notebook and a stubby pencil. Maggie wondered if she should get out of the car, try and clear up some of the confusion about the accident. Only thing was, an enormous heaviness had begun to press her into the seat, and she couldn’t quite feel her feet anymore.

I should have them call someone, she thought. Someone needs to know what happened. Eden? Jack? Who would tell her mother?

The world inside Maggie’s head began to tilt again, and pain coursed through her. For a minute she thought it might eat her up, swallow her and replace her with a giant open wound that pulsed against the sky. She felt herself spinning toward some kind of tunnel, and though she could see the black, she couldn’t avoid it. She tried to reach for something to slow her descent. She tried to grip the edge of the cliff she felt herself balancing upon, but her fingertips flicked against air and found nothing. Panic grew inside her chest, fighting like an injured bird and fluttering under her skin. She wanted to stay awake. She needed to.

She couldn’t.

Maggie slipped away.

4:00 a.m.

Jack sat in the Navigator. One hand ran over and over the steering wheel, as if in memorizing the stitching, it might open some kind of portal that would tell him what he was supposed to do.

Go after her and find her. Tell her it doesn’t matter. Tell her the only thing you care about is being with her.

Let her go, for now. Call her tomorrow, or even next week, after she’s had time to work everything out. After you have.

The bodiless voices sat on opposite shoulders and chattered back and forth inside Jack’s head. Part of him, the part that made his skin ache with want, the part that remembered how Mags had once filled up his life, wanted to listen to that first voice. The other part wanted to give her space to breathe, step back and analyze the consequences. After all, he wasn’t twenty-two any longer. He had a company to run, a mangled engagement, a fractured family still trying to pick up the pieces after his mother’s death. He couldn’t jump headlong into the past to chase a memory that had changed shape and color.

Be honest, he told himself. She was right. Ten years is a long time. You both were different people back then. Maggie today wasn’t the Maggie he’d known in college. She was someone different, someone with a secret he never suspected. Jack shivered, suddenly cold. What if they had nothing left between them but history? You couldn’t build a future on the shaky legs of something that had dusted over. Could you?

Weary, he rested his forehead on the steering wheel. He knew that tomorrow, half the conversations in the city would feature The Break-up of Jack and Paige. People would yap over brunch and whisper in church pews. They would buy their lattes on Monday morning and hurry to work a few minutes early just to rehash the details.

Sour regret coated his mouth.

You let Mags walk out of your life back in Vegas, and the next thing you knew, an entire decade had swept by. You want that to happen again?

Jack sat up. Wind buffeted the vehicle, squealing through the vents. The bottom line was, he couldn’t let her go. Analysis, consequences, a plan, a way out—he shrugged off everything he’d learned in business school. Some things, the important things, you couldn’t fit to the rules. You had to simply feel your way along and hope that intuition told you that you were doing the right thing.

He floored the gas and yanked the truck back into traffic. How long had he sat there? Ten minutes? Thirty? A siren-red Corvette swerved around him, its horn sounding. He braked and let it pass. Then Jack took the first turn he could, negotiating the side streets he knew by heart and hoping they’d take him where he needed to go.

*

Maggie felt cold. Too cold. Like her fingers and toes were icing over and moving through the zone of painful freezing to sheer numbness. She tried to open her eyes, but she every time she did, all she saw was Neve beside her. Or the EMTs outside her window. Once, she thought she caught a glimpse of a police officer bellowing and waving his arms around. From where she sat, he looked like a cartoon character, a man with huge arms that hung from his shoulders like slabs of beef. She watched him, curious, as he talked to someone beyond her view. She imagined he was telling the person to back off, to give everyone some space, the way the rescue personnel always did on television. But she couldn’t imagine who he might be talking to. Who would be standing out in the rain staring at a car wreck, when they could be sleeping safe at home?

No one, she thought. Just silly me, caught up in another mess I can’t get myself out of.

*

Jack squinted through the windshield as he headed toward the highway. What the hell? Looked like some kind of wreck up ahead, a couple of cars t-boned against the sidewalk. Emergency lights turned the sky red and blue, and two cops stood in the middle of the street. Great. Just what he needed. Another accident to slow him down. He’d already passed two.

Having no choice, he ground to a stop as the traffic neared the line of flares. A white sedan, covered with rust and missing a license plate, had apparently crushed a small blue car. The vehicles sat wedged together, half-collapsed into one of those small glass-and-metal bus stops. From what Jack could see, the passenger side and the hood of the blue car had buckled in. The white car spewed steam, its nose broken and bent. He smelled burning rubber.

Jack drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, his patience a too-tight violin string stretched thin. Emergency personnel buzzed about the cars, taking stock. Apart from the wreck stood two young guys, disheveled and white-faced. Wide-eyed, they talked to the police and gestured at the blinking stoplight above them. Probably out hitting the bars and trying to make it home before one or both of them lost their dinner, Jack guessed. Another cruiser arrived. Paramedics moved around the blue car, which looked like it had gotten the brunt of the crash. He wondered how the hell they were going to get anyone out of it.

A baby-faced officer trotted back and forth between the wreck and the flares. He spoke to a couple of medics and pointed back toward the traffic. A fire truck arrived next, squeezing past the stopped cars and pulling onto the curb. Busy night for Boston’s finest, Jack thought.

After a long ten minutes, the officer began to wave the cars on. Jack inched the Navigator forward, waiting as the yellow sports car in front of him curved a wide path around some broken glass. The officer directed them in an s-pattern, trying to keep one side of the street clear. Jack could see the highway entrance up in front of him, less than a half-mile away. Just a couple more minutes. Then I can find her. I hope.

Why he looked back at that moment, Jack never understood. He had no reason to hesitate, no reason to look any longer at someone else’s misery. He hated rubberneckers, as a general rule. So why did he glance over his shoulder at the twisted car? If he was superstitious, he would have chalked it up to karma, to the universe pointing him in the right direction. But levelheaded Jack couldn’t accept that. So he explained it to himself later as simple coincidence, figuring that at four in the morning, most other people were home sleeping. Who else would be on the road, in that particular spot, a few hundred yards from the interstate?

He ignored the other possibility tunneled deep inside his heart: when part of you, the other half of you, lay trapped inside a broken shell of a car, you knew it somewhere inside your gut. It was as simple as that.

“Holy shit.” Jack slammed on the brakes and stared. Under the streetlight, the license plate of the blue car beamed bright white.

D-D-S-G-N.

Jack threw the SUV into park and leapt from the seat. He stumbled as he hit the ground. It can’t be Mags. It can’t. The world couldn’t be that cruel. He winced as his ankle turned. Who was he kidding? Of course it could. Look at what had happened to his mother at the age of fifty-three. There wasn’t any justice, not when it came to death. Or rather, there was perfect justice. Any person, at any given moment, could be stolen away. It was as simple as that.

He caught his balance and kept moving. He needed to see for himself. Maybe it wasn’t Maggie behind the wheel. Maybe someone else had taken her car and crashed it while she waited nearby, whole and healthy. Jack forced one foot in front of the other. He needed to stop the terrible suspicion crawling up his spine.

As he neared the wreck, he dodged through emergency vehicles and wound his way through flares. Closer. A few more feet. No one seemed to notice him. Good. Jack took another few steps toward the crushed bus stop and the car that didn’t belong inside it. From here he could see the spider-webbed windows and the hood like a crumpled tissue, used up and tossed away with other pieces of trash along the sidewalk. He could spy, beneath the fractured glass, the faces of two women in the vehicle’s front seats. One wore green, the other brown. Blood covered both their faces.

Jack stopped. Despite the angst inside him, he couldn’t move one more step. He knew who sat in that car. Beyond any doubt, he knew. Perspiration dribbled down his spine. Still he stared. Shouts came from behind him, and seconds later, a rough hand grabbed his arm. The next thing he knew, a cop’s grizzled face was staring him down.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing? Get back into your vehicle. Now.” The burly man breathed a sour odor into Jack’s face.

“Hang on. You don’t understand.”

The cop let go and crossed his beefy arms, blocking Jack’s view. “Mister, we’ve got a serious accident here. I don’t care who you are, if you’re the Queen of England or from the goddamned press. You need to stay back and let the medics do their job. One person gets out of their car, everyone thinks it’s a show.”

“I know her,” Jack interrupted, trying to see around the man’s massive shoulders. It looked as though the firemen were setting up the Jaws of Life. Jesus Christ, this is bad. Really bad.

The man. “Excuse me?”

Jack raised his hand and pointed. His wrist shook a little and he fought to steady it. “The driver of that car. I know her. She’s…” She’s what, you idiot? Your girlfriend? Your ex-wife? The person you plan on spending the rest of your life with?

“She’s a friend of mine,” he said. “Please. I was—” He knew how unbelievable his next words would sound and hoped the cop would cut him some slack. “I was looking for her. I was following her. We had a fight, and…I wanted to talk to her.” He stuck out his chin and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “I’m not leaving.” He stood his ground, hoping that the three-hundred pound man standing in front of him would understand.

“You’re that Major guy, aren’t you?” The cop peered down at him. “Seen you in the papers once in a while.” He harrumphed. “Well, move your goddamned truck out of the middle of the road. And stand over there, if you’ve got to stay.” He gestured to an area of sidewalk twenty feet away. “I mean it. Don’t you goddamned get in the middle of things.”

Jack ducked his head and hurried to pull the Navigator out of the way. Yeah, I’ll get the truck out of the road. But I can’t make any promises about staying out of the way. Not when it’s Mags we’re talking about.

Minutes later, Jack watched from the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets. He paced, keeping his distance, until the cop stopped eyeing him and wandered off behind his cruiser. Jack wrapped his fingers around his cell phone. He thought of people he could call, people who might help him out. Lee Peters? He was chief in one of the precincts downtown. Or Teena Rae, the admitting nurse over at the hospital? He needed a plan. He needed to take action. He needed to bundle Maggie up in his efficiency and rescue her the way he rescued companies and failing mergers and disgruntled VPs. He couldn’t just stand on the corner and wait.

I’ve got to see her. Somehow, I’ve got to let her know I’m here.

But that wasn’t going to happen. At the instant the rescue team pulled Maggie from the driver’s seat, her chalky face and the awkward way her legs flopped down stopped Jack from moving any closer. A nervous whistle left his lips. He dodged behind a telephone pole.

“All right, get this one going,” he heard one of the medics say, and a minute later she was lifted into the back of an ambulance. Jack lost sight of her. His attention shifted back to the car, where an unconscious Neve was being lifted onto an identical stretcher. An EMT knelt beside the unconscious young woman, taking vital signs and saying something to the man beside her. In a flash, the two of them pushed the stretcher into the second waiting ambulance. Jack took a few steps closer and tried to eavesdrop, not caring who saw him anymore. He caught pieces of the medics’ conversation, and his skin went cold.

“This one’s in worse condition.”

“Yep. Broken pelvis, maybe. Right leg doesn’t look good either.”

Jesus, no.

“She was pregnant, the driver said.”

Was pregnant?

“She’ll be lucky if…”

The ambulance doors slammed shut.

5:00 a.m.

Jack pressed down on the gas and managed to close the gap between the Navigator and the ambulances carrying Maggie and Neve. Pink light skated across the horizon. Almost dawn, and his exhaustion had disappeared. He shook his head, trying to roll his neck and pop out the kinks. A few hours ago, the idea of socializing with half of Boston until dawn had turned his stomach. He would have given anything to be hitting the sheets before midnight. But now? Power, panic, excitement and terror all shuttled around his brain, tag-teaming each other and gaining speed as they went. He felt as though he could stay awake for a week.

How amazing, Jack thought, to peel back the layers and realize you still loved someone beyond all comprehension. How amazing to admit you still ached down deep. And how amazing that you could spend so many years denying it to yourself and find a way to keep on living despite the hole inside you. Like an oyster piling sand upon a sore, he mused, you try to hide the irritation until one day it’s too big to ignore and you look down to realize it’s taken over you, something brilliant and blinding and rare as hell.

Jack squeaked the truck through a narrow spot in the street. Okay, so Mags had told him some things he hadn’t expected, some things he’d never guessed about her. Maybe she wasn’t the same person he remembered. Maybe she had a sorrowful side and glimmers of darkness. Maybe she held other secrets too. Jack pulled at his bottom lip. Didn’t they all? Wasn’t that part of working through relationships? Taking hold of the hard parts, examining them from every side, and fitting them into the puzzle all the same?

He hadn’t been willing to do it with Paige. He hadn’t been willing to work that hard.

I wanted to, at first. God help me, I thought we matched up in all the right ways. We were both making names for ourselves and seeking the right connections. We both appreciated a baseball game at the end of the day, a good bottle of wine, each other’s bite and backbone. I thought good sex and financial success meant a solid life. I thought after a while love would come along with that. Not the kind of love I felt for Mags, of course, but a different kind. A safer kind. I thought Mags was a fling I would outgrow.

How startling to find out he’d never been more wrong.

Jack slammed on his brakes as traffic bottlenecked at a flashing light. The ambulances slowed and waited for the cars to part. After a minute, they made their way around the corner and disappeared.

“C’mon,” he muttered to the cars crowding the road. “Get out of the way.”

He laid on the horn, tailgated a pick-up, knocked over two orange cones, and finally worked his way through. On the next street, traffic had pulled over. He swept by it all. Maybe five more minutes to the hospital, he guessed, though he hadn’t been down there in years. Since Mom’s last chemo session, he thought, and then was sorry for the memory. For a few minutes back at the accident scene, he’d felt that same helplessness that had cloaked his mother’s last days, that agony of staring at her shrunken body and knowing there was nothing he could do to save her.

Jack gunned the truck through a red light. He cut off a cab driver, who let loose a string of curse words out his open window. Jack didn’t care. He needed to be with Maggie when she woke up. He’d sit by her bedside until she did. He didn’t care if it took two hours or two days. Everything else—the mess with Paige, Taz’s memorial, work itself—could wait.

Work. Jack frowned. Bullieston. The acquisition of the Hart’s Falls’ house. Or rather, the acquisition of Maggie’s house. For a moment, practicality chased romance from his brain. How the hell was he going to handle the Hart’s Falls’ deal now? He couldn’t very well call up the board members and tell them he’d fallen in love with the owner. He couldn’t suggest they find another property to buy, not after his speech to the VPs at yesterday’s meeting. You didn’t sabotage a multi-million dollar deal in the name of passion.

But how was he supposed to tell Maggie that she might not have a home after leaving the hospital? How was he supposed to explain that if she didn’t agree to sell to his company, Bullieston would buy it at auction for a fraction of what it was worth? How could he keep watch beside her broken body while his mind whirled with figures and phone calls he was expected to make? How could he split himself in two like that?

I am the biggest traitor in the world. Jack tried to swallow past the knob of guilt in his throat. He should probably call someone else to be there with her. Her mother, maybe. Or her stepfather? Maggie had never seemed very close to the guy, but still. There was a sibling, he recalled, a brother, but Jack had never met him. He picked up his cell phone and put it down again. Someone else needed to know about the accident. Someone who could hold Maggie’s heart while he tried to reconcile Jack the CEO with Jack the man with the splintered soul.

Eden, he decided after a minute. That woman knew how to give comfort like a warm thick blanket, tucked in tight around you. Maggie would want to see her gap-toothed grin upon waking. Plus, if anyone had a link to the past, if anyone knew where to find her mother, it would be Maggie’s best friend.

Jack thought of the first time he’d met Hillary, the summer between his junior and senior years of college. He’d seen the resemblance between mother and daughter immediately: the carefree smile, the tousled red hair. The way they both watched you during a conversation as if filing away data, all the little bits and bytes that made you up.

It was July, he remembered, after the holiday weekend. They’d just spent a few days at Taz‘s place in Westchester, and Mags wanted to drive up to see her mom…

*

“That’s it, the brown house at the end of the block.”

Jack pulled up to the curb and cut the engine. “Cute place.” Tucked away on a side street, the houses mirrored each other but for the shade of paint and color of flowers on the porches.

“It’s not Wellesley.”

He glanced over, surprised at the chill in Mags’ voice. “I came here to meet your parents, not talk stocks with the neighbors. You gonna introduce me, or should we just sit in the car all afternoon?”

Maggie stuck out her tongue as she jumped from the silver BMW. “Come on, then.” She danced ahead of him up the sidewalk, dodging his kisses and worming away from the hand that tried to slip itself around her waist.

Jack laughed out loud and finally scooped her up and tossed all one hundred pounds of her over his shoulder. She squealed and a woman dragging a garbage can to the curb looked over at them.

“Put me down,” Maggie said as they neared number two-sixty. Her feet dragged a little as the sidewalk cracked and split, and her mood sobered once they neared the front steps. By the time she rapped on the door and pushed it open, she’d stopped smiling altogether.

“Mom? Hello?”

He heard rustling down the hallway, and then a mirror version of Maggie burst out of the kitchen. “What are you doing here? You didn’t call—I had no idea you were coming!” The woman flung her arms around Maggie and kissed her on the cheek. “Why didn’t you let me know? I would have planned something for dinner.” She glanced down at the turquoise hospital scrubs she wore. The laces of one rubbery white shoe hung open. “I haven’t even showered. I only got home a few minutes ago.” For the first time, she looked away from her daughter, taking in Jack.

“Hi.” He reached out a hand. “Jack Major.”

“Hillary Doyle-Murphy. It’s a pleasure. Maggie’s told me a lot about you.”

She has? Good.

“I’m afraid my husband won’t be home for a few hours.” She turned back to Maggie. “Are you staying overnight?”

Maggie shook her head, and a cloud settled across her face. Jack let his arm fall across her shoulders, protecting her from a discomfort he sensed and couldn’t understand.

“No, we have a long drive back. We just wanted to stop in, have a drink, say hello.”

Hillary’s smile faded. “Oh. All right. Well, come on back to the porch. I just brewed some iced tea.”

“Sounds good,” Jack said. He glanced at a family photo hanging on the wall. “Do I get the grand tour?”

“Do you really want one?’

“Sure.” Didn’t Mags get it? He wanted to know everything about her: where she came from, what she pined for, how she’d come to be this amazing woman who turned his world upside down. He knew only pieces of her, gathered up in the six months they’d been dating, but he wanted to know so much more. These walls, her mother’s laugh, the scent of lemon polish that lingered in the air, the slant of the stairs, the little-girl pictures on the walls—he drank it all in, hints of the Maggie she’d been and the Maggie she might someday grow to be.

“Bedroom, bedroom, bathroom, living room on the other side of the stairs. Kitchen at the end of the hall.” Maggie stopped, her arms at her sides.

“What’s upstairs?”

“My mom and step-dad’s room, and another bathroom. And an office.” Her voice was flat.

“This your old room?” Jack pushed open a door sitting ajar. He guessed it must have been. Yellow walls matched a yellow and pink comforter. Fluffy pink pillows sat against the wall. A scarred desk in the corner. A tall dresser with a jewelry box on top. Different movie posters on the walls.

“Don’t tell me. You had a crush on Brad Pitt.”

Maggie grinned, though she remained in the doorway. “Yup. Still do,

actually. Sorry.”

Jack sighed. “I guess I’ll get over it.” He backed out into the hall. “Who had the other bedroom down here?” He paused in the open door and glanced at an old computer on a metal desk and a twin bed covered with a brown spread. Two pairs of worn work boots lay tossed in the corner.

“My stepbrother.”

Jack turned, surprised. “You never told me you had a brother.”

“Stepbrother,” she corrected. “Dillon. I haven’t talked to him in a long time.”

“Why not?”

Maggie’s eyes changed and the light in them disappeared. “Long story.”

Jack wanted to ask, wanted to know more, but something in her face stopped him. What the hell happened here? he wondered. The tension stretched across Mags’ cheekbones startled him. She’d never so much as mentioned a stepbrother in all the time he’d known her. Wasn’t that odd? He knew plenty of mixed families, and it wasn’t any surprise that sometimes the kids lost touch after leaving home, but this seemed different somehow. Maybe they just didn’t get along. Maybe Dillon was a lot older, or younger, and they didn’t have anything in common.

Jack shook his head and followed Maggie to the porch, putting it out of his mind. In the next year and a-half, neither one of them mentioned it again.

*

A switch flipped over in Jack’s mind. That name. The one he hadn’t recognized earlier, because he’d been half out of his wits at seeing Maggie again.

Dillon.

That was it. Mags had come to Boston and the Deveau Ball looking for her stepbrother. She’d been almost frantic in her search, glancing over shoulders every time someone new walked into the room. But why? From all Jack knew, there had never been any close relationship between the two. It didn’t make sense.

Up ahead, the sign for Boston’s largest hospital came into view. As the ambulance drove toward the Emergency Room, he pulled into the first parking garage he could find, a half-block up the street. Grabbing his cell phone, he thumbed through the saved numbers. Thank God Eden had insisted on giving it to him before he left the ball. Just in case, Jack, she’d drawled, and he’d humored her, letting her punch the numbers into his phone with maddening precision. He found her name after a few seconds of fumbling and recalled the last time he and Mags and Eden had all been together.

Las Vegas, of course: twenty-four hours of thrill and heartache, all wrapped up into a neat little day framed on either end by a plane ride. Start at ground zero, in love with the most beautiful woman in the world, and end up the next morning with your heart handed to you on a platter. Wrap up and take home, or discard on the way out. But for the change in calendar year, the scenario seemed frighteningly familiar.

Jack set his jaw. Not happening again, Mags, I can promise you that. You’re not leaving me again, not before I get a chance to say my piece. You’re not getting off that easy this time.

6:00 a.m.

For a while, Maggie felt nothing. It was as if she’d fallen into some kind of ocean, buoyed by gentle waves. She couldn’t feel her arms or her legs, but that didn’t worry her. She had a sense that the hum she could hear in the distance kept her afloat, and though she tried a couple of times to swim toward it, strange hands pushed her back. After a while, she gave up struggling and stayed where she was.

Once she thought she opened her eyes and saw a massive clock face above her, except this clock had four hands instead of two, and they spun around faster than they should have. She tried to count the seconds, but they ticked off in erratic beats, and just when she thought she’d gotten the hang of it, a new pattern began.

I’m dreaming. She had a vague recollection of a car accident, of her legs pinned beneath the dashboard and a collar around her neck. Had she driven off the road? Smashed head-on into someone else? She couldn’t piece together the details. She thought maybe Jack had been there too, but she couldn’t remember for sure, and that frightened her. She tried to ask for him, but no one seemed to be listening.

The clock spoke to her from its mouthless face. You’re out of time, it said. No more choices. No more solutions. Out of time.

Maggie wanted to cover her ears, but she couldn’t. She wasn’t even sure she could find her hands. So what else is new? she challenged the voice. Time has always been my enemy. I’ve never had enough of it, and when I need it most, when I need it to slow down or spin back or change, it never listens to me. Her thoughts crystallized for a minute, and everything came back to her. The house. The bank. The foreclosure. Dillon. Jack.

She whimpered and tried to sit up. She had so much to take care of.

At once, she felt a prick in her arm, and after a minute or two, warmth washed over her belly and slid down to her toes. She relaxed. Really, it didn’t matter. None of it mattered anymore. Time never stopped, and it certainly never went in reverse. No use wishing and hoping for things that would never come to be. Blackness came again, and this time Maggie embraced it, because diving down deep into it was the only way she could wash away memory once and for all.

*

Jack flipped his cell phone shut and shoved it into his pocket. He ran the words through his mind and hoped Maggie would listen to what he had to say. She wouldn’t have much of a choice, but he’d try and break it to her as gently as he could. Pulling off the tuxedo jacket he still wore, he tossed it into the backseat of the Navigator and headed for the hospital’s main lobby. Two nurses on break stood a few feet away. A reddish-blue haze from the sign above them colored their faces like a bruise. They puffed on cigarettes and cut him a glance as he walked inside.

Jack found the reception desk. “Excuse me.”

The woman with the graying bun ignored him as she wrote something on a clipboard. Crow’s feet lined her eyes, and her mouth pulled down into a frown.

“Excuse me?”

“Just a minute.” She didn’t look up.

Jack watched thirty-two seconds click by on the clock behind her. He grabbed a stray paperclip lying on the desk and twisted it until it broke in his fingers. Another twenty seconds. Still the woman continued to write. Jack turned in a slow circle, keeping both hands inside his pockets so he wouldn’t reach over the desk and yank the clipboard out of her hands.

Finally she raised her eyes. “May I help you?”

He let a breath puff out before answering. Isn’t this the hospital? Isn’t this where people come when they’re bleeding or dying or holding a limb together with a shirt sleeve? Shouldn’t you be showing me some concern? Because somewhere inside, Jack was pretty sure he was bleeding too.

He rubbed his knuckles against his jawline, rough with morning stubble. “A friend of mine was brought in a little while ago. From a car accident. Maggie Doyle.”

The woman’s face changed slightly. She slid her rolling chair across the carpet and tapped the keys of her computer.

“Well, I don’t have any information right now. You know, I can’t tell you anything, anyway, unless you’re family. Or unless the patient allows it. You’ll have to take a seat and wait for a doctor or a family member.”

A family member? Jack didn’t think any would be coming, and was about to say so when the telephone rang and she picked it up. Swiveling away from him, she chirped something into the receiver. He took a few steps back and checked out the room while he considered his next move. A ruddy-cheeked man with a crooked toupee sat in one corner, staring at an infomercial on the television. Two seats over, a little girl with tangled hair crouched at the feet of a harried-looking woman. The woman flipped through a magazine, and one heel jiggled against the floor. Her leg knocked the little girl in the chin every so often. Neither one seemed to notice or care.

Jack looked at his watch and took a drink of water from the fountain in the corner. Warm. Gross. He paced the length of the room twice and thought again about his plan. He wondered if he’d considered all the details. He didn’t have Suzi or Carl or anyone from the office running reports and comparing data. No one to bounce ideas off, no time for lunch with a colleague to consider the possibilities. All he had was a hunch gathered after a sleepless night.

Just make the call, he told himself on his third trip past Ms. Jiggle-Foot and her kid. Make the call, and then tell Maggie. He’d worked through every possible solution to the predicament he faced. None was ideal. All would have difficult consequences. But one he could work with. He just needed to make the phone call fast, before his office opened for the morning. With the expansion project running behind deadline, he’d ordered a skeleton staff to work on Saturdays. Now he could have cursed himself for the decision. The fewer people who were involved with this, the better.

Jack slid his phone out again and ran one thumb over the keys.

God, he didn’t want to do this to Mags. He didn’t want her to find out like this. But it was the only way he could think of…

He dialed the number he knew by heart. One ring. Two. C’mon. I know you’re up. I know you left the ball before eleven. I know you’ve already run four miles and are probably on your second bowl of oatmeal. Just answer your goddamned cell.

“Carl Anderson.”

“Carl, it’s Jack.”

“Is everything all right?”

“Listen, I need you to run some numbers for me, get some paperwork together as soon as you can. It’s regarding the Hart’s Falls house.”

*

Maggie struggled to open her eyes. Where was she? Rough, thin cotton rubbed underneath her fingertips. Satin, she thought. My dress is supposed to be satin.

She tried to sit up, but someone put a hand on her shoulder.

“Take it easy.”

Maggie rolled her head to one side. A jolly-faced nurse, all double chins, cheeks, and teeth, smiled down at her. “Welcome back.”

Back from where? Then Maggie remembered. The ball. The storm. The accident. She tried to swallow, but her mouth tasted funny. Her insides seemed wobbly. Really, she felt as though she’d been wrapped in stuffing and stored in a cardboard box, just recently let out for air with no idea which end was up.

“What time is it?”

“’Bout quarter to seven in the morning.” The nurse fastened a blood pressure cuff around Maggie’s arm. “Why? You got a hot date?”

I wish. Maggie stared at the nurse’s badge. Blue capital letters swam around for a moment before spelling out “Bella”. She wondered if that was the woman’s real name or a nickname. Was it short for Isabella? Annabelle? Elizabeth? Had someone she loved, a boy perhaps, given it to her?

Only three people had ever called her Mags. Dillon, then Jack. And Eden, after a while. No one else since. Funny things, nicknames. Most times you’d never pick them for yourself, but they sounded just right coming off someone else’s tongue.

“How long have I been here?”

Bella pulled a pen from her pocket and wrote something on a clipboard. “You were brought in a little over an hour ago. Checked in through Emergency and then moved up here.” A beeping sound started in the room next door. “If you need anything, press the button beside you. I’ll be back in a little while.”

“Wait.” This time Maggie did sit up, ignoring the pain in her lower back. “Please. My friend was in the car with me. Neve Weatherby. Do you know where she is? Is she okay?”

The nurse paused in the doorway. “I’m sorry. I don’t have that information. And even if I did, I couldn’t release it to you.”

“But I have to know. If you’re not allowed to tell me, then—” Maggie threw off the covers and swung her feet over the side of the bed. Then I’ll just go find out myself. Dizziness swept over her and she grabbed at the edge of the mattress to steady herself.

Bella marched back over and lay firm hands on Maggie’s shoulders. “Honey, you were involved in a serious car accident. You’re lucky to only have a few minor injuries. The doctor wants you to stay here for observation a few more hours, so just lie down and try to relax.” She helped Maggie back into the bed and rearranged the covers. “I’ll see what I can find out about your friend.”

Maggie didn’t answer. Glumness settled into her limbs as the nurse pulled the door shut. Her hair felt greasy. Her stomach rumbled, and she realized she hadn’t eaten anything in the last twelve hours besides a handful of appetizers. In one corner of the room, she spied a pile of green satin folded on a chair. That’s where her dress had ended up. She wondered if the doctors cut it off her and figured they probably did. Ruined, she thought, just like me. Just like the whole night.

Closing her eyes, Maggie stared at the red speckles on the insides of her eyelids. All she’d wanted to do was find a way to come up with the money she owed. She hadn’t wanted to skip down Memory Lane. She hadn’t intended to ruin anyone else’s evening. She certainly hadn’t meant to end up inside the walls of a city hospital. But that’s exactly what had happened, after all.

She traced circles on the sheets and wondered where she would go tomorrow or the next day. Her attorney said she might continue to live in her house while the foreclosure proceedings unfolded, but for how long? Fresh pain seared a strip behind Maggie’s eyes as she recalled the telephone message from Bullieston. The tumbling of Jack’s business cards into the street with the same name inscribed upon them. The moment of realization, the sad sealing of an inevitable deal.

…our company is planning an expansion into Hart’s Falls, and we’ve been looking at several homes in the north neighborhoods down there. I understand that you might be open to discussion…

Open to discussion. She supposed that was one way to look at it. She flopped one arm over her face. She guessed she could sell the house to them. That way, at least she could keep the business. But selling to Jack’s company meant seeing Jack again. It meant talking to him, signing papers with him, straining to carry on a conversation while trying not to dissolve into a puddle at his feet.

How could she possibly deal with that?

What other choice did she have?

7:00 a.m.

A blinding light and the television blaring to life woke Dillon as electricity surged back into his apartment.

“Shit.” He reached out and rolled clear off the couch. Where the hell was he? What time was it?

The storm. The transformer blowing out. Ditching the Deveau Ball. Oh, yeah.

He untwisted his boxers, found the TV remote, and silenced the infomercial. Another remote dimmed the lights above him. He rubbed his hair and ambled to the wide windows that overlooked the city.

Where hours before he’d seen only darkness, now pinpricks of light and color dotted the landscape. The sun struggled to break through the few remaining clouds, and Dillon realized with surprise that he’d slept almost nine straight hours. It looked as though the rain had let up, though wind still rattled the panes. He mentally thumbed down his list of clients, wondering how much damage each had seen and hoping repairs wouldn’t set him back too far.

Then he realized the other sound that had pulled him from sleep: his cell phone ringing. Where had he left it last night? He fished around the couch cushions, the pockets of his jeans, and the top of his entertainment center. Finally he found it under the ottoman. It beeped, indicating a missed call. Dillon slid his thumb to the voicemail button, but before he had a chance to play the message, the phone rang again.

He didn’t recognize the number that came up on the screen, but he answered it anyway.

“Yeah?”

“Dillon Murphy?”

“Who’s calling?” Only a few people had his private cell number, and he sure didn’t recognize this southern accent on the other end.

“Eden Fife. I’m a friend of Maggie Doyle’s…”

Dillon made it downstairs in less than ten minutes. Stopping only to brush his hair and teeth, he pulled on a t-shirt, found a pair of shorts, and stuffed his feet into Nikes that waited by the door. On his way out, he glanced into the mirror. He rubbed one hand over his chin and wished he had time to shave.

Dillon took the stairs two at a time and headed for his truck, taking in great gulps of the cool dawn air. Jesus, but the storm had signed its name everywhere he looked. Tree branches, overturned flowerpots, and piles of trash lay strewn around the manicured lawns. He dodged his neighbor’s patio umbrella and righted his own garbage cans before jumping into his pickup. With a quick glance over one shoulder, he headed out of the complex, barely able to make sense of what Eden had told him on the phone. Her voice still burned in his ear, this friend of Mags’ who’d woken him out of a fitful sleep.

…your sister’s been in a car accident…

…came here to Boston looking for you…

…at the hospital right now…

The irony left Dilllon cold. Hadn’t he been thinking of Mags, remembering her, half of yesterday? Normally he didn’t believe in karma or any other psychic crap about everything happening for a reason, but what was he supposed to think? Had there been some vibe in the air, some hint along the skyline that his sister had arrived? Where else had all those memories come from?

He slammed on the brakes at the first intersection, where the traffic light blinked in lieu of its regular red-yellow-green pattern. A tired-looking cop stood in the center of the street, one palm out.

C’mon…Dillon smoothed both hands over his hair and tucked it behind his ears.

Questions buzzed at his lips. What the hell was Mags doing in the city after all this time? Looking for him? Why? Where had she been for the last five or six years? He tried to sift through the pieces of conversation. Eden hadn’t said much, just asked him to come to the hospital as soon as he could.

…they want a family member, to release information and take her home…

But he didn’t even know where home was for Mags, not anymore. And why him? Was he the only one she had left? What happened to Hillary? Guilt drifted over him, reminding him how long it had been since he’d called or written his stepmother. Things just got so busy, once the business took off. The last time he’d tried, a few months back, he found himself talking to a recorded voice that informed him the number had been disconnected.

As if she dropped off the earth, Dillon thought. Same as Mags. Angry with himself for letting them both go, he revved through the intersection and skidded across puddles. The last time his little sister came home from a hospital, she’d refused to see him or talk to him. Well, that wasn’t going to happen this time. This time, he had a chance to make it up to her. He had a chance to atone for whatever mistakes still remained chalked up in the loss column against him.

Dillon tightened his grip on the wheel and took every corner as fast as he could, counting down the minutes and the miles until he could see her again.

*

Jack sat in the far corner of the waiting room, cell phone under his chin. He jotted the figures on a page he’d torn from an old magazine.

“Thanks. Fax the contracts to my home office. You have the number?”

He hung up, made one more call and then checked his email, thankful for the Blackberry that wired him to the world no matter where he was. Three messages from the office, and one forwarded from the Bay Bank. He read it over, scanning the details, and then glanced at his watch. Perfect.

Jack looked around for a vending machine. He could use a cup of coffee, even that stale hospital crap, after a night like tonight.

“Cafeteria’s down the hall and to the left,” the receptionist said in a singsong voice when he asked.

Too-bright lights made him squint on the way in, and it took a moment for him to get his bearings. Tables sat in random spots around the room, scratched and scarred with years of people’s nervous fidgeting. Some chairs were pushed in under tables, while others lined up in neat rows or sat tossed to the side. All seemed to tell stories of the people who’d sat in them before. Waiting. Thinking. Weeping. Loving. Losing.

Jack headed for the automatic coffee machines on the other side of the room. A couple of teenagers glanced at him, taking in the ruined tux and dark circles under his eyes, he imagined. He wondered why they sat there or who they waited for. Maybe they worked at the hospital, somewhere in the bowels of the building. Maybe they helped keep the place running for all the dozy-eyed people who wandered in and out every day.

He filled a Styrofoam cup and drank the coffee black, searing his throat and not really caring. He tried to sit down, but the chair dug into his back and his thighs. He stood up instead and filled the cup a second time. Somewhere behind his eyelids he felt his brain wake up, a little lurch helped by the caffeine. It’ll all be settled soon. No way to go but forward from here.

The teenagers vanished through some side door, and Jack stood alone in the cavernous space. One fluorescent light began to buzz above him, giving the whole place a sort of horror-movie vibe. A stooped man pushed a wheelchair through the door, wheezing with the effort. A shriveled woman hooked up to oxygen slept in the chair.

Jack looked away and checked his watch. He’d been killing time for nearly thirty minutes; surely Eden had arrived by now.

I’ll meet you there, she’d promised. Just let me make one phone call first.

He strode back down the hallway and into the waiting area. A few more people had filled the chairs, but no one he recognized. He glanced around, looking for a swath of blonde hair, listening for a Virginia accent. Nothing. Where the hell was she? How long did it take to make a goddamned phone call and catch a cab across town? Jack walked back to the desk. Sometime while he’d been down in the cafeteria, the shift must have changed. Now a bald black man with a thick neck and shoulders sat behind the computer.

“Yes, sir?”

“Maggie Doyle. She was brought in from a car accident a little while ago. I’m checking to see if you have any new information.” He cleared his throat. “I need to see her.”

“Better get in line.”

The voice, smooth and threatening, came from behind him. Startled, Jack turned to see a sandy-haired man about his own age. Lean and muscular, the guy looked like he spent most of his days in the sun. He reminded Jack of some kind of wildcat, golden-haired and wary-eyed and solid as rock. He rested one elbow on the desk and slid both thumbs through the loops of his jeans.

“You aren’t any kind of family, far as I can tell.” He gave Jack a once-over.

Jack’s hackles rose. “No, I’m not.” Not yet, anyway, he wanted to add. “But Maggie is my—”

“She’s my sister,” the man interrupted. A ponytail flopped over one shoulder as he shook his head. “And if anyone’s going to see her, that’d be me.”

“You’re Dillon.” Jack’s shoulders dropped down from where they’d hunched up around his ears. He stuck out his hand. Jesus, there were about a hundred things he wanted to ask the guy.

Dillon waited a long minute before returning the handshake. “Still don’t know who that makes you.”

“Jack Major. I…ah…” How the hell was he supposed to define himself in relation to Maggie? “I knew Mags back in school. We ran into each other at the Deveau Ball last night, and I…um…happened to be following her when the accident happened.” He waited for big brother to ask why he’d been tailing Maggie, but the question didn’t come.

“Yeah, think I remember hearing about you. Been a while, though.” Dillon’s tongue poked into the corner of one cheek as he considered something else. “You’re some big-shot corporate guy here in the city, aren’t you?”

“I work for Bullieston Software.” He paused. “Eden call you?”

Dillon nodded.

“Is she here?”

“Don’t know. Never met her. Only talked to her on the phone.” An odd smile zigzagged across his face. He fell silent, still sizing Jack up.

Jesus, we’re like two animals circling each other, Jack thought. Aren’t we on the same side? Aren’t we both here for Maggie? But as he looked into Dillon’s face, he saw something simmering just under the surface: a near-feral devotion, a protective instinct. He knew then that he would feel the same way if some stranger showed up in a hospital demanding to see his little sister.

“Listen, man, I’m just here because I’m concerned.” Jack took one step back and raised both palms.

“You still her boyfriend?” Dillon cocked his head to one side. “Or did you have something to do with the car accident?”

“Jesus, no,” Jack said and then wondered which question he was answering. He hesitated and wondered if he should mention what Eden had revealed to him on the phone. Did Dillon have any idea why Maggie had come to Boston? Did he know what she faced, what she needed to do in order to save everything she owned before time slammed the door shut?

“Have you spoken to Mags? Recently, I mean?”

Dillon scrubbed his chin with a calloused hand. “No. It’s been a long time, unfortunately. Too long.”

Jack wondered who else Maggie had cut out of her life. At least now he had a good idea why.

“You still didn’t tell me what you’re doing here,” Dillon went on. “If you’re not dating her and you weren’t involved in the wreck, then…” He waited for Jack to finish the sentence.

I’m in love with her, Jack wanted to say. I want to marry her—again. For good. Forever. But he held his tongue. Timing was everything, he’d learned long ago, especially when dealing with people who weren’t on your side. Yet.

“It’s a business matter,” he began. “Sort of a sticky thing, actually. I thought we’d be able to talk it out at the ball, but—”

Dillon shook his head. “You’re not here for business. Not at seven o’clock on a Saturday morning.”

You’d be surprised. Jack wondered for a moment how Carl was making out with the bank. He changed his tactics. “You’re right,” he admitted. “It’s not all business. I need your help in convincing Maggie to listen to me.”

Dillon whistled. “Mags always was a tough girl to convince of anything.”

“Isn’t that the truth?”

The guy’s guard seemed to crack a little, and Jack took advantage of the pause. “Anyway, Eden told me you’re in the landscaping business. I’m hoping you can do me a favor.”

“What does that have to do with Maggie?”

The man at the reception desk interrupted them. “Mr. Murphy? Your sister has been moved to room six-oh-two. If you’d like to go up and see her now, you’ll need to take a visitor’s badge. Take the elevator to the sixth floor. Nurses’ station will be directly in front of you when you get off.” He gestured across the lobby.

Dillon nodded and clipped on a badge. For a minute he hesitated, looking at Jack with a steady gaze. “Come on, then,” he said, and moved away from the desk. “Tell me what you need.”

Jack ran a hand over his hair, took a badge, and followed.

*

“You’ve got a couple of visitors waiting outside to see you.” Rosy-cheeked, Nurse Bella pulled the room’s two chairs close to Maggie’s bed. Her wide bottom jiggled with the effort. “Would you like them to come in?”

Maggie opened her eyes and shifted in the bed. The hospital gown rode up on her thighs. She hadn’t been sleeping anyway, just reliving the last twenty-four hours in excruciating detail. Who is it? she wanted to ask. But she didn’t want to get her hopes up.

“Okay.” The nurse disappeared, and after a minute, someone knocked at the door. “Come on in.”

Eden’s worried face appeared around the corner. Her hair had fallen out of its updo, and mascara dotted her cheeks. The bottom of her dress was wrinkled, as if she’d been crushing it in her palms or winding it around her fingers. Still, Maggie thought, she looks like she just fell from the pages of a magazine. How to Remain Glamorous the Morning After.

But then Eden burst into tears and darted across the room. “Mags! You’re okay?” She clutched Maggie’s hands in both of hers, weeping. “God, we were both so worried. You have no idea. I couldn’t find you, for the longest time. First we came in the wrong entrance, around the back side or something, and we couldn’t find anyone who knew anything. When we finally did, they wouldn’t tell us anything for the longest time…” She fished for a tissue in her purse.

Maggie glanced toward the door. “Who’s we?”

Eden turned and waved, motioning someone in. A wide-shouldered man took a few steps across the threshold. His brows drew together in worry. Fatigue and pain shot through his features, marring his usual good looks. He leaned against the other empty bed, and his gaze took in the stark walls, the black television, the machines standing like soldiers at attention around the room. Maggie swallowed. She hadn’t expected to see him.

“Andrew. Did the hospital call you?”

Neve’s husband nodded, and his fingers picked at the buttons on his shirt. “I drove up as fast as I could. Met your friend here outside in the parking lot.” He cleared his throat. “Nurse said you’re going to be all right? You can go home in a few hours?”

“I guess so. I sprained both ankles and I’ve got a mild concussion and every other part of me hurts like hell. But otherwise, I’ll be fine.” Maggie pushed herself to an awkward seat in the bed. “How’s Neve? Where is she? The nurse wouldn’t say.”

Andrew shuffled his feet around. He stuck his hands into the pockets of his jeans and avoided her gaze. “She’s got a concussion, I guess. Dislocated shoulder and maybe some torn ligaments in her right leg.” His jaw twitched.

“Oh, God.” Guilt hopped onto Maggie’s shoulder and bit at her with sharp, tiny teeth. “Will she be all right?”

“They think so,” he said, but his voice cracked on the last word. He jammed the heel of one hand against his eyes.

Maggie fell back against the pillow. If I hadn’t brought her to the ball…if we’d left before the storm got really bad…if I’d been paying attention at that intersection instead of thinking about Jack…

“It’s not your fault,” Andrew continued. “I guess the police are filing charges against the other driver. He blew a point one-two on the breathalyzer.” Still Neve’s husband stood at a crooked angle, swaying as he looked around the room for the tenth time.

“But the accident—there was a lot of trauma to her body, they said, and Neve…” He could barely get the words out. “…she might have lost the baby.”

8:00 a.m.

Dillon stared at Jack as the guy finished talking. The elevator chimed and slowed at the sixth floor and the two men made their way into a brightly lit hallway.

“You’re kidding me. That’s why she came to Boston? To the ball? Why didn’t she just call me?” I could have written her a check months ago. All she had to do was ask.

Jack shrugged. “She must have had her reasons. You know Mags.”

Dillon did. Exhaling, he took a minute to check the signs in front of them. The nurses’ station, covered with files and charts and a couple of wilting bouquets, sat empty. A custodian walked by, wheeling a towering laundry cart. Static crackled on the intercom above them. Dillon crossed his arms and pursed his lips. “I don’t know if she’ll go for it.”

“I don’t either. That’s why I need your help.” Two hallways led away from them in opposite directions. Jack lifted a hand toward the right. “Six-oh-two. It’s that way.”

“What are you gonna say?” Dillon asked. “Just tell her right out? Or ask her, make her think it’s her choice?”

“I haven’t decided, exactly.”

Dillon chuckled. The guy had an uphill battle ahead of him. He hadn’t seen Maggie in years; still, he couldn’t imagine that she’d agree to this solution without a fight. Feeling magnanimous, he pounded Jack on the back. “Okay, I’ll do it,” he said. “If she says yes, I’ll do it for you. For both of you.”

*

Maggie scrunched around in the wheelchair, trying to get comfortable. Thank God for whatever pain relievers the nurse had given her, because they’d turned her full-body ache into a minimal buzz about the hips and ankles. She looked up at Eden. “Guess I’m ready.”

Her friend grasped the handles and rolled Maggie out into the hall. “Okay. She’s just down around the corner, Andrew said.” They swung a hard left. “Room six-sixteen.”

Maggie chewed at what was left of her thumbnail. Nerves roiled in her stomach, and she thought twice about the Jell-O she’d just finished. Cherry-flavoring coated the back of her tongue, and she forced down the gag that wanted to bring it up again. A clock on the wall read a little after eight. According to Andrew, Neve had been awake for almost an hour. The first person she’d asked for, after her husband, was Maggie.

Eden slowed outside the closed door of room six-sixteen. Down here, near the end of the hall, everything moved at a hushed pace. They heard no voices, no doors opening and closing, no announcements over the intercom. To Maggie, the air itself seemed suspended. As if everyone and everything waited for recovery. As if there were no guarantees about who survived whole and unbroken and who didn’t. She closed her eyes and said a prayer. Everything that had mattered to her hours earlier—the insurmountable bills, her house, thoughts of Jack—had fled with Andrew’s broken words about the baby.

It isn’t bad enough that I jeopardized my own life. I destroyed another one. One that isn’t even here yet, one that’s just a promise, a kiss inside Neve’s belly, a swelling of love and cells and tiny fingers and toes waiting to be shaped.

“Hang on.” She sat in the wheelchair and stared at the door. She wondered if she could face what waited for her on the other side. In another life, an earlier one, she might have fled. She might have pretended to be too sick to speak to her friend. She might have cried into her pillowcase until the worst of the winds passed. She might have pretended that work needed her, that she couldn’t tear herself away from her deadlines.

Not anymore. I‘m not running from things that hurt. I told Jack the truth, after all. I didn’t break apart then, and I won’t now. I can hold Neve’s hand and tell her I’m sorry. I can help her heal. I can face this. I can. She sat up in the chair. Rubbed her cheeks dry. Smoothed the pilled cotton blanket over her lap. Counted the beats of her heart and told it a little bit of fear was okay.

“I’m ready.”

*

“Wait a minute,” Jack said as he and Dillon started down the hall. He pulled out his cell phone. A nurse had reappeared behind the desk, and she frowned as he answered it. Shaking her head, she pointed at the sign behind him, which read “Cell Phone Use is Prohibited in this Facility.”

Jack nodded, acknowledging her and ignoring her in the same motion. He knew the rules. It didn’t mean he always played by them. “Carl? You get the contracts?”

“They’re all set.”

“Fax them to my home number?”

“Just like you said.”

“Talk to the bank manager?”

“Just got off the phone with him.”

The nurse cleared her throat, and Jack slid behind a cart of supplies someone had left in the hall. “Okay. I should have her signature in the next hour or so.”

For the first time, doubt crept into the VP’s voice. “You’re sure? I mean, I thought she was—”

“I’ll have it,” Jack said.

“You know the board is going to have a field day with this, don’t you?”

“I’ll handle the board.” Jack flipped the phone shut. Meeting Dillon’s gaze, he gave a sharp nod. “All set. Let’s find Mags.” He fought the nerves clamping his stomach together and continued down the hall. The sooner he got out what he needed to say, the better. He wasn’t sure he could do it more than twice in a lifetime, anyway.

*

Maggie forced herself to look straight at Neve, who lay with the covers pulled up to her chin. Her hair fell across her forehead, damp with perspiration, or maybe tears. Andrew perched on a chair beside the bed. His hands held one of Neve’s, and both thumbs moved against her skin in circles of sympathy.

Maggie inched the wheelchair forward. Lightheadedness flooded her for a minute and she closed her eyes as she thought about what she wanted to say. I’m sorry. I know how much you wanted to be a mother. I know the grief that comes with a loss like that, even if you had the stirring of a baby inside you and I never did. Never will. She wanted to tell Neve that she knew about the pain. She understood the emptiness of realizing you wouldn’t carry a child to term. She knew what it meant to give up the possibility of creating a life.

She had to be strong. She had to show Neve that it was possible to go on.

Maggie opened her eyes again. This time, her friend was smiling.

“It’s okay,” she said before Maggie could utter a word. “The baby—it’s—we’re—healthy. We’re going to be fine.”

Maggie burst out crying. A whoosh of emotion filled her ribcage, fear and uncertainty replaced by complete joy. “Oh, I—” She began to hiccup. “I th-thought—Andrew said—”

“They didn’t know at first. But the doctor did a couple of tests and the baby’s fine.”

“They’re s-sure?” Maggie mopped her face with a corner of her blanket.

Neve nodded and glanced up at the machine beside her bed. “The doctor said everything looks okay, just bed rest for the next couple of weeks, and when I’m back on my feet, I have to take it easy. But she said all the signs are good, right now.”

“God, I’m so sorry.” Maggie didn’t know what to say or where to begin. “A-about everything.”

Neve stopped smiling, and when she spoke again, she sounded as if she were sitting behind the desk at Doyle Designs, putting a cranky customer in his place. “Stop it. Don’t you dare apologize. It wasn’t your fault. Not the storm, not the accident. Not any of it. Things happen. Life happens. So don’t cry, okay?” She squeezed Andrew’s hand. “We’ve done enough of that already.”

Maggie’s breath slowed. The hiccups subsided. Neve sounded so together. So healthy and smart. Like always. For the hundredth time, she marveled at her assistant’s composure, at her maturity beyond the twenty-two years. I’m not sure I could go through something like that. Hills and valleys of thinking you lost something and then getting it back again. Imagining you’re at the end of it all and then finding you’re only at the beginning. No, thanks.

“The most important thing is that you’re all right,” Andrew said. He lifted Neve’s hand and brushed his lips against it. “We could always try again. For a baby, I mean. Even adopt, if we had to. But if anything had happened to you, if I’d lost you…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but he didn’t need to, Maggie thought. Everyone in the room could read it on his face.

If I’d lost you, I would have lost everything.

Neve met his gaze and ran her fingertips over his chin, in a gesture so intimate that Maggie blushed to be sitting only a few feet away.

Tumblers clicked inside her brain, and as she sat there, something began to make sense. A padlock, the one she’d fastened across her heart years ago, creaked open. She took a deep breath and drew in the sterile smell of the room mixed with Eden’s perfume behind her. To feel that way about someone, to have that certainty and devotion in your life—maybe it was enough, after all. Maybe Eden was right. Maybe having children, or not having them, wasn’t the only glue that held two people together.

Neve raised herself on one elbow. “Is he here?” she asked.

“Who?”

But Neve was looking at Eden. “Andrew said he was coming. Said you talked to him after the accident.”

“I did,” Eden answered.

Maggie twisted in the wheelchair. “What are you talking about?”

Eden tucked a piece of hair behind one ear. “How do you think I knew you were here? After you left the ball, I thought you went straight home. Neve said you didn’t want to stay ay my place, so I figured that was that. Couple of hours later, I was saying my goodbyes, when I got this call telling me to come to the hospital as soon as I could.”

Maybe it was the painkillers kicking in, but Maggie couldn’t spin together what her friend was trying to say. “What are you talking about?”

“It was Jack, silly. Who else?”

Jack? “But I told him…” I told him I couldn’t have children. I told him he was wasting his time. I told him I knew he was following me just to get my house. “I told him to go to hell.”

Eden shrugged. “You probably told him a lot of things. Doesn’t matter. He was trying to find you, you know. Showed up right after the accident happened, I guess, and followed the ambulance to the hospital. He called me when he got here.”

Maggie’s mouth went dry. “You’re kidding.”

“Do I look like I’m kidding?”

“I said terrible things to him.”

Eden put her hands on slim hips. “Mags, he’s so madly in love with you, I don’t think he cares. He would have carried you here on his back if the medics had let him. He’s never gotten over you. That was obvious about ten seconds after you walked into the ball last night.” She shook her head. “Whatever you said, I’m pretty sure it’s forgiven.”

Maggie bunched the blanket up between her fingers. She didn’t know what to say. What to think. What to feel. Hills and valleys of thinking you lost something and then getting it back again. Imagining you’re at the end of it all and then finding you’re only at the beginning…

“Maggie.” The voice was Neve’s, quiet and firm. “Give him another chance.”

She looked at Neve, hand in hand with her husband, and at Eden, and then Maggie knew. Okay, she had debt. She had doubts. She had an ailing mother and broken fences with a stepbrother that needed mending. Jack had a fiancée and a million-dollar business that wanted to buy her tiny one. She could never give him children. He came from one of the most prestigious families in the city. She was stubborn. He was more so. Yet still she wanted to be with him, to wake up next to him, to wind herself into him with every atom that vibrated in her aching being. It defied explanation, but she guessed it didn’t matter. Maybe that’s what makes it real.

“Where is he now?”

Eden glanced at the door. “Not sure. Want to go find out?”

9:00 a.m.

“She isn’t here.” Dillon backed out of room six-oh-two.

“What do you mean? The guy downstairs said—”

He shrugged. “Maybe they took her somewhere.”

“You think they discharged her already?”

“Nah.”

“I’ll go ask.” Jack headed for the nurses’ station. “Gotta find a bathroom, anyway.”

Dillon leaned against the wall, restless. A nurse, a cute strawberry blonde in purple scrubs, walked by. A chart balanced in the crook of her forearm; a stethoscope hung around her neck. She didn’t look up. He checked the room number again. Then his watch. If what Jack had told him was true, then Mags would need every bit of help both of them could offer. He wondered if that stubborn streak he remembered from childhood still ran strong. He wondered, for the first time, what she looked like now, or if he’d even recognize her. He tugged at his ponytail, pulling it from the rubber band and smoothing back some stray hairs before winding it tight again.

She never liked my hair after I grew it long. It was one of the last things she’d said to him, right before he left for California.

You look like a hippy freak. You’ll never get a girl to go out with you. She’d tossed the comment over her shoulder as the two of them stood in the kitchen washing pots and putting dishes away.

You wish. You probably just want to keep me all to yourself. He’d tried to tease her, but it hadn’t worked. Nothing had worked, not really, since the afternoon he’d come home with bleeding fists only to find an angry Mags waiting for him. Not the grateful little sister he’d expected. Just a girl full of rage and blame and heartache.

The intercom squawked. A doctor walked down the hall and stopped in one room to comfort some family members. Dillon looked at his shoes and waited for Jack to return. At the murmur of female conversation at the end of the hall, he glanced up again. Checked out the blonde pushing the wheelchair. Admired her dress and the figure inside it. Then his gaze dropped to her fiery-haired passenger.

And I thought I wouldn’t recognize her. A smile creaked across Dillon’s face. His kid sister looked just about the same as he remembered, small and bright-eyed, with pale freckles and a voice too big for the body it came from.

They rolled closer, and as Maggie looked up and saw him, she stopped talking. One arm darted out from her lap. She put a hand on a rubber wheel of the chair and stopped it. He heard the breath she drew in, a sharp whistle across her bottom teeth. Ten feet lay between them. That, and more than ten years of rough spots that needed smoothing. Maggie and Dillon stared at each other. Neither one moved.

“You need a haircut,” she said after a minute.

I could say the same thing about you, he thought, looking at the curls that stuck out in all directions. He lifted his shoulders in a shrug, and when she didn’t say anything else, he went to her. Lifting her out of the wheelchair as if she were still a child, still the rebellious, resistant kid he remembered from the day their parents met, Dillon cradled Maggie against his chest. She tensed. Her shoulders heaved. Something shot him through the heart, jump-starting emotions he hadn’t faced in forever. He glanced up at the blonde.

Thank you, he mouthed.

She smiled.

Without another word, Dillon carried Maggie back into her room. Big brother. Protector. The one thing he had tried to be, had wanted to be, so many years ago. Finally, this time, she let him.

“You’re here.” Maggie felt as if the room were filled with fog, as if one of those smoke machines had shot out dry ice and fuzzed up her vision. Was it really Dillon? She’d expected to see Jack standing outside her room. Not her stepbrother. Not the one person she’d come to Boston seeking in the first place. Not the person she’d almost given up on.

He leaned back in the too-small chair beside her bed. “I’m here.”

Maggie turned to Eden. “You called him too?”

Standing in the doorway, her friend grinned, eyes bright. “I found someone at the ball who had his number. What can I say? The guy gets around.” She shot a look at Dillon, who reddened a little. “Plus, hospitals always hassle you if you’re not a family member. I thought I’d better find one.”

Maggie barely heard her friend’s last words. She couldn’t take her eyes off Dillon. Curled up against her pillows, she stared at him. He looked different somehow, weathered, more solemn. He looked older and graver around the eyes and mouth. She wondered how much of that change she was responsible for. How much came from time. How much came from trying to shape a brand new life for himself.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She spread her fingers wide as if trying to indicate the sum of everything she wanted to apologize for. “For…for losing touch. And not calling. And making you come here on a Saturday morning.” And blaming you when I should have blamed myself.

“I was up anyway.”

“Yeah, right,” she joked. “You never used to get up before noon on the weekends.” The smile it elicited from him made Maggie feel good, like a familiar quilt draping itself over her shoulders. That, at least, hadn’t changed with time. It melted away the years, the tension, the strain, until her seventeen-year-old brother sat across from her again.

“How are you? Seriously?”

She let out something that might have been a laugh. Physically? Mentally? Emotionally? Financially? You don’t want to know. “I’ll be okay. Just a little banged up.”

“Heard the guy who hit you was DUI.” An edge of anger laced Dillon’s words, as if he might storm out of the room at any minute and find the striped-shirted idiot who’d plowed into Maggie’s car.

I’m practically thirty, she almost said. You don’t have to protect me anymore. But something hitched in her chest. It had been over ten years since that night. It had been five or six since she saw him last. And still Dillon looked ready to stand up and fight for her today as if nothing at all had changed. As if she hadn’t said horrible things to him. As if she hadn’t blamed him for something that wasn’t his fault.

Was that what brothers did?

Maggie picked at the edge of her sleeve, and a thread unraveled little by little. You don’t have to share blood to be family. Why had it taken her so long to understand that? I always corrected people when they called him my brother. As if the most important thing about our relationship was the word used to define it.

“I’m glad you came,” she said in a whisper.

Dillon scratched his bare knee. A pale quarter-moon scar she remembered from a childhood bike accident arced across his skin. “Me too.”

“Hey, what about me?” The voice came from behind her. “Don’t I get any credit for being part of the welcoming committee?”

Jack. A tingling in Maggie’s toes began climbing its way up her spine, ivy stretching its tendrils along every nerve in her body. Her fingers dropped to the edge of the bed, where they gripped the mattress for support. She thought that if she turned too quickly, she might fall off the bed, through the floor and clear down to China. She squeezed her eyes shut. Send her to the moon and back, keep them apart for a hundred years, she would never forget the sound of Jack Major’s voice or the way it started up a fire inside her.

Oh, Jack, I love you. Tell me it’s not too late.

After a long moment, she dared to look at where he stood in her doorway. He still wore his rumpled tuxedo, missing its jacket and tie, and looked sexier than she might ever have dreamed. Bags puffed out under bloodshot eyes, and she knew that he’d been awake all night. Thinking of her. Following her. Rescuing her. Maybe loving her, too.

The thought stuck in Maggie’s throat. All the nights they’d spent together, all the murmured conversations they’d shared when everyone else in the dorm was asleep, all the heartache of saying goodbye in Vegas, all the years of wondering what if, all the minutes since she’d seen him at the ball and realized nothing had changed between them…they were the thousand little puzzle pieces that made up a love. Her love, her life, was Jack. It always had been.

“Yeah,” she said in a shaky voice. “You get credit too.”

Jack glanced at Dillon as he crossed the room. Smoothing the sheet, he sat down beside her. Maggie ran her fingers across the covers. She wanted to touch him so much that it hurt. He cocked his head. One hand moved to her collarbone and stroked the skin there. He traced the pattern of her racing pulse as if they were the only two people in the room. Electricity arced between them and Maggie drew a shuddering breath.

Jack leaned over, his mouth curving against hers, and kissed her gently. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” he said, the words a whisper.

“Do what?” she murmured.

“Almost get yourself killed. Leave me standing in the middle of the street. Decide for both of us that not having kids means the end of a relationship.” His lips moved to her ear. “Take your pick. But I’m not leaving. Not now. Not ever.”

Maggie tried to stop the fluttering in the back of her throat and found that she couldn’t. “I just…I wasn’t sure. About anything. I didn’t mean to…” She touched the eyes, the nose, the chin she knew by heart.

“I know.” He cupped her cheek with one hand and studied her. “God, I didn’t realize how much I missed you.”

It was as if he’d reached into her mouth and plucked out her words. She felt the stirring of fresh tears behind her eyelids and pressed her fingertips against his. I have so much to tell you, so much that needs sorting out. Then maybe we can move on. Move ahead. Start fresh. Maggie leaned closer to him, meaning to snuggle into his chest and dream away the morning.

But just as quickly as Jack had taken her hands, he leaned back. “There’s still something we have to talk about.”

Maggie thought she heard Dillon make a sound in his throat. She pushed her hair from her face. This didn’t sound good. She drew away and crossed her arms over her chest. “Okay. What?”

A mask, smooth and stoic, slipped into place over the melting green eyes and kind mouth. Jack the businessman replaced Jack the man she loved, and something dropped inside her.

“You still owe the bank upwards of fifteen thousand dollars. Bullieston still wants to buy your house before it goes to foreclosure.”

Maggie felt as though he’d slapped her. After all that had happened, he had the nerve to bring up her money troubles? “I already told you. I don’t want to sell it.” She made her voice flat, to match his. Her face grew hot. Leave it to Jack to resort to business, even at a time like this. She should have known she couldn’t trust him. She should have known he’d always wear the stripes of a Major, just like his father.

“I’ve already drawn up the contracts,” he went on. “All you have to do is sign them.”

Maggie’s jaw clenched. . How dare he try and take advantage of her? He was probably counting on her to be doped up and easy to persuade, she thought. “Forget it. Just because I’m in the hospital doesn’t mean I’ve lost my mind. I told you I didn’t want to sell my house to your company, and I meant it.”

Something like a smile creased the corners of Jack’s mouth. “I heard you.”

She wanted to reach over and peel that smile right off his lips. “Then don’t bother bringing me any contracts. I won’t sign them.” She didn’t care how much love he professed, or how much desire melted her bones. Her business, her house, was the one thing she had left.

Jack slid off the bed.

For a moment, Maggie thought he’d tumbled to the ground. She thought maybe he’d had a heart attack or lost control of the muscles in his legs. She was about to press the nurse’s call button when she took another look.

Jack knelt beside her, palms facing the ceiling, green eyes fixed on her. “Marry me.”

“Are you crazy?”

He shrugged. “Maybe.”

“Get up,” she said, embarrassed. “You’re not serious.” Twelve hours ago, you were engaged to someone else, she almost reminded him. Don’t make a fool of yourself. And don’t make a fool of me.

“I’m very serious.” He shifted to the other knee but stayed put. “I’ll stay down here as long as it takes for you to say yes. Again,” he added.

“I never said yes the first time.”

“You don’t remember the first time.”

Maggie couldn’t argue with that. “You just want my house,” she said instead.

He actually laughed. “Mags, do you really think I’d be making a fool of myself on a hard floor at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning just to weasel your house away from you? A house that, by the way, the bank is going to take in a matter of hours?”

She didn’t know what to say. After a minute, he went on. “Anyway, Bullieston isn’t buying your house. I am.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m buying it so I can give it back to you.”

Maggie sat there, confused. This was the oddest marriage proposal she’d ever heard. “I don’t need your charity.”

“No, but we will need a place to live after you decide you’re going to marry me. And I want it to be that house.” His voice softened. “I want it to be the one you made your own, the one where you started your business. I want it to be ours. I want to live there with you. I want to grow old there with you.” He paused, and his voice grew rough with emotion. “Your life is mine, Mags. It always has been.”

She couldn’t speak for a moment. “But what about Boston? You work here. You live here.” His whole family had always been here.

Jack shrugged. “Too damn crowded, if you ask me. I’ll commute.” He pulled himself up next to her. “Does that mean you’re saying yes?”

Maggie didn’t know what she was saying. She shot a look at her brother. “You knew,” she said, pointing an accusing finger.

“Jack let me in on his plan, yeah.”

“Oh, and Dillon’s going to landscape the place for you. For us,” Jack added. “As a wedding present. He’s the best in the city, from what I hear.”

“Listen, I’m gonna get some coffee, leave you two alone.” Dillon stretched to a stand. He planted a kiss atop Maggie’s head.

“I’ll join you,” Eden replied, and Maggie didn’t have to look to see her best friend’s glow as the two walked out together. Dillon had always attracted women, even when he wasn’t trying, and to Maggie’s tired eye, it looked like he’d kept himself in shape. Eden went for tattoos, anyway, and she’d seen more than one poking out from underneath his shirt sleeves.

When did you get those, big brother? she wondered. There was so much about him she didn’t know. She couldn’t wait to fill in the details and patch up the missing pieces of Dillon inside her heart.

Jack reached for her then. He stroked the curls that tumbled around her face, and Maggie forgot about everything else. His eyes, halfway to hazel in the fluorescent lights above them, drank her in. He started to say something, but this time she stopped him. Maggie pulled Jack close, parting his lips with her tongue and unbuttoning his shirt. Her hands slipped inside and caressed taut muscles, feeling them flex under her touch. She felt goose bumps and smiled. You do that to me too, she thought. He touched her hair, her cheeks, her breasts. She closed her eyes and saw circles of colors inside them; a wave of passion broke all the way up inside her throat.

“Mags.” The word was a love song, a murmur, a filling up of the hole that had existed inside her for so long.

Why didn’t I know? Why didn’t I realize that Jack was the one thing I needed to feel whole again?

“You never answered me,” he said, trailing his tongue up to her earlobe.

She wasn’t sure she could now, either. In another minute, they’d be consummating the marriage before the ceremony, right there in the hospital bed. She supposed it didn’t matter. She and Jack had belonged to each other for so long that ceremony seemed secondary. When she looked at him, she saw Vegas sunshine. New York City. A Boston skyline. A little girl of fifteen, a coed of twenty, a woman of thirty. They all belonged to him, all the pieces of her. Everything she’d been and everything she wanted to be. Twenty-four hours, ten years, or a lifetime—their hearts had been seeking each other forever.

“Yes,” she whispered. Maggie tasted Jack’s tongue again, felt his arms around her, saw his gaze across a ballroom filled with light and wanted the midnight rain to fall on her forever, so long as he stood there beside her.

About the Author

When Allie Boniface isn’t writing about the power of love or exploring the complexities of the human heart, she’s working as a high school English teacher in the northern NYC suburbs, where she lives with her husband Todd. To learn more about Allie, please visit www.allieboniface.com.

A star quarterback has one weekend to reclaim the woman who sacked his heart. Or get her out of his system once and for all.

The Last Thing I Wanted

© 2007 Heather Rae Scott

Only for her best friend, and for charity, would Tory Sinclair set herself up to possibly meet Mr. Wrong in a takeoff of The Dating Game. She never expected that Mr. Wrong would turn out to be Mr. The One Who Got Away.

After Tory disappeared five years ago without a word of explanation, Gabe Matheson never expected—or wanted—to see her again. But with the entire city watching, and his career on the line, how could he refuse?

When they’re thrown together in a situation that forces them to bare their souls, their secrets—and a few other things as well—Tory and Gabe quickly realize that fate might have given them the last thing they wanted. But it could be exactly what they needed.

Enjoy the following excerpt for The Last Thing I Wanted:

“What in the hell are you doing?”

Her features twitched. “You can’t leave me out there alone.”

She was insane. “You can’t wait in here.”

“Why not? I won’t peek.”

He cursed under his breath as she locked the door and turned her back to him.

“Want me to whistle?” she asked

“What?”

“You know, whistle—so you can pee.”

“No.”

Tory turned her head slowly to look at him. “I figured this would be okay—”

“And why did you think that?”

She held her hands out, palms up. “Because you pee around grown men all the time, you know, when you share the locker room.” She dropped her hands by her side.

“Tory, you need to get out.”

She shook her head, and then turned to face the door again. “Pretend I’m not here.”

“But you are here.” She made him want to hit something. Maybe it’d be different if she wanted to come in here to join the mile-high club, but she hadn’t. Had she? Maybe this was some ulterior motive. He’d soon find out. “Can you wait outside?”

“What if the guy who’s been eyeballing me comes back here—naked?”

“I think you can handle it. Besides,” he said, trying to rationalize with her, “if you went back to your seat and he approached you, you could pretend to be sleeping.”

He could tell by her expression she didn’t buy his suggestion. “I feel safer in here,” Tory said and turned back towards the door. “I can hum.”

“You can what?”

“Grace can’t go to the bathroom with someone in the room unless you hum.”

“I’m not Grace. I’m your other best friend.”

“I know.”

She flushed. Good!

This was ridiculous. There was no reason why he couldn’t do his thing with her behind him. It was obvious she wasn’t going to leave. “Fine,” he said and opened the toilet and did what he had to, then flushed. “Do I need to zip up?”

Tory snapped her head in his direction. “Excuse me?”

He bit back a snicker. “I figured since you were in here—since we were both in here—you might want to christen your first flight by joining the mile-high club.”

“And what is that exactly?”

He chucked. “You don’t know?” He zipped his pants.

She crossed her arms protectively against her chest. “No.”

“People have sex in the bathroom,” he told her. “Only it’s on a plane, a mile above the ground. Mile-high? Get it?”

The expression on her face was priceless. “How do they have sex in this confined space?”

“Wanna find out?”

“You’ve had sex in here?”

“No. Not in this bathroom,” he teased.

She shook her head.

“Don’t look all disgusted, Tory. Normal people do it all the time.”

“So, you’re saying I’m not normal?”

“No. That isn’t what I said at all.” He slipped past her to wash his hands and avoid her pained expression.

“How do you do it in here?” she asked him, moving a few inches to stand directly behind him.

His pulse quickened. “Writing a book?” He met her reflection in the mirror, could feel her breath permeating through his shirt. He felt Tory’s eyes travel over him and found himself sinking again.

“You haven’t answered me,” she said softly.

He reached out to toy with the gold hoop in her lobe and watched her catch her bottom lip between her teeth. “I don’t know—I’ve never qualified for mile-high membership. Satisfied?” He winked. “Want to help me gain membership?”

Tory swallowed—hard. She stood there motionless. The brush of his fingertips against her neck made every nerve ending come alive. He was right there for the taking. If she leaned in a bit closer she could have her mouth on his, she could taste him, feel him—

More turbulence. With a thud, she slammed into him. Tory blinked. This was insane. Suddenly, the warm confines of the bathroom were just as dangerous as the naked people outside the door. Time to go. Only Gabe blocked her way.

Tory shivered. “We should…someone might want to use the lavatory.”

“You running again?”

Hell, yeah. “No, I was simply stating—”

His mouth swallowed her words. His kiss felt slow and thoughtful at first. He cupped her face in his hands tenderly, coaxing her to open her mouth and let him in. When his tongue pushed past her lips, Tory moaned and melted into him. The heady taste of whiskey enveloped her as their tongues danced. Blood pounded in her brain, leapt from her heart and made her knees tremble.

When he pulled away, she buried her head in his neck. She whispered a kiss there, making him groan. His finger went under her chin, persuading her to look at him. When she did, he reclaimed her lips. Her insides turned right-side-out when he caressed the small of her back with his fingers. She could feel his growing need against her abdomen, his rapid heartbeat beneath her palm. Just for now, she wanted to live in the moment.

Gabe’s mouth left hers and landed soft, fiery kisses behind her ear, neck and trailed down the base of her throat. God, how she missed this. She trembled. If she gave herself to him again, there’d be no turning back. This had to stop. But his touch held magic, setting her body on fire. His kisses opened a familiar world for her. How could something so wrong feel this damned good?

Life, love and unlikely legacies.

Reversing Over Liberace

© 2007 Jane Lovering

Willow runs into Luke, the university lust-of-her-life, ten years on and this time around he’s interested––she’s lost twenty pounds and found fashion. But their meeting turns out to be no accident. What is Luke really after, Willow or her new inheritance?

Her best mate Cal is gorgeous and…well…gay. Then reveals himself to be more than a mild, unassuming computer geek and she is no longer sure exactly who is telling the truth or who to trust.

Is anyone in her life what they seem to be?

Add to the romantic confusion, twelve pairs of rubber boots, two elderly spaniels, a pregnant sister and the unexpected contents of a matchbox and you get a funny, touching story of a woman in search of revenge and getting what she needs, rather than what she thinks she wants.

Enjoy the following excerpt for Reversing Over Liberace:

“Luke?” Katie was waiting when I put the phone down, her scandalometer clearly reading into the red. “What’s happened?”

“Nothing, nothing,” I trilled. “Well, not exactly, we just had a bit of a misunderstanding, that’s all.”

“Oh, right, about him moving out of the hotel and stopping at the showroom instead?”

“Ah, no. This was another misunderstanding. A different one.” Buoyed up and riding on the tide of goodwill that Luke’s admission had brought, I told Katie the full background to last night’s little, ahem, indiscretion on the lip frontage. When I’d finished, she frowned.

“Do you and Luke ever actually, y’know, talk, Wills? Or do you spend all your off-duty time shagging and communicating in mime?”

“What?”

“You do seem to have an extraordinary number of misunderstandings, don’t you? For a couple who are supposed to be so deeply in love that they’re planning to get married, there’s a lot he doesn’t seem to tell you about. And, please God, if you’re going around kissing strange men, the reverse is also true.”

“Cal…it wasn’t…it wasn’t that sort of kiss.” I said indignantly. “And of course Luke and I talk, don’t be stupid. It’s just, you know how prone I am to grabbing the wrong end of the stick and using it to beat myself.”

“Yes, but the stick does have to be held out for you to grasp in the first place.” Katie put her hands on my shoulders and looked me deep in the eyes. “I’m worried about you, Will. Okay, so Luke might have good reasons for all the misconstructions that have gone on, but it’s more that they’ve happened than what they’ve been about that worries me.”

“Well, my dear, worry no more.” I twirled around on my chair. “I’m going to suggest to Luke that we move into the flat next week and start living together properly. It can’t be comfortable for him camped out in the showroom, and we might as well start getting it all together. How do you feel about wearing peach for the wedding?”

“Will, if it makes you happy I shall wear a whole fruit salad,” she said solemnly.

“Willow.” The door opened and Neil came in. “Bloke for you in the front.”

“Good Lord, it speaks. Evolution in action.”

“Shut it, frosty knickers.”

“What, Clive not with you? Was the separation a success?”

“And you can shut up an’ all.” Neil grinned. “Dunno ’oo he is. Some weirdo. Bit of luck, he’s a mad axe murderer.”

He wasn’t. It was Cal, loitering about in the front office, looking at the photographs on the walls. (Man Rescues Tortoise—Pictures Inside.) “Hi.”

“Hello.” Katie was hanging around by my left shoulder like a conscience-devil. “How are you?”

“Fine. I came to…” Cal clocked Katie and began to stammer. “I…I…you, yesterday…quite…upset.”

“Everything’s sorted now, just another misunderstanding,” I said smoothly. Well, I could have belched every word and next to Cal’s delivery it would have sounded smooth. “Cal, Katie.”

“Oh, so this is the guy with the lip action. Pleased to meet you, Cal.” And Katie turned round to face me and half-whispered, “Fuck me, Willow, you didn’t tell me he was such a ride. I mean, look at him.”

“Forgive my friend, Cal, she has a form of Tourette’s. We normally keep her locked up for her own good.”

Cal smiled broadly and Katie went “phwooooarrrr” in my ear. “Chuffin’ hell, will you look at the eyes on your man?”

“And she’s Irish. Happily married. Quite respectable.”

Katie leaned over the desk towards Cal. “But prepared to be unrespectable, if the offer’s right.” She pursed her lips and Cal’s smile grew slightly broader.

“Are you any good with goats?”

“Um.”

“So, that’s a ‘no’ then.” I hustled Katie to one side with my elbows. “It’s fine, Cal. I’ve spoken to Luke, he’s explained. It was something personal.”

“Anyway. The brother in Boston? I’ve got the phone number, if you wanted to ring and introduce yourself.”

“What a great idea.” Katie derailed the nearest elbow and slotted herself in beside me again.

“Have you got something in your eye?” I asked her suspiciously.

“No, I’m fluttering my eyelashes, can’t you tell?”

“I don’t think Cal’s impressed by fluttering eyelashes, Katie.”

“No, but I’m mightily impressed by anyone who can move my goat.”

Katie’s appraising stare narrowed. “Is that some sort of code, Willow? Is he chatting you up in code? Because if he is, that’s really unfair. No one chats me up in code, not even Dan—not that he chats me up anymore. Doesn’t even chat much, if you want to know the truth. He sort of grunts and points. I think he learned it off the twins.”

Cal and I shared a baffled shrug. “So, do you want to call him now? You can borrow my mobile.”

“Well, not right this second. I mean, I’m at work and everything and it’ll be the middle of the night in Boston, won’t it? Tonight. I’ll do it tonight.”

“Why are you putting it off?” He tipped his head on one side. “Are you worried about what he might say?”

“No! I told you, Luke and I have sorted everything out. If I ring James and he tells Luke that I called, then it looks as if I’ve gone behind his back and don’t trust him.”

“But you don’t, do you?” The words dropped into a clanging silence. I stared at Katie who didn’t even look ashamed of herself. “Come on, Willow. If you trusted him, he wouldn’t need to explain himself to you because the situations would never arise in the first place. I mean”—her voice became gentler—“you know I love you, Wills, but you can be a complete and utter zombo where men are concerned.”

“Is that a real word?” Cal asked.

“It is on Planet Katie,” I answered, a little bitterly. “Kate, you’re warping things again. Luke and I are fine. We…oh, sod the pair of you. Give me the number, Cal. I’ll call after lunch when it’s a civilised time in Boston. Katie can earwig all she likes to make sure I ask the right questions. There. Are you both happy now?”

The two of them agreed that, yes, in this instance they were fairly satisfied with my reply, and Cal left the office, Katie watching his every move. When she noticed his limp, her eyebrows almost twanged.

“Christ Jesus, he even manages to make that look sexy. Aw, do an old married woman a favour. Before you marry Luke, shag Cal just the once”—a libidinous look—“and tell me all about it.”

“Katie! I will do no such thing. Anyway, Luke’s sexy too, isn’t he?”

She stopped boiling over and switched down to simmer. “Yeah, he’s sexy, too. But it’s different with Luke. He’s macho sexy, all swagger and cock-first into a room. Your man there, you can tell he’s the kind who’ll make you wait, then lick you till you’re screaming.”

A pause while we thought about this.

“You really do need to get out more, don’t you?”

“Tell me about it,” she sighed.

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