Letter to Reader Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN EPILOGUE Copyright

Dear Reader,

I have a confession to make: I love weddings. Fancy ones, simple ones—it doesn’t matter. I end up happily sniffling into a tissue each time. What could be more fun, I thought, than writing about a wedding? Writhing about three weddings, that’s what! Welcome to the sexy, funny, tender and exciting tales of three brides and three grooms who all meet at—that’s right—a wedding! Three books, three couples...three terrific stories. Here’s the second in the series. You’ll enjoy it, even if you haven’t read the first, The Bride Said Never!—though I hope you have.

Annie Bennett Cooper and her ex-husband, Chase, haven’t seen each other since their divorce five years ago. Now their daughter’s wedding brings them back together for an afternoon. I can manage it, each one thinks. But neither Annie nor Chase has figured on the things parents will do for the happiness of a child—or on the enduring passion that still sizzles between them in The Divorcee Said Yes!

Sit down, relax and enjoy the book. And remember to look for The Groom Said Maybe! next month. If you want to drop me a line, I’d love to hear from you. Write to me at P.O. Box 295, Storrs, Connecticut 06268. Please enclose a SASE for a bookmark and a reply.

With my warmest regards,

Sandra Marton

The Divorcee Said Yes!

Sandra Marton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS HER DAUGHTER’S wedding day, and Annie Cooper couldn’t seem to stop crying.

“I’m just going to check my makeup, darling,” she’d told Dawn a few minutes ago, when her eyes had begun to prickle again.

And now here she was, locked inside a stall in the ladies’ room of a beautiful old Connecticut church, clutching a handful of soggy tissues and bawling her eyes out.

“Promise me you won’t cry, Mom,” Dawn had said, only last night.

The two of them had been sitting up over mugs of cinnamon-laced hot chocolate. Neither of them had felt sleepy. Dawn had been too excited; Annie had been unwilling to give up the last hours when her daughter would still be her little girl instead of Nick’s wife.

“I promise,” Annie had said, swallowing hard, and then she’d burst into tears.

“Oh, Moth-ther,” Dawn had said, “for goodness’ sake,” just as if she were still a teenager and Annie was giving her a hard time about coming in ten minutes after curfew on school nights.

And that was just the trouble. She was still a teenager, Annie thought as she wiped her streaming eyes. Her baby was only eighteen years old, far too young to be getting married. Of course, when she’d tried telling that to Dawn the night she’d come home, smiling radiantly with Nick’s engagement ring on her finger, her daughter had countered with the ultimate rebuttal.

“And how old were you when you got married?” she’d said, which had effectively ended the discussion because the whole answer—“Eighteen, the same as you, and look where it got me”—was not one you wanted to make to your own child.

It certainly wasn’t Dawn’s fault her parents’ marriage had ended in divorce.

“She’s too young,” Annie whispered into her handful of Kleenex, “she’s much, much too young.”

“Annie?”

Annie heard the door to the ladies’ room swing open. A murmur of voices and the soft strains of organ music floated toward her, then faded as the door thumped shut.

“Annie? Are you in here?”

It was Deborah Kent, her best friend.

“No,” Annie said miserably, choking back a sob.

“Annie,” Deb said gently, “come out of there.”

“No.”

“Annie.” Deb’s tone became the sort she probably used with her third-graders. “This is nonsense. You can’t hide in there forever.”

“Give me one good reason why I can’t,” Annie said, sniffling.

“Well, you’ve got seventy-five guests waiting.”

“A hundred,” Annie sobbed. “Let ’em wait.”

“The minister’s starting to look impatient.”

“Patience is a virtue,” Annie said, and dumped the wet tissues into the toilet.

“And I think your aunt Jeanne just propositioned one of the groomsmen.”

There was a long silence, and then Annie groaned. “Tell me you’re joking.”

“All I know is what I saw. She got this look on her face—you know the look.”

Annie clamped her eyes shut. “And?”

“And, she went sashaying over to that big blond kid.” Deborah’s voice turned dreamy. “Actually I couldn’t much blame her. Did you see the build on that boy?”

“Deb! Honestly!” Annie flushed the tissues down the toilet, unlocked the stall door and marched to the sink. “Aunt Jeanne’s eighty years old. There’s some excuse for her. But you—”

“Listen, just because I’m forty doesn’t mean I’m dead. You may want to pretend you’ve forgotten what men are good for, but I certainly haven’t.”

“Forty-three,” Annie said, rummaging in her purse. “You can’t lie about your age to me, Deb, not when we share a birthday. As for what men are good for—believe me, I know what they’re good for. Not much. Not one damn thing, actually, except for making babies and that’s just the trouble, Dawn is still just a baby. She’s too young to be getting married.”

“That’s the other thing I came in to tell you.” Deb cleared her throat. “He’s here.”

“Who’s here?”

“Your ex.”

Annie went still. “No.”

“Yes. He came in maybe five minutes ago.”

“No, he couldn’t have. He’s in Georgia or Florida, someplace like that.” Annie looked at her friend in the mirror. “You’re sure it was Chase?”

“Six-two, dirty-blond hair, that gorgeous face with its slightly off-center nose and muscles up the yin-yang...” Deb blushed. “Well, I notice these things.”

“So I see.”

“It’s Chase, all right. I don’t know why you’re so surprised. He said he’d be here for Dawn’s wedding, that he wouldn’t let anyone else give his daughter away.”

Annie’s mouth twisted. She wrenched on the water, lathered her hands with soap and scrubbed furiously.

“Chase was always good at promises. It’s the follow-through he can’t manage.” She shut off the faucet and yanked a paper towel from the dispenser. “This whole thing is his fault.”

“Annie...”

“Did he tell Dawn she was making a mistake? No. He most certainly did not. The jerk gave her his blessing. His blessing, Deb, can you imagine?” Annie balled up the paper towel and hurled it into the trash can. “I put my foot down, told her to wait, to finish her education. He gave her a kiss and told her to do what she thought best. Well, that’s typical. Typical! He could never do anything that wasn’t just the opposite of what I wanted.”

“Annie, calm down.”

“I really figured, when he didn’t show up for the rehearsal last night, that we’d gotten lucky.”

“Dawn wouldn’t have thought so,” Deb said quietly. “And you know that she never doubted him, for a minute. ‘Daddy will be here,’ she kept saying.”

“All the more proof that she’s too young to know what’s good for her,” Annie muttered. “What about my sister? Has she shown up yet?”

“Not yet, no.”

Annie frowned. “I hope Laurel’s okay. It’s not like her to be late.”

“I already phoned the railroad station. The train came in late, or something. It’s the minister you’ve got to worry about. He’s got another wedding to perform in a couple of hours, over in Easton.”

Annie sighed and smoothed down the skirt of her knee-length, pale green chiffon dress. “I suppose there’s no getting out of it. Okay, let’s do it... What?”

“You might want to take a look in the mirror first.”

Annie frowned, swung toward the sink again and blanched. Her mascara had run and rimmed her green eyes. Her small, slightly upturned nose was bright pink, and her strawberry blond hair, so lovingly arranged in a smooth, sophisticated cap by Pierre himself just this morning, was standing up as if she’d stuck her finger into an electric outlet.

“Deb, look at me!”

“I’m looking,” Deb said. “We could always ask the organist if he knows the music from Bride of Frankenstein.”

“Will you be serious? I’ve got a hundred people waiting out there.” And Chase, she thought, so quickly and so senselessly that it made her blink.

“What’s the matter now?”

“Nothing,” Annie said quickly. “I mean...just help me figure out how to repair some of this damage.”

Deb opened her purse. “Wash your face,” she said, taking out enough cosmetics to start her own shop, “and leave the rest to me.”

Chase Cooper stood on the steps of the little New England church, trying to look as if he belonged there.

It wasn’t easy. He’d never felt more like an outsider in his life.

He was a city person. He’d spent his life in apartments. When Annie sold the condo after their divorce and told him she was moving to Connecticut, with Dawn, it had damn near killed him.

“Stratham?” he’d said, his voice a strangled roar. “Where the hell is that? I can’t even find it on a map.”

“Try one of those big atlases you’re so fond of,” Annie had said coldly, “the ones you look in when you’re trying to figure out what part of the country you’ll disappear into next.”

“I’ve told you a million times,” Chase had snapped, “I have no choice. If I don’t do things myself, they get screwed up. A man can’t afford that, when he’s got a wife and family to support.”

“Well, now you don’t have to support me at all,” Annie had replied, with a toss of her head. “I refused your alimony, remember?”

“Because you were pigheaded, as usual. Dammit, Annie, you can’t sell this place. Dawn grew up here.”

“I can do what I like,” Annie had said. “The condo’s mine. It was part of the settlement.”

“Because it’s our home, dammit!”

“Don’t you dare shout at me,” Annie had yelled, although he hadn’t shouted. Not him. Never him. “And it’s not our home, not anymore. It’s just a bunch of rooms inside a pile of bricks, and I hate it.”

“Hate it?” Chase had repeated. “You hate this house, that I built with my own two hands?”

“You built a twenty-four story building that just happens to contain our particular seven rooms, and you made a million trillion bucks doing it. And, if you must know, yes, I hate it. I despise it, and I can hardly wait to get out of it.”

Oh, yeah, Chase thought, shuffling uneasily from one foot to the other and wishing, for the first time in years, that he hadn’t given up smoking, oh, yeah, she’d gotten out of the condo, all right. Fast. And then she’d moved herself and Dawn up to this—this pinprick on the map, figuring, no doubt, that it would be the end of his weekly visits with his daughter.

Wrong. He’d driven the hundred-and-fifty-plus miles each way every weekend, like clockwork. He loved his little girl and she loved him, and nothing that had happened between Annie and him could change that. Week after week, he’d come up to Stratham and renewed his bond with his daughter. And week after week, he’d seen that his wife—his former wife—had built herself a happy new life.

She had friends. A small, successful business. And there were men in her life, Dawn said. Well, that was fine. Hell, there were women in his, weren’t there? As many as he wanted, all of them knockouts. That was one of the perks of bachelorhood, especially when you were the CEO of a construction company that had moved onto the national scene and prospered.

Eventually, though, he’d stopped going to Stratham. It was simpler that way. Dawn got old enough so she could take a train or a plane to wherever he was. And every time he saw her, she was lovelier. She’d seemed to grow up, right before his eyes.

Chase’s mouth thinned. But she hadn’t grown up enough to get married. Hell, no. Eighteen? And she was going to be some guy’s wife?

It was Annie’s fault. If she’d paid a little less attention to her own life and a little more to their daughter’s, he wouldn’t be standing here in a monkey suit, waiting to give his little girl away to a boy hardly old enough to shave.

Well, that wasn’t quite true. Nick was twenty-one. And it wasn’t as if he didn’t like the kid. Nick—Nicholas, to be precise—was a nice enough young man, from a good family and with a solid future ahead of him. He’d met the boy when he’d flown Dawn and her fiancé to Florida to spend a week with him on his latest job site. The kids had spent the time looking at each other as if the rest of the world didn’t exist, and that was just the trouble. It did exist, and his daughter hadn’t seen enough of it yet to know what she was doing.

Chase had tried to tell her that, but Dawn had been resolute. In the end, he had no choice. Dawn was legally of age. She didn’t need his consent. And, as his daughter quickly told him, Annie had already said she thought the marriage was a fine idea.

So he’d swallowed his objections, kissed Dawn, shaken Nick’s hand and given them his blessing—as if it were worth a damn.

You could bless the union of two people all you wanted, but it didn’t mean a thing. Marriage—especially for the young—was nothing but a legitimate excuse for hormonal insanity.

He could only hope his daughter, and her groom, proved the exception to the rule.

“sir?”

Chase looked around. A boy who looked barely old enough to shave was standing in the doorway of the church.

“They sent me out to tell you they’re about ready to begin, sir.”

Sir, Chase thought. He could remember when he’d called older men “sir.” It hadn’t been so much a mark of respect as it had been a euphemism for “old man.” That was how he felt, suddenly. Like an old, old man.

“Sir?”

“I heard you the first time,” Chase said irritably and then, because none of what he was feeling was the fault of the pink-cheeked groomsman, he forced a smile to his lips. “Sorry,” he said. “I’ve got the father-of-the-bride jitters, I guess.”

Still smiling, or grimacing, whichever the hell it was, he clapped the boy on the back and stepped past him, into the cool darkness of the church.

Annie sniffled her way through the ceremony.

Dawn was beautiful, a fairy-tale princess come to life. Nick was handsome enough to bring tears to whatever eyes weren’t already streaming, though not to his former guardian’s, who stood beside him wearing a look that spoke volumes on his handsome face.

Chase was wearing the same look. Her ex was not just dry-eyed but stony-faced. He’d smiled only once, at Dawn, as he’d handed her over to her waiting groom.

Then he’d taken his place beside Annie.

“I hope you know what in hell you’re doing,” he’d muttered, as he’d slipped in next to her.

Annie had felt every muscle in her body clench. How like him, to talk like that here, of all places. And to blame her for—what? The fact that the wedding wasn’t being held in a church the size of a cathedral? That there wasn’t room for him to invite all his big-shot clients and turn a family event into a networking opportunity?

Maybe he thought Dawn’s gown was too old-fashioned, or the flower arrangements—which she, herself, had done—too provincial. It wouldn’t have surprised her. As far as Chase was concerned, nothing she’d ever done was right. She could see him out of the corner of her eye, standing beside her, straight and tall and unmistakably masculine.

“Isn’t Daddy gorgeous in formal wear?” Dawn had gushed.

A muscle twitched in Annie’s cheek. If you liked the type, she supposed he was. But she wasn’t a dumb kid anymore, to have her little heart sent into overtime beats by the sight of a man’s hard body or equally hard, handsome face.

There had been a time, though. Oh, yes, there’d been a time that just standing next to him this way, feeling his arm brush lightly against her shoulder, smelling the faint scent of his cologne, would have been enough to—would have been enough to—

Bang!

Annie jumped. The doors at the rear of the church had flown open. A buzz of surprise traveled among the guests. The minister fell silent and peered up the aisle, along with everybody else, including Dawn and Nick.

Somebody was standing in the open doorway. After a moment, a man got up and shut the door, and the figure moved forward.

Annie let out a sigh of relief. “It’s Laurel,” she whispered, for the benefit of the minister. “My sister. I’m so relieved she finally got here.”

“Typical Bennett histrionics,” Chase muttered, out of the side of his mouth.

Annie’s cheeks colored. “I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me.”

“I most certainly did, and—”

“Mother,” Dawn snapped.

Annie blushed. “Sorry.”

The minister cleared his throat. “And now,” he said in tones so rounded Annie could almost see them forming circles in the air, “if there is no one among us who can offer a reason why Nicholas Skouras Babbitt and Dawn Elizabeth Cooper should not be wed...”

A moment later, the ceremony was over.

It was interesting, being the father of the bride at a wedding at which the mother of the bride was no longer your wife.

Dawn had insisted she wanted both her parents seated at the main table with her.

“You can keep your cool, Daddy, can’t you?” she’d said. “I mean, you won’t mind, sitting beside Mom for a couple of hours, right?”

“Of course not,” Chase had said.

And he’d meant it. He was a civilized man and Annie, for all her faults—and there were many—was a civilized woman. They’d been divorced for five years. The wounds had healed. Surely they could manage polite smiles and chitchat for a couple of hours.

That was what he’d thought, but reality was another thing entirely.

He hadn’t counted on what it would be like to stand at the altar, with Annie standing beside him looking impossibly young and—what was the point in denying it—impossibly beautiful in a dress of palest green. Her hair had been the wild cluster of silky strawberry curls she’d always hated and he’d always loved, and her nose had been suspiciously pink. She’d sniffled and wept her way through the ceremony. Well, hell, his throat had been pretty tight there, once or twice. In fact, when the minister had gone through all that nonsense about speaking up or forever holding your peace, he’d been tempted to put an arm around her and tell her it was okay, they weren’t losing a daughter, they were gaining a son.

Except that it would have been a lie. They were losing a daughter, and it was all Annie’s fault.

By the time they’d been stuck together at the head of the receiving line as if they were a pair of Siamese twins, he’d felt about as surly as a lion with a thorn in its paw.

“Smile, you two,” Dawn had hissed, and they’d obeyed, though Annie’s smile had been as phony-looking as his felt.

At least they’d traveled to the Stratham Inn in separate cars—except that once they’d gotten there, they’d had to take seats beside each other at the table on the dais.

Chase felt as if his smile was frozen on his face. It must have looked that way, too, from the way Dawn lifted her eyebrows when she looked at him.

Okay, Cooper, he told himself. Pull it together. You know how to make small talk with strangers. Surely you can manage a conversation with your ex-wife.

He looked at Annie and cleared his throat. “So,” he said briskly, “how’ve you been?”

Annie turned her head and looked at him. “I’m sorry,” she said politely, “I didn’t quite get that. Were you talking to me?”

Chase’s eyes narrowed. Who else would he have been talking to? The waiter, leaning over to pour his champagne?

Keep your cool, he told himself, and bared his teeth in a smile.

“I asked how you’ve been.”

“Very well, thank you. And you?”

Very well, thank you... What was with this prissy tone?

“Oh, I can’t complain.” He forced another smile, and waited for Annie to pick up the ball. She didn’t, so he plunged into the conversational waters again. “Matter of fact, I don’t know if Dawn mentioned it, but we just landed a big contract.”

“We?” she said, in a tone that could have given chilblains to an Eskimo.

“Well, Cooper Construction. We bid on this job in—”

“How nice,” she said, and turned away.

Chase felt his blood pressure shoot off the scale. So much for his attempt at being polite. Annie was not just cutting him dead, she was icing the corpse, craning her neck, looking everywhere but at him.

Suddenly a smile, a real one, curved across her mouth.

“Yoo hoo,” she called softly.

Yoo hoo? Yoo hoo?

“Hi, there,” she mouthed, and waved, and damned if some Bozo the Clown at a nearby table didn’t wave back.

“Who is that jerk?” Chase said before he could stop himself.

Annie didn’t even look at him. She was too busy looking at the jerk, and smiling.

“That ‘jerk,’” she said, “is Milton Hoffman. He’s an English professor at the university.”

Chase watched as the professor rose to his feet and threaded through the tables toward the dais. The guy was tall, and thin; he was wearing a shiny blue serge suit and he had on a bow tie. He looked more like a cadaver than a professor.

He had a smile on his face, too, as he approached Annie, and it was the smile, more than anything, that suddenly put a red film over Chase’s eyes.

“Anne,” Hoffman said. “Anne, my dear.” Annie held out her hand. Hoffman clasped it in a pasty, marshmallow paw and raised it to his lips. “It was a beautiful ceremony.”

“Thank you, Milton.”

“The flowers were perfect.”

“Thank you, Milton.”

“The music, the decorations...all wonderful.”

“Thank you, Milton.”

“And you look exquisite.”

“Thank you, Milton,” Chase said.

Annie and the Prof both swung their heads toward him. Chase smiled, showing all his teeth.

“She does, doesn’t she?” he said. “Look great, I mean.”

Annie looked at him, her eyes flaming a warning, but Chase ignored it. He leaned toward her and hooked an arm around her shoulders.

“Love that low-cut neckline, especially, babe, but then, you know how it is.” He shot Hoffman a leering grin. “Some guys are leg men, right, Milty? But me, I was always a—”

“Chase!” Color flew into Annie’s face. Hoffman’s eyes, dark and liquid behind horn-rimmed glasses, blinked once.

“You must be Anne’s husband.”

“You’re quick, Milty, I’ve got to give you that.”

“He is not my husband,” Annie said firmly, twisting out of Chase’s embrace. “He’s my ex-husband. My former husband. My once-upon-a-time-but-not-anymore husband, and frankly, if I never see him again, it’ll be too soon.” She gave Hoffman a melting smile. “I hope you’ve got your dancing shoes on, Milton, because I intend to dance the afternoon away.”

Chase smiled. He could almost feel his canine teeth turning into fangs.

“You hear that, Milty?” he said pleasantly. He felt a rush of primal pleasure when he saw Hoffman’s face turn even paler than it already was.

“Chase,” Annie said, through her teeth; “stop it.”

Chase leaned forward over the table. “She’s a wonderful dancer, our Annie. But if she’s had too much bubbly, you got to watch out. Right, babe?”

Annie opened and shut her mouth as if she were a fish. “Chase,” she said, in a strangled whisper.

“What’s the matter? Milt’s an old pal of yours, right? We wouldn’t want to keep any secrets from him, would we, babe?”

“Stop calling me that!”

“Stop calling you what?”

“You know what,” Annie said furiously. “And stop lying. I’ve never been drunk in my life.”

Chase’s lips curved up in a slow, wicked smile. “Sweetheart, come on. Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten the night we met.”

“I’m warning you, Chase!”

“There I was, a college freshman, minding my own business and dancing with my girlfriend at her high school’s Valentine Day dance—”

“You were never innocent,” Annie snapped.

Chase grinned. “You should know, babe. Anyway, there I was, doing the Mashed Potato, when I spied our Annie, tottering out the door, clutching her middle and looking as if she’d just eaten a bushel of green apples.”

Annie swung toward Milton Hoffman. “It wasn’t like that at all. My date had spiked my punch. How was I to know—”

A drumroll and a clash of cymbals drowned out her voice.

“...and now,” an oily, amplified voice boomed, “Mr. and Mrs. Nicholas Babbitt will take their very first dance as husband and wife.”

People began to applaud as Nick took Dawn in his arms. They moved onto the dance floor, gazing soulfully into each other’s eyes.

Annie gave Milton a beseeching look.

“Milton,” she said, “listen—”

“It’s all right,” he said quickly. “Today’s a family day, Anne. I understand.” He started to reach for her hand, caught himself, and drew back. “I’ll call you tomorrow. It was...interesting to have met you, Mr. Cooper.”

Chase smiled politely. “Call me Chase, please. There’s no need to be so formal, considering all we have in common.”

Annie didn’t know which she wanted to do more, punch Chase for his insufferable behavior or punch Milton Hoffman for being so easily scared off. It took only a second to decide that Chase was the more deserving target She glared at him as Hoffman scuttled back to his seat.

“You are lower than a snake’s belly,” she said.

Chase sighed. “Annie, listen—”

“No. No, you listen.” She pointed a trembling finger at him. “I know what you’re trying to do.”

Did she? Chase shook his head. Then, she knew more than he did. There wasn’t a reason in the world he’d acted like such a jerk just now. So what if Annie was having a thing with some guy? So what if the guy looked as if he might faint at the sight of a mouse? So what if he’d had a sudden, blazing vision of Annie in bed with the son of a bitch?

She could do what she wanted, with whom she wanted. It sure as hell didn’t matter to him.

“Are you listening to me?” she said.

Chase looked at Annie. Her face was still shot with color. It arced across her cheekbones and over the bridge of her nose, where a scattering of tiny freckles lay like sprinkles of gold. He remembered how he used to kiss those warm, golden spots after they’d made love.

“I know what you’re up to, Chase. You’re trying to ruin Dawn’s wedding because I didn’t do it the way you wanted.”

Chase’s eyebrows leaped into his hairline. “Are you nuts?”

“Oh, come off it!” Annie’s voice quavered with anger. “You wanted a big wedding in a big church, so you could invite all your fancy friends.”

“You are nuts! I never—”

“Keep your voice down!”

“I am keeping it down. You’re the one who’s—”

“Let me tell you something, Chase Cooper. This wedding is exactly the kind Dawn wanted.”

“And a damn good thing, too. If it had been up to you, our daughter might have ended up getting married on a hillside in her bare feet—”

“Oh, and what that would have done to Mr. Chase Cooper’s image!”

“—while some idiot played a satyr in the background.”

“Sitar,” Annie hissed. “It’s called a sitar, Cooper, although you probably know a lot more about satyrs than you do about musical instruments.”

“Are we back to that again?” Chase snarled, and Annie’s color heightened

“No. We are not ‘back’ to anything. As far as I’m concerned—”

“...the bride’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Chase Cooper.”

Annie’s and Chase’s gazes swung toward the bandstand. The bandleader was smiling benevolently in their direction, and the crowd—even those who looked a bit surprised by the announcement—began to applaud.

“Come on, Annie and Chase.” The bandleader’s painted-on smile widened. “Let’s get up on the dance floor and join the bride and groom.”

“Let’s not,” Chase growled, under his breath.

“The man’s out of his mind,” Annie snapped.

But the applause had grown, and even the wild glance for help Annie shot toward Dawn, still swaying in the arms of her groom, brought only an apologetic shrug of her daughter’s shoulders.

Chase shoved back his chair and held out his hand.

“All right,” he said grimly, “let’s do it and get it over with.”

Annie’s chin jerked up. She rose stiffly and put her hand in his.

“I really hate you, Chase.”

“The feeling, madam, is entirely mutual.”

Eyes hot with anger, Annie and Chase took a couple of deep breaths, pasted civilized smiles on their lips and swung out onto the dance floor.

CHAPTER TWO

IMPOSSIBLE, miserable woman!

That was what she was, his ex-wife, what she’d turned into during the years of their marriage. Chase held Annie stiffly in his arms, enough space between them to have satisfied even starchy Miss Elgar, the chaperone at Annie’s Senior Prom.

“Propriety, please,” Miss Elgar had barked at any couple daring to get too close during the slow numbers.

Not that she’d approved of the Frug or the Mashed Potato, either. It was just that she’d figured those insane gyrations were safe.

Even all these years later. Chase smiled at the memory. Safe? A bunch of horny kids shaking their hips at each other? And no matter what the old witch thought, the sweetly erotic, locked-in-each-other’s-arms slow dancing went on behind her back just the same, in the hallway, in the cafeteria downstairs, even in the parking lot, where the music sighed on the warm spring breeze.

That was where he’d taken Annie, finally, out to the parking lot, where they’d danced, locked in each other’s arms, alone in the darkness and so crazy about each other after four months of dating that nothing else had mattered.

That was the night they’d first made love, on an old patchwork blanket he’d taken from the back of his beat-up Chevy and spread on the soft, sweet-smelling grass that grew up on Captree Point.

“We should stop,” he’d kept saying, in a voice so thick it had seemed to come from somebody else, though even as he’d said it, he’d been undoing Annie’s zipper, removing her gown and baring her beautiful body to his eyes and mouth and touch.

“Yes,” Annie had whispered, “oh, yes,” but her hands had been moving on him, even as she’d spoken, trembling as she’d undone his silly bow tie, sliding his white dinner jacket from his shoulders, opening his shirt buttons and smoothing her fingers over his hot skin.

The memories surrounded him, as if it were a gentle fog coming in over the sea. Chase made a soft sound in the back of his throat. His arm tightened around his wife; the hand that had been holding hers in stiff formality curled around her wrist, bringing her hand to his chest.

“Chase?” she said.

“Shh,” he whispered, his lips against her hair. Annie held herself rigid a second longer, and then she sighed, laid her head against his shoulder and gave herself up to the music and to the memories that had overcome her.

It felt so good to be here, in Chase’s arms.

When was the last time they’d danced together this way, not because dancing was what you did at the endless charity functions they’d attended so Chase could “network” with the movers and doers of the business community but simply because there were few things as pleasurable as swaying slowly in each other’s arms?

Annie closed her eyes. They’d always danced well together, even back in her high school days at Taft. All those senior parties, the last-minute Friday night get-togethers in somebody’s basement rec room the weekends Chase came home from college, and the dance at Chase’s fraternity house, when her parents had let her go up for Spring Weekend. The school formals, with Elgar the Dragon Lady marching around, trying to keep everybody at arm’s length.

And the night of her senior prom, when they’d finally gone all the way after so many months of fevered kisses and touches that had left them trembling in each other’s arms.

Annie’s heartbeat quickened. She remembered Chase taking her out to the parking lot, where they’d moved oh, so slowly to the music drifting from the school gym, and the way Chase had kissed her, filling her with a need so powerful she couldn’t think. Wordlessly they’d climbed into his ancient Chevy and made the long drive to the Point, with her sitting so close beside him that they might have been one.

She remembered the softness of the blanket beneath her, after they’d spread it over the grass, and then the wonderful hardness of Chase’s body against hers.

“I love you so much,” he’d kept saying.

“Yes.” She’d sighed. “Yes.”

They shouldn’t have done it. She’d known that, even as she was opening his shirt and touching him, but to stop would have been to die.

Oh, the feel of him as he’d come down against her naked flesh. The smell of him, the taste of his skin. And oh, that mind-shattering moment when he’d entered her. Filled her. Become a part of her, forever.

Except it hadn’t been forever.

Annie stiffened in the circle of her husband’s arms.

It had been sex, and eventually, it hadn’t been anything at all. He was her ex. That’s who Chase was. He wasn’t her husband anymore. He wasn’t the boy she’d fallen head over heels in love with, nor the man who’d fathered Dawn. He was a stranger, who’d been more interested in his business than in coming home to his wife and child.

More interested in bedding a twenty-two-year-old secretary than the wife whose body had begun to sag and bag.

A coldness seized Annie’s heart. Her feet stopped moving. She jerked back and flattened her palms against her former husband’s chest.

“That’s enough,” she said.

Chase blinked his eyes open. His face was flushed; he looked like a man rudely awakened from a dream.

“Annie,” he said softly, “Annie, listen—”

“The by-request dancing’s over, Chase. The dance floor’s filled with people.”

He looked around him. She was right. They were on the perimeter of the floor, which was packed with other couples.

“We’ve played out the necessary charade. Now, if you don’t mind, I’ve reserved the rest of my dance card for Milton Hoffman.”

Chase’s expression hardened. “Of course,” he said politely. “I want to touch bases with some people, too. I see you broke down and invited some of my old friends and not just your own.”

“Certainly.” Annie’s smile would have turned water to ice. “Some of them are my friends, too. Besides, I knew you’d need something to keep you busy, considering that you made the great paternal sacrifice of not asking to bring along your latest little playmate. Or are you between bimbos, at the moment?”

Chase had never struck a woman in his life. Hell, he’d never even had the urge. Men who hit women were despicable. Still, just for an instant, he found himself wishing Annie were a man, so he could wipe that holier-than-thou smirk from her face.

He did the next best thing, instead.

“If you’re asking if there’s a special woman in my life,” he said, his gaze locked on hers, “the answer is yes.” He paused for effect, then went for broke. “And I’ll thank you to watch the way you talk about my fiancée.”

It was like watching a building collapse after the demolition guys had placed the dynamite and set it off. Annie’s smirk disintegrated and her jaw dropped.

“Your—your...?”

“Fiancée.” he said. It wasn’t a complete lie. He’d been dating Janet for two months now, and she hadn’t been at all subtle about what she wanted from the relationship. “Janet Pendleton. Ross Pendleton’s daughter. Do you know her?”

Know her? Janet Pendleton, heiress to the Pendleton fortune? The blond, blue-eyed creature who turned up on the New York Times Sunday Society pages almost every week? The girl known as much for the brilliance she showed as vice president at Pendleton as for having turned down a million-dollar offer to lend her classic beauty to a series of perfume ads for a top French company?

For the barest fraction of a second, Annie felt as if the floor was tilting under her feet. Then she drew herself up and pasted a smile on her lips.

“We don’t move in the same circles, I’m afraid. But I know who she is, of course. It’s nice to see your tastes have gone from twenty-two-year-olds to females tottering on the brink of thirty. Have you told Dawn yet?”

“No! I mean, no, there hasn’t been time. I, ah, I thought I’d wait until she and Nick get back from their honey—”

“Milton. There you are.” Annie reached out and grabbed Milton Hoffman’s arm. She was pretty sure he’d been trying to sneak past her and Chase undetected, en route to the line at the buffet table, but if ever there’d been a time she’d needed someone to cling to, it was now. “Milton,” she said, looping her arm through his and giving him a dazzling smile, “my ex has just given me some exciting news.”

Hoffman looked at Chase, his eyes wary behind his tortoiseshells. “Really,” he said. “How nice.”

“Chase is getting married again. To Janet Pendleton.” Could your lips be permanently stretched by a smile? “Isn’t that lovely?”

“Well,” Chase said, “actually—”

“I suppose it’s the season for romance,” Annie said, with a silvery laugh. “Dawn and Nick, Chase and Janet Pendleton...” She tilted her head and gazed up into Milton Hoffman’s long, bony face. “And us.”

Hoffman’s Adam’s apple bobbed so hard it almost dislodged his bow tie. It was only a week ago that he’d asked Anne Cooper to marry him. She’d told him how much she liked and admired him, how she enjoyed his company and his attention. She’d told him everything but yes.

His gaze leaped to her former husband. Chase Cooper had taken his father’s construction firm and used his engineering degree and his muscles to turn it into a company with a national reputation. He’d ridden jackhammers as they bit deep into concrete foundations and hoisted pickaxes to reduce the remainder to piles of rubble. Hoffman swallowed hard again. Cooper still had the muscles to prove it. Right now, the man looked as if he wanted to use those muscles to pulverize him.

“Chase?” Annie said, beaming. “Aren’t you going to wish us well?”

“Yes,” Chase said, jamming his hands into his pockets, balling them so hard they began to shake. “I wish you the best, Annie. You and your cadaver, both.”

Annie’s smile flattened. “You always did know the right thing to say, didn’t you, Chase?” Turning on her heel, she propelled herself and Milton off the edge of the dance floor and toward the buffet.

“Anne,” Milton whispered, “Anne, my dearest, I had no idea...”

“Neither did I,” Annie whispered back, and smiled up into his stunned face hard enough so he’d have to think the tears in her eyes were for happiness and not because a hole seemed suddenly to have opened in her heart.

Married, Chase thought. His Annie, getting married to that jerk.

Surely she had better taste.

He slid his empty glass across the bar to the bartender.

“Women,” he said. “Can’t live with ‘em and can’t live without ’em.”

The bartender smiled politely. “Yes, sir.”

“Give me a refill. Bourbon and—”

“And water, one ice cube. I remember.”

Chase looked at the guy. “You trying to tell me I’ve been here too many times this afternoon?”

The bartender’s smile was even more polite. “I might have to, soon, sir. State law, you know.”

Chase’s mouth thinned. “When I’ve had too much to drink, I’ll be sure and let you know. Meanwhile, make this one a double.”

“Chase?”

He swung around. Behind him, people were doing whatever insane line dance was this year’s vogue. Others were still eating the classy assortment of foods Annie had ordered and he hadn’t been permitted to pay for.

“I’ve no intention of asking you to foot the bill for anything,” she’d told him coldly, when he’d called to tell her to spare no expense on the wedding. “Dawn is my daughter, my floral design business is thriving and I need no help from you.”

“Dawn is my daughter, too,” Chase had snarled, but before he’d gotten the words out, Annie had hung up. She’d always been good at getting the last word, dammit. Not today, though. He’d gotten it. And the look on her face when he’d handed her all that crap about his engagement to Janet made it even sweeter.

“Chase? You okay?”

Who was he kidding? He hadn’t had the last word this time, either. Annie had. How could she? How could she marry that pantywaist, bow-tie wearing, gender-confused—

“Chase, what the hell’s the matter with you?”

Chase blinked. David Chambers, tall, blue-eyed, still wearing his dark hair in a long ponytail clasped at his nape the same way he had since he’d first become Chase’s personal attorney a dozen years ago, was standing alongside him.

Chase let out an uneasy laugh.

“David.” He stuck out his hand, changed his mind and clasped the other man’s shoulders. “Hey, man, how’re you doing?”

Chambers smiled and drew Chase into a quick bear hug. Then he drew back and eyed him carefully.

“I’m fine. How about you? You all right?”

Chase reached for his drink and knocked back half of it in one swallow.

“Never been better. What’ll you have?”

Chambers looked at the bartender. “Scotch,” he said, “a single malt, if you have it, on the rocks. And a glass of Chardonnay, please.”

“Don’t tell me,” Chase said with a stilted smile. “You’re here with a lady. I guess the love bug’s bitten you, too.”

“Me?” David laughed. “The wine’s for a lady at my table. As for the love bug... It already bit me, remember? One marriage, one divorce...no, Chase, not me. Never again, not in this lifetime.”

“Yeah.” Chase wrapped his hand around his glass. “What’s the point? You marry a woman, she turns into somebody else after a couple of years.”

“I agree. Marriage is a female fantasy. Promise a guy anything to nab him, then look blank when he expects you to deliver.” The bartender set the Scotch in front of David, who lifted the glass to his lips and took a swallow. “The way I see it, a man’s got a housekeeper, a cook and a good secretary, what more does he need?”

“Nothing,” Chase said glumly, “not one thing.”

The bartender put a glass of Chardonnay before David, who picked it up. He turned and looked across the room. Chase followed his gaze to a table where a cool-looking, beautiful brunette sat in regal solitude.

A muscle knotted in David’s jaw. He took another swallow of Scotch.

“Unfortunately,” he said, “there is one other thing. And it’s what most often gets poor bastards like you and me in trouble.”

Chase thought of the feel of Annie in his arms on the dance floor, just a couple of hours ago.

“Poor bastards, is right,” he said, and lifted his glass to David. “Well, you and I both know better. Bed ‘em and forget ’em, I say.”

David laughed and clinked his glass against Chase’s. “I’ll drink to that.”

“To what? What are you guys up to, hidden away over here?”

Both men turned around. Dawn, radiant in white lace and with Nick at her side, beamed at them.

“Daddy,” she said, kissing her father’s cheek. “And Mr. Chambers. I’m so glad you could make it.”

“I am, too.” David held his hand out to her groom. “You’re a lucky man, son. Take good care of her.”

Nick nodded as the men shook hands. “I intend to, sir.”

Dawn kissed Chase again. “Get out and circulate, Daddy. That’s an order.”

Chase tossed her a mock salute. The bridal pair moved off, and he sighed. “That’s the only good thing comes of a marriage. A kid, to call your own.”

David nodded. “I agree. I’d always hoped...” He shrugged, then picked up his drink and the glass of white wine. “Hey, Cooper,” he said, with a quick grin, “you stand around a bar long enough, you get maudlin. Anybody ever tell you that?”

“Yes,” Chase said. “My attorney, five years ago when we got wasted after my divorce was finalized.”

The men smiled at each other, and then David Chambers slapped Chase lightly on the back.

“Take Dawn’s advice. Circulate. There’s a surprising assortment of good-looking single women here, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“For a lawyer,” Chase said with a chuckle, “sometimes you manage to come up with some pretty decent suggestions. What’s with the brunette at your table? She spoken for?”

David’s eyes narrowed just the slightest bit. “She is, for the present.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” the attorney said. He was smiling, but there was a look in his eye that Chase recognized. He grinned.

“You dirty dog, you. Well, never mind. I’ll—what did my daughter call it? Circulate. That’s it. I’ll circulate, and see what’s available.”

The men made their goodbyes. Chase finished his drink, refused to give the bartender the satisfaction of telling him he wouldn’t pour him another, and circulated himself right out the door.

Annie kicked off her shoes, put her feet up on the old chintz-covered ottoman she kept promising herself she’d throw out and puffed out a long, deep sigh.

“Well,” she said, “that’s over.”

Deb, seated opposite her on the sofa, nodded in agreement.

“Over and done with.” She flung her arms along the top of the sofa and kicked off her shoes, too. “And I’ll bet you’re glad it is.”

“Glad?” Annie pursed her lips and blew a very unladylike raspberry. “That doesn’t even come close. I’ll bet Custer had an easier time planning the battle at Little Bighorn than I had, planning this wedding.”

Deb arched a dark, perfect eyebrow. “Bad analogy, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Yeah.” Annie heaved another sigh. “But you know what I mean. The logistics of the whole thing were beyond belief. Imagine your daughter walking in one night and calmly announcing she’s going to get married in two months and wouldn’t it be wonderful if she could have the perfect wedding she’d always dreamed about?”

Deb stood, reached up under her chiffon skirt and wriggled her panty hose down her legs.

“My daughter’s in love with the seventies,” she said, draping the hose around her throat like a boa. “If I’m lucky, she’ll opt for getting married on a hilltop somewhere, with the guests all invited to bring... What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” Annie shot to her feet and padded to the kitchen, returning a moment later with a bottle of champagne and a pair of juice glasses. “He accused me of wanting that, you know.”

“Know what? Wanting what? Who accused you?”

“You mind drinking this stuff out of juice glasses? I know you’re supposed to use flutes, but I never got around to buying any.”

“We can drink it out of jelly jars, for all I care. What are you talking about, Annie? Who accused you of what?”

“Chase. Mr. Ex.” Annie undid the wire around the foil, then chewed on her lip as she carefully worked the cork between her fingers. It popped with a loud bang and champagne frothed out. Some of it dripped onto the tile floor. Annie shrugged and mopped it up by moving her stockinged foot over the small puddle. “A few weeks ago, he called to talk to Dawn. I had the misfortune to answer the phone. He said he’d gotten his invitation and he was delighted to see I hadn’t let my instincts run amok.” She held out a glass of wine, and Deb took it. “Amok,” she said, licking her fingertips, “can you imagine? And all because when we were first married, I threw a couple of parties in the backyard behind the house we lived in.”

“I thought you lived in a condo.”

“We did, eventually, but not then. Chase knew somebody who got us this really cheap rental in Queens.”

Deb nodded. “What kind of parties did you throw?”

“Outdoor parties, mostly.”

“So?” Deb made a face. “Big deal.”

Annie’s lips twitched. “Well, it was wintertime.”

“Wintertime?”

“Yes. See, the thing was, the house was so small, the mice pretty much ran it. And—”

“Mice?”

Annie sank down on the chair again. “It wasn’t much of a house, but then, we didn’t have much money. I’d just graduated from high school and the only job I could find was at the local Burger King. Chase had transferred to City College. The tuition was lots cheaper and besides, that way he could work construction jobs for his father a couple of days a week.” She sighed. “We were dead broke. Believe me, we found a million ways to save money!”

Deb smiled. “Including having parties outdoors in midwinter.”

Annie smiled, too. “Oh, it wasn’t that bad. We’d build a fire in a barbecue in the backyard, you know? And I’d make tons and tons of chili and homemade bread. We’d put on a huge pot of coffee, and there’d be beer for the guys...”

Her voice drifted away.

“A far cry from today,” Deb said. She reached for the champagne bottle and refilled both their glasses. “Bubbly, caviar, shrimp on ice, boneless beef with mushrooms...”

“Filet de Boeuf Aux Chanterelles, if you please,” Annie said archly.

Deb grinned. “Pardonnez-moi, madam.”

“No joke. Considering what that stuff cost, you’d better remember to give it its French name.”

“And you didn’t let Chase pay a dime, huh?”

“No,” Annie said sharply.

“I still think you’re nuts. What’re you trying to prove, anyway?”

“That I don’t need his money.”

“Or him?” Deb said softly. Annie looked at her and Deb shrugged. “I saw you guys on the dance floor. Things looked pretty cozy, for a while there.”

“You saw the past worm its way into the present. Trust me, Deb. That part of my life is over. I don’t feel a thing for Chase. I can’t quite believe I ever did.”

“I understand. A nostalgia trip, hmm?”

“Exactly. Brought on by my little girl’s wedding...” Annie paused, swallowed hard and suddenly burst into tears.

“Oh, sweetie.” Deb jumped from the couch and squatted down beside Annie. She wrapped her arms around her and patted her back. “Honey, don’t cry. It’s not so unusual to still have a thing going for your ex, you know. Especially when he’s hunky, the way Chase is.”

“He’s getting married,” Annie sobbed.

“Chase?”

“To Janet Pendleton.”

“Am I supposed to know her?”

“I hope not.” Annie hiccuped. “She’s rich. Gorgeous. Smart.”

“I hate her already.” Deb put her hand under Annie’s chin and urged it to rise. “Are you sure?”

“He told me so.” Annie sat back, dug a hanky out of her cleavage where she’d stuffed it after the ceremony and blew her nose. “So I told him I’m marrying Milton.”

“Milton? As in, Milton Hoffman?” Deb rocked back on her heels. “My God, you wouldn’t!”

“Why not? He’s single, he’s dependable and he’s nice.”

“So is a teddy bear,” Deb said in horror. “Better you should take one of those to bed than Milton Hoffman.”

“Oh, Deb, that’s not fair.” Annie got to her feet. “There’s more to a relationship than sex.”

“Name it.”

“Companionship, for one thing. Similar interests. Shared dreams.”

“And you can have enough of those things with Milton to make you forget all the rest?”

“Yes!” Annie’s shoulders slumped. “No,” she admitted. “Isn’t that awful? I like Milton, but I don’t love him.”

Deb heaved a sigh as she stood up. “Thank you, God. For a minute there, I thought you’d gone around the bend.”

“Not only am I sex-obsessed—”

“You’re not. Sex is a big part of life.”

“—but I’ve used poor Milton badly. Now I’ve got to call him up and tell him I didn’t mean it when I introduced him to Chase as my fiancé.”

“Wow,” Deb said softly. “You certainly have had a busy day.”

“A messy day, is what you mean.”

“Don’t kill me for saying this, but maybe you should rethink things. I mean, I know he’s getting married and all, but maybe you do still have a thing for your ex.”

“I wouldn’t care if he were living in a monastery!” Annie’s eyes flashed. “I do not have a ‘thing’ for Chase. I admit, I’m upset, but it’s because my baby’s gotten herself married.”

“You know what they say, Annie. We only raise children to let go of them once they grow up.”

Annie tucked the hanky back into her cleavage, picked up the champagne bottle and headed for the kitchen.

“It’s not letting go of her that upsets me, Deb. It’s that she’s so young. Too young, I’m afraid, to make such a commitment.”

“Well,” Deb said, folding her arms and leaning against the door frame, “you were young when you got hitched, too.”

Annie sighed. “Exactly. And look where it led me. I thought I knew what I was doing but it turned out I didn’t. It was hormones, not intelligence, that—” The phone rang. She reached out and picked it up. “Hello?”

“Annie?”

“Chase.” Annie’s mouth narrowed. “What do you want? I thought we said all we needed to say to each other this afternoon.”

Across town, in his hotel room, Chase looked at the boy standing at the window. The boy’s shoulders were slumped and his head was bowed in classic despair.

Chase cleared his throat.

“Annie... Nick is here.”

Annie’s brows knotted together. “Nick? There? Where do you mean, there?”

“I mean he’s here, in my room at the Hilton.”

“No. That’s impossible. Nick is on a plane to Hawaii, with Dawn...” The blood drained from Annie’s face. “Oh God,” she whispered. “Has there been an accident? Is Dawn—”

“No,” Chase said quickly. “Dawn’s fine. Nothing’s happened to her, or to Nick.”

“Then why—”

“She left him.”

Annie sank down into a chair at the kitchen table. “She left him?” she repeated stupidly. Deb stared at her in disbelief. “Dawn left Nick?”

“Yeah.” Chase rubbed the back of his neck, where the muscles felt as if somebody were tightening them on a rack. “They, uh, they got to the airport and checked in their luggage. Then they went to the VIP lounge. I upgraded their tickets, Annie, and bought them a membership in the lounge. I knew you wouldn’t approve, but—”

“Dammit, Chase, tell me what happened!”

Chase sighed. “Nick said he’d get them some coffee. Dawn said that was fine. But when he came back with the coffee, she was gone.”

“She didn’t leave him,” Annie said, her hand at her heart, “she’s been kidnapped!”

“Kidnapped?” Deb snapped. “Dawn?”

“Did you call the police? Did you—”

“She left a note,” Chase said wearily. Annie heard the rustle of paper. “She says it’s not that she doesn’t care for him.”

“Care for him?” Annie’s voice rose. “People care for—for flowers. Or parakeets. She said she loved Nick. That she was crazy about him.”

“...not that she doesn’t care for him,” Chase continued, “but that loving him isn’t enough.”

“Isn‘t—?”

“Isn’t enough. She says she has no choice but to end this marriage before it begins.”

Annie put her hand over her eyes. “Oh God,” she whispered. “That sounds so ominous.”

Chase nodded, as if Annie could see him.

“Nick’s beside himself, and so am I.” His voice roughened with emotion. “He’s looked for her everywhere, but he can’t find her. Dear God, If anything’s happened to our little girl...”

Annie’s head lifted. As soft as a whisper, the front door opened, then closed. Footsteps came slowly down the hall.

“Mom?”

Dawn stood in the doorway, dressed in the going-away suit they’d bought together, the corsage of baby orchids Annie had pinned on the jacket’s lapel sadly drooping. Dawn’s eyes were red and swollen.

“Baby?” Annie whispered.

Dawn gave Annie a smile that trembled, and then a sob burst from her throat.

“Oh, Mommy,” she wailed, and Annie dropped the phone and opened her arms. Her daughter flew across the room and buried her face in her mother’s lap.

Deb picked the phone up from the floor.

“Chase?”

“Dammit to hell,” Chase roared, “who is this? What’s going on there?”

“I’m a friend of Annie’s,” Deb said. “You and Nick can stop worrying. Dawn’s here. She just came in.”

Chase flashed an okay sign to Nick, who hurried to his side.

“Is my daughter okay?”

“Yes. She seems to—”

Chase slammed down the phone, and he and Nick ran out the door.

CHAPTER THREE

THE MOON HAD RISEN, climbed into a bank of clouds, and disappeared.

Sighing, Chase switched on the lamp beside his chair and wished he could pull a stunt like that. Maybe then people would stop looking at him as if he might just come up with a solution to an impossible situation.

But the simple truth was that impossible situations required improbable solutions, and he didn’t have any. His mind was a blank. At this point, he wasn’t even sure what day it was. The only thing he knew for certain was that a few hours ago, he’d been the father of—the bride. Now he was the father of—what did you call a young woman who’d gotten to the airport and then told her brand-new husband that they’d made an awful mistake and she wanted out?

Smart. That was what Chase would have called her, twenty-four hours ago, when he’d have given just about anything if Dawn had decided to put her wedding off until she was older and, hopefully, wiser.

Chase closed his eyes wearily. But his daughter hadn’t decided to put off her wedding. She’d gone through with it, which put a different spin on things. More than canceling arrangements with the church and the caterer were involved here. Dawn and Nick were bound together, in the eyes of God and in accordance with the laws of the state of Connecticut.

Severing that bond was a lot more complicated than it would have been a few hours ago. And it sure didn’t help that Dawn kept weeping and saying she loved Nick with all her heart, it was just that she couldn’t, wouldn’t, mustn’t stay married to him.

Chase put his hand to the back of his neck and tried to rub the tension out of his muscles. He had no idea what she was talking about, and neither did Nick, the poor, bewildered bastard. Not even Annie understood; Chase was certain of that, and never mind the way she’d kept saying, “I understand, sweetheart,” while she’d rocked Dawn in her arms.

“What do you understand?” Chase had asked her in exasperation, when she’d come hurrying out of the bedroom after she’d finally convinced Dawn to lie down and try to get some sleep. Annie had shot him one of those men-are-so-stupid looks women did so well and said she didn’t understand anything, but she wasn’t about to upset Dawn by telling her that.

“Dammit, Annie,” Chase had roared, and that had done it. Nick had come running, Dawn had started crying, Annie had called him a name he hadn’t even figured she knew...hell, he thought wearily, it was a good thing Annie didn’t have a dog, or it would have gotten in on the act and taken a chunk out of his ankle.

“Now see what you’ve done,” Annie had snarled, and the door to Dawn’s room had slammed in his bewildered face.

Chase groaned. He was tired. So tired. There’d been no sound from behind the closed door for hours now. Annie and his daughter were probably asleep. Even Nick had finally fallen into exhausted slumber on the sofa in the living room.

Maybe, if he just put his head back for a five-minute snooze...

“Dammit!”

Chase’s head bobbed like a yo-yo on a string. That was just what he’d needed, all right. Oh, yeah. Nothing like a little whiplash for neck muscles that already felt knotted.

“Stupid chair,” he muttered, and sprang to his feet.

For a minute there, he’d forgotten he wasn’t in the den he and Annie had shared for so many years. Annie had dumped all the old furniture when she’d bought this house. She’d filled these rooms with little bits and pieces of junk. Antiques, she called them, but junk is what the stuff was. Delicate junk, at that. Sofas and tables with silly legs, chairs with no headrests...

“You kick that chair, Chase Cooper, and I swear, I’ll kick you!”

Chase swung around. His ex-wife stood in the entrance to the room. She’d exchanged her mother-of-the-bride dress for a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt and from the way her hair was standing on end and her hands were propped on her hips, he had the feeling her mood wasn’t much better than his.

Too bad. Too damned bad, considering that she was the one had gotten them into this mess in the first place. If only she hadn’t been so damned permissive. If only she’d put her foot down right at the start, told Dawn she was too young to get married—

“It deserves kicking,” he grumbled, but he stepped aside and let her swish past him, snatch up the chair cushions and plump them, as if that might remove any sign he’d sat there. “How’s Dawn?”

“She’s asleep.” Annie tucked the cushions back in place. “How’s Nick? I assume he’s still here?”

“Yes, he’s here. He’s asleep, in the living room.”

“And he’s okay?”

“As okay as he can be, all things considered. Has our daughter told you yet just what, exactly, is going on?”

Annie looked at him. Then she ran her fingers through her hair, smoothing the curls back from her face.

“How about some tea?” Without waiting for his answer, she set off for the kitchen. “Unless you’d prefer coffee,” she asked, switching on the overhead fluorescent light.

“Tea’s fine,” Chase said, blinking in the sudden glare. He sank onto one of the stools that stood before the kitchen counter, watching as Annie filled a kettle with water and put it on the stove. “Has she?”

“Has she what?” Annie yanked open the pantry door. She took out a box of tea bags and put it on the counter. “Would you like a cookie? Of course, I don’t have those hideous things you always preferred, with all that goo in the middle.”

“Just tea,” he replied, refusing to rise to the bait. “What did Dawn say?”

Annie shut the pantry door and opened the refrigerator. “How about a sandwich? Swiss? Or there’s some ham, if you prefer.”

“Annie...”

“You’d have to take it on whole grain bread, though, the kind you always said—”

“—that I wouldn’t touch until somebody strapped a feed bag over my face and a saddle on my back. No, thank you very much, I don’t want a sandwich. I don’t want anything, except to know what our daughter told you and what it is you don’t want to tell me.” Chase’s eyes narrowed. “Has Nick mistreated her?”

“No, of course not.” Annie shut the refrigerator door. The kettle had begun to hiss, and she grabbed for it before it could whistle. “Hand me a couple of mugs, would you? They’re in that cupboard, right beside you.”

“He doesn’t seem the type who would.” Chase grabbed two white china mugs and slid them down the counter to Annie. “But if he’s so much as hurt a hair on our daughter’s head, so help me—”

“Will you please calm down? I’m telling you, it isn’t that. Nick’s a sweetheart.”

“Well, what is it, then?”

Annie looked at him, then away. “It’s, ah, it’s complicated.”

“Complicated?” Chase’s eyes narrowed again. “It’s not—the boy isn’t...”

“Isn’t what? Do you still take two sugars, or have you finally learned to lay off the stuff?”

“Two sugars, and stop nagging.”

Annie dumped two spoonfuls of sugar into her ex’s tea, and stirred briskly.

“You’re right. You can wallow in sugar, for all I care. Your health isn’t my problem anymore, it’s hers.”

“Hers?”

“Janet Pendleton.”

“Janet Pen...” He flushed. “Oh. Her.”

Annie slapped the mug of tea in front of him, hard enough so some of the hot amber liquid sloshed over the rim and onto his fingers.

“That’s right. Let your fiancée worry about your weight.”

“Nobody’s got to worry about my weight,” Chase said, surreptitiously sucking in his gut.

He was right, Annie thought sourly, as she slid onto the stool next to his. Nobody did. He was still as solid-looking and handsome as he’d been the day they’d married—or the day they’d divorced. Another benefit of being male. Men didn’t have to see the awful changes that came along, as you stood at top of the yawning chasm that was middle age. The numbers that began to creep upward on your bathroom scale. The flesh that began to creep downward. The wrinkles that Janet Pendleton didn’t have. The sags Chase’s cute little secretary hadn’t had, either.

“...make him normal. That’s not what happened with Dawn and Nick, is it?”

Annie frowned. “What are you talking about?”

“Reality, that’s what. I was telling you that I just heard about this guy, married a girl even though he knew he was a switch hitter, hoping that having a wife would make him normal—”

Annie choked over her tea. “Good grief,” she said, when she could speak, “you are such a pathetic mate stereotype, Chase Cooper! No, Nicholas is not, as you so delicately put it, a ‘switch hitter.”’

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah, well, it might not hurt to ask.”

“Nick and Dawn have been living together, the past three months. And Dawn hasn’t so much as hinted at any problem in bed. Quite the contrary.” Annie blushed. “I dropped in a couple of times—not in the morning, or late at night, you understand—and I could pretty much tell, from the time it took them to get to the door and the way they looked, that things were perfectly fine in that department.” She looked down at her tea. “I don’t drop by without calling first, anymore.”

“What do you mean, they’ve been living together?”

“Just what I said. Didn’t Dawn tell you? They took an apartment, in Cannondale.”

“Dammit, Annie, how could you permit our daughter to do that?”

“To do what? Move in with the man she was going to marry?”

“Didn’t you tell her no?”

“She’s eighteen, Chase. Legally of age. Old enough to make her own choices.”

“So?”

“What do you mean, ‘so’?”

“You could have told her it was wrong.”

“Love is never wrong.”

“Love,” Chase said, and shook his head. “Sex, is more like it.”

“I asked her to take her time and think it through, to be sure she was doing the right thing. She said she’d done that, and that she was.”

“Sex,” Chase said again.

Annie sighed. “Sex, love...they go together.”

“Yeah, well, they could have had the one and still waited for the other, until after the wedding.” Chase glowered into his tea. “But I suppose that’s too old-fashioned.”

“It was, for us.”

Chase looked up sharply. Color swept into his face. “What we did, or didn’t do, has nothing to do with this situation.”

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