Praise for the work of USA TODAY bestselling author Jennifer Greene

“A book by Jennifer Greene hums with an unbeatable combination of sexual chemistry and heartwarming emotion.”

—New York Times bestselling author

Susan Elizabeth Phillips

“Jennifer Greene’s writing possesses a modern sensibility and frankness that is vivid, fresh, and often funny.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Woman Most Likely To

“Combining expertly crafted characters with lovely prose flavored with sassy wit, Greene constructs a superb tale of love lost and found, dreams discarded and rediscovered, and the importance of family and friendship…”

—Booklist on Where Is He Now?

“A spellbinding storyteller of uncommon brilliance, the fabulous Jennifer Greene is one of the romance genre’s greatest gifts to the world of popular fiction.”

—Romantic Times magazine

“Ms. Greene lavishes her talents on every book she writes.”

—Rendezvous

Jennifer Greene

Jennifer Greene sold her first novel when she had two babies in diapers. Since then, she’s become the award-winning, bestselling author of more than seventy novels. She’s known for her warm, natural characters and humor that comes from the heart. Reviewers call her love stories “unforgettable.” You can write Jennifer through her Web site at www.jennifergreene.com.

Lucky
Jennifer Greene

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Foreword

This book is in no way a true story…except for one part. Years ago, someone I love dearly had a baby born with special problems—and who was misdiagnosed. The original prognosis for that baby was so dire that it seemed impossible to believe the baby had any kind of future. Yet that prognosis was wrong.

The story nestled in my heart for years until I had to write a book about it. It wasn’t just the baby that captured my heart. It was the crisis thrown at the parents. We all seem to grow up, very sure what’s right and wrong, very sure what we’d do if we were tested. Yet life can throw us a curveball that throws everything we believe right out the window.

I write romance because I truly believe that love has power—I gave my heroine that massive “curveball” in this story, because I think women can especially understand it.

Perhaps you’ve never had a problem remotely like the situation in the story. But I’ll bet you all grew up, aspiring to be good women, striving to do the right thing, intending to play by the rules. We’re raised with an unspoken promise that things will turn out fine as long as we’re “good girls.” Only life doesn’t always keep that promise.

It’s so hard to break the rules and risk all the things that make you safe. It’s so hard to find yourself alone, bucking the tide, when all you ever wanted was to be a good person and stay out of trouble.

It’s so hard to be more than you ever thought you could be.

This one’s for you, ladies.

Jennifer Greene

For STEPHANIE

No, sweetheart, this isn’t about you, because

I only write about pretend people. But I did

write it because I love you, and because

sometimes we all need someone to believe in us.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

PROLOGUE

D amned if her hands weren’t shaking.

Kasey sighed in exasperation. A year ago, she could never have imagined this moment—but then, a year ago, she’d believed she was the luckiest woman alive.

Thunder grumbled in the west as she hurried into the baby’s dark bedroom. Tess was lying in her crib, gnawing on a teething ring, wearing nothing but a diaper. Michigan in August was often hot, but this intense, smothering heat just kept coming. Normally Tess would have long been asleep by now, but the looming storm must have wakened her.

Curtains billowed wildly in the hot, nervous wind. Clouds hurtled across the sky, bringing pitchforks of sterling-silver lightning and a hiss of ozone. When the first fat raindrops smacked against the windows, lights flickered on and off—not that Kasey cared. She wasn’t worried whether the house lost power. She was worried whether she might.

She was born gutless. Pulling enough courage together to leave tonight was taking everything she had, everything she was—and she was still afraid that might not be enough.

“But you’re up for a little adventure, aren’t you, love bug?”

The baby kicked joyfully at the sound of her mother’s voice.

“That’s it. We’re just going to be calm and quiet, okay?” Well, one of them was. The baby softly babbled as Kasey swiftly changed her diaper and threaded on a lightweight sleeper.

A short time before, she’d stashed suitcases in the back of the Volvo, but she couldn’t leave quite yet. Quickly she packed a last bag with critical items—not diapers or clothes or money—but the things that mattered, like the jewel-colored mobile, the handmade quilt, and of course, the red velvet ball.

She juggled Tess and the bag, taking the back stairs, her heart slamming so hard she could hardly think. She grabbed rain gear on the way out. The garage was darker than a dungeon, yet Tess—who should have been tired enough to pull off a good, cranky tantrum—settled contentedly in her car seat. Kasey tossed in the rest of their debris and plunked down in the front.

It bit, taking the six-year-old Volvo. It wasn’t a car she’d paid for. It wasn’t a car she’d chosen. But compared to the new Mercedes and the sleek black Lotus and the Lexus SUV, it was the cheapest vehicle in the fleet, and God knew, the Volvo was built like a tanker.

A sturdy car wasn’t going to do her much good if she couldn’t get it moving, yet initially her fingers refused to cooperate. Yanking and snapping on the seat belt seemed to present an epic challenge. Then the key refused to fit in the lock. Finally she started the engine—which sounded like a sonic boom to her frantic ears—and then she almost forgot to push the garage door opener before backing out.

Her gaze kept shooting to the back door. Waiting for it to open. Afraid it would open. No matter how well she’d planned, no matter what she’d said, she was still afraid something or someone would find a way to stop her from leaving, stop her from taking Tess.

In an ideal world, she’d have made contingency plans—but she hadn’t been living in an ideal world for a long time now. She had no alternate plans, no contingency ideas.

This was it. Her one shot to tear apart her entire life in one fell swoop.

That thought was so monumentally intimidating that she considered having a full-scale nervous breakdown—but darn it, she didn’t have time. Her hand coiled on the gearshift and jerked it in reverse. The instant the car cleared the driveway, she gunned the accelerator.

Rain slooshed down in torrents, blurring her vision of the house and neighborhood. For so long she’d thought of Grosse Pointe as her personal Camelot. It struck her with a flash of irony that it really had been. She was the one who’d goofed up the happy-ever-after ending. She’d not only failed to follow the fairy-tale script, she’d somehow turned into the wicked character in the story.

Kasey knew people believed that. For months, she’d believed herself at fault, too—but no more.

She leaned forward, fooling with knobs and buttons. The windshield wipers struggled valiantly to keep up with the rain, but the defroster was losing ground. Steam framed the edges of the windows, creating a surreal, smoky world where it seemed as if nothing existed but her and the baby.

Kasey spared a quick, protective glance at her daughter. In that tiny millisecond, her heart swelled damn near to bursting. She’d never imagined the fierce, warm, irrevocable bond between mother and child until she’d had Tess. Sometimes she thought that love was bigger than both of them.

It still struck her as amazing, what even a spineless wuss—such as herself—would do for her child. And for love.

Emotions clogged in her throat, welled there, jammed there. Even now, she knew she could turn back. It was hard, not to want to be safe. Hard, to believe she had what it took to take this road.

By the standards of another life—the life she’d been living a year ago—Kasey knew absolutely that others would judge her behavior as wrong. Dead wrong, morally and ethically wrong, wrong in every way a woman could define the word.

A sudden clap of thunder shook the sky. The storm was getting worse, lightning scissoring and slashing the sky over the lake. When Kasey turned on Lakeshore Drive, Lake St. Clair was to her left, the water black and wild and spitting foam. There were no boats on the lake, no cars on the road. No one else was anywhere in sight.

Sane people had the sense to stay home in storms this rough.

At the first traffic light, she whipped her head around again, but Tess didn’t need checking on. The baby was wide awake and staring intently at the car windows, where streetlights reflected in the rain drooling down the glass.

The look in the baby’s eyes warmed Kasey. It didn’t suddenly miraculously make their situation all right—nothing could do that. But it was so easy to think of the storm as uncomfortable and unpleasant. Through the baby, Kasey saw the night diamonds, the magic in rain and light. Her vulnerable daughter had brought her miracles in every sense of the word.

Whatever frightening or traumatic things happened from here, she was simply going to have to find a way to cope with them.

The instant the traffic light turned green, she zoomed through the intersection. Quickly the lake disappeared behind them. The long sweeps of velvet lawns and elegant estates turned into ordinary streets. Lakeshore Drive changed its name when it got past the ritzy stuff. Kasey started sucking in great heaps of air at the same time.

The extra oxygen didn’t particularly help. She still couldn’t make her pulse stop zooming, her hands stop shaking. But it was odd. She didn’t really mind being shook up to beat the band. At least those feelings were real. She didn’t have to hide being anxious, being afraid—being who she was—anymore.

Love had the power to change a woman.

Kasey would never doubt that again.

The trick, of course, was for a woman to be able to tell the difference between life-transforming love and the kind of love that could destroy her.

She ran a yellow light. Then another. Courage started coming back in slow seeps. Of course, she was nervous and afraid. Who wouldn’t be?

She knew where she was going now. It was just hard to stop the questions from spinning in her mind.

How could she possibly have come to this point?

How did a nice, quiet, decent woman who’d always played by the rules get herself into such a situation?

How had the dream of her life become such a soul-destroying nightmare?

But the answers, of course, couldn’t be found in this night. The answers were steeped in the events over the past year. In fact, the whole story began almost a year ago to the day….

CHAPTER 1

“F or God’s sake, Kasey. No one’s killing you. You’re just having a baby!”

“Yeah, well, they told me all the pain would be in my head. None of it’s in my head!”

“Yelling and swearing isn’t going to help.”

Well, actually, she thought it might. She should have known it would happen to her this way. Breaking her water at a party—right in front of people she wanted to respect her, people Graham respected. Still, knowing she was going to die within the next hour definitely helped. It was a little depressing, realizing that peoples’ last memory of her would be with bloody water gushing down her legs in the middle of a dinner party. On the other hand, she’d be dead, so what was the point in worrying about it? For the same reason, there didn’t seem much point not to howl her heart out when the next pain hit, either.

As far as she could tell, she wasn’t likely to live through the next pain anyway.

“You wanted this baby,” Graham reminded her.

“Oh, Graham, I do. I do.”

“So try and get a grip. We’ll be at the hospital in fifteen minutes. Just stay here. I’ll run upstairs and get your suitcase and some towels for the car….”

He was gone, leaving Kasey in the kitchen alone for those few minutes. She sank against the white tile counter as another contraction started to swell.

Something was wrong with her. It wasn’t the stupid pain. They’d all lied about the pain—and she was going to stay alive long enough to kill the Lamaze instructor who promised that labor was simply work. It wasn’t work. It was torture, cut and dried. Yet Kasey fiercely, desperately, wanted this baby, and had expected to feel joyous when the blasted labor process finally started.

Instead, she felt increasingly overcome by a strange, surreal sense of panic. Goofy thoughts kept pouncing in her mind. This wasn’t her house. This wasn’t her life. This wasn’t really happening to her.

As the contraction finally ebbed, leaving her forehead flushed with sweat, she stared blankly around the high-tech kitchen. She realized perfectly well that anxiety was causing those foolish thoughts, yet the acres of stainless steel appliances and miles of white tile really didn’t seem to be hers. She’d never have chosen a white floor for a kitchen. The doorway led to a dining room with ornate Grecian furniture that she’d never chosen, either. The dining room led into a great room with cream carpeting and cream furniture—Graham had chosen all that stuff before they’d married, wanting a neutral color like crème to set off the artwork on the walls. He was a collector.

But now, the more she looked around, the more she felt a building panic roaring in her ears. This whole last year, she’d basked in a feeling of BEING LUCKY so big, so rich, so magical that she just wanted to burst with it. She’d found a true prince in Graham, when at thirty-eight, she’d given up believing she’d find anyone at all. And living in Grosse Pointe was like living in her own private Camelot—which it was, it really was. It was just that this crazy panic was blindsiding her. Maybe it had all been a dream. She didn’t live here. How could she possibly live here? She didn’t DO elegant. Cripes, she didn’t even LIKE elegant.

Not that she’d ever complained. Graham had said too many times that his ex-wife, Janelle, had been a nonstop complainer.

It wasn’t as if she spent much time in the fancy-dancy parts of the house, besides. With the baby coming, the kitchen was the room that mattered, and all the high-tech appliances were a cook’s dream. Still, the dishes were bone china. Heirlooms. Beautiful—but it was darn hard to imagine a baby in a high chair, drinking milk from a lead crystal glass and slopping up cereal from a 22-karat-gold-rimmed bowl onto that virgin-white tile floor.

Shut up, Kasey. Just shut your mind up. Another pain was coming. This one felt like lightning on the inside, as if something sharp and jagged was trying to rip her apart. Then came the twisting sensation, as if an elephant were swollen in her stomach and trying to squeeze through a space smaller than a spy hole.

She opened her mouth to scream her entire heart out, when Graham suddenly jogged into the room. “All right, I reached Dr. Armstrong. He’ll meet us at the hospital. You holding up okay?”

Of course she wasn’t okay. She couldn’t conceivably be less okay. She was wrinkled, stained, shaky, and positively within minutes of death by agony. Graham, typically, looked ready to host a yacht club outing. Abruptly—and with all the grace of a walrus—she pushed away from the counter and aimed for the back door. “Which car are we taking?”

“The Beemer. Easiest to clean the leather seats if we have to. Although I brought towels.”

For an instant she thought, Come on, Graham, couldn’t you think for one second about the baby instead of fussing over getting a stain in a car? But even letting that thought surface shamed her.

Her attitude had sucked all day, when she knew perfectly well that Graham was unhappy about the coming baby. During their courtship, he’d been bluntly honest about wanting no children—he adored his nearly grown daughter, but that was the point. He’d done the fatherhood thing. At this life stretch he wanted Kasey, alone, a romantic relationship with just the two of them.

Maybe there was a time when Kasey fiercely wanted children, but even at thirty-eight, there were increased health risks with a pregnancy. More than that, she’d already settled into a life without kids—and she loved Graham and everything about her life with him, so it just wasn’t that hard to go along with his choice.

Birth control hadn’t failed them so much as life had. She’d tracked conception down to the week she’d had a bad flu and couldn’t hold anything down—including her birth control pills. By the time she’d recovered, the fetus already had a grab-hold on life. If the problem had never happened, Kasey would undoubtedly have been happy as things were—but once she realized that she was pregnant…well, there was only one chance of a baby for her. This one.

She wanted this baby more than she wanted her own breath, even her own life. It was her one shot at motherhood. She just couldn’t give it up.

And she totally understood that Graham wasn’t happy about it—but there was no fixing that yet. Once the baby was born, she could work on him, make sure he never felt neglected, take care to shower him with love. Besides which, once the baby was born and Graham held the little one, Kasey felt certain the baby would win his heart. It’d all work out.

If she just didn’t blow it in the meantime.

“I love you,” she said in the car.

“I love you, too, hon.” But immediately he fell silent, steering through the quiet night, his profile pale as chalk. Dribbles accumulated on the windshield. Not rain, just the promise of it. She heard a siren somewhere, the thunk of the occasional windshield wiper, and realized that she was doing better. The pains were easing up, not one galloping right after the other now.

Randolph Hospital loomed ahead. Graham pulled up to the emergency-room door where a sign read NO PARKING UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. The hospital looked more like an elegant estate than a medical facility, with security lights glowing on the landscaped grounds and garden sculptures.

Graham slammed out of the car. “I’ll get a wheelchair or a gurney. I hate to leave you alone, Kasey, but I promise I’ll be right back.”

“I’ll be fine.”

But she wasn’t fine. He’d barely disappeared inside before another lumpy gush of blood squeezed between her legs. How come no one ever said labor was a total gross out? Certainly not that nauseatingly cheerful Lamaze instructor. And then another pain sliced her in half, so sharp, so mean, that she couldn’t catch her breath.

Pain was one thing. Being scared out of her mind was another. She fumbled for the door handle, thinking that she’d crawl inside the hospital if she had to—anything was better than dying here alone in the dark. She got the door open. Got both feet out. But then the cramping contraction took hold and owned her. She cried out—to hell with bravery and pride and adulthood and how much she wanted this baby. If she lived through this, and that was a big IF, she was never having sex again, and that was for damn sure.

The emergency-room doors swung open. She didn’t actually notice the man until she heard the clip of boot steps jogging toward her, and suddenly he was there, hunkering down by the open curb.

“You need help?”

“No, no. Yes. I mean—my husband’s coming. It’s just that right now—” The pain was just like teeth that bit and ripped.

“What do you want me to do? Get you inside? Stay with you? What? I can carry you—”

“No. It’s—no. Just stay. Please. I—” She wasn’t really looking at him, wasn’t really seeing him. Her whole world right then was about babies and labor and pain. Still, there was something about him that arrested her attention. Something in his face, his eyes.

Their whole conversation couldn’t have taken two minutes. She only really saw him in a flash. Background light dusted his profile, sharpened his features. He was built tall and lanky, with dark eyes and hair, had to be in his early forties or so. His clothes were nondescript, the guy-uniform in Grosse Pointe of khakis and polo shirt, but his looked more worn-in than most. He looked more worn in than most. The thick, dark hair was walnut, mixed with a little cinnamon. The square chin had a cocky tilt, the shoulders an attitude—but it was his eyes that hooked her.

He had old eyes. Beautiful brown eyes. Eyes that held a lot of pain, had seen a lot of life. In the middle of the private hospital parking lot, mosquitoes pesking around her neck, panting out of the contraction, scared and hot…yet she felt a pull toward him. He exuded some kind of separateness, a loneliness.

She knew about loneliness.

Of course, that perception took all of a minisecond—and suddenly the emergency-room doors were clanging open again. The man glanced up, then back at her. “Damn. You’re Graham Crandall’s wife? And you’re having your baby in this hospital?”

His question and tone confused her. She started to answer, but there was never a chance. Graham noticed the man, said something to him—called him “Jake”—but then he disappeared from her sight. The world descended on her. In typical take-charge fashion, Graham had brought out an entire entourage—a wheelchair, three people in different medical uniforms, Dr. Armstrong.

Graham was midstream in conversation with the doctor. “I don’t care what you have to do. She comes first. No exceptions, no discussion. You make sure she’s all right and gets through this. And I want her to have something for the pain. Immediately.”

“Mr. Crandall—Graham—first, I need to examine her, and then everything else will follow in due course. I swear that I’ve never yet lost a father—”

“I don’t want to hear your goddamn reassuring patter, and forget trying to humor me. I want your promise that nothing is going to happen to my wife.”

“Graham.” Kasey had to swallow. She’d never seen her husband out of control. Graham didn’t do out of control. And love suddenly swelled through her, putting the pain in perspective, reassuring her like nothing else could have. “I’m just having a baby. Really, I’m fine. The pain scared me. I didn’t realize it was going to be this bad—”

“I’ll take care of this, Kasey.” Graham cut her off, and rounded on Dr. Armstrong again. “I don’t care what it costs. I don’t care how many people or what it takes—you don’t let anything happen to my wife. You understand?”

The next few hours were a blur of hospital lights and hospital smells. The labor room was decorated to look like a living room, with a chintz couch and TV and even a small kitchenette. Dr. Armstrong did the initial exam. As always, he was patient and calm and as steadfast as a brick.

“But I can’t be only three centimeters dilated! You have to be kidding! I thought I was in transition because of the amount of pain.”

“I’m going to give you something to help you relax, Kasey.”

“I don’t want to relax! I want to get to ten centimeters and get this over with! And I want to be able to see the fetal monitor! Is our baby okay?”

“Your baby’s just fine,” Dr. Armstrong said reassuringly, but he hadn’t even looked. What was the point of being all trussed up with the fetal monitor if no one was even going to look at it? “You can have ice chips. And your husband can rub your back. And you can watch TV or listen to music….”

She just wanted it over with. But at least, once they all left her alone with Graham, she thought she could get a better hold on her fears and emotions. Later—an hour, or two, who knew?—she remembered the man outside, and thought to ask Graham who he was.

“Name is Jake McGraw. Used to be from the neighborhood.”

“I thought you called him by name, so I was pretty sure you knew him.”

“Yeah, I knew him. He’s Joe’s son. You’ve heard of Joe, used to be one of GM’s high-step attorneys. Money from generations back. Joe had a heart attack a while ago, put Jake back in the neighborhood now and then to help his father.”

“So that’s why he was at the hospital?” God. Another pain was coming on. How many did you get before you’d paid your dues? And now she knew you didn’t die from the little ones, because there were lots, lots, lots bigger ones after that.

“I don’t know why he was at the hospital. Forget him, Kasey. He’s a loser. An alcoholic.”

“Really?” For an instant she pictured those old, beautiful eyes again.

“Was part of a big fancy law firm, wife from the Pointe, fast lane all the way. Had a wild marriage, and I mean capital W wild. Gave one party that started out in GP and ended up in Palm Springs. They both played around, until some point when Jake went off the deep end. Or so they say. He’s got a teenage son, Danny, lives with his ex-wife. Doesn’t practice law anymore. You hearing me? He’s bad news all the way. Lost everything. And deserved to.”

“You never mentioned him before—”

“Why would I? And it beats me why we’re talking about him now.”

And then they weren’t. She’d only asked the question in passing. The man wasn’t on her mind. Nothing was, as the minutes wore on and the night deepened and darkened. Somewhere in the wing, a woman screamed. A door was immediately closed, sealing out the sound. The nurse came and went. Graham survived for a while—at least the first couple hours—but then he started pacing.

“Do you want some more ice chips, Kase? Are you cold? Warm? Want to watch any specific show on the tube?”

His solicitousness was endearing—except that every time a pain ripped through her, he paced again, like a panther who wanted to throw himself against the bars. Anything—but be trapped in here. “Graham, go out,” she said finally.

“No way. I’m not leaving you.”

“I know you’re willing to stay. But this is hard…harder than I thought. And to be honest, I believe I’ll handle the pain better if I’m alone. I’ve always been that way. Go on, you. Go get some coffee, or something to eat. Don’t feel guilty, just go.”

He kissed her, hard, on the forehead, squeezed her hand. But eventually she talked him into leaving.

She’d lied about wanting to be alone. The truth was, she desperately wanted Graham to be with her, yet he was obviously miserable, seeing her in pain. And for a while, for a long time, the fear completely left. Medical help was just a call away, and so was her husband, so it seemed easier to relax. She inhaled the silence. The peace. The feeling as if there was no one in the universe but her and the baby.

She cut all the lights but one, shut off the television. In between contractions, she rubbed her tummy, talking softly to her baby. This was about the two of them. No one else. “You’re going to love your room. I bought you a teddy bear the size of a Santa, and the toy box is already filled. The wallpaper is balloons in jewel colors, and over your crib, I set up real jewels dangling from a mobile—amethyst, citrine, jade, pink quartz. When the sun comes, you won’t believe what brilliant crystal patterns it makes on the wall. And there’s a wonderful, big old rocker. You and I are going to rock and sing songs, and I’m never going to let you cry, never….”

An hour passed, then another. Suddenly a pain seared through her that was different from all the others.

Finally, she thought, the transition stage. All the books claimed this stage was the hardest—but it also meant that they were nearing the end. Soon enough she’d hold the real baby in her arms after all these months.

Another pain. Just like that one, only worse. More of the fire, more of the scalding feeling of being ripped apart. She hit the button for the nurse, then hit it again.

No one came.

Now she realized what a sissy she’d been before, because these contractions were completely different. And possibly that’s why no one was coming now, because they thought she’d been crying wolf? Only Graham…where was he? Surely they wouldn’t leave her much longer without someone checking on her?

This wasn’t pain where she could scream or yell like before. This was pain so intense that it took all her concentration to just endure. This wasn’t about whining how she could die; this was about believing for real that she may not survive this. Agony lanced through her, again and again, not ceasing, not letting up, not giving her a chance to catch her breath. Her body washed in sweat. Fear filled her mind like clouds in a stormy sky, pushing together, growling and thundering. She wanted her mom. She wanted Graham. She wanted someone, anyone. She pushed and pushed and pushed the call button, but she had no possible way to get up out of bed and seek help on her own, not by then.

Finally the door opened a crack. Then a nurse’s voice. “Good God.” Then…lights and bodies and motion and more pain. “There, Kasey, you’re doing good—it’s going to be all over very soon.” By then she didn’t care anymore—or, if she cared, she couldn’t find the energy to respond.

They wheeled her into an unfamiliar room. Stuck her with needles. “Where’s Graham?” she asked, but no one answered. Everyone was running, running. The baby seemed to be rushing, rushing. And the pain was there, but with that last hypodermic, the knife edges of pain blunted, and her mind started blurring.

Somewhere, though, she heard a woman’s voice. One of the nurses’. Low, urgent. “Doctor, there’s something—”

She tried to stir through the thick mental fuzz, recognizing that something was happening. Something alarming. She heard the doctor’s sharp, “Be quiet.” And then, “Get out of the way. Let me see.”

“Is something wrong?” she whispered.

No one answered.

“Doctor, is something wrong with my baby?”

Still no one answered. But she felt another needle jab in her arm. And immediately came darkness.

Her dreams were all sweet, dark, peaceful. She remembered nothing until she heard the sound of a nurse’s cheerful voice, and opened her eyes to a room full of sunshine. “Are we awake, Mrs. Crandall? I’m bringing your beautiful daughter. There you go, honey… I have on your chart that you want to nurse, so I’m going to help you get set up. Can we sit up?”

She pushed herself to a sitting position, listening to the nurse, taking in the pale-blue walls of the private room, the fresh sun pouring in the window, the washed-clean sky of a new day. All those sensory perceptions, though, came from a distance.

Once the bundle was placed in her arms, there was only her and her daughter.

OhGodOhGodOhGod. The pain and fear had all been real, but mattered no more now than spit in a wind.

The feel of her daughter was magic. Reverently she touched the pink cheek, the kiss-me-shaped little mouth, then slowly—so carefully!—unwrapped the blanket. She counted ten fingers, ten toes, one nose, no teeth. Without question, her daughter was the first truly perfect thing in the entire world. Love rolled over Kasey in waves, fierce, hot, compelling, bigger than any avalanche and tidal wave put together.

“She’s all right? Really all right? I remember the doctor sounding worried in the delivery room. I was scared something was going wrong—”

The nurse glanced at the chart at the bottom of the bed, then quickly turned away. “She sure looks like a healthy little princess to me.” Efficiently the nurse adjusted Kasey’s nightgown, and finally coaxed Kasey to quit examining the baby long enough to see mom and daughter hooked up. “I’m going to give you two a few private minutes, but I’ll check on you in a bit, okay?”

Kasey nodded vaguely. The nurse was nice—but not part of her world. Not then. She stroked and cuddled her miracle as the little one learned to nurse.

She and Graham had bickered about baby names for months. Boys’ names had been tough enough, but girls had seemed impossible. Cut and dried, Graham wanted Therese Elizabeth Judith if the child was a girl. Kasey thought that sounded like a garbled mouthful…now, though, she found a solution to the problem in an instant. Graham could have whatever name he wanted on the birth certificate.

But her name was Tess.

Kasey knew. From the first touch, the first smell and texture and look…the name simply fit her. And it was hard to stop cherishing and marveling. The little one had blue eyes—unseeing but beautiful. Her skin had the translucence of pearl. The head was pretty darn bald, but there was a hint of rusty-blond fuzz. Little. Oh, she was so little.

Kasey thought, I’d do anything for you. And was amazed at the compelling swamp of instincts. How come no one had told her how fierce the emotion was? That mom-love was this powerful, this extraordinarily huge?

“Oh, Graham,” she murmured as she caressed the little one’s head. “Wait until you see how precious, how priceless your daughter is. She’s worth anything. Everything. All…”

Kasey stopped talking on a sudden swallow. She looked up.

Darn it—where was Graham?

Jake pulled his eight-year-old Honda Civic into the driveway on Holiday, touched the horn to announce his arrival, and then walked around and climbed into the passenger seat.

He saw the living room curtain stir, so Danny heard the car—but that was no guarantee his son would emerge from the house in the next millennium. Rolling down the window—it was hot enough to fry sweat—he reached in the back seat for his battered briefcase. Sweet, summery flowers scented the late afternoon, but the humidity was so thick it was near choking.

He glanced at the windows of his ex-wife’s house again, then determinedly opened his work. The top three folders were labeled with the names of suburban Detroit hospitals— Beauregard, St. Francis and Randolph. All three hospitals had a history of superior care until recently, when they’d had a sudden rash of lawsuits, all related to rare medical problems affecting newborns.

Traditionally even the word newborn invoked a panic flight response in Jake—yeah, he’d had one. He still remembered the night Danny had been born fifteen years ago—and his keeling over on his nose. So babies weren’t normally his favorite subject.

But he’d accidentally come across one of these mysterious lawsuits when he’d been researching a separate story for the newspaper, and then couldn’t shake his curiosity. Every question led to another dropped ash—a lit ash—and no one else seemed aware there was an incendiary pile of embers in the forest.

In itself, the increase in lawsuits didn’t necessarily mean beans, because everybody sued for everything today. People especially freaked when something happened to a baby—what parent didn’t suffer a rage of pain when their kid didn’t come out normal? Although Jake was no longer a practicing lawyer, he knew the system. Knew how lawsuits worked.

He’d already told himself not to get so stirred up. What looked like a Teton could still end up an anthill. But it smelled wrong, this sudden burst of lawsuits—and this sudden burst of serious health problems for babies, especially when the affected hospitals had longstanding excellent reputations.

Momentarily a woman’s face pounced in his mind. Kasey. Graham Crandall’s wife. Crandall was one of those starched-spine controlling types—a silver-tongued snob, Jake had always thought, the kind of guy who’d give you the shirt off his back—as long as you gave him a medal for doing it. There was no trouble between them, no bad history. Jake didn’t care about him one way or another, even back in the years when he’d hung with the Grosse Pointe crowd.

But it had been a shock to meet Crandall’s wife. Coming out of the hospital that night, he’d only seen a woman in labor—she was crying. Who wouldn’t? About to give birth to a watermelon? Yet her face kept popping in his mind. The short, rusty-blond hair. The freckled nose and sunburned cheeks.

She wasn’t elegant or beautiful or anything like the women Jake associated with Crandall. Instead, there was a radiance about her, a glow from the inside, a natural joyful spirit. The wide mouth was built for laughter; her eyes were bluer than sky.

Pretty ridiculous, to remember all those details of a woman he didn’t know from Adam—and a woman who was married, besides. Jake figured he must have had that lightning-pull toward her for the obvious reason. It had momentarily scared him, to realize she was going into that hospital to have a baby—the same hospital where he’d been researching the lawsuits.

Now, though, he sighed impatiently and turned back to his papers. Kasey was none of his business. Hell, even these lawsuits weren’t. For two years, he’d tried his best to just put one foot in front of the other, pay his bills, make it through each day, be grateful that the half-assed weekly paper had been willing to give him a job. Even the research on these hospitals he was doing on the q.t., his own time.

Jake had done an outstanding job of screwing up his life. Now he was trying to run from trouble at Olympic speed. He figured there was a limit to how many mistakes a guy could make before any hope of self-respect was obliterated for good.

The instant he heard the front door slam, he looked up, and immediately hurled his briefcase into the back seat. Quick as a blink, he forgot all about lawsuits and strangers’ babies. His focus lasered on the boy hiking toward the car. Just looking at Danny made him feel a sharp ache in his gut.

At fifteen, Danny had the look of the high school stud. The thick dark hair and broody dark eyes drew the girls—always had, always would. The broad shoulders and no-butt and long muscular legs added to the kid’s good looks. The cutoffs hanging so low they hinted at what he was most proud of, the cocky posture, the I-own-the-world bad-boy swagger…oh yeah, the girls went for him.

Jake should know. He’d looked just like the kid at fifteen. But there were differences.

Last week Danny’s hair had been straggly and shoulder-length; this week it had colored streaks. The kid’s scowl was as old as a bad habit and his eyes were angry—all the time angry, it seemed. The swagger wasn’t assumed for the sake of impressing the girls, but because Danny was ready to take on anyone who looked at him sideways.

Jake understood a lot about attitude. What knifed him in the gut, though, was knowing that his son’s bad attitude was his fault.

The boy yanked open the driver’s door and hurled his long skinny body in the driver’s seat. “You’re late.”

Not only was Jake ten minutes early, but he’d been waiting. Still, he didn’t comment. If Danny hadn’t started the conversation with a challenge, Jake would probably have had a heart attack from shock. “You brought your permit? And you told your mom that you’re going out with me?”

“Like I need to be treated like a five-year-old.” Danny fussed with the key, the dials, then muttered, “If I had any choice—just so we both know where we stand—I’d rather be anywhere but here.”

That about said it all. Danny wanted to drive so badly that he was even willing to spend time with his dad—and then, only because no one else wanted to practice-drive with him. Even his mother valued her life too much to take the risk.

“I suppose you’re in a hurry.” Danny used his favorite world-weary tone as he started the car.

“Nope. I’ve got as much time as you want—although I assume your mom wants you back by dinner.”

“Yeah. Maybe. Can I go on the expressway today?”

Maybe Churchill thought there was nothing to fear but fear itself, but the image of Danny on a Detroit expressway at rush hour was enough to make bile rise up Jake’s throat in abject terror. The kid had just gotten his practice license. The last time he’d tried to do something as basic as making a right turn, he’d climbed over a curb. “I think you probably need to get a little more comfortable with the stick shift before we take on the expressway.”

“That’s what you said last week.” Danny shoved the stick in reverse, made the gear scream in pain, and then stalled out when he let up the clutch too fast. Red shot up his throat. “That wasn’t my fault,” he said furiously. “It’s this old heap of a car. It’s so old it doesn’t respond to anything.”

It was going to be one of their better times, Jake thought. Of course, as they aimed toward Lakeshore, the test questions began. Can I play the radio. Can I drive by Julie Rossiter’s house. Can I this, can I that.

As far as Jake could tell, all the questions were designed to elicit a no, at which point Danny would instantly respond with a look of anger and disgust. Jake knew the game. He did his absolute best to say yes to any request that wasn’t definably life-threatening. Sure, Danny could drive by the girl’s house. Sure, he could play the radio—any station and at any volume he wanted. Jake encouraged him to drive exactly as he would be driving later, when he was alone, so he could see how distractions affected his concentration.

“Oh, yeah? Does that mean I can smoke while I drive?”

“No.” Jake didn’t elaborate, knowing how a lecture on smoking would be received. Besides, just then his right foot jammed on the imaginary brake and his pulse pumped adrenaline faster than a belching well. No, they hadn’t hit that red Lincoln going through the intersection. No, scraping the tire against the curb wouldn’t kill them. No, braking so fast they were both thrown forward didn’t mean either of them was going to end up hospitalized.

“I’m going to be sixteen in another seven months,” Danny said, as he turned on Vernier.

“I know.” Jake resisted holding his hand over his heart. Suburban driving wasn’t too bad, but Vernier eventually turned into Eight Mile. Eight Mile was a Real Road. The kind that tons of people actually used. Some of them might not realize how close they were to imminent death.

“So, any chance you might buy me a car?” Danny rushed on, “Mom’ll never let me drive the Buick. It’s uncool, anyway. But she’s already warning me that I won’t be able to use her car all the time. I really need wheels.”

“I can’t afford a car, Danny.”

“You could. If you were still a lawyer. If we were still a family. If you weren’t a drunk.”

There now. Every one of the accusations stung like a bullet, just as his son intended. Sometimes Jake wanted a minute with his son—just one damn minute—when Danny wasn’t trying to wound him.

But of course he’d earned those accusations. And all he could do now was hope that time—good meaningful time together—could start to heal that old, bad history. “Getting you a car isn’t just about having enough money to buy one.”

“The hell it isn’t.”

“Danny, come on, you’re a new driver. You know that you need more practice before you’ll be safe—or feel safe—on the road. It’s nuts to start out with a new car before you have some experience under your belt.”

“You care about being safe on the road? You used to drive drunk.”

“Yeah, I did. And I hope you never do. I hope you’re way smarter than me.”

“That wouldn’t take much.” Danny made a left on Mack, where approximately five thousand cars were speeding toward home. Horns blared when the Honda accidentally straddled two lanes. Jake reached for an antacid. Then Danny tried another jibe. “Mom’s going out with some guys. Three of them, in fact.”

“That’s nice.”

“I’ll bet she’s screwing at least one.”

Jake understood that this comment was supposed to be another way to hurt him. Danny assumed that he still cared what Paula did. And even though Jake should have known better than to bite, he couldn’t quite let this one go. “Don’t use words like that about your mother.”

“Oh, that’s right. We’re not supposed to tell the truth about anything. We just lie and pretend everything’s okay, right? The way you lied about being an alcoholic. And about you and Mom staying together, that you were just going through a rough time but we’d all be fine.”

Halfway through a yellow light, Danny gunned the engine and it stalled. The light turned red while they sat clogging the middle of the intersection. Sweat beaded on Jake’s brow. He said, “Take it easy. The other drivers can see you, so there’s no immediate danger. Just concentrate on getting the car started and going again.”

On the inside, Jake marveled at the epiphany he kept getting from these practice driving sessions with Danny. You sure learned to value your life when it was constantly at risk.

Besides that—and in spite of Danny’s sarcasm and surly scowls—Jake still felt the wonder of being with his son. It wasn’t a given. Danny hadn’t been willing to see him for most of the two years since the divorce—and God knew, that wouldn’t have changed if Danny wasn’t desperate to drive.

Jake realized he was riding a shaky fence. He fiercely wanted to make things right for his son, yet there seemed no parenting rule book for this deal. The kid was always egging him on, pushing him to lose his temper. What was the right dad-thing to do? Be tough? Or be understanding? Give him the tongue lashing he was begging for, or keep proving to the kid that he’d never vent temper on him?

Hard questions surfaced every time they were together. Jake didn’t mind the kid beating up on him—hell, he had a lot to make up for. But just once in his life, he’d like some answers. Some right answers. He was already a pro at the other kind.

When Danny turned again, aiming down a side road toward Lakeshore, the boy suddenly muttered, “Julie’s house is down here.”

Abruptly the kid slowed to a five-mile-an-hour crawl—which was fine by Jake—until Danny made another left. Four homes down from Sacred Julie’s house was the Crandall place. Jake spotted a BMW pulling into the driveway. Saw Graham Crandall climb out of the driver’s seat. Saw the passenger door open.

And there was Kasey.

His pulse bucked like a stallion’s in spring—just like it had the first time he’d seen her. The kick of hormones struck him as incontestable proof that a man had no brain below his waist…still, it made him want to laugh. The last time he remembered that kind of zesty hormonal kick, he’d been sixteen, driving Mary Lou Lowrey home from a movie, and 51% sure from the way she kissed him that she was going to let him take her bra off. Second base was hardly a home run, but sixteen-year-old boys were happy with crumbs. Even the promise of crumbs. At that age, the thrum of anticipation alone was more than worth living for.

Hormones were undeniably stupid, but damn. They made a guy feel busting-high alive and full of himself—a sensation Jake hadn’t enjoyed in a blue moon and then some.

Temporarily his son diverted him from the view—primarily because he was doing something to torture both the gears and the brakes simultaneously. “Danny, what are you trying to do?”

Danny shot him an impatient look. “Parallel park, obviously.”

“Ah.” Perhaps it should have been obvious. They’d edged up the curb, down the curb, up on the stranger’s grass, down on the grass, several times now. Ahead of them was a freshly-washed SUV, behind them a satin-black Audi. In principle there was an ample ten feet between the cars. “Try not to go quite so close—”

“Well, this is hard,” Danny groused. “How the hell are you supposed to know where the back end of another car is if you can’t see it?”

But he could see her. Kasey, climbing out of the passenger seat, holding a small pink blanket. She hit him exactly the same way she had before—as if he were suffering the dizzying, stupefying effect of a stupid pill.

The darn woman wasn’t any prettier than she’d been the first time. No makeup. Her rusty-blond hair was wildly tousled. She was wearing some God-awful green print that overwhelmed her delicate features. But the details just didn’t matter.

The sound of her laughter pealed down the street. She didn’t laugh like a lady; she laughed as if her whole heart and belly were into it, joyful laughter, the kind of hopeless giggling that sucked in strangers passing by.

And the way she held the baby, it was damn obvious the kid was worth more than diamonds to her. As Graham crossed the car to her side, she climbed out, then surged up on tiptoe and kissed him. She looked up at him with a love so radiant and full that you’d think Graham was everything a woman ever dreamed of in a guy.

And there it was, Jake mused wryly. He got it, the reason he had such a hard time looking away from her. It was plain old jealousy.

He knew damn well no one had ever looked at him like that.

No one’s fault for that but him. He’d grown up a spoiled rich kid, raised to be selfish, to feel entitled, to take whatever he wanted whenever he wanted it. God knew his parents only meant to love him, but that upbringing had still skewed his perspective. It had taken his losing everything for Jake to figure out what mattered. He’d run out of time. Either he got around to developing some character, or he was going to end up lost for good.

An alcoholic—at least an alcoholic who was serious about recovering—discovered certain things about life. There were things you couldn’t do. Other people could. You couldn’t. Life was as simple and mean as that. No one else had your exact list, but Jake knew what was written on the forbidden side of his sheet. Being attracted to a married woman—a very, very married woman—was as off-limits as it got.

He understood Kasey’s tug on him. Something about her reminded him of what he once thought life could be—when he still believed in dreams, when he still believed in himself, when every moment of sunshine was a treasure. He understood—but he turned off the volume and the vision, promptly.

Danny had given up trying to parallel park. He took the first left turn, aiming back toward his mother’s house. He didn’t speed. His driving problems had never been about carelessness, but about having no natural sense for the stick shift and the car. The more impatient he got with himself, the more he tended to make mistakes. Jake tried to shut up. Time and experience were the answers, not carping. Besides, dads couldn’t die from nerves, could they?

Danny accidentally hit the gas, pulling into Paula’s driveway, tried to recover by slamming on the brakes, and then, of course, stalled. For the first time in almost two hours, the kid looked him straight in the eye.

“I suppose you don’t have time to do this again on Thursday,” he said disgustedly.

“I suppose I do.”

It probably hurt the kid like a sore, but hope surged in those broody blue eyes. “Same time? Four o’clock?”

“I may be a little late.”

“Yeah, so what’s new? The question is whether you’ll show at all, just because you say you will.”

Jake said easily, “Damn right. You think I don’t know how much I need to make up for, Sport, you’re mistaken. And in the meantime, if you also want to take on a drive on Saturday or Sunday—there’s less traffic early in the morning, so we could go for a longer trek.”

“You mean get up early?” Danny’s tone suggested that particular idea was as appealing as a snake bite.

“No sweat if you don’t want to. I just know you’re hot to get more driving hours in, and I can’t get here during the work week until after four. Weekend mornings could give us more time.”

Danny heaved out of the car. “I’ll think about it.”

“Okay.” Jake got out, too, and crossed to the other side, conscious that his son hadn’t used the word Dad, much less said anything as pleasant as “goodbye.” This lesson, though, had been significantly more peaceful than the last one. Danny hadn’t sworn at him. Hadn’t hit anything.

“Hey.” Danny stopped at the front door, key in the lock, turning back to offer one last belligerent look.

“Yeah?” Jake assumed the “hey” was meant as some kind of question.

“Thanks for taking me,” Danny said stiffly, and then promptly disappeared in the house and slammed the door.

Well, hell. Jake was stunned speechless. The kid had actually thanked him? Maybe, just maybe, father and son did have a chance to mend their fences. Of course, earning the kid’s respect was still an uphill battle.

CHAPTER 2

K asey pulled into her mother’s driveway, thankful she’d made it across town in record time. She had no time for a visit, not today, but she was too worried to postpone it.

Quickly she freed Tess from the car seat, then stole a few more moments to kiss her daughter’s cheek, then her forehead, then her chin. “How do you like the day, snookums? Feel the breeze? See the leaves just starting to change color?”

Once she scooped up Tess, she grabbed the five tons of baby paraphernalia it took to travel with a six-week-old infant. Mentally she was already scolding herself. How could anything be wrong on a fabulous day like this? The afternoon sun was brilliant. The wind had the tickle of fall. And assuming she did need advice, her mom—much as she loved her—was not usually a source of reassurance. Still, for the kind of worries she’d been plagued with, her mother was the only person she could turn to.

“Finally you’re here.”

Kasey jumped at the sound of her mother’s voice and whirled around. Ellen Markowitz clapped the screen door open and hustled down the porch steps, wiping her hands with a dish towel.

Kasey got the towel.

Grandma got the baby.

“I haven’t seen you in two whole weeks!” Ellen crooned to the baby. “But look at how she’s smothered you. Forty-seven blankets, and here it’s almost sixty degrees. And you’ve grown so much in two weeks! She knows I don’t like to drop by if Graham could be around. He’s so busy and I don’t want to be an interfering in-law, but you’d think my own daughter could find a minute to see me more often.”

“Mom…” It was probably useless trying to get a word in, but Kasey made a first try.

“Oh, yes. You.” Ellen turned around, smacked a fast kiss on her daughter’s cheek. “Come in, we’ll have tea—but we have to be quiet. Your dad’s home. He hurt his ankle yesterday. Right now he’s napping in the den and I’d just as soon not wake him up.”

Kasey skipped a step. She loved her dad. But a sick Stan Markowitz was not a pretty sight. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have called.” She added quickly, “If you think the noise of the baby will bother him, would you rather I came back a different day?”

“Of course not. I want you right here, right now. We’ll just be quiet. And now that I’ve got my hands on my darling, there’s no way you’re taking off with her this fast. Lord, Kasey. I swear that she’s the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen.”

“You think?”

There. Her mom’s praise for the baby immediately soothed Kasey like salve for a burn. She wanted to shake herself. She’d never been the high-strung type; she’d always easily gone with the flow and tended to be a hard-core life-lover. It was just…Tess was her miracle baby. And she was a lot older than the usual first-time mom. Maybe her worries were crazy, but she just couldn’t seem to feel confident in this new-mom job.

Everything about the working-class neighborhood was as familiar as an old slipper. The houses were older, all with front porches and huge shade trees, but the edges showed signs of financial struggling. A dead car sat in one backyard; the sidewalks had weedy cracks; the curtains sagged in Mr. Harwoljj’s front window.

Inside her mom’s house, it was too hot. Whether summer or winter, Ellen liked her house five degrees cozier than anyone else. This year, the living room walls were a dark aqua, the couch and carpet a neutral taupe. Ellen had read all about color coordinating. The curtains had a strip of aqua, the couch pillows were a taupe and aqua print; and the orange throw that everyone used to curl up with was banished to an upstairs closet because it didn’t go with the current décor.

Kasey tiptoed behind her mother—and was hit with déjà vu. She remembered tiptoeing past the den when her dad had been sick before. In the narrow hall, the smell of Charlie perfume wafted from the bathroom, strong enough to bring on a sneeze. The kitchen was the long, skinny room at the back of the house—the only room that really mattered, because it was where the family had always eaten, fought, argued, and through thick and thin, come together.

“You’re making the tea,” Ellen ordered.

Like this needed saying? Kasey watched her mom shed Tess’s blankets, coo and tickle and examine the baby. Ellen never changed. In an era when women didn’t do middle age anymore, Ellen had embraced getting older as if she’d won a prize. She always looked tired, always reported a new ache. As a child, Kasey had no way to understand that martyrdom was a kind of comfort to her mother—even if it wasn’t a healthy one.

“So…how are the hemorrhoids?”

Kasey blinked. “Somehow I thought we might start out with ‘Hi, how are you,’ before we got into the prying questions.”

“You had a baby. You have hemorrhoids. One follows the other like night follows day, but all right, we won’t talk about anything that isn’t nice-nice. You always were a happy-go-lucky dreamer, wanting pies in the sky that could never be. I’d lost hope you’d ever marry. You were so lucky to find Graham.”

“Mom.” Kasey didn’t have to struggle for patience. No matter what she’d done as a daughter, to Ellen, it was never enough. Sometimes her mother’s belittling criticism hurt, but today was the opposite. If she could count on anyone in the universe to point out a problem or a fault, it was her mom. “I have to give a dinner party tonight, so I can’t stay more than an hour, and there are some things I need to talk to you about—”

“So go on, make the tea and talk. But at least give me enough time to rock my baby.”

The white rocker had been set up in the kitchen clearly for this visit. Kasey’s gaze softened as she watched the two. She’d nursed Tess before coming over, so the baby was likely to be good for a couple more hours. Soft eyelashes lay on the baby’s cheek like silken threads. There was a small tuft of blond hair on the top of her head now—not enough to put a bow—but enough to make her look like a miniature punk rocker.

“Kasey…” For one brief moment, her mother forgot to be critical. “She really is beautiful. Like a Gerber baby. Beyond beautiful. She takes my breath.”

“Mine, too.” Kasey knew where everything was. Tea was in the white cupboard over the stove, sugar in her great-grandma’s porcelain bowl, and the half-and-half stored in the second shelf of the old fridge.

“All your friends from the neighborhood come to see her? Your friends from work? Everybody see how nice you’re living in Grosse Pointe, the house and everything?”

“Well…they’ve all called.” Kasey knew what her mom wanted to hear. That all her friends were envious—especially those from the old neighborhood. “Very few have stopped over, but it’s a long drive. And I think they may be a little uncomfortable—”

“Well, of course they are. They’re jealous of how lucky you are,” Ellen said complacently.

Kasey didn’t buy jealousy as the reason, but the truth was, she’d felt confused when her friends started severing contact. She’d never thought marrying someone of a “different class” would matter—not to real friends—yet the old habits of doing lunch and girl-shopping had disappeared. At first Kasey had been so busy preparing for the baby that it didn’t matter, yet it was disconcerting to go from a gaggle of friends to such sudden isolation. That wasn’t, though, what her mother wanted to hear. “Lots of people sent presents for the baby.”

“I’m sure they did. Your Aunt Lorna send something good?”

“Yeah, something wonderful.” Kasey couldn’t remember what, but she wasn’t about to get her Aunt Lorna in trouble. Finally, she had the tea steeped and poured and could sit down. She motioned to Tess. “Mom, do you think she looks fat enough?”

“You still breast-feeding her?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then it’s always hard to be sure she’s getting enough milk. But for now, she couldn’t look healthier. You should be giving her a supplemental bottle now and then, though, so if you get sick, she won’t be so dependent on you. Is she sleeping all night?”

“No. But three nights ago, she went six hours.” Six blissful, uninterrupted hours. Maybe that’s why she’d been so oddly fearful and worried about the baby. Because too little sleep was making her batty.

Ellen adjusted the baby on her shoulder. “Bring me a cookie, Kase. The gingersnaps. Maybe you could try her with a little rice cereal. Like at dinner. See if that’ll hold her, make her sleep longer at night.”

“Mom…”

Ellen heard the start of the next question, and cocked her head impatiently when Kasey didn’t immediately follow through. But it was as if the fear and worries of the last weeks were suddenly bubbling to the surface like trapped air in a giant ocean. She’d loved being a mom every second since the baby was born—even the tired, cranky parts. But she felt so constantly unsure. Nothing she’d done in her life had prepared her for this level of terror. And it was as if, finally being in her mom’s kitchen, under her mom’s critical scrutiny, Kasey could finally let the fear seep out that had been prowling in the closet of her heart for weeks now. “Does she seem…normal…to you?”

Ellen’s jaw dropped. “You’re worried Tess isn’t normal? What are you, blind?”

“But she’s so good.”

“You’re lucky beyond belief, yet you’re complaining?”

“Not complaining. At all. It’s just…” All the rest of her screwy worries came out in a gush. “She barely seems to cry. When she’s awake, she just lays in my arms like an angel, or in the baby carrier, happy. I put her in one of the cribs, she’s happy there. Wherever I put her, she doesn’t seem to move.”

“So where is the bad news in this? She’s just a month old, you thought she would be doing cartwheels by now?”

There. She was finally able to laugh. “I guess I just thought she’d move around a little more. I was afraid I was doing something wrong.”

“Well, of course you’re doing things wrong. You know nothing. I don’t care how old you are, you’re still a new mother, and first-time mothers never know anything—that’s why you’ve got women in the family to ask advice from. Like me. Oh, you darling, I hope you keep those beautiful blue eyes!” Ellen snoozled the baby’s cheek, but then suddenly braced as they both heard a plaintive “ELLEN!” from the den.

“I’ll go see what he wants,” Kasey said immediately. As she hustled down the hall, she could hear Stan revving up the language, the kind of swearing that made her squirm when she was a kid—not because his temper was directed at her but because it was directed at her mother.

The instant she showed her face in the den, though, her dad’s bark turned into an instant smile. “I didn’t know you were here, sunshine! Come on, gimme a hug, I’ve missed you so much….” And then, “Damn it, your mother knows I can hardly walk with this ankle, and here I was calling and calling—”

Swiftly Kasey rushed to play peacemaker. “What can I do to help? Do you want a drink? A snack?”

“I need ice for my ankle. And a little nip. And the TV— I can’t find the remote—”

“I’ll fix it all, Dad, and in the meantime tell me all about what happened to your ankle.”

Kasey charged around, well aware that the time was clicking away, that Tess would be hungry soon and she had a dinner party for sixteen to prepare for. Still, it wasn’t that easy to escape the old daughter roles—placating her dad, and then hearing out her mother’s stream of advice and criticism.

“You’re pale, what is this, no makeup? You know how washed-out you look without foundation. It’s a mistake too many new mothers make, Kasey, letting themselves go. Marriages don’t survive by accident. They take work. And so do men.”

Kasey washed the tea dishes, brought a fresh ice bag for her dad, changed Tess. Graham had gotten her parents a new television, the new couch in the living room, bought them a satellite dish. To Ellen and Stan both, he was a god.

“I still don’t know what he saw in you,” Ellen said frankly.

“Hey! Thanks a ton!”

“I wasn’t trying to be cruel, Kasey. But you surely realize there’s something odd in your relationship? I know you’re wonderful because you’re my daughter, but Graham was rich and smart and should easily have been able to pick a woman from his own circles. He had to see something in you that he couldn’t get elsewhere. And that doesn’t have to be bad—but it could be. No one is this lucky without having to pay a price. Don’t blow it.”

“Mom, I love him. We’re happy. There’s nothing to blow.”

“So go home. Put on makeup. Make yourself pretty. Sexy. And do something with that hair.” Both of them heard Stan yell for Ellen from the den, and Ellen got that worn-out look in her eyes again.

Kasey left with that “Don’t blow it” still ringing in her ears. It took a full hour to drive home, primarily because I-94 turned into a gladiator den, and as if sensing her nerves, Tess started fussing.

Kasey murmured the instinctive mom there-there mantra, but Ellen’s rantings were still smarting in her mind. She’d known for years why her mother carried such antiquated values about women. Her grandmother had been divorced and struggled, near desperation financially sometimes, to raise three daughters. Ellen had gone into her own marriage with a terror of divorce. She’d always catered to Stan, waiting on him, jumping for his every wish, running to avoid his anger.

Ellen had relentlessly raised Kasey to believe that accommodating and appeasing a man were critical keys to a woman’s survival. Kasey got the shivers when she thought about following in her mother’s footsteps—that was never, ever, how she wanted to live.

Yet she did try to please Graham. That wasn’t being a doormat, was it? Didn’t every woman want to please the man she loved? Give up things, cater, try to show her love in ways that made him happy?

Which reminded her of the dinner coming up tonight. As she turned off the expressway, she gnawed on a thumbnail. Technically the dinner was just a neighborhood gathering, yet she sensed it was important to Graham.

He wanted their life to return to normal, to start entertaining and doing business functions together the way they had before the baby. Life wouldn’t end if this dinner didn’t turn out perfectly, but Kasey still felt uneasy. Their marriage had changed the minute Tess was born. She’d sworn that she wouldn’t let Graham feel neglected…but of course he did.

Tonight was a chance to make it up to him.

Kasey had been looking forward to the evening, yet that flash of uneasiness made her shiver again. She shook her head, laughing at herself loud enough to make Tess suddenly chortle from her infant seat. “Yeah, love bug, Mommy’s just being silly, huh? Our whole world couldn’t be better, and here I’m seeing shadows in the corners. How goofy can you get!”

At six-thirty the lobby of the weekly newspaper office was deserted. One lonely fluorescent light illuminated the hall, but the central office was as quiet as a tomb. During the day, phones and printers and faxes and people yelling made for a noisy bedlam. At this hour, the place looked like the aftermath of a riot, with wastebaskets overflowing with half-dead doughnut parts and reams of coffee cups, and the floor littered with paper and clips and everything else.

Jake sat at the far desk—his coat on, because he’d intended to leave some time ago. But he got studying a medical tome, and ended up concentrating so hard he never heard his boss approach his desk.

Barney couldn’t walk or talk without an unlit cigar chomped between his teeth. Wearing boots, he was conceivably five-four and had to weigh a good 250. The chin was grizzly with whiskers by five o’clock; the breath invariably smelled of old coffee, and the narrow eyes had a born-mean glow. He was so ornery that he couldn’t hire reporters fast enough to keep up with their quitting, and when he parked in front of Jake’s desk, he clearly had his bristles up.

“What the hell is this? Six o’clock, and you already got your coat on? You got here when?”

“Six o’clock this morning,” Jake answered.

“So. Twelve hours, and you think you can just go home. Knowing what I pay you for overtime?”

Barney hadn’t paid overtime in his life. What he did pay for a functional eight hours made slave wages sound good. “I’m leaving in ten. My dad needs me to take him to a neighborhood dinner thing. Until my mother can go with him, I’m the self-elected volunteer.”

“Like I asked you about your private life.” Barney took out his half-bitten cigar, only to stick it in the other side of his mouth. “So when you gonna tell me what the hell you’re working on so late these last weeks?”

“Nothing.”

Barney purposefully blocked the egress to the door—not hard to do when your stomach took up an entire aisle. “It’s something about kids. Babies. You got books and articles in here to the ceiling on medical crap. Somebody assign you a story I don’t know about?”

“No.” Jake marked the spot in the book he’d been reading, and carefully closed the tome.

“You are writing a story, aren’t you?” It was difficult to evaluate Barney’s expressions, but the sudden twist in his mouth was kin to a smile.

“I’m looking into an idea, but there’s nothing to tell you until I’m sure I’ve got something.”

That was all it took to make Barney start crowing. “Did I tell you you’d get into this job or what? Two years ago you walked in here with your hands shaking. Eyes looked like your best friend was a ghost.”

“Come on, now. You know I’ve heard these compliments before.”

“You told me you were a drunk. Couldn’t promise me you’d last a week. I know you secretly thought you were gonna bite the bullet, now, didn’t you, dimwit?”

Jake sighed. He refused to get embroiled in this conversation. Not again.

“But I told you you’d get your life back. And that you wouldn’t be happy just pushing out legal articles from the back desk, either. I wasn’t sure—hell, you were a lawyer, and who the hell can trust those dregs of the earth? But I still saw something in you. You picked up the writing bug, admit it.”

“I wouldn’t choose to write if it were the last profession on earth.” And Jake wouldn’t give Barney the satisfaction of hearing otherwise.

Barney ignored this, just squinched up his face so his eyes got smaller than beads. “So the story’s about kids, babies. Abuse?”

“No.”

“Not gang crap. I’m tired of that bullshit.”

“No. It’s about legal stuff. The stuff you hired me to look at.”

“Ah. Some kind of lawsuit?”

Jake buttoned his jacket, stood up. Barney didn’t budge. Jake sighed. “It’s about an epidemic of malpractice lawsuits involving newborns in the last three years. All involving good hospitals, and not just good doctors, but the best doctors in the city. Which is why I got interested. It’s a puzzle.”

Barney got a feral gleam in his eye. He’d never made it to the top, never would, barely had the talent to keep a weekly newspaper together. But that didn’t mean he didn’t hunger for more. “What’s wrong with the babies?”

Jake shook his head. “There’s no point going into it until I’m sure I’ve got a story.”

“God, you’re annoying.” Barney straightened up to his full five foot four. “All right, keep your story secret for now. But just so you know—if you quit me and go back to lawyering, I’ll cut you in the street like a dead dog.”

“I’m not going back to being a lawyer.” Jake didn’t have to swear it.

Barney nodded. “Of course not. Why would you go back to making a hundred, a hundred grand and a half every year, for a job that pays a little more than minimum wage? And have to give up a boss like me besides?”

“If I were only gay, we could be lovers,” Jake assured him, which—thank God—was enough to send Barney cackling back to his office.

Still Jake lingered, knowing how much his dad wanted to attend this dinner, not wanting to be late…but really not wanting to go anywhere near the Crandalls.

Kasey was the problem. Jake had no intention of going near her, not in any personal way. Once he’d identified her as forbidden, that issue became easy. He’d shoot himself before going near a married woman—so that solved that.

But four days ago he’d come across another medical lawsuit stemming from the obstetrics department in Randolph Hospital. The hospital where she’d had her baby. Just weeks ago.

“Kasey, where are you?”

Hearing Graham’s exasperated call, Kasey quickly patted the sleeping baby’s rump one last time, checked that the baby monitor was on, and then closed the door to the nursery. In the master bedroom, Graham was fighting with his favorite burgundy-and-blue striped tie. The tie was winning. It always did. With a chuckle, she stepped under her husband’s chin and took over.

“It’s almost eight. Company’s almost due. And then the tie got mean.”

“I can see that,” Kasey said. “Damn tie.”

“That’s what I said,” Graham said, still sounding aggrieved, yet out of nowhere he suddenly handed her a small narrow box.

“What’s this?”

“Just a little present. Finally, our lives are going back to normal as of tonight.”

Kasey saw the familiar gleam of desire in Graham’s eyes, and felt her heart sink. Graham knew she’d had her six-week checkup and the doctor had okayed sex again—and she’d always loved her husband’s ardent lovemaking. It was just…she was so beat. Between the doctor appointment and the visit with her mom and night feedings, she was drooping on the inside, and the dinner party hadn’t even started.

“Come on, love. Open the box.”

She did—and found a heavy chain of diamonds. “Good heavens, Graham!”

“You like it?” Obviously pleased at her shocked expression, he stepped behind her and hooked the chain. In the bureau mirror she could see herself—wearing a black dress, to please him. Her fingers touched the stones at her neck. Truthfully, the setting was huge and heavy and didn’t suit her—but how ungrateful could a woman be? They were diamonds.

“What an incredible surprise! I’m overwhelmed!”

“Good.” He dropped a kiss on her neck, clearly approving the dress, her swept-up hair, his choice of jewels. “It’s because you never ask, Kasey, that I love giving you things. And finally, tonight, I’ve got my wife back.”

God knew, she hoped he’d feel that way. It was increasingly troubling to her that Graham still hadn’t bonded with the baby and seemed to resent every minute Kasey spent with Tess. Tonight, though, she really hoped to turn that around.

When the doorbell rang, she went downstairs to greet the first guest. The Bartholomews arrived first, then the Fields and Mauriers. Although Kasey knew the neighborhood crowd now, her throat initially dried up as if she’d swallowed a cup of sand. There wasn’t an ugly woman in the group—or anyone who had less than a bachelor’s degree. Kasey always had the sensation that she didn’t belong here, never had, never would. No matter how wonderful the women had been to her, they just weren’t her brand of normal. They never got zits. Nobody’s hair ever had a dark root or a split end. She couldn’t imagine them suffering from gas, or a tampon leak, or even throwing up in an embarrassing situation.

Yet that first terrorizing reaction faded after a few minutes, as it often did.

She liked them. Really liked them. Kay and Mary Ellen ran their own businesses; Willa taught at U of D. Binky was too fast-lane for Kasey and always would be, but Karen—Bud Maurier’s wife—had been a mentor and friend from the day she’d moved into the neighborhood. Besides. They all knew by now that she had hopeless taste in clothes, and she’d been frank about her blue-collar background. When she first married Graham, she’d just presumed that the Grosse Pointe neighborhood would be a nest of snobs, and she couldn’t have been more wrong. Naturally there were a few elitists, but not many. From the beginning, they’d taken her in as if she were a fellow sister.

They did tonight, too. And she felt a little easier because she was dressed the way she was supposed to be—thanks to Graham. Bud Maurier gave her a kiss and made her laugh. She was flying around pretty high, still greeting guests. Only right after Jim and Chloe Cranston came the gentle, frail Joe McGraw—accompanied by his son, Jake.

Her heart oddly tripped when she shook Jake’s hand and welcomed him. “I’m so glad you came,” she said, as if he were any other guest, yet she found her hand clasping his for a second longer, her gaze oddly captivated by his.

He wasn’t any other guest. She remembered him, from the night at the hospital, and he’d stopped to help her. Since then she’d heard more gossip about him from the neighborhood women, who’d slung stories about his wild years and drinking. It wasn’t as if he’d dwelled in her mind—there’d been nothing in her mind for a month but her baby. But now, those deep, old, sexy eyes seemed to touch her. The tip of his smile. The way he was alone, even as he was helping his father join the gathering.

Of course, that odd moment passed, and then she was running nonstop. The pressure was on. She was determined to show Graham that she could easily put on a dinner the way she used to—that the baby wasn’t going to inhibit them from resuming the social life he valued so much. She could have hired a baby-sitter for Tess and extra household help, but she’d always coped alone before.

Dinner was served at nine. The problem with making everything look effortless was that it took so much effort. Graham did like things just-so. The housekeeper, Gladys, had helped clean, but Kasey polished the sterling icers and water goblets herself, created centerpieces with cranberry candles and fresh flowers. She’d done the new baby potatoes in a clay pot, marinated the London broil with her own original sauce, made a twelve-egg sponge cake from scratch. Now she brought dishes, kissed guests, served the fresh shrimp, scooped the quiet ones into conversations, until finally, everyone was sitting down and digging in.

“Kasey, this is the most fabulous London broil I’ve ever had.”

“Thanks.” Trust Bud to relax her with a compliment, and Karen to add to it.

“You’re going to give me the recipe for the sauce?”

She chuckled. “I’ve never had a recipe. I just made it up years ago, and then somehow it keeps evolving on its own.”

“But it’s always better,” Graham said from across the table. “The way Kasey cooks, it’s a miracle I’m not three hundred pounds.”

“How’s your daughter? Doing all right at school?” someone asked him.

“Laura’s just fine—supposed to come home next weekend.”

“Has she seen the baby yet?”

“No. She was just getting settled in at U of M, starting classes….”

Kasey kept checking the guests, making sure no one needed something. Yet every time she glanced at Jake, his gaze already seemed to be waiting for her, already studying her in a way that made her pulse rush. It wasn’t a bad feeling. Just a little unnerving. Suddenly she was conscious of her flyaway hair and the pretentious black dress and how flushed her cheeks were from running.

“I can’t imagine how you managed all this with a new baby,” Karen said.

“Oh, Tess is no trouble, is she, Graham?” But when Kasey looked at her husband, he’d clearly been sucked into a conversation with Peter Felding. Cripes. Not Peter. The two men were friends, but Graham would definitely turn cranky if the two started arguing politics. She pushed back her chair. “If you’ll all just relax a few minutes, I’ll bring in dessert.”

“Let me help, Kasey,” Karen insisted.

“No, no, honest, it’s no trouble. Everyone just put your feet up.”

With a smile, Kasey pushed the swinging door into the kitchen. Please let it keep going so well went the mantra in her head.

And it was going good, she thought. If her head weren’t pounding, the night would be almost perfect. And she did have to keep hustling. Fresh coffee had to be made—and not ordinary coffee, but fresh ground beans, with a pinch of salt and egg shells added to the ground for richness. Then the foot-tall sponge cake with the marshmallow frosting needed fresh cherries for a garnish. And then dessert dishes—where had she put the German china ones that were Graham’s grandmother’s?

She was just carving the sponge cake when a piece slid. It was right there. Sitting politely on the spatula, waiting to be transferred to the heirloom plate when, blast it, the slice of cake took off. Went flying through the air. Instinctively she grabbed for it. And caught it. Which meant that the marshmallow frosting and sponge cake were suddenly squished all over her hands—what didn’t gush all over her black dress and the floor.

At that precise moment, the kitchen door opened.

“Uh-oh.”

The masculine voice was filled with humor…Jake McGraw, she saw, the instant she looked up with frantic eyes. “I couldn’t imagine how you could do it all alone. Bring in coffee and dessert both. I was going to volunteer to help, but man, now that I’ve seen that cake…personally, I wouldn’t be wasting anything that looks that terrific on company.”

For some crazy reason, she found herself relaxing for the first time all day. “It’s good,” she said. “But not quite so good when eaten off a black dress.”

“You got some on the fancy necklace, too.”

“Oh no, oh no—”

“Let’s see. Quit fussing. Nothing’s that bad.”

“They’ll all be waiting for dessert—”

“They’re all stuffed like pigs and having a good time shooting the breeze. Tip your head up.” He grabbed a napkin and rubbed it on the necklace. Dipped the napkin in sink water, then rubbed the necklace a second time. He was standing so close she could see the cleft in his chin, smell his brand of soap, see his thick brown hair under the kitchen light, so dark and walnut-rich with that hint of cinnamon. Then he stepped back to take a critical look. “Well, it may still be sticky, but it doesn’t look like a meringue necklace anymore. Turned back into diamonds.” His eyes met hers, sexy and mysterious and darker than whiskey. “That necklace looks heavier than lead.”

“It is. To be honest, I’ve never been much of the jewelry type.” She added hastily, “Not that I don’t love it. But the fear of losing it scares the wits out of me.”

“Well, having to cut your fancy cake would generally scare the wits out of me. But I’m here, so you might as well put me to work. Besides, then you can blame it on me if anything else spills.”

“I will, you know.”

“You will what?”

“Blame any and all spills on you.” How goofy was this? Teasing as if she’d known him for years. Yet he didn’t seem like a stranger. He seemed…different. The way she’d always felt different, not one to easily fit in.

Maybe he had alcoholism and major mistakes in his personal closet, but Kasey couldn’t see it to look at him. He was obviously a caring son—caring enough to chauffeur his dad to events that he didn’t necessarily want to attend himself. And she loved the intelligence, the experience, the depth in his eyes. Yeah, she could see a trace of bad boy in his posture, in his lazy, lanky way of moving, in the kindling way he looked at a woman…but there was nothing to scare her from liking him.

The kindling potential nagged at her a bit, but not much. She was too old to pretend it wasn’t there—too old to need to. She loved Graham. It was just nice to talk to someone who just seemed to like her…. someone where she didn’t feel as if she had to be ON all the time, striving to prove herself.

“Did you really come in here just to help me?” she asked Jake curiously.

“Yeah, basically. I kept thinking someone else was going to volunteer—because for damn sure, I’m not great shakes helping in a kitchen. But you’ve been running a hundred miles an hour alone, as far as I could see.”

“It isn’t really running. I like cooking—”

“Yeah. So your husband keeps saying. Anyway, I also thought you’d probably been warned against me. Right?”

Again, those shrewd dark eyes met hers, held hers. She had the sensation of a thirsty man taking a sip of a long, slow drink. “Right,” she admitted.

“So I thought I’d better let you know—probably everything you heard was true. If my being in the kitchen with you could be a problem, just say the word and I’ll leave.”

“Hey, you just offered to help and already you’re trying to get out of it? Fat chance.” But she had to add more quietly, “Just for the record, though, I don’t need anyone else’s opinion to figure out who I want as a friend.”

He started dealing pieces of cake to plates faster than a Las Vegas hustler, but he cocked his head toward the window. “Look out at the driveway.”

She did, and saw the obvious crowd of cars belonging to all the guests.

“See the Beemers and Lexi and Mercedes and so on? And then do you see the eight-year-old Honda Civic?”

“Sure.”

“Well, the Civic’s mine.”

“Ah. That’s what you did wrong, huh? Have an old car?”

He sighed. “Obviously you haven’t lived here long enough to understand the difference between the mortal sins and the venial ones. You can kill and cheat and steal and all, but if you live in Car Town, you care about your wheels or you’re nobody.”

“This is a revelation,” she assured him.

Another sneaky, crooked grin, but it didn’t last. “Yeah, well, I got another sin. A bigger one. I left Grosse Pointe a couple years ago after a nasty divorce—and I didn’t try to come back. You can sin all you want here. But once you’ve cleaned up your act, you’re supposed to come back to the lifestyle. Nobody’ll forgive you for not wanting to be a Grosse Pointer again.”

“Sheesh, no one ever mentioned these rules before. Wait a sec—”

She wagged a finger at him, then hustled a tray with the fresh coffee and demitasses into the dining room, telling the group that dessert was on its way. “Okay now,” she said on returning. “You refused to come back to the lifestyle. Which means…?”

“Which means that I used to be a high-paid corporate lawyer. Not anymore. I took a job with a newspaper—not because I knew anything about newspaper work—but because that was the only place that would hire me at the time. Truthfully, the paper didn’t want me either, but they had a hole in their staff—they needed somebody who could wade through legal jargon and convert it to something human beings could understand. That’s what I started out doing—for which they were paying me pigeon feed.”

“Yet you’ve stuck with it?”

“Yeah, in spite of the pigeon-feed wages.” Jake shook his head. “I’m not sure why. In the beginning, I was just happy to be holding a job. I needed to prove myself. Prove that I could stay sober. That I wouldn’t fold. For a long time, that’s all I was looking for—something to do that didn’t stress any seams.”

Kasey couldn’t fathom why he was sharing all this personal history, but she sensed he was determined to be honest—determined not to put himself in a good light, for that matter. Whatever his motivation, she was interested. “It’d seem to me that you’ve proven your share if you’ve stuck it out for two years.”

“Yeah. I didn’t expect to like it. But I also thought the job was going to be no challenge, no risk…and somewhere along the way, it started to get interesting. The newspaper’s owned by a character named Barney Mendenhall. He’s an overbearing bully and a real tyrant.”

“Something in your voice tells me he’s a good friend.”

“That’s the problem. He is. He took a chance on me when everyone else was fed up, which is a real hard thing to forgive him for. And then the damn man kept telling me that writing stories would get in my blood, that one of these days I’d find a story I’d need to write, and then he’d own me, heart and soul.”

Fascinated now, she started to ask another question. Only, damn, Jake had finished loading up another tray of desserts, so she had to quit talking and ferry it into the dining room. “Sponge cake,” she announced to the group. “But in case anyone isn’t fond of that, I’m bringing in a fruit bowl next.”

She raced back into the kitchen. “So? Was your boss right? Have you found a story you can’t let go of?”

He’d been working like hired help, putting stuff on plates and wiping up. But now he looked at her in a way that made her pulse still. A quiet look. The way a man looked at a woman when he was through with the bullshit. “Yeah, I have. I’ve been looking into some malpractice cases affecting some of the local hospitals. Kasey, I have to ask you something…”

“Sure. Shoot.”

“Just tell me straight. Is your baby okay?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Your baby. She’s totally okay, right?”

Kasey felt as if all the air had suddenly been sucked out of her lungs. There was nothing in Jake’s quiet, gentle eyes to cause such panic, yet it was there, slamming in her heartbeat, drying up her throat. It was as if he’d known how secretly she’d been worried about the baby. “Tess? Tess couldn’t be more perfect. She’s beautiful and healthy and the whole world keeps telling me how lucky I am. And, God, I couldn’t love her more than my life. Why on earth are you asking? What made you—?”

When Jake first asked the question, she’d just opened the door to the dining room, carrying a tray with the fruit bowl and small bowls—but now she heard the baby’s faint wail from upstairs.

She forgot Jake, forgot the question, forgot everything. The baby monitor was right next to Graham. It should have gone off if the baby had made any sound—but right then, the monitor wasn’t the issue, simply Tess. The baby never cried unless there was something wrong. Kasey plunked the tray on the dining room table, gracelessly enough to make a clatter. She saw Graham shoot her a dark frown, but he probably hadn’t heard the baby’s cry. “Everyone help yourself to the desserts, okay? Don’t wait—I just heard the princess, so I’m going to run upstairs and make sure she’s okay. I’ll be right back.”

The instant she was out of sight, she shot upstairs to the baby’s room. The jeweled nightlight illuminated the crib. Her heart didn’t stop slamming until she scooped up the baby and snuggled her close. “Are you hungry, sweetheart? Wet?”

Yet the answer to Tess’s distress was much simpler than that. A burp erupted from the rosebud lips, and that was it, the end of the fretful tears. Still, Kasey patted and rubbed and cuddled, unwilling to put the baby down, unwilling to leave her. She’d felt better after talking to her mother, but now Jake had aroused her worry level again. It was dumb. Just new-mother jitters. Anyone with a brain could see Tess was the most beautiful baby in the universe. There wasn’t a single sign of illness.

What could her maternal instincts possibly be worth? She had no experience at all with newborns.

“You want to go back to sleep, dumpling? Or go join the party?”

The baby would have lain contentedly in the crib, but she also didn’t look remotely sleepy, so Kasey voted to carry her downstairs. When she ambled into the dining room, she had to chuckle for the chorus of “Oh, you brought the darling!” and “Let’s see her!”

Several minutes passed before she happened to glance up—and catch Graham looking rigid as stone and glaring at her.

“What’s wrong?” she mouthed silently.

But then she realized that others might have noticed his tight mood—in fact, Jake was looking directly at Graham. This was obviously not an appropriate time to try and talk to him.

An hour and a half later, the company was gone, the lights turned off, and the door closed on the disaster in the kitchen. Kasey checked on the sleeping baby one last time before walking into the master bedroom.

Graham was already there, standing at the window. At a glance, Kasey could see his shoes were already neatly lined in the closet, his cuff links and tie on the bureau, his shirt already sent down the laundry chute. Sometimes she teased him that he was so anal he’d line up Campbell’s soup cans by the label—but tonight that kind of joke didn’t seem wise.

“The dinner went pretty well, don’t you think?” she asked lightly. She slipped off her shoes and dress inside her walk-in closet.

“Fine.” His voice was shorter than a bite.

“I couldn’t love the necklace more, Graham. I thought Karen was going to rip it off my neck. Everyone noticed. It was so generous of you.”

He didn’t respond.

She scooped on a nightgown, shooting him worried looks in the mirror as she carefully undid the necklace. Her fingers were unsteady. She’d never seen Graham in a temper, but she knew when he was unhappy with her. She hated confrontations, never seemed to know what to do, what to say.

From under the nightgown she peeled off her panties. When she caught her reflection in the mirror—the still baby-pudgy tummy, the wreath-sized circles under her eyes, the wild hair—she moved away from the mirror. Her stomach was starting to churn.

“Graham,” she said carefully, “I know you’re annoyed with me, but honestly, I don’t know why—”

“I’ll tell you why! Can’t we have one night without the baby taking center stage!” His change clattered on the bureau. Then he stalked over to the bedside light and snapped it off.

In the darkness, Kasey frowned. This was about Tess? He was mad somehow about Tess? “I only brought her downstairs because she was crying—”

“And if you’d hired a nanny—the way I’ve urged you to, over and over—you wouldn’t have had to interrupt the dinner party. For that matter, if we just had an in-house nanny, you wouldn’t be so tired in the evenings, because of having to jump up every time the baby lets out the slightest cry.”

Silently she slipped under the covers—as if being quiet might help make her more invisible. “I don’t see how I was creating a problem or interrupting the dinner party. Everyone seemed delighted that I brought Tess down—”

“Well, of course they’d say that. It’s not the point. The point is that both of us deserve free time—time to be with other adults, children not included or always interrupting. I want my wife back, Kasey.”

“Oh, Graham. You have me.” She understood now. Hadn’t she warned herself about this a zillion times? He was jealous of the baby. The problem was in all the parenting books. Men wanted to be Number One in their mate’s eyes.

“I want our life back the way it was. I want time with you where your mind isn’t always on the baby.”

“Oh, Graham…”

In the darkness, he grabbed her, tugging her close. Her instinct was not just to respond, but to respond with extra warmth and giving. And any other time, his urgent forcefulness would have ignited her own passion.

But tonight…they hadn’t made love since the baby was born. And no matter what the doctor said, she remembered long painful hours of labor and was afraid that sex would hurt this first time. On top of that, she felt trembly and tense because of their argument. His mouth claimed hers roughly, possibly because he was still a little mad. It wasn’t as if she were afraid. That thought was crazy. But…

She couldn’t catch the mood.

His entry hurt. Really hurt. Exactly what she’d been afraid of. And although she knew Graham meant to come across as ardent and passionate, she couldn’t shake the distressing, achy feeling that he was oblivious to anything but what he wanted. The more he pushed, the more she burned, until she couldn’t help but cry out.

“That’s it, darling. Take me. All of me.”

She heard his words. And inside her head, she kept telling herself, all right, all right, this’ll be over in a minute, and everything’ll be different tomorrow. She understood better now, that he was having a difficult time relating to Tess and that their marriage needed more one-on-one time.

It was up to her to make this better. To make their marriage like it had been before.

She just had to try harder.

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