“My goal isn’t a new house.”

“I love this house, Brad. This is my house. Our house. This is where all my memories are.” As Stacey spoke, emotions swept through her, intensifying every word she said. “This is where we started out together. Where Julie and Jim became tiny people instead of just babies. I love this house,” she told him again with feeling.

Stacey searched his face to see if she’d gotten through. But there was no indication that she had.

He shook his head. “Then why change it?”

It wasn’t changing, it was improving, but she had a feeling that comparison would be lost on him, too. “Because like everything else, the house needs a face-lift.”

He glared at her. “You sure that a quarter of a million will cover everything you want done?”

Stacey had no idea what possessed her to glibly answer, “If not, it’ll be a start.” But it felt good to say it.

Marie Ferrarella

Marie Ferrarella wrote her very first story at age eleven on an old manual Remington typewriter her mother bought for her for seventeen dollars at a pawn shop. The keys stuck and she had to pound on them in order to produce anything. The instruments of production have changed, but she’s been pounding on keys ever since. To date, she’s written over 150 novels and there appears to be no end in sight. As long as there are keyboards and readers, she intends to go on writing until the day she meets the Big Editor in the Sky.

Finding Home
Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

From the Author

Dear Reader,

Welcome to my life.

All right, Finding Home is a slightly fictionalized version seeing as how I didn’t marry a doctor and my daughter isn’t in medical school and my son isn’t a musician. But I did live through the horror of having several rooms remodeled and I did have a husband who handed me lists every morning to review with a not-so-happy construction person.

Anyone who’s ever had remodeling done and remained married after the contractor and crew have left knows what sort of a triumphant feeling that is. Remodeling is definitely in the same realm as trial by fire. It tests the limits of your patience and your love. When it’s all over, you come out the other end stronger, more confident, with a reorganized sense of priorities. Either that, or in a straitjacket.

So, consider carefully before you make that first call to the local contractor. Can your marriage take it? If you’re afraid to find out, just move. In the long run, it might be safer. But definitely not more interesting.

Affectionately,

Marie Ferrarella

To Katherine Orr, with many thanks.

CONTENTS

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

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

CHAPTER 37

CHAPTER 38

CHAPTER 39

CHAPTER 40

CHAPTER 1

She couldn’t get the song out of her head.

It haunted her, popping up in the middle of a thought or an activity. Like now, just as she was putting a platter of sugar-dusted French toast in front of her husband.

Stacey Sommers first heard the song, which staunchly refused to untangle itself from her brain cells, years ago. At the time, the lyrics had struck her as unbelievably sad. It was playing on the radio while she was driving home from the supermarket.

The incomparable songstress, Peggy Lee, was asking anyone who would listen, “Is That All There Is?” and Stacey had laughed in response. Back then she was busy up to her eyeballs, juggling the care and feeding of two small kids and a husband who was in his last year of residency at a local hospital, all this while working in order to help pay for said husband’s staggering medical school bills, not to mention put food on the table.

At the time, she’d felt like a hamster with her foot caught in the wheel and was far too exhausted to wonder if life had anything else to offer. Moments together with Brad were just that, moments. Stolen ones. And all the more delicious and precious for their scarcity.

Now, twenty years later, the pace had slowed considerably, although time was still a scarce commodity. Her kids no longer needed her for every single little thing. Half the time, she felt shut out of their lives. And Brad? Brad was an established, well-respected neurosurgeon whose opinion was sought after.

But the moments they had together were even less now than they had been before.

Is that all there is?

At this point in Brad’s career and their lives, she would have thought they could finally have those idyllic vacations she used to dream about in order to sustain herself while going ninety miles an hour through her overwhelming life. But somehow, Brad was busier these days than he had been back when he was in medical school and even during those awful intern days.

Worse than that, he seemed so much more remote now than he had been back then. As if medicine had taken him away from her.

Slipping into the chair opposite his, her life-sustaining cup of coffee in her hand, Stacey looked across the breakfast table at her husband of twenty-five years, the only man she had ever loved, or wanted. He had the Monday Health section of the L.A. Times on one side of his plate of French toast, the latest copy of the Journal of the American Medical Association opened to an article he found engrossing on the other. His attention was unequally divided between the two periodicals. Whatever was left over, and there seemed only to be little more than a scrap, he devoted to his breakfast.

Stacey suppressed a sigh. She didn’t seem to fit into his life anymore. Had she ever? Had she ever been more than a means to an end for him, taking care of his kids, his bills, his eternally wrinkled shirts?

Stacey took a long sip of her black coffee, swallowing and feeling the tarlike liquid ooze through her veins like semifrozen molasses over a stack of pancakes.

Damn it, where was all this self-pity coming from? she upbraided herself in disgust. She knew Brad loved her. In his own conservative, quiet fashion. Moreover, she knew with a bone-jarring certainty that her husband had never once been unfaithful to her, even though he’d been presented with more than one opportunity to stray.

Thank God she didn’t have to grapple with feelings of betrayal the way Jeannie Roberts did. The woman had been completely devastated, not to mention humiliated, when she’d discovered that her neurologist husband, Ed, had been seeing the daughter of a former patient on the side for more than a year.

The only thing Brad had on the side were more old AMA journals. At times, though, she could swear that those old journals aroused her husband more than she did. At other times, she was fairly certain of it.

This morning the emptiness she sometimes felt gnawed away at her insides to the point that it almost hurt.

Stacey studied Brad over the rim of her mug, the one with the crack on the lip near the handle. The mug she refused to throw away because her son, Jim, had given it to her while he was still Jimmy. Before he’d gotten too old to admit to anyone other than an FBI polygraph technician that he actually loved his mother.

She was still very much in love with her husband, she thought. The man could still set her heart racing. They had just reached the plateau they had strived for and there was no feeling of fulfillment to greet her. No fanfare signaling that now life could be different. It was just more of the same. Life only got more routine.

Is that all there is?

There’s got to be something more, she insisted silently, trying to block the lyric. Squaring her shoulders, she put down the mug.

“Brad, let’s get away this weekend,” she said.

She didn’t tell him why she wanted to get away, or that this weekend, this Friday actually, was their twenty-sixth anniversary. She’d sworn to herself that she was never going to be one of those wives who nagged or felt slighted if an important day slipped by unnoticed.

But, in all honesty, she’d made that vow secure in the knowledge that Brad wouldn’t be like those husbands who forgot.

And he hadn’t been. Until about two years ago, when the hospital had put him on its board of directors and free time went the way of unicorns and leprechauns into the land of myths.

Her eager suggestion faded away, unnoticed. He hadn’t heard her. The sound of her voice, much less her words, apparently hadn’t even registered. Brad was frowning over something he was reading in the journal. Funny how she’d always been able to tune in to seventeen sounds at once—the kids, the TV, the telephone—and he couldn’t even tune in to one.

Inclining her head slightly, she waved her hand as close to his face as she could reach. “Earth to Brad, Earth to Brad.”

Rosie, their seven-year-old Labrador, the dog he hadn’t wanted but who had stolen his heart when she adoringly followed him around as his unofficial shadow, chose that moment to come into the kitchen.

As if to show her up in a play for power, Rosie headed straight for Brad and nuzzled his leg.

Brad looked up from what he was reading. A fond smile slipped over his lips as he ran his hand over Rosie’s back. “How’s my girl?” he murmured.

“A little frazzled, thank you,” Stacey replied. “How are you?”

Brad glanced at her, puzzled. And then he smiled that soft, tolerant smile of his. The one that had recently begun to irritate her because it made her feel like a five-year-old. A mentally slow five-year-old.

“I was talking to the dog, Stace.”

Stacey did her best to remain cheerful. “Yes, I know, and I’m sure Rosie appreciates the attention, but I was first.”

About to resume reading, Brad put the magazine down. “What are you talking about?”

“That’s just it, I was talking. To you. Not to the toaster or to the dog, although God knows that she’s the only one who listens to me at times, but to you. And you didn’t answer.”

The shrug was careless, dismissive, as if her complaint was unimportant. “Sorry, I didn’t hear you.”

A sigh escaped, dragging her hurt feelings out into the open. “You never hear me.”

The frown on his handsome, lean face deepened. Not to the point of making lines, but just enough to register his annoyance.

“You’re exaggerating again.” He glanced at his watch. “And I am running late.”

Between his going in early and coming home late, she hardly ever saw him, much less had conversations with him. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. They were supposed to be growing closer together, not further apart.

Stacey nodded at the large, round, silver-faced clock on the wall. “It’s only seven-thirty.” Which was earlier than he usually left.

“I know.” He folded the paper and carefully closed his magazine. This was the same man who left his shoes, socks and shirts wherever he shed them. But his journals were in perfect order, unmarred by crumbs or coffee stains, and their pages never even marginally bent. “I have surgery at eight-thirty at the surgicenter. What kind of a message would I send to the patient if I got there late? That his surgery doesn’t merit my attention?”

At times she was convinced he made a better doctor than he did husband. She didn’t always feel this way, she thought with a pang.

“The hospital is twenty minutes away,” she pointed out. “Fifteen if you don’t drive like an old man.”

His eyes narrowed. “I drive safely.”

“You drive slowly.” And sitting next to him drove her crazy at times. He never went through a yellow light. The moment a hint of anything amber arose, he came to a dead stop. Driving since he was sixteen, he hadn’t so much as a warning to look back on.

Not like her, she thought ruefully.

“Not all of us were born with a lead foot,” he told her matter-of-factly.

He’d have a lead foot, too, if he had to be in a dozen places at once, she thought. But she bit back the retort. Voicing it would only lead to a meaningless argument.

She watched her husband rise to his feet. At forty-eight, Brad Sommers looked young for his age. He had the same build from when she’d fallen in love with him more than thirty years ago. Though his career was demanding, his hours at times grueling, there were no undue lines or wrinkles on his face. The Southern California sun he’d once worshipped had had no chance to do any damage to his skin in the past two decades. The last time they’d been to the beach, she recalled, Julie was five and Jim was three. Other that a few gray strands weaving through Brad’s thick, deep-chestnut-brown hair, there were no indications that time was advancing on him, or that it even knew where he lived.

She was the one who’d changed, Stacey thought, not for the first time. She was the one who’d had twenty unwanted pounds stealthily sneak up on her over the past fifteen years. The one who no longer looked as if an agent from Playboy magazine might be interested in making her an offer.

It wasn’t so much that she’d let herself go. God knew she still tried to look and dress attractively, mostly for a man who no longer noticed. It was more that a silent attacker had set siege to her body. When she was driving home from work, she sometimes thought about going to one of those expensive spas where someone could reknead her body back to its former self again.

As if that was possible, she thought, silently laughing at herself. She hadn’t the time. And the spa probably couldn’t work miracles, anyway.

“So what do you say?” she asked as she followed Brad to the front door—directly behind Rosie.

Brad glanced at her over his shoulder, perplexed. “To what?”

“To my idea. About getting away this weekend,” she added when his expression still remained blank.

For a moment, Brad had her going, had her hopeful that he might actually remember it was their anniversary.

“Sounds good.” But then he halted at the door. “But I can’t,” he recalled. Was that disappointment in his voice, or was she just wishing it into existence? “I’ve got a conference to attend. A local one,” he added. They both knew how much she hated having him go away for a conference.

“Can’t you—?”

Stacey never got a chance to finish her question. His cell phone rang, interrupting her. Brad held up his hand to stop her in midsentence as he listened to whoever was on the other end.

He mouthed “Goodbye” to her as he walked out.

And left without kissing her.

Again.

CHAPTER 2

That was happening more and more frequently these days, Stacey thought as she turned away from the closed door. She made her way back to the kitchen, trying to remember the last time Brad had kissed her goodbye without her first having to throw herself directly in the path of his outgoing lips.

That long ago, huh?

Once in the kitchen, which was sunnier than she felt at the moment, Stacey began to clear away Brad’s plate with its only half-eaten piece of French toast. She supposed, in her husband’s defense, for the most part she’d stopped waiting for him to make the first move, to lean forward and kiss her. Because, in her own defense, she didn’t want to take the chance on winding up staring at the back of a closed door, feeling as if she’d just been kicked by a mule.

Feeling hollow. Just like this.

Is that all there is?

Damn it, why couldn’t she get that stupid song out of her head?

Stacey felt a sudden, overwhelming urge just to cry.

Hormones.

They always picked the worst time to attack, she thought, fighting to reach equilibrium and some semblance of calm. Stacey looked down at the dog, who, with Brad gone, had shifted her allegiance as she did every morning and followed her back to the kitchen.

Rosie was now wagging her tail, a hopeful look in her eyes.

“You just want another treat, you furry hussy.” She stroked Rosie’s head and went to the cupboard where she kept the dog’s wide assortment of treats. After taking out something that resembled plastic bacon, she tossed it to the animal. With a semileap, Rosie caught the treat and devoured it in the time it took to close the cupboard doors. “At least he talks to you,” Stacey said wistfully. “Someday, you have to tell me your secret.”

“Talking to the dog again, Mom?”

Stacey turned, surprised to see Jim enter the kitchen. Now that college was over, unless something out of the ordinary happened or the house was on fire, Jim did not acknowledge that any hours before eleven-thirty even existed. As he stumbled barefoot into the kitchen, wearing the ancient torn gym shorts he slept in, his deep blue eyes were half closed.

Six foot, one inch and still filling out his gangly torso, at twenty-two Jim looked exactly the way Brad had at that age. But carbon-copy looks were where the similarities between her two men ended.

At that age, Brad had been driven to make something of himself and to provide not just for himself and the family they’d hope to have, but for his ailing mother as well. Back then, she’d thought of him as being almost a saint.

Except for the sex.

Her mouth curved as she remembered even despite her efforts not to at the moment. The sex had truly been without equal.

And she missed it like hell.

Their son, as Brad was wont to point out over and over again whenever they did have a conversation, was not driven. After much pleading, Jim had attended UCLA, emerging after four rather lackluster years with a degree in fine arts. He’d gotten the degree, they both knew, purely to drive his father crazy.

“Damn it, he’s a smart kid, Stace,” Brad had complained loudly enough for her to close a window. “We all know that. His SAT scores were almost perfect. Why is he throwing his life away like this?”

Arguments over Jim and the course of their second-born’s life were as regular as clockwork. And there was never a resolution. Her only answer to Brad’s question was that their son was striving to be the complete antithesis of everything that his father was. She kept it to herself.

“I’m talking to Rosie because she doesn’t talk back or give me an argument,” Stacey told her son cheerfully. “That’s kind of refreshing.”

Dragging a hand through his yet-to-be-combed, unruly hair, Jim shrugged off the answer. Taking the half-eaten French toast from her, he straddled the chair his father had vacated and put the plate down in front of him. He didn’t bother with a fork.

Somewhere between the first and second bite, his lips dusted with a fine layer of powdered sugar, Jim nodded in the general direction from which he’d just come. “Upstairs sink is clogged again.”

Stacey sighed as she placed a fresh piece of French toast on what was now her son’s plate. So what else was new? It seemed that something was always going wrong with the sinks and toilets in the house. There were four of the first and three of the second. And that didn’t take into account the house’s two showers and tub.

And lately, the wiring was giving her trouble. The power would go out on certain lines. A month ago, half the house was down until the electrician came to the rescue. Brad had been furious over the bill. Rescues did not come cheaply.

Stacey dearly loved the house they lived in. She’d fallen in love with it the very first time she saw it, over twenty years ago. But she was the first one to admit that it was at a point in its life where it needed loving care and renovating. A great deal of renovating.

Her problem was, she couldn’t seem to convince Brad of that. Practical to a maddening fault, her husband would only nod in response to her entreaties, then, when pressed for a verbal answer, would point out that they could make do by calling in a plumber.

“Which is a hell of a lot cheaper than getting renovations.” He’d give her that look that said he knew so much better than she did what was needed. And then he’d laugh, the sound calling an official halt to the discussion. “If I let you, you’d wind up spending your way into the poorhouse.”

She knew as well as he did what they had in the bank. What they had in all the different IRA and Keogh funds Brad kept opening or feeding. There was no way renovating the house would send them packing and residing in debtors’ prison. Or even strolling by it. But telling him that she had no intentions of using solid-gold fixtures or going overboard made no impression on Brad. Neither did saying that most of their friends had already updated their homes and added on years ago. Some had done it twice.

That kind of an argument held no meaning for Brad. He had no interest in keeping up with anything except for the latest advances in his field.

The only other thing that meant anything to him was making sure his children had the best. He wanted them to have every opportunity to make something of themselves—he being the one who defined what “something” was.

Julie had been canny enough to hit the target square on the head. Ever since she’d first opened her eyes to this world twenty-four years ago, Julie had been the apple of her father’s eye. Julie could do no wrong—and she didn’t. Their daughter was presently in medical school. Her goal was to become a pediatrician.

Jim, who had taught himself how to read at four because he’d been too impatient to wait for anyone to read to him, had been Brad’s genius. He’d begun making plans for their son the second he’d detected that spark in his eyes, been privy to the innate intelligence their son possessed. But rebellion had taken root early in their son, as well. Once he got into college, Jim deliberately slacked off. There’d been a few times he’d been in jeopardy of being “asked” to leave the university. Whenever that happened, he’d study enough to get his grades back up. And then backed off again.

Somehow, he had managed to graduate this June. But he still seemed destined to infuriate his father at every turn and raise his blood pressure by ten points with no effort at all.

The problem was, his inherent aptitude for science notwithstanding, Jim had the soul of a poet. A poet who wanted nothing more—and nothing less—than to make music. Brilliant to a fault, with an IQ that was almost off the charts, he had no use for the academic world. As a matter of fact, he had gotten his degree not to please his father but as a grudging tribute to her. Because she’d begged him to give working in a different field a try, “on the slim chance” that he changed his mind later on in life.

She poured a glass of orange juice for Jim and set it down next to his plate. “I’ll call the plumber from work today.”

He shook his head, his hair falling into his eyes. He left it hanging there. She resisted the temptation to push back his hair, knowing that would somehow only lead to accusations that she was “inflicting her judgments” on him. Meaning that while her generation liked to see a person’s eyes, his didn’t see a reason for it.

“Doesn’t need a plumber, it needs last rites,” he informed her glibly. He raised accusing eyes to her face. “Bathroom’s ancient, Mom. Why don’t you do what you’ve been talking about and finally get the damn thing renovated?”

“Don’t curse at the table,” she told him.

Jim pushed his chair back from the table roughly a foot. “Why don’t you get the damn thing renovated?” he repeated.

She sighed, giving up the argument. Someone had told her that all sons went through a phase like this and that he would eventually turn around and be, if not the loving boy she remembered, at least civil.

“Your father—”

The sneer on Jim’s lips leaked into his voice. “Right, God says no.”

There were times when she could put up with it, and times like now, when her patience was in short supply, that she could feel her temper threatening to flare. “Jim, a little respect—”

He lowered his eyes to the plate, as if the French toast suddenly had all of his attention. “As little as I can muster, Mom. As little as I can muster.”

It was an old familiar dance and she had no time to go through the steps today, or to point out in how many ways Brad had been so much of a better father to him than her own had been to her. It only fell on deaf ears, anyway. Besides, she’d promised to go in to work early today to start implementing the new software program.

Stacey had worked at the Newport Pediatric Medical Group for the past fifteen years as their office manager, beginning as their all-around girl Friday—she really preferred the term “girl” to “woman” as she got older. All seven doctors associated with the group depended on her to keep things running smoothly. That included making sure that the new software package helped rather than hindered.

Still, she couldn’t just leave the house on this note. Brad might drive her crazy at times, but that had no bearing on his relationship with his son. “He’s your father—”

Jim shrugged as he continued communing with his breakfast. “Not my fault.”

“No,” she said sharply, “but your attitude certainly is.”

Jim raised his head. He smiled at her with Brad’s smile, tugging at her heart even as he infuriated her. “Tell him to change his toward you and maybe we’ll see.”

This, too, was familiar ground. Jim claimed he didn’t like the way his father treated her. “Your father’s attitude is fine, Jim.”

The smile became a sneer. “Yeah, for someone out of the Dark Ages.”

“Last time you said he was like someone out of the fifties.”

The look he gave her said he knew so much more than she did. “Same thing. This is a partnership, Mom. Seems to me he treats you like a junior apprentice.”

Come back after you’ve been married awhile and then we’ll talk. Out loud, she said, “Marriage is more like a work in progress—”

“So,” Jim cut in, “where’s the progress?”

He made her tired. Arguing with Jim always made her tired. It was like boxing with a shadow and trying to knock it out. “I’ll talk to you later.”

She was at the back door when he said, “I’ve got a possible gig.”

Stacey swung around. She knew he practiced with a band, had even heard them rehearse a few times. In her opinion, they had potential, even though they weren’t playing anything she could remotely hum to. “That’s wonderful. Where?”

He gave her a serene smile and offered her back her own words. “We’ll talk later,” he said before disappearing from the kitchen with the last of the French toast.

CHAPTER 3

Stacey glanced at her watch. Okay, so she was going to be a little late. What was more important, getting to the office or having a few more words with her son?

Jim won, hands down.

It was no contest, even if there was a sliver of guilt attached. But then, she was raised Catholic and the blood of both Italians and Jews flowed through her veins. There was always a sliver of guilt attached. To everything.

Crossing to the threshold that led out into the hallway, she called after Jim. “You’re going to miss these long, lengthy talks when you move out.”

Jim had just gotten to the foot of the stairs and he turned to look at her. He knew what she was really saying, no matter how much humor she laced around her tone. She didn’t want him moving out. He’d come home every weekend while attending UCLA. And only gotten more estranged from the rest of the family during those years.

It was time for him to fly the coop for good. Way past time.

“Forget it, Mom.” He grinned as he proclaimed, “I’m not staying. The end of the week, I’m gone.” And then, because at bottom he didn’t like being the source of hurt for her, he added, “There’s always the telephone.”

She looked at him knowingly. “Which you won’t use.”

He shrugged. “You never know, maybe I don’t have any of Dad in me at all.” He stuffed the remainder of the French toast piece into his mouth. Powdered sugar rained from both corners of his lips.

His comment was a not-too-veiled remark about all the times she’d waited in vain for a call from Brad, telling her he was delayed, or had an emergency surgery. All the times dinner got cold and carefully made plans got canceled.

It was all true, but she still didn’t like the stance Jim had taken against his father. Despite all his rhetoric explaining his attitude, she still didn’t understand, still couldn’t reconcile the loving boy she’d known to the cynically combative one she found herself confronting over and over again.

“Jim—”

Jim held up hands that were dusty with sugar, stopping her before she went any further. “I can’t stay here. He hates me.”

“He doesn’t hate you,” she insisted with feeling. “He’s your father, he loves you.”

Standing on the second step of the staircase, he towered over her. And used the image to his advantage as he looked down at her with a masterful sneer. “The two aren’t a set.”

A part of her wanted to take him by the shoulders and shake him. “In this case, they are. He does love you, Jim, he just doesn’t understand you.” And neither do I, she added silently.

The look in Jim’s eyes had a hint of contempt in it. “That makes two of us.”

She jumped at the first thing that struck her. Because she could vividly remember how unsure of herself, of her choices she’d been when she was only a little younger than he was. “You don’t understand do you? That’s only natural at this point in your life.”

Jim was quick to set her straight. “Him, Mom, him. I don’t understand him. Me, I understand.” The affirmation was made so casually and comfortably, Stacey realized that her son actually meant it. “I just want to make music. My music, my way.”

His way.

The words echoed in her head. And how often had she heard that, in one form or another? Silent or implied. Brad’s mantra. “There’s more of your father in you than you think.”

She saw the annoyed frown and knew how much he hated being compared to the man he was trying so hard not to be. The man he so often so closely resembled in looks and in spirit. But there were times she just couldn’t keep quiet, couldn’t refrain from pointing out the obvious. And hope that she could get through to Jim. And he would stop thinking of himself as some sort of an island and realize that he was part of the family.

Stacey glanced at her watch again and winced inwardly. She should have already been behind the wheel of her car, stuck in traffic for the past ten minutes.

“To be continued,” she promised.

Jim spread his hands before him, giving her a little bow like the performer he felt destined to be. “I’ll be here all week, folks. Till Friday. And then I shall be liberated.”

She shook her head. “I have no idea how you managed to survive all this cruelty heaped on your head all these years,” she remarked as she hurried back to the kitchen to get her purse.

Jim raised his voice so that it would follow her into the next room. “Me, neither.”

“Well, you certainly don’t look like a happy camper. The new software giving you trouble?”

Kathy Conners’s new perfume preceded her as she leaned over Stacey’s shoulder to glance at a screen that made absolutely no sense to her. Although she was better at it than the doctors she worked for, the computer was definitely not her best friend.

Stacey was.

Ten pounds heavier and two shades lighter blond than she had been in her wedding pictures, Kathy Conners was just half an inch over five feet. It was a fact that had annoyed her no end until Stacey had convinced her that petite was a far better description for her than “runt of the litter,” which was the way her older brother used to refer to her. She had known Stacey even longer than Brad had and it was Kathy who had gotten this job for her.

Stacey turned away from the screen. Despite her late start, she’d gotten to the office half an hour before everyone else. Early enough to begin installing the new program without having a gaggle of well-meaning but computer-illiterate doctors hovering over her shoulder, asking questions that only impeded her progress. Once patients began showing up for their appointments, the new software was put on hold.

“The software is being software,” Stacey replied. “Resisting having its code cracked at first go-round.” She shrugged. Since she’d become office manager, she’d learned a great deal about computers and software, all out of necessity. Trial by fire, so to speak. “But that’s nothing new. Shouldn’t take long to have everything up and running.”

Kathy shed the sweater she’d thrown over her shoulders and held tightly to her cup of coffee. “So why the frown?” She raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow. “Trouble in paradise?”

Stacey laughed softly to herself. “Today, playing the part of paradise will be hell.” The second the words were out, a faint, rueful smile gave the slightest curve to her lips. “Actually, that’s not fair.”

Kathy stopped sipping her giant-size iced coffee. “That’s your problem, Stacey, you’re always thinking about being fair. Stop that,” she chided. “Nobody else is thinking about being fair. Life isn’t fair. The world isn’t fair,” she insisted heatedly. “Why should you be so concerned about always being fair?”

Something was up, Stacey thought, studying her friend. Kathy sounded way too bitter. “It’s a dirty job, but someone has to do it. Besides, I’m not nearly as pessimistic as you.”

“Don’t see why not.” Kathy took another long sip through her straw. “You’re married, too.”

Stacey debated asking what was wrong or waiting until whatever was bothering Kathy came pouring out of her. “Marriage is not the end of the dream, Kathy.”

“It certainly isn’t the beginning of it.”

Stacey turned in her chair, her eyes following Kathy as the latter moved around the office. Were those tears shimmering in her eyes, or just a trick played by the lighting? “You seem unusually bitter this morning.”

“Thanks for noticing.” After dragging the last bit of coffee down her throat, Kathy crushed her cup before throwing it into the trash with enough force to slam dunk a basketball in a championship game. “Ethan wants a divorce.”

Stacey looked at the calendar on the side of her desk. “It’s the middle of the month. Doesn’t he usually ask for a divorce around now? You get the end of the month, he gets the middle. You both realize you can’t live without each other around the first?”

Her words didn’t evoke a smile from Kathy the way they usually did. “This time, I think he’s serious.”

On her feet, Stacey drew closer to her. Her voice was soft, compassionate. “Why?”

Kathy raised her head, shaking it a little like a kewpie doll about to stonewall anyone offering the slightest bit of sympathy. Her eyes were even brighter with tears.

“Because he didn’t shout it. He just said it. Quietly. Like he’d been thinking about it and just said it out loud to see how it sounded.”

Stacey slipped her arm around the woman’s shoulders. “Do you want to divorce him?”

This time, the tears became a reality. “Of course I don’t. I’m forty-eight years old,” she snapped, pulling away. Wishing she had something to punch that wouldn’t hurt her knuckles. Like Ethan’s soft midsection. “I don’t want to have to start over again with someone else.”

“There has to be a better reason to stay in a marriage than that,” Stacey told her kindly. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard Kathy bandying the word divorce about. But before, it was Kathy who was vocal about leaving Ethan.

“Maybe.” She brushed the back of her hand against her damp cheek. There was a smudge of mascara across the skin. She murmured a curse. She was going to look like a bat and it was all Ethan’s fault. “But that’s all I got.”

Stacey didn’t believe it for a minute. Taking her best friend by the shoulders, she forced Kathy to look at her. “And you don’t love him?”

Kathy tossed her head. “What’s love got to do with it?”

“Everything, Tina Turner.” Stacey laughed. “Everything.”

Kathy went on the offensive—or thought she did. “After all this time, you still love Brad.”

There wasn’t a single moment’s hesitation on her part. “Yes.”

“Even though living with him is like being stuck in a reenactment of Where’s Waldo?”

It was second nature for Stacey to defend her own, no matter what she felt to the contrary. “I see him more often than that.”

“This is me you’re talking to, Stacey, the woman you’ve poured your heart out to.”

Stacey laughed softly to herself. Served her right for talking. “My bad.”

Kathy looked at her, confused. “What?”

She’d forgotten. Kathy and Ethan had three dogs and no children. Popular slang bypassed them all the time. “Something Jim says. It means my mistake. My error.”

“The error,” Kathy said with feeling, “is that God didn’t make disposable men. You know, like disposable cameras. You get what you want out of them, then throw them away.” The thought really pleased her as she rolled it around in her head, picturing Ethan in a giant wastepaper basket. “Kind of like the Amazons. Those Amazons, boy, they had the right idea when it came to men. You fool around with them, and then you kill them. Neat, clean. No muss, no fuss.”

Stacey smiled. She knew Kathy inside and out. Knew what was behind this display of anger. Coming up behind her, she whispered in her friend’s ear. “He doesn’t want a divorce, Kathy.”

Kathy gave up the ruse. Turning, she covered her mouth with both hands. “Oh, God, I hope not.”

“Why don’t you go home early today?” she suggested. Granted, this was Monday, which was always busy, but this was an emergency. She could cover for Kathy as long as no one wanted her to give a shot. Besides, there were two other nurses to take up the slack, provided there was any. “Make something special for dinner, put on something sexy, lower the lights—”

A self-deprecating snort escaped her lips. “The way I cook, I’ll have to lower the lights so he doesn’t see what he’s eating.”

“Then bring home takeout and warm it up. The meal isn’t the main thing. You are.” Stacey squeezed her hand. “It’ll be all right.”

Kathy raised her chin a little, half hopeful, half pugnacious. “Thanks, Dear Abby.” And then her smile softened. “I hope you’re right,” she all but whispered.

Me, too, Stacey thought. Me, too.

“I’ve got to get back to this before the patients start coming,” she said, sitting down at her desk.

The front door opened and a child was heard wailing.

“Too late,” Kathy announced.

The words sounded more like a prophesy.

Stacey held back a shiver. God, I hope not.

CHAPTER 4

She wasn’t going to tell him.

As the weekend inched closer to reality, Stacey swore to herself that this time, she wasn’t going to tell Brad that their anniversary was coming up. Wasn’t going to spend her time dropping broad hints that even a cerebrally challenged person to whom English was a completely foreign language could pick up on. She’d done that once or twice before, but not this time. This time Brad was on his own when it came to remembering their anniversary.

She was still arguing with herself when Friday finally arrived, settled in and drifted into afternoon. The argument continued as she drove home that evening. She had a lot of time for it. MacArthur Boulevard had turned into a pricey parking lot with cars lodged nose to bumper.

A new element had entered her mental tug-of-war. The very real fear of disappointment. She’d given no hints, left no pictures of brides and grooms or wedding cakes. Left the ball entirely in Brad’s court.

Can you stand the disappointment when he doesn’t remember?

Given how preoccupied her husband seemed to be these days, there was more than a fifty-fifty chance that he would forget.

Fifty-fifty? Hell, she really was an optimist, wasn’t she? The odds were more like five to ninety-five. That he would forget. Because their anniversary no longer meant anything to him. It was just something that came and went, like Arbor Day. A date on the calendar, but not something of any great consequence—except maybe to a nurseryman here and there who wanted to move a few trees and used the day as leverage.

Who remembered Arbor Day, anyway?

That wasn’t fair, she argued, jockeying for position in the right-hand lane. Their anniversary meant something to Brad.

When he remembered.

Blowing out an exasperated breath, Stacey shook her head. It was catch-22 reasoning and she was going to wind up going in circles and getting a headache. A bigger one than the one she already had.

The opening in the right-hand lane disappeared. She resigned herself to remaining in her current lane. When the time came to turn off, she hoped she would be able to get over.

A song played on the radio, but it was only so much noise in the background. None of the words penetrated.

Kathy had called in this morning, saying that she and Ethan were taking off on a romantic weekend, thanks to her. A romantic weekend. She would have killed for a romantic weekend.

Why was it that she could give everyone else advice, see the way to solutions for other people, but when it came to her own life, everything became this horrible, tangled mess? It hadn’t always been that way. Once upon a time, everything had been crystal clear, spread out before her like the waters beneath a glass-bottom boat. It had come to her almost like an epiphany. She was going to marry Brad, have a couple of kids and be the best damn wife and mother ever created.

Unlike the women around her, she had no burning ambition to leave her mark on the world, to cure some dread disease, write the great American novel, have a rose named after her or break fresh, new ground. She wanted the old ground. She wanted home, hearth, husband, kids to love and to love her back. She’d never been ashamed or embarrassed by the fact that all her goals seemed so old-fashioned, so out of step with today’s modern woman. Her mother had wanted more for her, but to her, this was more. Brad, Julie and Jim had been everything she’d ever wanted.

But somewhere along the line, she hadn’t been allowed to enjoy being a wife and mother. Or rather, hadn’t been allowed to enjoy just that part in her life. Because there were mouths to feed and Brad’s loans to pay off, and they couldn’t get by on what he was earning as a resident. So she’d left the kids with her mother and went back to work for a little while.

A “little while” stretched out until it became her life. Until she could hardly remember when she wasn’t working. And when money was no longer of paramount importance—to everyone but Brad—she continued working because she liked the people, liked the contact. Liked having the patients talk to her, asking her for advice. She was, she supposed, a people person. A people person who liked helping others.

So why couldn’t she help herself? she silently demanded again as she narrowly managed to get her car over in time to make the turn onto University Drive. Why couldn’t she get the people she loved the most in the world to do what she needed them to do?

Her advice to Kathy had certainly gotten the desired results. And her assurances that Ethan really didn’t want a divorce turned out to be right on the money as well. Ethan had been feeling a little neglected. The romantic dinner had been exactly the right move on Kathy’s part.

Kathy had come into the office half an hour late the next morning, with a very goofy smile on her face and a dreamy look in her eyes. The latter remained in place all day and part of the next. And then she’d announced that they were going away together on a romantic weekend.

Her romantic weekend, Stacey thought with more than a little tinge of envy. A little romance, just a little romance, that was all she wanted. No grand gestures, no protestations of undying love shouted from the top of the Eiffel Tower. He could murmur it from the sewer if he wanted to. Just something to let her know that she still mattered in Brad’s world. That he didn’t take absolutely everything she did for granted. That he didn’t just notice her whenever she did something to irritate or displease him.

That sometimes he noticed her just to notice her.

Was that asking for too much?

Stacey blinked back the tears, calling herself an idiot. She was wasting time, feeling sorry for herself like this. Brad probably had something planned and she was going to feel like a fool for wallowing in self-pity like this.

The road opened up as she took the turn off. Stacey pressed down on the accelerator.

Ten more minutes found her home. In time to watch Jim pack the last of his belongings into the trunk of his car. Stacey suddenly realized that the loneliness that threatened to explode inside of her had only intensified.

Julie was already out on her own, living off campus in student housing that the UCLA Medical School helped subsidize. She didn’t want Jim to leave, too. Because that would leave her alone in the house. Alone, waiting for Brad to come home. And even when he would come home, somehow, having the kids gone would just make the growing separation between the two of them that much more prominent.

There was a time when she cherished being alone with Brad. But now, just thinking about that, thinking about coming face-to-face with the fact that they had nothing to say to each other, was filling her with a sense of dread.

Damn, where were all these negative feelings coming from?

She didn’t want to be one of those women who had to be medicated with three different colored pills just to face the day. She was made of stronger stuff than that. Stacey couldn’t shake the uneasiness. She tried denial. And didn’t get very far. Only as far as Jim’s car as she helped him carry a box of his things.

“You know, this isn’t really practical,” she told him, easing the box into the fold-down space he’d created in the rear of his vehicle. “You only have that part-time job of yours.” Dusting her hands off, she leaned against the side of the car. “How are you going to manage paying for everything?”

Jim gave her a mysterious look. “I can always sell my body.” And when he saw the horror on her face, he ran his hands up and down her arms, as if to reassure her. “I’m kidding, Mom. I’m kidding.” He dropped his hands to his sides. “I’m a musician. I’m supposed to starve.”

She laughed shortly. “Said the boy who has never lived more than fifty feet away from a fully stocked refrigerator.”

He took offense instantly. “Man, Mom. I’m a man.”

“Sorry.” She held her hands up in mute surrender. “Said the man who has never lived more than fifty feet—”

“I get it, Mom, I get it,” he said sharply, cutting her off. He tried again, lowering his voice and doing his best to sound civil. “Look, maybe a little deprivation will be good for me. Make me appreciate you more.” As if to drive his point home, Jim paused and kissed the top of her head.

She could feel a lump rising in her throat, but she refused to give in to it. If she cried, Jim would just think she was trying to manipulate him, which she wasn’t. She just wanted him to stay. Wanted time to stop moving ahead. To at least freeze in place if it couldn’t go back and retrieve the better moments of her life.

Stacey forced a smile to her lips. “You might even get to appreciate your father.”

“I might,” he agreed, nodding his head slowly. “Right after they outfit penguins with ice skates so they can skate over hell.”

Stacey opened her mouth and then shut it again. She wasn’t going to get sucked into another argument. Not on her son’s last day at home.

She tried again. “So, am I allowed to know where my son’s going to be living?” When he said nothing in response, she added, “Or is it a state secret?”

He paused, leaning his lanky body against the side of the vehicle, his eyes on hers. His expression was completely sober. “It’s on a need-to-know basis.”

She gave him that look that had him confessing pilfering candy from the supermarket when he was six. It could still put him on the straight and narrow if he let it. “I need to know.”

He let go of the pretense and laughed. “Just kidding, Mom. I’m going to be in L.A. Pete Michaels’s roommate moved out—”

The address brought a chill to her mother’s heart. There were places in the middle of a war zone that were safer. “Are you sure he moved out and he’s not some chalk outline on the sidewalk?”

Jim frowned, his expression telling her to back off. “This is a safe area, Mom.”

“Nothing is safe these days.” But she knew that there was no arguing him out of it, unless it were strictly his idea. Sometimes she wished she were versed in post-hypnotic suggestions. “By the way, I had a microchip implanted behind your ear while you were sleeping. It’s a tracking device.” And then she laughed, banking down the urge to tousle his hair the way she used to. “Don’t worry, I’m not that neurotic.”

He looked at her knowingly. “We both know that if you could have, you would have. You’ve got to stop worrying, Mom.” Jim made little effort to hide his irritation.

“You show me where it says that in the Mom’s Handbook, and I will.” She sighed. “Sorry, it’s a package deal. You give birth and you worry. Can’t have one without the other.”

Jim’s mouth curved. “I thought Sinatra said that was love and marriage.”

“That, too,” she agreed. She walked him to the front of the car and watched as he got in behind the steering wheel. “So, no fooling around until after you’re married.”

His grin was nothing short of wicked. “Too late.”

Stacey sighed. “I was afraid of that.” He started the car. She fought the urge to pull him out and throw her arms around him. “You’ll be careful?”

He nodded. “I won’t play in traffic unless I absolutely have to.”

“And you’ll come for dinner?”

“How about I meet you for lunch every so often?” he countered.

She took what she could get. “Deal—but I’m not giving up on dinners.”

He grinned, pulling out of the driveway. “You wouldn’t be Mom if you did.”

Stacey stood and watched until there was nothing left of the car to see. And then she stood there a little longer.

The walk back into the house was a long one.

CHAPTER 5

Stacey lifted the glass lid from the serving dish filled with the beef stroganoff she’d made earlier. Warmth wafted up, following the curved lid like a vaporous shadow. The condensation inside reminded her of tears. Or maybe it was just her mood.

With a sigh, she replaced the lid. At least something was working right. She’d bought the warming tray years ago in a naive effort to attempt to keep Brad’s dinners fresh when he didn’t get home in time. Back then, it had been the insane hours he’d kept as a resident that were responsible for his coming in hours after he was supposed to. Once he’d gotten his certification in his chosen field of neurology, she’d assumed that the tray could go into storage.

Really naive, Stace.

Although residency was long in the past, unfortunately, late evenings were not.

She fidgeted, debating whether or not to take off the long, dangling earrings she wore. The ones that went with the little black dress she also had on. Her black high-heeled pumps had come off more than half an hour ago. It seemed that every week, something unexpected would come up. Something that wound up keeping Brad from coming home. She knew his lateness was legitimate. But legitimate or not, that didn’t mean she still couldn’t be jealous. And she was. Jealous of his practice. Jealous of the patients who took him away from her during the hours when he should be hers.

Stacey closed her eyes and sighed, wishing that Brad had gotten a nine-to-five job like so many of the people who’d graduated college with them. But then he wouldn’t have been Brad. Wouldn’t have been the man she’d fallen in love with.

Was he now?

There were times when she caught herself looking at him over the breakfast table, wondering who this man with Brad’s face was. Those were the times when she felt he was almost a stranger. A stranger she knew so little about. A stranger who somehow managed to keep her at arm’s length, away from his innermost thoughts.

She was making a mountain out of a grain of sand. Brad was dedicated, that’s all. Dedicated to a fault. He really enjoyed being a doctor, enjoyed making a difference in the lives of the people who came to him, looking to be helped. A sad smile twisted her lips as she stared at the flame of the candle that was closest to her on the dining room table. Too bad Brad didn’t enjoy making a difference in hers.

She glanced over toward the telephone on the hutch. Because Brad always worried about missing a call and misplaced his cell phone like clockwork, there was a phone in every room of the house. Except for someone who’d wanted to clean her rugs, all the phones in the house had conspiratorially remained silent. There’d been no call from Brad, saying he was going to be late. It was rare that he remembered to call about being late these days. Most of the time, he forgot or took it for granted that she would instinctively know that one of his patients needed him.

Took for granted.

There was a lot of that going around, Stacey thought ruefully, pushing back from the table where she’d sat for the past hour, hoping for a miracle. Hoping for her husband to walk through the door, sweep her into his arms and murmur “Happy anniversary.”

Stacey bit her lower lip. Damn it, she wasn’t going to cry, she wasn’t. After twenty-six years, why should this hurt?

Because it did.

She didn’t even want a gift. All she wanted from Brad was to have him remember that this day was supposed to be special. To both of them, not just her. And she wanted him to give her a card. Cards meant someone had taken the time to stop the routine of their day and think of her. She would have settled for one created with crayons and construction paper, as long as Brad had been the one creating.

“You’re selling yourself cheap again.”

The words echoed in her head. Words her late mother had said to her more than once whenever she gave in, or met Brad ninety-five percent of the way.

But her mother didn’t know what it was like to love a man with all your heart, love him so much that it ached inside. Her mother and father had had a pleasant-enough marriage, one unmarred by demonstrations of anger. One also unmarred by demonstrations of affection. There were no highs, no lows in her parents’ union, just a marriage that flatlined the duration of its life.

She couldn’t complain about that. Her mouth curved as she remembered what it was like when she and Brad had first fallen in love. When they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. She’d had highs. Oh, God, she’d had highs. And it was the memory of those highs that had sustained her all these years. Sustained her through the unbearable loneliness that had leaked in now and then.

With a sigh, Stacey rose in her seat and leaned over the table. She blew out first one candle, then the other. And just as she did on her birthday, amid much teasing from Brad and the kids, she made a wish. She made the same wish twice, once for each candle.

But the door didn’t open.

Brad eased the door open softly. Then, just as softly, he pushed it back into the doorjamb, taking care not to make noise in case Stacey had gone to bed. He didn’t want to take a chance on the door slipping out of his hand and slamming, waking her up.

His wife had been looking a little tired lately. He worried about her, although he hadn’t had the occasion to say anything to her. Which was just as well, he supposed. Stacey saw herself as some kind of superwoman. Superwomen didn’t like to be reminded that kryptonite existed in the world they inhabited. Stacey took pride in being able to juggle all the balls without dropping a single one.

He didn’t know how she did it. Nothing short of pure magic, he mused.

As he crossed to the staircase, he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye. Rosie trotted up to greet him. Probably roused herself from a dead sleep. The dog was getting on in years, and when she wasn’t chasing away the visiting neighborhood cat, she dozed.

There was a time when he would go out in the wee hours of the morning and run with her, but a bum knee and lack of time had changed all that. He missed those quiet hours. Missed a lot about his life. Sometimes he felt as if he had no control over anything anymore.

Just the tiredness talking, Brad.

He paused to rub the dog’s fur with both hands, savoring the tranquillity of the act.

“How’re you doing, girl?” he asked affectionately. “Chase any cats away today?”

“No. And I’m doing better than my mistress,” Stacey said as she crossed to him from the living room. She was using the high-pitched voice she always used when she pretended to be the dog answering him.

Surprised, Brad turned around to look at her. He was even more surprised to see that instead of jeans or shorts, she wore a dress. The little black one he always liked on her. It fit a little more snugly than usual and he wondered if he should point that out to her. But she’d only get defensive, so he decided against it.

“Stacey.” He stopped petting Rosie. “I thought you’d be in bed.”

“It’s just nine. Even Cinderella got to stay up past midnight.”

“Why are you all dressed up like that?” he asked.

“I thought you were going to come home early.”

She didn’t even have to say anything else. A certain look came into her eyes, a look that made him feel guilty. And angry with her for making him feel that way. He wasn’t up to it tonight. He felt more drained than a tank of gasoline at the end of a NASCAR meet.

“I was,” he replied evenly. “But I got a call from the hospital just as I was leaving the office. There was a car accident three miles from the hospital and they were rushing the survivor into emergency surgery.”

There was no emotion in her voice as she said, “And they needed you.”

Why did she make that sound like a bad thing? She was happy enough to be the wife of a surgeon and to have the lifestyle that came with it. Didn’t she realize that it came with a price?

“They wouldn’t have called if they didn’t,” he replied evenly.

She wasn’t going to start a fight tonight, she wasn’t. So instead, she tried to sound sympathetic. Because she really was. She knew how hard he worked. Did he know how hard she waited? “Wasn’t there any other neurosurgeon they could have called?”

His eyes met hers and held for a long moment. “I didn’t ask.”

She sighed. “No, you wouldn’t have.” Instead, he’d ridden to the rescue. And she was proud of him, but she just wanted her fair share of him.

Life’s not fair, Stacey.

She could hear Kathy’s voice in her head, but she just didn’t want to believe it. Didn’t want to be forced to believe it.

Brad looked at her, puzzled. Concerned. “Stacey, what’s wrong? You know that this is what I do—”

She stopped him, wanting to get her two cents in before he got rolling and there was no space for any of her words. Or her.

“I know that you’re a doctor. A surgeon. A damn fine surgeon,” she amended. “But I know other doctors, other surgeons, some even almost as good as you—”

“Stacey—”

“And I talk to their wives,” she went on, raising her voice to drown out his. “They go on vacations. Together. They have nights out. Together. And some of the time, they even take a break from saving the world. Together.”

“Stacey, what’s wrong?” he repeated. And then, almost as if his eyes were programmed to take in the sight right at this moment, he glanced toward the dining room. And saw the set table, saw the flower arrangement in the center, saw the fancy tablecloth with the dormant tapered candles.

“Did I forget something?” It was a rhetorical question. She never set the table like that unless it was for a special occasion. “What did I forget?” he asked. Then, because she said nothing, he tried to figure it out on his own. “Not your birthday. Your birthday’s in July and this is August.” And then his eyes widened as his own words sank in. “This is August.” A huge neon sign went off in his head. “I forgot our anniversary, didn’t I?”

She pressed her lips together. “Looks like.”

Damn it, he’d never forgotten the day before. But then, he thought, she’d always left him enough hints before the day came along. Why hadn’t she hinted this year? “Today’s our anniversary.”

She looked at him impassively. “For another two hours and forty-two minutes.”

He took hold of both her arms and drew her into his, folding them around her. “Oh, God, Stacey, I’m sorry.”

She closed her eyes and pretended that all the years hadn’t happened. Pretended, just for a second, that they were still living in that one-room furnished apartment where they kept tripping over their own shadows. The Brad she’d loved then would have never forgotten. The Brad who’d lived in that apartment with her had brought her a cupcake because it was all they could afford, stuck a single candle into it and wished her happy anniversary.

“Yes,” she murmured, “I know you are.”

CHAPTER 6

There was genuine distress on his face. “Look, we could still go out.”

Because he felt bad, she forgave him. And put him first the way she always did, especially when her defenses had been dismantled.

“You look exhausted, honey, and this is Friday night. If we go out now, we’ll only wind up waiting hours for a table.” But it wasn’t too late to have a romantic dinner at home. The way she’d originally planned. She caught her lower lip between her teeth, then asked, “How do you feel about cold beef stroganoff?”

“Beef stroganoff?” When his eyes widened like that, he looked almost boyish. God help her, she felt her pulse quicken. He could still excite her the way nothing and no one else could, after all these years. “You made beef stroganoff? That’s my favorite.”

Affection grew within her. “Yes, Brad, I know. That’s why I made it.” She led the way through the dining room into the kitchen. “I kept it on the warming tray. I’m afraid it’s beginning to resemble congealed butterscotch pudding.” Stacey opened the refrigerator where she’d placed the serving dish. After edging it out, she picked the dish up with both hands and set it down on the counter. “I could put it in the microwave,” she offered.

He nodded, reminding her of an eager little boy. Of Jim when he’d been little, ready to agree to anything in order to get what he wanted.

“Sounds great.”

“It won’t taste as good,” she warned him. “Nothing out of a microwave except for popcorn ever tastes as good as it’s supposed to.” She debated her next move. “Maybe I’ll heat it up on the stove. It’ll take longer, but it’ll taste better.” He hadn’t said anything. “Unless you’re starving,” she qualified, waiting for him to tip the scales one way or another.

He followed her as she moved toward the stove, his eye on the prize, the dish with his dinner in it.

“I am,” he told her, then made the supreme sacrifice. “But I can wait.”

All right, she’d give him points. He was trying. Guilt did that to a man sometimes. Made him easier to work with. And right now, she wasn’t above using that guilt to her advantage.

Once she moved the serving dish right next to a front burner, she took a pot out of the lower cupboard and spooned in two servings of stroganoff, then added one more for good measure in case Brad was really ravenous. The linguine stood in the bowl where she’d placed it earlier. Stacey dumped that into another pot, poured water over it and set it on the burner beside the stroganoff.

“Five minutes for the linguine, ten for the stroganoff,” she announced. Then, taking a chilled bottle of wine out of the refrigerator, she poured some into a long-stemmed glass and handed it to him. “You can have this while you’re waiting.”

“You’re a life saver.” He murmured the words to her back as she filled a second glass for herself. Brad took a long sip and let the red liquid pour itself through his veins. For a moment, his eyes had fluttered shut. “God, that feels good.”

Stacey felt a slight pinch in the pit of her stomach. There was a time when Brad had said that after they had finished making love.

To her “good” was a paltry word, hardly fit to describe their lovemaking. Though never frequent because of the demands of his work, when they had occurred, the sessions had been nothing short of spectacular. He’d always teased her that it was quality, not quantity that counted, and he’d certainly made a true believer out of her. At least, until the occasions grew fewer and fewer, moving further apart until eventually, it felt as if she was faced with neither quantity nor quality.

Stacey offered him a smile that involved mostly her lips and not her heart. And was then surprised when Brad touched his half-empty glass to her full one.

“To another twenty-five years,” he said before taking another sip.

Her heart twisted a little. “Twenty-six,” she corrected.

“Twenty-six?” he repeated, furrowing his brow. “Has it been that long?” He tried to think back to the actual year. For a second, nothing came to him. He drew a blank. “Are you sure?”

Did he actually think she didn’t remember when they had gotten married? That he’d forgotten cut her to the quick. It was all she could do to keep the hurt from registering on her face.

“I’m sure,” she answered with a cheerfulness that rang hollow to her own ear. “Time flies when you’re having fun.”

He knew her inside and out and he knew that hurt tone. He couldn’t fault her, he supposed. But by now, he would have thought that she understood. She shouldn’t need the outward trappings, the constant assurances. Shouldn’t she just know that he loved her without wanting to be shown, without having him jump through hoops all the time?

Weren’t women ever satisfied?

He sought what little patience his day had left him. “Stacey—”

“I’ll get dinner,” Stacey told him, cutting him off as she turned away. That was his I’m-lecturing-even-though-I-don’t-consider-this-a-lecture tone. She didn’t want to hear it. The way she felt right now, she wasn’t sure if she could hold her tongue, and once things were said, they couldn’t be unsaid.

“You know, I think I like stroganoff better after it’s been warmed up once,” Brad told her a few minutes later as they sat at the dining room table.

Stacey looked at him over the unlit candles. She’d begun to light them once she’d brought his dish to the table, only to have him stop her. There was no reason to light candles, he’d told her. After all, the power hadn’t gone out.

But it has, she thought now as she watched him eat. It’s gone out of our marriage, Brad. You just can’t see it.

“Good,” he murmured, raising his fork as if in tribute. “After all these years, you haven’t lost your touch.”

How would you know? she wondered as she nodded in response with a half smile. Try as she might to connect a date, an event, to the last time that they had touched each other, she found that nothing came to mind. It had been so long, she couldn’t remember when.

But that was going to change tonight, she promised herself.

They went to bed shortly after ten, after narrowly avoiding getting into a heated argument about Jim. She’d mentioned that he hadn’t said anything about Jim not being around, and he’d responded by saying that he was savoring the quiet. It made her feel that he was happy to be rid of their son. The fact that they were so far apart in their feelings about Jim bothered her to the very depths of her soul.

She would have loved to have resolved something, but that wasn’t going to happen. She’d finally tabled the discussion when it looked to be in danger of escalating into a full-blown argument. She desperately didn’t want to argue on their anniversary, even though she felt that Brad was just as wrong in his attitude toward Jim as Jim was in his attitude toward his father.

As Brad got into bed, she quickly slipped into the bathroom and put on the sexy black nightgown she’d bought earlier in the week. Running a comb through her hair, she checked over her makeup, opting to leave it on tonight rather than run the risk of looking like someone who’d fallen into the river and been dragged out, pale and ghastly.

When she came out less than five minutes later, Brad already looked on the verge of falling asleep. She purposely jostled the bed as she got in.

His eyes opened. Good.

Curling up beside him, she ran her hand slowly along the ridges of his chest.

“You still have pretty decent pectorals,” she commented with a smile. Slowly, she strummed her fingers along the outline of his muscles. Brad was blessed with good genes, she thought, genes that allowed him to retain the physique he’d worked to create more than two decades ago. He still had a membership to the gym, but by his own admission, he had no idea where the card was any longer, or when he’d been to the gym last.

Brad shifted. When she continued running her hand along his chest, he covered it with his own. And then moved it aside.

“Stacey, don’t.”

Instantly, she could feel herself stiffening inside. But she refused to believe that he was saying what she thought he was saying.

Still, her throat felt tight as she asked, “Don’t what?”

He looked at her and frowned reprovingly. By now, she should have known better. Wasn’t a wife supposed to be able to read the signs?

“Don’t start.”

God, but she hated the way he made her feel. Like a lowly supplicant, begging for a crumb of affection. Stacey sat up and looked at him. “Start what?”

Brad seemed more weary than annoyed. “You know what I’m talking about, Stacey. You’re starting in and I’m tired tonight.”

Starting in. Like making love with her was some kind of a hardship for him that he was forced to endure out of a sense of duty. She couldn’t keep the note of bitterness out of her voice, even though she fought it. “Why should tonight be any different?”

He covered his eyes with his hand, like someone gathering what little strength he had left. “Don’t do the guilt thing, Stacey. I was on my feet for four hours, trying to save this kid’s legs.”

“And did you?”

The question surprised him. “I think so.”

“Good.” And she meant that. Because she was proud of him, proud of the fact that he helped people. But that didn’t mean she didn’t want something for herself, too. “So how about trying to save our marriage?”

“Our marriage doesn’t need saving,” he told her with a dismissive air, as if she was babbling nonsense. “And it doesn’t depend on sex.”

“Thank God for that,” she quipped, “because if it did, it would have died a long time ago.”

This was old ground. They’d danced over it before. He saw no reason to rehash anything tonight. He had no desire to get into an argument on their anniversary.

“You get it often enough,” he assured her. He tugged the sheet up over him, rolling over as he closed his eyes. “I’ll owe you,” he told her. “I’m good for it.”

“You know, if I ever decide to collect on that, you’re going to be making love to me for at least six months straight.”

“I look forward to it,” Brad murmured. He was already drifting off to sleep.

“That makes two of us,” Stacey answered.

But she was talking to herself and she knew it. With a sigh, she leaned over, switching off the lamp. And then watched as the darkness swallowed up the room with one bite.

CHAPTER 7

“Here.”

Coming up behind her at the kitchen counter the following Monday morning, Brad placed two hundred-dollar bills next to her mug of coffee.

Lost in thought, she hadn’t even heard him walk into the room. Stacey turned from the counter, his breakfast—four scrambled egg whites and one slice of wheat toast, no butter—on the plate she was holding. She set it down before him.

“What’s this?” she asked.

Brad picked up the newspaper and gave her an amused look. “I know that you like doing everything by credit card or check, but I thought you could still recognize money when you saw it.”

Taking her coffee mug and leaving the bills where they were, Stacey sat down opposite her husband. She hated it when Brad got flippant. It always felt as if he was talking down to her.

She supposed that she was being overly sensitive, a holdover from her hurt feelings. Ordinarily, she didn’t allow things to fester, but Brad had been gone most of the weekend, attending a local conference. This was supposed to have been their weekend.

It took everything she had to bank down the frown that wanted to possess her lips. “I know it’s money, Brad. What was it doing next to my coffee mug?”

Brad moved his broad shoulders in a dismissive half shrug, uncomfortable with having to explain himself. He wasn’t a man of words. Didn’t she understand that? “I just thought you might want to go buy yourself something.”

Stacey stared at him, speechless. Dear God, when had this man gotten rooted in the fifties? Did he suddenly forget they had a joint checking account?

She took a long sip of the black coffee, letting the caffeine jolt through her system before commenting. Very carefully, she set the mug down before her, then curved her hands around it. She had this sudden need to anchor herself to something.

Stacey raised her eyes to his. “If I wanted to go buy myself ‘something,’ Brad, I would,” she informed him evenly. “I have all those credit cards and checks you just referred to a minute ago. And—” she underscored the word because it was important to her that she was earning her own way, that he didn’t think of her as just so much dead weight he was carrying “—I earn a pretty decent salary, so if I did buy myself ‘something,’ I wouldn’t feel as if I was dipping into ‘your’ money.”

Brad’s brow furrowed. He looked at her as if she’d just lapsed into a foreign language, one he was trying desperately to decode.

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He jabbed at his eggs with his fork as if he expected resistance from that quarter as well. “It’s our money.”

Right. Until I want to do something with it. This morning, as she turned on the kitchen faucet, she could hear the toilet flush. Since there was no one in the house but the two of them and there was no resident ghost to speak of, that meant the water pressure was weak in the third bathroom. Something else that could be addressed if they renovated the house.

Stacey seized the term he used, cornering him. At least for a second. “If it’s ‘our’ money, why can’t I use it to renovate ‘our’ house.”

Finished with his eggs, Brad took a bite of his toast. He’d always been a compartmental eater, Stacey thought as she watched him.

“We’ve been over this, Stacey,” he told her wearily. “It’s not a wise move.”

She was willing to admit that she was the one who liked to dream, to make plans that weren’t always rooted in cold, hard reality and that he grounded her by being the logical one. It was what made them a good team, she’d once thought. But somewhere along the line, it felt as if their team had become a dictatorship, with Brad in the role of Il Duce. She was getting so damn tired of his practicality, his bare-bones approach to things.

It was all she could do not to roll her eyes as she listened to him.

“I don’t want to be wise, Brad, I want new cabinets. I want drains that don’t stop up and I want bathrooms that don’t look as if they were left over from the set of Leave It to Beaver.”

The toast eaten, Brad pushed back his plate, struggling with annoyance.

“You’re exaggerating again, Stacey.” Looking past her shoulder, he saw that the money was still lying on the counter. She hadn’t put it in her pocket the way he thought she would. “Look, all I wanted to do was make up for forgetting your anniversary.” The second the words were out, he realized his mistake and was quick to correct it. “I mean our anniversary.”

There, he’d said it in a nutshell, she thought. Her anniversary. Like he had phoned in his response to the priest when they’d taken their vows. Like it didn’t mean anything to him. The urge to cry was almost overwhelming.

“By throwing money at me?” Her voice cracked at the end of the question.

“I didn’t throw it.” Irritated, he pointed toward the money. “I placed it on the counter.”

She glanced over her shoulder at the two bills. He just didn’t get it, did he? Although she knew it was an exercise in futility, tantamount to banging her head against the wall, she tried to explain it to him, anyway.

“Brad, I can buy myself anything I want. That’s not the point.” When he made no response, she knew that he had no idea what the point was. So she spelled it out for him. “The point is you actually taking the time to buy something for me.”

He blew out a breath in disgust. “I’m not any good at that. You’re hard to shop for.”

Her eyes widened in complete mystification. She’d never made a secret of anything she liked. And she liked a broad spectrum of things. It was hard to find something she didn’t like.

“Hard to shop for?” Stacey echoed, stunned. “I’d accept anything you bought—as long as you thought I might like it.”

“That’s just it,” he declared as if she’d made his point for him. “I have no idea what you’d like.”

Sadness swiped through her like a rusted sword. “You used to.” Her mouth curved as a cherished memory whispered to her from across the pages of time. “I still have the trivia book you bought me for no reason that time we were browsing in the used bookstore.”

She saw by his expression that he had absolutely no recollection of what she was referring to. She took a stab at rousing his memory. “We’d just started going together. You were looking for used textbooks to buy for your anatomy class and the trivia book was misplaced. You didn’t have much money to spare, but you bought it for me. Because you knew I loved trivia.” He was nodding. Was that just to put her off or because he finally remembered? “I cried when you gave it to me.”

And then the light really did dawn on him. “Oh. Right.” He was nodding with feeling now. “I remember you crying.” Remembered because it had embarrassed him and he didn’t know how to get her to stop. “I thought I did something wrong.”

She laughed softly. She supposed in some ways he had always been clueless.

“No, you did something right. Something very right.” She searched Brad’s face for a sign that she’d managed to get through to him and finally asked, “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He took a shot at it. “That you want another trivia book?”

Men had to be the most frustrating creatures on the face of the earth. “No, I want you to stop and think. About me. About us.”

In a general way, he knew what she was after. And it was foolish. “Stacey, you’re not a twenty-year-old girl anymore, you’re forty-seven, and I’m not a twenty-one-year-old premed student doing his damnedest to score points with you—”

“Maybe that’s the problem,” she cut in. “Maybe you should be.”

She’d lost him. “Be what? A twenty-one-year-old premed student?”

“No, doing your damnedest to score points with me.”

“Why?” he demanded, looking at her as if she’d lost her mind. “We’re married.” And then he sighed. “That didn’t come out right.”

“No,” she agreed. “It didn’t. Did you ever consider that maybe I’d like to feel special? That I still mattered to you?”

“Of course you still matter,” he retorted, his temper fraying. “I’m still here, aren’t I? Do you have any idea how many of the doctors who I work with have gotten a divorce?”

Was that supposed to make her feel better? That he hadn’t divorced her? Why did he always focus on the negative instead of the positive? Was it his profession that made him this way, or had he always been like this? She no longer knew. She just knew that she was unhappy and she didn’t want to be.

She shook her head, fighting another wave of sadness. “You wouldn’t be able to find the time to get a divorce,” she replied quietly.

He gave it one last try. “Stacey, we’ve been married for twenty-five years.”

“Twenty-six,” she corrected again, her teeth clenched to keep from shouting. “We’ve been married twenty-six years.”

He huffed impatiently. “Twenty-six, twenty-five, the point is, we’ve been married for a long time. I’m not about to start pretending that we’re still dating. That’s juvenile.”

It felt as if he’d just slapped her. “I’m being juvenile?”

He neither denied nor verified. He just built on what he’d said. “Maybe that’s why you related so well to Jim. He refuses to grow up, too.”

The phone rang, the sound wedging its way between them. Stacey ignored it. She was in the middle of an argument and all that mattered to her was getting Brad to understand how much his words, his actions, or lack thereof, hurt her. “Don’t drag Jim into this, Brad. This is between you and me.”

He looked toward the telephone. “Aren’t you going to answer that?”

“No,” she said flatly. “Not until you answer me.”

Brad threw up his hands. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this,” he snapped, rising. The phone rang again as he crossed to it.

They weren’t through yet. For once, she wanted a resolution instead of letting things just remain tangled until they faded away. “Whoever it is can leave a message.”

“It might be a patient, trying to reach me.”

Stacey got up, following him. “I’m trying to reach you,” she insisted.

But Brad was already picking up the receiver.

“Hello? What? Yes, this is Dr. Sommers. Could you repeat that, please?”

She sighed. Work had pulled him away from her again. Crossing back to the table, she picked up her mug and carried it to the sink. She was about to turn on the water to rinse the mug out when Brad held out the receiver to her. She looked at him quizzically.

“It’s for you.” His expression was grim.

CHAPTER 8

Stacey suddenly felt very cold. She was aware of the hairs rising along her arms and the back of her neck. Her fingertips were damp as she wrapped them around the receiver. Her imagination hit the ground running.

The neighborhood her son had moved to was considered unsavory and dangerous.

“Is it about Jim?” she asked hoarsely. When he didn’t answer immediately, she made a second guess. “Is it Julie?”

Brad merely shook his head. But his expression remained grim. Was that pity she saw in his eyes? Sympathy? A sense of panic mounted in her chest as she brought the receiver to her ear.

“Hello?”

A deep, resonant voice with a hint of a British accent asked, “Is this Mrs. Stacey Sommers?”

With lightning speed, her brain attempted to make an instant voice match. And failed. She didn’t know anyone with a British accent, slight or otherwise.

“Yes.”

“Mrs. Sommers, this is Ian Bryanne. I am—I was Titus Radkin’s attorney.” He paused, as if to allow the words to sink in. Her grip on the receiver tightened. Instinctively, Stacey knew what was coming. A sadness pooled through her. “I’m sorry to have to be the one to have to tell you this, but your uncle died last night. He went peacefully in his sleep.”

“Uncle Titus?” She said the name numbly.

The image of a tall, thin, gaunt-faced man with flowing, shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair materialized in her mind’s eye. Titus Radkin wasn’t actually her uncle, he was her great-uncle.

By last count, he’d been ninety-four and still going strong. Last Christmas she’d gotten a card from him. He’d included a picture of himself and his newest mistress, a woman of thirty-eight. “She’s a little old for me, but she has some very fine redeeming qualities,” he’d written across the back of the photograph.

Eternally young, that was the way she’d thought of her father’s uncle. He’d embraced a completely different generation, one in which people wore flowers in their hair, rioted in the name of peace and drove around in air-polluting VW buses while preaching about saving the environment and doing their damnedest to procreate and perpetuate the species one lovefest at a time.

As she recalled, Titus was a zealous advocate of free love.

Everything else, however, the man had put a price on. A rather dear one. Which was how he was able to buy his very own island approximately twenty years ago. The world had modernized too quickly, going in directions he had no desire to follow. So he had founded his own world. For the most part, or so the story went, he had left the demands of society to live out the rest of his years the way he wanted to.

It hadn’t been quite so because he’d gone with a full staff and had a great deal of money for his every comfort. She’d visited the island once, when the children were still very young. Titus had paid for the four of them to fly out. Brad had had to pass because of previous commitments.

“Does he treat you well, Stacey?” Titus had asked, looking at her with those piercing blue eyes of his.

“Yes,” she’d declared perhaps a little too quickly.

He had only smiled a half smile, the left corner of his mouth rising while the other remained stationary, and shaken his head. “In the end, that’s all we have, you know, the people who love us. Make sure he doesn’t take you for granted.”

At the time she’d thought those strange words to be coming from a man who had never turned his back on making love to as many women as he could.

Good-bye, Uncle Titus. I hope you died in the saddle and not peacefully, the way your lawyer said.

Stacey took a breath, processing what she’d just been told.

“How?” she finally asked. “How did he die—besides peacefully.”

There was a long pause, as if the man on the other end was trying to ascertain whether or not she was on to the truth. And then the attorney said, “He died of natural causes.”

Which could have meant, since this was Uncle Titus, that he died making love. Or that he simply died of being ninety-four. At least the germs he was so vigilantly on guard against hadn’t managed to fell him, she thought. Her mother had always joked that they had their own personal Howard Hughes in the family.

The irony of the whole thing struck her. Because Uncle Titus was so well off, her father had mentioned more than once that he looked forward to the day Titus went “to his reward and left us with ours.” Uncle Titus had wound up outliving both of her parents, she thought sadly.

And with his death, the last of her extended family was gone.

Granted, there was still Brad’s family. Brad had two brothers, one older, one younger, and a younger sister, all married—all with children and all living within the state. Two of them were only ninety miles away in San Diego, while the other lived up north in Santa Barbara. They all tried to get together for the holidays and on other occasions as well, but it still wasn’t quite the same thing.

Titus was the last of the family she’d once had. At forty-seven, she suddenly felt like an orphan.

“Will there be a funeral?” Her voice echoed back to her, sounding shaky. Stacey took another deep breath, trying to regain her composure.

“Yes. The services will be held this Thursday. On the island,” the attorney added. After another pause, he told her, “Mr. Radkin expressed the hope that you would attend.”

“Of course.” Stacey felt an odd hollowness forming at the pit of her stomach. Then it spread, taking in every inch of her and lacing it with sadness.

Other than the unexpected Christmas card, there had been almost no contact between them for years now, at least none that had been reciprocated. She sent Christmas cards and received none in kind. It got to the point that Brad teased her about sending them to the dead-letter office and cutting out the middleman. But she never stopped, always hoping that Titus would respond. He had sent a card and a fifty-dollar savings bond when each of the children had been born. And he’d included a handwritten note.

The note had meant far more to her than the bonds. She dutifully banked the former, which was the beginning of each of the children’s bank accounts. The latter she had placed in her box of treasures, things that she had collected over time. Things that meant nothing to anyone but her. She’d placed Uncle Titus’s last Christmas card there, along with the photograph.

“I’ll be there Wednesday,” she told the lawyer.

“I will have the airplane tickets forwarded to you.”

“There’s no need—” she began.

“It’s per Mr. Radkin’s instructions,” the lawyer told her.

“Oh. Well, then, all right,” she agreed. “Thank you for calling.” She was still fighting the numbness as she hung up the receiver.

Brad had remained beside her for the duration of the conversation. “You’ll be where Wednesday?” he asked.

“Attending Uncle Titus’s funeral.” It felt so strange to say that. She had gotten accustomed to the idea that the man was going to live forever. The way he’d always thought he would.

She realized that Brad was frowning and shaking his head. “I can’t make it, Stacey.”

Brad and Titus had met twice, once at a family Christmas and once at their wedding. Brad had thought the man odd, a throwback to another era, but she needed his support now. He couldn’t be falling back on prior commitments. Didn’t she mean anything to him?

“What?”

“The funeral. I can’t make it,” he said. “I have a six hour surgery scheduled for Wednesday. I cleared my calendar completely to accommodate the time it needed. The patient’s already given his own blood. Everything’s been set in motion. It can’t be rescheduled.”

She knew how difficult it was coordinating everything that went into performing a surgery. But this was her uncle Titus. The last living relative in her family. She needed Brad with her.

Stacey tried to think. “Could you fly out right after the surgery?”

Brad’s immediate response was to shake his head. “I’ve got another surgery for Thursday morning.” But then he paused, thinking. He didn’t want to be the bad guy twice in her eyes in such a short duration. “Maybe I can get Harris to cover for me—”

Stacey knew that neurosurgeons didn’t “cover” for one another. Not unless something like an earthquake or hurricane was directly involved. Each had his own area of expertise, his own small kingdom.

She banked down the bitterness that had prompted her to think the last part. “That’s okay. I’ll go alone.”

Brad peered at her face, his own uncertain. “Are you sure?”

She didn’t want to argue about this, too. Especially since she knew how it would turn out. Why waste the time? “I’m sure.”

Off the hook, Brad still didn’t like the idea of her flying alone. “Maybe Jim could go with you—”

She looked at him sharply. “Jim’s busy setting up his new life. I’m perfectly capable of flying on my own.” She blew out a breath, the impact of the news hitting her all over again. “God, I can’t believe that Uncle Titus is really gone.”

Brad nodded as he absently checked his pockets for his car keys. “I thought your uncle would go on forever.” Their eyes met for a moment. “Outlive us all.”

“Yes,” she said quietly, waiting for the ache to set in, the one that always came when she lost a loved one, “me, too.”

There was an awkwardness in the air. Brad felt he should say something more. He had no idea what. “He never married, did he?”

“Not officially, at least, not that I know of,” she amended, then smiled. “He was too much into ‘free love.’ Thought that monogamy was a waste of time, although he was pretty faithful to his ‘lady of the moment’ as he used to call them. When I was little, my parents used to have him over for the holidays because they kind of felt sorry for him.” There was irony for you, she thought. Titus was always smiling. Her parents never were. “I think he enjoyed life a lot more than they did in the long run.”

“At least he got to do it for longer.” Brad glanced at his watch. “Oh, hey, look at the time. I should have already been halfway to the hospital. I need to make my rounds before I go to the office,” he told her, striding toward the threshold.

He was halfway to the front door before he stopped and turned around. Hurrying back to the kitchen, he caught her off guard.

“Did you forget something?” she asked.

In response, he took her into his arms and kissed her forehead. “I really am sorry about Titus.”

He could have knocked her over with a feather. Stacey smiled up at him. She doubted that he realized it, but that was worth far more to her than the two hundred dollars he had left on the counter.

“Thanks,” she murmured.

Brad released her. “I’ve got to rush.”

She followed him to the door. “That really meant a lot to me.”

Brad nodded as he left the house. But he really didn’t understand why Stacey had said that.

CHAPTER 9

The long flight from LAX to Titus’s small Pacific island gave Stacey the opportunity to read for more than five minutes at a clip. She’d almost forgotten how to savor and enjoy a lengthy story. Everything these days came at her in tidy, bite-size pieces. Magazine articles ended within two pages. News stories came with highlights that summarized their content quickly for the rushed. The end result was that she no longer really knew how to immerse herself in something she was reading, had no patience to wade through deep prose, no matter how beautiful. Her brain seemed to lack staying power.

The first half hour of her journey was spent trying to keep her mind from straying as she struggled to focus on the written words before her. At the end of that first half hour she realized she’d been reading the same page over and over again. It took more effort than she would have ever guessed. So was keeping a lid on the impatience drumming through her. She kept wondering about things that she had left behind. Not the usual did-I-leave-the-stove-on anxieties, but misgivings about how Brad would fare in the house without her. He’d assured her he’d be fine, but she had her doubts.

And what if Jim needed her while she was gone? Or Julie?

She took a deep breath. They were all adults, all three of them. Even Brad. They would be fine. But would she?

Stacey propped the book up on the tray before her, trying again to lose herself in the pages of the mystery she’d purchased expressly for the trip. There was a time when she would curl up on any available space and read for hours on end, losing herself in whatever story—romance, mystery, historical biography—she selected. When had there stopped being time for reading for pleasure? For reading “just because”? When had life changed for her?

She couldn’t pinpoint a moment, an earth-shattering event, that had transformed her. It had happened in tiny increments, stealthily, so she hadn’t really been aware of the change. Until it had overwhelmed her.

The same was true of her marriage, she supposed. They’d started out being partners, two crazy-in-love partners, sharing every moment, every thought with each other. Living on love and dreams and not much in the way of creature comforts, but it didn’t matter. As long as they had each other. Now they were like two strangers who met at the same bus stop every morning. There was recognition, an exchange of a sentence or two, but very little else. Certainly no feeling of communion, or even camaraderie.

She hadn’t changed, had she? Not in the way she felt about things. Not about any of the things that truly mattered to her.

But Brad had.

Brad had changed, oh so much. Her mouth curved in a sad smile. She had married James Dean and woken up one morning to find herself sleeping next to Dennis the Menace’s Mr. Wilson. Conservative, grumpy and so not a risk taker.

She missed James Dean more than she could possibly put into words.

Stacey looked down at her book. She was twenty pages further along than she had been earlier—and couldn’t remember a single word of the story that had transpired, or how the mystery’s feisty protagonist had wound up standing in a grave.

Annoyed, Stacey flipped back twenty pages, hoping to be more successful in keeping her mind from wandering this time around.

C’mon, Stace, you can do this. You can read this book. You remember what it was like to read, don’t you? To block out everything else except for the characters in your book? Strike a blow for the not-so-distant past. Do it for Uncle Titus.

She smiled to herself. Uncle Titus loved to read. It was one of the forms that his rebellion took as society conspired to take its citizens away from the printed word and place them in front of a digital display.

For Uncle Titus, she thought, amused.

Buckling down, Stacey narrowed her eyes and forced herself not to think about anything except the novel she had before her.

Ian Bryanne looked exactly the way he sounded over the telephone.

Tall, thin, faded blond hair worn just a tad longer than the norm in deference to his chief employer. The former citizen of Great Britain was all angles and sharp points in a subdued gray Armani suit. The only splash of color came from his red tie. And from his electric-blue eyes.

The commercial flight she’d taken from California only took her as far as Honolulu. Ian had chartered a small local plane to bring her the rest of the way to Titus’s island. The trip had roughly been a hundred miles. Roughly because the weather had turned inclement just before she’d boarded the small aircraft. Her stomach was in complete upheaval by the time they landed.

She hadn’t been this nauseated since she’d been pregnant with Julie. Disembarking on very shaky legs, Stacey was convinced she would have been subjected to less turbulence had she made the short trip riding inside of a blender.

It felt like a full-fledged tropical storm by the time they touched down in the field where Titus kept his private Learjet. The moment she stepped out of the plane, Ian introduced himself, leaning forward to give her the benefit of the shelter afforded by the huge black umbrella he had brought with him.

Gusts of wind had the rain falling almost sideways, sailing beneath the umbrella and soaking her, but she appreciated the gesture. Together they walked side by side, careful not to slip on the metal steps of the ramp that had been pushed up against the plane.

“Welcome to the Island,” Ian told her crisply, raising his voice above the wind.

Attention focused on getting down to ground level, Stacey only smiled and nodded in response.

The Island. Her uncle hadn’t liked naming things. When he had purchased the fifteen-mile-wide island, rather than fixing some vain moniker to the tract of land, he referred to it by its description.

“Keep things as simple as you can,” he had told her more than once.

He had the same attitude when it came to everything. The stray canine he’d taken in some five years ago answered to Dog. She had no doubt that if Uncle Titus’d had a son or a daughter, he would have named them Boy and Girl. Unless there were more, and then he would have affixed numbers to them. Boy 1, Boy 2 and so on.

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