“It’s time to look at things from a new perspective.”

“A lot of time has passed,” Rosie agreed coolly, “but my perspective remains the same. I lost my brother, my father and our baby in the space of a week, and you…” The anger turned to pain for an instant, but she tossed her head, seeming to shake it off. Being angry at him was apparently more comfortable than hurting. “You left me.”

“You drove me away,” Matt corrected.

“I had lost…three of the most important people in my life!” Her voice rose. “Did you expect me to be the same perky little debutante you married?”

“Of course not. I just wanted you to remember that I was there to offer support, comfort, a way back. But you didn’t want to come back.”

Dear Reader,

I’m a great lover of Christmas and all the warm and cozy rituals that surround it. This story incorporates them, but against a backdrop of old grief, the threat of danger and a husband and wife who loved each other more than anything until tragedy drove a wedge between them.

Even against those odds, love conquers all. And when this happens at Christmas, emotions are heightened and the joy is even greater.

Read all about it!

Happy holidays!

Muriel Jensen

The Man under the Mistletoe
Muriel Jensen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

In loving memory of my brother, Matthew Charbonneau,

called home much too soon. I will always remember kitchen

chairs lined up in a row as we played Rocky Jones,

Space Ranger; Necco Wafers candies used for

Holy Communion when we played Mass; and, when I was

eight and he was twelve, flying down the Dean Street hill

on the handlebars of his bike in complete confidence that

he would get us safely to the bottom. Love you, Mattie.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

PROLOGUE

ROSIE DEMARCO SAT opposite Jackie Whitcomb at a table for four in the Breakfast Barn’s meeting room. The restaurant was the heartbeat of Maple Hill in western Massachusetts. In this first week of December, a waitress and two busboys were hanging paper snowflakes from the light fixtures.

Also at their table were Molly Bowers, a florist, and Adam Bello, who owned Bello Automobile Agency.

“So that’s about it, Jackie.” Rosie pushed away her half-empty plate and consulted her notes one more time. “Maple Hill’s Industrial Growth Committee is officially reactivated, and all because Molly and Adam and I were at the same table at the fall festival dinner and got to talking about the health of business in this town. Molly has served on the committee before, but this is Adam’s first time.”

Adam smiled enthusiastically. He was young and personable. “We could use a little clean industry here to bring in jobs and give us more to depend on than tourism.”

Jackie, Maple Hill’s mayor and a descendant of one of the town’s founding families, was a lively redhead with a genuine devotion to the community. She spread her hands, her smile taking in everyone at the table. “That’s great news. And you think Tolliver Textiles is willing to try us again?”

Rosie nodded. The company had been considering a move to Maple Hill from Boston two years ago, but circumstances had conspired to defeat the plan.

“I spoke to the new president of the company yesterday,” Rosie told her. “They’d moved to a temporary space in an old mill on the Charles River when the last deal fell apart. He’s anxious to get out of there, but we both agreed that the holiday season is a bad time to talk about it. Everyone is too busy. He’s coming to Maple Hill right after the new year to talk to us in person.”

“And we have a new location for him to consider,” Molly said. She was a full-figured blonde in her mid-fifties who, not surprisingly, always smelled of flowers. “There won’t be any environmental surprises like the last time when we discovered a heron rookery that was missed on the impact statement. I wish Dennis Sorrento could join us again, but he’s had a few health problems and he’s trying to scale back.”

Dennis was a pharmacist who’d been an important part of the committee’s first incarnation.

“That’s too bad,” Jackie replied. “But you sound as though you have a good handle on what you’re doing, Rosie. Maple Hill has a reputation for sound business while maintaining its beautiful surroundings. Just keep that in mind.”

Rosie nodded. “Haley’s joined the committee, but she can’t meet with us until January. She has her hands full with the special holiday-shopping edition. A good thing for the publisher of the Maple Hill Mirror, but not necessarily for the wife of a busy lawyer and the mother of a toddler.”

Jackie rolled her eyes. “My niece is a wild child.” Jackie was Haley Megrath’s sister-in-law, and little Henrietta’s aunt and godmother.

“I’ve seen her in action.” Rosie reached into her purse for her wallet. “But my point was that with Haley on board, we’ll be secure in the knowledge that our every move will be monitored.” Haley was famous for taking on anything or anyone she considered a threat to Maple Hill financially, ecologically or in any way at all.

“Well.” Jackie consulted the bill and took out her own wallet. “Your committee has my blessing. Keep me informed.”

“We will.” Rosie glanced at her watch, then smiled at her companions. “I’ve got to go back to my shop. Last fitting on my sister’s wedding dress this afternoon.”

As the group stood to go their separate ways, the lone occupant of a corner booth watched in angry disappointment and thought, So Rosie chose to ignore my warning. Something will have to be done….

CHAPTER ONE

ROSIE FLUFFED the tea-length hem of her younger sister’s wedding dress and stepped back to get the full effect. One hand on the louvered door of the dressing room, she assessed the lace draped over Francie’s impressive bosom, cinching her slender arms and tiny waist, fluttering around her ankles as she did a turn.

With Francie’s blue hair and pierced eyebrow, she was hardly an ad for Vera Wang, but she did sparkle. And she looked happy.

“The alterations are perfect,” Rosie said. “The dress is as beautiful on you as we knew it would be. What do you think of the muff?” A soft, faux-fur material, it matched the band of the hat she’d chosen. “Gives it all a Christmassy look, don’t you think?”

Francie nodded at Rosie’s reflection in the mirror. “I love it. Mom?”

Sonja Erickson, “Sonny” to friends and family, squeezed into a corner of the built-in bench, looked as though she had an appointment for cocktails at the Polo Lounge even though she was three thousand miles away in a tiny dressing room in snowy Maple Hill, Massachusetts.

The light blue gaze she cast over the dress revealed nothing. Then she sighed—a sign that she knew her opinion wouldn’t be well received so she would keep it to herself. “It’s very pretty,” she said. “Very pretty.”

Francie closed her eyes—a sign that after twenty-three years of dealing with her mother’s criticism, she still let it get to her.

Rosie tried to distract Francie by reaching for the veiled hat she’d selected to go with the dress, but she was too late.

“It’s the hair, isn’t it?” Francie demanded, turning with a swoosh of taffeta to glare at her mother. “I told you it’s staying blue. Deal with it, Mom!”

“I’m dealing,” Sonny replied with a calm smile.

Rosie had always admired that her mother could do that—react to shrieks of anger and frustration like an amused goddess. She was the composite of a fifties up-bringing that forbade expressing displeasure, and a talent for making everyone around her somehow pay for what she was feeling but couldn’t show.

At last she heaved a long-suffering sigh. That meant all bets were off. Her mother would say what was on her mind.

“It’s the eyebrow ring I’m worried about.” She stood gracefully, still fashionable at fifty-seven in a classic suit. “What if your veil gets caught in it? Will there be blood everywhere? Will you need plastic surgery? What personal statement is worth ruining your wedding day?”

“It’s not a statement of anything!” Francie screamed. Blue hair did not flatter a purple face. In the little room, the sound of Francie’s voice ricocheting back and forth took on a physical force. “It’s who I am, that’s all. It’s me!”

“Mom, Francie,” Rosie pleaded quietly. “I have other customers…”

“You were not born with an eyebrow ring!” Sonny shouted back. “Believe me! I’d have noticed during my thirty-seven hours of labor!”

“Oh, God.” Francie put both hands to her ears. “If you regret having me so much, why did you do it? You already had two beautiful overachievers!”

“I do not regret having you!” Sonny said heatedly. “But there are moments when I regret letting you live! I’ll be in the car.” She handed Rosie her Visa card.

Rosie pushed it back at her. “Mom, I told you. The dress is my gift to Francie.”

Her mother took her hand and forced the card into it. “Don’t be ridiculous. You know Happily Ever After will be out of business before spring. You’re going to need the money.”

That salvo delivered, she left the dressing room. Seconds later the bells over the front door tinkled. Her daughters knew she wasn’t going far—she’d brought Francie to the shop, after all, and would be taking her home.

Rosie sank onto the bench.

“Why does she hate us?” Francie demanded.

“Try this.” Rosie handed Francie a veiled bowler hat. “She doesn’t hate us. She just doesn’t know how to love us.”

Francie put on the hat, then tugged the veil carefully down to her chin.

Rosie knew she’d been right about the choice. A standard headpiece and veil would have accentuated Francie’s nontraditional hair and piercing. The hat and muff worked with them.

Francie nodded at her reflection, her expression softening. She looked at Rosie in the mirror as she played with the veil. “I don’t understand. What’s so hard about it?”

“I’ve been working on that for a long time.”

“I thought being willing to die for your children was supposed to be instinctive to all mothers.”

“Oh, I think she’d die for us. She just finds it really hard to live with us.”

Francie handed back the hat, then reached behind her to unzip the dress. Rosie stood to help her. “You and I,” Francie said moodily, “are never going to make her happy. How do you stand it? She always makes me feel like the last kid picked for the baseball team.”

Rosie held the dress with one hand and helped Francie step out of it with the other. “You have to get over the idea that you’re responsible for her happiness.” She eased the dress onto a hanger. “She’s had a rough time, you know? She always looks as though she’s got it together, so we expect her to behave that way. But inside, she’s more at a loss than she’ll let us believe.”

Francie made a scornful noise as she slipped into jeans and a red, crushed-velvet sweater. “You’re saying she wasn’t like this before Jay and Daddy died? I don’t remember. Seems like she’s been on my case forever.”

She watched as Rosie stuffed the skirt into the plastic cover, smoothed it neatly and pulled up the zipper, then asked, “Do you ever wonder about Dad?”

The confines of the tiny room made avoiding eye contact difficult. Besides, Rosie found it hard to lie to the sister to whom she’d explained menstruation, sex and geometry.

Still, she hedged. “About what, particularly?”

Francie shifted impatiently. “About not loving us enough to want to live.”

God. Only her family could take an afternoon in a bridal shop and turn it into a Faulkner novel.

“And don’t try to put a positive spin on it,” Francie went on. “Even you can’t do that. Dad was so devastated by Jay’s death that he didn’t want to live. I mean, think about it. What does that say about you and me, his daughters? Didn’t it occur to him that I’d need him to walk me down the aisle one day? Or that you’d have babies who’d need a grandfa—” She stopped abruptly, looking horrified, then spread her arms in apology. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think…”

Rosie snatched the dress off the hook and carried it out into the shop, needing to escape the words, knowing she couldn’t.

The store smelled of a spicy-sweet carnation-and-vanilla potpourri and she breathed in a whiff of it to reestablish her equilibrium. This is me, she told herself firmly. Beautiful things, steady little business, cheerful, grateful clients. Not the grim confusion my life has been for the past two years.

“Don’t be silly,” she said, hanging the dress on a rack behind the counter as Francie joined her. “Women have miscarriages every day and don’t expect other people to apologize every time a baby is mentioned. Now. Yes, it bothers me about Dad. He didn’t have much time for us, but he adored our brother and there’s nothing we can do about that now that they’re both gone. So…try to have a little more sympathy for Mom. She played second fiddle to Jay, too. If you worry about Dad not caring enough to stay with us, imagine how she must feel.”

Rosie reached to the shelves behind her for a hatbox.

“I feel sorry for Chase, too,” Francie said, “living out here in the boonies with his grandmother and his aunts.” She held the box steady while Rosie placed the hat into the tissue. Their eight-year-old nephew had already suffered more than his share of tragedy. His mother had run off with a group of musicians, and his father had died in a grizzly accident.

“Yeah, well, he’s a brave little boy.” Rosie put the lid on the box. “You want to take the dress and hat home, or do you want me to keep it for you?” The wedding was only a week away, but Francie’s room in the family home still looked like a fourteen-year-old’s.

“Keep it, please.”

Rosie put the hatbox back on the shelf and slapped a label on it that read, Francie. “I worry about Chase, too,” she said. “Fortunately, he has Jay’s sunny nature.”

“Did you find somebody to help you watch the shop so you can take care of him while Mom’s in California with Aunt Ginger and Aunt Sukie?”

Rosie nodded. “It’s all handled. I’ll move from the guest house into the house while Mom’s gone, and Sara will help me with the store if I need her.” Sara Ross, a friend since high school, could be depended upon to step in whenever Rosie needed anything. “Now. What else do we need? Slip? Stockings?”

“Rosie?”

“Yeah.”

“I have something else to tell you.”

Rosie detected something worrisome in Francie’s tone. For all her sister’s pugnacious need to quarrel with their mother, she’d never argued much with Rosie. They’d been too busy commiserating with each other to fight.

“Francie,” she said firmly, reaching into the storage under the counter to pull out a box of stockings, “you’re going to be married in a week. It’s no time to talk about death or miscarriage or—”

“I wasn’t going to.” Francie put a hand on Rosie’s. Then she drew a breath, raised her eyes to heaven and blurted, “I asked Matt to give me away.”

If anything could have made this day harder on Rosie’s nerves than it already had been, the mention of her ex-husband was it. Especially as part of her sister’s wedding party. Rosie was the maid of honor.

“I didn’t ask him to take pictures,” Francie continued. “I’m sure he’d do a better job than the photographer we hired, but I just want him to walk me down the aisle.” Her fingernails were digging into Rosie’s palm. “Please tell me you don’t hate me. Please tell me you won’t chicken out on me because Matt’s coming. Please.”

Francie was near tears. She had a theatrical turn to her nature and could call them up at will, but Rosie knew these were genuine. Francie had loved Matt from the day Rosie had brought him home to meet the family. With no father to give her away, she no doubt thought it logical to ask Matt. Their mother had offered to give her away as was often done in fatherless weddings, but despite her rejection of tradition in many aspects of her life, Francie had always been halfhearted about the idea.

Rosie smacked Francie’s hand with the box of stockings. “I won’t walk out, but I do hate you. When’s he coming?”

“Friday. He’s…” She avoided Rosie’s eyes and added quickly, “He’s staying with us.”

Oh, good. There was nothing Rosie wanted less than to have the man who’d walked out on her in the darkest period of her life move right back in, even for a couple of days.

“He asked me if I’d asked you first. I told him I had and that you said it was okay.” Francie related the lie with no apparent evidence of guilt.

Rosie nodded. “I’m going to hurt you, Francie, before I kill you. He’d better be on his way home before I move into the house to stay with Chase.”

Francie reached across the counter and hugged Rosie fiercely. “I’m sure he will be. He’s going to China, you know.”

Rosie was more puzzled than interested. “China?”

“He has a contract for a pictorial book. I guess he’s giving up newspaper work for a while. He says he wants to travel.” Francie glanced at the door. “I’ve got to go before Mom drives off.” She hesitated one more moment to look into Rosie’s eyes. “You’re sure you’re okay with this?”

How could she ever be okay with it? But she was the big sister. She had to be okay.

“Of course,” she replied.

“Good. You going to be home for dinner tonight? Afterward, I’m making birdseed bags for the wedding.”

“I’ll be there.”

“Okay. See you then. Thanks, Rosie.”

Rosie stepped out into the sunshine to wave her mother and sister off as though the afternoon had been fun, rather than an exercise in anger management. All attempts to spend time together ended that way. She could hardly wait for dinner.

Her mother waved dutifully, the martyred little smile on her face; it was first cousin to the long-suffering sigh.

Rosie watched the dark blue Mercedes drive away and had the same thought that crossed her mind every day. She should move away, get her life together, find out who she was when she wasn’t connected to the high-strung eccentrics who made up her life.

But that would leave Chase without an ally now that Francie would be out of the house, and though her mother loved Chase, Rosie knew from experience that that didn’t necessarily mean she could help him develop into a well-rounded individual.

Rosie also hated the thought of leaving Maple Hill. Her father had been born here and inherited her grandfather’s construction company. Though he’d worked for his own company in Boston for many years, the family had spent summers and the Christmas holidays at Bloombury Landing, their family home on the lake. In Maple Hill, in the foothills of the Berkshires, winter, and Christmas, particularly, were spectacular.

Maple Hill dated back to colonial days, and its main street still looked as though a minuteman with a musket might appear at any moment. Most of the buildings built around the town square dated back to that time, or had been rebuilt in keeping with that era’s architecture. It was a lively little center of commerce in a picture-perfect setting.

Rosie loved it here. She loved the town’s rich history, the press of tourists in the summer, the red and gold leaves of fall, the pristine snow in the winter. Add to that the warmth and comfort of old friendships, and it was a wonderful place to be.

She felt she belonged here. Her reasons were complicated, but primarily, she thought it was because her dreams had been born here. They had died here, too, yet somehow, strangely, that had only strengthened her bond. Right now she existed somewhere between hope and devastation, unable to believe in a future here, but also unable to give up on it.

And—she even hated to admit this to herself—she couldn’t quite dispel the feeling that her mother clung to her. Not physically, of course, not with any apparent emotional dependency, but sometimes Rosie heard something in her voice, saw something in her eyes that recalled a long-ago past when things had been different.

Every time it happened, Rosie would chase the memory only to come to a dead end. Then she would tell herself she’d been imagining things, that she and her mother had never been that close. But that look in her mother’s eyes said things Rosie felt, rather than remembered, and she couldn’t quite dismiss it.

So she had to stay. At least for a while. At least until Gillian Howe of the Runway Boutique got serious about adding wedding dresses to her shop in Springfield just a few miles across the Connecticut River and bought Rosie out.

Then, with money in hand to plan the future, Rosie could think about whether it would be worth it to leave the place where she really wanted to be, to find the woman she really was.

“YO! MATT!”

The frantic sound of a woman’s voice was followed by loud rapping on the darkroom door.

“We’re developing!” Shorty shouted as he washed the contact sheet. “Don’t come in, Jenny!”

Matt DeMarco looked over Shorty’s shoulder as the faces of children at a local science fair began to materialize into the neat little squares of the contact sheet that represented every frame on the roll of film. He was fairly sure the Sacramento Sentinel was the only newspaper in the West that still developed film in a darkroom. Shorty and technology didn’t get along.

“I need Matt!” Jenny shouted.

“Control yourself, woman!” Shorty hung the contact sheet by a clothespin to an overhead line. He pointed a pen to one particular shot, as usual picking out the best one on the roll. It wasn’t showy or necessarily dramatic, but a ten-year-old boy’s excitement in his science experiment shone from a pair of dark blue eyes. “That’s it, Matt. Discovery. Pride. How do you always manage to find the definitive face?”

“I don’t find it, Shorty. I just shoot what’s there.”

“Come, now. When you have a fifty-thousand-dollar advance in your pocket, there’s no need to be modest.”

“Ma-att! I need you! There’s a fire at Hudson’s Department Store! Top floor completely engulfed!”

“Too bad,” Shorty said as Matt snatched his camera off the stainless-steel table. “I thought she just wanted you for a quickie in the news van.”

Matt reached for film in an overhead cabinet and headed for the door. “Well, I can always dream,” he said with a chuckle, opening the door to a small hallway.

“Come on, Matt, let’s go!” Jenny Morrow grabbed Matt’s arm and pulled him down a corridor to the back door and the newspaper’s parking lot. Matt marveled at her energy. She was out-of-control enthusiasm and mouth.

She was also very beautiful, glossy brown hair flying as she ran toward her Honda.

Matt peeled off toward his Mustang, unlocking the door with the remote as he approached.

She finally realized he’d taken off in another direction and raced to follow. “Why don’t I ever get to drive?” she asked, catching up with him. She climbed into the passenger seat as he got in behind the wheel.

The Mustang did zero to sixty in five seconds, shooting out of the parking lot like a thumbed rubber band. It wasn’t as though the fire would be out before they got there, but he always wondered what he was missing while he was still on his way.

“You have a tendency to drive where other cars are parked.” He braked at the corner and cast her a grinning glance before looking quickly left, then right.

“One time! I hit a parked car one time!”

“It was a police car.”

She groaned. “The cop forgave me. Isn’t it time you did?”

“It was embarrassing.”

“Oh, get over yourself. It’s time you trusted me.” She put commands into her laptop even as she spoke to him and helped him watch for a break in the traffic. “We’ve been on stakeouts together, we’ve barfed at traffic accidents, we’ve lied our way out of tight spots, we’ve cried together…”

“When?”

“That story on the children’s wing of the hospital. Remember? The little girl with—”

“Oh, yeah.” He raised a hand to silence her. Somehow that little girl fighting lymphoma had reminded him of his own child, who’d never even lived to see the light of day. “I remember.”

The road clear, he sped off, as much to escape the memory as to take advantage of the opening in traffic. “I’m an important photojournalist now.” He faked an imperious air. “I have an image to protect.”

Jenny made a scornful sound. “Well, unfortunately for you, my mother believes that. You’re invited to dinner again next weekend.”

Jenny’s mother had designs on him for her daughter. She tried to be subtle about it and failed miserably. Matt and Jenny smiled at her matchmaking efforts, knowing that nothing more than friendship was possible between them. Matt was too reserved for Jenny, and her hyper behavior made him crazy.

He made the turn toward the department store. Smoke and flaming cinders filled the air. She pointed ahead. “There’s the police barricade.” He pulled over to park.

“Notice how I did that without hitting anything?” he said.

She punched him in the arm.

In the next block fire trucks and hoses were entangled in the street and a crowd of people had gathered to watch the flames. “Please offer your mom my apologies,” he said, reaching for his camera, “But I can’t go. I’m leaving tomorrow for my sister-in-law’s wedding.”

Jenny frowned at him. “You mean, the dragon’s sister is getting married?”

“Who said she was a dragon?”

“Aren’t exes always dragons?”

“I don’t know. Rosie’s the only ex I have, and she’s more of a…” What? he wondered. What described a woman who’d withdrawn so completely he could no longer reach her? “A turtle, I think.”

“You mean she moves slowly?”

“No.” He shook his head to end the discussion. She didn’t get it. But then, he’d been there, and he didn’t get it completely, either. He pushed his door open. “Come on before they put the damn thing out.”

CHAPTER TWO

“WHAT DO YOU THINK?” Rosie’s mother did a turn in her deep pink mother-of-the-bride silk suit. “Imagine silver hoop earrings, a white poinsettia corsage with silver ribbon, and Ferragamo pumps and clutch.”

Rosie opened her mouth to tell her she looked spectacular even without the accessories. But she was interrupted by her aunt Virginia, who’d arrived two days ago for the wedding. Known as Ginger to everyone, she’d earned her nickname because of her sharp opinions on everything.

“Very pretty,” Ginger said, walking around her smaller, more curvaceous sister. Then she swatted Sonny’s backside with sibling familiarity. “But I’m not sure you need two layers of fabric right there where you’ve always had more than the rest of us. You should have gone for a shorter jacket.”

Sonny put both hands behind her and looked over her shoulder, checking her reflection in the mirror over the mantel. She had to walk some distance away before she could see herself.

“It looks beautiful,” Rosie assured her, then said politely to her aunt, “We Erickson women are proud of our curves. And the heels will give her more height. She’ll look perfect.”

“They’ll also give her more jiggle,” Ginger declared. “You are wearing a shape enhancer, Sonny?”

“A what?”

“A girdle,” Rosie translated, then made a point of looking at her watch. “You don’t need one, Mom. And aren’t you two meeting Camille Malone for dinner?”

The ormolu clock on the mantel chimed six as though in compliance with Rosie’s need to get her mother and aunt out of the house—and out of her hair. She had every detail of the wedding under control except for those two.

“We are!” Ginger exclaimed, shooing her sister toward the stairs and the bedrooms. “Hurry up! Let’s get changed.”

“Relax.” Sonny resisted the attempt to hurry her. “Camille won’t be upset if we’re a few minutes late.”

“I want to try to charm her into writing her autobiography,” Ginger said, hurrying around Sonny and starting up the stairs. “Old movie stars are hot stuff these days,” she said.

“But she’s led a very quiet personal life.”

Ginger nodded greedily. “But I understand there’s a scandal involving her oldest daughter’s father.”

“Jasper O’Hara?” Sonny asked, clearly puzzled.

Ginger continued up. “He wasn’t the father,” she said.

“What? How could you possibly know that? You’ve been here all of two days.”

Ginger shrugged. “It’s a gift. I know where the stories are and who wants to buy them. I met a woman on the train coming in who knew all about her. She was returning from Christmas shopping in New York. Seems Camille told a mutual friend of theirs in confidence and she told me.”

“Some friend.” Sonny chased her up the stairs. “You will not ask her about her…” Her voice faded as a door closed.

Oh, no. Camille’s daughters, Paris Sanford and Prudence Hale, were Rosie’s friends. Rosie knew there were shocking facts about Paris’s father that Camille wouldn’t want to discuss. Rosie trusted her mother to talk her aunt out of promoting the book idea.

Of course, talking Ginger out of anything was a major undertaking. She’s been married at seventeen, divorced at nineteen, married again at twenty-one, divorced five years later—and then married a third time at the age of thirty. She was now divorced again.

The four Chamberlain sisters, of whom Ginger was the eldest, had grown up in Beverly Hills, daughters of a prominent heart surgeon and a gifted cellist. Ginger was now a literary agent in New York City, while the second eldest, Sonny, had given up her plans to study law when she’d married Hal Erickson in her senior year at Princeton. Sukie, or Susan, had been sickly most of her life but thanks to a doting husband, lived comfortably in Palm Springs; Sonny and Ginger planned to visit her together right after the wedding. The youngest sister, Charlotte, had had a brilliant career in music, before dying in a tragic traffic accident when she was only twenty-five.

Rosie still found it difficult to equate the motivated and single-minded mother she knew with the dewy-eyed college senior who’d thrown in her lot to support the brash and ambitious son of a longtime Maple Hill family.

Hal Erickson had built a large, successful construction company in Boston. When his father passed away, he sold his business and took over the helm of his father’s Berkshire Construction in Maple Hill. He’d maintained the company’s reputation for quality work, got involved in bringing business to the community. He’d been serving his second term on the town’s Industrial Growth Committee, and Rosie had been in the middle of her first term, when Jay had the accident. The projects under way at the time were stalled by his death, and Tolliver Textiles had backed out of the deal. The committee had been dormant until its resurrection at the fall festival dinner. She was convinced that if she was staying here, she had to take a hand in strengthening business.

But someone wasn’t happy about the plan, according to a message left on her answering machine several days ago. She hadn’t recognized the voice and caller ID had been blocked, so she’d just erased the vaguely threatening request that she let the textile plant remain in Boston.

It was impossible to please everyone, but she thought once she had Tolliver Textiles firmly interested in moving to Maple Hill, she’d ask Haley Megrath of the Maple Hill Mirror to report on the process of making the project happen from the Environmental Impact Statement on the parcel of land in question, to the construction of the building so that fears were allayed.

Frankly, she was grateful for the challenging project, even though real work wouldn’t begin until the new year.

She didn’t know how long it took other people to recover from loss, but she suspected she wasn’t even halfway there. She kept going because she didn’t know what else to do. And she had the feeling that if she stopped or gave up, her mother and sister might flounder with her.

And then there was her nephew, Chase; all he really had was the three of them. She had to keep going.

Rosie went back to the gift cataloging she’d been doing before her mother had modeled the pink suit. A corner of the large living room had been turned into a receiving area and temporary storage. Francie and Derek Page, her fiancé, had opened gifts as they’d arrived, and left the cards in the item or attached to it as Rosie had advised. Now she was being a helpful big sister and making Francie a list for thank-you notes.

“You’re sure your services don’t include writing the notes?” Francie had said, looking forlornly at the sea of gifts.

Rosie had shaken her head. “Hey, you’re the blushing bride. That’s your job.”

“I’ll pay you.”

“There’s not enough money in the world.” When she’d married Matt six years ago, their treasure trove of gifts had looked a lot like this. And she’d written thank-yous in her spare time from Thanksgiving to Christmas.

Matt. She didn’t want to think about him, though when he arrived, she’d be forced to. Until then she was going to pretend, just as she’d been pretending for the past year, that he’d never come into her life.

“Aunt Rosie!” Chase raced in, arms wide like the wings of an airplane. “Look! I’m a navy Tomcat!”

“Really.” She glanced up from her notes. “You look just like my nephew.”

“Is he fast and maneuverable?”

She smiled at his vocabulary. Obviously he was smart, just like his father. “Yes, I believe he is,” she replied. “But no one else in our family is an airplane.”

“You’re forgetting Uncle Matt,” he said, circling her again, apparently in a holding pattern.

“Uncle Matt’s an airplane?”

“He says he’s a cargo bus,” Chase said between bursts of jet-engine noises. “’Cause he carries around a lot of stuff inside.”

She stared at Chase in surprise as he landed and taxied toward her. She guessed Matt hadn’t been talking about freight. “When did he say that?”

“Just now. He’s parking the car. He said to tell you he was here in case you wanted to hide or something.” Chase frowned. “Does he mean like hide-and-seek?”

Rosie was caught somewhere between rage and horror. Matt was here! After two years of struggling with her bereavement, she was going to have to confront the only other person who’d gone as deeply into hell as she had. Only, he’d surfaced again within months, and hadn’t been able to wait for her to resurface, too. And then he’d left.

He wasn’t supposed to be here until tomorrow. But…today, tomorrow—what difference did it make? Thanks to Francie, she couldn’t avoid him. Sooner or later she had to look into the face that she’d once loved so much but that now would only remind her of the darkest part of her nightmare.

There was a firm knock on the door. Her heart leaped against her breastbone, then sank again, thudding dully. She wanted to take a moment, draw a breath, prepare herself, but Chase was already running to the front door. He had to use both hands to pull it open.

Matthew Antonio DeMarco stood in the oak-framed doorway. He was big, though in her painful memories she’d made him smaller. Long, jeans-clad legs, broad shoulders in a gray tweed jacket over a blue sweater. Dark hair unruly.

Even from across the room, she found it hard to look into his face. But after he affectionately ruffled Chase’s hair, his dark eyes sought her. He found her, though she tried to disappear into the spread of gifts. She would have sworn she heard the sound of their eyes meeting—metal on metal—like swords clashing.

“I told her you were here!” Chase said, taking Matt by the wrist and pulling him into the room. “But she didn’t hide. Maybe she doesn’t want to play, but I do! Want me to go hide and see if you can find me? Huh?”

Matt had always been one of Chase’s favorite people. Eighteen months did not seem to have dimmed that affection.

Matt gave him a very adult, guy-to-guy look. “Let’s find something to do after I put my stuff away, okay?”

“Okay. Grandma says you’re gonna stay in Aunt Rosie’s old room.”

“Old room?” Matt asked.

Chase nodded. “She lives in the guest house now. But she’s moving in here to take care of me when Grandma goes away. Want me to go put the light on for you and check under the bed for monsters?”

That was a duty Matt had done for Chase when he and Rosie had baby-sat their nephew years ago. But Chase prided himself on his bravery now that he was eight.

Matt laughed. “Yes, please,” he said.

“Want me to take your bag?” Chase reached for it.

Matt held on to it. “It’s pretty heavy. But thanks, anyway.”

“Full of all that old stuff you carry around?” Rosie asked. She hated that the first words out of her mouth were snide. She’d wanted to appear cool and remote, not reveal that he could affect her from the moment he arrived.

Chase, already on his way upstairs, hadn’t heard her. Matt nodded simply, his eyes turbulent.

Then he smiled politely, like a visiting stranger.

“Hello, Rosie,” he said. “Sorry I’m early, but connecting flights from Hartford come in only on Monday and Thursday. I didn’t remember that.” He walked farther into the room and stopped to look around him. Her mother had redone the living room since he’d left. The formal wallpaper and dark wood he probably remembered had been replaced by soft yellow walls, crisp white woodwork, and floral and ivy patterns in the upholstery and draperies. She’d put away Rosie’s father’s collection of sailboat models and had her own trinkets set about— Montovani statuary, crystal bowls filled with flowers, a Victorian lady fabric doll Aunt Sukie had made.

“It’s sunnier in here,” he observed.

“Yes, it is,” she had to agree. “Redecorating gave Mom something…something to do.” Her mother had insisted, furthermore, on doing the redecorating herself rather than hiring the work out.

Rosie had volunteered to help, grateful for something to do to keep her hands and her mind occupied.

Francie had stayed away as much as possible after their father’s and their brother’s deaths and Matt’s defection. She said the house was like a mausoleum and no amount of paint was going to change it.

Matt focused his attention on her as she replied, and now she pulled herself together. If he was going to be here for a couple of days, she had to find a way to cope.

MATT KNEW that gesture, that drawing up of her leggy height, the aligning of her shoulders, the tossing of her long dark hair and The Look. It was a superior angle of her chin, an imperious expression in her bright blue eyes. She was suppressing emotion in favor of appearing controlled. He hated that she could do that so well.

As she stood there, all graceful, slightly disheveled femininity, old anguish tightening her mouth, anger at him in every line of her body, he wanted to drop to his knees and scream his frustration to the world.

But he’d done that two years ago and it hadn’t moved her. And that had been a valuable lesson to him. As much as he loved her, as hard as it was to walk away from all they’d been to each other, she’d dug a hole for herself he wasn’t going to be able to pull her out of. He’d had to save himself, or he wouldn’t be around to try again to save her. And just before her father’s suicide, Matt had stumbled upon information about shady dealings on Hal’s part that could have hurt her further. He’d had to get away.

She looked as remote today as she had then, but he had to believe that the intervening year and a half had had some kind of effect on her.

“How’s the business doing?” he asked, looking for a topic that didn’t relate to family or their relationship. That was difficult. Everything had been so tightly bound together in those days.

“Oh, you know,” she said, dropping a pad of paper on what appeared to be a crystal bowl in a nest of tissue. “Sometimes really good, sometimes not so good. Mom’s convinced I’m going to be bankrupt by spring. But I think I just have to have faith in love and romance and the business it’s going to bring me.”

That remark hung between them like a foot of sizzling fuse. She shifted uncomfortably, obviously wishing she’d chosen her words more carefully. He was tempted to tell her it would have been good if she’d had a little faith in their love and its ability to heal, but instead he smiled politely again, extinguishing the fuse—at least for now.

“Where’s Mom?” he asked.

“She and Aunt Ginger are having dinner with Camille Malone tonight. You remember her?” At his nod, she went on. “They just left. Have you had dinner?”

“No, I haven’t. Is the Breakfast Barn still in business?”

“Yes. And it’s brisk.”

“Then I’ll put my bag upstairs and go get myself something to eat. Has Chase eaten?”

She shook her head. “Not yet.”

“Shall I take him with me?”

She nodded. “I’m sure he’d love that.”

He debated the wisdom of inviting her along. It would be foolish to think they could easily pick up the threads of their relationship as it had been before her brother died, before she’d found her father with a .30-caliber hole in his temple, and before the shock of that had caused her to lose their baby. Her rejection of his offer would hurt and pile up behind all the other times since then when he’d tried to touch her, hold her, make her turn to him, only to have her push him away.

But that was part of the reason he was here. He loved Francie like his own sister, and he’d come because she’d asked him. But this was the opportunity he’d been waiting for, a way to walk in under cover of some other mission and assess Rosie’s emotional situation and whether he could fit into her life again.

“Want to join us?” he asked intrepidly.

He saw the civility dissolve and the anger come forward in her eyes. “Now, what do you think?”

“I think a lot of time has passed,” he said reasonably, “and it’s time to look at things from a new perspective.”

“A lot of time has passed,” she agreed coolly, “but my perspective remains the same. I lost my brother, my father and our baby in the space of a week, and you…” The anger turned to pain for an instant, but she tossed her head, seeming to shake it off. Being angry at him was apparently more comfortable than hurting. “You left me.”

“You drove me away,” he corrected.

“I had lost…three of the most important people in my life!” Her voice rose. “Did you expect me to be the same perky little debutante you married?”

He had to focus on keeping his voice down. “Of course not. I just wanted you to remember that I was there to offer support, comfort, a way back. But you didn’t want to come back.” He remembered clearly the helplessness that he’d felt then, and that had lived with him ever since. “I know how much you loved Jay and your dad. And I loved our baby as much as you did and would have been happy to be the second most important person in your life. I’d have even dealt with being in line behind your father and Jay if you’d given me some sign you knew I was there.”

“You wanted…sex!” She whispered the last word like an accusation.

“I didn’t want sex,” he said, having a little difficulty keeping his voice calm. “I wanted to make love to you, to remind you that in spite of all the people you’d lost, we were still alive. And that was almost six months after…after that hellish week, and you hadn’t touched me or let me touch you in all that time. I was desperate to get through to you, to make sure you knew we could go on if you wanted to.”

Her response to that effort had made it clear she didn’t want to go on. He smiled grimly and added, “Instead, you slapped me, hard, and told me you never wanted to see me again. I didn’t leave you, Rosie. You sent me away.”

She looked puzzled, almost as though she couldn’t quite remember that.

Chase ran down the stairs, his skinny, lively little body cutting right through the tension. “Aren’t you coming up to unpack, Uncle Matt?” he asked breathlessly. “I put the lights on, and Grandma put towels and stuff for you in the bathroom.”

“Great.” Matt struggled to redirect his attention. He’d known that returning to Bloombury Landing would be hard. He had to pace himself and his emotions. And he was sure it wasn’t easy for Rosie, either. “Want to come to dinner with me, Chase?”

“Yeah!” Chase danced along beside him as he headed for the stairs. “Can Aunt Rosie come?”

“She…” He hesitated over an excuse.

“I have to fix something on Grandma’s suit for the wedding,” she said with a smile for the boy. When her gaze bounced off Matt, it revealed a complex mixture of resentment, suspicion and simple annoyance—a variation of The Look. “You go with Uncle Matt and have a good time.”

“Want us to bring something back for you?” Matt pushed, wanting her to know he wouldn’t be put off by her efforts to hold him completely at bay.

“No, thank you.” Her reply was icy as she picked up her notepad again and looked away.

“Okay.” He handed Chase his briefcase and picked up his brown leather bag. “You lead the way, sport. We’ll wash our hands and be off. Are chicken wings still your favorite?”

“Yeah! Only now I like the hot ones, just like you! And they don’t make me puke anymore!”

Matt followed him upstairs, remembering the time he and Rosie had been baby-sitting Chase and he’d allowed the boy to sample his buffalo wings. When he’d liked them, Matt had bought the boy his own order. Matt had insisted that it was the large banana shake that followed the wings that had made Chase sick most of the night, but Rosie had still blamed him.

Matt walked into Rosie’s old room with some trepidation. After they were married, they’d shared this room whenever they stayed over, and there were memories connected to it he was reluctant to explore.

But it was time. He’d tried not to think about her for the past eighteen months, and he’d been successful only a very small part of the time. So he’d pushed away all the good memories and let himself recall only how difficult those six months before he’d left had been. He’d remembered her as stiff and angry and inaccessible.

This room, though, brought back all the delicious times before that when what ultimately happened to them would have seemed unimaginable.

“Nobody stays here now,” Chase said, “but Grandma had all the windows open all day so it wouldn’t smell funny.”

In the old days, he remembered, Rosie’s fragrance had been everywhere. A friend who worked in a cosmetics company in Boston had developed a personal fragrance for her and had started, of course, with roses. She’d added a list of spices Matt could never quite remember, but the end product pinpointed her personality to perfection—a soft sweetness with a surprising bite.

Rosie must have been away from this room long enough that it no longer smelled of her, but her stamp lingered all the same. The walls were a terra cotta color, the woodwork a creamy beige. The bed, dresser and desk were light oak, and there were plants in colorful pots everywhere, standing on the hardwood floor, on surfaces, hanging near the curtainless bay window that looked out on to the lake.

A window seat was upholstered in a shell-and-sea-birds pattern in shades of white and gold, and matched a wallpaper border that ran around the room near the ceiling. They’d made love on that window seat one night when they’d stayed up late to watch a meteor shower.

“Grandma put some hangers in here for you.” Chase slid open one side of a wardrobe and pointed to the odd assortment of hangers on the rod. “Those fluffy ones are from her closet.” He pointed to a padded white silk hanger. “And the wooden ones are from my dad’s old closet.”

Matt, opening his suitcase on the bed, turned to the boy, wondering if it hurt him to think about his father. But Chase simply smiled and pointed to two plastic hangers. “Those are from my room.”

Chase had been only six at the time, and two years was probably like an eternity in the life of a child. He seemed remarkably well adjusted for a boy who’d endured such tragedy and was now growing up in the same house with Sonny.

He was sure Sonny was a good woman. Though she didn’t relate to her daughters very well, Francie’s free spirit particularly, he had no doubt she loved them. And she’d always been kind and welcoming to him since the first time Rosie had brought him home. But she was the stiff and slightly superior product of a privileged background and a life he guessed had turned out to be less than she’d hoped for.

She had appeared to have everything—beautiful home, handsome and successful children, an intelligent and successful husband loved by everyone. But there was always a certain disappointment in her eyes and in her manner, and everyone who loved her seemed willing to assume the blame for it.

That had always intrigued him. He’s been an only child in the most dysfunctional family this side of a Jerry Springer marathon. His father had been addicted to drugs, his mother an alcoholic, and by the time he’d been taken away by the state at fourteen and put in foster care, his father was in prison for armed robbery. His mother died of liver failure not long afterward.

But he’d never felt responsible for his parents’ lives the way the Erickson offspring felt responsible for their parents. Maybe it was because he hadn’t loved his. He’d wanted to, but neither had been sober or conscious long enough for him to really get to know them well enough to love them. Their bodies had been present, but no mind or heart for him to connect with.

He’d grown up strong and self-sufficient, and mercifully philosophical about coping with the life he’d been given. But he’d been lonely. Sometimes very lonely. Then he’d met Rosie at a party and everything had changed. Life was no longer simply acceptable, but happy, fun, filled with hope. He’d moved to Maple Hill and gone to work for the Mirror.

And then he’d lost it all again. He didn’t think he was to blame, but he had kept secrets from Rosie. When her emotional distance had made it impossible even to talk to her, he’d taken his secrets and left.

The move had seemed like the noble thing to do at the time, but he’d wondered since if it had really been cowardice.

That was something he intended to find out while he was here.

Matt hung up the few things he’d brought, put socks and underwear in the highboy, then put a pair of dress shoes and his bag in the bottom of the closet.

“What’s in here?” Chase asked, handing him the briefcase he’d carried up.

“My laptop,” he replied, “and some stories I’m working on.” He took the briefcase and placed it beside the bag.

“But that’s work.”

“Yes. I thought if I needed something to do…”

“But it’s Aunt Francie’s wedding. Grandma says she’s going to work everybody like slaves until it’s over.” The boy grinned happily. “Then she’s going away for a while and Aunt Rosie’s going to move in and stay with me until Grandma comes back. We’re gonna go to the movies and have pizza and take long walks around the lake. And sometimes she’s going to take me to the new arcade.”

“Sounds like fun.” Long walks around the lake had once been his and Rosie’s specialty. They’d identified all the flora and fauna around the lake, had loved spotting any new ones. “But right now I guess it’s just you and me.”

“That’s cool, too,” Chase said with enough enthusiasm to convince Matt that he meant it.

At the Breakfast Barn, they found a booth near a window. Rita Robidoux, a redheaded, middle-aged woman who always knew what was happening in Maple Hill and why, brought them menus and glasses of water.

“Well, will you look who’s here!” she exclaimed, grinning broadly at Matt. “Prue and Gideon Hale just got back together, you know. And now you just appear like a miracle. Goes to show you love’s catching. Where’s Rosie?”

“Hi, Rita.” Matt smiled into her welcoming face. “That’s great about Prue and Gideon. I read that she had a fashion show in Boston. But unfortunately, unlike them, Rosie and I are still separated. I’m just here for Francie’s wedding.”

Rita nodded skeptically over her order pad as though she knew better. “Yeah, that’s how it starts. Gideon came through on his way to Alaska and, well, you see how that turned out.”

“That’s them, Rita. This is Rosie and me.” He shook his head. “So, what’s the special?”

“Sirloin tips over noodles, comes with soup or salad and a roll. Or chicken-fried steak. Same deal.”

Matt consulted Chase.

Chase handed Rita his menu. “Hot buffalo wings, please, with blue-cheese dipping sauce, and…” He paused and turned to Matt. “It comes with celery, but I don’t like that. I usually get a side of coleslaw, but that’s extra.”

“And a side of coleslaw for my friend,” Matt told Rita. “Same for me, except that I like the celery.”

She wrote quickly. “Okay. And to drink?”

“Coffee, please. Chase?”

“Banana shake.”

“Wait a minute.” Matt stopped Rita’s hand before she could write that down. He leaned toward Chase and asked quietly, “Are you sure?”

Chase beamed. “I have hot wings all the time and I never get sick. I’m eight now, you know.”

Matt noticed the careful wording. “But does Grandma let you have a banana shake with them?”

“Grandma doesn’t come here. I come with Aunt Rosie.” His beam dimmed. “She never lets me have a banana shake. But I’d really like to have one now.”

“What if you get sick?”

Chase shrugged his bony shoulders. “Then I’ll still have had my two favorite things together.”

That was logical and rather profound; he was willing to pay for what he wanted. Matt found it hard to argue with such a sane philosophy.

“Okay. Banana shake,” he told Rita.

“Okay,” Rita said. “Be back with your drinks in a minute.”

“How’s school?” Matt asked. Rita returned almost immediately with the coffeepot and filled his cup. “Are you in third grade now?”

“Yes.” Chase made a face. “Multiplication tables. Yuck. But art is fun. I made Grandma a bill holder out of paper plates, and I glued a picture of me and my dad on it. She misses him a lot.”

Matt looked into his nephew’s open face and saw the sadness there. “You miss him, too?”

Chase nodded as he opened out his paper napkin. “Yeah. But Grandma doesn’t like to talk about him. Aunt Rosie does, though. Did you know that she used to ride on the handlebars of his bicycle when they were little? You’re not supposed to do that, but sometimes they did it anyway ’cause they were late for dinner and only Dad had a bike. Aunt Rosie almost drowned when she borrowed the bike and tried to ride it into the lake.”

Matt smiled. He’d heard that story. Water levels had been way down and a precocious seven-year-old Rosie had thought that meant the whole lake was knee deep. “Yeah, your dad told me,” he said.

Chase looked pensive for a moment. “Sometimes I miss him a lot, but then it’s okay ’cause I loved him very much and he really loved me. Aunt Rosie says not everybody gets that, so you have to be happy that you had it.”

“That’s right.” Matt wondered if that meant she’d come to terms with the losses in her own life or if she was just giving her nephew advice that she knew would help him cope.

Chase’s banana shake arrived with a large dollop of whipped cream on top, a little, round slice of banana sticking in it. The boy suddenly lost interest in the conversation.

ROSIE WAS PERCHED on a stool at a small bar in the kitchen, watching the news on a tiny television, when they came home. There was a bowl of cereal in front of her and a cup of tea. She slipped off the stool to give Chase a hug.

“Did you have a good time, Chaseter?” she asked.

“We had dinner,” he replied, sending Matt a look that asked him to honor the male code of silence about the banana shake. “Then we went to the store ’cause Uncle Matt forgot his toothbrush.” He held up the battery-operated toothbrush with a Nemo figure on the top that he’d exclaimed over and Matt had felt compelled to buy. “And look what I got!”

She admired it, then handed it back. “Cool. You should get to your homework, Chase.”

He rolled his eyes and blew air noisily. “But Uncle Matt’s only here for two days and I have to go to school tomorrow, then it’s the wedding, and then—”

“His room is right across from yours. I’m sure he’ll be happy to look in on you and say good night.”

“Maybe he could tuck me in tonight instead of you.” Chase turned to Matt hopefully.

Matt nodded. “Of course. I’ll be in my room working on a story. Just come and get me.”

Rosie looked just a little injured, but smiled at Chase when he hurried off. The smile vanished, though, when she turned off the television with the remote and confronted Matt. “You let him have a banana shake, didn’t you? I saw that guy look pass between you.”

What the innocent Chase didn’t know, Matt thought, was that women had long ago broken every code men had developed to keep things to themselves. “Yes, I did,” he replied calmly. “If he gets sick during the night, you’ll be back in the guest house and I’ll be right across the hall from him. So I don’t see that you have anything to worry about.”

“Except the very fact that you let him do something you’re pretty sure will make him sick,” she said judiciously.

“He made the choice,” Matt argued calmly, “and understood that was a possibility. He said he didn’t care because then he’d have had his two favorite things together.”

“As the adult…” she countered, drawing closer to him. She did it only in anger, but it revved his pulse, anyway “…you’re supposed to help him understand that he should do what’s best for him.”

“Considering he’s an orphan living with a bunch of women who love him very much but are all a little eccentric and overprotective, I thought the momentary pleasure of having hot buffalo wings and a banana shake together was better for him than ordering something sensible.”

“You always have made decisions the easy way,” she accused.

He was in little doubt what she meant. When she tried to turn away from him to go back to her cereal, he caught her wrist to hold her there. He saw anger flare in her eyes, but he thought he caught a glimpse of something else for an instant. Then it was gone.

“If I made decisions the easy way,” he said, holding on to her when she tried to pull free, “I’d have made an excuse when Francie called and asked me to come. But I’m here. I knew you’d take every opportunity to blame everything that happened on me, but I came, anyway.”

“I hate you, Matthew DeMarco,” she said feelingly.

She looked and sounded completely sincere. But he knew her. He heard that subtle, sad little sound under the harsh declaration, felt the energy in her body drawing her to him even as she tried to pull away.

“No,” he corrected. “I don’t think you do.”

She yanked away from him and stormed off.

He knew her. That didn’t mean he understood her.

CHAPTER THREE

IN THE FRONT ROOM of her shop, surrounded by the male members of the wedding party, Rosie studied the fit of their tuxes. Though Derek and his brother had been carefully measured for them, and Matt had assured her in a fax that his measurements for the tux he wore at their wedding remained the same, she wanted to be sure there were no last-minute surprises.

Despite the animosity between them, she could appreciate how wonderful Matt looked in his tux. Not only did he have the ideal broad-shouldered and lean-hipped frame, but his rugged good looks were lent an urbane maturity she didn’t remember in him.

On the job, he’d always been rough and ready, no subject too mighty or intimidating to tackle, no detail too small to track down. At home, he’d worn old jeans and sweatshirts while he worked on the house, the lawn, the car. That was what had appealed to her about him in the beginning—he’d been an intellectual with the body of a quarterback.

Francie’s groom, Derek, on the other hand, was tall and very slender, and the tux gave a sort of polish to his thin-faced, bespectacled self. His brother, Corin, an inch shorter, more thickly built and five years married, was so cheerful and funny that he’d have looked good no matter what he wore.

“Everyone comfortable?” Rosie asked, walking around them, checking length of sleeves, leg, and smoothness across the shoulder.

“No,” Derek complained, pulling on the small bow tie at his neck. “I wanted to get married on the beach in shorts and sandals.”

“It’s December in western Massachusetts,” she reminded him, pulling his arm down to see if she could adjust the tie. “There’s no beach and there’s snow on the ground. You’d freeze to death.”

He tipped his head backward while she worked. “I was thinking in terms of Florida or Hawaii. But Francie thought getting married somewhere else might upset your mother.”

“I couldn’t have flown to Hawaii, anyway.” Corin did a turn in the three-way mirror. “I have a mortgage and pediatrician bills.” His many reflections grinned at his brother. “I’m sure you wouldn’t have wanted to get married without me.”

“True. Ah, that’s better.” Derek breathed a little easier as Rosie loosened his tie. “I’m sure this is best, all in all. I just hate the fuss, you know?”

“Women are about fuss,” Corin said as Rosie drew him forward to stand beside Derek. “You’d better just resign yourself to that now. And once you have children, there’s no going back, fusswise.”

Rosie tuned out the children remark, refusing to let her brain hold on to it, and did one last walk around the men to make sure everything was perfect. But she was aware of Matt shifting his weight, and when she walked around them to stand back and take in their appearance one last time, she noted the grim line of his jaw, his unfocused gaze.

When she stood in front of him, he refocused on her, and for one split second they looked into each other’s eyes. She saw his pain and knew that he saw hers, though she tried not to feel it. But, however unwittingly, they shared the moment.

Then Corin went on about teething and sleeplessness and the moment was gone.

“You all look very handsome,” Rosie said finally. “And contrary to what usually happens, your tuxes seem to be perfect fits. Take them with you, but please don’t let them get rumpled.”

“What time’s the rehearsal dinner tonight?” Corin asked. “Katie’s excited about a night out without the kids.”

“Seven o’clock,” Derek replied. “Yankee Inn. Same place we’re having the reception, just in a smaller room.”

“Right. Okay.”

Corin and Derek went back into two of the three dressing rooms. As Matt headed toward the third, Rosie noticed what appeared to be a small split in the seam of one of the sleeves. She stopped him with a hand on his arm. She was so into her wedding-planner mode that she forgot for a moment what touching him might do to her.

As she explored the split seam to see if it went through to the lining, she felt the hard ridge of his shoulder, the warmth through the fabric of the flesh and blood that covered it. She saw the broad expanse of his back, the wiry dark hair at his nape, the shirt’s starched, white collar pressing into his neck.

Though he didn’t move a muscle, she was suddenly aware of the tension in him. For a moment she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, couldn’t speak. Finally, impatient with herself, she dropped her hand from his arm and said a little sharply, “The collar looks tight. It’s cutting into your neck.”

“Formal clothes are always uncomfortable,” he replied quietly, turning to her, her change of mood noted in his eyes. “It’s not as though I’ll be in the tux that long.”

“Still, it doesn’t have to be uncomfortable. I’ll have a larger one overnighted to the house from Boston. You told me your measurements hadn’t changed.”

He shrugged. “I’ve been working out a little, but all my regular clothes fit.”

“Yes, well, so many fabrics have stretch and give today that you probably wouldn’t have noticed. Just leave the tux in the dressing room so I can fix that small tear.” She paused. “Uh, do you remember where the Yankee Inn is?”

“Of course.”

“Francie will expect to see you there.”

“I’ll be there. Want me to drive?”

“I’ll be working late, so I’ll leave from here. But you can drive Mom, Aunt Ginger and Chase.”

He accepted that for the dubious honor it was. “I don’t suppose you’re going to want to dance with me once we get there.”

“No, I won’t.” She thought she sounded firm, though she was still a little unsettled by his nearness, and surprised that he’d even suggest they dance. “Please save us both the embarrassment of doing anything to make it look as though we’ve remained friends.”

“Then please don’t touch me anymore,” he said with the same firmness. “And how is it going to look to the wedding guests if we’re at war throughout the day tomorrow?”

“We won’t be at war,” she argued. “We just won’t be…in contact.”

It wasn’t until Derek cleared his throat that she realized he and his brother were standing nearby and had probably heard most of what she and Matt had said.

“Just wanted to say thanks,” Derek said quickly, doing his best to pretend they hadn’t heard anything. “Anything I can do to take some of the burden off you?”

Rosie was momentarily distracted from Matt by Derek’s sweetness. Francie was a lucky girl. “I think everything’s under control. Just hang up the tux, and be ready on time tomorrow.”

“You got it. See you tonight.” Derek and Corin left, and silence fell over the shop.

Matt eased out of the jacket and handed it to her. “I know this isn’t the time for it, but I want to sort through what happened between us and try to figure out where we lost each other.”

“There’s no going back,” she said. But she took the jacket from him and clutched it to her. He wondered if the small gesture spoke of what she truly felt but wouldn’t allow herself to say.

“I don’t want to go back,” he assured her. “Believe it or not, there’s as much pain there for me as there is for you. But if we put effort into it, maybe there’s a way ahead.”

He saw the smallest flare of hope in her eyes. Or maybe he wanted to see hope so much that what he saw was merely the reflection of his own hope.

“You left me,” she said. Her free arm closed over the one holding the jacket. She was creating the creases she’d warned against.

“You no longer wanted me,” he said, feeling a little crazy that she didn’t remember it that way. He strained for patience. “You have to stop blaming me for what was ultimately your fault. You hated me, but for what? I didn’t do anything. Unless it was just that I was still alive and our daughter and all the other men you loved were dead.”

She looked stricken but didn’t seem to know how to respond.

“It doesn’t get us anywhere to go over that old ground,” he finally added. “Let’s just agree to talk about it after the wedding.”

She met his gaze, then seemed to realize what she was doing to the jacket. She held it in front of her and shook it out in disgust. “I don’t want to,” she said finally. “Thanks for driving the family to the dinner. I have to go fix this. Excuse me.”

He’d been with her long enough to know that when argument turned to polite dismissal, there was little point in continuing. She’d frozen up, turned off. He went into the claustrophobic little room, changed into his own clothes, hung up the slacks, placed all the other accessories on the bench and left the shop.

THE REHEARSAL DINNER was an exercise in charm and good manners. The Yankee Inn had been decorated for the holidays with chunky garlands wound with lights, huge Christmas trees in the lobby and the banquet room, and festive table linens.

All the guests did their best to be amenable. Even the outspoken Aunt Ginger engaged Corin’s wife, Kate, in pleasant conversation. Sonny captivated Derek’s parents with stories about Francie and the amusing things she and her siblings had done as children.

Francie tried to listen, but Rosie seemed determined to distract her with a brochure featuring all the highlights she could expect to see on her honeymoon in Bermuda. Rosie wore a simple purple suit, her hair loose and full, the sight of it almost more than Matt could bear. She tossed it a lot, and he knew that to mean she was acting. This good cheer was all for Francie’s benefit.

The only tense moment of the evening came when Derek’s mother asked if Matt’s presence at the wedding meant they were together again.

“No,” Rosie replied politely. “Matt and Francie have always had a great affection for each other, and with our father gone, he was the logical choice to walk her down the aisle.”

Mrs. Page frowned. “Isn’t that awkward for you?”

“Not at all,” Rosie lied, then tucked her arm in his to prove her point, and walked him onto the dance floor.

He hesitated before taking her into his arms. “I thought you didn’t want to dance with me.”

She placed her hand firmly on his shoulder. “I don’t, but I didn’t know where else to take you. I want everything to be perfect for Francie.”

“So you keep saying, but what about how things should be for you?”

She seemed surprised that he’d asked such a question. He had to forestall what he was sure would be her response.

“If you say, why should I care because I left you,” he warned, “I swear I’ll kiss you senseless right here in front of God and everybody.”

She took his hand and forced him into a dance attitude. “Then I’d say dancing is the lesser of two evils.”

Taking her into his arms was so easy. Her hand on the shoulder of his sports jacket, her fragrant hair skimming his nose, her slender body in his arms. Everything was dearly familiar.

Painful as hell, but dearly familiar.

She did, however, hold herself rather stiffly tonight, when she used to lean into him trustingly, comfortably. She’d always been warm and invitingly physical, even in a crowd, touching him, bumping against him, whispering things to him, her lips and her cheek touching his. He wanted that back with a desperation he struggled not to show.

But he’d been the one to admit there was no going back. They couldn’t recapture even the best parts of the old days. They had to find a new way to connect, another method of communication.

He splayed his left hand between her shoulder blades and applied enough pressure to bring their bodies into contact.

“Matthew…” she warned under her breath.

“Relax, Roseanne. It’s just a dance. That’s all life is. That’s all love is.”

“I’m not…” She tried to wedge some distance between them, but he thought the effort a little halfhearted, so he held on to her.

He lowered his head until his cheek rested against the side of her temple. “You’re still a warm and vital woman. The three most important people in your life may have died, but you didn’t. Just let yourself be alive for the space of this dance.”

“I…don’t want to dance,” she complained, but she’d stopped pulling away.

“You led me to the dance floor,” he reminded her.

She said in a breathless whisper, “There was nowhere else to go.”

He held her closer. “That’s right. Until the music stops, just pretend you belong right here.”

To his amazement, she did. “Embraceable You” played on, mellow and torchy, and when it was finally over, she drew out of his arms with seeming reluctance. Her eyes brimmed with unshed tears, and all he knew for sure was that she considered him responsible for those tears. That was fine with him, he thought, watching her hurry off the dance floor toward the ladies’ room. He’d become familiar with assuming the blame.

FRANCIE AND DEREK’S wedding was as perfectly organized and executed as any major military or political event Matt had ever covered as a journalist. He knew it was a testament to Rosie’s expertise that every detail was perfect, right down to the red ornament at every place setting. FRANCIE AND DEREK and the date, had been hand-printed on it in gold leaf.

Matt overheard several women at a table behind where he sat with Chase speculate over why it was, when Rosie could probably be an event planner in Hollywood if she wanted to, that she felt tied to Maple Hill.

“She lost everything here,” one of them said. “Her brother, her father, her baby, her marriage. And contrary to popular opinion, you don’t run when that happens, you stay and spend the rest of your life trying to figure out what went wrong.”

“I think she stays because her mother needs her,” another guessed. “Sonny Erickson comes on like she knows and understands everything, but I’ll bet she’s hollow inside since the tragedies. If it wasn’t for Rosie, she’d fall apart.”

“I think she’ll leave now that her sister’s moving away next year.” That came from a younger voice. “Francie’s brilliant, but a little wild. Rosie’s been a steadying influence.”

“Rosie was just waiting for Matt to come and take her away,” a fourth voice said with authority. “She never stopped loving him. Have you seen how she watches him now? There’s greed in her eyes! I’ll lay you odds—”

“Shh!” One of the other women, probably recognizing the back of his head, stopped her abruptly. Matt heard mad whispering, a giggle, a groan of regret. Ordinarily he might have been annoyed at being the object of gossip, but he was happy to hear that last opinion.

“Aunt Francie looks beautiful!” Chase said, scarfing down his third piece of cake with ice cream. “Even with her blue hair.”

“Yes, she does.”

“And so does Aunt Rosie.”

She certainly did. The raspberry-colored dress clinging to her breasts and waist, and yards and yards of filmy stuff flying out around her, lent color to her complexion and drama to her very presence. Everything was going so well that she’d stopped being the wedding planner and reverted to her role as maid of honor.

He had a sudden flash of memory of when she’d been the bride and the sparkle in her eyes had been all for him. That had been an eternity ago.

“Hey, handsome.” Sara Ross, Rosie’s old high-school friend, sat down between Matt and Chase, looking very glamorous in a plum-colored suit and a broad-brimmed hat in the same color. She patted Chase’s hand. “Or should I say, you two handsome men?” Chase preened. “You guys look so cool,” she went on. “And I hear you’re on your way to China with a hefty advance in your bank account, Matt.”

Matt reached for the carafe in the middle of the table to pour coffee into her cup. He remembered her as a smart but plain young woman, not at all the curvaceous beauty she was today. He didn’t even remember that she’d been blond. He had to stop himself from staring. “I am,” he replied finally. “And what have you been up to? Whatever it is, it agrees with you.”

“I’m working for a law firm here,” she replied, placing a pink linen napkin on her lap. “And I’m going back to school next term to get a law degree.”

“I’m impressed.” As he recalled, she’d worked for the city, the hospital, and clerked in several stores. She’d even done a stint in the army, though there was nothing remotely military about her appearance. “Ambition is very appealing in a woman.”

Her cocoa-brown eyes widened.

“To whom, exactly?” She heaved a big sigh as she picked up her fork. “I had a life of domestic bliss planned,” she said in a jocular tone, “but that doesn’t seem to be working out, so I’m making new plans. Smarts and money are my focus now.” She winked at him and picked up her fork. “Well, tell me what you’ve been up to. If Rosie knows, she isn’t talking.”

They spent half an hour catching up, then Corin and his wife joined them, and by the time they noticed that the crowd was thinning and Francie and Derek were ready to leave for their honeymoon, it was midafternoon.

Everyone collected coats and gathered outside where Francie threw her bouquet. It was caught, ironically, by Sara. The small crowd pressed the bride and groom toward a waiting limousine, but Francie broke free to throw her arms around Matt’s neck. “Thanks for coming,” she said. Her smile was blinding. Then she grew serious and said for his ears only, “Make this work, Matthew. Get her back.” Then she kissed him noisily on the cheek and got into the car.

They drove off to cheers and applause and birdseed thrown after them. Matt looked for Rosie, but she’d avoided him all day.

“You think I could have one more piece of cake?” Chase asked him, following him back inside.

“No.” He did head for the buffet table. “Did you have anything at all substantial today? Ham? Cheese? Deviled eggs?”

Chase made a face. “I thought there’d be hamburgers or hot wings.”

“It’s a wedding. They have classier stuff.” He studied the array of food. “How about some vegetables and dip?”

“How about more cake?”

“No.”

Chase looked betrayed. “You sound like Aunt Rosie.”

“That’s because we love you and want you to be healthy.”

Matt finally talked Chase into eating a spring roll by telling him it came with hot sauce. Chase felt honor-bound to try it.

By the time he’d finished two of them and a few carrot sticks, the Yankee Inn’s banquet hall was empty of guests and the waitstaff was beginning to clean up.

Sonny appeared, changed out of her elegant pink suit and wearing casual slacks and a faux fur-trimmed black parka. She was still very chic. As Matt stood, she wrapped him in a fragrant embrace.

“A cab’s picking up Ginger and me to take us to the airport. You’ll be long gone when I return, so I just wanted you to know how good it was to see you again and…” Her smile seemed to falter and that deep sadness he’d often seen in her came to the fore. “And…how much I wish things had turned out differently for you and Rosie.”

“So do I.” He returned her hug. “I haven’t given up yet, though she’s not doing much to inspire hope.”

“I think you should kidnap her,” she said, “and take her to China.”

“I’ll give that some thought.”

Ginger shouted from the doorway that the cab had arrived. Rosie, still wearing the raspberry gown, had pulled her coat on over her shoulders and hurried toward them from the other direction. She and Matt and Chase followed Sonny and Ginger to the cab.

It was almost four and the sun was already low on the horizon. Snow-covered rooftops and church steeples were pink in its glow.

There were hugs all around.

“Do think about what I said,” Sonny murmured to Matt as she followed her sister into the cab. She held the door open when the cabbie would have closed it. “I’ll be home the night before the community Christmas dinner,” she shouted at Rosie. “If anybody needs me for anything, you can give them Aunt Sukie’s number. You know Carol Walford. Everything’s a crisis!”

“Okay, Mom. Don’t worry.”

“What’s that all about?” Matt asked.

“Mom’s giving the welcoming speech at the Revolutionary Dames’ annual Christmas dinner on the tenth. Carol Walford is the chair, and Mom swears she wears starched underwear. You can imagine how stiff she is if Mom thinks she is.” The cabbie closed the door. “I heard her tell you to think about something. What was that?”

“She wants Uncle Matt to kidnap you and take you to China,” Chase reported, looking from one to the other.

Rosie gasped indignantly.

Matt brought his fist down playfully on top of Chase’s head.

He should have let him have another piece of cake, then he’d have been too engrossed in it to overhear their conversation. “Just a little joke, Rosie,” he said placatingly.

Rosie turned to wave as the cab drove away with the snick of tire chains in the rutted snow. Quiet settled over the parking lot, now empty of cars. The staff still inside were parked in the employee lot in back.

“Like carting me off somewhere would solve anything,” she said while she continued to wave. “You and I just aren’t…”

Matt heard only part of her assurance that nothing in the world could bridge the chasm between them. His attention was caught by the glint of a slanting ray of setting sun on metal or glass. It had an eerie familiarity. He’d been a soldier during Desert Storm, and he’d covered a year of battles in Yugoslavia before he decided that he missed home too much and gave up being a foreign correspondent.

His brain processed what he saw more quickly than it reeled out the accompanying thoughts. He’d already pushed Chase to the ground when a bullet smashed into the ground between him and Rosie.

Rosie turned at the strange sound, and Matt lunged toward her to knock her to the ground as a second shot rang out.

Something slammed into his upper arm, burning like a branding iron, and knocked him to his knees.

He heard Rosie scream, saw her white and horrified face as she knelt beside him, and thought with perverse satisfaction that he finally had her attention.

CHAPTER FOUR

ROSIE COULDN’T SEEM TO get enough air. Shock, disbelief and horror at the sight of blood spreading on the sleeve of Matt’s jacket took control of her body. How could this keep happening to her? The bloodstain brought back the memory of the red on the side of her father’s face, streaming to his shoulder, the stuff dried on the sleeve of his shirt, congealed on the arm of the chair, in a little pool at his feet, her own backward tumble off the porch.

With that came the wrench of pain in her stomach and the certainty that something awful had happened to the baby she carried. Then there was blood on her legs, on her tennis shoes.

She remembered hearing herself scream and that sound came back to her with all the shrill clarity of the moment she’d made it.

She had a weirdly disassociated sense of having lost the past two years. Every small step she’d made in the recovery of her good sense, in her willingness to go on, in collecting her shredded hopes and dreams and trying to start over was being wiped out.

“Rosie,” Matt said, his voice surprisingly strong. “Rosie!” He shook her, then swore, the action probably hurting his wound. “Rosie, come on.”

She came back to the present, on her knees facing Matt. She had hold of his arms and he held hers, his fingers biting into her flesh. She’d lost the jacket she’d thrown over her shoulders to come outside and was aware of being cold as she yanked the decorative handkerchief out of Matt’s pocket and reached inside his coat to press it to the wound. Nausea rose to the back of her throat. She prayed she wouldn’t be sick.

“Chase,” Matt said, “put Aunt Rosie’s coat back on her shoulders.”

Chase, his eyes enormous and terrified, scrambled to his feet.

“Never mind the coat,” Rosie told the boy. “Run inside and get my purse. The cell phone’s in it. Call nine one one and tell them where we are, and that Uncle Matt’s been shot.”

“Okay.” The boy began to run off, but Matt stopped him.

“Get the coat first,” he said calmly, “then call nine one one.”

As the boy came back to do his uncle’s bidding, Rosie snapped at Matt, “You’re bleeding, you idiot.”

“And you’re freezing, angel voice,” he returned. “Stop yelling, okay? I’m starting to get a headache.”

The coat had fallen right beside her and Chase picked it up. He placed it on her shoulders, then took off at a run for the inn.

“You okay?” Matt asked, his eyes roaming her face as she held the handkerchief firmly to the wound.

“Of course I’m okay,” she retorted. She didn’t know why she felt so testy. “I didn’t get shot. I swear to God, hunters get more careless every year. Farmers and ranchers have to put red blankets on their cows and horses so they’re not mistaken for deer or elk! Pretty soon we’re all going to have to wear—”

“It wasn’t a hunter.”

She’d been rambling and his statement stopped her short.

“How do you know?” she challenged.

“Because somebody aimed at me. Unless he’s seen deer wearing tuxedos…”

“How do you know someone aimed at you?”

“Before the first shot, I saw sunlight wink off metal or glass. And I am shot, aren’t I?”

She put her free hand to his forehead, certain he was hallucinating. “Matt, don’t be ridiculous.” She whipped the coat off her shoulder and put it around him. He was starting to look pale and there was blood everywhere. “Who’d want to kill you? And I was standing just a few feet…from…you.”

Her denial that he’d been shot lost impetus as she remembered that moment. She’d heard Chase’s gasp of surprise and turned to find that Matt had pushed him to the snow. She’d opened her mouth to ask him what he was doing, but he’d been coming toward her, his eyes on something in the trees across the road. Then she’d heard the loud pop, watched his body take the impact that drove him to his knees.

Her brain was muddled with lingering shock and the upsetting sensation of having his warm lifeblood oozing onto her fingers. She was having difficulty thinking this through. But if he’d thought there was a gun out there, and he’d been running toward her—

“You mean…the barrel of the gun was aimed at me?” she asked.

Before he could reply, Chase came running outside followed by Jackie Whitcomb, who, as well as being the mayor, was the owner of the inn. She was carrying a blanket.

“The ambulance is coming right away,” Chase said, kneeling beside Matt. “You’re not gonna die, are you?”

“No,” Matt replied. “I think the bullet just nicked me.”

Rosie doubted that. This was a lot of blood for a simple nick, but she knew Matt was trying to allay Chase’s fears.

“Good Lord!” Jackie exclaimed, handing Rosie the coat and wrapping the blanket around Matt’s shoulders. “Can you stand? Let’s try to get you out of the cold.”

They had him on his feet and, supporting his weight, they’d taken several steps toward the inn when the sound of a siren split the air.

“Here comes the ambulance!” Chase said.

Rosie pushed him gently toward the sidewalk. “Go flag them down, Chase, so they don’t go in around the back.”

Rosie and Jackie, Matt between them, reversed directions down the snowy path. The siren grew louder, then stopped.

They were intercepted by Chase who ran ahead of two EMTs, one carrying a bag, the other pushing a gurney. The one with the bag was tall and fair, the other short and sturdily built.

“Hi, Rosie.” The tall one was Randy Sanford, her friend Paris’s husband. He looked inside Matt’s jacket, removing the large cotton square Rosie had pressed into the wound. “Not too deep,” he said after a moment. “Okay, let’s get you on the gurney.”

The other technician, Randy’s friend Chilly Childress, had opened it out and helped him ease Matt onto it. Rosie’s reality teetered dangerously. Matt, whom she would never forgive for having abandoned her when she’d needed him so much, still represented for her the happiest period of her life. For the first time since then, she had a clear memory of how cold and distant she’d been. She wanted to remember why, but found she couldn’t and Matt was now supine on a gurney, being lifted into the back of an ambulance, wincing and pale.

While Randy climbed into the back with the gurney, Chilly opened the passenger-side door of the ambulance, beckoning her. “Want to ride with us?” he asked.

She hesitated. She wanted Matt to be all right, but she didn’t want to be where people were struggling for life and possibly dying. She’d had all she could take of that.

“Your husband’s going to be fine,” he assured her, still holding the door. “But we have to get him to the hospital.”

Her husband.

“Go,” Jackie said, her hands on Chase’s shoulders. “I’ll take care of Chase.”

“No, I want to come,” Chase protested, trying to follow Rosie.

“You stay with Jackie, sweetie,” Rosie said as she ran back to give Chase a hug. “I’ll call and tell you what’s happening, and the minute I’m home again, I’ll come and get you.”

“He’s not going to die?”

“No.”

“You’re sure. ’Cause…lots of our family does that.”

“Well, see there. He isn’t our family. He’s a DeMarco, not an Erickson.”

“But you’re a DeMarco, and he’s your family and you’re my family, so—”

“I promise you,” Rosie said firmly, holding both his hands, “that he is not going to die, and I’m going to bring him home, and whenever that is—tomorrow or the next day—we’re all going to have hot buffalo wings together. Okay?”

Chase finally bowed to pressure. “Okay. But I’m gonna be really mad if you’re wrong.”

“Go,” Jackie encouraged Rosie. “And don’t worry. Matt will be fine.”

MATT FELT as though he was in hell—or, at least as if his arm was. Though he doubted seriously that Christmas was celebrated there. There were cardboard cutouts of Santa, elves, and puppies in Santa hats all over the windows and walls. A glittering, three-dimensional paper star hung from a light fixture in the middle of the ER.

The EMT had been right; it was just a flesh wound. He’d been bandaged, given an antibiotic and pain medication.

“You’re going to have to rest this arm for a couple of days,” the doctor said, then turned to Rosie. “The bullet scraped some muscle, so he’s going to be pretty uncomfortable. This dressing will have to be changed a couple of times a day.”

Rosie didn’t look thrilled at that notion. Of course, she wasn’t thrilled that he was here at all. But he’d seen that horrified expression in her eyes when she saw he’d been shot, and remembered that she’d worn it two years ago after she’d found her father on the porch and lost their baby. He guessed it was the blood that had upset her.

The doctor continued with his instructions. Rosie nodded, looking stoic and controlled.

The doctor studied her closely. “Are you all right?”

“Yes.” She nodded.

He turned to Matt. “She should have a brandy when you get home.”

“I’ll see to it.” Matt slipped off the table to his feet, feeling the pain in his arm reverberate all the way into his head. Okay. He was going to have to move more carefully.

The doctor caught his wince, shook one of the pills he’d given him into the palm of his good hand and went to the sink for a paper cup of water.

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