He didn’t want to play it safe now.

Dave slipped his arms around Kara and drew her to him ever so carefully, a nurseryman with a new cactus he was still trying to determine how best to handle without getting pierced.

“I remember,” he replied, his voice low, his mind already trying to figure out how to survive the turbulent ride looming ahead.

Part of him was fervently hoping that the impact of that first kiss was, for some unknown reason, all in his imagination.

Part of him was hoping it hadn’t been.

Dearest Reader,

People are always asking me where I get my ideas for stories. Most of the time, they are knitted together from bits and pieces that come from newspapers, magazine interviews, TV shows and conversations around me. It’s usually hard to trace back an idea to its origin. That’s not the case this time. This story has its roots in handwritten letters, then typed ones and finally, e-mails, all of which have spanned over the last thirty-plus years.

I first met Nancy, my oldest young friend, in third grade. She was poised and pretty and I idolised her. Slowly, because I was shy back then, we became friends. We never stopped. I moved to California, she remained in New York. We wrote sporadically. And then we both became mothers at the same time. She had a son, I had a daughter. Hers was born in April, mine in July. And over the years, one or the other of us has wistfully said, “What if …?” Luckily, from our kids’ point of view, there is not a chance in the world that our wistfulness will bear fruit since there’s three thousand miles between the two homes. So, I did the next best thing. I imagined it on paper. And hopefully, you will be entertained (and for the record, if you’re wondering, neither one of us is going to tell our kids about this book).

Thank you for reading and, as ever, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

Best,

Marie Ferrarella

About the Author

USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award-winning author MARIE FERRARELLA has written more than two hundred books, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, www.marieferrarella.com.

The Last
First Kiss

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To

Nancy Parodi Neubert,

My Youngest Oldest Friend

Chapter One

“Oh, c’mon, Lisa, think about it. What have we got to lose?”

Maturity, for the most part, had been kind to Paulette Calhoun, leaving few of the customary telltale age lines on her face. Closing in on sixty, the tastefully dressed strawberry blonde with deep blue eyes leaned her still very trim body in, as if the proximity would add more weight to her urgings and win the other woman over.

Lisa Scarlatti, younger by three months, sat facing her lifelong friend across a black lacquer-top table for two. She held a cup of tea between her hands, the warmth just beginning to fade.

“Well, offhand, I’d say our kids. If Dave so much as smells a romantic setup, quiet though he normally is, he’ll read me the riot act. And, if memory serves, I’m pretty sure that goes double for your independent, outspoken Kara.”

Laughter sparkled in Paulette’s eyes. “They won’t smell a setup because they know that we know better than to try one, which is the beauty of all this.”

Lisa frowned. Her heart fought with her brain. Since they lived a good sixty miles apart, she and Paulette got together for lunch several times a year. More often now that they both found themselves unavoidably and sadly unattached. Paulette’s husband had died almost thirteen years ago, while Lisa’s had passed away after an accident eight years ago.

“I never thought of alienating my child as having anything to do with beauty,” she told Paulette. “For heaven’s sake, Thomas and I put that boy through medical school. I’m finally coming out from under that staggering debt. Let me enjoy Dave for five minutes before I do something that will have him renouncing me in the public square.”

Paulette rolled her eyes. “And here I thought I was the dramatic one. Dave’s not going to renounce you,” she insisted. The subject of setting up their children had been on her mind ever since she’d heard about her second cousin’s overwhelming success in playing matchmaker for not just her daughter, but her friends’ daughters—and son—as well. Hell, if Maizie could do it, she could, too. And so could Lisa.

“Listen, this plan is perfect,” Paulette enthused. “You said your niece’s little boy has a birthday coming up, right?”

There was a trap here somewhere. Lisa knew Paulette too well for there not to be. “Right,” she replied cautiously.

“And what, according to you, does Melissa’s adorable son, Ryan, want more than anything in the whole world for his birthday?”

Lisa sighed. She saw where this was going.

“‘The Kalico Kid’ video game,” Lisa finally said because Paulette was obviously waiting.

Nodding, Paulette asked, “And what is impossible to get?”

Why were they playing this game? “‘The Kalico Kid’ video game.”

Paulette’s wide smile grew wider. “And where does my daughter work?”

Lisa closed her eyes. She was being sucked into this, but there was no other course open to her. “At the video game company that puts out ‘The Kalico Kid.’”

“Exactly,” Paulette declared with feeling, warming to her subject. “So, since Dave is a softhearted sweetheart who likes making his cousin’s little boy happy, and Kara has access to copies of the all-but-impossible-to-get game, it’s all very simple.” She paused for a moment for effect, then delivered her plan’s grand finale. “I ask Kara to get a copy and deliver it to Dave when he’s volunteering at that free clinic near where Kara works—”

“And just like that—” Lisa snapped her fingers, a touch of uncustomary sarcasm in her voice “—they’ll see each other, and angels will sing while the sound of heavenly music echoes everywhere.”

“No.” Paulette dismissed her friend’s convoluted scenario. “Dave’ll be grateful and offer to take Kara out to dinner to repay her for her kindness. You raised a very polite son, Lisa.” Paulette folded her hands before the still half-full teacup. “And then they can take it from there.”

“Maybe there’ll be no place to take it,” Lisa suggested.

She knew how stubborn her son could be. He hadn’t told her anything close to personal in more than ten years. The only way she deduced that he was unattached was that he kept coming back to his childhood home on his days off. Much as she loved seeing him, she wanted him to spend his days off with a woman worthy of him, nurturing a relationship.

“At least we would have tried,” Paulette insisted. She attempted another tactic. Putting her hand on top of her friend’s, she peered up at her, a silent plea in her eyes. “Don’t you remember how we used to all go on family vacations together when our husbands were alive, just the six of us? And you and I used to watch the kids play and dream about Dave and Kara getting married?”

“We used to watch them fight,” Lisa corrected. “And anyway, that was a long time ago. It hasn’t been the six of us for a while now,” she reminded Paulette. “Thomas and Neil aren’t around any longer.” The words weighed heavily on her tongue. All these years later, she still missed Thomas as if he’d died yesterday. She doubted that the ache would ever really go away.

“All the more reason to get our kids together,” Paulette pressed. “Neither one of them is getting any younger, you know.”

Lisa pointed out one glaring fact. “It’s not like we haven’t tried before.”

More than once they had attempted to get their grown offspring together, but something always came up at the last minute, preventing it. It had been years since Kara and Dave were even close to being in the same room at the same time.

Paulette waved her hand, dismissing the argument as not worth her time or effort to get into.

“That was for occasions—Christmas, Thanksgiving,” she specified. “One or the other always begged off, saying they had to work. I swear Kara logs in more overtime than any other human being on the face of the earth, with the possible exception of Dave. You ask me, they’re perfect for each other. All we need to do is get them to see that.”

Paulette beamed at her friend. “There was no pressure before. We kept it light. But this time, I mean business,” she announced. “This is going to be more like a sneak attack.” Her eyes glowed with anticipation. “They’ll never know what hit them.”

Lisa still didn’t like it. She enjoyed the relationship she had with her son. They didn’t speak as much as she’d like, but he did call her and he appeared on her doorstep on many of his days off, which were rare. She treasured that and didn’t want anything to jeopardize their relationship.

“But we’ll definitely know what hit us,” she countered.

Paulette stared at the friend she’d had for more than five decades. “Since when have you gotten so negative?”

Lisa shrugged. Then, because once again Paulette was waiting for an answer, she tried to explain.

“If we don’t try to get Dave and Kara together, I can always hope that someday it’ll happen. If we do get them together and it blows up in our faces, then it’s all over. The dream is gone. For good. I’d rather have a piece of a warm, fuzzy dream than a chunk of stone-cold negative reality.”

Paulette summoned a look of complete disappointment. “The Lisa I knew and went to school with was absolutely fearless. Where did she go? What happened to her?”

“The Lisa you knew was a lot younger. I like peace and quiet these days. And a son who calls his mother once in a while.”

The sigh that escaped Paulette’s lips could have rivaled a Louisiana hurricane. “So you’re not going to ask Kara if she can get that game from her company for Dave so that he can give it to Ryan?”

Lisa’s frown deepened several degrees. She knew when she was outmatched. Paulette could wield guilt like a finely honed weapon. “I hate it when you put on that long face.”

The long face was instantly gone, replaced by a wide smile of satisfaction. “I know.”

It was Lisa’s turn to sigh. “I think if anyone should do the asking, it should be you. Otherwise, Kara’s going to be suspicious. I don’t call her,” she pointed out. “So getting a call from me might alert her that we’re up to something. In any event, this’ll make it your fault when Dave and Kara decide to put us out to sea on a tiny ice floe.”

“They’ll have to interact with each other in order to do that,” Paulette concluded, grinning. “So, either way, it’s a win-win scenario. Okay, that’s settled,” she declared happily, adding, “Suddenly, I feel very hungry.” She picked up the menu.

Lisa’s eyes narrowed as she looked at her best friend. She’d walked right into that one, she thought. “Suddenly,” she countered, “I’m not.”

Paulette raised her blue eyes to Lisa’s face. “Eat. You’re going to need your strength.”

Which was exactly what Lisa was afraid of.

Something was off in the universe. She could just feel it.

Closing her eyes and taking a five-second break, Kara Calhoun, senior quality assurance engineer for Dynamic Video Games, tried to tell herself that she was allowing the game she’d been assigned to crack to get to her.

After working on this particular version, with its wizards, warriors and spell-casting witches, for close to twenty days straight—not counting the overtime she’d been forced to amass—Kara was beginning to feel as if she had become one with the game. Not exactly something she’d recommend to anyone wanting to maintain their hold on reality.

Luckily, her hold on reality was stronger than most. She’d loved video games ever since she’d wandered into her very first arcade at the age of four, when she’d become hooked on the whirling lights and noises. But most of all, she loved the challenge of defeating whatever adversary she found herself pitted against.

Even so, she was careful to keep it all in perspective. These were games she was working with and playing with, nothing more. In no manner, shape or form did they remotely represent real life.

Definitely not hers.

There was no way she was going to allow what happened to her coworker Jeffrey Allen to happen to her. He began believing that the people within his game were communicating with him, warning him of some imminent disaster. He’d clearly lost his grip on reality.

That being said, she couldn’t shake the feeling that there really was something off. That some sort of pending doom was shimmering on the horizon and it had her name written all over it.

Maybe she needed a vacation, Kara thought.

She began to play again and immediately discovered another glitch in the program. The Black Knight was not supposed to be able to ride his equally dark steed into the ocean, much less have the horse gallop across the waves.

Kara shook her head. It seemed that every time she pointed out one error and the programmers fixed it, two more errors would pop up, tossing another wrench into the works. To make matters worse, the company’s deadline was swiftly approaching, and she was beginning to have serious doubts that the game would be ready to hit the stores as had been promised.

But, ready or not, here it came, Kara thought, knowing how the market operated. Games were often sent out without having all their programming problems and bugs addressed with the fervent hope that the buyers wouldn’t find the glitches. Right. And maybe pigs would fly.

When the phone rang on her desk, Kara debated simply ignoring it. After all, she was deeply involved in trying to figure out exactly why the knight’s horse was veering off its path. Preferably before six o’clock tonight. The idea of actually getting home by something resembling normal time for a change seemed like a borderline miracle to her.

The phone continued to ring. Kara shot it a dirty look and sighed. With her luck, it was probably someone from Corporate calling, and she knew they would only go on calling until she finally picked up.

Might as well stop putting off the inevitable, she thought. Muttering an oath, she yanked the receiver from its cradle. “This is Kara. Speak.”

“My God, is that the way you answer the phone at work?”

“Hello, Mother.” Kara immediately thought of her feeling that something was off. Maybe there was something to this intuition stuff after all. “What can I do for you? Speak fast, I’m up against a deadline.”

She heard her mother make a noise and could just envision the disapproving look that came over the woman’s heart-shaped face.

“You’re always up against deadlines. That’s all I ever hear. I never see you anymore, Kara,” her mother complained.

Pointing out that, yes, she did, would do her no good and Kara knew it. “Get out the pictures you insisted on taking at Easter and look at them, Mom. I haven’t changed any since then.”

“You still haven’t gained any weight?” Paulette lamented.

Trust her mother to turn her remark against her. “That’s a good thing, Mother.”

Unable to concentrate on two things at once when one of those things involved her mother, Kara stopped working on the game and turned away from the monitor. She lowered her voice. This was not a conversation she wanted anyone in one of the other cubicles to overhear.

“Are you actually calling me to find out if I’m eating?”

“No, I’m calling to ask you a favor. Your company puts out that ‘Kalico Kid’ video game, doesn’t it?”

This was a trap of some sort, she could smell it. “You know we do,” Kara answered cautiously. She’d mentioned how hard her team had worked on getting the game out on time. What was her mother up to?

“Can you get a copy?”

The company store had several copies set aside. “I probably can,” she allowed, “seeing as how I worked on it for six months.” Kara sat up, her body at attention. “Don’t tell me you’ve suddenly decided to play video games.” Mentally, she crossed her fingers. It would be nice if her mother found another hobby other than watching over her life, Kara thought. She also knew that the chances of that happening were as unlikely as her striking gold in the company’s first-floor ladies’ room.

“Lisa’s son, Dave, needs to get his hands on a copy for his cousin’s little boy. It’s a birthday party and Ryan, Melissa’s son—Melissa is his—”

“I get it, Mom, I get it,” Kara protested, trying to stop her mother before the woman verbally drew an elaborate family tree for her.

“Anyway, Ryan has his little heart set on getting that game. Can you come through with one, or is he going to be heartbroken for his birthday?” her mother asked her bluntly.

No doubt about it, when it came to wielding guilt, her mother knew no equal. “Stop, Mom,” Kara pleaded, holding the receiver away from her ear. “I’ll see what I can do.” Pulling her calendar over, she picked up a pen, intending to mark the date. “When do you need it by?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” Kara echoed. Talk about being last minute. “Mother, that’s—” She stopped herself. She knew better than to attempt to argue with the woman who’d made it into an art form. Instead, she said, “I’ll see what I can do, Mom.”

“That’s my girl.” Warmth radiated from the phrase. “I told Lisa you’d come through. By the way, would you mind dropping it off with Dave when you get it? Tomorrow is his day to work at the Seventeenth Street Clinic. He volunteers there, you know.”

As if her mother hadn’t already told her that little tidbit countless number of times. “You don’t say.”

“The clinic isn’t all that far from you,” Paulette went on, ignoring the sarcasm in her daughter’s voice.

Kara suppressed a sigh. If she sighed too often, she was going to wind up hyperventilating. Worse, she’d have her mother fussing over her, which was the last thing she needed.

“I know where Seventeenth Street is, Mother.” This time, a hint of impatience came through.

Sadly, it appeared that her mother hadn’t perceived it. “Wonderful, then we’re all set. Dave’ll be there all day,” Paulette stressed. “That young man is positively selfless, never takes any time off for himself,” Paulette marveled.

This was getting a little too thick. Kara smelled a rat—the kind that wore high heels and was given to being sneaky.

“Mother—”

“Oops,” Paulette exclaimed abruptly. “I’ve got to go. Talk to you later, Kara. Bye!”

Her mother’s flood of words came at her fast and furious—just before the receiver on the other end went “click.”

She’d been right, Kara thought as she leaned forward and replaced the receiver into its cradle. The universe was out of whack today. Now all she had to do was figure out why.

There were times, like today, when Dr. David Scarlatti wished he’d been blessed with an extra set of hands. Either that, or had learned to increase his energy level and work twice as fast as he normally did. There just never seemed to be enough hours in the day for him to do everything he needed to.

That was especially true whenever he volunteered at the free clinic. He’d been here since seven and he didn’t feel as if he was making a dent. For every patient he saw, two more seemed to pop up to take his or her place. After six hours straight, the waiting room was still jammed. So much so that some of the patients were sitting cross-legged on the floor.

Nobody was here for something as mundane as a routine checkup. Everyone had something wrong, usually something that they had been enduring for at least several weeks before grudgingly swallowing their pride and making the pilgrimage to the clinic.

It was one o’clock. Typically, most doctors’ offices were closed for lunch at this hour. But for him, lunch was only a faraway dream. Other than a candy bar, he hadn’t had anything to eat—nor the time to consume it if he’d thought to bring something with him.

He didn’t like being hungry, but they were down one doctor today, which made him not low man on the totem pole but sole man on the totem pole. Added to that, one of the nurses didn’t show and the one who did looked as if she were running on empty. Clarice, a normally no-nonsense nurse whose age he wouldn’t dare attempt to guess—he knew she had grandchildren—had been out sick for a week, and it was rather obvious to him that she needed a couple more days.

Too bad neither he nor the clinic had that kind of luxury. There were patients to attend to, and there was no putting that on hold.

As Dave walked out Mrs. Rayburn and her allergy-challenged twins, Megan and Moira, he paused by the reception desk to pick up the next file. There had to be a break coming soon, right?

“How many more, Clarice?” he asked the full-figured dynamo, who was, among other things, his first line of defense.

“You don’t want to know,” the woman informed him darkly.

Since the clinic had originally opened its doors, Clarice Sanchez had seen doctors come, burn out and go. For reasons he wasn’t quite sure of but was eternally grateful for, after an initial butting of heads, the somber nurse had taken him under her large, protective wing. Clarice was the one who kept things moving, even when she was operating at less than her usual maximum efficiency.

Dave read the side of the folder and was about to call the name of his next patient when suddenly, someone was calling out his instead.

“Dave!”

Caught off guard, he momentarily forgot about Ramon Mendoza and glanced about the waiting area to see who had just addressed him by his first name. No one did that around here. It was disrespectful. If they spoke to him, they always invoked his title in a grateful voice.

He didn’t have far to look. His line of sight was immediately engaged by a vaguely familiar, rather sexy-looking blonde. She was striding across the packed room, heading toward him as if she were the bullet and he was the bull’s-eye. From the expression on her face, he could see that she seemed agitated.

One thing was for damn sure. She certainly didn’t look as if she belonged here. It was like a lily suddenly sprouting in the middle of a field of weeds.

Before he could acknowledge the woman—God, that face looked familiar—Clarice stepped in. “I already told you,” she snapped at the blonde, giving her a withering look, “you’re gonna have to wait your turn, lady.”

“I just need to see the doctor for a minute,” the blonde insisted.

“That’s what everyone says,” Clarice told her coldly. “Now either sit down and wait your turn or I’m going to get someone to escort you out of here.”

Kara decided that she was going to give this one more try and then leave. Lunch was almost over and she was hungry. More to the point, she really didn’t need this kind of abuse.

“Dave,” she called to him again, deliberately ignoring his guard dragon. “It’s Kara Calhoun. Your mother sent me.”

Chapter Two

Dave found himself staring at the blonde, stunned. While the face was vaguely familiar in a distant sort of way, the name was familiar in a far more vivid, in-your-face kind of fashion.

He knew only one Kara, God help him.

That would be the only daughter of his mother’s oldest friend, Paulette Calhoun. Every single memory associated with Kara Calhoun was fraught with either embarrassment or frustrated annoyance—or both. He didn’t even try to remember one good moment spent in her company. There weren’t any.

Back when he was a little boy, his parents and hers would get together frequently. All the summer vacation memories of his childhood had Kara in them. Kara and turmoil. He’d been rather shy and introverted. Two years younger, Kara had been the exact opposite, as wild as a hurricane, and just as fearless. He’d felt inadequate.

And then mercifully, just before he turned thirteen, his father’s company began moving him, and thus them, from location to location. They traversed the Northwest and then the Southwest. Changing addresses so frequently made it hard for him to make any friends, but the upside was that at least during the rest of the year, he didn’t have to spend time confined in some remote summerhouse with the wild tomboy, counting the hours until September and the beginning of school.

If, after all these years, this gorgeous woman really was Kara Calhoun, then God, he couldn’t help thinking, had a very macabre and somewhat sadistic sense of humor.

Despite the pressures generated by an incredibly hectic morning stapled to the makings of an equally insane afternoon, Dave stopped what he was doing and waved his next patient into the first open room.

“Be right there, Mr. Mendoza,” he promised.

Then, instead of following the man, Dave rounded the reception desk and walked toward the sexy-looking blonde with the long legs.

That just couldn’t be Kara.

Still, why would she say she was if she wasn’t? He wasn’t going to have any peace until he found out for certain one way or the other, so, warily, he asked, “Kara?”

“Yes,” she cried with the same sort of feeling a contestant might display when their partner finally guessed the right answer after being supplied with countless clues.

He still couldn’t get himself to believe it. Why, after all these years, would she suddenly appear here, in a place where she was clearly out of her element? Her shoes alone looked as if they might equal a week’s salary for one of his patients—the ones who actually had a job.

“Kara Calhoun,” he said, trying to reconcile the image of a bratty, skinny girl with pigtails and a nasty sense of humor with the clearly gorgeous young woman who was standing in the packed waiting room. Obviously nature could work miracles.

Why all the drama? Kara wondered. The Dave she remembered had been a super-brainy geek. Had he been forced to trade in his brains for looks? Was that how it worked?

“Want to see my driver’s license?” she offered, wondering what it would take to convince this man who she was.

The touch of sarcasm in her voice was all he needed to convince him. “It’s you, all right. Still have the sunny disposition of an armadillo, I see.”

She stretched her lips back in an obviously forced smile. “You’ve filled out since I last saw you.” Which, she added silently, was putting it mildly. If the way his lab coat fit was any indication, the man now had muscles instead of arms that could have doubled for toothpicks. “Too bad your personality didn’t want to keep up.”

He would have liked nothing better than to turn his back on her and walk away, but she hadn’t just appeared here like some directionally challenged genie out of a bottle. There was a reason Kara had sought him out after all these years and he had just enough curiosity to wonder why.

He made it simple for her. He asked. “What are you doing here?”

“I was wondering the same thing myself,” she cracked. But then, as he apparently lost patience and began to turn on his heel to walk away, she relented. There was no point in coming all the way over here and not giving him the game. “I brought you a copy of the latest version of ‘The Kalico Kid’ video game. Your mother told mine that your cousin’s little boy’s birthday is coming up and he’s dying to get his hands on one.”

If this were anyone else, he would have expressed his gratitude, paid for the game and taken it. But this was Kara, and the ordinary rules didn’t apply here. His memory was crowded with a host of different sneaky tricks that a gangly ten-year-old played on his trusting twelve-year-old body. Spending summers trapped in her company had taught him to hold everything she was involved in suspect.

His eyes narrowed as he looked at her. Motioning her closer to create at least a semblance of privacy, he asked, “What’s the catch?”

“Catch?” Boy, talk about not being trusting. But then, looking back, maybe she couldn’t quite blame him. She had been pretty hard on Dave when they were kids. “The catch is you have to spin a room full of straw into gold by morning.”

“You can do that?” a small voice directly behind her piped up. Despite the distance, her voice had carried enough so that the only child in the room heard, and he was clearly awestruck.

Kara turned around to see a little boy of about eight or ten. He looked rather small and fragile, so he might have even been older. She couldn’t tell for sure. But she did know that he had the widest smile she’d ever seen.

He also, she noted, had an extremely pale complexion and, despite the fact that it was unseasonably hot outside, he was wearing a bright blue wool cap pulled down low on his head. She suspected that the boy’s mother, sitting behind him, had put it on him to keep people from staring. The stigma of a bald head on one so young was difficult to cope with.

“She was making a joke, Gary,” Dave told the boy. “She does that kind of thing.”

Or did, he added silently. The truth was that he had no way of knowing what Kara was like these days, but he suspected she was still true to form—even if her outer form had turned out incredibly well.

He got back to business. “How much do I owe you for ‘The Kalico Kid’ game?”

But Kara was no longer paying attention to him. Her attention was now completely focused on the little boy. Even if he hadn’t been the only child in the room, he would have stood out because of his near-ghostly pallor.

“You really have ‘The Kalico Kid’ game?” Gary asked. She would have had to be blind not to notice the wistful gleam that came into his brown eyes.

She smiled at him, blocking out everyone else, especially Dave. “Yes, I do.”

Reaching into her shapeless, oversize purse, Kara felt around until she located what she was looking for. Instead of the boxed game she’d brought for Dave, she pulled out a handheld gaming system that had become all but standard issue for every bored kid sitting in the backseat of his or her parents’ car, forced to endure yet another cross-country family vacation.

She guessed by the way the little boy’s eyes lit up that not only did he not have a copy of the new version—only a few had hit the stores—but he didn’t have a handheld set, either.

“Want to play the game?” she offered, holding the gaming system out to him.

“Can I?” he breathed almost reverently. His smile was the closest to beatific she’d ever seen.

She had to restrain herself from hugging the boy. Hugging was something she did when she became emotional. Instead, she nodded and choked out the word “Sure.”

“Gary, you’d better not,” his mother chided. The woman looked as worn-out as her son. “I don’t want to risk having him break it. I can’t afford to replace it,” she explained.

Her eyes went from the boy to his mother. There was no way she was going to separate Gary from the gaming system. That hadn’t been her intent when she’d handed it to him. “I take it he doesn’t have one.”

Pride entered the woman’s face as she squared her shoulders. “We manage just fine.”

“I’m sure you do,” Kara quickly agreed. “I didn’t mean to suggest you didn’t.” She looked back at the boy. “Would you like to keep that, Gary?”

Gary looked as if he’d suddenly stumbled into paradise. “Can I?” he cried in absolute disbelief.

“No, you can’t,” his mother told him firmly, even though it clearly hurt her to have to deny him.

Prepared, Kara was quick with her assurances. “It’s okay. I work for the company that produces the game. We’re giving out a few handheld systems as a way of promoting this latest version.”

The boy’s mother looked doubtful. Gary looked ecstatic.

“Really?” he cried excitedly, his eyes now bright and as large as proverbial saucers.

Kara had to struggle to contain her own smile. She nodded. “Really.”

Gary clutched the system, fully equipped with this newest version of “The Kalico Kid,” to his chest. “Thanks, lady!”

Kara solemnly put her hand out to him as if he were a short adult. “My name is Kara—and you’re very welcome, Gary.”

Gary quickly took her hand and tried to look serious as he shook it, but his grin kept insisting on breaking through.

Kara raised her eyes to look at Gary’s mother, half expecting the woman to voice some kind of objection. Instead, she saw tears gathering in the woman’s soft brown eyes. Gary’s mother mouthed, “Thank you,” over the boy’s head.

Her mouth curving just a hint, Kara nodded in response.

Behind her, Dave was busy instructing Clarice, telling her to send another one of the patients to the second newly vacated exam room. Done, he turned his attention to Kara.

“I’d like to see you in my office,” he told the specter from his childhood.

Kara couldn’t help grinning as she followed him around the reception desk, then toward the back of the office. “Bet you’ve been waiting years to be able to say that line to me.”

He bit off his initial response to her flippant remark. After all, she’d just been very kind to one of his regulars. Instead, he waited until Kara had walked into the closet-size office, and then closed the door behind him.

The scarred, faux-mahogany desk listed a little to the right. It and the two chairs, one in front of the desk, one behind it, took up most of the available space. He didn’t bother trying to angle his way behind the desk. He anticipated that this was going to be short.

“You’re not really having some promotional giveaway, are you?” It wasn’t a question.

She would have played this out a little longer just to see how far she could take it, but she was running out of time. As senior quality assurance engineer, she was supposed to set an example for the others when it came to keeping decent hours. “No.”

“Didn’t think so. That was rather a nice thing you just did.” He didn’t bother going into any details about how very strapped Gary’s mother was, or what a brave little person the boy was. That was the kind of stuff that violins were made for and he had a feeling it would be wasted on Kara anyway. It definitely would be on the Kara he remembered.

Or thought he remembered, he amended.

Getting what sounded like a compliment from Dave felt awkward to Kara somehow. Not to mention unsettling. She shrugged, dismissing the words. “Well, I make it a rule not to eat children on Wednesdays.” And then she sobered. Raising her eyes to Dave’s green ones, she started to ask, “Does he have—?”

He cut her off, sensing that talking about the disease that had ultimately claimed her father was difficult for her. “It’s in remission, but I’m not all that hopeful,” he confided.

“That was always your problem,” she recalled, not entirely critically. To her, that was just the way things were and she viewed it as something that needed improvement. “Not enough hope, too much practicality.”

“You were just the opposite.” Almost to the point where she’d stick her head in the ground, he recalled.

She flashed him an irritating smile. “And pleasingly so.”

He needed to get back to work before they were literally drowning in patients, and he knew from experience that Kara could keep up the bantering responses all afternoon.

“So, you didn’t tell me,” he reminded her, taking out his wallet. “How much do I owe you?”

Right, the game. She still hadn’t given it to him. Kara dug into her purse again. This time, she pulled out the copy of the video game she’d brought for him. The cellophane around it crinkled as she said, “Your immortal soul.”

He pinned her with a look. “Exactly how much is that in cash?”

“I’ll let you know.” She had no intentions of selling him the game. That made her too much like a lackey. Giving it to him was far better. Besides, she liked the idea of having him indebted to her. “Maybe I’ll take it out in trade sometime. I might need something stitched up someday.”

He suddenly had an image of her sitting on a rock by the lake, blood running down her leg. The wound had appeared a lot worse than it actually was. That was the summer he’d made up his mind to become a doctor. “You mean like that time at the lake?”

She knew he was referring to that last summer at the lake before he and his family had moved away. She’d been eleven at the time and had slipped on the rocks, trying to elude him after playing some prank. She’d gotten a huge cut on her knee and it wouldn’t stop bleeding. She’d valiantly struggled not to cry.

“Those weren’t stitches. That was a butterfly bandage you put on it.”

The point was that it had done the trick and had held until her father could get her to the emergency room. “Would you have let me come at you with a needle?” he asked.

A rueful smile curved one corner of her mouth. “Point taken, Davy.”

He stopped the cringe before it could surface. “No one’s called me that in years.” She had been the only one to ever do it. Dave looked at her pointedly. “I hate being called Davy.”

She grinned, her eyes laughing at him. “I know.” She had to get going, and from the sound of the noise in the next room, so did he. “Forget about owing me anything for the game,” she told him. “It’s on the house. For old times’ sake,” Kara added.

If she was making restitution for things she’d done to him all those years, this didn’t begin to make a dent. But he saw no point in saying anything. After all, Ryan really wanted the game, and she had been nice to Gary, who had enough hard knocks against him. Besides, saying anything remotely adversarial to Kara would only embroil him in another no-win verbal match. She was probably still a master at that and he wasn’t up to one at the moment.

“Thanks.” As he said the word, his stomach growled, as if adding a coda.

She stared at him. He couldn’t begin to read her expression. Some things never changed, he thought.

“I had no idea you were a ventriloquist.”

His stomach growled again, a little softer this time. This was getting embarrassing. “I am on the days I don’t get to eat breakfast—or lunch.”

She cocked her head, as if she found the information fascinating. “You haven’t eaten yet?”

He knew her well enough to wonder what she was up to now. “No.”

“But you will.”

What kind of a question was that? Everyone had to eat—or expire. “Eventually.” He could feel her eyes delving into his skin. Just what did she expect him to say? “Someday,” he allowed, then amended his answer to, “Yes,” as he brushed past her to get back into the tiny hallway that was desperately in need of a paint job. “Right now there’s no time to go get something.”

She could see how he couldn’t leave, but that didn’t mean he had to go hungry. “Why don’t you send out Ms. Personality?” When Dave looked at her blankly, she nodded toward the reception room. “The anaconda at the front desk.”

“We’re shorthanded. Clarice’s my backup nurse—and the only one manning the front desk. I can’t spare her, either.”

Dave always did make things more complicated than they were, she recalled. Resigned, she dug into her purse yet a third time. “In that case, take this.”

Though he would have preferred not to admit it, Dave stared in fascination as the woman from his past pulled out what appeared to be an entire foot-long sandwich from her purse. It was cut into two equal halves.

What else did she have in there?

“Is that your equivalent to a clown car?” he asked. “Do you just put your hand in, then pluck an endless amount of things out?”

She didn’t feel like being on the receiving end of what he might call wit. She had traffic to face and a game with her name on it waiting to be further deconstructed. Holding it out to him, she asked, “You want this roast beef sandwich or not?”

He’d always thought of her as being rather unusual, but he had a feeling she wasn’t given to arbitrarily carrying food in her purse. There was only one other explanation for it. “Isn’t that your lunch?”

“Well, if you take it, it becomes yours,” she pointed out with a trace of impatience. And then she sighed. “Look, it’s not like I can’t buy myself another one on my way back to the office. You, on the other hand, look like you haven’t a prayer of making it out the door without that gestapo agent throwing a net over you and stopping you before you take three steps.”

He felt honor bound to defend the woman working with him. “Clarice’s okay.”

“I’m sure. For a gargoyle,” Kara agreed. She raised the sandwich a little higher, into his line of vision. “You want this or not?”

She might be annoying, but that was no reason to deprive himself in order to show her he didn’t need her help. “I’ll take it.”

She placed the wax-paper-wrapped sandwich into his hand. “Very kind of you.” With that, she turned on her heel to leave.

“Kara?” he called after her.

Pausing, she looked expectantly at Dave over her shoulder. “Yes?”

He still really hadn’t thanked her—and found that it was difficult to form the words where she was involved. He settled for: “Tell your mom I said thanks.”

Amused, Kara inclined her head and said, “Sure.”

That, he knew, was a cop-out on his part. He was better than that, Dave reminded himself. Just because this was Kara shouldn’t mean that he reverted back to behaving like an adolescent. “And thanks for bringing it by.”

She gave him a quick two-finger salute. “I live to serve.”

Same old Kara, same old sarcastic remarks, he thought as he walked out behind her.

“You look good.”

The words had slipped out without his permission, going directly from his gut to his tongue without pausing to clear it with his brain. His brain would have definitely vetoed having the words said aloud.

Surprised, Kara stopped abruptly and turned around, causing a near collision between them. He immediately took a step back.

“Are you addressing that assessment to me in general or just to the back of me?” she asked, an amused smile on her lips.

She could still fluster him, Dave thought. He’d assumed that reaction was years behind him. After all, he’d graduated at the top of his class, been voted into all sorts of positions of honor and had, in general, become confident in not just his abilities but in himself, as well.

Five minutes around Kara and he turned into that gangly, tongue-tied geek whose physique was all but concave the last summer their families had vacationed together.

“Let me think about it,” he said evasively.

She nodded. “Thought so.”

As she walked out, Gary rose to his feet. “Thank you,” he called after her.

She spared the boy a wide smile. This made everything worthwhile. “My pleasure, Gary. All my pleasure.”

With that, she was gone.

But not, Dave thought as he turned away to see the patient in room one, forgotten.

Chapter Three

Kara barely had time to run to the sandwich shop to purchase another roast beef sandwich for herself and get back to her desk before her lunch hour was officially over. Just when she’d managed to finally catch her breath, the phone on her desk rang.

Picking it up, she cradled it against her neck and ear. She needed her hands free for the control pad. The newest version of the game still had the pesky Black Knight’s horse water surfing.

“Hello?” Kara said absently, guiding the horse and rider over the water to see just how far this glitch extended.

The voice on the other end of the line responded with a single word. “So?”

Kara came to attention as she recognized her mother’s voice. The Black Knight and his horse were temporarily forgotten.

“So?” she repeated, having no clue what her mother was asking or saying.

She heard her mother sigh on the other end of the line, then carefully enunciate her question. “Did you bring the game to Dave?”

The question irritated her. Why wouldn’t she take the game if she’d already told her mother that she would? “I said I would.” She picked up the control pad again. The horse resumed galloping erratically. “Yes, I brought the game to Dave.”

“And?”

Kara frowned. Just what was that supposed to mean? “And what?”

A note of frustration entered her mother’s voice. “How did he look?”

Damn, the horse just rode off the edge of the earth. This was not good. “Like a maniacal serial killer. What do you mean, how did he look? He looked like Dave. Only taller.” She paused for a moment, then added, “And handsomer.”

“Aha.”

“Aha?” Kara repeated, confused. Okay, just where was this conversation headed?

“Never mind,” her mother said quickly. “Sorry, I need to go.”

Her mother definitely had too much time on her hands. “What you need, Mom, is a hobby.” Other than me, she added silently. Kara paused to make a notation about the game on the pad she kept by the computer.

“Agreed. Maybe someday you’ll give me one,” she thought she heard her mother say. The next moment, the line went dead.

Kara looked thoughtfully at the receiver in her hand. Maybe someday you’ll give me one. Under ordinary circumstances the most logical “hobby” would be one involving playing on a gaming system. But she had a feeling that her mother was not referring to anything as run of the mill as a video game.

And then, just like that, that strange, unsettling feeling that the universe was tilting began to come into focus for her.

The “hobby” her mother was referring to was a grandchild. Her mother wanted a grandchild. And the only way to get one of those, according to her mother, was to get her married and pregnant.

The woman was actually trying to play matchmaker. Damn. Ordinarily, her radar was better than this. How had she missed it?

For the time being, the black stallion was on its own. His aquatic adventures were definitely the last thing on her mind now.

Kara looked at the framed photo on her desk of her mother, her late father and her, taken when she was seventeen. It was the last family photo she had. Looking at her mother now, she shook her head.

“Why, you little sneak. I know what you’ve been up to. I’m really disappointed in you, Mom,” she murmured.

Jake Storm, the man occupying the cubicle next to her, rolled his chair back a little in order to catch a glimpse of her. He had hair and eyebrows that made him look like an affable sheepdog. One shaggy eyebrow arched in amusement now.

“Talking to yourself, Kara?”

She glanced to her right. “No,” she told him. “To my mother.”

Jake rolled his chair out a little farther, allowing him a clearer view of her space, which was, due to her position in the hierarchy, twice the size of his.

“That would be your invisible mother?” he asked.

“No,” she answered. “That would be the meddling mother on the other end of this now defunct phone call.” Putting the receiver down, she pushed the offending instrument back on her desk.

“Ah, meddling mothers. Tell me about it. Mine isn’t going to be happy until I chuck this game-testing job to the winds, get a degree in something she can brag about, marry the perfect girl and give her three and a half grandchildren—none of which is really doable,” he said with a heartfelt sigh, then brightened as he looked at her again. “Unless you’re free tonight to drive to Vegas and become Mrs. Jake Storm.”

She knew he was kidding. They were friends—without benefits. “And the three and a half kids?” she asked, mildly curious.

“We could rent them.” He grinned. “I think a month of endless babysitting might teach my mother a valuable lesson, as in ‘careful what you wish for.’ Might even be worth the effort,” he said wistfully.

However unintentionally, Jake had just given her an idea. A very good idea. She looked at him sharply. “Jake, that’s brilliant.”

“Clever, maybe,” he allowed, “but not brilliant. By the way—” he leaned in closer “—what clever thing did I just say?”

“Something,” Kara told him as she shifted over to the other monitor on her desk, the one directly hooked up to the internet, “that just might get my beloved mother to back off.”

“Well, I’m all for that,” Jake declared with feeling. Anyone who knew him knew that to be true. His mother was forever trying to set him up with the offspring of her friends. “Let me know how it goes.” He nodded toward his own area. “Gotta get back to that crazy horse. He’s still walking on water.”

“Tell me about it,” she murmured under her breath as Jake moved back into his cubicle.

She had no idea what Dave’s number was, but she assumed that, as an M.D., he had to be listed somewhere. Starting out in the most obvious place, she did a people search through the white pages. The effort took several tries, but ultimately, she came away a winner.

Dialing the phone quickly, she was connected to Dave’s office in less than a minute. And then she got to listen to an answering machine. He wasn’t in, which only made sense since she’d just seen him at the clinic. His message said his office was closed today.

“Better than nothing,” she murmured under her breath with far less enthusiasm than usual as she waited for the outgoing message to end.

If Dave didn’t call her back by tonight, she was fairly sure she could find his private number using some creative methods on her laptop at home.

The beep sounded in her ear and she started talking. “Hi, Dave, it’s Kara. Remember I said that I’d take that favor out in trade? Well, trading time just arrived. We need to talk. Call me.” She rattled off both her cell phone number and the number to her landline in her apartment.

Hanging up, Kara smiled to herself, relishing her plan. Once it got rolling, it would be just what the doctor ordered, she thought, feeling very confident about the outcome. This was going to teach her mother—and possibly Dave’s—never to even think about matchmaking again.

Dave was more than a little surprised, when he picked up his messages that evening, to find Kara’s among them. Not only was it the only phone message that didn’t describe some symptom in depth, but he and she hadn’t had any contact in—what, eighteen?—years, and now twice in one day?

Exactly what was up and why did he feel so uneasy about it?

Dropping his mail onto the coffee table, Dave made his way over to the phone on the kitchen wall.

“Only one way to find out,” he said aloud. But even so, he didn’t begin dialing immediately.

It wasn’t that he wanted to renege on the unofficial agreement to reciprocate when she asked. After all, Kara had produced the much sought after game. Then again, how hard could it be for her? She did work for the company that put it out.

Still, she didn’t have to deliver it herself—or even give him the game in the first place. Once upon a time, he would have bet his last dime that she wouldn’t have given him the time of day, much less gone out of her way, to bring him something he needed.

He also wouldn’t have thought that there was a kind bone in her excessively skinny little body. But her treatment of Gary in the waiting room showed him he’d been wrong in his assessment of her. Or at least the “new” her.

No, none of that was holding him back from immediately keeping his word. What was stopping him was the hour. He’d just walked in and it was after eleven. Added to that, he was bone tired.

He had no one to blame for that but himself, he thought. Himself and the endless line of sick people who just kept on coming. Clarice had finally closed the doors two hours later than the clinic’s official closing time. And he’d gone on treating patients until there was no one left in the stale-smelling waiting room.

Now, two steps beyond dead tired, he was too exhausted to even get anything to eat out of the refrigerator. One way to lose weight, he mused. That sandwich Kara had pulled out of her magic bag was practically the only solid thing he had to eat all day until Clarice had called her grandson to bring some food from the Thai takeout place in her neighborhood. He hadn’t really recognized what he’d eaten, but whatever it was had substance to it and ultimately had helped to keep him going, which was what counted.

His mind came back full circle to Kara. Okay, she’d given him a game and her sandwich. If nothing else, that meant he needed to return her phone call.

And if, God willing, she didn’t answer, well, at least he was on record for trying. Recorded record. He punched out her numbers on the keypad and crossed his fingers that she didn’t answer, but he might as well have saved himself the trouble. Kara picked up her phone on the second ring.

“Hello?”

Her voice sounded a bit sleepy, he thought. An image of Kara in bed, wearing nothing but the moonlight breaking through her window, suddenly popped up in his head.

He really needed that social life he was sorely missing out on.

“Hello?” he heard her say again.

He dove in. “Kara, it’s Dave. You called.”

At the sound of his voice, Kara dragged herself up into a sitting position. She’d fallen asleep on her sofa, playing a portable version of the game that was bedeviling her and the staff she supervised. She struggled to clear the fog from her brain. She didn’t even remember shutting her eyes.

Squinting, she tried to make out the time on the cable box across the room. The numbers swam around, and she gave up.

“Right. I called,” she murmured, dragging her hand through her hair, trying to figuratively drag her thoughts together at the same time.

“About anything in particular?” Dave pressed. She sounded sluggish. He thought back and couldn’t remember a time when she wasn’t going ninety miles an hour. “Because if this can wait, or you just called to yank my chain, it’s been a really long day and I’ve got an early call tomorrow in the hospital—”

She wasn’t about to give him a chance to hang up. From the sound of it, she was going to have to make an appointment to talk to him on the phone if she didn’t speak up quickly. So she did. “Our mothers are trying to set us up.”

“What? With who?” he asked incredulously.

Was he kidding? “What do you mean, with who? With each other. At least,” she amended, backtracking just a step, “I know mine is, and whatever mine does, yours usually does, too.”

When did this happen? It wasn’t making any sense. She must have made a mistake. “What are you talking about?” he demanded.

She took a breath and explained how she’d come to this conclusion. “After I came back from your clinic, my mother called me at work to see if I’d given you the game.”

“She obviously knows how dependable you are,” he observed dryly.

Her back instantly went up. “I’ll have you know that I am—Never mind.”

This wasn’t the time to allow herself to get into an argument with him. They were both tired. Things could be said that couldn’t be retracted. The best way to prevent that was not to start anything at all. Besides, she had a far more important point to get to. She couldn’t allow herself to get sidetracked.

“Anyway, she wanted to know how you looked. More accurately, she wanted to know what I thought of the way you looked.”

So far, he wasn’t hearing anything that should have set off any whirling red lights for her. “Natural question,” he commented. “We haven’t seen each other in almost two decades.”

She stopped her narrative, struggling with her temper. Was he for real? Or was he just baiting her? If it was the latter, maybe he’d learned a thing or two since they’d last seen each other. But somehow, she doubted that. He’d always been too upstanding to stoop to anything.

“Were you always this naive, or did you just suddenly decide to go back to your childhood?”

He really wasn’t in the mood for this. “If you’re going to insult me—”

“Tempting, but I’ll save that for some other time. Right now, hard as it is for me, I need to ask you for your help.”

Dave interpreted her question the only way he knew how. “You have a medical question?”

“No, I have a mother question. Or rather, a solution to a meddling-mother situation.” He was very quiet on the other end. Was that a good sign, or had he fallen asleep? “Our mothers want to get us together. I never told you,” she segued quickly, “but I once overheard them talking about how terrific it would be if, when you and I grew up, we’d get married.”

His voice was stripped of all emotion as he said, “No, you never told me that.”

“At the time I heard it, I thought it was too gross to repeat,” she explained. “But it obviously has never stopped being on their minds.”

He was trying to follow her logic and found that there were gaping holes in it. “And you think that your mother calling you to see if you delivered the game to me is actually some kind of a confession on her part that she’s trying to get us to the altar?”

She knew he was mocking her and forced herself to swallow a few choice words. “Her asking me what I think of your looks is pretty transparent.”

Where was all this going, anyway? “So you called to warn me?”

She shifted the phone to her other ear. “No, I called to get you to cooperate with an idea I have.”

He really didn’t like the sound of that. “This never turned out well for any of the characters in those sitcoms you always liked so much,” Dave pointed out.

That he remembered she used to watch them astonished her. She told herself it meant nothing and kept talking. “What if you and I pretend to go out together? Pretend to, you know, like each other.”

It sounded as if she were forcing herself to endure a fate worse than death. “Assuming I’ve had my rabies shots,” he said sarcastically, “how is this going to teach our mothers a lesson? This is what they want—according to you.”

Kara sighed. “You really don’t have an imagination, do you?”

“I have one,” he told her. “I just don’t let it go off on wild tangents.”

She took offense and shot back through gritted teeth, “Okay, Davy, let me spell it out for you. We go out. We pretend to fall in love, and then we have one hell of an argument, making sure that we have this fight where our mothers can hear us. After the argument, we go through the throes of an agonizing ‘breakup.’ A devastating breakup,” she specified, really throwing herself into the role, “where we both act as if there’s no tomorrow—”

“Being just a little melodramatic, don’t you think?” he interjected.

He really was spoiling for a fight, wasn’t he? Not that she was intimidated, but she wanted this to get under way quickly. The sooner the better.

“Maybe. We’ll have to play it by ear. But they’ll be so upset that we’re upset, I guarantee that it’ll cure them once and for all from trying to play matchmaker with us on any level—separately or together.” She paused to take a breath. “What do you think? You game?”

If he said no, he had a feeling she’d keep calling and badgering him until he agreed. Still, throwing his lot in with Kara made him uneasy.

“Why do I get the feeling that I’m about to sign my own death warrant?”

What was it about him that set her off like this? Eighteen years and nothing had changed. Except that he was better looking, but that had no bearing here.

“Because you’re running on next to no sleep, you have no imagination and you don’t know a good plan when you hear one. Shall I go on?”

He laughed shortly. “Not that I have the slightest doubt that you could, but please don’t.”

She was still waiting for an answer. “Does that mean no?”

This was the moment of truth. He could still walk away. But he had a feeling that she had a point. Though he loved his mother dearly, he could think of nothing he wanted less than to have her playing matchmaker on his behalf.

“That means that I’m probably going to really regret this, but you do have a point.”

Yes! “Glad you recognize that.”

He wanted to move this along while he still had a prayer of getting some sleep. “All right, mastermind, so what’s our next move?” he asked her.

She would have thought that was self-evident. “We pretend to go out.”

“And what, notify the press first? How are our mothers going to know we’re going out? I think they’d be suspicious if either one of us just picked up the phone and called to tell them.”

She smiled. He was almost cute when he tried to be flippant. The key word here was almost.

“Ah, there is more than just space between those manly ears. You’re absolutely right. How about that birthday for your cousin’s son?” she asked. “The one I got you the video game for.”

“Ryan,” he supplied.

“Ryan,” she repeated. “Ryan’s going to have a birthday party, right?”

“Yes—” He got no further.

Kara pounced on the next question. “Is your mother going to be there?”

Okay, so now it was all crystal clear to him. Not bad, he acknowledged, albeit silently. Saying it out loud would just give her a bigger head. “Yes.”

“Okay, then we will be, too. All we need is one eyewitnessing mother to spread the news to the other.”

“Eyewitnessing,” he echoed. “Is that even a word?”

“It is for this purpose,” she said glibly. “Anyway, they’ll think their plan is working—until we show them otherwise. So, are you in?”

“I’m in,” he answered even as part of him had the sinking feeling that by agreeing, life as he knew it would never be the same again. This very well could be a huge mistake.

Joining forces with Kara was always dangerous. It was a known fact that she possessed a golden tongue. It was also a known fact that she could abruptly leave him holding the bag if it suited her purposes.

He had no reason to believe that eighteen years had changed anything, her greatly improved figure notwithstanding.

Chapter Four

The phone rang just as Paulette walked past it. On her way out, she debated just letting the answering machine pick it up. But there was something about a ringing phone that always captured her attention to the exclusion of everything else. It was irresistible.

Pausing, she lifted the receiver from the cradle and brought it to her ear. “Hello?”

“I thought you’d want to be the first to know—well, not really first, but close,” the voice on the other end said.

Lisa. Paulette dropped her purse to the floor, kicked off the high heels she’d just slipped on and deposited her body into the overstuffed chair in her living room. There was no such thing as a quick exchange of words between her and Lisa.

“Almost the first to know what?” Paulette asked. Even as she did so, she mentally crossed her fingers, hoping that her little plan had succeeded in its next stage.

“That Dave called Melissa and asked her if she’d mind if he brought someone to Ryan’s birthday party.”

Paulette could hear the smile in her friend’s voice. It mirrored the one on her own face. “And this friend wouldn’t be Kara, by any chance, would it?”

At this point, it was a rhetorical question. She sincerely doubted that Lisa would be calling her to say that her son was bringing someone else to the little boy’s party.

And then Lisa confirmed all her hopes by saying, “Yes, it would.”

Paulette would have clapped her hands together with glee if both of them had been free. “See, I told you so. All it took was for the two of them to be in the same place at the same time.” And just like that, she was flying high on confidence. “The rest will soon be history.”

“Don’t start sending out the wedding invitations just yet,” Lisa cautioned. “I mean, it’s not like Dave hasn’t dated before. And you’ve told me that Kara has gone out with a few guys from time to time. Wasn’t there that guy, Alex something-or-other, she was seeing pretty regularly a while back?”

The name instantly brought a wave of anger. “You mean the bigamist?”

“He was married?” Lisa asked, horrified.

“Well, not exactly,” Paulette backtracked. “But he was seeing several women at the same time, including a live-in girlfriend who just happened to be the mother of his little boy. Kara was devastated when she accidentally found out—devastated and furious. He’s the one who made her swear off having anything to do with men.”

At the time that it happened, she’d kept the news to herself in deference to Kara’s wishes. But in her opinion enough time had passed for the truth to finally come out. Besides, she wanted Lisa to know that her daughter wasn’t a wallflower because no one was interested. She was one by choice.

“I don’t think you realize what this actually means,” Paulette continued.

“Enlighten me,” Lisa urged.

“If Kara actually agreed to go out with Dave, it means she’s ready to get back into life. This is a really big deal,” Paulette enthused. “Why don’t we get together at the end of this week and celebrate?”

As ever, Paulette was getting ahead of herself, Lisa thought. “A family gathering for a child’s birthday doesn’t exactly fall into the same parameters as a date,” Lisa pointed out.

“Walking down the block holding hands is a date,” Paulette insisted. “Anything involving two consenting people is considered a date. C’mon, Lis, don’t rain on my parade.”

It wasn’t that she wasn’t as hopeful about the outcome of all this as Paulette was, it was just that she was a little more grounded than her friend. And yes, a little more pessimistic.

“I’m not raining on it, Paulette, I just want you to have an umbrella handy—just in case,” Lisa explained. “By the way, about Ryan’s party … There’s always room for one more. Would you like to come?”

“You know I would, but …”

Lisa thought that Paulette would have jumped at the chance to be there to watch over her daughter interacting with Dave. “But?” she questioned.

“If I’m there, Kara might feel self-conscious and not be herself.” Her daughter also might think she was being spied on, Paulette thought.

Lisa sighed, considering Paulette’s reasoning. “I suppose you have a point.”

Paulette paused, chewing on her lower lip. “On the other hand, I also have an insatiable desire to see them finally come together.” She weighed the two sides for a moment, thinking. Desire won out over sensibility. “Oh, what the hell? Count me in.”

Lisa laughed. As if there was ever any real doubt, she thought. “Consider it done. I’ll call Melissa right now,” she said, ending their phone call.

This was taking way too long. By all rights, it should have been a snap, Kara told herself as she took yet another outfit out of her closet and looked it over carefully.

Ordinarily, she’d reach into her closet and throw just about anything on. Or, at the very least, she wouldn’t regard everything she’d taken out with such a critical eye.

Why did how she looked matter so much? She upbraided herself.

The problem was that she worked for a company that had no dress code—beyond requiring that their employees show up at work clothed. During the summer she went in wearing a tank top and shorts half the time. And since she hadn’t had a date since the Alex fiasco had burned her so badly, all of the things she might normally wear for any sort of actual occasion had been pushed to the back of her closet. Now, as she pulled them out, she kept finding something wrong with each outfit.

What was the matter with her? This was just Davy she was going with. Comfortable, old stick-in-the-mud Davy. And this was all pretend, anyway. There was no need to fuss like this.

“Damn it,” she said to her reflection in the wardrobe mirror. “It’s a kid’s party. A stained T-shirt and dirty jeans would probably blend right in.”

Even so, she took out yet another garment, this time a light blue sundress with white piping along the edges of the skirt, spaghetti straps and bodice. Holding it up against herself, she decided that it was as good as anything she’d pulled out so far. Maybe a tad better than most. For one thing, the color brought out her eyes and the dress’s waistline brought out her own.

Finally.

Or maybe—

Kara glanced at her watch. How had it gotten to be so late? This was supposed to take her only ten minutes, not an hour. The party was beginning in less than half an hour.

“Sundress, it is,” she declared.

She’d no sooner shed her tank top and shorts and put the sundress on than her doorbell rang.

Now what? she wondered. She wasn’t expecting anyone.

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