Praise for the novels of
New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Sherryl Woods

“Woods … is noted for appealing character-driven stories

that are often infused with the flavor

and fragrance of the South.”

—Library Journal

“A whimsical, sweet scenario …

the digressions have their own charm, and Woods

never fails to come back to the romantic point.”

—Publishers Weekly on Sweet Tea at Sunrise

“What better way to welcome spring back into our lives

than to be able to sit down with a book by a beloved

author, a cool drink, and dreams of young love blooming?”

—Romance Review on Home in Carolina

“Woods’ readers will eagerly anticipate her trademark

small-town setting, loyal friendships, and honorable

mentors as they meet new characters and reconnect with

familiar ones in this heartwarming tale.”

—Booklist on Home in Carolina

“Warm, complex, and satisfying.”

—Library Journal on Harbor Lights

“Sparks fly in a lively tale that is overflowing with family

conflict and warmth and the possibility of rekindled love.”

—Library Journal on Flowers on Main

“Launching the Chesapeake Shores series,

Woods creates an engrossing … family drama.”

—Publishers Weekly on The Inn at Eagle Point

“Woods is a master heartstring puller,

and her endearingly flawed characters deal with their

plethora of problems in a predictable but satisfying manner.”

—Publishers Weekly on Seaview Inn

Also by New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Sherryl Woods

A CHESAPEAKE SHORES CHRISTMAS*** HONEYSUCKLE SUMMER* SWEET TEA AT SUNRISE* HOME IN CAROLINA* HARBOR LIGHTS*** FLOWERS ON MAIN*** THE INN AT EAGLE POINT*** WELCOME TO SERENITY* SEAVIEW INN MENDING FENCES FEELS LIKE FAMILY* A SLICE OF HEAVEN* STEALING HOME* WAKING UP IN CHARLESTON FLIRTING WITH DISASTER THE BACKUP PLAN DESTINY UNLEASHED FLAMINGO DINE ALONG CAME TROUBLE** ASK ANYONE** ABOUT THAT MAN** ANGEL MINE AFTER TEX

*The Sweet Magnolias

**Trinity Harbor

***Chesapeake Shores

Look for Sherryl Woods’s next original novel

DRIFTWOOD COTTAGE

available April 2011

And the next novel in

The Charleston Trilogy

FLIRTING WITH DISASTER

available August 2011

SHERRYL

WOODS

The Backup Plan

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Dear Reader,

I can’t tell you how delighted I am to have The Backup Plan back in print. Not only was it my hundredth book, but it’s set in one of my favorite cities, Charleston, South Carolina, and starts a trilogy set in the South Carolina low country. It’s followed by Flirting with Disaster, which will be reissued later this year, and by Waking Up in Charleston.

You may be reading The Backup Plan in the middle of winter, and if that’s the case, I think you can trust Dinah Davis and Cordell Beaufort to stir up plenty of heat for you. From the moment I met them, they were steaming up my reading glasses as I typed.

Dinah’s a woman at a crossroads of her life, an intrepid foreign correspondent who’s been through too much and is very close to coming unglued. Cord is one of those laid-back bad boys we all dream about, but at his core he’s one of the genuine good guys. For Dinah, he may turn out to be her greatest risk ever, but he also promises to offer her the greatest reward of her life.

I hope you enjoy traveling to the low country with these two wonderful characters and will be anxiously awaiting more when Flirting with Disaster and Waking Up in Charleston are reissued.

All good wishes,

1

Her producer was tiptoeing around bad news. Dinah could see it in his eyes, hear it in his voice. After a decade of working in TV journalism with basically the same news team, she’d learned to recognize the signs.

Ray Mitchell was an outstanding producer, but he was lousy at subtle communication. Barking out directives was more his style. In fact, he belonged in another era, one of hard-drinking, cigar-smoking journalists and legendary war correspondents such as Ernie Pyle, Edward R. Murrow, Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather. They had brought battle coverage to new heights through shrewd performances. Watching Ray try to sheepishly soft-pedal whatever was on his mind was painful.

“What is it you’re trying so hard not to tell me?” she finally asked. “Is there something wrong with the piece I just turned in? It was a great interview.”

The pictures had been good, too, even if they weren’t as great as her previous cameraman’s would have been. But they were better than adequate.

Ray looked even more uncomfortable. “For somebody else, maybe,” he said with the familiar bluntness Dinah had always respected. “Not for you.”

On some level Dinah had been anticipating that comment. Still, she stared at him in shock. She wasn’t used to being even gently criticized for her work. The many years of accolades from her colleagues in the field and her superiors in their lofty New York towers made her expect praise. “What are you saying, Ray? Just spit it out.”

It was hot as blazes without air-conditioning in their makeshift newsroom, but Dinah knew that wasn’t the reason Ray needed to mop his round face with a handkerchief. He was so nervous that he looked miserable.

“Okay,” he said eventually. “You want the truth, here it is. You’ve lost your edge, Dinah. It’s understandable, given what happened a few months ago, but—”

Dinah tuned him out. Nobody ever mentioned the incident in front of her anymore. Not being able to talk about what had happened had been difficult for Dinah. Whenever she brought up the subject of that tragic nightmare, everyone’s eyes filled with pity as they murmured soothing nonsense and then cut off any further discussion.

That was partly because for weeks after the episode, Dinah had listened dry-eyed to everyone’s sympathy or made the kind of impersonal, caustic comments that all reporters made to keep their fears and grief at bay. They’d all taken their cues from her and had stopped discussing it. Now that she was finally able and eager to talk, their grieving was over and they didn’t want to be reminded that only through the grace of God had they not been on that deadly roadside. They no longer wanted to face their own mortality, or consider the risks inherent in this hellish assignment.

War correspondents were a special breed of journalists. The burnout rate was high for those who favored ambition over self-preservation.

“They’re asking questions in New York,” Ray continued.

That got her attention. “What kind of questions?” she asked testily. She’d grown complacent about the network’s hands-off approach to most of her pieces.

“They want to know whether you shouldn’t be taking a break, you know, just until you’ve had time to deal with what happened,” Ray said carefully. “You’re due some time off, anyway. More than a little, in fact. No one can remember the last time you took a vacation.”

Her stomach sank. A break was the last thing she needed. Work defined her. It motivated her to get out of bed in the morning. Turning in one supposedly sub-par interview when she’d given them dozens of prizewinners and nearly single-handedly earned the upstart cable news operation industry-wide respect deserved better than this treatment.

“I don’t need time off,” she said flatly. “I need to keep working.”

“How about a different assignment then?” Ray suggested. “Go to the London bureau for a while. Or Paris. Maybe even Miami. Now there’s a cushy one. Sunshine, palm trees and beaches.”

The image didn’t impress her. In the days immediately following what she still thought of as the “incident,” she’d considered quitting. But then she had realized that this was the only work she truly wanted to do. If it was harder, if she was scared every minute of every day, she was determined to overcome her fears. Now when she walked out of the hotel and into uncertainty every single day she considered her actions a personal tribute to the bravery of every correspondent who’d died while making sure that the world had a close-up view of the action.

“Come on, Ray. I’d be wasted in London or Paris. And you can forget about Miami,” she said with a shudder. “Covering war is what I do. And I do it better than ninety percent of the other reporters around.”

He looked at her with concern. “Until recently you were better than all of them.”

“And I will be again,” she insisted. “I just need a little time to …” What? Adjust? Not possible. Go on? Maybe. That’s what she was aiming for, one day at a time.

“Wouldn’t it be better to take that time someplace else?” he asked, trying one more time. “You’ve paid your dues, Dinah. You were due for a break before any of this happened. We talked about it, remember? I thought you were planning to go home, see your folks. Why not do it now? People rotate in and out of here all the time because nobody can live like this without getting their heads all screwed up. You’re not Superman. Why should you be any different?”

Because if she left now, everyone would see it as a sign of weakness, she thought. They would think she’d folded in a crisis and she wouldn’t allow anyone to see her that way. She was used to commanding respect.

Ray went right on. “I’d think you’d want a chance to see your family, do something normal for a while. Weren’t you looking forward to that?”

She had been, but not any longer. Things had changed too drastically. Working was what she needed to do if she were to remain sane and maintain her self-respect. She wasn’t sure she wanted to go home until everyone there had forgotten whatever they’d heard about her. She didn’t want to face all the questions back home just yet.

“Not now, dammit!” she said more sharply than she’d intended. “Forget it, Ray! I’m not going anywhere.” Alarm flared in Ray’s eyes. “This is what I’m talking about. You never used to snap, no matter how tense things got. You’re not yourself, Dinah, and I’m worried about you. I don’t want you coming unglued on air one of these days.”

She stared at him with sudden understanding. “That’s why I’ve done so few live shots lately, isn’t it? You’re afraid I’ll lose it.”

He regarded her with obvious discomfort. “It’s a chance I’d rather not take,” he admitted. “For your sake, not the network’s. I don’t give a damn what they think.”

She suspected that much was true. Ray had always been an ardent advocate for his team. He babied his reporters and cameramen as if they were his own kids. He’d go to bat for them with the powers-that-be in New York whether it was in his own best interests or not.

Because she had faith in his motives, she deliberately forced herself to calm down before she replied. “You’re being an old fussbudget,” she accused lightly. “I’m fine. If that changes, if I think I can’t do the job anymore, I swear I’ll let you know.”

Ray looked doubtful. “You’ve never known your own limits, because you never had to set any for yourself. You did whatever it took.”

Listening to him, she felt guilty. If Ray knew what a struggle it was for her to walk out of the hotel on every assignment, he’d be even more adamant about sending her away.

“I still do whatever it takes,” she told him, knowing that much was true. It just cost her more. “Come on, Ray. Cut me some slack here.”

“That’s just it. I have been cutting you a whole lot of slack.”

This was another shock, and it was more humiliating than the first. She regarded him with dismay. “What are you talking about? Are you saying I’m not carrying my weight?”

He regarded her with discomfort. “Okay, here’s the plain, unvarnished truth. And listen up, because you need to hear this. We’ve missed some stories, Dinah. Things that never should have gotten past us. Everyone up top has been ignoring it, because of the circumstances, but they’re getting impatient back home. It’s been a few months now. I’m not going to be able to hold them off much longer. The decision of whether you stay or go could be taken out of my hands … and yours.”

Dinah tried to think of stories they’d missed. She hadn’t paid that much attention to the competition and what they were reporting. With her contacts, she’d always been so far out in front, she hadn’t needed to. Was it possible that the other journalists were taking advantage of her distraction? Maybe so, she admitted truthfully.

“Okay, that stops now,” she promised Ray, filled with a renewed sense of determination. “I’ll be back on top of things from here on out. If I’m not …”

He met her gaze. “If you’re not, you’re going home, Dinah,” he said flatly. “Whether it’s what you want or not.”

The unflinching warning shook her as nothing had in weeks. “It won’t come to that,” she said grimly.

All she had to do was push those godawful images out of her head and focus on the here and now. She’d put aside horror in order to do her job a thousand times through the years.

She could do it again, she told herself staunchly. She was going to get it together and come back better than ever. She owed it to the viewers who counted on her to tell an honest, objective story on the nightly news. She owed it to the network that had given her a chance when she was barely out of journalism school.

Most of all, though, she owed it to herself. Without this job, who the hell was she?

Two weeks after her conversation with Ray, the sound of her cell phone ringing at 4:00 a.m. sent Dinah diving under her hotel bed. It wasn’t the first time she’d become skittish over nothing, but the incidents were becoming more frequent and more dramatic.

So were the nightmares that woke her in a cold sweat. She hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in weeks. It didn’t take a genius to tell her she was suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome, but she’d been convinced she could weather it on her own through sheer will. It wasn’t working.

Eventually, she crawled out from under the bed, still shaking, and sat on the floor in the dark with her knees pulled up to her chest, waiting for the worst of the panic to ease.

Maybe Ray was right. Maybe she couldn’t continue working right now. But what could she do instead?

Home. When Ray had mentioned it, she’d been dismissive, but now she recognized a surprising hint of longing whenever she thought of that simple word. She had always thought of home with a sort of detached nostalgia. Home was where she came from, not where she wanted to be. Just a couple of weeks ago, she’d hated the idea of returning.

Suddenly, though, the images of South Carolina Low Country were appealing. Trees draped with Spanish moss, and the sultry summer air thick with the scent of honeysuckle seemed idyllic. It was certainly as far removed from the tumultuous, horrific world of Afghanistan as she could possibly imagine.

Not that she’d appreciated it all that much when she’d been growing up on the outskirts of Charleston in what she’d considered little better than a mosquito-infested swamp. She’d hated the slow pace, the unhurried speech, the steamy nights when it was almost impossible to catch a decent breath of air. She hadn’t been able to leave her overprotective parents quickly enough.

Being the debutante daughter of Dorothy Rawlings Davis, a woman able to trace her roots back to the first ship to dock in Charleston, and Marshall Davis, a man whose granddaddy had amassed a fortune in South Carolina banking, gave Dinah a skewed view of her own importance. She’d been wise enough to recognize that and to rebel against it. Her brother hadn’t been so lucky. He’d drifted along, not only in his daddy’s shadow, but that of all their proud ancestors. Tommy Lee had nothing he could point to with pride and call his own.

Dinah hadn’t been content to inherit her place in the world. She’d wanted to make one for herself. She’d needed to prove that she was as capable, as independent and as fiercely strong as the toughest of her ancestors. She wanted to be a successful woman first, a Southern woman second. Anyone who’d grown up in the South knew there was a difference.

She’d chosen television journalism for a career because it was a profession with noble ideals, and she’d taken assignments that had placed her in the line of danger just to prove that she could stand tall next to the brightest and best in her field. It wasn’t enough to be good. She was determined to be outstanding, the correspondent viewers relied on for learning the truth behind the headlines.

For ten years Dinah had accomplished exactly that by covering unfolding events in Chechnya, the Middle East, and lately Pakistan and Afghanistan. Whenever or wherever news was being made, Dinah was there.

Her last assignments had been the most challenging. It had been impossible to calculate the risks, impossible to find trustworthy sources, impossible to predict whether she would live long enough to get the story on the air. Many said it took a danger junkie to accept such assignments, but she’d never seen herself that way. She simply had a job to do. The risks were worth it because events that unfolded without the glare of news cameras often led to untold horrors and chilling secrecy.

Yet in all of her thirty-one years she’d never had such terrifying dreams. She figured she’d come too close to the edge and seen too much. She’d lost friends this time, some of the best and brightest in the business. That had sucked the life right out of her.

Maybe Ray had been right. Maybe it was time—past time—for her to go home. There was nothing left to prove here.

As she crouched beside her hotel room bed after being frightened by the unexpected ring of a phone, her heart finally slowed to a more normal rhythm. In that instant she realized that she couldn’t get home fast enough. If she stayed here any longer, she’d come completely unglued.

Later that morning when Dinah told Ray what she’d decided, she was hurt to see relief and not regret in his eyes.

“It’s for the best,” he assured her. “It’s not forever,” she replied because she needed to believe it. “A few weeks, a couple of months at most.”

Ray got up and closed the door, then gestured for her to sit down. “Listen to me, Dinah. You get back to South Carolina and make a place for yourself. Get a job at the local station. Be their superstar. Find yourself a good man. Settle down and raise a family. This is no life.”

“It’s my life,” she protested, horrified by what he was suggesting. It was too damn close to anonymity and suffocation.

“Not anymore,” Ray insisted. “I’ve seen it happen before. An excellent reporter goes through a close call, sees someone they know die right in front of them, whatever, and they start cutting back on the risks. They’re a little more hesitant, they play it a little safer. Or they do the opposite and turn into some sort of rogue I can’t control. Either way, a reporter like that is no good to me.”

Anger filled her at the grim picture he presented. “Are you saying I’ll never be able to do this job again?”

“Never as well,” he said bluntly. “You’re beautiful and smart and talented. Put all of that to work for you back home. If not in South Carolina, then at the network in New York or Washington. I can get a transfer authorized anytime you say the word. Find yourself a real life and live it. What we do over here, it’s necessary, but it’s not living. It’s courting death.”

“Are you telling me this just because I’m a woman?” she asked heatedly. “That’s a little sexist even for you.”

“Maybe so,” he admitted candidly. “Mostly, though, I’m telling you this stuff because I like you. I want to know you’re out there somewhere safe and happy. I don’t ever want to have to make the same call to your folks that I’ve had to make to other reporters’ relatives.”

Dinah drew in a deep breath and asked him the question that was burning in her gut. “Spell it out for me, Ray. Are you telling me I can’t come back, that you don’t want me here?”

Ray hesitated before replying. “No,” he said with obvious reluctance. “The network would have my head for saying this, but I’m telling you I hope like hell you won’t.”

He regarded her with a worried frown. “Listen to me, okay? Think about what I’m saying. You’ve done the heroics, proved whatever you set out to prove to yourself. You’re a top-notch journalist, one of the best, but maybe it’s time to stop and figure out who Dinah Davis really is.”

Her stomach sank. She thought she had figured that out the day she turned in her first television news report. Now this man she trusted was telling her she’d gotten it wrong.

“Then you think I should quit?” she asked, hating the fact that her respect for him ran so deep that she was actually considering doing as he asked.

“Yes,” he said firmly. “Get a real life, Dinah.”

She tried to picture the peaceful, ordinary life he was describing. The image eluded her. “You actually think I’m destined to be somebody’s wife and mother?” she asked.

“Why the hell not?”

“And if I decide that what I am is a foreign correspondent, that it’s all I was ever meant to be?”

He gave her a sad look. “Then I pity you.”

“It’s what you’ve done all your life,” she reminded him.

“And look at me. No wife. No family. No one who gives a damn whether I come home or not. That’s not a fate I’d wish on you. Isn’t there someone back home you think about from time to time, some man who got away?”

Dinah started to shake her head, but then an image of Bobby Beaufort appeared in her mind. She couldn’t stop the smile that spread across her face. It had been ages since she’d thought about Bobby. He’d been in her life almost as far back as she could remember. He’d wanted to marry her, but she’d turned him down to chase after her dream.

“There,” Ray said triumphantly. “I knew it!” “He was no one special,” Dinah insisted. “Just a friend.”

A good friend who’d promised to be around if she ever got tired of roaming the globe. If she was ready for love, she was supposed to turn to Bobby. She would always own a piece of his heart, at least that’s what he’d claimed. All she had to do was come home, say the word and they’d be married before she could say Las Vegas. That was what they’d agreed when she left town. He was her safety net, her backup plan. She’d never expected to need him.

She didn’t need him now, she asserted silently. All this stuff Ray was saying meant nothing. She’d straighten herself out and come back here … eventually.

In the meantime, though, she met Ray’s worried gaze. “Okay, then,” she said at last. “I quit. I suppose there’s no point in doing this by half measures.”

She said it halfheartedly, but Ray gave her an encouraging smile.

“Good for you, Dinah! It’s the right thing to do.”

Maybe so, she thought despondently, but just in case she’d made a huge mistake, maybe the first thing she ought to do when she got back to South Carolina was look up Bobby Beaufort. Maybe he was meant to save her from the kind of lonely life Ray was describing. She’d know when she saw him.

Bobby had never made her palms sweat or her pulse race, but he was a good guy. Soothing and dependable, he’d never, ever let her down. In fact, his sweet attentiveness had nearly suffocated her, but maybe she’d changed. Maybe she was ready for someone to lavish her with love and attention.

She thought of that and her lips curved once more. Yes, indeed, a woman who’d just impulsively quit her dream job needed to keep her options open.

2

After four dinner parties in a row to welcome her home, Dinah called a halt.

“Mother, that’s enough! I’m pretty sure there’s not a soul in Charleston, at least in certain social circles, who doesn’t know I’m back in town.”

Dorothy Davis regarded her with dismay. “Just one more,” she coaxed. “A few people from the committee to save Covington Plantation.” Her eyes suddenly lit up. “In fact, Dinah, if you’d give a little talk, we could turn it into an impromptu fund-raiser. I’m sure people would be fascinated with all your adventures. And these renovations are going to cost a fortune. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could work together to raise some additional funds?”

Dinah glanced at her mother. Her adventures were precisely what she was trying to forget. If Dinah tried to explain that to Dorothy it would heighten her mother’s overprotectiveness. It had taken her several unnerving calls months ago to convince her mother that she was fine and that there was nothing for her to worry about. Apparently she’d been successful in downplaying what had happened because her mother hadn’t mentioned a word about it. Dinah didn’t want anything to kick those maternal antennae back onto alert now. She tried another tactic.

“Haven’t your friends pumped me for every bit of information they’d care to hear, Mother? No one wants to know what it’s really like over there.” Dinah was a hundred percent certain of that. “It’s not great dinner table conversation,” she added. “They’re content knowing it’s happening on the other side of the world.”

“Not everyone here is shallow, darling,” her mother scolded. “You’ve always sold us short.”

Dinah sighed. It was true. She had. But she’d heard nothing since coming back to change her impression of her parents’ friends. They lived in their monied, insulated world and were happy enough if it didn’t rain on their golf games.

“Forget the fund-raiser, Mother. I’ve never been any good at that sort of thing. And please don’t plan another dinner party. I came home for some peace and quiet. As it is, I’ve barely had a minute alone with you or Dad or Tommy Lee and his family.” Not that she was all that unhappy about missing out on the questionable joy of being around her brother’s children. From what little bit she had seen, they were holy terrors.

Still, there had been precious little of the quiet she’d anticipated. Aside from the dinner parties her mother had held at their house, she’d been trotted out to lunch with her father’s business cronies half a dozen times. She had yet to see a single one of her own friends, not that she’d kept in touch with that many of them since she’d left for college.

She wasn’t exactly excited about seeing anyone at all. Every chance she got, she stole off to the solitude of her room or sat in the back garden with an unopened book in her hands. She’d told herself the inertia was only temporary, that she’d snap out of it in a few days, but she was beginning to wonder if it wouldn’t be easier just to give in to it.

Judging from the worried frown that creased her mother’s otherwise unlined face, Dorothy had taken note of Dinah’s reluctance to leave the house.

“Is something going on that you haven’t told me?” her mother asked. “Sitting around in this house all day is not like you.”

“I don’t just sit in the house. Sometimes I sit in the garden.”

Her comment drew another chiding look. Dorothy Rawlings Davis had never known what to make of her only daughter. Dinah had scoffed at tradition. Though she’d reluctantly agreed to go through with it for her mother’s sake, Dinah had made a mockery of her debutante ball. She’d attended private school under protest and, worse, had chosen to go to college out of state, to New York, no less. It had grated on her father, who’d attended the Citadel and then Clemson, and her mother who’d graduated from the University of Charleston without ever leaving home.

Her brother had thankfully followed tradition or her parents would most likely have died of shame. Dinah’s celebrity had allowed them to hold their heads up just a bit higher these last few years. She wondered what they would think if she told them she was thinking of giving it all up forever.

Even at eight o’clock in the morning the vast differences between Dinah and her mother were apparent. Her mother was wearing an expensive, tailored suit, antique gold jewelry that winked with diamonds, Italian designer pumps, a perfect French manicure and had every strand of her perfectly highlighted hair in place. Dinah wore a favorite pair of old shorts, a halter top and she was barefooted. She hadn’t had a manicure or pedicure in years and her hair was cut in a haphazard style that could best be described as wash-and-wear. In less than a week she’d fought off six attempts by her mother to change that with a spa day. When it came to style Dinah was still a bitter disappointment to her socialite mother.

Even so, her mother did seem to be touchingly happy to have her home. Dinah could even understand her desire to cash in on Dinah’s reflected celebrity. She wasn’t a bit surprised that her mother wasn’t taking no for an answer.

“Darling, it’s just that you’re so rarely here,” her mother said. “I want to be sure that everyone gets a chance to see you before you go gallivanting off on your next assignment.”

Dinah told herself she should admit that she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but she wasn’t ready to do that. Silence allowed her to go on pretending that this was a temporary sabbatical. It would be another few weeks before she started to wear on her mother’s nerves. Then her parents would start asking the really tough, unanswerable questions about how such a fabulous career had wound up in the toilet. Right now they were proud of her and it was nice to bask in that, at least in small doses.

She forced a smile. “I know, Mother, but let’s put it off a few days, okay? Let me catch my breath. I haven’t even seen Maggie yet or any of my other friends.”

Maggie Forsythe was the one person Dinah truly was anxious to see aside from Bobby. She was the only one Dinah dared to mention. If she uttered a peep about tracking down Bobby Beaufort, her mother would draw the wrong conclusions. The prospect of a wedding was just about the only thing that might distract Dorothy from her daughter’s news about being all but kicked out of Afghanistan by her worried boss.

“Okay, if you insist, I’ll reschedule for the week after next,” her mother finally relented. “You will still be here, right?”

“I’ll be here,” Dinah assured her.

Satisfied, her mother rounded the dining room table and pressed a kiss to Dinah’s cheek. “I’m so glad you’re home. Your father and I have missed you.”

Dinah’s eyes stung at the sentimental tone in her mother’s voice. She had always shunned her mother’s overt displays of affection, but all of a sudden the little impromptu hugs and kisses made her weepy.

“I have to run. I have a meeting about the renovations at the plantation this morning. It’s likely to drag on all day,” her mother said. “What will you do today? If you don’t have anything in mind, you could come with me and take a look around. We’re making excellent progress. I think you’d find it fascinating.”

Dinah knew her eyes had probably glazed over at the suggestion, so she tried to feign enthusiasm for her mother’s latest pet project. “If you’re involved, I know it’s bound to be amazing,” she said. “I promise to get there, just not today.”

Her mother hid her disappointment well, but Dinah knew she’d hurt her. It had always driven her crazy that Dinah showed no interest in any of her favorite civic or historical preservation projects.

“Okay, then, I’m off,” her mother said. “Will you be here for dinner?” “Of course,” Dinah said. “If that changes, I’ll call or leave word with Maybelle.”

“I’ll see you later, then.”

When her mother left, the sound of her heels tapping on the hardwood floors, the scent of Chanel lingered in her wake. Dinah felt the tension in her shoulders ease the minute she was finally alone.

Coming home had been harder—and easier—than she’d expected. She’d been welcomed like the prodigal daughter, pampered by their longtime housekeeper, and treated like a celebrity by her family’s friends.

The hard part was lying and keeping the pretense that she was just fine, that her career was perfect, her life amazing. She kept it up because she wasn’t ready to admit the truth, not to them, not even to herself.

Some days she could convince herself that she was fine. As if her body sensed that she was in a safe haven at last, she hadn’t had a major panic attack since she’d arrived. The nightmares had even diminished. She’d only awakened a couple of times in a cold sweat with her heart hammering so hard she’d felt it might burst from her chest.

She’d managed to accommodate her parents’ meet-and-greet dinners as well as the thankfully brief lunches at her father’s club. Increasingly, though, the mere prospect of leaving the house had made her palms turn damp. Although she’d been able to face the possibility of a roadside ambush or a car bomb a mere week ago, she now could barely stand the thought of walking down the comparatively safe, familiar streets of Charleston. She knew that hiding out wasn’t smart, or healthy. Nor was it one bit like her. Always full of energy, Dinah was determined to recapture some of her old spirit.

She decided to start by looking for Bobby. It would be good to see him, catch up a little, figure out if there was a single spark that could be fanned into a conflagration that might help her forget what she would have to give up to stay here.

She gathered up her dishes and took them to the kitchen.

Maybelle Jenkins, who’d run the Davis household Dinah’s entire life and her mother’s family’s before that, immediately rushed to take them from her. “What do you think you’re doing?” she scolded. “You trying to get me fired? Tidying up is what I do around here.”

Dinah grinned at her. “We both know you do a whole lot more than that. You keep this place running. You hold this family together.”

Maybelle swept her into a hug, one of many she’d readily dispensed since Dinah’s homecoming. “Lordy, but I’ve missed you. You’ve been away too long, girl. It’s about time you came back to see us. Some of us, we ain’t getting any younger, you know.”

Though she looked ageless with her smooth brown complexion, Maybelle had to be at least seventy-five. She’d been almost twenty when she’d gone to work for Adelaide Rawlings when Dinah’s mother was born. That was fifty-five years ago.

Dinah grinned at her now. “Who’re you kidding, Maybelle? You’ll outlive all of us.”

“Especially if you keep getting in the way of them guns and bombs,” the housekeeper chided. “That close call you had ‘bout gave me a heart attack. Never saw the sense of you doing such a thing. Thought we raised you to be smarter.”

Dinah met the dark brown eyes of the woman who’d been such a constant in her life. A sudden need to unburden herself nearly overwhelmed her. Maybelle had always patiently listened to every one of her childhood hopes, dreams and heartaches.

“Can I tell you something you can’t repeat to anyone? “ Dinah asked.

“You askin’ if I can keep a secret? I’ve kept enough for you and that brother of yours, don’t you think?”

Dinah laughed. “Yes, I suppose you have.”

“So what’s one more?”

“I might not go back,” Dinah said, testing the words.

“Well, praise the Lord and hallelujah!” Maybelle said exuberantly. “That’s the best news I’ve had in years. Why you want to keep such a thing a secret?”

Dinah regarded her sadly. “Is it good news?”

“If it means my baby’s gonna be safe, then it’s good news to me.” She gave Dinah a penetrating look. “You don’t seem too happy about it, though. You quit or get yourself fired?”

“I quit, but no one around here’s to know that. I don’t expect you to lie for me, but hem and haw if anyone asks, at least for now.” She gave Maybelle a stern look. “Promise?”

“I gave you my word, didn’t I?” She hugged Dinah again. “Whatever’s going on with you, you’ll work it out. I know how you like to mull things over in that head of yours. But if there comes a time when you need someone to talk to, I’m here, same as always.”

“Thank you. I love you.”

“And I love you, same as all those children I gave birth to, and those grandbabies and great-grandbabies that are coming along,” Maybelle told her. “You’re family to me.”

Tears welled up in Dinah’s eyes. She swiped at them impatiently. “Now you’ve gone and made me cry,” she teased. “I’ll have to redo my makeup before I go out in public or Mother will be totally humiliated.”

“Since when you put on makeup?” Maybelle asked wryly. “Your mama cares way too much about stuff that don’t matter a hoot to anybody but her and those social-climbing women she spends her days with.” At Dinah’s amused look, Maybelle added, “And don’t think I wouldn’t say the same thing right to her face. I knew her when she was in diapers, too.”

“Ah, Maybelle, you keep telling us like it is. Maybe one of these days we’ll all get our priorities sorted out.”

Maybelle laughed. “You, maybe, but I think it’s too late for that brother of yours. He’s fallen into the same pattern as your daddy. They’re both so full of themselves it’s little wonder they can never see eye to eye on anything.” She shooed Dinah toward the door. “Now get along out of here, girl. You might be unemployed, but I’m not. This old house doesn’t clean itself and it takes me a mite longer to get around than it used to.”

Dinah wandered upstairs, intending to freshen up and change her clothes before heading out in search of Bobby, but she found an old high-school yearbook and got distracted.

By the time she’d closed the book, it was past lunchtime. Still wearing the same old shorts and halter top, she added a pair of sandals, ran a brush through her hair, then begged a sandwich from Maybelle. It was nearly four o’clock when she finally set off to look for Bobby. Maybe once she saw him, some magical something would click and she’d know whether or not she was home to stay. In her experience, though, life was rarely that clear-cut.

All during the tedious meetings at Covington Plantation, Dorothy had been distracted. She couldn’t seem to shake the feeling that something was going on with her daughter. Dinah hadn’t been herself since she’d arrived home.

Her gentle resistance to all the dinner parties was to be expected. She’d always hated that sort of fuss. But isolating herself in the house and only reluctantly talking about her work made Dorothy think that the close call Dinah had minimized months ago might have taken more of a toll than she’d led them to believe.

Since there was never a chance to talk to Marshall about any of this—or anything else—at home, Dorothy made a detour to his office at the bank. Based on the stunned reactions of everyone she greeted there, she concluded it had been far too long since she’d paid her husband an impulsive visit. In fact, there had been little spontaneity in their lives for a very long time. It was just one worrisome aspect of their marriage lately.

When she entered his office, Marshall was on the phone. He gave her a distracted wave and kept right on talking. She gazed around at the room she’d helped him to decorate years ago when he’d first taken over the presidency and was shocked to discover that many of her carefully selected furnishings had been replaced. The color scheme was bolder and, to her eye, far more modern and jarring than suited a sedate banking establishment. Nothing in the room spoke of the bank’s conservative tradition.

She doubted the change had been Marshall’s idea. Her husband cared little for that sort of thing. He must have given carte blanche to someone to redecorate. She found that oddly disturbing. There had been a time when they discussed everything going on at the bank, when he relied on her opinion and taste. When had that stopped? Months ago? Years?

Were the bright artworks and sleek leather and chrome furnishings symptomatic of the problems she’d been ignoring in their marriage? Had they grown so far apart, communicated so little, that something like this could happen without her even knowing about it? It was a minor thing, but it forced her to face the fact that she hardly knew what was going on in her husband’s life anymore.

She looked at her husband with dismay and wondered where they’d gone wrong. They were only in their early fifties, too young to have drifted so completely apart.

When Marshall finally hung up, he regarded her not with the delight he once would have shown, but with a trace of impatience.

“I didn’t know you were coming by,” he said. “I have a meeting in less than ten minutes.”

She swallowed the first bitter retort that came to mind and said briskly, “Then I’ll finish what I have to say in nine minutes. I want to talk to you about Dinah.”

He looked startled by that. “What about her?”

“Something’s wrong, Marshall. Haven’t you seen it?”

He shook his head, his expression still blank. “She seems fine to me.”

“You don’t find it odd that she’s barely left the house?”

“What are you talking about, Dorothy? She’s left the house. She’s had lunch with me three or four times in the last week.”

“Because you made the arrangements and told her where to go,” she said impatiently. “And she turns up for dinner because I tell her what time to be downstairs. But there’s no life in her, no spark. She stays in her room or sits in the garden and broods. It’s not like her.”

He looked bemused. “She’s rarely home, so you can’t say if it’s like her or not these days. Hell, after all she’s been through, she’s entitled to some peace and quiet. All this commotion we’ve stirred up has probably been too much for her. After all, this entertaining we’ve been doing is a far cry from the kind of life she’s been used to the past few years. Maybe we’ve crammed in too much of it at once.”

“That’s pretty much what she said,” Dorothy acknowledged.

“Well, there you have it,” he said, clearly satisfied that the problem was solved. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get ready for this meeting.”

His dismissal was annoying. Dorothy stood and started for the door, but then she turned back. “When did you redecorate in here?”

Marshall looked up from his papers, clearly disconcerted by the question. “A few months ago. Why?”

“I’m just surprised you didn’t ask for my help.”

“You’ve been tied up with your own projects,” he replied. “I had my secretary hire a decorator.”

“And you like what they did?” she asked, not sure why any of it mattered so much.

He looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time. He shrugged. “It’s a change.”

“It certainly is,” she said tartly. “And not for the better.”

Feeling thoroughly disgruntled by the whole exchange, Dorothy stalked out of his office, her back rigid, her temper barely in check. She’d started the day with one worry on her mind—her daughter. Now she had two.

Her marriage, which she’d always accepted as faintly staid, but solid, was anything but secure. She’d been around long enough to know that enough tiny little fissures could seriously undermine the foundation of the most fortified structure. Discovering that her marriage was riddled with such fissures was a shock.

Unfortunately, for the moment Dinah had to be her priority. She simply had to hope that when she got around to focusing on her own life, it wouldn’t be too late.

Cord Beaufort lazily swatted at the fly circling his bottle of now-lukewarm beer. It was the end of a steamy, grueling day, a day that had tested his patience and sent his nerves into more of an uproar than the last time he’d engaged in far more pleasurable, rambunctious sex.

He’d met with the board of directors for Covington Plantation and to a man—and woman—they were the most impossible, exasperating group of self-important human beings he’d ever had the misfortune to work for. They wanted to micromanage everything and not one of them had the expertise for it.

Worse, he’d had to wear a suit and tie, even though the temperature was pushing ninety. If there was one thing he hated more than placating a bunch of wealthy, egotistical bosses, it was wearing a suit and pretending not to be bored to tears while they yammered on and on. Things that should have been decided in less than an hour had taken the whole damn day.

Stretched out in a well-used Pawleys Island hammock strung between two ancient live oaks, he now wore comfortable jeans and nothing else. He was trying his best not to move a muscle until a breeze stirred, which probably wouldn’t happen until November. He was not feeling especially optimistic at the moment.

The sound of a car bouncing along the dirt lane leading to his house did nothing to improve his mood. He wasn’t feeling any more sociable than he was optimistic. He’d left all the ruts in the damn road as a way of discouraging visitors. Most people had long since gotten the message.

When the car finally came into view, he tried to place it and couldn’t. The sight of a pair of long, shapely, bare legs emerging from the front seat, however, did improve his outlook marginally. Only one woman in all of South Carolina had legs like that. And she pretty much hated his guts. He couldn’t say he blamed her.

If all the rumors he’d been hearing were right and Dinah Davis had decided to come home and appear on his doorstep it could only mean one thing. She was here to redeem the idiotic offer his brother Bobby had made to her years ago. Bobby, much as Cord loved him, was a damned fool. Who’d want a woman whenever she felt like it, even if that woman was as drop-dead gorgeous as Dinah Davis?

Cord watched her as she exited her car, wondering if her uppity mama knew she was going around town in a pair of shorts that left little to the imagination, and a halter top that wasn’t exactly on the approved fashion list for a one-time Charleston debutante who never strayed from the straight and narrow. Right now she looked more like somebody he wouldn’t mind taking a tumble with, which would flat-out horrify her mama.

Then again, maybe Dinah’s choice of attire explained why Mrs. Davis had been on such a royal tear at the board meeting today. A rebellious daughter, even one who was thirty-one or so and internationally famous, could unsettle an uptight woman.

“Well, well,” he murmured as Dinah lifted her chin with a familiar touch of defiance and started in his direction. “Just look at what the cat dragged in.”

Bright patches of color immediately flooded her cheeks and her devastating, dark blue eyes flashed with irritation, but her good breeding quickly kicked in. She was, after all, on his turf. An uninvited guest with manners, Cord thought with amusement as he awaited her response.

“Good evening, Cordell,” she said, her voice as sweet as syrup, yet unmistakably insincere. “I see your manners haven’t improved with age.”

“Not much,” he agreed, refusing to take offense. “Time’s been kind to you, though. You’re as pretty as Miss Scarlett and twice as tough, judging from what I’ve seen of you on TV.”

“I’m amazed you watch network news,” she said. “I thought the cartoon channel would be more to your liking.”

“Sugar, I’m a man. Surfing channels is in my nature. Even I slow down when I see a hometown girl lighting up the screen in my living room, while bombs blow things up behind her.”

“Yes, I imagine it gives you something to fantasize about on one of your lonely nights,” she said, her voice cool with disdain.

“I am never lonely except by choice.” Lately, though, he was making that choice more and more. Women, gorgeous and fascinating though they could surely be, were proving to be more trouble than they were worth. Dinah gave him a withering look signaling that she found his claim laughable.

“As pleasant as it is chatting with you,” she said in that same syrupy voice that was all about properly bred, South Carolina manners, “I’m here to see Bobby. Is he around?”

Cord took a long, slow sip of beer and an insolent, long, slow head-to-toe survey of her before replying.

“Nope.”

She regarded him with unmistakable impatience. “Expected back?”

Cord saw no reason to help her out when he disapproved so heartily of her apparent mission. “Eventually.”

“Which means exactly what?”

He grinned. Riling Dinah had always been a snap. It was a pure pleasure to see that hadn’t changed. “I thought I was clear enough. He’ll be back when he gets back. You know how it goes with us lazy, good-for-nothing Beauforts. We’re not much on timetables.”

Dinah sighed heavily, which had a fascinating effect on the rise and fall of her barely clad breasts. Cord wondered if she had any notion of the raw sensuality she projected or just how close he was to summoning the energy to drag her straight into his arms and give her the kiss she was half-begging for. Probably not or she’d have hightailed it out of here, instead of pestering him for answers he would not give her. He intended to protect Bobby from his own foolishness.

“Is Bobby due back tonight? Tomorrow? Next week?” she asked, her tone impatient.

“Could be next week,” he said, then shrugged. “Maybe not.”

“Has anyone ever told you how impossible you are?”

“Before you?” he asked. She scowled.

Cord grinned. “Now that you mention it, I believe your mama said something very similar to me just this afternoon.”

Her eyes widened, pleasing Cord with the fact that he could still surprise her. Shocking Dinah had been one of his primary delights back when she and Bobby had been dating. It had been a long time since he’d taken such pleasure in stirring a woman’s temper or her dismay.

“Where on earth did you see my mother?” she inquired.

Her tone suggested he surely must have done something illegal to have such an encounter with an upper-crust paragon. If Dinah weren’t so cute up there on her high horse, he might be insulted that she couldn’t imagine any circumstance under which he and Dorothy Rawlings Davis would cross paths.

“Out and about,” he replied mildly. “Charleston is, after all, a small town in many ways. In fact, I do believe that was why you were so anxious to leave.”

“I left to attend college and pursue a career,” she said, her voice tight as her cool gaze raked over him. “Maybe that’s something you should consider doing.”

He held up his beer and gestured around him. “Why leave? If you ask me, it doesn’t get much better than this—a roof over my head, a little money in the bank, a cool drink and up until a few minutes ago plenty of peace and quiet.”

“Thank heaven your brother doesn’t share your total lack of ambition,” she said.

Her uppity little tone of voice was starting to get on his nerves. He frowned at the comparison in which he came out wanting. He could have told her a few things about what he’d been up to, but why bother? She enjoyed thinking of him as a low-life. Why take that pleasure away from her when she’d just gotten back to town? It would be so much more fun for him watching her eat those words later.

“Please tell Bobby I’m home and looking forward to seeing him,” she said. “You can remember a simple message, can’t you?”

“If I put my mind to it,” Cord agreed. Not that he intended to. Dinah Davis would eat his brother alive. Bobby didn’t need the aggravation. Of course, the last time he’d tried thinking for his brother and interfering in his so-called romance with Dinah, there had been hell to pay.

“Well, try real hard,” she said.

Then she sashayed back to her car, providing him with a fantastic view of her very fine derriere. Cord shook his head. Too bad she was so aggravating. Otherwise, he might enjoy tangling with her himself. Instead, he’d just content himself with keeping Bobby out of her clutches.

3

“I don’t know how Bobby and Cordell could possibly come from the same gene pool,” Dinah told her friend Maggie as they sipped iced tea on the veranda of Maggie’s converted gatehouse a few blocks from the harbor in the historic downtown section of Charleston. “Bobby is sweet and kind and smart and ambitious. Cordell is …” For a woman who made her living with words, she couldn’t find any to describe just what a low-down scoundrel she thought he was.

“Handsome, smart, sexy as sin,” Maggie supplied.

Dinah regarded her with amazement. “Are you crazy?”

“Don’t tell me you didn’t notice,” Maggie teased. “That’s why you’re all tongue-tied and pink-cheeked. What was he wearing? Jeans and nothing else, am I right?” She fanned herself in an exaggerated gesture designed to make a point. “He’s the only man I know who can turn denim into a proper fashion statement.” Her grin spread. “Or should I say improper?”

“I didn’t notice,” Dinah claimed piously.

“Like hell, you didn’t. You’re a female, aren’t you?

All women notice Cordell’s …” She paused significantly, then added, “Attributes.”

“Magnolia Forsythe! A lady does not utter such a comment about a gentleman.”

Maggie grinned at the direct quotation uttered all too frequently by their prim principal throughout their grammar school days. “According to you, Cordell is no gentleman. Give it up, girl. You’ve been gone a long time and probably hiding out in caves for much of it. The only reason you’re so upset with Cord is because he made you sit up and take notice of what a real man looks like.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dinah declared emphatically. Seeing Cord had reinforced just what an ill-mannered lowlife he was. He’d always taken an inordinate amount of pleasure in aggravating her. Nor would she ever forget or forgive what he’d once done to try to drive a wedge between her and Bobby. “I wouldn’t give him a second look if he were the last man on earth. Bobby overcame those unfortunate Beaufort genes, but Cord certainly hasn’t. He’s pond scum. Always was. Always will be.”

Maggie’s knowing smile spread.

“Well, he is,” Dinah insisted.

“Whatever you say, though you were far less judgmental when we were in grammar school. Weren’t you the one who insisted that both Cord and Bobby needed to be included in our birthday parties, even when our folks cringed at the very idea of it?”

“I was thinking of Bobby,” Dinah insisted. “I didn’t want his feelings to be hurt. After all, he was our classmate. He’s the one who insisted on dragging Cord along. He worshipped his big brother, though Lord knows why.”

“And you didn’t give two figs about Cord’s feelings?” Maggie asked, her skepticism plain.

Dinah frowned. “Okay, yes. Maybe a little. It would have been rude to leave him out. Neither one of them could help that they were poor. Bobby took the opportunities they were given and made something of himself. Cord’s apparently as lazy as ever.”

Maggie merely raised a brow at that. “And I thought journalists were supposed to gather facts, not leap to conclusions.”

There was something in her friend’s tone as well as her words that suggested Dinah had gotten it all wrong. “Why have you turned into some big defender of Cord Beaufort all of a sudden?”

“I’m not. I’m just encouraging you to do your research before you rip apart a man you haven’t seen in years,” Maggie said defensively.

“Are you telling me I’m mistaken?”

“I’m telling you to do a little of that investigative reporting you’re so famous for.”

The chiding note in Maggie’s voice silenced Dinah. She took a long swallow of her sweet tea and sighed. It was a little like drinking ice-cold syrup. “This is heaven. I haven’t had tea like this since I left home.”

“It’s about time you remembered some of the good things about living here,” Maggie said lightly. “Maybe you’ll come home more often.”

Dinah hesitated before responding. She’d known Maggie since they’d made mud pies together in preschool. Of all the girls at their fancy private school, they’d been the only two who hadn’t been afraid to get their pretty little school dresses dirty. They’d become best friends growing up together, sharing confidences, talking about boys and sex, hopes and dreams.

Maggie was the first one Dinah had told when she’d decided to defy parental expectations by going after a job as a foreign correspondent rather than marrying well. Maybe it was only fitting that she be the first one Dinah told that she was quitting her dream job.

“Actually, I’m about eighty percent sure I’m here to stay,” Dinah said quietly. Despite the fact that she’d said the words to herself before leaving Afghanistan, she hadn’t entirely believed them. Now that she was home she knew the chances of her returning to her network career were decreasing daily. She wasn’t getting any happier about it, just more resigned to the fact that Ray Mitchell had been right. If she could sit around for an entire afternoon sipping sweet tea without getting antsy and bored, then she couldn’t ignore the probability that she had lost the hunger, drive and insight required of a top-notch reporter. Maybe quitting had been the smart thing to do, after all. Maybe it hadn’t been the colossal mistake she’d assumed it was the minute the words had left her mouth.

Maggie let out an exuberant whoop not unlike Maybelle’s, then sobered at once. “Why?” she demanded, her gaze raking over Dinah. “You didn’t go and get yourself shot or something, did you? Not after that close call you had a few months back. That must have been awful, by the way. I told your mama to give you my love.”

“She did,” Dinah confirmed. “And no, nothing’s happened since then.”

“Then you’re not recuperating? You didn’t catch some fatal disease?”

“No, I wasn’t shot and I’m not sick,” Dinah said. Her soul had broken and it couldn’t be mended in any hospital or even by a long rest at home. “I’m just tired.”

“Well, why on earth wouldn’t you be? Sometimes when I see you on the air and realize where you are and what you’ve seen, my heart just aches for you. Your mama and daddy must be over the moon knowing you’re safe and back for good.”

“Actually I haven’t told them yet. You’re the only one who knows. Well, besides Maybelle, and I’ve sworn her to secrecy. I’m asking you to keep this quiet, too. I’m not ready to explain it to anyone.” She gave Maggie a pointed look. “Not even you, okay?”

“No, it most definitely is not okay,” Maggie said. “What is wrong with you? What’s to explain? Tell them, Di. They’ll be ecstatic.” She regarded Dinah with concern. “If it’s something you can’t tell your parents, surely you can tell me. You know I’ll be discreet. I never told a living soul that you spent the night with Bobby after prom, instead of with me, did I? I won’t say a word about whatever you tell me now.”

“I know you wouldn’t, but my mind’s still reeling. I need to work this out before I talk about it. As for my parents being ecstatic, I’m not so sure about that,” Dinah said. “It’s true that they weren’t that happy when I left. Mother thinks anything outside South Carolina’s borders is Satan’s turf, but they’ve come to enjoy bragging about their little girl being a foreign correspondent. I think they’re going to be disappointed that I’m giving it up.”

“Don’t you believe that for one single second,” Maggie scoffed. “I can’t tell you how often your mama has said how much she misses you and wishes you’d come back here and settle down and give her some grandbabies.” She grinned impudently. “Those brats of your brother’s can’t be much fun,” she said, then amended politely, “No disrespect intended.”

Dinah laughed. “They are out of control, aren’t they? They were at the house for dinner night before last and it was all I could do not to suggest we hogtie ‘em and leave ‘em in the backyard till the rest of us had finished having a civilized meal. If my children turn out like that, please take me out and shoot me.”

“You couldn’t possibly have children like that,” Maggie said loyally. “You were raised by a Rawlings.”

“So was Tommy Lee,” Dinah noted, thinking about how oblivious her brother had seemed to his children’s bad behavior during the family dinner. He and their father had been at odds, too. She supposed she ought to sit down with Tommy Lee and figure out what was bugging him, but she knew she needed to get her own life straightened out before she could be a help to anyone else, even her own brother.

Maggie gave her a disbelieving look. “Maybe your mama influenced Tommy Lee, but men aren’t the ones who teach their children good manners. It’s left up to women. And your sister-in-law’s as sweet as can be, but she wasn’t exactly raised by a woman familiar with Emily Post’s rules on etiquette.”

Lord knows, that was true enough, Dinah thought. Her brother’s wife had narrowly escaped a troubled past and an uncertain future when she’d met Tommy Lee under circumstances no one ever dared ask about. That the two were head over heels in love had been enough for everyone to look the other way, with the possible exception of Dorothy Davis who made repeated attempts to bring her daughter-in-law up to her own high standards of conduct.

Unfortunately, all the lessons in the world weren’t going to turn Laurinda into anybody’s notion of a genteel Southern belle. Dinah almost admired the stubborn way she’d clung to her own identity. Standing up to Dorothy Davis took more courage than Dinah had ever had. In fact, her tendency to let her mother push her into doing things was one of the very many reasons she’d been so anxious to escape Charleston. It was bad enough that she’d undergone the torment of a debutante ball, but the prospect of having a lavish wedding to a suitable, hand-chosen man had been more than she could bear. She’d just about literally run for her life.

Now she was back and within the scope of all her mother’s plans. It didn’t bear thinking about.

“Let’s not talk about Laurie and Tommy Lee,” Dinah begged since thinking about those two had sent her off down memory lane.

“Then let’s get back to you,” Maggie agreed readily. “Why were you over at the Beauforts’ last night, anyway?”

“I went looking for Bobby.”

Maggie’s gaze narrowed with suspicion. “Because?”

“He’s an old friend, just like you. What other reason do I need?” Dinah asked, aware that a defensive note had crept into her voice.

Maggie regarded her blandly. “I don’t suppose it had anything at all to do with that ridiculous backup plan you two devised when you graduated from college and turned down his proposal.”

Dinah winced. That was the problem with sharing confidences with a woman who never forgot anything. Still, she feigned ignorance. “Backup plan?”

“You know, the one where the two of you get married if no one better comes along. I believe it was to kick in when your biological clock started ticking too loudly. I’m certain it was all on your terms. To this day I have no idea what Bobby got out of it, other than some dim hope that you’d eventually come to your senses.” Dinah cringed at the suggestion that she’d manipulated that agreement out of Bobby and that she was taking advantage of him even now. “You make it sound as if Bobby’s nothing more than a last resort.”

“Isn’t he?”

“Of course not. I just want to get together with him and catch up.”

“Is that some euphemism for getting him into your bed?”

“You’re being crass again,” Dinah accused. “It’s not about sex.”

“Then you’ve given up fame and fortune and rushed home because you suddenly had an epiphany in the middle of Afghanistan and realized that you’re wildly in love with him?” Maggie asked skeptically. “Because that’s the only reason that would justify you getting that poor man’s hopes all stirred up again after all these years.”

“I’ve always loved Bobby,” Dinah replied carefully. Not that he’d crossed her mind more than a half-dozen times in recent years and always with more fondness than passion. Good marriages had been built on a whole lot less, she told herself.

“Not the same thing as being in love with him,” Maggie replied. “Does your heart go pitter-pat when you see him?”

“I haven’t seen him in ten years,” she retorted irritably. The truth was her pulse had never skipped so much as a single beat at the sight of Bobby. He’d been comfortable and back then that’s all she’d wanted, a man who wouldn’t tangle her emotions into knots. That had left her free to pursue her own dreams.

Deep down Dinah recognized that Cord had seen her intentions and had set out in his own way to protect his brother, but Bobby hadn’t wanted his protection and she’d been shocked and angry that Cord would betray his brother’s trust the way he had.

“How would I know if Bobby turns me on?” she grumbled defensively.

“My point precisely,” Maggie said, clearly satisfied. She gave Dinah a knowing look. “I’ll bet Bobby has never once gotten you all worked up the way Cordell did just last night. Now there is a man worth throwing away a career just so you can have him climbing into your bed.”

Dinah thought of the way her blood had sizzled through her veins within ten seconds of trying to carry on a sensible conversation with Cord Beaufort. That was irritation, plain and simple. He’d been annoying her like that since they were toddlers.

“Bobby is sweet and kind and smart,” she repeated emphatically.

“And dull as dishwater,” Maggie countered. “You’ll be bored stiff in a week.”

“And you think Cord would be an improvement?”

“Definitely.”

“You’re out of your mind.” The very last thing she needed in her life was a man who made her feel prickly and restless, the kind of man who prided himself on taking women on some sort of emotional roller-coaster ride. She’d given up danger when she’d left Afghanistan.

Maggie grinned. “We’ll see,” she said with smug confidence.

Dinah decided it was past time to turn the tables on her friend. “What about you, Magnolia?” she inquired, deliberately using her friend’s hated real name. “Anyone special in your life? Since you seem so fascinated by Cordell, perhaps you should be encouraging him to give you a tumble.”

“I tried, to be perfectly honest,” Maggie admitted. “He wouldn’t give me a second look. I’m far too tame for the likes of Cordell.”

“And I’m not?”

“You play a form of roulette with car bombs and rebel gunmen,” Maggie replied. “I’d say that qualifies you for a man who likes living on the edge.”

Dinah sighed. Though no one here knew it, she’d fallen for a man like that, a man who courted real danger every day. She’d wound up with a broken heart. Of course, there was a vast difference between physical danger and the emotional minefield a woman would have to tiptoe through with Cord. Even so, Dinah wanted no part of it.

“I’ve had it with risk-taking,” she told her friend emphatically. “I think Bobby’s definitely the way to go.”

“But you haven’t caught up with him yet?”

“No. I asked Cord to have him call me, but so far I haven’t heard a word.”

“And you haven’t gone chasing after him?”

“Not yet.”

“Maybe that should tell you something,” Maggie suggested gently.

“What? That Cord didn’t pass on the message?”

“That, or maybe you don’t care enough to make the effort. Then, again, maybe it means that Bobby’s moved on with his life. It has been ten years. Even an eternal optimist can get tired of waiting around after that long.”

Dinah studied Maggie. “What do you know that I don’t?”

“Just that I don’t want you to be setting yourself up for disappointment if Bobby doesn’t fall right in with your plans.”

That was definitely something Dinah hadn’t considered. Maybe she really was a self-absorbed idiot to think he’d been waiting for her all this time. Their deal had merely been that they’d get together, if they happened to be available.

“You think he won’t?” she asked Maggie.

“I can’t say. That’s up to him.”

Dinah had a feeling there was something that Maggie was deliberately keeping from her. She usually wasn’t so circumspect. “If you know something you think I should know, tell me,” she commanded.

Maggie shook her head. “Not a chance. This is between you and Bobby.” She grinned. “And maybe Cordell. Something tells me he’s going to figure in this before all is said and done.”

“You are turning out to be almost as exasperating as he was,” Dinah accused lightly. “Doesn’t mean I’m not happy to see you, though. Can we have dinner soon?”

“My calendar’s disgustingly open. Just tell me when,” Maggie said. “Now I’d better get back to work before my employees stage a rebellion. The last time I took a long lunch they sold a valuable painting at half price. Said they couldn’t find a sticker on it, so they negotiated. They claimed their blood sugar had dropped so low, they forgot about the price list we keep in the file.”

Dinah chuckled at what was most likely no exaggeration. “I promise I’ll come by to see this gallery of yours in a day or two and we’ll schedule dinner.”

“Don’t wait too long,” Maggie ordered. “Or I’ll come looking for you.”

“It’s good to see you, Maggie. I’ve missed you,” Dinah said, giving her friend a fierce hug.

“Missed you more.”

Dinah stood on the sidewalk in front of Maggie’s place and watched her friend head off down the street to her successful gallery. She looked purposeful and confident, two traits Dinah wondered if she’d ever feel again.

Covington Plantation was a labor of love for Cord. Putting up with the board members and fighting for every penny to do the job right took more patience than waiting for the first cool breeze of fall, but it was going to be worth it to see this grand old house restored to its former glory.

For a kid who’d grown up in a place that was little more than a run-down shack, a house like this represented everything his home hadn’t been. It was solid and spoke of proud ancestors. His own ancestors had been unremarkable and there had been nothing dependable about the two people who’d raised him and Bobby. They’d contributed genes and not much else. It was the charity of others that had given him and Bobby a chance at a better life. As much as it had grated to accept the private-school tuition, the church handouts, the free lunches, they’d swallowed their pride and done it.

Bobby had fit in better than Cord. Even as a kid, he’d had an ingratiating way about him, while Cord had radiated little better than grudging tolerance for those who’d extended a helping hand. He’d seethed with ungracious resentment and unwarranted pride, but he had managed to keep it under wraps for Bobby’s sake and ultimately for his own.

He felt a whole lot better about it now, knowing that he had the respect of some of those same people who’d seen helping him and Bobby as their ticket into heaven. With the wisdom of age, Cord was just realizing that some of those folks were simply being generous because they’d seen two kids in trouble. They had honestly wanted to help put them on the right track.

It was a matter of pride, though, that he’d earned their respect, that they’d turned to him when they were ready to proceed with the Covington Plantation renovation. He hadn’t had to beg for the chance to bid, though he might have done it just for the opportunity to be a part of saving the house. As a kid he’d liked riding his bike out here.

He liked the stately old plantation house best early in the morning with the sun just starting to filter through the ancient trees and the sound of the birds breaking the silence. Sometimes as a boy, he’d sat on the front steps with a cold Coke in his hand and imagined he could hear the squabbles coming from the family inside or the distant singing of slaves working in the rice fields. Being here spoke to him of the past more clearly than any history teacher ever had.

He’d never want to go back to that sad time period, but now that he was all grown up, he liked knowing that he could preserve a little piece of it as a reminder of another era. More than that, he liked saving structures that had been meant to last, restoring their beauty and craftsmanship for future generations to enjoy.

Usually this half hour before his crew arrived was a tranquil time, but ever since Dinah Davis had come by the house in search of Bobby, there hadn’t been a peaceful moment in his life. That woman had gotten under his skin, just as she had years ago. A part of him wanted to put her in her place. Another part—the very male part of him—wanted to kiss that uppity expression off her face. He’d struggled with the same dilemma as far back as he could remember.

Okay, maybe not quite as far back as elementary school, but it had definitely crossed his mind starting with puberty. Even then he’d somehow known he would be better for her than Bobby, who’d followed her around like an adoring puppy. When he couldn’t stand his brother’s attitude a minute longer, he’d done something about it, something that had almost caused a permanent rift with his brother and had left Dinah hating his guts.

When his cell phone rang, he glanced at the caller ID and suffered a pang of remorse.

“Hey, Bobby,” he said, stuffing down the faint trace of guilt he felt over keeping his mouth shut about Dinah’s return. What was a little guilty silence, when the end result would be his brother’s happiness? “How’s it going in Atlanta?”

“We’re on schedule and under budget,” Bobby announced. “Which you would know if you read the reports I fax over there every damn day.”

Cord grinned. He enjoyed keeping up the pretense that he ignored all Bobby’s carefully detailed paperwork. It drove his brother nuts. “I believe I swept up a whole bagful of those reports just the other day. Summarize for me.”

Bobby did just that in tedious detail.

“Sounds like everything’s under control, then. You’re doing great work,” Cord praised. “That project’s going to be a real showcase for us and you deserve all the credit.”

The truth was that they made a great team. Bobby knew the construction trade almost as well as Cord did, but while Cord loved working with his hands and considered himself a skilled craftsman, Bobby excelled at staying on top of the details, working out cost projections and smooth-talking their backers. He was a natural for the Atlanta renovation project.

The Atlanta development was the most ambitious they’d done so far, encompassing an entire section of old buildings that had been destined for a wrecker’s ball until Bobby and Cord had put together a proposal and bid on the property. When it was finished, there would be shops, restaurants and apartments in high-ceilinged old buildings with glowing hardwood floors, beautiful crown molding and a dozen other historic touches rarely found in this day and age. They and their backers stood to triple their investment, to say nothing of what the finished project would do to move them into the ranks of the elite historical preservationists in the country.

Suddenly Cord recalled one of the first things Bobby had said. “Just how far ahead of schedule are you?”

“A few weeks. I’ll be back home before you know it, bro. I’ve got to tell you, I can’t wait. Living in a hotel room is getting on my nerves. I was thinking I might drive over this weekend. It would give us a chance to go over those other projects we’ve got lined up. We need to think about assigning someone to oversee them. There’s too much work for us to do it ourselves.”

Cord flinched. “No rush on that,” he said at once. “Just concentrate on wrapping things up in Atlanta. I’ve got everything here under control.”

“You still on speaking terms with the board at Covington?” Bobby asked worriedly.

Cord laughed. “Haven’t insulted anybody in a couple of days now, as a matter of fact.” Unless he took into account Dinah, but that was definitely not something he cared to share.

“You sure about that?” Bobby asked, his skepticism plain. “I know there was a big meeting this week and I know how you hate that kind of thing.” “We all survived it.”

“Any ruffled feathers need smoothing over?”

“None,” Cord assured him. “I was on my best behavior. I swear it.”

“Why don’t I find that nearly as reassuring as you evidently want me to?”

“Because you’re a suspicious kind of guy?” Cord suggested. Because he feared that sooner or later he’d slip up and mention Dinah, Cord balled up a piece of paper beside the mouthpiece of the phone. “Hey, Bobby, the connection’s going. We’ll talk again soon, okay?”

“Don’t you dare hang up on me. I know that trick,” he declared just as Cord hit the disconnect button.

Cord sighed, thanking his lucky stars that Bobby wasn’t the kind of man who asked about the latest gossip. When his phone immediately rang again, he ignored it.

The last thing Cord wanted to do was utter an outright lie. It was better for Bobby to keep right on working his tail off in Atlanta in blissful ignorance. Since Bobby also happened to have a fiancée, Cord could even tell himself he was being noble and protecting her interests as well.

Just then another fleeting image of Dinah Davis with her endless legs and lush curves popped into his head and made a liar out of him. That didn’t mean he intended to do anything about the attraction, he assured himself. He surely wasn’t going to go chasing after her.

But the best part of having known a female since childhood was the long-standing awareness of her weaknesses. Sooner or later frustration and indignation were going to kick in and Dinah was going to come to him.

Cord lifted his cup of coffee in a silent toast to predictability. God bless it! He’d gotten more women just by waiting them out than most men had with flowers and candy. Patience was a gift, no question about it. Luckily, he’d been born with an abundance of it.

4

Two weeks passed without a word from Bobby. Dinah was disappointed that he didn’t seem nearly as eager to renew their old relationship as she was. Or as she might be, she corrected. She wasn’t exactly sure what to expect. Was she just trying to find something to replace her career if she couldn’t conquer her post-traumatic stress issues and eventually go back to the network?

Acknowledging that possibility gave her a momentary twinge of guilt. Maybe Maggie was right. What right did Dinah have to disrupt Bobby’s life after ten years when she merely might be ready for marriage? Sure, at thirty-one her biological clock was probably ticking loudly, but she hadn’t even been listening to it until recently, not like a lot of women would be.

No, a relationship with Bobby was all about her desire to fill up her days with something that wouldn’t get her killed, to be around people who weren’t in danger of dying on a daily basis, to get her own equilibrium back.

Suddenly her reasons sounded damn selfish, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to meet Bobby and see how she would react. What was the point of having a backup plan if she wasn’t going to use it? If Bobby wasn’t interested in sticking to their deal then she’d have her answer. But how was she supposed to know how he felt without talking to him? Surely, after all they’d once meant to each other, he would at least tell her face-to-face that she was too late. He wouldn’t leave her twisting in the wind like this. It wasn’t one bit like him.

It was, however, a lot like Cord. There was always the very real possibility that Cord hadn’t gotten around to mentioning her visit to Bobby. It would be just like him to deliberately keep her message from his brother just to annoy her. It wouldn’t be the first time he’d done something totally underhanded to the two of them.

Another woman might have waited longer for Bobby to call on the off chance that he had made a conscious decision not to see her. Another woman might have feared being totally humiliated by the prospect of laying her heart bare and risking rejection, but Dinah wasn’t most women. She’d braved far greater risks than rejection.

Besides, she was growing restless and increasingly tired of trying to evade her mother’s worried interrogations. She’d come home on a mission. Perhaps it was a misguided one, but it was time she made something happen. Sitting around idle or being evasive wasn’t her style.

She intended to take Ray’s well-meant advice to heart. She was going to seriously consider getting married and having babies and put her dangerous, nomadic life behind her. She was beginning to wonder if she wouldn’t prefer being shot at, rather than bored to death but the instant that thought crossed her mind, she knew that she needed to find Bobby immediately. She couldn’t leave her fate in some other person’s hands, especially when that person was Cordell.

With that in mind, Dinah went shopping, found herself the prettiest little sundress in all of Charleston, then drove right back out to the Beauforts'. She planned on busting right past Cord if he was guarding the threshold again. This time she would see Bobby or find evidence that would point her in the direction of wherever he was.

As she made the trip, she realized what a wonder it was that she’d ever gotten to know Bobby and Cordell. They weren’t exactly poor, but they definitely hadn’t run in the same social circles as the Davises. They had been befriended by someone who did travel in the same circles and so Dinah had met them at an early age. Only much, much later had she realized the enormity of the gift that someone had given them by enrolling them in the best private schools in Charleston.

Cord had been a pain in the neck even then. Two years older and precocious, he’d seemed to sense that he and his brother were tolerated rather than accepted. He understood that they were in that fancy private school because of someone’s charity and he’d resented it. He’d set out to stir things up in a way that pretty much guaranteed that he wouldn’t even be tolerated by the time he hit his teens. Whoever their benefactor had been, he or she had let Cord’s ungrateful behavior pass. Maybe the person had even understood the cause of it. Dinah certainly hadn’t, not back then, anyway.

Of course, as time went by, that dangerous, rebellious streak had only made Cord more attractive to a certain group of risk-taking debutantes intent on giving their mothers the vapors. Dinah had most definitely not been one of them. If she’d held a secret fascination for the black sheep Beaufort brother, she’d been far too sensible to act on it. Even-tempered Bobby had suited her then and he suited her now. She’d come home in search of someone comforting, not a man who exasperated her at every turn, no matter what Maggie thought to the contrary.

Unfortunately, after she’d jarred her teeth driving over the rutted road that supposedly passed for a driveway, she found only Cordell. He was again sprawled in that shaded hammock, beer at his side, jeans riding low on his hips, his amazing abs now in full view. Her impression that he hadn’t changed from being a lazy, good-for-nothing jerk was correct. But for the first time Dinah couldn’t help but admire his body. Maggie had been right. God had given this man a real gift and he was wasting it out here in the middle of nowhere. He ought to pose for his own calendar, so women everywhere could ogle him in the privacy of their own homes. Dinah realized that even that would be too enterprising for Cord Beaufort.

When Cord didn’t immediately call out some insult, she concluded with relief that he was asleep. She decided to creep past him and go in search of Bobby.

She’d almost made it, when Cord’s hand snaked out and grabbed hers, hauling her to a stop. She couldn’t help noticing that despite his annoying, powerful grip, there was something amazingly sensual about the way her hand fit into his, the way his thumb rubbed a lazy little circle over her pulse. She swore to herself that the heat suddenly sizzling through her blood was due to the steamy afternoon temperature and had nothing at all to do with his almost hypnotic touch.

“I thought you were sleeping,” she accused, struggling to free herself.

“That’s not the first mistake you’ve made about me,” Cord said, his mouth curving into a grin. “I imagine you’re still prowling around looking for my brother.”

She saw no reason to deny it. “Yes.”

“He’s still out of town.”

Something in his overly-pleased tone told her that he most likely had something to do with that. “How much longer is he going to be gone?” she asked.

His gaze caught hers and held. “How long are you going to stick around Charleston?”

His words all but confirmed her suspicion. She scowled at him. “Why don’t you want me to see Bobby?”

Cord gave her a stunned look that was all innocence, or would have been if he were the sort to be constitutionally capable of maintaining an innocent act. Dinah acknowledged that it was a fairly decent attempt, though. Lord knew, he’d had enough practice perfecting it.

“Hey, my brother’s a grown man,” Cord told her. “He can see anyone he wants to see.”

“Then you’ve told him I’m here?”

He considered the question with a thoughtful expression. “Could be that it slipped my mind,” he finally admitted.

“Why?”

“I have a lot going on these days,” he said with a shrug. “I can’t remember everything.”

“Yeah, right. I can see for myself just how busy you are. It must be purely exhausting walking clear across the lawn to get your next beer.”

“Sugar, surely you’re not suggesting that I’m lying to you,” he said with a trace of feigned indignation.

“That’s exactly what I’m suggesting,” she retorted.

“Why would I want to keep you and Bobby apart?” he asked, feigning innocence once more.

“I was wondering that very thing myself. I don’t understand it today any better than I did ten years ago when you made up a whole passel of lies to try to come between us. What is it, Cord? Can’t you bear the thought of your brother being happy?”

“With you?” he asked with such blatant skepticism that Dinah winced.

“He loves me,” she retorted.

“Is that so?”

“He proposed to me.”

“When exactly was that?”

“A while back,” she said, unwilling to admit just how long ago it had been.

“Ten years,” Cord said, proving he knew more than Dinah had suspected. “And you assume he’s been sitting around here pining for you all this time? How insulting is that? Bobby and I may not be a bit alike, but saint that he is, he’s still a man with needs, if you know what I mean.”

As smart and intuitive as Dinah had always thought herself to be, she was forced to concede that she’d never seriously taken into account the possibility that Bobby might have moved on. She assumed he’d dated, but she’d only considered then dismissed the possibility he’d found a new love of his life. But maybe Cord was right. Maybe she was taking Bobby’s affections for granted. In light of the deep feelings she’d developed for someone else during the past ten years, she had to acknowledge the possibility Bobby had indeed found someone else.

Studying Cord, she asked, “Is your brother involved with someone else?”

Cord seemed to be debating the answer to that one, but he finally said, “You’ll need to ask him that yourself. I got in the middle of your business once. I won’t make that mistake again.”

“Meaning he isn’t, but you wish he were,” she concluded with a little sense of triumph. Or was it relief she felt?

“No, meaning this is between the two of you,” Cord responded flatly.

His careful dance around the question echoed what Maggie had told her, which was more disconcerting than Dinah cared to admit. They both implied that they were leaving out an important truth that they thought only Bobby had a right to share with Dinah. She decided to try to get to the bottom of it, though she’d probably have better luck with Maggie than with Cord. He had a stubborn streak that Maggie didn’t share. Still, Cord was here and her best friend wasn’t. She might as well push him a little and see what happened.

“It would be between Bobby and me if you’d given him my message,” she said. “As it is, you’re right in the thick of it, Cordell. Why is that? Surely you’re not jealous.”

His low chuckle grated on her nerves. It spoke volumes about what he thought of that explanation.

“It’s not as if I’m a bad catch,” she grumbled.

“You’d be a challenge, no question about it,” he replied, his smirk still firmly in place. “In fact, if I had to comment, I’d say you’re too much woman for my brother.”

“Now who’s being insulting to Bobby?” she retorted. “Bobby can handle me.”

“Is that so? Then this ridiculous backup plan the two of you hatched was his idea? He talked you into it?”

She frowned at that. “No.”

Cord cupped his ear. “What was that? Did you say no?”

“It would never have worked if Bobby and I had gotten married ten years ago. He knew that,” she said defensively.

“But it will work now?”

“Yes.”

“Because you’ve gone round the world sowing all your wild oats, so to speak?”

“I didn’t sow any oats, dammit. It wasn’t about that,” she said, feeling her temper kick in.

“Oh, that’s right. You had to go and make a name for yourself. You wanted to be somebody special. And now what? You’re ready to settle down and be my brother’s wife and let him count his lucky stars every night that you deigned to come back to him?”

“Why are you so determined to put an ugly spin on this? I don’t have to listen to you question my motives,” she declared, whipping around to go.

“Maybe you should listen,” he said, a quiet command in his voice that compelled her to turn back. “This is all about you, Dinah. I’d wager you haven’t spent more than a minute or two thinking about what might be best for Bobby. You probably sat over there in Afghanistan and got some bee in your bonnet about your own mortality and decided it was time to come home and play it safe. Bobby’s not the love of your life. He’s just convenient.”

Because there was an undeniable element of truth to his stinging words, Dinah flinched. She searched for a ready comeback to put him in his place, but there wasn’t one.

Just then the wind kicked up. Black clouds rolled in the sky above them. Dinah could all but feel the stir of electricity in the air.

“Looks like we’re in for a storm,” Cord noted without moving a muscle. “Run along, Dinah, before you get drenched. There’s nothing for you here.”

She hated the patronizing tone in his voice as much as she hated his dismissal. She would have said so, too, then taken off, if a bolt of lightning hadn’t split the sky just then, immediately followed by a crack of thunder.

Her brain told her this was nothing more than a good old-fashioned summer storm, the kind that hit hard, turned the hard-dried ground into rivers of mud, then passed on, leaving the air steamier than ever.

But her heart and her nerves took over her rational thought and she felt immediately transported back to Afghanistan where car bombs exploded and gunfire prevailed all around. She dropped to the ground, lay on her stomach, and heard her heart pounding so hard she thought it might explode, before the first drop of rain even fell from the sky. Humiliating whimpers escaped before she could stop them.

Two seconds later Cord was beside her, gathering her into his arms, holding her tight against all his solid strength and bare skin, murmuring soothing nonsense words as the storm raged around them. Dinah clung to him, no longer caring that he was the bane of her existence. She could hear the steady beat of his heart and her own pulse finally slowed to match it. Her terror eased, but still she clung, his skin warm and slick beneath her fingers.

“Sugar, I’m going to take you inside now, okay?” Cord said, his tone surprisingly gentle. All traces of animosity and disdain had vanished. “We need to get you dried off and cleaned up, okay?”

Dinah shivered uncontrollably, but managed to nod. She prayed he couldn’t distinguish between the rain and the tears spilling down her cheeks. Given that he’d seen her take a nosedive into the dirt at the sound of thunder, it seemed absurd to worry about having him see her cry, but she still had a tiny shred of pride left.

Of all people, why had it been Cordell who witnessed her coming unglued? It was just going to give him one more thing to gloat about, one more reason to say she wasn’t good enough for his brother. He’d probably tell Bobby that he’d have to be insane to take her on.

Inside the house, Cord started to set her down in an easy chair, but Dinah couldn’t let go of him. When he realized she wasn’t going to release him, he sat in the chair himself and held her cradled against his chest.

With surprisingly gentle fingers, he brushed damp curls away from her face. When she finally risked a glance at his expression, she saw not the contempt she’d expected but a combination of understanding and tenderness. It brought more salty tears to her eyes. Cordell Beaufort’s compassion was the last thing she’d expected, the very last thing she wanted.

They sat like that for an eternity, neither of them speaking. Dinah slowly lost the sensation that she was spinning out of control. When she finally relaxed and sighed, she caught a glimpse of the satisfaction on Cord’s face. Some of the tension in his body eased, as well.

In the back of her mind, she noted with more than a little surprise that he didn’t seem interested in taking advantage of the situation. Based on his reputation, the Cord of old would have turned this into a seduction, or at least an attempt at one. He’d have considered it his duty.

“You’ve been through a rough time, huh?” he said, breaking the silence.

The note of sympathy in his voice made her eyes sting with more tears. “I can’t talk about it,” she said. She didn’t even want to think about the last year and she certainly didn’t want to discuss it with him. Of course, not talking about it hadn’t worked all that well.

“Maybe you should. It usually helps with this sort of thing. Brings the demons out of the closet, so to speak.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said disdainfully.

“You think not? The Gulf War wasn’t much of a picnic, Dinah. There were …” He hesitated, seeming to search for a word. “After-effects,” he said eventually. “There were after-effects for a lot of us.”

She blinked at that. “You were there? You had post-traumatic stress syndrome?”

He nodded, his face empty of expression. “Still do, I suppose.”

“And?”

“I survived.”

She gave him a wry look. “Apparently you don’t think what’s good for the goose is good for the gander. You could be a little more forthcoming than that.”

“It’s been more than ten years, Dinah. I’ve done my talking. I’ve put most of it behind me, at least as well as anyone ever can.”

“How?” she asked, unable to keep the plaintive note out of her voice. She hated sounding vulnerable, especially in front of Cord, but she needed to know that the dreams, the panic attacks would eventually end.

“Time, mostly.”

Dinah sighed. “I’m not sure there’s enough of that left in my lifetime.”

He gave her a faint grin. “You’re not that far over the hill, Dinah. You’ve probably got at least one or two good years left.”

“Sometimes I feel ancient,” she responded wearily.

A whisper of a breeze stirred over them and Dinah shivered, then realized that they were both sitting under a ceiling fan soaking wet. Though she hated leaving the unexpected comfort of his embrace, she pushed away and stood.

“I should go.”

“Not when it’s pouring like it is out there. The driveway will be a sea of mud. You’ll just get stuck and then I’ll have to tow you out of a ditch.”

As much as she wanted to go now that the panic had faded, she knew he was right. “Why don’t you pave the stupid driveway?” she grumbled.

He chuckled. “Because keeping it like it is generally keeps away unwanted visitors.” He gave her an insolent once-over that heated her blood. “Lately it’s not working half as well as it’s meant to. Some people apparently can’t take a hint.”

He stood up slowly and tucked a finger under her chin. “Stay put, okay? I’m going to get you one of my shirts and a towel, then you can take a warm shower and dry off while I throw your clothes in the washer.”

His sudden kindness was confusing her. She wasn’t sure how to react to it. It was easier to deal with Cord when he was being exasperating. “Why are you being so damn nice to me?”

“Maybe I don’t want you suing me for letting you catch pneumonia on my property.”

She gave him a disbelieving look. “I don’t think you can file lawsuits for something like that.”

“You have no idea what people will sue over these days. The world’s a crazy place. Now, are you going to stay put like I asked, or are you going to be stubborn and try to set out in this weather?”

“I’m stubborn, not stupid. I’ll stay, at least till the storm’s over.”

Something told Dinah there was a distinct possibility she was going to live to regret it.

Cord listened to the shower running in his bathroom and thanked his lucky stars that he’d gotten Dinah out of that sexy, soaking wet sundress and sent her off to change before she’d noticed that he was completely and totally aroused by the sight and feel of her. She’d fit a little too snugly in his arms, smelled a little too provocative. Her dress, respectable enough when dry, had been way too revealing when wet.

Sweet heaven, what was he thinking? Him and Dinah Davis? No chance in hell. She might be grateful to him right this second, but she’d come to her senses before the night was out and remember that she hated him, that she had good reason to. Add in that he was just too low class for her and any relationship between the two of them was doomed.

What grated was that he was certain now that she’d never dismissed Bobby as low class. Hell, she was all set to marry his brother, or thought she was. Cord figured it would be a cold day in hell before that happened.

By the time he heard the shower cut off, Cord had poured a couple of beers into glasses, mostly to prove he could be civilized when it suited him. He’d put a couple of chicken breasts topped with mushroom gravy into the oven to bake. He was in the process of making a salad when Dinah came into the kitchen.

She didn’t make a sound when she entered, but he knew she was there just the same.

“What’s all this?” she asked.

“Dinner. I figure even people who watch their waistlines for the camera have to eat something. Besides, the adrenaline rush from one of those attacks always left me starved.”

“What’s in the oven?”

“Chicken.”

“It smells … good,” she said hesitantly, with yet another note of surprise in her voice.

Cord grinned, though he was glad she couldn’t see his face. He doubted she would appreciate knowing how much she amused him with her faltering attempts to be polite. “You keep dishing out those lavish compliments, sugar, you’re going to turn my head.”

“I was trying to be polite,” she said crossly.

“I get that, but there’s no need to try so hard. Us low-lifes don’t expect much. A simple please and thank-you now and then will do.”

He turned to set the salad on the table and got his first good look at her in one of his old light-blue dress shirts. He damn near swallowed his tongue. He should have remembered how those long, bare legs of hers affected him. If he had, he would have come up with something else for her to put on … maybe baggy sweatpants, even if it was still eighty-eight degrees, despite the storm passing overhead.

“Why don’t you have a seat?” he suggested when he could speak without stammering. He needed to get those legs of hers out of sight before he started to imagine them wrapped around his waist while he buried himself inside her.

He yanked open the freezer door and stuck his head in, wishing it could be another part of his overheated anatomy.

“What are you looking for?” she asked, sounding puzzled.

“Ice,” he said.

“Isn’t that an ice dispenser on the door?” she inquired, amusement in her voice.

Cord cursed the oversize, stainless steel refrigerator Bobby had insisted they buy. “Broken,” he lied tersely. He turned back to the table with a handful of ice, almost regretting that he couldn’t shove it down the front of his jeans.

“I see,” Dinah said, though she still looked skeptical. “And what was it you needed the ice for?”

“Water,” he said at once, dumping the handful of cubes into a glass, then running tap water over them and drinking every drop of the cold water straight down. It slaked his thirst, but did nothing for the hunger that had been gnawing at him since he’d gotten a good look at Dinah in his shirt.

He busied himself with getting the rest of their dinner on the table, grateful that Dinah had finally gone silent. Maybe she’d realized just how close he was to hauling her into his arms and kissing her senseless.

When he finally sat down at the table, she studied him quizzically. It was the kind of curious, penetrating look that he imagined her using on some reluctant interview subject. No wonder she’d won so many awards. All but squirming under that gaze, he’d have told her just about anything she wanted to know.

“What have you been doing with yourself all these years?” she asked eventually.

Cord was a little surprised her mother hadn’t told her, maybe not about the company, but at least about his role in the restoration of Covington Plantation. Then, again, maybe he wasn’t a hot topic for the Davis women.

“This ‘n that,” he said, not sure why he didn’t want to tell her the truth and disprove once and for all the apparently low impression she had of him. In the end he figured he wasn’t the bragging type.

She frowned at his response. “Don’t you think you should have found steady work by now?”

“Oh, I do well enough,” he said.

“You can’t rely on Bobby to support you,” she said.

Her assumption that he was dependent on Bobby’s largess stuck in his craw. “Oh? How do you know it’s not the other way around? Maybe I’ve been carrying Bobby all these years.”

She gave him a look filled with undisguised skepticism. “Please, Cordell. We both know that Bobby would never depend on you. He got an excellent college education, which I’m sure he’s put to good use.”

Cord could barely suppress a grin at her uppity tone. “Is that so? And just how much do you know about what Bobby’s been doing since you took off? Maybe he’s gotten friendly with Jack Daniels and hasn’t done a lick of work. Wouldn’t be the first time one of the Beaufort men couldn’t hold his liquor.”

She looked a bit flustered by the question. “Are you telling me that your brother is an alcoholic?”

“Nope. Just saying you can’t possibly know one way or the other. You’ve made a lot of assumptions in the last couple of weeks, or am I wrong? Have folks been filling your head with tales, Dinah?”

“No, I haven’t heard anything specific,” she admitted. “But I do know you.”

He shook his head at her confident tone. “Oh, sugar, I wouldn’t be too sure of that. The truth is you don’t have a clue about either one of us. Never have. Never will.”

She regarded him with a huffy expression. “I’ve known you since grade school, Cordell. Bobby was always thoughtful, generous and hardworking. You were an arrogant, smart-alecky kid without a lick of ambition and I don’t see any evidence that you’ve changed a bit.”

He laughed at that. “Then you must not be half the journalist you’re cracked up to be.”

“Meaning what?” she asked, her cheeks pink with indignation.

“That you must have missed all those lessons on objectivity and fact-gathering. You’re making assumptions right and left here.”

“Then set me straight,” she retorted at once.

“Why should I?” he asked. “I think it’s going to be a whole lot more entertaining to let you make a few discoveries all on your own.”

5

Twenty-four hours after humiliating herself in front of Cord and with his indictment of her fact-finding skills still ringing in her ears, Dinah went in search of Maggie for information. If Cord wasn’t going to tell her anything about Bobby or himself, then she was just going to have to drag it out of her best friend. Besides, it had already been a couple of weeks since she’d promised to go by the gallery and set up a date for dinner. Surely once she was there she could lull Maggie into revealing something helpful about Bobby’s whereabouts.

She found Images on a narrow alley in downtown Charleston, only a few blocks from the Battery. It had a lovely wrought-iron fence, climbing rosebushes in full and fragrant bloom in the tiny courtyard, and old brick that had faded to a lovely shade of pink. Everything about it spoke of charm and class. Knowing her friend as she did, Dinah hadn’t expected anything less than the classiest of businesses. Maggie had always had excellent taste, even though she’d occasionally rebelled against it.

A bell rang when Dinah opened the door and Maggie emerged from the back, a smile spreading across her face when she saw her friend.

“It’s about time you came by,” she declared.

“I know,” Dinah said readily. “I’m sorry it’s taken me so long.”

“I’m sure you’ve been busy. Knowing your folks, they’re probably still showing you off every evening.”

“Not really. I called a halt to that after the first few days. The last thing I want is to be trotted out like some visiting celebrity. It’ll just make it that much harder to explain to everyone when I don’t go back overseas on another assignment.”

Maggie’s gaze immediately narrowed. “What’s up, then? Is everything okay? Come on in the back and I’ll pour us both some tea and we can talk.”

“Not till I’ve had a look around,” Dinah said, mostly out of genuine interest, but also to put off Maggie’s inevitable questions.

She made a slow turn in the main room, admiring the watercolors that hung on the walls and the sculptures and art glass displayed on an assortment of antiques that Maggie had obviously brought from her family’s home. It was an eclectic mix set against a backdrop of warm wood furniture, gleaming oak floors and creamy walls. The effect was inviting, not intimidating, though the price tags certainly put the inventory several steps above most people’s pocketbooks. She imagined that Images had a very wealthy clientele, mostly from Charleston’s oldest families and the recently rich who needed to add the look of family heirlooms to their homes.

“Very, very elegant,” she said at last. “You have a good eye, not just for the art, but for how to showcase it. I’m impressed.” She gestured toward a familiar desk that had once been in the Forsythes’ living room. “You’re not selling off the family treasures, are you?”

“Hardly. My mother’s horrified enough that I insisted on bringing some of Great-grandmother’s prized pieces to a shop. If she thought they might wind up in someone else’s home, she’d probably disown me. As it is, I’ve convinced her to think of this as an unofficial museum.” She grinned. “It helped that it gave her an excuse to go shopping for some new furniture for the house.”

“You have a great talent for display, though,” Dinah said, truly impressed. “I imagine everyone who comes in wants to take the entire package—art and presentation.”

Maggie beamed at the compliment. “Does that mean I can sell you something before you leave? It’s been a slow morning.”

“You could if I had someplace to put it. Unfortunately our house is packed to the rafters, as you well know.”

“I remember,” Maggie said. “Isn’t it time you started to look for a place of your own, if you’re going to stick around? Just think how beautifully you’ll be able to furnish it with all those antiques your folks have hidden away in the attic. I could help you sort through them.” Her expression brightened. “And I know the perfect place for you. There’s a wonderful carriage house on the market just a few blocks from here. The owner’s anxious to sell because she’s relocating to California, so I imagine you can get a good deal if you act quickly.”

Dinah automatically shook her head. “No, thanks. I’m not ready for that.”

“But you just said …” Maggie regarded her with confusion. “Surely you don’t want to go on living at home.”

“It’s not forever,” Dinah said. “Just till I get my bearings.”

“Get your bearings? Are you sure you’re not afraid that you’ll change your mind about staying?”

“That’s one reason,” Dinah admitted. Not even to herself had she contemplated what she would do if Bobby didn’t fall right in with her plans for the two of them.

“And the other? I hope you’re not counting on moving into someplace with Bobby,” Maggie said, frowning.

“You say that as if it’s a totally ridiculous notion,” Dinah said, grateful that her friend had given her the perfect opening for her interrogation. She used her very real annoyance to lay out the questions she wanted answered. “Why is that, Maggie? What do you know about Bobby that you’re not telling me?”

Maggie didn’t look the slightest bit intimidated by her accusatory tone. She held up her hands. “Not my place to say another word.”

“You and Cord,” Dinah muttered in disgust. “You’re both tossing out all these maddening hints and innuendoes, but neither one of you has the guts to just say what’s on your mind. I never thought I’d live to see the day when I’d be lumping you in with Cordell Beaufort. You’re supposed to be my friend.”

“I am your friend, which is why I have no intention of getting caught in the middle of this. I’ve already told you my opinion and you’ve rejected it, so I’m staying out of it from now on,” Maggie replied. “And when did you see Cord again, by the way?”

“What makes you think I’ve seen him again?”

“Because it’s obvious you’re still exasperated. Since you rarely hold a grudge for long, I figure he must have done something recent to get you all stirred up again. Am I right? Have you seen him?”

Dinah saw no real point in hiding it beyond depriving Maggie of a chance to gloat. “Last night, if you must know.”

Maggie’s eyes brightened. “Oh, really? How utterly fascinating.”

“It wasn’t fascinating. It was exasperating.” And maybe just a little surprising, when she thought about how gently he’d held her when she’d suffered another one of those disconcerting panic attacks. “Stop trying to make something out of me running into Cordell.”

If anything, Maggie only looked more amused. “Where did the two of you cross paths? The grocery store, perhaps? On the street?”

“Back out at his place,” Dinah admitted defensively. “And don’t even go there. I can see that you want to make something out of that, but I went back to look for Bobby. Period.”

“I was merely going to comment that you seem to be making yourself at home out there,” Maggie teased.

“I’ve been there twice,” Dinah replied impatiently. Then, since Maggie didn’t seem to be buying it, she added emphatically, “Both times looking for Bobby.”

“Has it occurred to you yet that you’re looking for him in the wrong place?”

Dinah stared at her in sudden confusion. “What do you mean? He lives there, doesn’t he?”

“Usually,” Maggie said.

Dinah bit back a groan. “What does that mean? Please don’t tell me he’s living right here in town.”

“Actually you might have better luck finding him in Atlanta,” Maggie admitted with apparent reluctance.

“Atlanta? What on earth is he doing in Atlanta?” She frowned at Maggie. “And don’t tell me you don’t know because I can tell that you do. It’s time to start spilling some information, Maggie, or I’m going to have to wonder if you’re not as anxious as Cord is to keep the two of us apart. He has a history of it. You don’t.”

Maggie sighed. “You’re really not going to drop this whole ridiculous notion you have about getting together with Bobby, are you?”

“No. At least not till I’ve spoken to him and he tells me that he wants no part of what we used to have.”

“That’s what I was afraid of. Okay, he’s over in Atlanta working.”

“Permanently?”

“No. He’s been handling a project over there for a while now, a few months at least.”

“Why the hell didn’t Cord just tell me that?” Dinah grumbled, the scowled at Maggie. “Why didn’t you?”

“I just did.”

“You could have mentioned it the other day. I could have seen him in Atlanta by now.”

“What would have been the fun in that?” Maggie asked. “I’ve already told you that I think you’re wasting your time on Bobby. Personally, I like the idea of you and Cord butting up against each other and setting off sparks for a while. I think it’s just what you need.”

“I don’t,” Dinah replied emphatically. “So just tell me what you know. How can I reach Bobby in Atlanta? Do you suppose he’s renting someplace? Or is he staying in a hotel?”

Maggie shrugged. “I have no idea. You could ask Cord.”

Dinah frowned at the suggestion. “I am done asking Cordell anything at all.”

Maggie’s lips twitched. “Is that because you don’t like the answers he’s giving you or because you’re starting to like the fireworks a little too much?”

Dinah regarded her friend impatiently. “You really need to get a life.”

“Probably so,” Maggie agreed readily. “But until I do, I’m happy to meddle in yours.”

“Stop it,” Dinah pleaded. “Especially if you have some insane notion that Cord and I are the perfect match.”

“Maybe not perfect,” Maggie said thoughtfully. “But darn close, and definitely hot.”

Dinah gave her a helpless look. “You’ve never even seen us together. What makes you think there is anything hot between us?”

“Oh, sweetie,” Maggie said, laughter in her eyes, “even if a woman would have to be dead not to react to Cord, it’s written all over your face every time you mention his name. The man ties you up in knots.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dinah scoffed, then hesitated. Much as she hated to admit it, Maggie did know her well. “What do you think you see when I mention Bobby?”

“Comfortable,” Maggie said at once.

“Perfect,” Dinah said happily. “Comfortable is exactly what I’m after.”

“Maybe so, but it’s not what’s best for you and it is definitely not what will make you happy, not for the long haul.”

“And you know that because?”

“Because I’ve known you all your life and I know your deepest, darkest secrets. Cordell Beaufort was always the one who made your heart pound.”

“Only because he infuriated me,” Dinah snapped. “Which you are starting to do, as well.”

Maggie merely laughed. “Because you know I’m right. Now that we’ve established that, let’s talk about dinner. Are you free tonight?”

So she could listen to more of Maggie’s absurd theories?

Not a chance, Dinah thought. “I’m busy tonight,” she said.

“Doing what? Trying to track down Bobby?”

“Yes, as a matter of fact. If he doesn’t have a number listed with information, I will call every hotel in Atlanta till I find him,” she said with grim determination. Maggie and Cord might be totally opposed to this, but she knew what she needed and it was Bobby Beaufort. “If there’s one thing I know how to do, it’s how to work the phones to find someone who doesn’t want to be found.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier just to ask Cord?” Maggie repeated.

“Been there, done that,” Dinah reminded her. “Whatever his reasons, Cord doesn’t seem inclined to share what he knows.”

Besides, if there was any chance at all that Maggie might have it exactly right about her attraction to Cordell, Dinah needed to keep the contact between them to a minimum. She couldn’t afford to be distracted by something that didn’t have a chance of turning into anything more than a wild, no doubt self-destructive fling.

The minute Dinah got home she headed straight for her father’s den. He kept all sorts of phone books around. There was bound to be one for Atlanta. The bank probably did a lot of business there.

She was sitting on the antique Aubusson carpet, pulling phone books out of a credenza and piling them haphazardly on the floor, when Maybelle came in.

“What on earth are you doing in here?” the housekeeper demanded, looking dismayed. “Besides making a mess of your daddy’s stuff, that is. You know how he likes everything in order. Never known a man to be so set in his ways.”

Dinah grimaced. Maybelle was right about that. When he noticed them at all, Marshall Davis liked his life and his surroundings to be orderly.

“I’ll put it all back,” Dinah promised, then grinned. “How many times do you suppose you came in here and had to set things to rights before Daddy came home and pitched a fit?”

“Once a day from the time you could walk,” Maybelle responded at once, a tolerant smile on her face at the memory.

“And how many times did he find me out, anyway?”

“Most every one,” Maybelle said, grinning. “That daddy of yours surely did dote on you, though. If your mother or me got so much as a paper clip out of place in here, he’d raise the roof. If it was Tommy Lee, he’d paddle his behind. But if it was you who turned things upside down, he’d just smile and say one day that curiosity of yours was going to pay off big-time. Turned out he was right about that.”

Even so, Maybelle frowned at the chaos Dinah had created. “You’re too big for me to be following around after you and cleaning up your messes, young lady. You put those things back before your daddy gets home, you hear. He might not be so tolerant these days. You’re a grown-up woman who ought to know better than to mess with someone else’s things.”

“It’s a few phone books, Maybelle. Not top secret files.”

“In his mind, there’s not much difference.”

Dinah laughed. “Stop fussing. I can handle Daddy.”

After the housekeeper left, Dinah finally found the current Atlanta phone directory and flipped through the pages. She found two Robert Beauforts and one Bobby, but after calling all three numbers, it was evident none was the right man. She called information to see if there happened to be a more recent listing that hadn’t made the directory, but she struck out there, too.

That left hotels and motels, she concluded with a sigh. She dragged over the Yellow Pages and started with the downtown hotels. It was a mindless, tedious task, but that was just about all she could cope with.

She’d made at least a dozen fruitless calls, when she heard her father’s voice escalating in the foyer. It was countered by her mother’s equally exasperated response. Dinah sat there in shock. She’d never heard either of them raise their voices. It wasn’t that they hadn’t had disagreements. It was just that her mother especially had been brought up to believe that a raised voice was unseemly. She soothed and placated when it was called for. She certainly didn’t shout.

Listening to them now, but unable to discern what the argument was about, Dinah sat frozen in place. She’d always assumed that her parents’ marriage was calm, if not passionate. She’d seen nothing since coming home to change that view. So, what had she missed? Was this heated discussion an anomaly or was it a significant symptom of a problem they’d been hiding from her? Did they feel free to argue now because they thought she was out of the house? Or were they so furious that they simply didn’t care if she overheard? Whatever the explanation was, hearing them was an unwelcome shock.

She was tempted to open the door and step into the hallway, but concluded that would only embarrass all of them. She stayed where she was and hoped that her father would go upstairs to change clothes, rather than stepping directly into his den as he usually did.

Luck wasn’t with her. The door to the den opened and he stalked into the room, slamming the door shut behind him. When he spotted Dinah, he stopped short. Embarrassment sent a tide of red flooding his handsome, patrician face.

“You heard, I suppose,” he said, looking chagrined.

“Just that you were arguing,” she said. “Not what it was about.”

He nodded slowly. “That’s good, then.”

“Can I help?”

His lips curved slightly. “Your mother and I have been working out our own problems for a lot of years now. I don’t think we need counseling from you.”

He said it without rancor, but somehow it stung. Dinah busied herself with putting away the phone directories to avoid having him see the hurt that was in her eyes. Maybe she hadn’t been around for years now, but she still considered herself to be a part of this family, not some intrusive outsider. Her father finally muttered a curse under his breath, then hunkered down beside her. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings, Dinah. I was just trying to say that there’s no need for you to get all worked up over this. Your mother and I have been doing this a long time now. We’ve survived so far.”

Dinah regarded him with disbelief. “I never once heard the two of you argue.”

“Because we didn’t want you to,” he said reasonably. “Sounds as if we did one thing right.”

She studied him curiously. “You did a lot of things right. You were great parents.”

“Thanks for saying that, though it seems like you’re revising history a bit,” he said, his eyes suddenly sparkling with amusement. “Didn’t you tell us we were smothering you right before you left for New York and college?”

“Of course I did,” she said, nudging him with her elbow. “How else do you think I’d have gotten out of here without drowning the two of you in tears? There was a part of me that wanted to stay right here in my safe little cocoon.”

His expression sobered and he gave her a penetrating look. “Is that what you’re doing now, hunkering down someplace safe?”

Apparently Dinah had always sold her father short. It seemed he had more intuition than she’d ever given him credit for. “Maybe just a little,” she admitted.

“Did something happen over there?” he asked. “I mean something worse than the obvious mayhem you must have seen on a daily basis?” He searched her face, a worried crease in his forehead. “Dammit, Dinah, did someone hurt you?” he demanded angrily.

She winced at his sharp tone. “A lot of things happened over there,” she said a little too lightly, hoping to change the entire tenor of the conversation. She knew the kind of things he must be imagining and she didn’t want to go there.

“You know what I mean, Dinah,” he chided. “If there’s something on your mind, if you were hurt in some way—any way—you surely know that you can talk to me or your mother about it. Does it have anything to do with what happened a few months ago? Were you just covering up when you said you were fine so we wouldn’t worry?”

“I am fine and I do know I can always talk to you.”

He lifted his brows at her quick response. “Of course, you should know that, but just in case you’d rather talk to someone else, I do know a few people who are good listeners and more impartial than your mother and I.”

She gave him a startled look. “You mean a shrink?” It was the very last thing she’d ever expected to hear her father suggest.

He seemed amused by her surprise. “Yes, a shrink. There’s no shame in asking for help, Dinah. I imagine a lot of folks coming home from that war over there could use professional counseling to deal with what they’ve been through. When I came back from Vietnam, I wish I’d done that, rather than wrestling with all those demons on my own.”

His admission barely registered, though she knew it was something she would ponder later. It wasn’t the same for her. She wasn’t a troubled soldier.

“I don’t need a psychiatrist,” she said sharply. “I’m just a little tired. A couple more weeks of rest and I’ll be good as new.”

Her father didn’t look as if he believed her, but he nodded finally. “So what were you looking for in here? Can I help?”

She realized that he might very well know exactly how she could get in touch with Bobby, but she didn’t want to ask. She wasn’t entirely sure why, either. Maybe it was because she didn’t want to have to explain to her very traditional father why she wanted to find a man she hadn’t seen in more than a decade. Or maybe it was because she was afraid he, like Cord and Maggie, would not agree hers was a good idea and then withhold some crucial piece of information.

“I’d just like to borrow one of your phone books, if you don’t mind,” she said.

“Of course,” he said at once. “Just put it back when you’re finished.”

“Believe me, I will,” she said fervently, taking the Atlanta directory and giving her father a quick kiss before heading back up to her room.

She assured herself it was better to finish this search the way she’d started … on her own.

After all, she thought a little ruefully, she’d been independent and proud of it for a number of years now. Somehow, though, in recent months independence had lost its allure.

6

Dorothy was still seething over her argument with Marshall. He refused to attend an important function Dorothy had arranged for them to attend together.

“Go on your own,” he’d told her when he’d arrived home from work just as she’d walked in the door after a rather tedious meeting. “You love that sort of thing, but you know I hate it.”

She’d stared at him incredulously. “Since when?”

“Since forever.”

“You were always eager enough to go in the past, when it suited your business interests,” she’d reminded him, her voice ringing with impatience.

“No, I’ve been accommodating long enough,” he corrected. “Tonight I’m tired and I have no intention of going out again. If you don’t want to go alone, call Tommy Lee. I’m sure he’d be happy enough to escort you. Our son needs to spend a little time cultivating those people, if he expects to take over at the bank someday.”

She’d stared at him in shock. “What do you mean if?“ she’d demanded, her voice rising to a level she’d never in her life resorted to before. Then again, Marshall had never been more exasperating than he was being right at this moment.

“I don’t mean anything,” he said in the tone that indicated just the opposite. It merely meant he was tired of the whole subject. To prove it, he’d walked away from her, gone into his office and slammed the door.

Now she sat in front of her dressing table mirror and stared at her reflection. What on earth was happening to them? It was as if she was suddenly married to a stranger.

Their marriage had never been the passionate love match that some of their friends claimed to have, but they’d been well-suited in many ways. They’d found a rhythm for their lives that worked, especially after their children were born. Her role had been to support Marshall’s busy career, raise their children and to be socially active in a way befitting their standing in the community. She’d always accepted that she and a small cadre of her friends were the style-setters in town.

Charleston was, in many ways, still a small town with a well-defined hierarchy. With their combined family backgrounds, it had been a foregone conclusion that they’d be accepted as a part of the crème de la crème of Charleston society, but maintaining that lofty position required real effort. It wasn’t enough to send the occasional check to charity or to be seen at the right galas. They’d had to serve as chairmen of key events, which meant that she did the work and Marshall reaped the rewards. For a time she’d done it gladly.

It was only in recent years that it had all begun to bother her. She’d found her own worthwhile causes and put her time and energy into those. Maybe that was where the gulf now evident between them had started.

Tonight she’d been forced to face the fact that it would take a sturdy bridge to cross that deepening chasm.

When someone tapped on the bedroom door, she assumed it was Dinah, but it was Marshall who entered. She regarded him with dismay. She wasn’t up to another angry exchange.

“Unless you’ve come to say you’ve changed your mind about tonight, you can leave,” she said coolly.

Instead of doing as she asked, he sank down on the edge of the bed. “I came to talk about Dinah.”

“Now?” she asked incredulously.

“Yes, now, dammit! I came to tell you that I just had a very disturbing conversation with her. I saw for the first time what you meant when you came by the office to discuss your concern, Dorothy. She’s obviously distraught over something. I think we need to get to the bottom of it.”

Dorothy put aside her annoyance and turned to face him. The encounter must have been troubling indeed if it had put such a worried frown on his face. “What do you suggest we do?”

He regarded her with a helpless expression. “I have no idea. This is your area of expertise.”

She smiled at that. “At least I still have one skill that you admire.”

He frowned at her bitter comment. “What the hell do you mean by that? Can’t you put aside whatever differences you have with me for one minute and concentrate on our daughter?”

She bit back a sharp retort and held up her hand. “I agree that now’s not the time, Marshall. Let’s concentrate on Dinah. Did she tell you anything?”

“Nothing,” he admitted. “But something happened to her over there. Something bad. I’d stake my life on it. She says it wasn’t that incident she was involved in a few months ago, but I’m not convinced she’s being entirely truthful.”

Alarm spread through her. “You don’t think she was …?” She couldn’t even bring herself to say the word.

“Raped?” he said with a visible shudder. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think we can rule it out. I don’t think we can rule out any sort of atrocity at this point.”

“Oh, dear God.”

He took her hand in his. “Come now, Dorothy. Don’t fall apart on me. We don’t know it was anything like that, but she’s been living in an uncivilized atmosphere. Anything’s possible. Since she refused to tell me anything, I tried to get her to agree to talk to a psychologist I know, but she refused. Do you think she’s talking to her friends?”

“No. I don’t even think she’s seen anyone outside of Maggie.”

“Maybe Maggie knows something, then,” he suggested.

“I’ll call her,” Dorothy said at once. “First thing in the morning. For now, though, I’d better finish dressing. I’m running late.”

Marshall hesitated, then regarded her with a faintly sheepish expression. “Perhaps I will go with you tonight, after all, unless you’ve made other arrangements.”

“No. I did speak to Tommy Lee, but he and Laurie already had other plans.”

“They’re probably line-dancing at some country-western bar,” he suggested, his tone scathing. “That seems to be the kind of entertainment they go for these days.”

She frowned at him. “This isn’t the first time you’ve hinted that you’re unhappy with Tommy Lee. Would you care to explain?”