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  “That’s more or less what I had in mind, yes,” Micah told his sons, doing his very best not to laugh at their facial expressions.

  Covering his face, Gary declared, “Yuck!” with a great deal of feeling.

  “Yeah,” Greg cried, mimicking his brother, “double yuck!”

  Micah slipped an arm around each little boy’s very slim shoulders and pulled them to him. He would miss this when the boys were older, miss these moments when his sons made him feel as if he was the center of their universe.

  “Come back and tell me that in another, oh, ten, fifteen years,” he teased.

  “Okay,” Gary promised very solemnly. “We will, Daddy.”

  “Yeah, we will!” Greg echoed, not to be outdone.

  Micah’s aunt, Sheila Barrett, stood in the living room doorway, observing the scene between her nephew and her grandnephews. Her mouth curved in a wide smile. While she lived not too far from Micah, it felt as if this was more her home than the place where she received her mail. She took care of the boys when her nephew was at work, which, unless one of his sons was sick, was most of the time.

  “They picked that mug out themselves,” she told Micah, in case he thought that this was her idea. “They absolutely refused to look at anything else after they saw that mug. They thought it was perfect for you.”

  “And of course you tried to talk them out of it,” Micah said, tongue in cheek. His amusement was there, in his eyes.

  Sheila shrugged nonchalantly. “The way I see it, Micah, little men in the making should be as free to exercise their shopping gene as their little female counterparts.”

  “Very democratic of you,” Micah commented, the corners of his mouth curving. Aunt Sheila had always had a bit of an unorthodox streak. He learned to think outside the box because of her. He sincerely doubted that he would be where he was today if not for her. “Well, just for that, I’m taking all of you out for lunch.”

  “Aunt Sheila, too?” Greg asked, not wanting to exclude her.

  “Aunt Sheila most especially,” Micah told his younger son. There was deep affection in his voice. “After all, Aunt Sheila is the real mom around here,” he emphasized pointedly.

  Clearly confused, Greg turned to look at the woman who came by every morning to take him to preschool and his brother to kindergarten. Every afternoon she’d pick them both up and then stayed with them until their father came home. Some nights, Aunt Sheila stayed really, really late.

  “Aunt Sheila has kids?” Greg asked his father, surprised.

  Sheila smiled, answering for Micah. “I have your dad,” told the boy.

  They had a special bond, she and her sister’s son. When the world came crashing in on him when his parents were killed in a car accident while on vacation, Micah had been twelve years old. Injured in the accident, too, he’d been all alone at that San Jose hospital. She’d lost no time driving up the coast to get to him. She’d stayed by his side until he was well enough to leave and then she took him home with her. There was no looking back. She’d raised him as her own.

  Greg was staring at her, wide-eyed, his small face stamped with disbelief. “Dad was a kid?”

  “Your dad was a kid,” she assured him, biting her tongue so as not to laugh at the expression of wonder on the little boy’s face. “And a pretty wild one at that.”

  “She’s making that part up,” Micah told his sons. “I was a perfect angel.”

  “When you were asleep, you looked just like one,” Sheila agreed, then added, “Awake, not so much.”

  “Can you tell us stories about when Daddy was a kid?” Gary asked eagerly.

  Sheila’s smile was so wide, her eyes almost disappeared. “I sure can.”

  “But she won’t,” Micah interjected with a note of finality. “She’s going to save those for when you’re older.”

  Gary’s forehead crinkled beneath his blond bangs. “Why?”

  “I’ll tell you that when you’re older, too,” Micah promised him. Changing the subject, he asked, “Now, who’s hungry for pizza?”

  The words were no sooner out of his mouth than a chorus of “We are!” rose up. It was hard to believe that two little boys could project so much volume when they wanted to.

  Micah gazed at his aunt who’d made herself comfortable in the love seat opposite Micah and the boys. “I thought we’d go to that little Italian restaurant you like so much. Giuseppe’s.” The boys bounced up to their feet. His aunt rose to hers, as well. “Luckily for me, it’s kid-friendly.”

  “As it happens,” his aunt said, placing a hand on each boy’s shoulder in order to usher them out the front door, “so am I.”

  * * *

  “You know there’s no one here to impress, right?” Kate Manetti Wainwright said to her friend, Tracy Ryan, as she stuck her head into the latter’s office.

  It was Sunday and the law firm was closed. Or should have been. The sound of typing must have drawn Kate to Tracy’s small office, which meant an interruption.

  Tracy looked up from the brief she was working on. “You’re here,” she pointed out.

  “But I’m not supposed to be.” And neither was anyone else, she added silently. “I just stopped by to grab the sweater I left here on Friday.” She held up the powder-blue article of clothing as exhibit A. “And besides, I don’t count.”

  “You do to me,” Tracy told her, flashing a quick, fleeting smile at her friend. “And for your information, I’m not trying to impress anyone, I’m just trying to catch up on my workload.”

  Kate rolled her eyes. “You already work twice as hard as anyone here,” she pointed out. “How much catching up do you possibly have to do?”

  Tracy’s slender shoulders rose and fell in an absentminded shrug. “Enough,” she said evasively, then, cocking her head, she leveled a piercing gaze at the woman who had been her friend all through law school. They’d been each other’s support group through the bad times, and each other’s cheering section through the good ones. “Don’t you have somewhere to be?” she asked. After all, today was Mother’s Day and, unlike her, Kate was lucky enough to still have one.

  Kate feigned innocence. “As a matter of fact, I do—and you’re coming with me,” she declared as if she’d just thought of it.

  Instead of automatically demurring, Tracy felt she needed to arm herself with information first so that she could come up with a good reason to say no. Kate didn’t take “no” easily. “And just where is it that I’m supposed to be going, too?”

  “Giuseppe’s. Lilli and I are taking my mother out for Mother’s Day,” she said, referring to her brother Kullen’s wife.

  Tracy shook her head. “That’s okay, I’ll just stay here and finish this brief.”

  “I’m not taking no for an answer, Trace,” she informed her friend.

  “It’s Mother’s Day,” Tracy said out loud, taking care not to lace her protest with emotion. “I’m sure your mother doesn’t want you dragging a stray along on her afternoon out.”

  “Then you definitely don’t know my mother—and you’re not a stray,” she tagged on as an afterthought. “You’re more like family.” She smiled at her. “Like the sister my mother never got around to giving me,” she told Tracy.

  Tracy suppressed a sigh. Mother’s Day was particularly difficult for her on two counts. The mother she adored was no longer part of her life. She hadn’t been for close to three years now. Moreover, added to that was the numbing fact that her blink-and-you’ve-missed-it marriage that came and went four years ago had left her pregnant and hopeful. Tracy had always loved children and the idea of being a mother herself was thrilling. But the thrill became tragedy when her baby came into the world prematurely—and stillborn.

  That, more than the painfully short marriage she’d endured, had left her with the feeling that she was one of those people who was meant to go through life alone. She faced that the same way she faced everything else she found overwhelming: she threw herself into her work. Buried herself in a hundred and
one details. Anything so that she didn’t have any time to think, to dwell on her own situation—or lack of one.

  When the loneliness came at her full force, as it did sometimes, Tracy just worked a little harder until she was able to make herself numb again.

  The important thing was not to feel. Since she was a normally caring person, she channeled her emotional connections into the cases she took on—and the people whose hand she figuratively held while she worked on their cases.

  “I am not taking no for an answer,” Kate repeated with more feeling, adding, “And don’t worry, this isn’t some kind of a setup. Jackson is out of town on bank business this weekend, so it’s just going to be us girls,” she promised. “C’mon,” Kate coaxed, “It’ll be fun.

  “That can wait,” she insisted, nodding at the brief on Tracy’s desk. “Unless it suddenly grows legs—and if it does, we’ll have bigger problems than just your workload—it’s not going anywhere,” she concluded with finality. Her tone left no room for a rebuttal. Tracy was coming with her even if she had to find a way to carry the woman out of the office and to the restaurant.

  For now, she made a show of tugging on Tracy’s arm, gently but insistently nonetheless.

  With a sigh, Tracy gave in. She supposed that being around pleasant people was preferable to being here by herself. Except for the very low hum of her computer, the office was bathed in silence. Silence allowed memories to pop up, painful memories that were liable to sneak up and ambush her at any time.

  She knew the danger in that. Dwelling on either one of her losses for even a minute tended to devastate her. As long as she outran the memories or banked them down, she was all right. She could function. She desperately needed to function.

  The alternative, sinking into a darkness where grief could eat away at her until there was nothing left, was not an option she was willing to accept. She’d been there once, and once was more than enough.

  “Okay, I guess a girls’ afternoon out does sound pretty good,” Tracy agreed.

  “Great!” Kate declared, already way ahead of her. Coming around to Tracy’s side of the desk, she nimbly pressed a combination of keys to save the document Tracy had been working on, and then shut down the computer. “Done,” she informed Tracy, then hooked her arm through her friend’s the moment Tracy got up from her chair.

  “Knew you’d come around,” Kate told her, doing little to hide the triumphant note in her voice. “Let’s go. I don’t want to keep my mother waiting. Oh, by the way, did I tell you that Nikki and Jewel were going to be there with their mothers, too?”

  It was in the form of a question, but Tracy knew her friend was dispensing information slowly. Tracy could acknowledge Kate was a dynamo in the courtroom and the complete opposite in a private setting.

  “I hope you don’t mind,” Kate added. “My mom and those women have been friends forever. I knew she’d enjoy things more if they were there, too.”

  What was that saying Mom used to say? In for a penny, in for a pound, Tracy recalled. Since it was Mother’s Day, she’d follow the old adage.

  With a nod of her head, Tracy allowed herself to be dragged along.

  * * *

  Tracy had met Theresa Manetti a couple of times, once at Kate’s wedding, the other at Kullen’s. The woman reminded her a little of her own mother. Consequently, she had taken an instant liking to the intelligent, savvy woman as well as the two women she’d introduced as her “best friends since third grade,” Maizie Sommers and Cecilia Parnell.

  She’d discovered that by combining the three women’s characteristics, she came practically face-to-face with her own mother. She savored the experience for a moment, then refocused herself to enjoy the individual company of each of the women.

  “See,” Kate said as she, Lilli and Tracy all sat down at the extended table, “I told you it was going to be girls’ afternoon out.”

  Theresa laughed shortly. “You’re stretching the word, dear,” she told her daughter. “I haven’t been a girl since the last century.”

  “It’s all in your attitude,” Maizie told her. “Me, I’m never getting old.”

  Theresa suppressed a laugh and asked Cecilia, “What’s the female counterpart to Peter Pan?”

  “Happy,” Tracy chimed in without hesitating.

  Maizie smiled her approval. “I do like the way you think, Tracy.” Picking up the menu, she began to scan it. “So, what looks good?” she asked the others.

  “Offhand, I’d say he does,” Theresa Manetti answered. She wasn’t looking at the menu but at the occupant of a table three tables away.

  Maizie looked up at the dark-haired man her friend was referring to. She pretended to look surprised. In reality, all three of them—she, Cecilia and Theresa—knew exactly where Micah Muldare would be sitting, thanks to prior arrangements with Sheila.

  “You were saying about Peter Pan?” Maizie teased. And then she leaned forward, squinting just a little. “Oh, I think I know the woman he’s with.”

  Now all the women at the table were looking in the direction Theresa was. “A little old for him, isn’t she?” Cecilia asked.

  “That’s his aunt, Sheila Barrett. I sold her a condo a few years ago,” Maizie explained, slanting a glance toward Tracy.

  “Then she’s really a client, not a friend,” Tracy guessed.

  Maizie smiled as she looked at the newcomer. “She’s both.”

  “Mother makes friends easily,” Nikki confided.

  Tracy looked at the table in question. “Cute little boys,” she commented. Her smile was genuine. And wide.

  Maizie nodded in approval. “Yes, they are. He’s doing a wonderful job, raising them by himself, I hear. Of course, Sheila comes by to help out when she can, but there is no real substitute for a mother’s love, is there?”

  The question was directed toward Tracy, but it was her own daughter, as well as Theresa’s and Cecilia’s, who chorused in a singsong voice, “No, Mother, there really isn’t.”

  Maizie only laughed softly. She had a really good feeling about this. There was a definite smile in Tracy’s eyes when she looked at the children. That was very telling in her book.

  Another match would soon be in the offing, she thought with satisfaction.

  It would be only a matter of time.

  ISBN: 9781459238213

  Copyright © 2012 by Harlequin Books S.A.

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