“She wrestles his jacket off, tosses it. Rips his sweater off, heaves it away.”

“Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!” Mac said.

“But the gold medal move was the belt. She whips that belt off—” Laurel flicked an arm through the air to demonstrate. “Then lets it fly.”

“I think I need another bottle of water.”

“Unfortunately, Parker, they took it inside.”

“Killjoys,” Mac muttered.

“The rest was left to my very . . . fluid imagination. So I want to thank our own Emmaline for the view from my balcony seat. Sister, stand up and take a bow.”

To enthusiastic applause, Emma did just that. “Now I’ll leave you and Peeping Thomasina to your salacious thoughts. I’m going to work.”

“Back against the door,” Parker murmured. “I’m small enough to be jealous.”

“If I were small enough, I’d be jealous of her having her back against anything. But it’s okay, because I’ve declared myself in a sex moratorium.”

“A sex moratorium?” Mac repeated, turning to Laurel.

“That’s right. I’m in a sex moratorium so I can be in a dating moratorium, because for the last couple of months dating’s just been irritating.” Laurel lifted her shoulders, let them fall. “Why do something that irritates me?”

“For the sex?” Mac suggested.

Eyes slitted, Laurel shot a finger at her friend. “You’re only saying that because you’re getting laid regularly.”

“Yes.” Mac considered, nodded. “Yes, I am getting laid regularly.”

“It’s rude to brag to those of us who are not,” Parker pointed out.

“But I’m getting laid with love.” Mac drew out the final word so Laurel laughed.

“Now you’re just getting sickening.”

“I’m not the only one, at least on one side. Emma said you were right, Parks. She’s in love with Jack.”

“Of course she’s in love with Jack,” Laurel interrupted. “She wouldn’t have slept with him otherwise.”

“Um, I hate to disillusion you, Bright Eyes, but Emma’s had sex with men she wasn’t in love with. And,” Mac added, “has gently refused to have sex with more men than the three of us combined have scored.”

“My point exactly. What happens when the four of us go to a club, for instance? Four very hot chicks? We get some hits, naturally. But Emma? They swarm like wasps.”

“I don’t see—”

“I do.” Parker nodded. “She doesn’t have to sleep with someone just because she’s attracted. She can and does pick and choose. And she’s picky and choosy rather than promiscuous. If it were just lust, she could and would answer that call elsewhere, because to answer it with Jack is complicated, and risky.”

“Which is the reason she waited so long to act on it,” Mac pointed out. “I don’t see . . . Yes, I do,” she corrected. “Damn it, I hate when I don’t have a chance to be right before you’re right.”

“Now that she’s realized what I could’ve told her weeks ago, I wonder what she’ll do.”

“She had her dancing in the garden dream,” Mac told them, “and it was with Jack.”

“Okay that’s serious. Not just in love,” Laurel said, “but in love.”

“She’s okay with it. She’s going to enjoy the moment.”

No one spoke.

“I think,” Parker said carefully, “love is never wrong. Whether it’s for the moment, or it’s forever.”

“We all know Emma’s always wanted forever,” Mac pointed out.

“But you can’t have forever unless you take the moment.”

“And if it doesn’t work?” Laurel looked at her two friends. “That’s what we’re here for.”


In her office, Emma caught up on paperwork while she let a facial mask deep clean and hydrate. Just how many women were lucky enough to be able to deal with skin care and generate invoices at the same time? In their bare feet, with Norah Jones crooning out of the speakers?

And how many of those who might be lucky enough had also had crazed jungle sex—twice—with an amazing man the night before?

Not many, she’d wager. Not many at all.

While the mask worked its magic, she placed an order with her suppliers for flower foam, plastic ties, wire, clear and colored stones, then did a cruise through to see what might be on sale, or on special, and added liquid foam and foam sheets and three dozen light bases.

That would hold her for a while, she thought, placed the order, then brought up her wholesale candle supplier to see what they had to offer.

“Knock, knock! Emmaline! Are you home?”

“Mom? Up here.” She saved her shopping cart, before pushing away from the desk. She met her mother coming up the stairs. “Hi!”

“Hi, my baby. Your face is very pink.”

“I . . . Oh, I forgot.” Laughing, Emma tapped her fingers on her cheek. “It needs to come off. I started on candles and got caught up.” She detoured to the bathroom to wash off the mask. “Playing hooky?”

“I worked this morning, and am now free as a bird so came by to see my daughter before I go home.” Lucia picked up the jar of mask. “Is this good?”

“You tell me. It’s the first time I’ve tried it.” Emma finished splashing cool water on her face, then patted it dry.

Lucia pursed her lips. “You’re too beautiful for me to know if it’s because of the lucky genes I passed to you or from the jar.”

Emma grinned. Studying her face in the mirror over the sink, she poked lightly at her cheeks, her chin. “Feels good though. That’s a plus.”

“You have a glow,” Lucia added while Emma sprayed on toner, followed up with moisturizer. “But from what I hear that’s not from the jar either.”

“Lucky genes?”

“Lucky something. Your cousin Dana stopped in the bookstore this morning. It seems her good friend Livvy . . . You know Livvy a little.”

“Yes, a little.”

“Livvy was out with a new boyfriend, having dinner, and who did she spot in a quiet corner across the room sharing wine, pasta, and intimate conversation with a certain handsome architect?”

Emma fluttered her lashes. “How many guesses?”

Lucia raised and lowered her eyebrows.

“Let’s go downstairs and get something to drink. Coffee, or something cold?”

“Something cold.”

“Jack and I went to an art opening,” Emma began as they started down. “A really terrible art opening, which is actually a good story.”

“You can come back to that. Tell me about the wine and pasta.”

“We had wine and pasta after we left the opening.” In the kitchen, Emma got down glasses, filled them with ice.

“You’re being evasive.”

“Yes.” With a laugh, Emma sliced a lemon. “Which is silly, since you’ve obviously figured out Jack and I are dating.”

“Are you evading because you think I won’t approve?”

“No. Maybe.” Emma opened the sparkling water her mother liked, poured it over ice, added slices of lemon.

“Are you happy? I already see the answer on your face, but you can answer yes or no.”

“Yes.”

“Then why would I disapprove of anything that made you happy?”

“It’s sort of odd, isn’t it though? After all this time?”

“Some things take time, some don’t.” Lucia turned into the living room, sat on the sofa. “I love this little room. All the colors, the scents. I know it’s a place that makes you happy.”

Emma came over, sat beside her mother. “It does.”

“You’re happy in your work, your life, your home. And that helps a mother—even of a grown woman—sleep well at night. Now, if you’re happy with a man I happen to like quite a bit, I’m happy, too. You need to bring him to dinner.”

“Oh, Mom. We’re just . . . dating.”

“He’s been to dinner before.”

“Yes. Yes. Del’s friend Jack has been to dinner, to some cookouts, to some parties at the house. But you’re not asking me to bring Del’s friend to dinner.”

“Suddenly he can’t eat my cooking or have a beer with your father? You understand,

nina, I know what ‘dating’ means in this case?”

“Yes.”

“He should come for Cinco de Mayo. All your friends should come. We’ll put the pork on the grill, and not Jack.”

“Okay. I’m in love with him, Mama.”

“Yes, baby.” Lucia drew Emma’s head to her shoulder. “I know your face.”

“He’s not in love with me.”

“Then he’s not as smart as I think he is.”

“He cares. You know that. He cares, and there’s a really big attraction. On both sides. But he’s not in love with me. Yet.”

“That’s my girl,” Lucia said.

“Do you think it’s . . . underhanded to deliberately set out to make a man fall in love with you?”

“Do you intend to lie, to pretend to be what you’re not, to cheat, make promises you won’t keep?”

“No. Of course not.”

“Then how could it be underhanded? If I hadn’t made your father fall in love with me, we wouldn’t be sitting here in your pretty little room.”

“You . . . Really?”

“Oh, I was so in love. Hopelessly, or so I thought. He was so handsome, so kind, so sweet and funny with his little boy. So lonely. He treated me well, with respect, with honor—and as we grew to know each other, with friendship. And I wanted him to sweep me away, to see me as a woman, to take me into his bed, even if it was just for a night.”

Inside her chest, Emma’s romantic heart simply soared. “Oh, Mama.”

“What? You think you invented this? The needs, the wants? I was young and he was above me in station. The wealth, the position, these were barriers—at least I thought so. But I could dream.

“And maybe a little more than dream,” Lucia added with a secret smile. “I tried to look my best, to cook meals he especially liked, to listen when he needed a friend. That’s what I knew how to do. And I would make sure, when he was going out, that his tie wasn’t quite straight—even when it was—so I’d have to fix it. I still do,” she murmured. “I still want to. I knew there was something—I could feel it, I could see it in his eyes—something more than the bond over the little boy we both loved, something more than friendship and respect. All I could do was show him, in little ways, that I was his.”