“Yeah. Carter . . . he’s just good, you know?” Mac’s face went soft with a smile. “So patient and insightful and innately kind without being sticky about it. I think some people, like him, are lucky to end up doing what they were born to do. And the rest of us benefit from that.”

“Like us. I really believe we’re doing what we were born to do,” Emma added. “That’s what makes it more than a business—like teaching is more than a job to Carter.We make a lot of people happy, but one of the reasons—beyond, ‘hey we’re just that good’—is because what we’re doing makes us happy.”

“Here’s to us.” Laurel lifted her glass. “Happy, hot, sexually satisfied, and just that damn good.”

“I’ll drink a whole lot to that,” Mac said.

Parker acknowledged the toast, started to drink.And her phone rang. “Oh well, I’ll just step out and be happy. Be right back.”

“Okay,” Mac said the minute Parker was out of the room. “What do we think?”

“I think their chemistry is off the charts,” Laurel answered. “And that they’ve each got an emotional hook deep in the other. A man with Mal’s kind of edge and ’tude doesn’t fumble his way through a dinner at his mother’s unless it matters.”

“Because when Mom’s important—and Mal’s is to him—it’s a step. It takes it up a level.” Mac nodded.“If he didn’t want it to go up a level, he’d have found a way to back his mother off.”

“It’s sweet it makes him nervous,” Emma added, “because yes, it matters. Both these women matter. You know, my sense is he faces things head-on.The way he told Del straight off he was interested in Parker.The way he brought up the money-status deal to Parker when they first got physical. It’s lay it out there and deal. Kind of his default. So I don’t think much makes him nervous.”

“What I see?” Mac contemplated another slice of pizza. “I see two strong, confident, I-can-fix-it personalities not only trying to figure out the vulnerabilities of being in love, but the risks and the potential outcomes. Basically? I think they’re perfect for each other.”

“Yes! So do I.” Emma glanced toward the doorway. “But it’s not the time to tell her that. She’s not there yet.”

“Neither’s he,” Laurel commented. “I wonder which one of them will get there first.”

MAL RAKED IN THE POT. THE FINAL CARD TURNED HAD GIFTED HIM with a very pretty full house—queens over eights—which left Jack’s ace-high straight in the dust.

“You’re awful damn lucky tonight, Kavanaugh.”

Mal stacked his chips and got a flash of Parker, the utility room, and the tattered white lace in the back pocket of his jeans.

Pal, he thought, if you only knew.

“Brought it in with me,” he said, and smiled as he took a pull of his beer.

“How about passing some around.” Rod, one of the poker night regulars, scowled as he tossed in his next ante.“I’ve had crap all night.”

“Don’t worry. This next hand’ll clean you out. Then you can just watch the rest of us.”

“You’re a cold bastard, Brown.”

“No heartstrings to pluck in poker.”

Mal tossed in his own ante. The thing about Del, he thought, was the man was merciless at the table. Probably much the same in court, though Mal had never seen him work. But under it? A whole different engine hummed.

Poker night had been going on since Del and Jack had been at Yale together, and Del was the foundation of the continued tradition. Most of the men who came had been playing together for years. He and Carter were the newest members. Carter’s entre had been through Mac primarily, though he and Del had known each other back in the day, too.

And his own? He wasn’t quite sure, except that he and Del had simply clicked.

So the engine driving the man—other than poker and law—was a traditionalist, generous, loyal, fiercely protective of the people who mattered to him.

Parker mattered. He wasn’t sure how Del, or Parker, would react to the fact she’d come to matter more to him than he’d ever imagined she would, or could. How could he speculate on their take when he didn’t know how the hell he felt about it himself?

He studied the flop, his cards, calculated possibilities, and rolled with the next bet while conversation flowed around him. Trash talk, a little business, bad jokes.

When Carter turned up the next card, Mal recalculated, saw possibilities narrow.Then Del bumped the bet, and he folded.

The way he saw it, poker and life had a lot in common.You played the cards you were dealt, figured the odds, took the gamble or not. And when your cards were shit, you bluffed if the pot was worth it, and if you had the balls.

Otherwise? Wait for the next hand.

He figured the way he’d played the game had worked out for him pretty well, life-wise. Now he needed to take a good look at the cards, figure the odds with Parker. She was worth the gamble.

Frank, another regular, tossed in his cards. “So, Del, when is your new male palace going to be ready?”

“Talk to the architect.”

Jack saw Del’s next raise. “Working on the permits.Things go smooth? We should be taking your money in the new place by March, April latest.” Jack glanced around Del’s game room. “I’m going to miss this place.”

“It’s going to be weird,” Rod added.“Poker night with women right . . .” He pointed his thumb at the ceiling.

“Not just women,” Frank pointed out. “Wives, once you and these three take the plunge. Jesus, this time next year we’ll all have taken the dive. Except you,” he said to Mal.

“Somebody has to hold the rope.”

“Skirting pretty close to the edge yourself.” Rod grinned at him around a cigar.“Dating Parker.The last holdout of Del’s Quartet.”

Mal flicked a glance at Del, but his friend’s poker face stayed intact, and the return look was very cool.“I’ve got good balance.”

Frank snorted.“Keep thinking that, buddy, right until you find yourself over the edge with your hands slipping off that rope.”

“Good thing he used to be a stuntman,” Jack added.“He ought to know how to fall.”

Mal just took another pull on his beer.Yeah, he knew how to fall. But he also knew just what could happen if the landing didn’t go the way you’d planned.

HIS MOTHER KEPT A TIDY HOUSE, MAL THOUGHT. THAT WAS PRIDE, habit, and basic disposition. But for Sunday dinner—this Sunday dinner—she’d gone on a cleaning binge equivalent to a drunk’s binge with a bottle of Wild Turkey.

It was a nice house. He’d been careful when he’d started the hunt for one that would work for her, one he’d feel confident about her living in. He’d wanted a good neighborhood, the sort where people actually talked to each other, looked out for each other a little. He hadn’t wanted anything so big she’d be overwhelmed or rattle around, or anything so small she’d feel closed in.

He’d found it in the modified ranch with its traditional brick face, the plot of lawn they could easily maintain between them. The attached garage with second-story apartment had been the big bonus.

They loved each other, even liked each other quite a bit, but neither of them had wanted to actually live together. This way they each had their space, their privacy, their routine. But he was close enough to keep an eye on her. And, he knew very well, vice versa.

He could, and did, forage in her kitchen if the mood struck, grab a cup of her coffee in the morning—or not. And she could call on him to see to some household repair or haul out the trash.

The system worked for them.

Except for the times she drove him crazy.

“Ma, it’s just dinner. It’s food.”

“Don’t tell me what it is.” Kay wagged a finger at him as she stirred the sauce—again—for the lasagna that was, he knew, her signature dish.“When’s the last time you brought a woman home to dinner?”

“It’s been about never, give or take.”

“Exactly.” She stopped wagging her finger to jab it at him.

“I’m not bringing her anyway.” The idea made his shoulder blades itch. “She’s bringing herself.”

“And shame on you for that.”

“But she—”

“Eh!”

It was another signature, the sound that said “don’t even try to argue with me.”

He took a breath, changed strategy. “It smells good.”

“Tastes better.” She took a spoon, dipped, offered.

“Yeah it does,” he agreed after the sample.

“It better. It’s important to me.The girl’s got class.”

“So do you, Ma.”

“Damn right, but you know what I’m talking about. It was class that had her calling me to thank me for inviting her. I’m going to give her a good meal.” She winked. “With a little class. I made fancy hors d’oeuvres.”

“Pigs in a blanket?” When she laughed, tossing back her head the way she did, he poked her. “I like pigs in a blanket.”

“You’re not getting them tonight. You’re sure that’s a good wine?” She pointed to the two bottles on the counter, one opened to breathe.

“I’m sure.”

“You know more about that than me, with your Hollywood debauchery.”

“Yeah, but back then I only drank it out of women’s navels.”

“Sure can’t get a good drunk on that way,” she said, and this time he laughed.

She stepped back from the stove, took yet another survey of the kitchen.

She had a pretty bowl of fruit on the little drop-leaf table under the window where she liked to sit and have her coffee in the morning. The cute little shamrock plant Mal had given her shot up white blooms from its perch on the sill above the sink.

Her collection of salt and pepper shakers filled the shelf on the wall over a bench he’d made in high school wood shop.

You could eat off her floor, and every surface gleamed.