He hadn’t been there. Hadn’t even known she’d fallen. For the first time in his life he felt truly alone. For years he’d roamed the world, thinking himself free of strings. His mother’s death had truly cut him free, and for the first time he knew what it was like to be untethered. He also knew he’d been fooling himself. He hadn’t traveled the world without strings. They’d been there. The whole time. Keeping his life stable. Until now.

He had one living relative. Just one. A father he hardly knew. Hell, they didn’t know each other. It was no one’s fault, just the way things were. But maybe it was time they changed that. Time to spend a few days reconnecting with the old man. He didn’t think it would take long. He wasn’t looking for a Hallmark moment. Just something easy and free of the strain that existed between them.

He got out of the Land Cruiser and made his way across the thick green lawn to the flower garden rich with explosive color. Sebastian thought about the diamond stud in his pocket. He thought about giving it to Mrs. Wingate to return to Clare. He’d have to explain where he found it, and the thought brought a smile to his lips.

“Hello, Mrs. Wingate,” he greeted the older woman as he approached. Growing up, he’d hated Joyce Wingate. He’d blamed her for his sporadic and unfulfilled relationship with his father. He had gotten over it about the same time he’d quit blaming Clare. Not that he harbored any love toward Joyce. He didn’t have feelings one way or the other. Until that morning, he hadn’t had any thoughts one way or the other about Clare either. Now he did, and they weren’t nice thoughts.

“Hello, Sebastian,” she said, and placed a red rose in a basket hanging from her bent arm. Several ruby and emerald rings slid on her bony fingers. She wore a pair of cream-colored pants, a lavender blouse, and a huge straw hat. Joyce had always been extremely thin. The kind of thin that came from being in control of everything in her life. Her sharp features dominated her large face, and her wide mouth was usually pinched with disapproval. At least it had been whenever he was around, and he had to wonder if it was her acerbic personality or her domineering ways that had always kept Mr. Wingate firmly planted on the East Coast.

Probably both.

Joyce had never been an attractive woman, not even when she was younger. But if someone shoved a gun in Sebastian’s ear and forced him to say something kind, he could say her eyes were an interesting shade of light blue. Like the irises growing at the edge in her garden. Like her daughter’s. The harsh features of the mother were smaller and much more feminine in the face of her daughter. Clare’s full lips softened the lines of her mouth, and she’d inherited a smaller nose, but the eyes were the same.

“Your father tells me you plan to leave him soon,” she said. “It’s a shame you can’t be persuaded to stay longer.”

Sebastian looked from the rose in Joyce’s basket up into her face. Into eyes that had shot blue flames at him as a kid. A huge bumblebee bumped along on a slight breeze, and Joyce waved it away. The only thing he saw in her eyes today was polite inquiry.

“I’m trying to talk him into staying at least through the coming week,” his father said as he pulled a handkerchief from the back pocket of his pants and wiped beads of sweat from his brow. Leo Vaughan was a few inches shorter than Sebastian and his once brown hair was turning two-tone gray. The corners of his eyes had deep lines. His brows had gotten bushy in recent years and his “twenty minute naps” now seemed to last an hour. Leo would turn sixty-five at the end of the week, and Sebastian noticed that his father didn’t get around the Wingate garden as easily as he remembered. Not that he remembered a lot about his father. A few months here and a weekend there didn’t exactly make for copious childhood memories, but the one thing he did remember quite clearly was his father’s hands. They’d been big and strong enough to snap small branches and boards, gentle enough to pat a boy’s shoulder and rub his back. Dry and rough, the hands of a hardworking man. Now they were spotted with age and by his profession, the skin loose over his enlarged knuckles.

“I don’t really know how long I’ll stay,” he said, unable to commit to anything. Instead, he changed the subject. “I ran into Clare last night.”

Joyce bent to cut another rose. “Oh?”

“Where?” his father asked as he shoved the handkerchief back into his pocket.

“I met an old U.W. buddy at a bar in the Double Tree. He was there covering a Steelhead’s fund-raiser, and Clare said she’d been attending a wedding reception.”

“Yes, her friend Lucy was married yesterday.” Joyce nodded and her big hat dipped. “It won’t be long before Claresta marries her young man, Lonny. They’re very happy together. They have talked about having the wedding here in the garden next June. The flowers will be in bloom, and it will be just lovely that time of year.”

“Yeah, I think she mentioned Lonny.” Obviously, Joyce hadn’t heard the latest news. An awkward silence passed between them, or perhaps it was only awkward on his end because he knew there would be no June wedding. “I didn’t get the chance to ask Clare what she does for a living,” he said to fill the silence.

Joyce turned to her roses. “She writes novels, but not like your book.”

He didn’t know which shocked him more: that Mrs. Wingate knew enough about him to know he’d written a book, though his wasn’t a novel, or that Clare was a writer. “Really?” He would have thought she was a professional volunteer, like her mother. But he did have a vague memory of her telling him boring stories about an imaginary dog. “What’s she write? Women’s fiction?” he asked.

“Something like that,” Joyce answered, and the old blue flames he recognized flared in her eyes…

It wasn’t until later when Sebastian and his father were alone at dinner that he asked, “So, what does Clare really do for a living?”

“She’s writes novels.”

“I got that. What kind of novels?”

Leo pushed a bowl of green beans in Sebastian’s direction. “Romance novels.”

His hand stilled as he reached for the bowl. Little Claresta? The girl who thought kissing made babies? The weird-looking little girl with the thick glasses who’d grown into a beautiful woman? The beautiful woman who wore a little pink thong and made it look good? A romance writer? “No shit?”

“Joyce isn’t happy about it.”

He picked up the bowl and started to laugh. No shit.

Three

“He told me it didn’t mean anything,” Clare said, and took a sip of coffee. “As if it was okay because he didn’t love the Sears repairman. It was the same excuse my third boyfriend used when I found him with a stripper.”

“Bastard!” Adele swore, and stirred almond-flavored creamer into her cup.

“Gay or straight,” Maddie added to the conversation, “men are dogs.”

“Worse of all, he took Cindy,” Clare informed them, referring to the Yorkshire terrier she and Lonny had chosen together last year. While he’d packed his things, she’d taken a shower and changed out of her bridesmaid’s dress. Some of the items in the house were solely his or things they’d purchased together. He could have all that; she didn’t care for any reminders, but it hadn’t occurred to her that he’d wait until she was in the shower to abscond with Cindy.

“At the risk of repeating Maddie,” Lucy said as she leaned forward and poured herself more coffee, “bastard.” Lucy had been married for less than twenty-four hours, but left her groom when she’d heard about Clare’s heartache.

“Are you sure Quinn doesn’t mind your being here?” Clare asked, referring to Lucy’s husband. “I hate interrupting your honeymoon.”

“I’m positive.” She sat back and blew a cooling breath into her china cup. “I made him so extremely happy last night, he can’t quit smiling.” The corners of her lips curved up, and she added, “Besides, we don’t leave for Grand Bahama until tomorrow morning.”

Even though Clare had seen Lonny with her own eyes, she still couldn’t believe it had happened. Raw emotion burned in her veins and she vacillated between anger and pain. She shook her head and choked back tears. “I’m still in shock.”

Maddie leaned forward and set her cup and saucer on the marble and mahogany coffee table. “Honey, is it really a complete shock?”

“Of course it’s a shock.” Clare brushed moisture from her left cheek. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, we all thought he was gay.”

Her fingers stopped and she looked at her friends sitting in her living room on her great-grandmother’s sofa and armchair. “What? All of you?”

Their gazes slid away.

“For how long?”

“Since we first met him,” Adele confessed into her coffee.

“And none of you told me?”

Lucy reached for the delicate silver tongs and added a sugar cube to her cup. “None of us wanted to be the one to tell you. We love you and didn’t want to cause you pain.”

Adele added, “And we kind of figured you must already know on some level.”

“I didn’t!”

“You never suspected?” Maddie asked. “He made tables out of glass shards.”

Clare placed her free hand on the front of her white sleeveless blouse. “I thought he was creative.”

“You told us yourself the two of you didn’t have sex all that often.”

“Some men have low sex drives.”

“Not that low,” all three friends said at the same time.

“He hangs out at the Balcony Club.” Maddie frowned. “You knew that right?”

“Yes, but not all men who have a drink at the Balcony Club are gay.”

“Who told you that?”

“Lonny.”

The three friends didn’t say a word. They didn’t have to. Their raised brows spoke for them.

“He wore pink,” Lucy pointed out.