“I’ll start with Mom. It’s kind of hard to explain, but if you had to describe Mom, using three words, what would they be?”

“Loving. Witty. Loyal.”

“True, but that’s not what I’m looking for. Think business-related words.”

“Mom was a stay-at-home mother. I don’t think of her in business-related terms.”

“Think PTO mom.”

“Oh. Okay, then. Organized. Decisive. And workaholic.”

Lucca nodded. “I’d agree with those. So let me explain three things about the work being done at Aspenglow Place. Indoors, the first thing she did was have the upstairs bathrooms painted.”

“I thought they were all going to be renovated.”

“They are.”

“That’s stupid. Why did she do that?”

Lucca ignored the question. “It gets better. She has purchased six colors of paint for the outside—not samples, mind you—but enough paint to paint the exterior six different times in six different colors. What’s craziest of all, three times I’ve walked into that house in the middle of the workday to find her sitting in a rocking chair reading a book or watching TV. Watching soaps!”

Tony sat up straight. “Soaps? Mom? Our mom?”

“Yep.”

“She doesn’t watch daytime TV.”

“She does now. And she’s hooked. She got all teary yesterday when she told me about one of the characters coming back from the dead. Pregnant. With amnesia.”

“That’s bizarre.”

“Gabi doesn’t know what she’s getting into. You’ve heard that she’s quit the sheriff’s office?”

“Yes. I understand she wants to help Mom run the inn.”

“I’m not taking bets on how long that idea lasts. Gabi put together a renovation plan—a good one, mind you—but the changing paint palette is driving her crazy. Yesterday she told me she’s beginning to wonder if working together might be harmful to their mother-daughter relationship.”

Tony pointed his remote at the TV and started channel surfing. “I could have told her that.”

“Yeah, well. I thought they needed to try it to figure it out for themselves. If you or I tell Gabi it’s a bad idea, she’ll dig in her heels and stay longer just to prove us wrong.”

“You have a point.”

“And I could be all wrong. Gabi and Mom could be the perfect working couple. At least Gabi’s not afraid to say no to Mom, which is more than I can manage.”

“Man, I’ve never been able to do that, either.”

“I’m counting on Gabi to convince Mom she needs to hire a contractor.”

“I thought that was your job,” Tony observed.

“I can handle a little painting and repair and doing yard work outside, but I don’t know a damn thing about plumbing or electrical work or carpentry. I don’t know the subs in the area. If she wants Aspenglow to be a commercial success, the work needs to be done right.”

Tony’s cellphone buzzed, and he picked it up and sighed. His thumbs flew across the touch screen. “If somebody had told me five years ago that my job would soon entail tweeting, I’d have called BS.”

He tossed the phone onto the chair beside him and glanced at Lucca. “Daytime TV, huh?”

“And laundry.”

“Laundry?”

“She doesn’t do laundry on a schedule anymore. I’ve seen her let dirty towels pile up for over a week. And there were breakfast dishes in the sink at dinnertime.”

“Definitely bizarre.” Tony took a thoughtful sip from his bottle of water. “You know, Lucca, considering everything, I hesitate to bring up the D word. …”

Lucca flattened his mouth. Damn, he didn’t want to talk about this. Not even with his twin brother. “I know I was depressed. I did get some help when I was away. It’s better. Now we are talking about Mom, not me.”

Tony took a moment to absorb the news and Lucca could see questions lighting his eyes. His brother knew him well enough to understand that now was not the time to pursue the topic. He asked, “Do you think we need to be worried about Mom?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think so. I think she’s just … changing. Everything is different with Dad gone.”

“It was easier when Dad was alive. Everything was his call. Now we’re the ones with the responsibility.”

“That’s the problem right there. Mom would say that she’s responsible for herself. And honestly, she’s right.”

“But she’s our mother. Our widowed mother. We’re her sons.”

“Which makes us responsible,” Lucca agreed.

Tony rubbed the back of his neck and thought the problem through. “All right. Here’s my take. I saw her and Savannah during their Denver trip recently. Mom seemed happy as a clam to me. Maybe once she brings a contractor on board, the weirdness will work itself out. Could be she has too much to organize and it’s overwhelming her. I say we do that, then wait and see.”

“That’s what I was thinking. Glad we’re thinking along the same lines.”

“We usually do.” Tony rolled to his feet and carried the empty ice cream bowls to the outdoor kitchen’s sink. “So, want to bet on how long Gabi lasts at Aspenglow?”

“I won’t bet that she actually begins there.” Lucca paused a moment, then said, “My next-door neighbor told me the school’s PE teacher just quit and they haven’t found a replacement. I thought maybe Gabi could …”

Tony was shaking his head before Lucca completed the thought. “Bad idea.”

“She’s an athlete. She knows basketball.”

“She played basketball. She can’t coach basketball. She’s a terrible teacher. You know that. She has no patience. For the sake of the students, I’d let that one go.”

Lucca sighed. “All right. You’re right. I knew that. I needed someone else to say it out loud. Between her and Mom … I’m just worried.”

“Good. You caused them both enough worry, disappearing the way you did. A little payback doesn’t hurt a damned thing.”

“I’m an ass. I know that.”

“I’m glad we can agree, brother.”

Lucca shot his twin the bird, and Tony laughed. “Look, I’m not worried about Gabi. She’ll find something that’s right for her. It may take her awhile, and she’s bound to bounce around a bit, but she’ll land on her feet. As far as Mom is concerned … well … I don’t like the dishes-in-the-sink thing. Still, she’s better than she was a year ago. That’s a good thing. Deep wounds take time to heal. You know that, right?”

Lucca understood that here, his twin wasn’t talking about their mother.

He nodded curtly, wishing he could explain the cloud that had descended on his spirit to his brother, but since he couldn’t explain it to himself, that wasn’t going to happen.

Tony gave him a long look, then lightened his tone. “So, before I turn my the-doctor-is-in-the-house sign over to read he’s-outta-here and take this conversation in a more serious direction—namely, the dismal state of the Rockies bullpen—do you have any other women troubles we need to discuss?”

An image of Hope Montgomery lying in the golden light of dawn, her cheeks flushed, her lips pink and swollen from his kiss, shimmered like a dream in his mind. “Nope. No women troubles here.”

“All right then. Did you catch the ninth inning last night? What the hell is wrong with our closer?”

The brothers talked baseball, fishing, a little politics, even the latest book in a fantasy series they both read. Twice Tony tried to bring up basketball, but Lucca shut the subject down fast. They closed the evening off with a swim, a best-two-out-of-three race, in that way of unending competition that had been part of Lucca’s life for as long as he could remember.

He went to bed in Tony’s guest room, pleasantly fatigued and comfortably relaxed.

As he sank toward sleep, his thoughts wandered back over the events of the day to the predawn celestial event. In his mind’s eye, he saw sparkling meteors streaking across a black sky. He saw starlight and passion reflected in Hope Montgomery’s eyes.

Lost in heavenly bodies, he drifted into sleep and into dreams of stars and moons and meteors, starships and captains, and Lieutenant Hope Montgomery standing at a computer console dressed in a Starfleet uniform—a tight, bright red minidress and black boots.

Star Trek women had always been hot.

For Hope, the school year began with the chug chug chug of diesel as she started the school bus at a quarter after six in the morning and headed out on her rural route. She picked up seventeen students over the course of the next hour and delivered them to school in plenty of time for her to make it to her classroom to greet her students—the largest kindergarten class in some time in Eternity Springs.

The first day of class was always hard. It took all of her strength to meet her class on the first day without breaking into tears. What did Holly look like on her first day of school? She’d be starting fourth grade this year. Did she still wear her wavy red hair long? Did she have more than a dusting of freckles now? What books did she like to read?

Hope allowed herself a limited time to wallow in such thoughts, then she did what she always did—she soldiered on. She turned her focus toward getting to know her students as individuals, not as children the same age as Holly was when she disappeared, and by the end of the first week of school, her students loved her and she adored them in return.

Such was the joy of kindergarten.

During those first weeks of September, she kept busy and saw nothing of her prickly next-door neighbor. She told herself she was glad.

Even if she had relived that kiss more than once in her dreams.

Kindergarten was a half-day program in Eternity Springs, so in the afternoon, Hope taught one section of fifth grade social studies and three classes of PE. Between the two of them, she and Principal Geary had managed to coerce a couple of fathers in town to take charge of the football team. Hope had a target—three targets, actually—in mind to help with the basketball team, and she was waiting for the right moment to make her pitch.