Will wondered if his son had given any thought to what this Do Over project might really cost in terms of humiliation and intrusion. Or maybe that was the point. Maybe he just hadn’t fully realized how public a payback this renovation might be.

Madeline’s discomfort was a tangible thing. He’d already discovered that she could get feisty when pushed, but she was about as thick-skinned as the little boy in her lap. How desperate did you have to be to open your family up to this kind of personal exposure? “You know, being that bug under the media microscope doesn’t get any easier. Max handles it pretty well. I bet he ate up the stage back in the day.” It was the only positive thing he could think of to offer. “What happened to him after the show?”

They looked at him blankly. Troy lowered his camera from his shoulder, set it on the coffee table.

“Max died.” Kyra’s tone was terse. Tears pooled in her eyes. “If you watch all eight episodes you’ll get to see him take a bullet meant for Dustin.”

“You’re shitting me,” Will said.

“Deirdre got shot, too.” Maddie said this quietly. Will turned to look at the older blonde, who was rubbing her arm almost reflexively. “Deirdre threw herself in front of a bullet to protect Avery.”

“Jesus.” Will studied the women around him; they were a mixed lot and yet they seemed somehow fused together. But then it sounded like they’d been through way more crap together than he had imagined. Still, the mood was way too somber for comfort. “So . . . the homeowner doesn’t always die in the end, does he?” He couldn’t quite keep a completely straight face. And he saw flickers of surprised amusement on theirs.

“We don’t actually know.” He could see Avery working to keep her tone deadpan.

“And why is that?” he asked, playing along.

“You’re only the second homeowner we’ve dealt with.” She smiled grimly.

He turned and caught Maddie’s eyes on him. He winked at her. “I guess I’d better be on my best behavior, then.”

* * *

The next morning after the debacle of the Do Over premiere, even the rooster’s cock-a-doodle-doo sounded subdued. Maddie left the houseboat to walk to the main house while the sun was still ascending and was drenched in sweat by the time she got there. The roofers were already at work, their clatter and clang echoing all over the island. She peeked at the pool and saw William cutting through the water, his strong arms flashing with each stroke. Letting herself in the unlocked front door she stood in the front hall, where the blast of air-conditioning hit her full force, chilling her damp skin.

In the kitchen she put on a pot of coffee, assembled the boxes Avery had left for her, and began to empty the kitchen cabinets, which were slated to be demolished.

The others had been sent out to the garage with bags of kitty litter meant to soak up the gasoline stains on the cement floors and sledgehammers to take down walls and remove the garage doors. She knew she’d been given the easier duty, but she also knew it came with a price—she was supposed to help talk William Hightower into lending his face and name and possibly some of his memorabilia to shore up the insufficient budget.

With all the noise on the roof she didn’t hear footsteps approaching and jumped when she realized Thomas Hightower was behind her.

“Sorry.” He was dressed in khaki shorts and a pale blue polo, but his feet were bare. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I knew they’d start early to beat the heat, so, well, sleeping in is definitely not an option.”

“There’s coffee if you’d like some.” Maddie snapped off a length of strapping tape and began to tape up the bottom of the box she’d been holding.

“Thanks.” He poured a mug and leaned against the counter to drink it. “It tastes a lot better than anything Will or I have ever brewed.”

“Your dad’s taste seems pretty . . . simple for someone so . . . famous.”

“Oh, yeah.” His tone was droll. “Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll. That was always the holy trinity for him. Food wasn’t ever in the mix.”

Maddie kept her eyes on the box, unsure what to say.

“You seem like a nice lady. I’d be careful not to be sucked in by the ‘new leaf’ thing; my father’s turned over so many his branches are completely bare.”

Maddie felt the oddest urge to defend William Hightower. She resisted it.

“I can see you don’t want to believe it. He’s always had that effect on women. Or maybe it’s just that you can get away with almost anything if you’re famous enough.”

She busied herself folding another box. The distance between William and his son and their disagreement over the renovation had been clear from the day they’d arrived, but she hadn’t realized quite how great the distance was until now. She was reminding herself that this was not her business when Thomas said, “My mother was only seventeen when he spotted her at some concert. She followed him all over the damned world, acting like none of the other women he screwed meant anything. She hid from the truth in drugs and denial—just like he always has.” He shook his head, ran a hand through his dark hair. “He treated her like shit, but right up until the day she OD’d she was still telling herself that deep down he really loved her.”

“Maybe he did.” Maddie had barely renewed her vow to keep her thoughts to herself before she spoke. “Sometimes it’s hard for children to see adults through grown-up eyes.”

He snorted. “I don’t think there was anything particularly adult about either of them.”

There were thuds and thumps from the roof. The front door opened and Kyra came in with Dustin, who had his favorite truck and tool belt with him. His face lit up when Kyra set him down on his feet. He toddled to Maddie, arms outstretched. She swooped him up as Thomas Hightower watched.

“Can he stay with you for a while?” Kyra asked. “I want to go out and get some action shots in the garage. I don’t think I have any footage of Nicole and Deirdre swinging sledgehammers.” She smiled, and Maddie was glad to see that she seemed to have shrugged off some of the previous night’s anger. Now if they could all just forget about the humiliation.

“Sure.”

Maddie set Dustin on his feet and then buckled his tool belt onto his small hips as the front door slammed shut. Moments later Dustin’s head snapped up. He broke into another smile when he spotted Will. “Billyum!”

Droplets of water glistened in William Hightower’s dark chest hair. A striped towel had been tied around his hips. His abs were tighter than sixty-one-year-old abs had any right to be.

Thomas straightened. Maddie saw his surprise when Dustin toddled straight toward Will and threw his arms around the rocker’s bare legs. Thomas’s surprise turned to shock when William bent down and shook his head to spray droplets of water at Dustin.

“You wet!” Dustin reached out and tugged on William’s hair. Hightower laughed and shook his head again, spraying Dustin in the face. He looked like a healthy male animal. The laughter made him human.

William looked at her and Thomas. He smiled amiably. “Morning. Do we have any juice for my friend here? As I recall, he favors grape.”

“Gwape!” Dustin crowed.

A smile tugged at her lips. It fled when she saw Thomas’s eyes darken in . . . she couldn’t quite identify the emotion.

“Up!” Dustin let go of Will’s leg and reached out to be picked up.

William put his hands on Dustin’s waist and lifted him. He held him at arms’ length, chubby legs dangling, as if unsure what to do next. “I never was any good at this.”

“Now, there’s an understatement,” Thomas muttered under his breath.

“Here, sit him down.” She motioned to the bar stool next to Thomas. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Yeah, thanks.” William sat in the third bar stool, which left Dustin in the center of a Hightower sandwich.

Maddie pulled a juice box from the refrigerator, poked the tiny straw into it, and set it in front of her grandson. “When Thomas was little did he like to be in the water as much as Dustin does?” she asked, wanting to include the younger Hightower in the conversation.

William looked at her, every bit as surprised as his son by the question. “Are you kidding? I used to think he was part fish. In fact, I’m pretty sure he learned to swim before he could walk.”

There was a small exhalation of breath from Thomas.

“He used to love it when I sprayed him like this.” William leaned over and shook his head at Dustin. Her grandson giggled. “Tommy was only a little older than Dustin when I bought the island.”

Thomas’s brow furrowed.

“And he was fast,” William said to Maddie. “I used to have to chase him all over the beach to catch him when it was time to go inside. Even at dusk, when the mosquitoes were big enough to carry him off.”

Thomas looked at his father as if he had never seen him before.

“Are you telling me you don’t remember?” William asked.

“What I remember is that you were always gone. And that about two minutes after my mother died you shipped me off to boarding school.”

William studied his son’s face. “Seriously? That’s it?”

Thomas Hightower nodded slowly. “Yep, I’d say that pretty much sums it up.”

“Man.” William’s voice was tinged with irony. “I’ve spent a huge part of my life trying to blot out the bad things. It never occurred to me that anybody would want to blot out all the good stuff.”

Father and son contemplated each other out of identical brown eyes under identical slashes of brow. She waited for one of them to say something that might facilitate a more in-depth conversation, something that might bridge the distance between them; but neither man spoke. She didn’t know how the male species had survived when so many of them had so little clue. “Are you hungry?” she asked finally. “There are eggs in the fridge. I could scramble a few or maybe make you omelets. Kind of a last semiofficial meal before this kitchen gets torn out.”