Madeline looked at her daughter, who seemed unable, or unwilling, to grasp the fact that the divorce had left both of her parents happier, or at least less unhappy, people.

“Well, if I get that spin-off I’ll be sure to invite you on for a cameo appearance as the cougar’s disapproving daughter.” Madeline bit back a smile at the horror in Kyra’s wide-set gray eyes. “We’d better get on the road. I told Avery we’d be there in time for dinner.” Madeline climbed into the driver’s seat of the minivan. She averted her gaze from the For Sale sign as she backed down the drive for what might be the last time and reminded herself that the time had come to stop apologizing. Still, the last thing she wanted to think about was partying or, God help her, dating. Ending her marriage had been all about making the most of the life she had left, not the right to sashay through bars or pick up men.

Fifty-one-year-old grandmothers did not belong in the dating pool when they weren’t even sure they remembered how to swim.

* * *

Avery Lawford had what some might consider an unhealthy relationship with power tools. She’d come by it naturally, the result of a childhood spent trailing behind her father on his construction sites, a bright pink hard hat smashed down on top of unruly blond curls, a training wheels of a tool belt buckled tightly around her little-girl hips.

Before her mother ran off to Hollywood to become an interior designer to the stars, Avery went with other little girls to ballet and tap lessons, where she discovered she had no discernible natural rhythm or the slightest chance of learning to leap like a gazelle. By the time her mother left them, Avery knew how to handle the business end of a hammer and when to use a fine blade in a circular saw versus a rough cut. The whine of a band saw, not Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, was the music that moved her.

She spent most of puberty telling herself that her mother had been nothing more than a vessel who’d carried her father’s DNA. On the morning of her sixteenth birthday she’d finally conceded that her height, which was nowhere near tall enough for the size of her chest, and the blond hair, blue eyes, and Kewpie doll features that resulted in an immediate deduction of perceived IQ points and caused strangers to talk to her slowly, using really small words, were, in fact, unwelcome “parting gifts” bequeathed by the absent Deirdre Morgan.

In architectural terms Avery was a Fun House façade wrapped around Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater. It was that façade that nullified her architectural degree and the years spent on her father’s construction sites and that had encouraged two television networks to try to turn her into the Vanna White of the do-it-yourself set.

Avery drew a deep breath of freshly sawn wood, shook a ton of sawdust out of her hair, and smiled. It was a heady scent, filled with new beginnings, borderline heavenly, one that conjured her father and everything she’d learned from him in a way nothing else could.

She took in the room that had been designed for Chase’s father, who’d fallen and fractured both his hip and his femur just before she and Deirdre had moved into the Hardins’ garage apartment. The newly framed walls, just-laid hardwood floor, windows stacked against one wall waiting to be shimmied into their openings. She ran a hand over the shelf of a bookcase that she’d built around the front window. The large bedroom/bath/sitting room would be warm and cozy. Most important, it would be barrier free.

“It’s looking good.” Chase Hardin, who had once been a contender for the title of most annoying man in the world, stepped up behind her, hooked a finger in the tool belt slung low on her hips, and pulled her closer.

“Yeah. The space will be perfect for your dad. He’ll be right here with you and the boys, but he’ll have his independence, too.” She turned in his arms and looked up at him. “I hate to leave before the addition’s finished.”

“I know. But it means a lot to Dad that you and I have been working on his new space together.” Chase’s father, Jeff Hardin, had been her own father’s longtime partner in the construction business they’d founded and that Chase now ran.

Chase buried his face in her hair. “Mm-mm. What’s that perfume you’re wearing?”

Avery snorted. “I believe that would be Trésor de Two-by-Four. Or perhaps zee Poison de Pine.” She tried for a French accent and failed miserably.

He nuzzled her ear. “I like it. Maybe we should bottle it.”

“Great idea. I’m sure we could sell a ton of it at Home Depot.” She laughed. “Right next to the Drano and commercial cleaning products.”

“Hey, there are a lot of men who like the smell of a woman who knows her way around a construction site.” He nuzzled her other ear. “Of course, they like her to be wearing less clothes than you have on right now.” His hands dropped down to cup her bottom. Which vibrated on contact.

“Wow,” Chase said. “That’s incredibly . . . responsive. I’m flattered.”

“Very funny,” she said, already reaching a hand toward her shorts’ pocket, which was, in fact, buzzing. “I asked Kyra to let me know when they were close.”

Pulling out her cell phone, she held it up so she could read the screen. The text read, Amset air in HaRrin funjom.

They looked at each other. “I don’t understand it. But I know who sent it.” Maddie Singer’s thumbs and her iPhone were often incompatible. She claimed she’d been a lot more comfortable with her smartphone before it got so smart.

Avery peered down at the screen again to check the time. “I was so into the bookcase, I forgot to order the pizza.” She swiped at her T-shirt. Fresh shavings sprinkled to the floor. “I know I’ve got the delivery number in here somewhere.”

Many of the meals she and Deirdre had shared with Chase, his two teenage sons, and his increasingly frail father had been delivered. Few of them had required silverware. She began to scroll through her contacts.

“I have it on speed dial,” Chase said. “But Deirdre took care of dinner.”

“Deirdre?” she asked. “Deirdre ordered pizza?” Deirdre had returned almost two years before and continued to claim that all she wanted was to be Avery’s mother. But none of her efforts to build a mother/daughter bond had included a willingness to lower her epicurean standards.

“Not exactly. I think the appetizer is a liver pâté of some kind. The main course is pompano en papillote.”

Avery groaned. “I don’t know why your dad gave her that apron and those cooking lessons for Christmas.”

“Hey, there’ve been four males living in this house for way too long for me to see a downside to a home-cooked meal of any kind. And he was smart enough not to give them to you,” Chase said.

“Ha. Deirdre always has an angle. She took mothering lessons from Maddie in Miami. Now she’s trying to become Betty Crocker. If she thinks she can turn her reappearance in my life into some kind of Brady Bunch reunion show, she’s crazy.”

“I agree that she has a lot to make up for. No one’s ready to pin the Mother of the Year medal on her chest. But she did throw herself in front of a bullet for you,” Chase pointed out.

This was still almost as hard to believe as it was to dismiss. “Well, all I know is Maddie and Kyra have been on the road for eight hours with a toddler. Greeting them with ground-up goose livers and fish cooked in a paper bag is ridiculous.” Avery hurried through the newly widened doorway and into the family room.

In the kitchen Deirdre was arranging crackers around a mound of pâté. Jeff Hardin sat at the kitchen table, his walker within easy reach. A bowl of fancy nuts and an opened bottle of red wine sat breathing on the counter.

“There.” Deirdre slid the plate of hors d’oeuvres closer to Jeff and untied her apron. She wore a periwinkle blue silk pantsuit that looked as if it had been dyed to match her eyes. She was built just as small and big-breasted as Avery, but the cut of her tunic top downplayed the D cup that dwelt beneath it. A pair of strappy sandals gave her an extra couple of inches.

Avery wore a pair of Daisy Dukes, a chopped-off Do Over T-shirt, and an ancient pair of Keds. Which just went to prove that the apple could fall far from the tree if it tried hard enough.

“Dinner’s almost ready,” Deirdre said, giving Avery the once-over. “But there’s time if you want to shower and change.”

That had been Avery’s plan until Deirdre brought it up. “I’m good. Thanks.”

With a snort of laughter Chase reached in the refrigerator and pulled out a beer. “Dad?”

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Chase handed his father a beer, then opened one for himself. He slathered pâté on a fancy cracker and popped it in his mouth. “Mm-mm.”

Deirdre beamed at him. Avery gritted her teeth and went to the pantry.

“Where are the Cheez Doodles?” she asked, scanning the shelves.

Deirdre raised an elegant eyebrow. “I believe we’re out.” She said this with a regretful tone that was no more convincing than Avery’s French accent. “But if you put them on the shopping list I’ll—”

“Forget to buy them. Again.”

“They turn everything they touch orange. There’s no telling what they do to your internal organs,” Deirdre said.

“I’m thirty-six years old. My internal organs belong to me. And you showed up on the scene way too late to influence my taste in food.”

Deirdre rubbed her arm where the bullet had gone in.

Avery rolled her eyes. “She does that every time I even think about disagreeing with her.”

“Which is pretty much all the time,” Deirdre said.

“My Cheez Doodle habit is my own business,” Avery pointed out.