Dockside at Willow Lake

“Gosh, and I was going to invite you, too, Max,” Daisy said. “Having you there, holding my hand, would have meant so much to me.”

“It would mean you finally lost what’s left of your marbles. Geez.” He shuddered again.

Greg ground his teeth. Despite the fact that she was pregnant, she still bickered like a third grader with her brother. Although it took some restraint, Greg knew it was best not to intervene when the two of them went at it. The bickering usually played itself out and sometimes even seemed to relieve tension, oddly enough.

With an older brother and two older sisters, he understood the dynamics of siblings. The main thing was to stand back and let the fur fly. He found this surprisingly easy to do, zoning out while they picked at each other about everything from the way Max ate a Pop-Tart to their cousin Olivia’s upcoming wedding, in which Daisy was to be a bridesmaid, Max an usher.

“You know you’re going to have to take ballroom dancing lessons,” Daisy told her brother with a satisfied smirk.

“Better than birthing lessons,” he shot back. “You’ll be, like, the world’s largest bridesmaid.”

“And you’ll be, like, the world’s dorkiest uncle. Weird Uncle Max. I’m going to teach the baby to call you that.”

Greg figured if these kids could survive each other, they could survive anything. He left them to battle it out and went to his study to check e-mail. There was a message from Brooke with a noncommittal subject line—thanks for today …

He didn’t even need to click on it in order to guess the rest of the message: … let’s be sure we never do it again sometime. She probably wouldn’t be that blunt, but he’d belatedly figured out that Brooke Harlow’s interest in him was as a client, not a boyfriend. That was his conclusion after today, anyway. After the boating fiasco, she’d been all too eager to bug out with the lame-ass bank president in tow.

The encounter today with Nina had caused his confidence to falter. What the hell was he getting himself into? No. Greg was happy enough with the transaction. He did realize it could be a disaster—long hours, a challenge around every corner. Then again, it could be the second chance he needed for his family—an enterprise that kept him close to home, the kids engaged in family life, not avoiding it. He practically flinched as he remembered the end of his marriage, when he and Sophie had given up pretending for the sake of the children, who saw straight through them, anyway. Their unhappiness was like a disease that infected the whole family. They’d engaged in battles of bitter recriminations that usually ended in slammed doors, the four of them hiding from each other. Ultimately, Greg and Sophie attempted a trial separation. There was a sense of relief, sure, but the separation opened a whole new set of troubles.

Greg blamed himself for not seeing how troubled Daisy was by the divorce. If he had, maybe Daisy never would have gone to that weekend party on Long Island, and she never would’ve gotten pregnant. Well, not so soon, anyway.

He’d spent his entire marriage waiting for disaster and then reacting to it. He was determined to change now. Buying the inn felt right, and he was focused on making it happen.

The soft doorbell sound of an incoming e-mail distracted him. He glanced at the screen and then did a double-take when he saw who it was from—Nina Romano. The subject line read We need to talk.

Well, he thought. Well.

Nina looked at her best friend, Jenny, and then back at the computer screen. “I just hit Send. I can’t believe I just hit Send.”

“That’s the best way for him to get the message.”

“But I changed my mind.” Nina swiveled back to glare at the screen. She wished there was some way to dive through the digital ether and snatch back her message.

She and Jenny were in Nina’s office. It wasn’t properly an office but a small nook in her bedroom where the computer sat on a card table. Everything about the house was small, including the rent check she gave her Uncle Giulio every month. She’d lived in the modest, cluttered house since Sonnet was little, trying to balance school and work and motherhood. She was blessed with a supportive family, but ultimately wanted to go it alone. She thought again about the offer from Greg Bellamy. No way.

“All you said was that you wanted to talk further about the inn,” Jenny insisted. “It’s not like you made a lifetime commitment.”

Nina’s chest hurt and she realized she’d been holding her breath. She let it out in a burst of air. “He’ll see it as a sign of weakness. He’ll think I’m wavering.”

“You are wavering,” Jenny pointed out. “And that’s a good thing. It shows you have an open mind about the situation.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me this was happening while I was away.”

“I didn’t know. Even if I did, it would have been completely pointless to ruin your trip with Sonnet.”

She was right. It would’ve ruined the trip, her cherished mother-daughter time. “Sorry,” she said. “It wasn’t your job to keep me informed. He’s probably already looking for someone else. I bet he won’t even call.”

The phone on the desk rang, and both women jumped. Nina grabbed the handset and checked the caller ID screen. The name Bellamy, G winked back at her.

“Oh, God. It’s him.”

“So pick up,” Jenny suggested.

“No way. I’d rather die.”

“Then I’ll do it.” Jenny grabbed the phone.

Nina made a lunge for it, but missed.

Jenny clicked the talk button. “Romano residence. This is Jenny McKnight speaking. Oh, hey, Greg.”

Nina collapsed on the floor in a heap of helplessness.

“I’m fine, thanks,” Jenny said pleasantly. “Rourke, too,” she added.

Of course she was fine, thought Nina. She was married to the love of her life, and she had just found a publisher for the book she’d written, a memoir about growing up in a Polish-American bakery. Of course she was freaking fine.

She chatted pleasantly with Greg about his kids, who also happened to be her first cousins, though she hadn’t known them very long. Although Jenny was related to the Bellamys, the situation had come to light only in the past year. Jenny had grown up never knowing who her father was. Only last summer did she discover that there had been a tragic love affair between her mother, Mariska, and her father—Philip Bellamy—who happened to be Greg’s older brother. So that made Greg her uncle. They’d met just recently, but now, hearing Jenny chat so easily with him, Nina wondered if that blood tie actually counted for something.

“Yes, she’s here,” Jenny said.

The traitor. Nina nearly came out of her skin. With nonverbal Italian-American eloquence, she asked Jenny, Do you want to die today?

“But she can’t come to the phone right now. I’ll make sure she returns your call. That’s a promise.”

Jenny hung up the phone, seemingly unperturbed by Nina’s fury. “Good news,” she said. “He hasn’t found anyone else yet.”

“How do you know? Did he say anything?”

“Of course he didn’t say anything. It’s none of my business.”

“Then how do you know he hasn’t moved on to his next victim?”

“If you don’t believe me, call him yourself.” Jenny held out the phone.

Nina shrank from it. “I need a drink.”

“I can help with that.” Jenny led the way to the kitchen with the familiarity of a best friend. She went straight to the cupboard and found a bottle of sweet red wine. “This will be perfect with the biscotti I brought from the bakery,” she said. Although the Sky River Bakery had decidedly Polish roots, there were a number of Italian selections on the menu as well, including cantuccini biscotti that were admittedly better than anything a Romano woman had ever baked. Dunked in the sweet dark wine, they made Nina forget her troubles for approximately twenty-nine seconds.

“So what did he sound like?” she asked Jenny.

“You already spoke to him today, right?”

“No, I mean did he sound conciliatory? Pissed?”

“He sounded like a Bellamy—you know, Manhattan prep school, Ivy League college and all that.” Jenny emulated the accent perfectly, then laughed at herself. “Sometimes I still can’t believe I’m related to those people.” The lighthearted reference belied the ordeal Jenny had gone through as she discovered her ties to the Bellamy family.

“They haven’t changed who you are,” Nina reminded her, “and that’s a good thing. Remember how the two of us used to make fun of the summer people when we were growing up?” As girls, she and Jenny would observe the summer vacationers who escaped the city for the cool relief of Willow Lake. They used to discuss the ridiculousness of the girls’ tennis whites and straight, silky hair, and that the kids were looked after by servants. The one thing neither Nina nor Jenny ever acknowledged, however, was the fact that their ridicule was rooted in envy.