It was late when they’d gotten back to the house, but they sat in the car for another thirty minutes, talking, before Steffie went inside.

She’d fully expected to lie awake half the night savoring the time she’d spent with him, but to her astonishment, she’d fallen asleep immediately.

“Steffie was out with Charles,” their father announced without looking up from his paper. “She didn’t get home until late.”

Steffie feverishly worked the knife back and forth across the muffin, spreading the already thin layer of jam even thinner.

“Charles Tomaselli?” Norah repeated as though she wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly.

“Two girls and a boy,” David returned cheerfully.

“I beg your pardon?” Steffie asked.

“You and Charles,” he answered. “You’re going to get married and within the next few years have your own family.”

Rather than argue with her father or listen to more of this, Steffie glanced at her sister. “I need to do a few errands around town, but then I’m driving to Portland. Does anyone need anything?”

“Portland?” her father echoed. “Whatever for?”

“I thought it was time I applied for my doctorate and a part-time teaching position at the university. I am qualified, Dad, as you well know since you paid dearly for my education.”

“But you can’t worry about finding work now.”

“I realize the country’s in a recession, but—”

“I’m not talking about the economy,” he said. “You’re going to be married before the end of the summer, so don’t go complicating everything with a job.”

Steffie could feel the heat leap into her face. He seemed so certain of a marriage between her and Charles, and that exasperated her no end. “Dad, please listen—”

“It doesn’t make sense for you to be starting a job or a course and then taking time off for a honeymoon.”

Steffie wasn’t sure if it was a good idea to humor him anymore. This had gone on long enough, but she didn’t know what to say. She was aware that her father claimed everything would work out between Valerie and Colby, too. After seeing her older sister’s pale, drawn features that morning, Steffie had no faith in her father’s words. Not that she’d really ever believed him…

“I don’t actually expect to make a lot of contacts, since most of the offices won’t be open on a Saturday, but I’m hoping to look around, check out the library, get a few names. Obtaining a teaching position now might be difficult, anyway, especially for the fall session. But I’d like to get started on a thesis soon.”

“In other words you’re going to Portland, no matter what I say?”

“Exactly.”

“Then go shopping when you’re done,” her father suggested. “Try on a few wedding dresses. Both you and your sister are going to need ’em. Soon.”

Norah was watching Steffie closely and spoke the moment their father had left the kitchen.

“What are we going to do?” Norah pleaded.

“I don’t have a clue,” Steffie said, fully agreeing with her sister’s concern. “If Dad insists on believing—”

“Not Dad,” Norah blurted out impatiently. “I’m talking about Valerie.”

Steffie’s exasperation with her father was quelled by her compassion for Valerie. “What can we do?”

Norah’s face was pinched with worry. “That’s the problem. I don’t know, but we can’t let her leave town like this. She came down early this morning…. I decided I had to tell her about Colby dating Sherry Waterman.”

“How’d Valerie take it?”

“I don’t know. She’s so hard to read sometimes. It was as if she already knew, which is impossible.” Norah frowned. “I wish you’d talk to her again. She’s in her room now and, Steffie, I’m really worried about her. She’s in love with Colby—she admitted it—but she seems resigned to losing him.”

Steffie thought she understood her older sister’s feelings.

“To complicate matters,” Norah went on, “Valerie and I started talking and…arguing, and Dad heard us. He asked what we were fighting about.”

“What did you say to him?”

“I didn’t get a chance to say anything. Dad did all the talking. At least he and I agree. Dad believes Valerie should go talk this out with Colby, too. But I don’t think she will.”

“Where’s Valerie now?” Steffie asked.

Norah looked away. “She’s upstairs.”

“Doing what?” Her sister had been spending a lot of time alone in her room lately.

“I don’t know, but I think you should go to her. Someone’s got to. Valerie needs us, only she’s so independent she doesn’t know how to ask.”

Steffie disagreed. Her sister was getting—and apparently ignoring—advice from just about everyone, when what she needed to do was listen to her own heart.

“What’s all this about you and Charles?” Norah asked with open curiosity. “I didn’t know you even liked him.”

In light of their recent confrontation over the newspaper article, it was natural for her sister to assume that.

“We’re just friends.”

“Which is definitely an improvement,” Norah muttered.

Eager to leave before Norah asked more questions, Steffie went upstairs to her room. She toyed with the idea of talking to her sister, of telling her that seeking a long-distance cure for a broken heart didn’t work.

But Valerie was intelligent enough to make her own decisions, and Steffie didn’t feel qualified to say or do any more than she already had.

She dressed in a bright blue suit for her trip to Portland, one Valerie would have approved of had she been home. Her sister had mysteriously disappeared without saying where she was headed.

Steffie was on her way out the door when her father stopped her. “Sit on the porch with me awhile, will you, Princess?”

“Of course.” The wicker chair beside her father had belonged to her mother. Steffie sat next to him and gazed out over the sun-bright orchard she loved so much.

“Are you serious about this—getting a teaching position and all?”

“Yes. I can’t stay home and do nothing. It’d be a waste of my education.”

“Wait, Princess.”

All his talk of marriage was beginning to annoy her. “But, Dad—”

“Just for a couple of weeks. You’ve been home such a short while— I don’t want you to move away just yet. All I ask is that you delay a bit longer.”

“I won’t be moving out right away…” She hesitated. She couldn’t deny her father anything, and he knew it. “Two weeks,” she promised reluctantly. “We’ll visit, catch up, make some plans. Then I’ll start looking for an apartment.”

“Is Charles coming for dinner tonight?”

“No.” She’d invited him, but he had a late-afternoon meeting and doubted he’d be back in time.

“He’s going to miss out on your Italian dinner.”

“There’ll be others.”

“You should fix a plate and take it into town for him. A bachelor like Charles doesn’t often get the opportunity to enjoy a home-cooked dinner.”

“He seems to be doing just fine on his own,” Steffie said, hiding a smile. Her father wasn’t even trying to be subtle.

“He’s a fine young man.”

“Yes, I know. I think he’s probably one of the most talented newsmen I’ve ever read. To be honest, I’m surprised he’s still in Orchard Valley. I thought one of the big-city newspapers would’ve lured him away long before now.”

“They’ve tried, but Charles likes living here. He’s turned down several job offers.”

“How do you know?” That he’d received other offers didn’t surprise Steffie, but that her father was privy to the information did. Then she remembered he and Charles had worked together on the farm-worker article.

“I know Charles quite well,” her father answered. “We’ve become good friends the past few years.”

Steffie crossed her legs. “I’d forgotten the two of you wrote that article.”

Her father shook his head. “Charles wrote nearly every word of that story. All I did was get a few of the details for him and add a comment now and then, but that was it.”

“He credits you with doing a lot more.”

Her father was silent for a few minutes, reflective. Steffie wondered if he was worrying about Valerie the way Norah had been. She was about to say something when her father spoke.

“Charles is going to make me a fine son-in-law.”

Steffie closed her eyes, trying to control the burst of impatience his words produced.

“Daddy, don’t, please,” she murmured.

“Don’t what?”

“Talk about Charles marrying me.”

“Why ever not?” he asked, sounding almost offended. “Why, Princess, he’s loved you for years, only I was too blind to notice. I guess I had my head in the clouds, because it’s as clear as rainwater to me now. Soon after you left for Italy, he started coming around, asking about you. Only…he was so subtle about it I didn’t realize what he was doing until I saw the two of you together last night.”

“I know, but—”

“You don’t have a clue, do you?” her father said, chuckling and shaking his head. “Can’t say I blame you since I didn’t guess it myself.”

The way her father made it sound, Charles had spent the past three years pining away for her. Steffie knew that couldn’t be true. He was the reason she’d left. He’d humiliated her, laughed at her.

“When your mother said you’d be marrying Charles—”

“Dad, please.” Steffie felt close to tears. “I’m not marrying Charles.”

He studied her, eyes narrowed in concern. “What’s wrong, Princess? You love him, don’t you?”

“I did…but that was a long time ago when I was young and very foolish.” Her father had no way of knowing just how foolish she’d been.

Even after the incident in Charles’s home, when she’d soaked in his tub until her skin resembled a raisin, she hadn’t stopped. Some odd quirk of her nature refused to let her believe he didn’t want her, not when she loved him so desperately.

Oh, no, she hadn’t been willing to leave well enough alone. So she’d plotted and planned his downfall.

Literally.

Leaving a message at the newspaper office that her father needed to see him right away, Steffie had waited in the stable for Charles’s arrival. She’d spread fresh hay in the first stall.

No one was home and she tacked a note on the front door directing Charles to the stable.

He’d arrived right on time. She had to say that for him; he was punctual to a fault. He hesitated when he saw she was there alone, then asked to talk to her father. He kept his distance—which might have had something to do with the pitchfork in her hand.