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  “I don’t think so.” Dillie’s voice was thoughtful. “I think I need one. I think I’d like it. But I don’t think I want my mom to be Rachel.”

  “Rachel?” Phin’s temper flared. “Who—”

  “Grandma Liz says Rachel is just like a mom when she baby-sits me,” Dillie said. “And Rachel’s mom keeps saying maybe someday she’ll be my grandma and won’t that be nice. But I don’t think Rachel’s practical enough to be my mom. And I really don’t want her mom to be my grandma because her mom is mean to Grandma Junie all the time.” She fell into her maternal grandmother’s southern Ohio drawl as she added, “She’s just naasty.”

  “Rachel’s not going to be your mom,” Phin said. “You can stop worrying.”

  “Well, I don’t know.” Dillie sighed and straightened. “That’s what Grandma Liz wants, and if we stay here, that’s what'll happen because we always end up with what she wants.”

  “Trust me, Dill,” Phin said. “There’s not a chance in hell that Rachel will be your mom.” He heard his mother call, “Dillie?” and he raised his voice and called back, “We’re out front.”

  Liz came around the house from her garden, her gloved fist clenching blue-violet roses, her pale hair refusing to move in the summer breeze. The Tuckers did not let nature push them around. “Why are you sitting out here?”

  “Because it’s nice,” Phin said. “What did you want to talk to me about?”

  Liz stopped at the foot of the steps. “I want you to spend more time with Stephen Garvey instead of turning your back on him and rushing off like that. You’ll never build a consensus giving him the cold shoulder.”

  “I don’t want to build a consensus, I want to run a bookstore,” Phin said. Dillie poked him and he added, “And eat hot dogs with my kid. Dillie and I are going to have a sleepover at the store tomorrow night.”

  “What?” Liz frowned at them both, two ridiculous children. “She can’t. Her piano lesson is at six and then there’s dinner, and she has to be in bed at eight-thirty. There’s no point in her sleeping there.”

  “Friday, then,” Phin said.

  “Ballet,” Liz said. “I don’t understand this at all.”

  “What night don’t you have a lesson?” Phin said to Dillie.

  “Mondays,” Dillie said glumly.

  “That’s the only night?” Phin turned back to Liz. “When did that happen?”

  “You stay at the bookstore past six most nights,” Liz pointed out. “She’s not missing quality time with you. And we want her to be well-rounded.”

  Phin looked down at his angular little girl. “She’s rounded enough. We’re staying at the bookstore on Monday.”

  “That’s the first day of school so it would be impractical—”

  Dillie looked at him anxiously and he broke in. “We like impractical. Dillie and I live on the edge.”

  Dillie beamed at him, joy radiating from every cell in her body, and he thought, I have to spend more time with this kid. She’s the best.

  Behind Dillie, Liz opened her mouth again and Phin met her eyes. “Monday we stay there.”

  “Very well,” Liz said, clearly thinking it wasn’t. “Just for this Monday, though. We have to be practical about school nights. Come on, Dillie, let’s go get changed for dinner.”

  Dillie took one yearning look back at him, which would have wrenched his heart if he hadn’t known what an actress she was. “All right,” she said plaintively, and took her grandmother’s hand, dragging her feet as she went up the stone steps.

  “For heaven’s sake, Dillie,” Liz said, and Phin laughed.

  Dillie jerked her head up and grinned at him, pure kid again, and then she went inside with her grandmother to go without dessert because it was a weeknight.

  Diane would have given her dessert for breakfast, he thought, and then stopped, surprised that he’d thought of Diane at all. They’d been together for so short a time, he wasn’t sure he could remember what she’d looked like. Round, he remembered, because that was what had gotten him into trouble in the first place. That, and she’d been so warm. Warmth had been in short supply at the Tuckers‘, especially when he’d come home to help his mother cope with his father’s second heart attack and his father cope with his own mortality.

  Then one night he’d gone to the Tavern to get away from all the manufactured optimism at home, and Diane had sat down beside him. “So you’re Phin Tucker,” she’d said. “Heard about you.” He closed his eyes and tried to call up her face, guilty that he’d cared so little for her that he couldn’t even get that back. Warm brown eyes, he remembered, and dark tumbling hair, and that cupid’s-bow smile that Dillie could use to twist him around her little finger. He tried hard to put the features together, but instead of Diane, he saw Sophie Dempsey, who didn’t look like Diane at all, her brown eyes wary and her dark hair twisted in that tense curly knot on top of her head. And her mouth was full and lush, not bowed like Diane’s—

  He felt a flush of heat thinking about her mouth and stood up, wondering what the hell was wrong with him that he could forget the woman who’d given him a daughter and get hot for a woman he didn’t know and didn’t like.

  “Dad, dinner,” Dillie said from the doorway behind him, and he went inside, dropping another kiss on the top of her head when he reached her.

  “You are my favorite woman in the whole world,” he told her, and she said, “I know,” and led him into his mother’s immaculate, air-conditioned, dessert-free dining room.

  Chapter Three

  On Thursday morning, Rachel Garvey went out to the Whipple farm, a woman on a mission: She had to get out of Temptation before she went crazy and became her mother.

  Her plan was simple; she was going to offer Clea Whipple her services on the movie, and then she’d make herself indispensable, so that when Clea left, she’d take Rachel with her. Her mother was always telling her what a treasure she was, so now she’d be Clea’s treasure. Rachel felt no guilt at all about deserting her mother. Her two older sisters were still in town and they could be treasures after she was gone. It was way past time for their turns anyway.

  When she pulled up to the porch, Clea was sitting on the top step, beautiful in the sunlight. More than beautiful. Drop-dead, sky-eyed, magnolia-skinned beautiful. So when Clea said, “Hello?” in a voice that sounded like music, Rachel said, “God, I’ve never seen anybody as gorgeous as you.”

  Clea smiled and became more gorgeous.

  Good start, Rachel thought, and went toward her. “I’m Rachel Garvey,” she began, holding out her hand. “And I was thinking maybe you could use—”

  “Garvey?” Clea lost her smile. “Any relation to Stephen Garvey?”

  “I’m his daughter,” Rachel said. “Um, I came out to see if you could use some help.”

  Clea shook her head, but before she could say anything, the screen door slammed, and Rachel looked up to see a redhead in tight jeans and a pink T-shirt knotted above her belly button.

  “Hi.” The redhead looked at Rachel with naked curiosity. “I’m Amy.”

  “I’m Rachel. I came out to help.” Rachel held out her hand and then noticed that the redhead’s hands were full of paint scrapers. “You’re painting?” she said, hope rising.

  Amy jerked her head to the right side of the porch. “Just the porch wall white for a background.” She handed one of the scrapers to Clea, who looked at it as if she’d never seen one before.

  “No,” Rachel said. “First of all, the paint’s almost off that wood, so it’s going to suck up the first six coats of white paint you put on. You need a coat of primer.”

  “Oh.” Amy squinted at her. “Listen, we don’t want this to be a good paint job, we just want a nice background.”

  “Then you don’t want white, either. White isn’t very flattering.” Rachel smiled sweetly at Clea. “You want something warm that will bounce color back at you.”

  “She’s right.” Clea reexamined Rachel, head to toe, and Rachel stood with her