Then Brent died, and I knew neither of them was ever coming back. No one came back. Not for me.

Pearl was off tonight, so we’d planned to fry up the drum I’d caught Sunday along with a bagful of fresh okra Sam brought me from her dad’s garden yesterday. Sam wasn’t fond of okra, so she was happy to get rid of it and Pearl was happy to take it. I was less sure. It was free okra, not free beer.

“I straight-up dropped a hundred-dollar beaker in the lab today,” Pearl said, plopping a pat of butter and a pinch of salt into the rice. “I was so mortified—I must’ve turned ten shades of red. Everybody froze, including me, until Dr. Kent said, ‘Well it ain’t gonna sweep itself up. Broom’s in the broom closet.’”

I chuckled at her vocal imitation. “He sounds like a good ol’ boy.”

“Yeah, but he’s such an actual genius I think regular people exasperate the hell out of him. He’s usually cantankerous. I thought for sure he’d make some sort of example out of me for being clumsy with the lab equipment. I’d have deserved it.”

I watched her soak okra slices in buttermilk and coat them with cornmeal and spice. I’d grown adept at cooking fish a hundred ways, but vegetables were always raw or microwaved. I had no patience with anything that required a recipe. She’d made fresh iced tea too, in a pitcher I didn’t know I had.

“Maybe he thinks you’re hot,” I said, turning the fish in the frying pan.

Her laughter tumbled out like a song I wanted to replay over and over. “Boyce, jeez! He’s old enough to be my grandpa.” Her dark eyes glinted as she slid the okra into the pan alongside the fish.

“Baby, if he ain’t dead yet, you’re hot enough to wake him right up.” I winked, nudging her from prim and proper to hot and bothered. She wouldn’t look at me, and her cheeks shaded pink. When she added salt and butter to the rice like that task demanded her full concentration, I didn’t have the heart to tell her she’d just done that two minutes ago. I’d always loved getting her flustered and unbalanced with a bit of flirting and then catching her and setting her upright before she knew what was what.

That thought brought to mind the thing that would unbalance her in a way I didn’t want. Once we sat down to eat, I said, “I need to tell you something.”

“Okay.” She waited, wide-eyed. I wasn’t sure what she thought I was about to tell her, but whatever it was, she was off the mark.

“My mother is coming back to town in the next few days. Seems she and my dad never got divorced. They did make wills—leaving everything to each other. But that doesn’t matter as much as the fact that he died still married to her.”

Her lips fell apart. “So she’ll get everything. Including the garage?”

I nodded, unsurprised that she’d caught on faster than I had.

“That rotten bastard. How dare he have you running his damned business and taking care of his sorry ass and never tell you this?”

Pearl rarely cussed. She had to get pretty pissed to let loose like that. I bit back a grin at how cute she was when she was spitting mad.

“After the first year or so he never brought her up, drunk or sober.” I shrugged. “I’d always assumed they’d divorced somewhere along the way. I assumed I was his sole heir. Mr. Amos says I could fight it, but this is a community property state and they were still legally married. I’d lose. And I need my savings to do whatever the hell I’m doing next.”

She laid her hand on mine, and I knew right then there was nothing I wouldn’t do to make her mine, short of dragging her down with me.

“What will you do next?”

“No idea,” I said, which wasn’t the whole truth. I had one short-term plan—a proposition I intended to make. I wouldn’t share it with her, though. If she knew the details, she’d never let me go through with it.

Pearl

I’d never wanted to give somebody a piece of my mind like I wanted to give it to Bud Wynn in that moment. Too bad he was dead. All I could do was hope hell was real and he was in it.

My sorority’s social director, Jen, had been pre-law, and her parents were both attorneys. She’d explained the basics of trust funds and inheritance transfers and prenups to any of us who weren’t familiar with the legal pitfalls of saying I do and later saying I sure as hell don’t. I’d assumed that if Mitchell and I got married, we’d be doing so as doctors—equals. If it didn’t work out we’d arrange a reasonable, equitable split.

I’d never considered what happened in a situation like this—where a divorce should have happened but hadn’t. Boyce’s mother had run from an abusive husband, leaving her share of marital property behind. I couldn’t justly fault her for wanting her share—I just hated what she might take from Boyce. He wouldn’t know what she intended until she showed up, but I’d learned two things from Jen’s warnings and a bit of Internet research: she was probably entitled to everything, and when it came to money and inheritance, people lost their damned minds.

“You have a personal account in your name, right? Separate from the business and your dad’s accounts?”

He nodded, staring at his plate. “There’s not a whole lot in it. I’ve been channeling most of the garage income back into the business, replacing crap diagnostic equipment, buying new tools. I got advice from Maxfield’s dad when I first took over, and he told me to keep the business money completely separate and pay myself a salary. I wish I’d given myself a fucking raise a year ago.” He chuckled. “But thank Christ I listened to him or I’d have lumped it all together like a dumbass.”

“Boyce, there’s no way you could have seen this coming,” I said—his words to me when Mama had told me I couldn’t live at home and pursue the life I wanted. Little did I know I’d be echoing them back to him about his own mother. I took a bite of rice and nearly spit it right back out. “Aauugh! How much salt did I put in this?”

He laughed and arched a brow. “You were a tad distracted.”

Lord, was I ever. I downed half my iced tea in an attempt to dilute the salt and battled the urge to fan myself like a swooning twit. “Maybe you shouldn’t distract me while I’m cooking.”

He leapt from playful to predatory in two seconds flat. “But I like distracting you.”

His mouth curved into the lazy half smirk I knew so well, and his gaze dropped to my lips. When I licked them (combination nervous habit and enough salt on that rice to choke a horse), our eyes connected. There was nothing guarded in the deep green of his.