“We’re not . . . it’s not . . . We’re not at the point of family gatherings. We had dinner. It’s one date.”

“Two with the coffee,” Sherry corrected. “Are you seeing her again?”

“Probably. Maybe.” He felt his shoulders hunch as he shoved his hands in his pockets. “I don’t know.”

“I hear good things about her, and she does very good work. Otherwise, she wouldn’t be doing Sherry’s wedding.”

“Isn’t she Linda Elliot’s daughter? Or it’s Barrington now.”

“I haven’t met her mother. It was dinner.”

The news pulled Diane away from the window. “Linda Barrington, sure. Her daughter’s close friends with the Browns, and Emmaline Grant, and that other one. They run that wedding business together.”

“I guess that’s the one then,” Carter acknowledged.

“Linda Barrington.” Diane’s jaw tightened as she compressed her lips in an expression Carter knew reflected disapproval. “That’s the woman who had an affair with Stu Gibbons, and broke up his marriage.”

“She can hardly be held responsible for her mother’s behavior.” Pam opened the oven to check her roast. “And Stu broke up his own marriage.”

“Well, I heard that she pushed Stu to leave Maureen, and when he wouldn’t she told Maureen about the affair herself. Maureen skinned Stu in the divorce—and who could blame her—and after that she wasn’t so interested anymore.”

“Are we talking about Mackensie or her mother?” Pam wondered.

Diane shrugged. “I’m just saying what I know. People say she’s always on the hunt for the next husband, especially if he’s someone else’s.”

“I’m not dating Mackensie’s mother.” Carter’s tone was quiet enough, cool enough, to light a fire in Diane’s eyes.

“Who said you were? But you know what they say about apples and trees. You might want to be careful, that’s all, so you don’t have another Corrine Melton on your hands.”

“Di, why do you have to be such a bitch?” Sherry demanded.

“I’ll just keep my mouth shut.”

“Good plan.”

Pam cast her eyes at the ceiling as her oldest daughter stalked back to the windows. “She’s been in a mood since she got here.”

“She’s been in a mood since she was born,” Sherry muttered.

“That’s enough. She’s a pretty girl, as I recall. Mackensie Elliot. And as I said, I’ve heard good things about her. Her mother’s a difficult woman, no question. As I recall, her father’s charming and absent. It takes a lot of spine and stomach to make yourself into something when no one gives you a foundation.”

Carter leaned down, kissed his mother’s cheek. “Not everyone’s as lucky as we are.”

“Damn right. Diane, call those kids in so they can get cleaned up. That’s the two-minute warning.”

When dinner conversation jumped from a rehash of the game, to his niece’s school play, veered into wedding talk and skipped over to his nephew’s desperate desire for a puppy, Carter relaxed.

His relationship with Mac—if there was one—had apparently been taken off the table.

Nick cleared, a gesture that had endeared him to Pam since his first family dinner. Mike sat back, looked down the long length of table in the formal dining room. “I have an announcement.”

“Are you going to get me a puppy, Grandpa?”

Mike leaned down to his grandson, whispered, “Let me work on your mom a little more.” He eased back again. “Your mother and I have an anniversary coming up next month. You’re still my valentine,” he added and winked at her.

“I thought you might like a small party at the club,” Diane began. “Just family, and close friends.”

“That’s a nice thought, Diane, but my bride and I will be celebrating thirty-six years of marital bliss in sunny Spain. That is, if she agrees to go with me.”

“Michael!”

“I know we had to put off the trip we’d planned a couple of years ago when I took over as chief of surgery. I’ve cleared two weeks in February, written them in stone. How about it, sugar? Let’s go eat paella.”

“Give me five minutes to pack, and I’m there.” Pam shot out of her chair, raced over, and dropped into Mike’s lap.

“You’re all excused,” he said, waving at his children.

There it was, Carter thought, there was another reason he’d come home.

The constancy.

CHAPTER NINE

A CRAPPY MOOD DIDN’T SERVE AS AN EXCUSE FOR MISSING A Monday morning breakfast meeting. So Mac took it with her, like a snarling dog on a leash, to the conference room at the main house. Laurel and Parker sat nibbling on cranberry muffins in what had once been the Browns’ library.

The books remained, a kind of frame to the space. The fire crackled cheerfully in the hearth. The old gleaming library table held the setup for coffee, and she knew the engraved console hid a supply of bottled water.

Her friends sat at the round inlaid table in the center of the room. Bright and beautiful, she thought, both of them. Every damn hair in place at eight-freaking-A.M. Just looking at them made her feel sloppy and gawky and somehow less in the torn jeans she’d dragged on.

“And when I called him on it?” Laurel lifted her cup of what Mac knew would be perfectly prepared cappuccino. “He said, ‘I never leave the house without my toothbrush.’ ” She let out a snort of derision, then smiled at Mackensie. “You’ve just missed my retelling of The Demise of Martin Boggs. Why the hell did I go out with someone named Martin Boggs anyway? I hope your date was better than mine.”

“It was fine.”

“Mmm, that good, huh?”

“I said it was fine.” Mac dumped her laptop on the conference table and stalked over to the coffee bar. “Can we get started on this? I have a lot to deal with today.”

“Somebody got up on the cranky side of the bed.”

Mac flipped up her middle finger.

“Right back at you, pal.”

“Girls, girls.” Parker let out a long, windy sigh. “Do I have to separate you? Have a muffin, Mac.”

“I don’t want a goddamn muffin. What I want is to get on with this meeting that’s a total waste of time anyway.”