ARY L YNN M ARCO EXITED the kitchen of the split-level house she shared with her husband carrying two dessert plates with extralarge pieces of tiramisu.
“Here you go.” The smile she’d worn the entire evening didn’t waver as she put dessert plates decorated with showy flowers in front of Grady and Tony.
“Thanks,” said Tony without much enthusiasm.
“You’re welcome,” Mary Lynn answered in kind.
Grady picked up a fork and tried to look like he wasn’t about to burst from the extra helpings of rigatoni, bread and steamed vegetables she’d kept offering. “Is this the recipe you got from Uncle Vinny?”
Mary Lynn had phoned Grady over the weekend to invite him to dinner, claiming the single day he’d spent with the extended family in Johnstown over the Christmas holidays hadn’t been enough. She told him she’d be using recipes she’d talked Tony’s father into surrendering.
“Yes,” Mary Lynn said. “It’s layers of Italian sponge cake and mascarpone cream, although Tony’s dad’s tiramisu looks a lot better than mine.”
“Looks pretty good to me,” Grady said.
Mary Lynn adopted an even bigger smile, then sat down at the end of the table across from Tony and next to Grady. “I’m so happy you came tonight, Grady. Any cousin of Tony’s is always welcome here.”
Tony caught Grady’s eyes and raised his eyebrows. “You already told him that, Mary Lynn. Three times.”
Mary Lynn’s smile wavered, but only slightly. She was such a champion smiler she would have done well on the beauty pageant circuit. With her long curly blond hair, blue eyes and delicate features, she was certainly pretty enough. She was twenty-four, but seemed younger, partly because she was about five foot two.
She made an odd couple with the much more serious Tony, but Grady didn’t know how they’d hooked up. He and Tony had grown up on opposite ends of Pennsylvania, seeing each other at the occasional family get-togethers as children and even less frequently as adults.
“I’ll never get tired of you saying I’m welcome here,” Grady told Mary Lynn. “I like hearing how much you two enjoy my company.”
“Mary Lynn’s speaking for herself,” Tony said, his fork full of tiramisu suspended halfway to his mouth. “You made my life a living hell this past week by suspending Bryan Charleton.”
“You’re not going to start talking about that basketball player again, are you?” Mary Lynn even smiled when she was complaining. “Isn’t it enough that he’s back on the team?”
“Not when R.G. won’t let him play Tuesday,” Tony said.
“If Grady won’t let him play, he probably wants to make real sure the boy learns his lesson,” Mary Lynn said.
Grady slanted Mary Lynn a grateful look. “Exactly right.”
Tony’s dark eyebrows arched as he addressed Grady. “The way you learned a lesson from what happened at Carolina State?”
Grady felt as though Tony had cut into his flesh, then taken the shaker from the table and liberally sprinkled salt into his wound. “The two have nothing to do with each other.”
“Sure they do,” Tony said. “Right about now Bryan thinks life isn’t fair. Isn’t that how you felt when you couldn’t get another job coaching basketball?”
Did Tony honestly think Grady had tried to get another coaching job? Grady assumed Tony knew he’d been driving a truck by choice. Well, maybe choice was the wrong word. It certainly hadn’t taken much convincing for Tony to talk him into applying for the teaching position at Springhill.
“I didn’t look for another coaching job,” Grady said.
“You came to me when Fuzz had the heart attack, remember?”
Mary Lynn laid a hand on Grady’s forearm. “And he’s told me a dozen times how lucky Springhill is to have you. Isn’t that right, Tony?”
“Yeah,” Tony said. “But I still wish he hadn’t suspended Bryan.”
Tony brought the tiramisu the rest of the way to his mouth. Grady dug in, too. The bitter, grainy taste of strong coffee hit him at the same time Tony reached for a half-empty glass of water beside his plate and drained it.
“What’s the matter?” Mary Lynn asked. “Did I mess up the recipe?”
“It’s fine,” Tony said, although it obviously wasn’t.
“I think you used coffee grounds instead of brewed coffee,” Grady told her.
“I’m so sorry.” She stood up and gathered up their plates with the barely eaten tiramisu. She blinked a few times, Grady thought to keep from crying. “I’ll clean up.”
When Mary Lynn was gone, Grady asked Tony in a quiet voice, “Don’t you want to make sure she’s all right?”
“She’ll be fine,” Tony said.
Grady wasn’t so sure, an observation that was proved true when he carried some dirty dishes into the kitchen and found Mary Lynn wiping tears from under her eyes.
He patted her awkwardly on the back. “Don’t cry, Mary Lynn. It’s only dessert.”
“That’s not why I’m crying.” She blinked a few times.
“Did you hear how polite Tony is around me? He couldn’t even tell me the tiramisu was awful.” Mary Lynn took a tissue out of the box and dabbed at her eyes. “Listen to me. Blabbing to you about my troubles. And you being Tony’s cousin.”
Grady’s desire to help Mary Lynn overrode his vaguely uncomfortable feeling at hearing her private business. “I’m family. Anything you tell me stays with me.”
“You’re a sweetheart,” she said, blinking up at him through damp eyelashes. “It’s just that I’ve been trying to get pregnant for almost a year, and I can’t get Tony to go to an infertility clinic.” She sniffed. “Sometimes I think it’s because he doesn’t want to have a baby with me.”
Grady would have issued a consoling statement if he hadn’t gotten the distinct impression that Tony had been hitting on Keri Cassidy, not the sign of a happily married man.
“I’m sorry.” Mary Lynn covered her mouth, her hand trembling, her expression miserable. “You’d think that after being married two years, I still wouldn’t be so jealous of her.”
“Of who?” Grady asked.
“Tony’s ex. You know he was engaged before he married me, right?”
Grady nodded, although he’d never met Tony’s fiancé. He’d been too busy trying to build a successful team at Carolina State.
“It’s hard living in the same town as her,” Mary Lynn said on a heavy sigh.
The same town…
“What’s her name?” he asked.
Mary Lynn took a shuddering breath before she replied, but Grady already knew what her answer would be. It was why the name had seemed familiar to him.
“Keri Cassidy,” she said.
K ERI STOOD ABOUT TEN FEET from the baseline Tuesday night, close enough to the Springhill High cheerleading squad that she had to guard against getting whacked in the face by a black-and-gold pom-pom.
At a few minutes past game time, every seat in the gym seemed to be taken. Keri’s only hope was if the group of parents she usually sat with saved her a seat.
“Watch out!” The tiny, dark-haired cheerleader at the end of the line shouted a warning.
Keri turned toward the court to see a player in black-and-gold valiantly trying to save the basketball from going out of