.

Hill. And yes, she has a boyfriend, a pretty serious one at that.”

      Janey thought about what she had learned of local relationships, since she had moved back to town. “Johnny Byrne, isn’t it?” He too had once bussed tables at The Wedding Inn and was now attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

      Thad nodded. “They’ve been dating for three years.”

      Janey didn’t find that surprising—both were nice, well-rounded, clean-cut kids with the same strong work ethic and ambitious outlook on life. Yet she sensed a reservation in Thad akin to the one her brother Mac had just demonstrated. “Do you get along with Johnny?”

      Thad fell silent, a conflicted expression on his face.

      “You don’t like him, do you?” Janey guessed.

      Thad shrugged his powerful shoulders. “I’m just not sure he loves her the way he should. With all his heart and soul.”

      That was a surprisingly romantic thing for a guy to say.

      “But, as you would no doubt point out,” Thad continued with a resolve Janey couldn’t help but respect, “Molly is a grown woman, so I’m just going to have to trust that she knows what she is doing.”

      “Mom!” Chris came out of the swinging double doors that fronted the terrace, as exuberant as ever. “There you are! Uncle Mac says we got to call Grandma.”

      “Yes,” Janey said, realizing that Mac had sent Chris to make sure a repeat kiss would not happen, even if Chris didn’t realize it. She smiled at her son. “We do.”

      Thad said a few kind words to Chris, then excused himself. To her disappointment, Janey did not see Thad again before she and Chris checked out of the lodge the next morning. Because it was still raining, they had decided to go back to Holly Springs. She hoped Chris’s nonstop chatter on the trip home about sports camp would help her get her mind off Thad Lantz and the way he had kissed her the night before.

      THAD WAS HALFWAY HOME Sunday morning when he got the message from his mother, asking him to meet her in her office at noon over at the hospital’s physical therapy department. “So what’s the family crisis?” he asked when he got there, knowing immediately from the pinched, worried look on his normally unflappable mother’s face that something drastic had happened.

      His mother looked up from the patient records she was going over. She gestured for Thad to have a seat, even as she pushed away from her desk. “Molly called from Gatlinburg. She and Johnny Byrne eloped.”

      Thad did a double take. “You’re joking.”

      “Believe me,” his mother replied ruefully as she ran a hand through her short and curly black hair, “I wish I was.”

      Thad stretched his long legs out in front of him. “Why would Molly do that?” Especially when Molly had been planning her nuptials—at least in theory—for years.

      Veronica idly fingered the hospital ID badge clipped to her belt. “I have no idea.”

      “Is Lionel upset?”

      Veronica made a beleaguered face. “What do you think?”

      Given the fact that Molly was the apple of his stepfather’s eye, Thad thought, Lionel had to be furious, as well as hurt, at being shut out of this very important moment of his only daughter’s life.

      Veronica removed her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. “I want you to talk to her when she gets back tomorrow, Thad. Try and see if you can figure out why she and Johnny went and did this.”

      Thad was glad to help in any way he could. “I’ll try. She may not confide in me, though,” he warned.

      “Try anyway. And in the meantime, I’m going to pull together the best reception I can manage for the two of them. I just hope Delectable Cakes can do a wedding cake for them on such short notice.”

      Thad grinned as he thought about the pretty baker. “I can handle that for you, Mom,” he said, glad for the excuse to go and see Janey again. “When do you want it?”

      “Friday. It’s the only evening I can get The Wedding Inn this week for a reception. And I only got that because of a cancellation.” Veronica lifted a brow. “I wasn’t aware you and Janey were friends.”

      “Her son is interested in attending the Storm’s summer hockey camp,” Thad replied casually.

      “So are at least six hundred other boys.” Veronica put her glasses back on. “I don’t hear you talking about any of their mothers.”

      Touché. Briefly, Thad explained about the heart-rending letter he’d received from Chris.

      Veronica’s expression softened compassionately as she listened. “And something about Chris’s plea really got to you,” she noted finally.

      Thad nodded. “I know how much it meant to me when Lionel helped me find the proper outlet for my own athletic ambitions.” Thad loved his real father, but Gordon Lantz had never really understood Thad’s desire to become involved in professional sports. Gordon had wanted Thad to become involved with the garden and landscape business that his own father had begun. It was his stepfather, Lionel, who had come into Thad’s life when he was ten, and helped him find his way, in that regard. It was also how they’d became close.

      “I can understand how you would want to do for someone else what Lionel did for you,” Veronica stated gently. “And I know firsthand what a personable and winning kid Christopher Campbell is. I met him one day when he was out with his grandmother.”

      “But?” Thad prodded, hearing the concern underlying her words.

      Veronica got up and removed two bottles of orange juice from her minifridge. She tossed one to him. “You’re facing two major pitfalls here. The first is that anything you say or do on the subject has the potential to further the rift between Janey and her son Chris. And unless you want to make a sworn enemy of Janey, you need to make sure that doesn’t happen. Because her relationship with her son is everything to her.”

      Thad hadn’t needed to be told that. In Janey’s place, he would have felt the same. But he let his mother have her say, anyway. “And the second?”

      “Issue concerns your own heart and happiness,” Veronica continued with the practical plainspokenness she was known for both inside and outside the hospital. She paused, measuring her words carefully. “I know how much you enjoyed being a father when you were married to Renee, and that there’s a hole in your life you’ve never really been able to fill since you lost your own stepson. According to his grandmother, Helen Hart, Christopher is reeling, too, from the loss of his dad.”

      So maybe it was destined, Thad thought, that he and Chris meet.

      His mother, unfortunately, did not see it that way. She looked him straight in the eye and continued, “I would hate to see you use Chris—even subconsciously—to assuage that loss, Thad.”

      As if he would ever put the needs of any kid second to his own. “So you’d rather see me what?” Thad shot back angrily, setting the orange juice down unopened. “Walk away from a kid who looks up to me so much he asked for my help?” Thad had already abandoned one child—albeit reluctantly. It wasn’t an experience he was looking to repeat. With anyone.

      “I’m saying, honey, that I don’t want you to make the same mistake twice. And from what I’ve heard, Janey had a rough enough time in her first marriage. Even if she won’t quite admit it.”

      Thad got to his feet. He squared off with his mother over her desk. “I have no intention of hurting her,” he said evenly. Or Christopher.

      Veronica removed the plastic wrap from the top of her bottle and tossed it in the waste can. “You had no intention of hurting Renee and Bobby, either. And look what happened.”

      THAD LEFT, furious with his mother.

      He