had snapped that it wasn’t a conscious choice to be alone—that sometimes the right man found the right woman in someone else. Of course, Cassie hadn’t known what she meant at the time, and Irene had refused to answer any more questions on the subject. Watching her friend with Jerry now, she thought she finally understood.
“Are you going to sit down and read the book or just stand there?” Irene finally asked her.
Cassie knew her too well to be offended by the brusque tone. “I was just waiting for the two of you to finish your stroll down memory lane,” she responded lightly.
“I don’t stroll anywhere with six pins in my leg and I wouldn’t stroll with him even if I could,” Irene said primly.
“Thankfully, it’s just your leg and not your arms that are weak,” Jerry teased. “Otherwise you’d have trouble holding on to that grudge.”
Cassie fought against a smile as she settled back into a wing chair, turned to the first page and began reading while Jerry lowered himself onto the opposite end of the sofa from Irene.
She read three chapters before she was interrupted by voices in the hall as the residents started to make their way to the activity room for Beach Party Bingo. Irene professed to despise bingo but she was fond of the fruit skewers and virgin coladas they served to go with the beach party theme.
When Cassie glanced up, she noted that Jerry had shifted on the sofa so that he was sitting closer to Irene now. Not so close that she could find his ribs with a sharp elbow if the mood struck her to do so, but definitely much closer. Apparently the man still had some moves—and he was making them on her friend.
“I think that’s a good place to stop for today,” she decided, sliding a bookmark between the pages.
“Thank you for the visit,” Irene said, as she always did.
Cassie, too, gave her usual response. “It was my pleasure.”
She set the book down on the coffee table, then touched her lips to her friend’s soft, wrinkled cheek.
Irene waved her away, uncomfortable with the display of affection.
“What about me?” Jerry said, tapping his cheek with an arthritic finger. “I’d never wave off a kiss from a pretty girl.”
“Isn’t that the truth?” Irene muttered under her breath.
Cassie kissed his cheek, too. “Good night, Mr. Riordan. I’ll see you on Friday, Irene.”
“There’s a trip to Noah’s Landing on Friday,” her friend said. “We’re not scheduled to be back until dinnertime.”
“Then I’ll come Friday night,” Cassie offered.
“That’s fine.”
“No, it’s not,” Jerry protested. “You can’t ask a beautiful young woman to spend her Friday night hanging out with a bunch of grumpy old folks.”
“I didn’t ask, Cassandra offered,” Irene pointed out. “And she comes to visit me, not any other grumpy old folks who decide to wander into my room uninvited.”
“Well, I’m sure Cassandra has better things to do on a Friday night,” he said, glancing at Cassie expectantly.
“Actually, I don’t have any plans,” she admitted.
He scowled. “You don’t have a date?”
She shook her head.
“What’s wrong with the young men in this town?” Jerry wondered.
“They’re as shortsighted and thickheaded now as they were fifty years ago,” Irene told him.
“And on that note,” Cassie said, inching toward the door.
“I’ll see you in a few days,” Irene said.
“Don’t come on Friday,” Jerry called out to her. “I’m going to keep Irene busy at the cribbage board.”
“I have cataracts,” she protested.
“And I have a deck of cards with large print numbers.”
Cassie left them bickering, happy to know that her friend had a new beau to fill some of her quiet hours. And eager to believe that if romance was in the air for Irene, maybe it wasn’t too late for her, either.
Of course, if she wanted to fall in love, she’d have to be willing to open up her heart again, and that was a step she wasn’t sure she was ready to take. Because what she’d told Braden about her struggles with chemistry was only partly true. About half of her experiments had fizzled into nothingness—the other half had flared so bright and hot, she’d ended up getting burned. And she simply wasn’t willing to play with fire again.
* * *
While Braden wouldn’t trade his baby girl for anything in the world, there were times when he would willingly sacrifice a limb for eight consecutive hours of sleep.
“Come on, Saige,” he said wearily. “It’s two a.m. That’s not play time—it’s sleep time.”
“Wound an’ wound,” she said, clapping her hands.
He reached into her crib for her favorite toy—a stuffed sock monkey that had been a gift from her birth mother—and gave it to Saige. “Sleep. Sleep. Sleep.”
She immediately grabbed the monkey’s arm and cuddled it close. Then she tipped her head back to look at him, and when she smiled, he gave in with a sigh. “You know just how to wrap me around your finger, don’t you?”
“Da-da,” she said.
He touched his lips to the top of her head, breathing in the familiar scent of her baby shampoo.
She was the baby he and Dana had been wanting for most of their six-year marriage, the child they’d almost given up hope of ever having. In the last few weeks leading up to her birth, they’d finally, cautiously, started to transform one of the spare bedrooms into a nursery. They’d hung a mobile over the crib, put tiny little onesies and sleepers in the dresser, and stocked up on diapers and formula.
At the same time, they’d both been a little hesitant to believe that this time, finally, their dream of having a child would come true. Because they were aware that the birth mother could decide, at the last minute, to keep her baby. And they knew that, if she did, they couldn’t blame her.
But Lindsay Benson had been adamant. She wanted a better life for her baby than to be raised by a single mother who hadn’t yet graduated from college. She wanted her daughter to have a real family with two parents who would care for her and love her and who could afford to give her not just the necessities of life but some extras, too.
Within a few weeks, Braden had begun to suspect that he and Dana wouldn’t be that family. For some reason that he couldn’t begin to fathom—or maybe didn’t want to admit—his wife wasn’t able to bond with the baby. Every time Saige cried, Dana pushed the baby at him, claiming that she had a headache. Every time Saige needed a bottle or diaper change, Dana was busy doing something else. Every time Saige woke up in the middle of the night, Dana pretended not to hear her.
Yes, he’d seen the signs, but he’d still been optimistic that she would come around. That she just needed some more time. She’d suffered so much disappointment over the years, he was certain it was her lingering fear of losing the child they’d wanted so much that was holding her back. He refused to consider that Dana might be unhappy because their adopted daughter was so obviously not their biological child.
Then, when Saige was six weeks old, Dana made her big announcement: she didn’t really want to be a mother or a wife. She told him that she’d found an apartment and would be moving out at the end of March. Oh, and she needed a check to cover first and last month’s rent.
And Braden, fool that he was, gave it to her. Because they’d been married for six years and he honestly hoped that the