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“Remember when your father bought the Christmas tree that was so fat it couldn’t fit through the front door?” Mom asked, a smile in her tone. “The beginning of our porch tree tradition,” Maeve recalled. I felt a stab of guilt. I hadn’t put up a porch tree this Christmas. I hadn’t even put up an indoor tree. Just the now-dead wreath I’d bought from Chloe’s school fundraiser. Cancer had made other plans for our family. I would make up for it next Christmas, I decided. There would be life here. Family here. Laughter and cookies and alcohol and badly wrapped gifts.
“I know your father was the pep talk giver,” Mom began. “But I promised him I’d do my best. So this is how it’s gonna go. We’re going to march into that funeral home and give him the best damn funeral this town has ever seen. We’re going to laugh and cry and remember how lucky we were to have had him for as long as we did.” Maeve and I nodded, tears already welling in our eyes. I blinked them back. The last thing my mom or sister needed was to deal with a volcano of sad from me. “Can I get a hell yeah?” Mom said. “Hell yeah,” we answered in quavering voices. Mom looked back and forth between
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“As your father liked to say, ‘We can’t drink all day if we don’t start now.’”
“Uh-oh,” my cousin said. I followed her gaze to the toddler who was evading his father by running circles around the urn’s pedestal. “Hold this,” Nessa said, handing me the baby. “Mama needs to quietly and gracefully save the day.” “You know,” I said to the baby, “my dad would probably love it if your brother accidentally dumped his ashes today. He’d think it was hilarious.”
I’d heard of women’s biological clocks kicking in with one whiff of a baby’s head, but a countdown kicked off at a funeral? That had to be a first.
“This sucks,” she whispered before releasing me. “Yeah. It really does,” I agreed, clearing my throat and forcing the emotions back down. I could do anger. Anger was easy and clean and transformative, powerful even. But the messier emotions I wasn’t comfortable sharing with others.
Lucian Rollins. Luce or Lucy to his friends, of whom he had few. Lucifer to me and the rest of his legion of enemies.
I could deal with that innate, biological warning that danger was near. After all, there was nothing safe about the man. What I couldn’t handle was how the tingling turned immediately into a warm, happy, reflexive There you are, as if I’d been holding my breath for him to appear.
That Lucian, the dreamy, hopeful boy who carried a burden much too heavy, was gone. In his place was a cold, ruthless man who hated me as much as I hated him.
“I trusted you, Sloane. And you broke that trust. You did more damage than he ever could.”
It was strange, having a secret with the boy I’d once loved and now sharing it with the man I couldn’t stand.
God, he was beautiful. Supernaturally molded by the gods beautiful. He would make gorgeous little demon babies.
“Here,” Lucian said irritably, shoving a coat at me. He was tall, dark, and evil. I was short, fair, and awesome. “That’s not mine,” I said. “It’s mine. Put it on before you freeze to death.” “If I put it on, will you go away?” I asked. I wanted to be alone. To catch my breath. To glare up at the clouds and tell my father I missed him, that I hated cancer, that if it snowed, I would lay on my back in it and make him a snow angel. Maybe I’d have time to let out a few of the tears I’d dammed up inside me.
“There won’t be any new stories,” I murmured. “What?” he snapped. I shook my head. “Nothing.” “You said there won’t be any new stories,” he prompted. “I was talking to myself. I’ll never have another new memory of my dad.” To my undying embarrassment, my voice broke.
“I don’t want to hear you whining about getting dirt on your fancy suit,” I grumbled then noisily blew my nose in his ridiculous handkerchief. Who carried reusable snot rags with them these days? “I’ll try to control myself,” he said mildly.
“You could have distracted me with a nice, normal fight, you know,” I accused. On a sigh, he exhaled another cloud of smoke. “Fine. It was stupid and selfish of you not to eat this morning. Now your mother is inside worrying about you, making a bad day even worse for her. Your sister and friends are concerned you’re not handling things. And I’m out here making sure you don’t pass out so they can keep grieving.”
“You have one job today. Hold your mother up. Support her. Share her grief. Do whatever it takes to be what she needs today. You lost your dad, but she lost her partner. You can mourn your own way later. But today is about her, and making her worry about you is fucking selfish.” “You are such an ass, Lucifer.” An astute, not exactly wrong ass. “Get your shit together, Pixie.”
It was smarter all around to sell the place and be done with it. It was why I’d come back last summer. But one look at those green eyes—not a soft, mossy green. No, Sloane Walton’s eyes blazed with emerald flames. One look and my best-laid plans disintegrated.
“Sometimes in order to build things back up, you gotta tear them down to the studs.
Irritated, I yanked open the door, and my heart stuttered. It always did when I saw her unexpectedly. Part of me, some small, weak splinter buried down deep, saw her and wanted to draw nearer. Like she was a campfire beckoning with a promise of warmth and goodness in the dark night. But I knew better. Sloane didn’t offer warmth. She promised third-degree burns.
For a second, we were connected by cashmere. “Are you here for me?” she asked suddenly. “What?” “You heard me. Are you here for me?” “I came to pay my respects. Your father was a good man, and your mother has always been nothing but kind to me.” “Why did you come back this summer?” “Because my oldest friends were behaving like children.” “And I didn’t factor into those decisions?” she pressed. “You never do.” She nodded briskly. There was no hint of emotion on her lovely face. “Good.”
Simon: If I could have chosen a son in this lifetime, it would have been you. Take care of my girls.
“Marriage is right for some people. People like you who can’t stop burning casseroles and need a nice woman to force you to stop dressing like a 1980s sitcom star.”
Nash poured the bourbon. He distributed the glasses and held his aloft. “To Simon. The man all men should aspire to be.” “To Simon,” I echoed, keenly aware of a fresh stab of grief.
Tears spilled hot and fast down my cheeks. I hugged myself around the middle and just let them come. Like a volcano erupting, I cried as if I were splitting in two. I was supposed to feel some measure of relief. Dad’s suffering was over. He wasn’t in pain anymore. His consciousness wasn’t being stolen from us minute by minute by cancer and drugs. He was free of suffering. But I didn’t see an end to my own. Because I would miss my dad for the rest of my life. I blew my nose noisily. I’d felt like this only once before. When I’d lost another man—a boy really. Lucian.
“We’ll give you two options. You can either talk about your dad, or you can talk about Suit Daddy,” Stef said. “I think I want to start a family.” I blurted out the words and then immediately shoved half a slice of pizza into my mouth to prevent me from speaking again. Lina choked on her margarita. “Option number three then,” Jeremiah said, eyebrows winging high.
“Guilt isn’t a great reason to start a family, my sexy little librarian,” Stef pointed out. Jeremiah nodded. “I’ve gotta agree with Stef. And not just because we’re dating. Family is a big deal.” Jeremiah would know. He came from a large, loud Lebanese family. “I don’t want a guilt baby,” I scoffed. “It’s just I put so much time into building the professional side of my life, I forgot about the personal side. I want a hot husband who rubs my feet on the couch and knows that I put hot sauce on my pizza. I want to complain about spending Saturday mornings at soccer games and bake three dozen
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“Are you considering prioritizing a partner or a baby first?” asked the ever-practical Naomi at the same time. I took a contemplative sip of my margarita. “Ideally? A partner. But do I really have time to meet someone, force them to fall in love with me, and then get knocked up before my eggs turn to tiny balls of dust? Then again, if I start with kids, I might limit the dating pool and miss out on my perfect husband. On the other hand, if a guy is turned off by kids, then he wouldn’t be the kind of husband I want.”
Things would be so much simpler if I walked out the door and met the perfect guy tomorrow. But in reality, if I walked out the door, the only man I was going to run into was a surly one in a suit. The man I loved to hate.
“What about Suit Daddy?” Stef asked. I opened my fingers over my eyes to glare at him. “Not in this lifetime.” “Give me three good reasons why,” he challenged. I dropped my hands. “He’s unbelievably rude. He’s selfish. He’s so stubborn and controlling that everything has to be done his way or he loses his damn mind. He’s got the whole rich and powerful thing going, which means he’s absolutely corrupt. He’s involved in politics. And not in the ‘I want to make a difference in the world’ way. But in the ‘I want other rich, powerful jackasses to owe me favors’ way. He can’t connect with other
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“I don’t want to make any assumptions. Is Mr. Right definitely a Mr.?” Stef asked me. “As much as I would have zero qualms making out with Alicia Keys after she serenades me with a ballad, I can’t live without the dick.” “Man with penis,” Naomi said out loud as she made another note. “What else are you looking for in a man?” “Um, I guess he should be funny and kind and generous. And it would be nice if he was into gardening to help me keep up with the backyard. Obviously he should like kids…and books.” The cat pranced into the room. I patted the arm of my chair. Meow Meow shot me a look of
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Nash tugged the still laughing Lina to her feet. “You smell like tequila and bad decisions,” he said. She wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a noisy kiss on the mouth. “And you smell like we should have sex.”
Sloane was grinning, her emerald-green eyes clear and bright. “You’re not drunk,” I observed. “None of us are. It’s the snow. It turns us into fourth graders. Case in point,” she said and waved both magenta mittens at me. “When’s the last time you did something as undignified as playing in the snow?” “You can take the man out of Knockemout, but you can’t take Knockemout out of the man,” I quipped.
“I’m extra mad because you ratted me out to Naomi when all I wanted was a quiet evening at home by myself.” “As you can see, I too am suffering the consequences of my actions,” I said, gesturing in the direction of Knox and Nash. Sloane buried her face in Piper’s wet, wiry fur. “For some ridiculous reason, Naomi felt the tattler shouldn’t be alone tonight either. My suffering is almost worth knowing that you have to entertain your pals instead of figuring out how to drive up the cost of blood pressure medicines or whatever it is you do to entertain yourself.”
Anyone would have thought from the long, impassioned goodbyes they shared with Naomi and Lina that they were going off to war. What was it about love that turned men into simpering idiots?
A tiny thrill rolled through me just thinking about him. Lucian Rollins was a junior and starting quarterback on the varsity football team. I liked to think the serious, dark-haired boy who took out the trash shirtless was the reason for my teenage sexual awakening. I’d gone from thinking boys were gross—which, at twelve and thirteen, was absolutely accurate—to wondering what it would be like to be kissed by the bad boy next door. Lucian was gorgeous, athletic, and popular.
I crossed to him and snatched it out of his hand. “Why are you in my room?” I demanded, finally finding my voice. “Mostly considering apologizing for the rock,” he said, his voice low and smooth. “Mostly?” He shrugged and began to wander the room. “I’ve never been inside your house before. I wanted to see what it was like.” “You could have used the front door,” I pointed out. If I were a cheerleader, I’d know how to flirt. I’d have showered and be wearing matching pajamas and lip gloss. I’d toss my hair without hurting my neck, and he’d feel compelled to kiss me. But I wasn’t a cheerleader. I
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glanced at him and found him already looking at me. Together, we turned back to my mom. “What’s going on, Karen?” he asked at the same time as I said, “What’s going on, Mom?” “Simon loved you both. When the cancer came back, he started thinking a lot about what was important for a good life. And the kind of grudge you both seem to be carrying isn’t healthy.”
What did Lucian have to stop denying? What secrets did he and my mom share? We Waltons were an open book. We knew everything about each other. Well, almost everything.
“I love you, Sloane,” Mom whispered. “Be happy. Do good. Don’t let this derail you for too long. Dad wouldn’t want that.”
That was why I loved this damn town so much. Why I never wanted to live anywhere else. We were all intimately involved in one another’s lives. Step outside your front door, and if you looked past the leather and exhaust fumes, the luxury SUVs and designer equestrian wardrobes, you’d witness a dozen small acts of kindness every day.
While she talked, I walked to the wall of glass and stared out over Washington, wondering what Sloane would think of this place and what I’d accomplished. I’d become someone. Forged an empire. And I’d gotten strong enough, rich enough, powerful enough that no single threat could take what I’d built. I’d vanquished the ghosts of the past.
“Maybe you’re carrying some multi-decade grudge about something that happened when you were practically children, which would be pathetic. Or maybe you had a secret torrid affair that went south and now you can’t stand her, which would be immature. Maybe she ran over your pet tarantula when she was learning to drive. I honestly don’t care about the why. The bottom line is I don’t want to dedicate my working life to a man who treats my friend badly. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have a politician to blackmail.”
She looked me straight in the eye. “I think it does to both of us. Are you just making power moves to remind people you’re a big, strong man who needs to be feared? Or are you moving pieces around on the world’s biggest chess board for the greater good?” “I attempted to hire you for your brain. Why don’t you use it and tell me what you think?” She leaned forward, resting her elbows on her knees. “I think you are putting friendly people in positions of power and not just because they pay you to. Sheila Chandra is an elementary school principal. She doesn’t have pockets deep enough to pay your
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“You know, it’s been a while since I’ve had sex. Maybe I’ll match with my perfect future husband right away, and then I can get laid and snap out of this funk.” Good sex, whether from a relationship or a flirtation turned hookup, had always been a nice reset for me. Like a spa day, only with more coed nudity.
I wondered for the briefest of seconds what it felt like to be standing there wearing a beautiful dress knowing that I was going to marry the man of my dreams. Would I have that moment? And if I did, would it be dimmer because I knew my father wouldn’t be here to walk me down the aisle? Tears prickled behind my eyes. Damn it! No crying. No self-pity. I was Comeback Sloane, Truly Excellent Bridesmaid. Not Debbie Downer of the Whomp-Whomp Family.
The deep rumble of Lucian’s voice vibrated its way up my spine. I turned slowly and drank in the godlike hotness of Lucifer himself. It was impossible not to. It was like standing in a room with a great work of art and trying not to memorize every masterful brushstroke.
“Everyone here seems so happy,” Naomi said, trying to switch to a more positive subject. “It’s hard not to be,” Lina said. “The pay is well above fair. The benefits are generous. And the boss is a beautiful beast of a man who no one wants to disappoint.” I sniffed. “I guess if you’re into the whole fire and brimstone thing.”
The past few weeks had made me question everything I’d been so sure of. Things I believed in like they were immutable laws of nature. I could always count on my parents. There was no rush to start my own family. Lucian Rollins was a horrible troll of a human being. Now I felt…lost. Like I had somehow stepped into an alternate dimension where up was down and down was purple. I couldn’t handle any more change at the moment.
“This is all just part of the grieving process,” I told my reflection. “You don’t really care if Lucian is human or not. Your brain is just trying to find something else to obsess over. Things will get better. Eventually. Probably.”
