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Why couldn’t they just have sex and clear the air?

  Because she wasn’t built that way, she admitted. And wasn’t that too damn bad. There had to be a little more . . . something before she stripped down, literally and figuratively, with a man.

  She liked him, well enough, she thought as she tipped her head back and let the hot water beat on her face, her shoulders. She appreciated the way he’d reacted last spring when there’d been trouble, admired—now that she had the distance to look back—the way he’d leaped in without hesitation, without investment.

  Some men would have run the other way, and would certainly have dismissed the idea of working for her, in a house haunted by what they now knew could be a dangerous spirit.

  And well, she’d been charmed, really, at the way he’d been so flummoxed over buying a child’s gift—and how much he’d wanted to find the right thing. It was a point in his favor.

  If she were keeping score.

  If she wanted to dip her toe in the dating pool again, it would probably be with someone like him. Someone she could have conversations with, someone who attracted and interested her.

  And it didn’t hurt that he was what Hayley termed a hottie.

  Then again, look what happened last time.

  It was a stupid woman who’d use anyone like Bryce as a yardstick. Sheknew that, so why couldn’t she stop? The fact that she was doing it was a sort of victory for Bryce, wasn’t it? If she could do nothing else about it, she could and would work on pushing him out of her thoughts.

  Prick.

  All right, she thought as she switched the water off again and reached for a towel. Maybe she’d consider—just consider—going out to dinner with Mitch. Just to prove to herself that she wasn’t letting Bryce affect her life in any way.

  A little dinner out, some conversation, a mix of business and pleasure. That wouldn’t be so bad, when she drummed up the energy for it. She wouldn’t mind seeing him on a personal level. In fact, it might help all around if she got to know him better.

  She’d think about it.

  After wrapping the towel around her body, she reached automatically for her lotion. And her hand froze inches from the bottle.

  Written in the steam of the bathroom mirror were two words.

  Men Lie!

  SIX

  ROZ PUT MEN, family ghosts, and messages written in steam out of her mind. Her sons were home.

  The house was full of them, their voices, their energy, their debris. Once, the piles of shoes, the hats, thethings they’d leave scattered around had driven her slightly crazy. Now she loved seeing the evidence of them. Once, she’d longed for an ordered, quiet house, and now reveled in the noise and confusion.

  They’d be gone soon enough, back to the lives they were building. So she would treasure every minute of the two days she had her family under one roof again.

  And wasn’t it fun to see her sons with Stella’s boys, or watch Harper lift a fussy Lily and cuddle her in his arms? It made up for finding herself at the head of this mixed generational train.

  “I want to thank you for letting Logan stay tonight.” Stella settled onto the sofa beside Roz.

  “It’s Christmas Eve. We generally have room at the inn.”

  “You know what I mean, andI know it’s probably fussy and anal and silly, but I really want our first Christmas in his—our—house to be when we’re official.”

  “I think it’s sweet and sentimental, and selfishly I’m glad everyone’s here tonight.” She watched Hayley scoop Lily up as the baby made a crawling beeline for the tree. “Glad to have children in the house tonight. Austin!” she called out as her middle son began to juggle three apples he’d plucked out of a bowl. “Not in the parlor.”

  “That tune’s so familiar, I can add the music.” A tall, narrow-hipped young man with his father’s wavy blond hair, he winked at Gavin while giving the apples one more rotation. “Not in the parlor, Austin, not in the parlor,” he sang, making Stella’s sons roll with laughter before he tossed them each an apple, and took a bite out of the third.

  “Here, Mama, have some wine.” Her youngest, Mason, sat on the arm of the sofa and handed her a glass. There was a wicked twinkle in his blue eyes that warned Roz trouble was coming. “Austin, you know the parlor is sacred ground. You don’t want to be juggling in here. Especially something like, say, shoes.”

  “You can juggle shoes!” Awestruck, Luke goggled at Austin.

  “I can juggle anything. I have amazing talent and dexterity.”

  “But sadly, I wasn’t able to talk him into running off and joining the circus when he was eight.” Harper took Lily when she leaned away from Hayley and held out her chubby arms to him.

  “Can you juggle mine?” Luke asked.

  “Hand one over.”

  “Austin.” Resigned, Roz sighed and sipped her wine. “You break anything, you’re grounded.”

  “Why, another familiar tune. Let’s see, I need a challenge. Logan, looks to me like that shoe’s big enough to house a family of four. Let’s have it.”

  “I give you my shoe, you get grounded, I get fired. Call me a coward, but I’ll soon have two growing boys to feed.” He reached down to poke Gavin in the ribs. “And they eat like pigs.”

  “Oink.” Showing off, Gavin grabbed a cookie from a tray and stuffed it whole in his mouth. “Oink.”

  “Oh, go ahead, Logan.” Roz waved a hand. “He won’t be satisfied otherwise.”

  “Let’s see, one more.” His gaze scanned, landed on Hayley. “Look at those pretty, delicate feet. How about it, sweetheart?”

  Hayley laughed. “They’re about as delicate as banana boats.” But she slipped her shoe off.

  “Harper, move your grandmother’s Baccarat there to safer ground,” Roz ordered, “so your brother can show off.”

  “I prefer the termperform. ”

  “I recall a performance that cost Mama a lamp,” Harper commented as he moved heirlooms. “And got all three of us—and you, too, David, if memory serves—KP duty.”

  “In my salad days,” Austin claimed. After giving the trio of varied footwear a few testing tosses, he began to juggle. “As you can see, I’ve sharpened my skills since that regrettable incident.”

  “Fortunate to have a fallback career,” Mason told him. “You can take that act down to Beale Street.”

  The circling shoes had Lily giggling and bouncing on Harper’s hip. For herself, Roz just held her breath until Austin took his bow.

  He tossed a shoe back to a delighted Luke. “Can you teach me?”

  “Me, too!” Gavin insisted.

  “She’s going to say ‘not in the parlor,’ ” Austin announced even as Roz opened her mouth. “We’ll work in a lesson tomorrow—outside—keep us all safe from Mama’s wrath.”

  “She’s the boss of everybody,” Luke told him solemnly.

  “No flies on you. Since nobody’s seen fit to throw money, I’ll have to settle for a beer.”

  He strolled over to hand Logan his shoe, then walked to Hayley. “All right, Cinderella, let’s see if this fits.”

  He made a production out of slipping it back on her foot, then grinned at Harper over Hayley’s head. “Shoe fits.” He took her hand, kissed it. “We’ll just have to get ourselves married when I get back from the kitchen.”

  “That’s what they all say.” But she gave him a flirting sweep with her eyes.

  “Why don’t you get me a beer while you’re at it?” Mason asked.

  “If I’m taking orders, what can I get everyone?”

  After a scatter of requests, he looked over at Harper again. “Why don’t you give me a hand fetching the supplies?”

  “Sure.” He passed Lily back to Hayley, and followed his brother out of the room.

  “Can’t miss this,” Mason whispered to his mother, then strolled out behind them.

  “PRETTY THING,ISN ’Tshe, our cousin Hayley?” Austin commented.

  “You’ve always had a keen knack for stating the obvious.”<
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  “Then I’ll keep my streak going by saying I think she’s soft on me.”

  “And an infallible way of misjudging women.”

  “Hold on,” Mason told them. “I’ve got to find something to write on so I can keep score.”

  “She’s got the prettiest mouth. Not that you’d notice, big brother, since it’s not something growing out of a pot.” He took out a beer, had a swig from the bottle even as Harper got out pilsners.

  “And the only way you’d get your fat lips on hers is if she has a seizure and requires mouth-to-mouth.”

  “He shoots, he scores. By the way, I’m the doctor here,” Mason reminded them. “She needs mouth-to-mouth, I’m first in line. We got any Fritos or anything around here?”

  “Got ten bucks says different.” In an old habit, Austin boosted himself up to sit on the counter. “Maybe you could babysit so I can see if our resident babe would like a little stroll around the gardens. Seeing as I haven’t heard you call dibs.”

  “She’s not the damn last piece of pie.” With some heat, Harper grabbed the beer from his brother, took a long swallow. “What the hell’s wrong with you talking about her that way? You ought to have a little more respect, and if you can’t come up with it on you’re own, you and I can take a little stroll outside so I can help you find it.”

  With a grin, Austin jabbed a finger at Mason. “Told ya. Can I call ’em or can I call ’em?”

  “Yeah, he’s hooked on her. What kind of kitchen is it that doesn’t have any Fritos?”

  “In the pantry, top shelf,” Roz said from the doorway. “I’m surprised you’d think I’d forget your childish addiction to corn chips. Austin, have you finished messing with your brother’s head for now?”

  “I was really just getting started.”

  “You’ll have to postpone that portion of your holiday entertainment.” She glanced over, had to smile when she heard Mason’s cheer as he located the bag of chips. “We have company, and it might be nice if we present the illusion that I raised three respectable and mature young men.”

  “That’s pretty well shattered since he’s already juggled,” Harper grumbled.

  “There’s a point.” She moved over to touch Harper’s cheek, then Austin’s before she turned to Mason. “You may not be respectable and mature, but by God, the three of you sure are handsome. I could’ve done worse. Now get those drinks together, Harper, and take them out to our guests. Austin, get your butt off my counter. This is a house, not the neighborhood bar. Mason, put those chips into a bowl, and stop dropping crumbs all over the floor.”

  “Yes’m,” they said in unison, and made her laugh.

  CHRISTMAS DAY WENTby in a blur. She tried to imprint specific moments on her mind—Mason’s sheer delight in the antique medical bag she’d found him, Harper and Austin squaring off over a foosball table. There was Lily’s predictable fascination with boxes and wrapping rather than toys, and Hayley’s joy in showing off a new pair of earrings.

  She loved seeing Logan sitting cross-legged on the floor, showing Stella’s boys—his boys now—the child-sized tools inside the toolboxes he’d made them.

  She wanted to slow the clock down—just for this day, just this one day—but it sped by, from dawn and the excitement of opening gifts, to the candlelight and the lavish meal David prepared and served on her best china.

  Before she knew it, the house was quiet once more.

  She wandered down to take a last look at the tree, to sit alone in the parlor with her coffee and her memories of the day, and all the Christmases before.

  Surprised when she heard footsteps, she looked over and saw her sons.

  “I thought you’d all gone over to Harper’s.”

  “We were waiting for you to come down,” Harper told her.

  “Come down?”

  “You always come down Christmas night, after everyone’s gone to bed.”

  She lifted her eyebrows at Mason. “I have no secrets in this house.”

  “Plenty of them,” he disagreed. “Just not this one.”

  Austin came over, took her coffee, and replaced it with a glass of champagne.

  “What’s all this?”

  “Little family toast,” he told her. “But that comes after this one last gift we’ve got for you.”

  “Another? I’m going to have to add a room on the house to hold everything I got this morning.”

  “This is special. You’ve already got a place for it. Or did at one time.”

  “Well, don’t keep me in suspense. What have y’all cooked up?”

  Harper stepped back into the hall and brought in a large box wrapped in gold foil. He set it at her feet. “Why don’t you open it and see?”

  Curious, she set her glass aside and began to work on the wrap. “Don’t tell Stella I’m tearing this off, she’d be horrified. Myself, I’m amazed the three of you got together and agreed on something, much less kept it quiet until tonight. Mason always blabs.”

  “Hey, I can keep a secret when I have to. You don’t know about the time Austin took your car and—”

  “Shut up.” Austin punched his brother’s shoulder. “There’s no statute of limitations on that sort of crime.” He smiled sweetly at Roz’s narrowed look. “What you don’t know, Mama, can’t hurt this idiot.”

  “I suppose.” But she wondered on it as she dug through the packing. And her heart simply stuttered as she drew out the antique dressing mirror.

  “It was the closest we could come to the one we broke. Pattern’s nearly the same, and the shape,” Harper said.

  “Queen Anne,” Austin added, “circa 1700, with that gold and green lacquer on the slanted drawer. At least, it’s the best our combined memories could match the one Mason broke.”

  “Hey! It was Harper’s idea to use it as a treasure chest. It’s not my fault I dropped it out of the damn tree. I was the baby.”

  “Oh, God. Oh, God, I was so mad, so mad, I nearly skinned y’all alive.”

  “We have painful recollection of that,” Austin assured her.

  “It was from your daddy’s family.” Voice thick, throat aching, she traced her fingers over the lacquered wood. “He gave it to me on our wedding day.”

  “We should’ve been skinned.” Harper sat down beside her, rubbed her arm. “We know it’s not the same, but—”

  “No, no, no.” Swamped with emotion, she turned her face to press it against his arm for a moment. “It’s better. That you’d remember this, think of this. Do this.”

  “It made you cry,” Mason murmured, and bent to rub his cheek over her hair. “It’s the first time I remember seeing you cry. None of us ever forgot it, Mama.”

  She was struggling not to cry now as she embraced each one of her sons. “It’s the most beautiful gift I’ve ever been given, and I’ll treasure it more than anything I have. Every time I look at it, I’ll think of the way you were then, the way you are now. I’m so proud of my boys. I always have been. Even when I wanted to skin you.”

  Austin picked up her glass, handed it to her, then passed around the other three flutes. “Harper gets the honors, as he’s the oldest. But I want it on record that I thought it up.”

  “We all thought it up,” Mason objected.

  “I thought most of it up. Go on, Harper.”

  “I will, if you’ll shut up for five seconds.” He lifted his glass. “To our mama, for everything she’s been to us, everything she’s done for us, every single day.”

  “Oh. That’s done it.” The tears welled into her throat, spilled out of her eyes. “That’s done it for sure.”

  “Go ahead and cry.” Mason leaned over to kiss her damp cheek. “Makes a nice circle.”

  GETTING BACK TObusiness as usual helped fill the little hole in her heart from kissing two of her sons goodbye.

  It would be a slow week—the holiday week was, routinely—so she took a page out of Stella’s book and shouldered in to organizing. She cleaned tools, scrubbed down worktables, helped with inven
tory, and finally settled on the style of potting-soil bag, and the design.

  With some time to spare, she worked with Hayley to pour a fresh supply of concrete planters and troughs.

  “I can’t believe Christmas is over.” Squatting, Hayley turned the mold as Roz poured. “All that anticipation and prep, and it’s over in a snap. Last year, my first after my daddy died? Well, it was just awful, and the holidays dragged and dragged.”

  “Grief tends to spin time out, and joy contracts it. I don’t know why that is.”

  “I remember just wanting it all to be over—so I wouldn’t keep hearing “Jingle Bells” every time I went to work, you know? Being pregnant, and feeling alone, the house up for sale. I spent most of Christmas packing things up, figuring out what I was going to sell so I could leave Little Rock.”

  She sat back on her heels to sigh, happily. “And here, just one year later, and everything was so bright and happy. I know Lily didn’t know what was going on, but it was so much fun to watch her play with her toys, or mostly the boxes.”

  “Nothing like a cardboard box to keep a baby entertained. It was special for me, for all of us, to have her, to be able to share that first Christmas with her.”

  With the mold full, Hayley tidied the edges with a trowel. “I know you love her, but, Roz, I just don’t feel right about you staying home New Year’s Eve to sit with her while I go out to a party.”

  “I prefer staying home New Year’s Eve. Lily gives me the perfect excuse. And I’m looking forward to having her to myself.”

  “You must’ve been invited to half a dozen parties.”

  “More.” Roz straightened, pressed the small of her back. “I’m not interested. You go on out with David and celebrate with other young people. Wear your new earrings and dance. Lily and I will be just fine seeing the new year in together.”

  “David said he never could talk you into going to this party, even though it’s been a tradition for years now.” She picked up a bottle of water, drank casually. “He said Harper would probably drop by.”

  “I imagine so. They have a number of mutual friends.” Amused, she patted Hayley’s shoulder. “Let’s get this next one done, then call it a day.”