Read the book: «Flirting With Disaster»

PRAISE FOR

SHERRYL WOODS

“Strong supporting characters, a vivid sense of place, and a strong appreciation for the past add to the appeal of Woods’ contemporary romance.”

—Booklist on The Backup Plan

“Clever characters and snappy, realistic dialogue add zest … making this a delightful read.”

—Publishers Weekly on About that Man

A “gripping, emotionally wrenching but satisfying tale.”

—Booklist on Flamingo Diner

“Sherryl Woods gives her characters depth, intensity and the right amount of humor.”

—Romantic Times

“Energetic pacing, snappy dialogue and an appealing romantic hero.”

—Publishers Weekly on After Tex

Dear Reader,

Usually when I write connected books, I plan in great detail well in advance, but when I came to the end of The Backup Plan, I suddenly realized that Maggie needed to have her own story. Here was a bright, spirited, successful woman who’d had the world’s worst luck with men, a mother who considered her a failure at love, and a safe, predictable ex-fiancé who’d called off their wedding at the last minute. Maggie’s self-esteem was pretty much trashed.

And so she ran … straight to a beach house to try to get a grip on her life. When three people show up to save her from herself—including her ex-fiancé—Maggie’s pretty sure that her future is about as bleak as it can get.

Her best friend, though, has a plan … and a man for Maggie.

Josh Parker has issues of his own, including a mother whose maternal instincts leave a whole lot to be desired. What fun to have this strong, sexy man try to battle his feelings for Maggie and wrestle with all those old issues when his exuberant, offbeat mother zips in from Las Vegas after yet another disastrous marriage!

Once I had the right guy for Maggie, the rest of the story came together the second I saw the Reba McEntire commercial for Habitat for Humanity. Every single time I see it, I get choked up and think about all the families this wonderful organization has helped to move into their first real homes. It’s a church that’s building a home this time, but the philosophy of giving people a fresh chance is the same.

I hope you’ll enjoy Maggie and Josh’s story and that you’ll have fun catching up with Dinah and Cord and meeting Amanda and Caleb. You guessed it! Those two will have their own remarkable story in Waking Up in Charleston, coming out in May 2006.

All best,

Sherryl

Also by SHERRYL WOODS

THE BACKUP PLAN

DESTINY UNLEASHED

FLAMINGO DINER

ASK ANYONE

ABOUT THAT MAN

ANGEL MINE

AFTER TEX

Flirting

With

Disaster

Sherryl Woods

www.mirabooks.co.uk

1

At six, running away from home had been a scary proposition. It should have been easier and less traumatic at thirty-two.

It wasn’t, Maggie concluded with regret after three weeks in hiding. Oh, the logistics were easier, but the emotional wear and tear were about the same.

Way back then, lugging a Barbie suitcase packed with Oreos and her favorite stuffed toys, Maggie had set out to show her parents that she didn’t need them anymore. But by the time she’d wandered a few blocks away from their Charleston home onto unfamiliar streets, and by the time darkness had closed in with its eerie shadows, she’d begun to wonder if she hadn’t made a terrible mistake.

Still, she’d been far too stubborn to consider backing down. She’d climbed onto a wicker rocking chair deep in the shadows of a deserted front porch and, tightly clutching her tattered Winnie the Pooh, gone to sleep. Her frantic parents had found her there the next morning, thanks to a call from the owner of the house, who’d been alerted to her presence by his son. Leave it to terrible Tommy Henderson to rat her out. No wonder no one in first grade liked the little tattletale.

It seemed more than a bit ironic that twenty-six years later, Maggie was running away from home again and that she was still trying to prove things to her parents. The only difference this time was that Tommy Henderson was nowhere around. Last she’d heard, he was working somewhere overseas as a CIA operative for the United States government. At least he’d put his capacity for sneakiness to good use.

Sitting in a rocker on the front porch of a tiny rented beach house on Sullivan’s Island, Maggie sipped her third glass of sweetened iced tea and watched the fireflies flicker in their endless game of tag in the evening sky. The air was still and thick with humidity, the night quiet and lonely. Even though she was all grown up, in many ways she was just as scared now as she had been at six, and just as stubbornly determined to stay away till she made sense of things.

She couldn’t recall exactly what had sent her fleeing into the night back then, but now it was all about a man, of course. What else could possibly drive a reasonably sane and mature woman to run away from her home and business and fill her with enough self-doubt to keep her on a shrink’s couch for years? She didn’t miss the irony that it was, in fact, a shrink who’d turned her world upside down.

Safe, solid, dependable Warren Blake, Ph.D., had been the kind of respectable, charming man her family had always wanted for her. Her father had approved of him. Predictably, her mother had adored him. Warren didn’t make waves. He didn’t have any pierced or tattooed body parts. He could carry on an intelligent conversation. And he was Southern. What more could they have asked, after the parade of unlikely candidates Maggie had flaunted in front of them for years?

Basking in all that parental approval for the first time in her life, Maggie had convinced herself she loved Warren and wanted to marry him. The wedding date had been set.

And then, with the invitations already in the mail, Warren had called the whole thing off, saying he had come to his senses and realized their marriage would be a mistake. He’d done it so gently, at first Maggie hadn’t even understood what he was trying to say. But when the full import had finally sunk in, she’d been furious, then devastated. Here she’d finally done the right thing, made the right choice, and what had she gotten in return? Total humiliation.

She’d packed her bags—Louis Vuitton this time—and run away from home again. In terms of distance, it really wasn’t that much farther than she’d run all those years ago, but Sullivan’s Island was light-years away from Charleston in terms of demands on her shattered psyche. She could sit on this porch, swatting lazily at mosquitoes, and never once have to make a decision that she’d come to regret the way she regretted her decision to get engaged to Warren.

She could eat tomato sandwiches on white bread slathered with Miracle Whip for breakfast and an entire pint of peach ice cream for lunch. She could play the radio at top volume and dance around the living room at any hour of the day or night, if she could summon the energy for it. She could go for a swim without waiting a whole hour after eating, and she could track sand through the house, if she felt like it.

In fact, she’d been doing all that for a while now and, she was forced to admit, it was getting on her nerves. She was a social creature. She liked people. She missed her art gallery in Charleston. She was almost ready to start seeing her friends again, at least in small doses.

But she’d made up her mind that she wasn’t going home until she’d come to grips with why the devil she’d been so determined to marry Warren in the first place. There had to be a reason she’d talked herself into being in love with a man who was the complete opposite of every other male she’d ever dated in her life. When she was willing to give Warren credit for anything, she conceded that he’d only saved them both a lot of misery. So why had the broken engagement sent her packing?

It wasn’t the humiliation. Not entirely, anyway. Maggie had never given two figs what anyone thought of her, unlike her mother, who obsessed about everyone’s opinion and had been horrified by her daughter’s broken engagement.

It certainly wasn’t a broken heart. Her ego might have been a little bruised, but her heart had been just fine. In fact, in a very short time she’d found herself breathing a sigh of relief. Not that she intended to admit that to Warren. Let the man squirm.

So, if it wasn’t her heart or her pride that had been wounded, what was it? Maybe nothing more than watching a last desperate dream crash at her feet, leaving her with no more dreams, no more options.

On that disturbing note, Maggie dragged herself out of the rocker and went inside to retrieve another pint of ice cream—chocolate-chocolate chip this time—from the freezer. At this rate she’d be the size of a blimp by the time she decided to go back to Charleston. She shrugged off the possibility and dipped her spoon into the decadent treat. If she never intended to date again, what difference did it make if she was the size of a truck? Or a blimp?

She flipped on the radio and found an oldies station. She preferred country, but wallowing in love-gone-wrong songs at this particular moment in her life struck her as overkill.

She was dancing her way back toward the porch when she spotted three people on the other side of the screen door. Unfortunately, even in the dark, she knew exactly who they were—her best friend, Dinah Davis Beaufort, Dinah’s new husband, Cordell, and the traitorous Warren.

If she’d had the energy, she would have bolted for the back door. As it was, she resigned herself to greeting them like the proper Southern belle she’d been raised to be. She could hear her mother’s words echoing in her head. Company, even unwanted company, was always to be welcomed politely.

But even as she forced a smile and opened the door, she also vowed that the next time she ran away from home, she was going to choose someplace on the other side of the world where absolutely no one could find her.

As interventions went, this one pretty much sucked. Not that Maggie knew a whole lot about interventions, never having been addicted to much of anything—with the possible exception of truly lousy choices in men. She was fairly certain, though, that having only three people sitting before her with anxious expressions—one of them the very man responsible for her current state of mind—was not the way this sort of thing ought to work.

Then, again, Warren should know. He’d probably done hundreds of them for his alcohol- or drug-addicted clients. Hell, maybe he’d even done a few for women he’d dumped, like Maggie. Maybe that was how he’d built up his practice, the louse.

“Magnolia Forsythe, are you listening to a word we’re saying?” Dinah Davis Beaufort demanded impatiently, a worried frown etched on her otherwise perfect face.

Dinah and Maggie had been friends forever. It was one reason, possibly the only reason, Maggie didn’t summon the energy to slap Dinah for using her much-hated given name. Magnolia, for goodness’ sakes! What had her parents been thinking?

Maggie regarded her best friend—her former best friend, she decided in that instant—with a scowl. “No.” She didn’t want to hear anything these three had to say. Every one of them had played a role in sending her into this depression. She doubted they had any advice that would drag her out of it.

“I told you she was going to hate this,” Cordell Beaufort said.

Of everyone there, Cord looked the most relaxed, the most normal, Maggie concluded. In fact, he had the audacity to give her a wink. Because Maggie’s futile attempt to seduce him before Dinah’s return to town last year from a foreign assignment was another reason she was in this dark state of mind, she ignored the wink and concentrated on identifying all the escape routes from this room. Not that a woman should have to flee her own damn living room to get any peace. She ought to be able to kick the well-meaning intruders out, but—her mother’s stern admonitions be damned—she’d tried that not five minutes after their arrival and not a one of them had budged. Perhaps she ought to consider telling them whatever they wanted to hear so they’d go away.

“I don’t care if she does hate it,” Dinah said, her expression grim. “We have to convince her to stop moping around in this house. Look at her. She hasn’t even combed her hair or put on makeup.” She surveyed Maggie with a practiced eye. “And what is that she’s wearing? It looks as if she chopped off her jeans with gardening shears.”

“I’m at the beach, for heaven’s sake! And stop talking about me as if I’ve left the room,” Maggie snapped.

Dinah ignored Maggie and went right on addressing Cord. “It’s not healthy. She needs to come home. She needs to get out and do something. This project of ours is perfect.”

“In your opinion,” Cord chided. “Maggie might not agree.”

Dinah frowned. “Well, if she doesn’t want to help us with that, then she at least ought to remember that she has a business to run, a life to live.”

Maggie felt the last thread holding her temper in check snap. “What life is that?” Maggie inquired. “The one I had before Warren here decided I wasn’t his type and dumped me two weeks before our wedding? Or the humiliating one I have now, facing all my friends and trying to explain how I got it so wrong? Or perhaps you’re referring to my pitiful and unsuccessful attempt to seduce Cord before you waltzed back into town from overseas and claimed him for yourself?”

Of all of them, only Warren had the grace to look chagrined. “Maggie, you know it would never have worked with us,” he explained with great patience, just as he had on the night he’d first broken the news that the wedding was off. “I’m just the one who had the courage to say it.”

“Well, you picked a damn fine time to figure it out,” she said, despite the fact that she’d long since conceded to herself that he’d done exactly the right thing. “What kind of psychologist are you that you couldn’t recognize something like our complete incompatibility a year before the wedding or even six months before the wedding?”

Warren regarded her with an unblinking gaze. “We were only engaged for a few weeks, Maggie,” he reminded her in that same annoyingly patient tone. “You were the one who was in a rush to get married. Neither one of us had much time to think.”

“I was in love with you!” she practically shouted, irritated by his determination to be logical when she was an emotional wreck. “Why would I want to waste time on a long engagement?”

Warren’s tolerant expression never wavered. It was one of the things she’d grown to hate about him. He wouldn’t fight with her. He was always so damn reasonable. It might be a terrific trait in a shrink, but in a boyfriend it had been infuriating, especially for a woman who enjoyed a good argument.

“Maggie, as much as I would love to think that you fell head over heels in love with me so quickly we both know the rush was all about keeping up with Dinah and Cord. The minute they got married, you started to panic. You hated being left behind and I was handy.”

“You’re wrong,” she protested stubbornly, not liking the picture he was painting.

“Am I?” he asked mildly. “We’d already stopped seeing each other after just a few mostly disastrous dates, but right in the middle of Cord and Dinah’s wedding reception, you decided we should give it another chance.”

“Because my family adored you, because everyone said you were perfect for me. I was being open-minded,” she countered. “Isn’t that what the sensible women you so admire do?”

Cord tried unsuccessfully to swallow a chuckle. Warren and Dinah scowled at him.

“I have to say, I think Warren is right,” Dinah chimed in. “I think you latched on to Warren as if he were the last life raft in the ocean.”

“Oh, what do you know?” Maggie retorted. “You and Cord are so into each other you barely know anyone else is around.”

“We’re here, aren’t we?” Dinah asked, completely unfazed by Maggie’s nasty tone. “We can’t be that self-absorbed.”

“How did you find me, by the way? I thought I’d covered my tracks pretty well.” The truth was, she hadn’t tried all that hard. In fact, in her state of self-pity, she hadn’t been able to imagine anyone caring enough to come after her.

“I’m a journalist,” Dinah reminded her. “I know how to make phone calls. Besides, I know you. I knew you’d never go too far from home. Charleston is in your blood.”

“More’s the pity,” Maggie grumbled. She really did need to broaden her horizons. Maybe that was what was wrong with her life. She’d never had any desire to be anyplace except South Carolina’s Low Country. Maybe if she’d traveled the world the way Dinah had during her career as a foreign correspondent for a TV network, Maggie would have discovered some other place where she could be perfectly happy. At least it would have gotten her out from under her mother’s judgmental gaze.

“Do you really want to talk about the pros and cons of living in Charleston?” Dinah inquired tartly.

“Not particularly,” Maggie said.

“Then let’s focus on getting your life back on track. Moping around out here all by yourself is not you, Maggie.”

“I’m not moping,” Maggie retorted. “I’m on vacation.”

“Oh, please. You were halfway through that pint of ice cream when we walked in,” Dinah responded. “That’s moping. Believe me, I know all the signs. It’s obvious you’re in trouble and we want to help.”

“I really don’t need the three of you sitting here with these gloomy expressions on your faces trying to plan out my life. Hell, Dinah, you’re the one who talked Warren into going out with me in the first place. Considering how things turned out, I should hate you for that.”

In fact, she was pretty darn irritated about it. If it hadn’t been for Dinah’s meddling, Maggie would never in a million years have fallen, however halfheartedly, for a man like Warren Blake. Rock-steady and dependable might suit a lot of women, but such traits had always bored Maggie to tears. She preferred dark, dangerous and sexy. Men like Cord Beaufort, as a matter of fact.

If she were being totally honest, she’d have to admit she’d known all along that with Warren, she was settling for someone safe. He might not rock her world, but he’d never hurt her, either. As it turned out, she’d been wrong. He had hurt her, though mostly it was her ego that was bruised. If a man like Warren couldn’t truly love her, who would?

That was what she’d been pondering in her Sullivan’s Island hideaway for a few weeks now. If she wasn’t interesting enough, sexy enough or lovable enough for Warren, then she might as well resign herself to spinsterhood. He was her last chance. Her sure thing. Sort of the way Bobby Beaufort, Cord’s sweet, but dull-as dishwater brother, had been Dinah’s backup plan till her hormones and good sense had interceded.

Even as Maggie was struck by that notion, she realized she should have seen the handwriting on the wall. Wasn’t she the one who’d told Dinah that safe was never going to be enough? If it wasn’t good enough for Dinah, why had she, Maggie, ever thought it would work for her? They’d always been like two peas in a pod when it came to choosing between conventional and unconventional.

“Mind if I say something?” Cord asked, his gaze filled with surprising compassion. He spoke in that slow, lazy drawl that had once sent shivers down Maggie’s spine till she’d realized he’d never want anyone but Dinah. She’d learned to ignore the attraction and look in other directions. Warren, unfortunately, had been in the vicinity.

Maggie shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“Here’s the way I see it,” he began. “Nothing’s stopping you from sitting in this cozy little beach house all the live-long day, if that’s what you want to do. I’m sure your art and antiques gallery can pretty much run itself, thanks to those competent employees you’ve hired. And if it doesn’t, so what? You’ve got a nice little trust fund from your daddy. You don’t need to do a thing.”

Maggie bristled. She’d never liked thinking of herself as a spoiled little rich girl who didn’t need to work for a living. She’d poured heart and soul into Images, a high-end shop that catered to Charleston’s wealthier citizens and the tourists who visited the city’s historic district. She’d never treated it like a hobby, and had taken pride in its success. She also felt a certain amount of perverse satisfaction just knowing that it drove her mother crazy to think of her daughter being in “trade,” as she put it. Juliette Forsythe should have lived in some earlier century.

As for her employees, Maggie didn’t know where Cord had gotten the idea they were competent. She’d be lucky if they didn’t run the place into bankruptcy. Although, until right this second with Cord taunting her, she hadn’t much cared.

But if Cord was aware of her growing indignation, he gave no indication. “Maggie’s a smart woman,” he continued mildly, aiming his words at Dinah and Warren and leaving Maggie to draw her own conclusions. “This has obviously been a trying time for her. I think we should let her decide for herself how she wants to spend her days. She can go back to work running her business, if that’s what matters to her. She can come on out and help us with our project and make a real difference in someone’s life. Or she can sit right here and feel sorry for herself. It’s her choice. I think once we clear out and give her some breathing room, she’ll make the right decision.”

Maggie saw the trap at once. If she did what she wanted to do and hung around here wallowing in self-pity and Häagen-Daz ice cream, they’d worry, but they’d let her do it and they wouldn’t think any the less of her, because they loved her. But in her heart, she’d see herself for the ridiculously self-indulgent idiot she was being.

She’d lost a man. So what? Warren wasn’t the first and undoubtedly he wouldn’t be the last, despite her current vow to avoid all males from here to eternity. Leave it to a man as sneaky and surprisingly insightful as Cordell to appeal to her floundering self-respect.

“Okay, okay, I get it. Tell me again about this stupid project,” she said grudgingly.

Cord, bless his devious little heart, bit back a grin. “We’re going to be building a house for someone who needs one. The church’s congregation got the idea, a benefactor donated the land, and the preacher asked me to put together a volunteer construction crew. We’ll be working mostly on weekends, since that’s when people are available. Dinah and her mama are in charge of raising money for whatever building supplies we can’t get donated.”

“What do you expect me to do?” Maggie asked suspiciously.

“What you’re told,” Dinah said with a glint of amusement in her eyes. “Same as me. It’ll be a refreshing change for us. At least that’s what Cord says. We’ll be hammering and painting right alongside everyone else.”

Maggie turned her gaze on Warren. “And you?” she asked.

“That’s up to you,” he replied. “I said I’d help, but I’ll stay away if you want me to, Maggie. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Maggie wasn’t sure Warren had any essential skills for building a house, so sending him away might not be much of a loss, but why bother? Maybe it was time to show all of Charleston that she was holding up just fine after her broken engagement. It was past time she held her head up high and behaved like the strong, independent woman she’d always considered herself to be.

“Do whatever you want to do,” she told Warren with as much indifference as she could muster.

“Then you’ll help?” Dinah asked.

“I’ll help,” Maggie agreed. “If I don’t, who knows what sort of place you’ll build? Everyone knows I’m the one with taste in this crowd.”

“We’re building a three-bedroom bungalow with the basic necessities for a single mom with three kids,” Cord warned. “Not a mansion. Let’s not lose sight of that.”

“You’re building a house,” Maggie retorted emphatically. “I’ll turn it into a home.”

But just as she uttered the words, Maggie spotted the satisfied glint in Dinah’s eyes and wondered if she wasn’t making the second mistake she’d made that day. The first had been opening the door to these three.

2

The blessed ceiling fan was making so much noise Josh couldn’t even hear himself think. Normally that would be downright terrific, but he was sitting on the edge of his motel-room bed, facing down his boss and his boss’s drop-dead-gorgeous wife, who was trying valiantly to pretend that this sleazy dump was a palace. They all knew better.

Josh raked a hand through his hair and tried not to stare at Dinah Davis’s elegant, long legs. Dinah Davis Beaufort, he reminded himself sternly. He had a hunch if his gaze lingered one second too long, Cord would punch him out and forget all about whatever scheme had brought the two of them over here at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning.

Which might not be a bad thing, Josh realized. He didn’t like that matching gleam in their eyes one damn bit.

“Why exactly are you here?” he asked, wishing like hell he hadn’t had that fourth beer the night before. It had knocked him out so he could sleep, but it was muddying his thought processes now and something told him he was going to need all his wits about him before this conversation was over.

“I need you to do me a favor,” Cord said.

“A huge favor,” Dinah amended.

Josh regarded both of them suspiciously. He turned his gaze on Dinah, since he had this gut-sick feeling she was the one who’d come up with this huge favor. Cord was a businesslike sort who laid things on the line, said what he needed and then left his crew to get the work done. Dinah was sneaky … or clever, depending on your point of view. Her mere presence here was enough to fill Josh with dread.

“I am not going out with one of your friends,” Josh announced, since that was always what women seemed to want from him. They assumed that if he was single, he was lonely. He wasn’t, at least not in the way that made him accept blind dates intended to lead to something serious and permanent. In fact, he’d had enough experience with the female population to last him a lifetime. He was currently dedicating himself to a life of celibacy. Of course, he’d only been at it a week and it was already getting on his nerves, so the odds weren’t great he’d stick with it. Still, permanency was absolutely, positively out of the question, and that was the only thing any friend of Dinah’s was likely to be interested in.

“Of course not,” Dinah said sweetly. “I would never dream of imposing on you like that, Josh. I don’t know you well enough to presume to know your taste in women.”

Even though he’d only encountered Dinah a few times in his life, Josh knew for a fact she only laid on that thick, syrupy accent when she was lying through her teeth. Her mama was the same way. He’d run into Dorothy Davis a few times when he’d helped out with the renovations Beaufort Construction was doing at Covington Plantation, her pet historic preservation project. She’d always poured on enough syrup to send a man into a diabetic coma just before she moved in for the kill. Watching her work on Cord had given Josh all the lessons he needed to know to watch his backside around the Davis women.

“What, then?” he inquired cautiously.

“Actually it’s going to be a real challenge, something downright rewarding,” Cord said in what sounded like an overly optimistic bit of spin. “We’re going to be building a house for a particular family and I need you to oversee the project. I’ll keep you on the company payroll, but everyone else will be volunteer labor.”

“You don’t build houses,” Josh said, trying to get a grasp on what Cord was saying. “You do historic renovation. So do I.”

Cord’s lips twitched. “I’d say we both have enough skill to build a house from the ground up if we put our minds to it. Besides, this is a one-shot deal. I’m not asking you to take on an entire development in the suburbs.”

Josh still couldn’t hide his bemusement. “I don’t get it. Why me? For that matter, how did you get sucked into this?”

Cord cast a glance at his wife, which answered one question, then he leveled a look straight into Josh’s eyes. “I want you on this because the Atlanta renovations are finished and there’s nothing going on over there till we get that new deal finalized. The Covington renovations are almost done. I need to finish up out there if we’re going to keep my mother-in-law happy. She’s got some big gala scheduled in a month to show it off, and if every little detail isn’t just right, she’ll have my hide. You’ve got the time for this right now. I don’t.”

“I do historic renovations,” Josh reminded him again. “I don’t build cute little houses with amateurs.”

“You do if that’s what I need you to do,” Cord reminded him mildly, pulling rank.

“It’s a bad idea,” Josh argued. In fact, it was a lousy idea in ways too numerous to mention. He settled on one. “It’s a waste of my skills. I should be helping you out at Covington. Then you’ll be done that much sooner.”

“Hey, come on, pal,” Cord cajoled. “It’s a few months out of your life for a good cause. What’s the big deal?”

Josh shuddered. He knew more than most about good causes. For most of his life he’d been on the receiving end of other people’s charity. He hadn’t much liked it. It had reminded him that there was nothing normal about his family, that his dad had disappeared before Josh had needed his first diaper change and that his mom had tried to fill that void with one creep after another. They’d run from cheap motel to cheap motel in more cities than he could count, trying to get away from the worst of the creeps. It was the reason he picked rooms like this one. It reminded him of his so-called homes. That kind of history didn’t exactly qualify him to build anybody’s dream house.

“This is like one of those Habitat for Humanity things?” he asked.

“Exactly like that,” Cord said. “But this is just a one-shot deal being put together by a church in Charleston. One of the parishioners has had a run of real bad luck and the church wants to help her out. They’ve got the land. They’ve got people beating the bushes to get building materials donated. I’m putting together the construction crew and I want you in charge.”

“You say it’s for someone who’s had a run of bad luck. What kind of bad luck?” Josh inquired, despite his intention to nip this whole scheme in the bud.

“A woman with three kids,” Cord said. “Her husband was killed in a car accident and left them with nothing but a mountain of debt. They had to sell their house and move into a cramped apartment. They were about to be evicted from that till the church stepped in and took care of the rent, but they need a bigger place, a home that really belongs to them. Building this will give them a new start in life.” He gave Josh a pointed look. “I’m sure you can relate to that.”

Josh cursed the day he’d spilled his guts to Cord about his lousy childhood. He should have known it would come back to bite him in the butt.

Before Josh could stop her, Dinah whipped out a picture of a pretty, but exhausted-looking woman with three solemn-looking kids. Every one of them appeared beaten down. Unfortunately, just as Cord had guessed, Josh could relate to that. His mother, Nadine, had looked exactly like that way too often. He felt his heart twist. How the hell was he supposed to say no now that he’d looked into those sad, vulnerable eyes that reminded him of her? His mother always bounced back quickly, but something told him this family might not have her resiliency.

“I suppose they’re all going to be underfoot?” he asked, resigned. If there was one thing he was more skittish about than women, it was kids. He didn’t know what to make of them. He sometimes wondered if that was what had sent his father fleeing, the jittery sense that he was in way over his head when he found out Josh was on the way.

“That’s part of the deal,” Cord said. “They have to help, right down to the littlest one.”

“I’m not babysitting a bunch of kids,” Josh declared fiercely. “It’s way too dangerous for them to be anywhere near a construction site.”

“You won’t have to worry about them,” Dinah assured him. “I’ll make sure they’re kept busy and out of your way.”

“And the mother?”

“She’ll do whatever you need her to do, the same as the rest of us,” Dinah promised. “And we’ve already rounded up a lot more volunteers. You’ll have plenty of help.”

“I don’t suppose any of these volunteers will actually know what they’re doing,” Josh said, resigned to his fate.

“We’ll bring in professionals for the plumbing and electrical,” Cord promised him.

Josh sighed. “Great. The house might fall down, but at least the toilets and lights will work.”

“It’s up to you to see that the house doesn’t fall down,” Cord chided. “So, is it a deal?”

“Do I have a choice?” Josh retorted wryly.

“You can always go off and look for another renovation project to fill the time till our deal comes through in Atlanta,” Cord said.

Unfortunately, Josh knew that high-end historic renovation projects were few and far between. He also knew that Cord was better at them than anyone else he’d ever met. He didn’t want to work on some half-baked job for an idiot who barely knew one end of a hammer from the other. He owed Cord for making him foreman of the Atlanta project when a lot of contractors would have turned their backs on a man who’d wandered from place to place as much as he had. Cord had trusted him to stick around and see the job through.

Josh had done that, and now would be the perfect opportunity for him to move on, the way he usually did. But he was damn tired of staking out new turf for a few months, then leaving it behind just when he started to feel comfortable. He’d worked in Atlanta and Charleston for Cord, so he knew his way around in both places. It wasn’t as if he was going to be putting down any roots if he stuck around awhile longer. Nobody in his right mind would put down roots if this dump of a motel room was what he came home to at night.

As long as neither Dinah or Cord had any ulterior motives, Josh couldn’t see much of a downside to staying. Maybe one good deed would make up for some of the miserable stunts he’d pulled in his life. Maybe he’d start to feel better about who he was if he gave something back, instead of living in the lonely isolation that had become a habit as far back as he could remember. People who were always on the run had few genuine friends. Maybe that was what had made Nadine latch on so desperately to anyone who showed her the least bit of kindness.

He gave Dinah a hard look, because she was the one he suspected of not being entirely truthful about her motivations. “This is just about the house, right?”

She beamed at him. “Of course. What else could it possibly be about?”

In Josh’s humble opinion, she sounded just a bit too cheerful. “You tell me,” he pushed. “You don’t have any ideas about me and this single mom, do you?”

“Absolutely not,” she said. “I haven’t even met Amanda yet. That’s her name. Amanda O’Leary. We wanted to get everything in place before we told her what was going on. We didn’t want to get her excited and then have to let her down if we couldn’t make it happen. I’m sure she’s still grieving the loss of her husband, so I seriously doubt she’s looking for a new relationship.”

Josh stared Dinah down, but she never so much as blinked. He turned his gaze on Cord. “Is she telling the truth?”

“Dinah’s a journalist,” Cord said. “She always tells the truth.”

“We’ll see about that,” Josh said, still skeptical.

“You’re saying yes?” Dinah asked eagerly.

“Sure,” Josh said without enthusiasm. “Like Cord said, I’ve got time on my hands. I might as well do something productive with it.”

“You’re an angel,” Dinah declared.

Josh chuckled. “Not even close, darlin’. Not even close.”

Now that she was back in Charleston, Maggie knew she had no choice but to drop in to see her mother. If Juliette Forsythe heard from someone else that her daughter had returned, Maggie would never hear the end of it. It would be added to her already lengthy list of sins.

The Forsythe mansion faced Charleston Harbor, its stately elegance protected by a high wrought-iron fence. The front lawn was perfectly manicured, and in spring azaleas spilled a profusion of pink, white and gaudy magenta blossoms over the landscape. But in July, as it was now, everything was unrelentingly green. Juliette didn’t believe in “tawdry” annuals along the walkways or hanging in pots from the porch ceiling. One brave gardener had edged the walkway with cheerful red geraniums and been fired on the spot for his audacity.

Maggie had timed her visit carefully. Juliette had a standing hair and manicure appointment at 10:30 a.m. Thursdays, so that she would be looking her absolute best when she met her friends for lunch and shopping in the historic district. By arriving at nine forty-five, Maggie knew she would only have to endure a twenty-minute grilling before being dismissed. No one kept Madame Monique waiting, not even Juliette. In fact, the hairdresser was the only person in all of Charleston that Maggie had ever seen intimidate her imperious mother.

“It’s about time you came to see me,” Juliette declared when Maggie walked into her upstairs sitting room, where she was drinking her morning coffee and finishing her raspberry croissant. She was already dressed in a stylish knit suit. A pair of one-carat diamond studs winked at her ears. Her makeup was flawless. Every highlighted blond hair on her head was in place, which seemed to mock the need for the impending salon appointment.

Juliette was fifty-seven, but looked ten years younger, the result of obsessive control of her diet and enough skin-care products to stock a spa gift shop. Her self-absorption might annoy Maggie, but it was simply the way Juliette had been raised. Her duty was to be an asset to her wealthy husband and a doting mother to her children. Unfortunately, there had been only Maggie upon whom to lavish all that attention. Maybe if there had been sons or another daughter to distract Juliette, Maggie wouldn’t have been the focus of so many maternal rules and regulations and would never have felt the need to rebel.

Now Juliette did a disapproving survey of Maggie’s simple red dress and sandals, then sighed before adding, “I thought you’d vanished.”

“Obviously you weren’t too concerned or you’d have hired a search party,” Maggie replied, bending down to give her mother a dutiful peck on the cheek. “How are you? You’re looking well.”

“I’m humiliated, that’s how I am,” Juliette declared. “I can barely hold my head up as a result of that debacle with your wedding.”

“You should be in my shoes,” Maggie retorted, though it was clear the sarcasm went right over her mother’s head. Everything was always about Juliette, how events affected her. By the time Maggie had hit her teens, she’d given up expecting a sympathetic ear.

“You still haven’t said why you haven’t been by,” Juliette complained.

“I’ve been away,” Maggie said, regretting that she’d bothered to rush right over, since it was evident her mother hadn’t been especially worried about her absence.

Juliette looked momentarily startled. “Away? Where? You never said anything about going away.”

“I rented a house on Sullivan’s Island. I’ve been out there for nearly a month now.”

“My heavens, why would you do a thing like that? What if your father and I had needed you in an emergency? Do you ever think of anyone other than yourself, Magnolia?”

“If you’d needed me, I would have known about it,” she said. “I checked my phone messages every day. Since there weren’t any from you, obviously there were no emergencies, so don’t make a big to-do about it now, Mother.”

Juliette regarded her with a familiar expression of dismay. “Sometimes I just don’t know what to make of you.”

Maggie bit back a grin. “Now there’s a news flash,” she muttered under her breath.

Her mother frowned. “What did you say?”

“Nothing important,” Maggie said. “I should run along now. I know you need to get to your appointment and I have to go to the gallery and check on things there. I just wanted you to know I was back.”

Her mother glanced at her watch, obviously torn. “I do need to go, but we really must talk soon, Magnolia.”

“About?”

“This fiasco with Warren.”

“The fiasco with Warren is over. It’s not open for discussion.”

“But I’m sure you could mend fences if you put your mind to it,” Juliette persisted. “He’s a reasonable man. I’m sure he’ll forgive you for whatever you did to upset him.”

“He’ll forgive me?” Maggie said incredulously. “Are you kidding, Mother? I didn’t do anything. He’s the one who called off the wedding. If there’s any groveling to be done, let Warren do it.”

“There it is again,” her mother said accusingly. “That stubborn streak of yours. It’s always been your downfall, Magnolia. If you don’t reconcile with Warren, what will you do?”

“I’ll survive, Mother. In fact, I’ve already gotten involved in an exciting new project that will take up a lot of my time for the rest of the summer. I’ll tell you about it next time I see you. Now, we both really need to get moving.” She leaned down for another quick kiss. “Love you.”

Duty done, Maggie was out the door and down the stairs at a clip an Olympic runner would envy. With her visit to Juliette behind her, life already looked brighter.

Maggie’s improved mood lasted only until she walked into Images and took a good look around at the displays that had been created in her absence. They were chaotic. Of course, she had no one to blame but herself. She was the one who’d gone off and left the decision making to her employees. She could hardly expect a twenty-one-year-old who dressed all in black and had pink streaks in her hair, or an art-school dropout whose mind tended to wander when she wasn’t in front of a canvas, to arrange the gallery with the same expertise and attention to detail that Maggie would. She was probably fortunate that they’d even bothered to uncrate the new shipments and price them.

“You’re back!” Victoria exclaimed when she stirred from reading her book. Judging from the cover, it was something dark and depressing, suitable for a woman in black.

“Indeed, I am,” Maggie said. “I see the new shipments came in.”

“Last week,” Victoria acknowledged. “I didn’t want to touch them, but Ellie said we probably should. The gallery was starting to look kinda empty, like we were going out of business or something.”

“Ellie was exactly right,” Maggie said. “Is there coffee made?”

Victoria stared at her blankly. “Coffee?”

“Yes, coffee. We make it every day in case a customer would like a cup.”

“Oh, I thought it was just for you, and since I didn’t know you were coming back today, I didn’t make any.”

“Never mind. I’ll make it, and as soon as I have a cup you can tell me what business has been like while I’ve been gone.”

“Actually, you’ll need to ask Ellie. I have an appointment at eleven, so she’s coming in early. Since you’re here, I’ll go now so I won’t be late.”

Maggie had always given her employees a lot of flexibility in scheduling, but usually she expected them to work longer than an hour before taking off. “When will you be back?”

Victoria shrugged as if the concept of time was of little importance. “How should I know? It depends on how long Drake can get away.”

“Drake?”

“My boyfriend,” Victoria explained impatiently as if Maggie should know that.

Maggie searched her memory. “I thought your boyfriend was named Lyle.”

“He split, like, three weeks ago, so now I’m seeing Drake.”

“In the middle of a workday?” Maggie said, subtly trying to suggest that there was something inappropriate about that. The notion apparently was utterly foreign to Victoria.

“It’s when he’s free,” she said reasonably. “After work, he has to go home to his wife.”

Maggie stared after Victoria as she fled to keep her “appointment” with her new, married boyfriend. And Juliette thought Maggie made bad choices. Her mother should spend an hour or two with Victoria. Maggie would begin to seem downright traditional after that.

A few minutes later, as Maggie was sipping gratefully on her first cup of very strong coffee, Ellie came in. In comparison to Victoria, she looked thoroughly professional in her tan slacks and white blouse. Her hair might be short and carelessly styled, but it was a perfectly normal shade of golden blond.

“Where’s Victoria?” Ellie asked, obviously startled to find Maggie behind her desk. “You didn’t fire her, did you?”

“No, though the thought has crossed my mind. She went to see Drake.”

Ellie grimaced. “Can you believe it? She’s dating a married man. And he must be having some kind of midlife crisis or something. Why else would he pick somebody as flighty as Victoria? He’s old. He must be thirty-five, at least.”

Maggie herself had issues with men that age. Warren was thirty-five. “Maybe you could sit here and tell me what’s been going on. Has business been good?”

Ellie looked vaguely disconcerted by the question. “I guess,” she said eventually. “The deposit slips are all in your desk.”

Maggie sighed. She should have known better than to expect any kind of overview of the gallery’s business the past month from either Victoria or Ellie. She was lucky they’d managed to keep the place from burning to the ground in her absence.

Ironically, the customers loved them. The two young women, with their off-beat quirkiness, seemed to fit the artistic stereotype people anticipated when shopping in a gallery. Her own contribution, she supposed, was class, necessary to assure the customers that the works and antiques on display were genuine and worth every penny of their exorbitant price tags.

“Thanks for looking after things,” Maggie said, meaning it. “I really appreciate the way you pitched in.”

“Sure. No problem. You know me. I can always use the extra cash.” Ellie’s expression brightened. “But I did sell two of my paintings while you were gone.”

Maggie beamed at her. What Ellie lacked in business skills, she more than made up for as an artist. “Congratulations! I told you it was only a matter of time. I think we should talk about having a real show one of these days. You’re ready for it, don’t you think?”

Ellie’s joy faltered. “Maybe you should come by the studio and take a look before you decide,” she suggested worriedly. “Maybe there aren’t enough good paintings yet. I don’t want you to be embarrassed.”

“You could never embarrass me. You’re the most talented artist I’ve discovered yet,” Maggie assured her with total sincerity. “I can’t wait to really give your work a big splashy show. Why don’t I come by one evening after we close and take a look. Then we can decide. I’d love to schedule something for this fall.”

“Really?” Ellie said, her eyes shining.

“Sweetie, you’re going to be showing in the Museum of Modern Art in New York before you know it, and I’m going to be bragging that I knew you when.”

“Don’t even tease about that,” Ellie said, bright spots of color in her cheeks.

“Who’s teasing? Don’t you know how good you are?” She could see by Ellie’s doubtful expression that she did not. “Don’t worry. You’ll see. I promise you.”

In fact, seeing Ellie’s career take off the way a few of Maggie’s other discoveries had before her was exactly the kind of achievement that kept Maggie in business. It was reassuring to know that in one area of her life, her judgment was impeccable.