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Free Romance Excerpt Featuring The Day We Met by Barbara Bretton

Last week we announced that Barbara Bretton’s The Day We Met is our Romance of the Week and the sponsor of thousands of great bargains in the Romance category: over 200 free titles, over 600 quality 99-centers, and thousands more that you can read for free through the Kindle Lending Library if you have Amazon Prime!

Now we’re back to offer our weekly free Romance excerpt, and if you aren’t among those who have downloaded The Day We Met, you’re in for a real treat:

The Day We Met

by Barbara Bretton

The Day We Met
4.7 stars – 24 Reviews
On Sale! Everyday Price: $2.99
Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled
Here’s the set-up:

THEY WEREN’T LOOKING FOR LOVE . . .

It’s 7:08 on the morning of Maggy O’Brien’s thirty-fifth birthday and she’s driving carpool in her pajamas and bunny slippers. She can’t remember the last time she shaved her legs. She’s hasn’t slept past dawn since her kids were born and one of them is now a teenager.

Can life possibly get any worse?

The second she sees her sisters waiting impatiently at the foot of her driveway, she knows the answer to that question. Claire and Ellie are staging a makeover intervention and no amount of protest can save Maggy from being cut and colored and waxed to within an inch of her life. And as if that’s not enough, they announce she’s being banished to Atlantic City for an all-expenses-paid getaway weekend for one.

Maggy isn’t a sequins-and-stilettos kind of woman. She’s a single mom who is more comfortable pushing a shopping cart through Stop & Shop than sipping champagne in the backseat of a stretch limo headed toward Vegas on the Jersey Shore. Still even Maggy isn’t immune to playing Cinderella for a weekend, even if it only means room service lobster and trying her hand at the penny slots.

But when she locks eyes a few hours later with ruggedly handsome police detective Conor Riley, she discovers there’s more to Cinderella’s story than dancing until midnight.

They agree it’s just a fling. A weekend of magic with no strings attached. They’d say goodbye on Sunday night and return to their everyday lives with sweet memories and no regrets.

But Maggy and Conor are about to discover that maybe some flings are meant to last forever . . .

(previously published in print by Berkley Books)

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  And here, for your reading pleasure, is our free romance excerpt:

Chapter One

“Daddy’s getting married.”

Maggy O’Brien gripped the steering wheel and glanced at the dashboard clock. It was 7:08 on the morning of her thirty-fifth birthday, and she was in her pajamas and bunny slippers, driving her daughter to school. Up until that second, she hadn’t thought things could get any worse. She met her daughter’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “Would you say that again, Nicole?”

Nicole’s gaze drifted away, and she disappeared behind a curtain of dark purple hair. Nicole was fifteen. Purple hair came with the territory. “Daddy’s getting married.”

“Today?” Maggy asked. He wouldn’t get married on her birthday. He wouldn’t do that to the mother of his children, even if the divorce had been finalized two years ago this past April.

Nicole made a sound of disgust. “Of course not today. Maybe Christmas.”

“Well,” said Maggy, and then she stopped. What was there to say beyond that? In a little over two months, there’d be a new Mrs. Charles O’Brien. “How long have you known?”

Nicole’s slender shoulders rose and fell. “I dunno. Maybe a week.”

A week. Maggy drew in a breath and forced herself to count to ten. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did tell you.”

Count to twenty, Maggy. Thirty, even. Just don’t let her push your buttons.

“You could have told me last week.”

“I forgot.”

“You forgot your father’s getting married?”

Nicole sighed. “It’s not like it’s a big deal. He’s been seeing Sally forever.”

“Not a big—” She choked back the words. Her daughter was right. It wasn’t a big deal. Ex-husbands remarried every day of the week. That’s why they were ex-husbands, so they could find themselves new wives. “You’re right,” she said. “It’s not a big deal at all. Your dad and I have been divorced for two years. If he wants to get married, he can get married. It’s nothing to me.” She flipped on her turn signal. “What he does is none of my business. I only care because it affects you and Charlie.”

She made a right onto Main Street, drove two blocks, then pulled up in front of the high school.

“Oh, God,” Nicole said, adding a groan for emphasis. “Don’t park here! I don’t want anyone to see you in your pajamas.”

“You should’ve thought about that when you missed the bus.”

“My hair wasn’t dry yet.”

“Then get up earlier, and you won’t have these problems.”

“I hate you!”

“I know you do,” said Maggy. “Believe it or not, you’ll grow out of it.”

Nicole scrambled out of the car, slammed the door, then ran full speed toward the school as she tried to put as much distance between her and her mother as possible. Maggy used to do that, too, when she was a girl. She’d be out shopping with her mother and sisters and she and Claire and Eleanor would duck behind pillars every time they saw somebody they knew, because God forbid anybody should know that ditzy woman with the dyed red hair and too much blush was their mother. Funny how life can play tricks on you. These days, it was her sisters and her mother who pretended they didn’t know her.

They meant well. At least Maggy liked to believe they meant well when they criticized everything from her haircut to her shoes and all stops in between. They worried about her. They said she stayed home too much, she worked too hard, she’d forgotten how to have fun. They told her she’d settled into a routine somewhere around senior year and stayed there, and, try as she might, Maggy couldn’t argue with that. Who had time for that nonsense anyway? God knows, she hadn’t had time when she was a newlywed with a baby on the way or when she was following Charles from army base to army base with two toddlers, two dogs, one cat, and an irascible parrot, all of whom were her responsibility. Charles’s responsibility was his career, and she understood that. It was her job to hold the family together, and if that meant learning how to pack up the old house overnight and turn the new house into a home the next morning, then that was what she did.

She could wrap, pack, and ship with the best of them. She knew how to open herself up to new experiences and make friends with people who would be important to her for the twelve months they’d be assigned there and forgotten the second they waved good-bye. She told herself she enjoyed the nomadic life of an army wife, but she enjoyed the fact that it came with an end date even more. Charles would retire when he hit twenty years, and then they’d buy themselves a real house in a real neighborhood, and the only time she’d pack a suitcase would be for their two-week vacation each July.

Too bad it hadn’t worked out that way. Then again, what dream ever did? One night, Charles came home while she was packing them up for a move to Florida and told her that he’d decided to reenlist, that the opportunities presented to him were everything he’d ever wanted, and that he hoped she’d understand that he would be leaving for London alone.

Of course, what he was really saying was that their marriage was over. The life he wanted and the life she dreamed about were too far apart for them to bridge the gap. Six months later, they filed for a divorce. There was no animosity between them. No screaming fights or bitter rages. Maybe it would have been better if there had been. Then there might have been something worth saving, some small remnant of the passion they’d once shared. Their good marriage had run its course, and it was time to divvy up the furniture and the savings account and get on with their lives. Charles had been assigned to a diplomatic position in London, and Maggy went home to New Jersey.

Home was a comfortable ranch house on three-quarters of an acre in the same neighborhood where she’d played as a little girl. Back then there hadn’t been any houses, just lots of open space and woods where a kid could get lost with her dreams. Maggy’s dreams had always been the same: home and family. With a home and a family to love, you could take pretty much anything life threw your way. Well, she had a home and she certainly had a family. Two kids, two sisters, a mother who’d suddenly discovered the fountain of youth, and enough aunts, uncles, and cousins to fill the Meadowlands. She also had a job and school, and if she didn’t have love or passion or a man to hold her when the going got rough, she knew things could be a whole lot worse. At least her sisters didn’t know Charles was getting married.

She stopped for the traffic light at the corner of Poplar and Sycamore and congratulated herself. One block away from home, and she hadn’t been busted by any of Nicole’s friends—or her own, for that matter. Another three minutes, and she’d pull into the garage, and nobody would ever know that she’d managed to sneak out again in her pajamas. It was a small victory, but she took them wherever she could find them. She flicked on her right-turn signal and angled onto Sycamore, then muttered a word she hadn’t muttered since the day she got in between one of the cats and an angry skunk.

Her sisters’ cars were parked at the curb in front of her house. Claire’s Saab was angled toward the fire hydrant. The back wheel on the passenger’s side was up on the curb. The front wheels looked dazed. Eleanor’s gleaming black Lexus faced the wrong way. Its front bumper nosed against the fender of the Saab. This was nothing unusual. What was unusual was the fact that they were there at all.

Maggy’s hands started to shake as she turned into her driveway and shifted into park. Something was wrong. Why else would they be there at seven in the morning? She knew it wasn’t Nicole, but what about Charlie? She’d put him on the school bus over an hour ago. She’d noticed the substitute driver and made a mental note to call the school and ask for his name and qualifications. Please God…

She ran up the pathway, bunny slippers pounding against the slates. The door was slightly ajar, and she threw it open wide.

“Claire! Eleanor! What’s wrong? Where are—”

“Happy birthday, Mags!” Her two impossibly elegant younger sisters popped out from the archway and enveloped Maggy in a pair of bear hugs. “Surprise!”

“Surprise?” She sagged against them in a mixture of relief and rage. “You almost gave me a heart attack!”

“You’re getting old, Mags.” Claire grinned. “Thirty-five must be a dangerous age.”

Maggy’s heart was beating so fast she found it hard to breathe. “I thought something had happened to one of the kids. I thought the school had called you and—” She couldn’t finish the sentence. No mother could.

Ellie, currently a blond, poked Claire in the upper arm with one French-manicured finger. “I told you she’d think something happened to the kids. We should’ve waited outside.”

“Not to worry,” said Claire, hugging Maggy again. “She’ll live. Besides, any woman who goes outside in her pajamas and bunny slippers deserves whatever she gets.” She made a show of looking Maggy over. “Good God, woman, what on earth were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking,” Maggy said, sliding out of her oversized raincoat and hanging it from the curved oak hook to the left of the front door. “I was mothering.”

“Nicole missed the bus again?” Ellie’s naturally flinty voice always mellowed when she mentioned her niece.

Maggy struggled to hold back a sigh. She’d helped diaper both of her tall and elegant sisters. You would think that would give her an edge, but it didn’t. Looking at them that morning made her feel dumpy and old and alone. “Nicole missed the bus. Charlie spilled orange juice on his shirt, and I had to iron another one. Tigger threw up on the sofa.” Take your pick, girls. Welcome to the exciting world of the single mother. She reached back and adjusted her ponytail. “Besides, it’s not like I make a habit of going out in my pajamas. This was an emergency.”

“We know,” said Claire, her perfectly mascaraed gray blue eyes wide with compassion. “Nic told us.”

“Told you?” Maggy was puzzled. “Told you what?” No. Please don’t let them know about Charles.

Another exchange of worried glances.

“About Charles.” Ellie wasn’t a toucher. She patted Maggy’s forearm the same way she patted feral cats, quick little stabs with stiffly outstretched fingers.

“You know about Charles?” she asked. It wasn’t even eight in the morning, and already this qualified as the worst birthday of her life. “You can’t possibly know about Charles. I just found out thirty minutes ago.”

Claire and Ellie locked eyes.

“Stop that! If you two don’t quit giving each other looks, I’m—”

“That’s good,” said Claire. “Let it out. That’s the best way to get past the pain.”

“Pain?” Maggy laughed. “What pain? Charles is getting married. I wish him well.”

“You can level with us,” said Ellie. “We’re sisters. We understand.”

“That’s right,” said Claire. “Everyone knows you don’t marry your transitional lover. He’ll learn.”

“You remember that,” Ellie said. “It’s so easy to mistake loneliness for love.”

They meant well. Maggy knew that. All of this patronizing talk about love and loneliness was meant to soothe her battered, divorced ego, to remind her that even though her ex-husband had found somebody new to love while Maggy stayed home with the cats and dogs and tended the home fires, there was still hope. Those two unmarried role models for success actually thought they understood how it felt to be the single mother of two, part-time student, part-time secretary, and full-time worrier that the road not taken was the one that led to the pot of gold. They loved her. It wasn’t their fault that they didn’t get it. How could they? Sometimes there was simply no substitute for experience.

“How did you find out about Charles?” she asked.

“Nic called me,” Claire said. She looked slightly uncomfortable, although you had to have known her from birth to recognize the signs. Claire had always been good at concealing her feelings until it was too late.

A lump formed deep inside Maggy’s throat. “When?”

“Right after she spoke to her father.”

“Oh.” Maggy knew her daughter and her sister were very close, and she’d never been a bit jealous. The ugly feeling in the center of her chest was a brand-new sensation, and she didn’t like it. She wanted to go back to the days when Nic was a sweet baby girl who needed nothing more than her mother’s love to make her happy.

“It wasn’t that she wanted to tell me,” Claire rushed on. “It’s just that you were out at school and—”

Maggy raised her right hand, palm out. “You’re making it worse, Claire. Just let it go.”

“You don’t understand,” her beautiful, clueless baby sister said. “It was your school night and Nic was all upset and she had to—”

“I know,” Maggy interrupted, “and it’s okay. You and Nicole are good friends. I think it’s great. Now, how about some coffee? I don’t know about you two, but I could use some caffeine right about now.”

“Not very subtle,” Ellie observed. “If you want to change the subject, just say so.”

“I want to change the subject.”

“Good,” said Claire, “because you don’t have time for that caffeine anyway.” She glanced at the man’s watch strapped to her left wrist. “What time is the appointment?” she asked Ellie.

“Eight-thirty,” said Ellie, “and unless Maggy’s going out in her pajamas again, she’d better get moving.”

They were up to something. No doubt about it. “Do either one of you feel like telling me what in hell you’re talking about?”

* * *

“I don’t need a makeover,” Maggy said as they practically strapped her into the chair at Royal House of Beauty an hour later. “All I need is a good night’s sleep.”

The stylist, a tall black man named Andre, rolled his eyes. “Rapunzel, you’re not a day too soon.” He held her ponytail between his fingers and tsk-tsked. “We can’t pretend we’re in high school any longer, can we… not once those little gray hairs start coming in.”

“I do not have gray hair.” It was hard to look fierce when you were wrapped in a pastel pink bib. “I’m too young for gray hair.”

Andre pointed a comb in the direction of her sisters. “They’re not too young for gray hair, girl, and neither are you. Now what to do about it…”

“Color all you like,” said Maggy, “but don’t cut an inch.”

Andre rolled his eyes and turned to face Claire and Ellie, who were sprawled on chaise longues by the window. “The girl won’t let me cut her hair, and you said I could cut her hair.”

Claire leaped to her expensively shod feet. Manolo Blahniks. What else? Maggy couldn’t even pronounce Manolo Blahnik, much less walk in them. “Of course you can cut her hair. That’s part of the makeover, isn’t it?”

“No, he can’t cut my hair,” Maggy said, growing annoyed. “Is this a makeover or an execution? Don’t I have any say in what goes on?”

“No!” said the other three in unison.

“You’re stuck in cement,” Ellie said. “It isn’t 1982 any longer, Mags, and you’re not eighteen.”

“Thanks for the reminder.” Maggy watched as Andre removed the coated rubber band and brushed out her hair. It fell across her shoulders like a familiar dark blanket. Charles used to love her hair. Back when they were newlyweds with happily-ever-after stretching out before them, back before there was a future second Mrs. Charles O’Brien on the horizon, he used to bury his face in her hair, run his hands through it, tell her how much he loved her, and she’d whisper how they’d always be together, how there’d never be anyone else but the two of them while he took her hair between his hands and—

“Cut it,” she said as her sisters and Andre stared back at her through the salon mirror. “I want you to chop it off right now.”

Andre’s silver scissors glinted in the morning light. “Girl, once I snip, there’s no going back.”

“Good,” said Maggy as she met the reflection of his eyes. “Cut it all off.” She couldn’t go back now if she wanted to.

* * *

The stretch limo was waiting at the curb when Maggy stepped out of the hair salon with her sisters.

“You didn’t,” she said, stopping dead in her tracks. “You wouldn’t.”

“Of course we did,” said Claire, draping her arm around Maggy’s shoulders. “You didn’t think we’d just give you a haircut for your birthday, did you?”

“I don’t know what I think anymore,” Maggy said, running her fingers through her newly shorn, newly tinted hair. “I’m not sure I can think.” Maybe Andre had snipped off her gray cells along with two feet of hair. She felt like a different person, as if thirty-five years of expectations had vanished along with her ponytail. She felt lighter, breezier, more capable, even though she knew that was giving a haircut an awful lot of credit.

“You don’t have to think,” Ellie said as the limo driver walked around the back of the car. “We did the thinking for you. Your bags are packed. We have an outfit for you to change into for the trip. Nicole is staying with Claire. The Giordanos are taking Charlie. Yours truly will tend to the menagerie. All you have to do is have fun.”

Her baby sisters had arranged for her to spend a weekend in Atlantic City. She’d be whisked down the shore in a cushy stretch limo, ensconced in a suite at one of the fancy-shmancy casino hotels, wined and dined and even gambled into pure and utter relaxation.

“You deserve this and more,” Claire said, growing uncharacteristically teary-eyed with emotion. “After all you did for Mom last year—” She stopped for a second. “I mean, she wouldn’t still be with us if you hadn’t—”

“You’ve always been there for all of us to lean on,” Ellie broke in, “and it’s time we showed you how much we appreciate you.”

Maggy made the right noises. She thanked them both and oohed and aahed over the limo and the little television and the fully stocked bar and the handsome driver, but the truth was, she would have been happier staying home. She’d planned to spend her day off in her pajamas, curled up on the love seat in the family room watching trashy videos and eating take-out Chinese.

The driver showed her how to work the television set, the radio, the heat, and the reading lights. He pointed out the bar, the ice buckets, and the pretty little glasses set up atop the burled wood ledge. The glasses had the hotel logo etched into the front. They sat on crisp white doilies that also bore the hotel logo. “If you need anything else,” the driver said, “just push the button near the light switch, and I’m at your service.” The Plexiglas partition whirred up between them, and they were on their way to the bright lights and spinning slot machines of Atlantic City.

Her most unfavorite city in the known universe. You’d think her sisters would know that simple thing about her. She wasn’t a bright lights type. She wasn’t comfortable in sequins and bugle beads. She hated crowds. She thought life was a big enough gamble and wasn’t about to toss her hard-earned money into the mix.

She wasn’t one of those mysterious women you saw in movies, the kind who dressed in black and smoked foreign cigarettes and spoke in hushed tones. All you had to do was look at her and you would know she’d be more at home behind the wheel of a minivan than in the backseat of a stretch zipping down the Garden State Parkway.

She glanced at her reflection in the vanity mirror that folded into the rear door panel. The only thing left of her old self was the look in her eyes. Everything else had been cut and colored and shadowed and tinted and lipsticked and blushed into something as close to perfection as Maggy had ever been. She hadn’t looked this good on her wedding day. It would have been fun to push a cart through the ShopRite and watch her neighbors breeze right past her in the frozen food aisle. “Hey, Marie,” she’d call out. “You’re not talking to me anymore?” Marie’s mouth would drop open when she realized who was talking to her, and Maggy would live off that look of amazement until the Christmas decorations came down next year. What was the point of a makeover if you couldn’t make your friends green with envy?

What would Charles think if he saw her now? Now there was a loaded question for you. Not that it mattered anymore what he thought, but she couldn’t help wondering if he’d feel a momentary pang for everything they had shared. Maybe something like the pang she’d felt when Nicole told her that he was getting married. She didn’t want to be married to him any longer, but the thought of him marrying someone else made her feel like weeping.

So many hopes and dreams ended with their marriage. The small jokes at the end of a day. The shared concerns. The vision of themselves, many years down the road, surrounded by their children and grandchildren. She knew that Charles would give his life for their children, same as she would, and there was nobody else on earth she could say that about.

Suddenly she wanted nothing more than to be home. She supposed she could ask the driver to turn around. It was her birthday, after all. Didn’t Claire say she could do anything she wanted? She’d have the driver take her home, and she wouldn’t tell her sisters. Charlie was staying overnight with his pals Kyle and Jeremy Giordano, while Nicole would spend the night with Claire at her fancy condo on the water. Nobody would have to know that she was home with her TV and takeout. She’d say something at the next exit, she thought as they whizzed past Holmdel, heading south. The big car was as comfortable as her living room, and there was something hypnotic about the parade of blazing autumn color flashing by her window as they cut through what remained of long-ago forests and pine barrens. Another exit passed and then another. It was so easy to do nothing, to just lean back against the plush leather seat and let life happen.

She wasn’t entirely sure she knew how to do that. She’d been the one with the lists and the schedules and the responsibility since she was ten years old. It was a tough habit to break. When the gods and goddesses of newborns doled out their gifts, they’d bestowed beauty on Claire, brains on Eleanor, and a sense of responsibility on Maggy. Okay, so maybe it sometimes seemed more like a chronic Catholic guilty conscience, but whatever you wanted to call it, it worked. If you needed someone to watch your kids, carpool for you on Tuesday, or pick up your dry cleaning, all you had to do was call Maggy. She’d never let you down. “Maggy’s like Old Faithful,” her ex said once in front of a group of colleagues at a boring cocktail party at the Officer’s Club. “You can always count on her.”

Her sisters said they wanted to thank her for all she did for the family, but Maggy knew there was more to it than that. They felt sorry for her. When they looked at her, all they saw was a thirty-five-year old divorcee with two kids, living in a tract house in central New Jersey. A soccer mom who took college classes at the community college two nights a week, who worked part-time for a priest of all things, and considered a trip to Pizza Hut a major night out. It wasn’t conjecture. She knew that’s what they thought because she’d heard them say it. Their mother had been recovering from the stroke at Maggy’s house. Maggy was fresh from divorce court, struggling to set down roots for herself and her children in the town where she grew up. She’d been filled with fear and worry and the most ridiculously inappropriate sense of optimism imaginable. Ellie and Claire had come over for dinner, and Maggy overhead them talking in the kitchen. “Poor Mags,” one of them said. “I feel so sorry for her. This isn’t much of a life. Bet she wished she’d stayed with Charles.”

She had laughed it off at the time, chalking the comment up to youth and inexperience, but as the months wore on, she’d found herself thinking about it again and again. Sometimes, when she was overworked and overtired, she wondered if she’d made a mistake when she divorced her husband. He was a good man. They’d had a good life. It was just that one day it stopped being the life they both wanted. By the time the divorce became final, she felt a sense of profound relief, and she suspected Charles felt it as well. Their time had come and gone, and she knew it, but still the news of her ex-husband’s upcoming marriage made her feel as if a door had been shut and locked between them, a door that not even divorce had been able to close completely.

* * *

Conor Riley saw her as she stepped from the limo.

He’d handed over his car keys to the valet and was about to grab his duffel bag and head for the lobby where his brother was waiting for him when he heard a smoky female voice and a quiet laugh; he turned to his left and saw her. She had short dark hair shot through with red highlights and the kind of smile he used to dream about when he believed in such things. Her smile was wide and true, and it engulfed her whole face. He watched while she talked to the driver then shook his hand. Maybe a shade over five feet tall. Maybe a shade over one hundred pounds. Her eyes were a clear light blue, like a morning sky.

He caught himself and shook his head. Where the hell did that morning sky crap come from? Female Caucasian, mid-thirties, brunette, blue eyes. Cold, hard facts. Anything else was a waste of time. If he didn’t know that, he really was in the wrong line of work. Sixteen years on the force had taught him how to reduce a person to basics in twenty seconds, how to commit a face to memory in less time than it took to blink. How to take your emotions and stuff them in your back pocket where they couldn’t hurt anyone. Emotions got in the way. They clouded your judgment. They made you see things that weren’t there and miss the things that were.

Damn. He wasn’t going down that road again. Not this weekend. He was going to roll some dice, play a little blackjack, maybe drink more than he should, and keep one step ahead of the memories. If he managed to get through this weekend, maybe there was a chance for him.

A bellman approached the blue-eyed woman and said something. She nodded, then the bellman took a garment bag from her limo driver and hung it on one of those rolling racks. The driver handed over two overnight suitcases that the bellman tossed on the shelf beneath.

Those suitcases reached out and grabbed Conor’s attention. A pair of mismatched bags, one navy and the other a weathered tan, with scuff marks he could see from thirty yards away. The bags didn’t fit the woman. Or the stretch for that matter. She was sleek and pampered and expensive. The bags weren’t.

“Too rich for your blood,” said a familiar voice. “She’s either somebody’s wife or a high roller. Either way, she’s not for you.”

Conor swung his bag over his shoulder and turned toward his younger brother Matt, who had joined him on the curb. “I thought we were meeting up in the lobby.”

“We were,” Matt said, “but after awhile, I began to wonder if you’d bailed on me. How long does it take to hand over the keys to the valet?”

“It’s your hotel,” he shot back. “Maybe you need a new efficiency expert.”

Matt was the whiz kid in the Riley family, the one who’d broken out of the cops-and-firemen mold and found a job that didn’t come with a uniform or a gun. The kid launched into a defense of his employer that lasted until Conor checked in at the main desk.

“Dinner at eight,” Matt reminded him. “Nero’s, on the third floor.”

Conor was more the hamburger and fries type, but it was the kid’s night to show off. “Eight o’clock, third floor,” he said. “I’ll be there.”

They walked together toward the bank of elevators at the far end of the lobby, past a small room tucked into a quiet corner. He had a glimpse of dark paneling, lots of leather, oil paintings, and the dark-haired woman with the mismatched luggage sitting on the edge of a fancy brocade chair while one of the hotel assistants fielded a phone call.

“Told you she was out of your league,” Matt said. “That’s the VIP desk where the real players check in.” He took another look. “Since when do you go for the waif type, anyway? I thought you liked big boobs and long legs and—”

“Shut up,” Conor said good-naturedly. “You’re not too old for me to deck you.”

Matt was twenty-six years old, but that grin of his was only eight. “I’ve been telling one of the cocktail waitresses about my big brother. Her name’s Lisa. She’s on tonight from four to midnight, and she’s a hell of a lot more your type than the little brunette back there. Maybe—”

“Yeah,” said Conor. “Maybe.”

* * *

Maggy had first noticed the man in front of the hotel when she was talking with the bellman who took her bags. He was tall, big across the shoulders, with a few strands of silver threaded through his head of thick chestnut hair. Not that she’d been paying that much attention to him. It was just that the sunlight had managed to find him that second and draw her attention away from the bellman. A few strands of gray in a woman’s hair, and her sisters gang up on her and send her out for a makeover. A few strands of gray in a man’s hair, and he’s on the cover of People magazine.

His gaze was deep, intense, and it didn’t miss much. She looked back at him, almost daring him to acknowledge her, but a young man walked up behind him, and the man turned away. That was probably for the best, since she was easily the world’s most inept flirt. She would have made a fool of herself and downright ruined the weekend before it had a chance to get started.

She hadn’t thought about the man again until just this minute when he walked slowly past the VIP Check-in and smiled at her. At least she thought he smiled at her. She was reasonably sure she saw his eyes crinkle a little at the outer corners and his mouth edge upward in a smile that did little to soften his somewhat forbidding features. Then she saw that the same young man she’d noticed in the parking lot was at his side, and a rush of disappointment took her by surprise. The smile wasn’t for her at all. It had nothing to do with her, and if she’d had the slightest bit of experience, she would have recognized that fact right off the bat.

Too bad Claire and Ellie weren’t there with her to translate. When it came to the mysteries of the man/woman thing, Maggy was a newborn. Nicole knew more than she did, and Nicole was barely fifteen. Maggy was too literal, too down-to-earth, too busy to pay much attention to all of that nonsense. The last date she went on had ended badly when Maggy told the poor man that perhaps it was better if he didn’t call again because the odds of a second date were maybe five million to one.

“You couldn’t let him down gently?” Claire had asked her the next day when she called Maggy for details.

“I did let him down gently,” Maggy said. Why string him along when she had no intention of seeing him again?

Claire had told Ellie and Ellie told their mother and their mother told the aunts and the cousins, and before long the entire family was calling Maggy the Terminator. She laughed when they said it, but she still didn’t understand what was so bad about telling the truth. What with school and work and the kids, she didn’t have time for Mr. Right, much less for Mr. Absolutely Terrible.

“Here you go, Ms. O’Brien.” The statuesque blond desk clerk handed Maggy a packet with a key inside. The packet was made of heavy, cream-colored vellum that was smooth to the touch. “Your suite is on the thirty-second floor. I’m sure you’ll enjoy the view. You’ve been given access to the Augustus Club where members can stop for a complimentary drink or a bite to eat twenty-four hours a day.”

She walked Maggy to the bank of elevators situated next to an obscenely expensive jewelry store whose sole purpose was to relieve lucky winners of some of that irksome money. Maggy tried to act nonchalant until the clerk walked away, then she all but pressed her nose against the storefront and gawked at the egg-sized diamonds and rubies on display. Garish, she thought. The jewels were ostentatious and vulgar and downright breathtaking, and she barely managed to control the impulse to step inside the shop and try on everything they had.

It turned out that the same adjectives could be used to describe her hotel suite. The bellman was waiting for her in the hallway. He smiled at her as if they were old friends as he unlocked the door and ushered her inside. He flipped on the lights, and she found herself wishing she hadn’t tucked her sunglasses away in her purse. The windows faced the ocean, and the refracted sunlight bounced off the wall-to-wall smoked mirrors and almost blinded her. Louis XIV Meets Early Bordello with a touch of Vegas thrown in for good measure, all served up with an ancient Roman accent.

“This is the bar,” the bellman said, pointing to a sleek curve of mahogany. She noticed gleaming gold taps and a row of glittering old-fashioned glasses. “Fully stocked. If it’s not to your liking, just press five, and Stefan will be glad to help you.” He showed her the pair of refrigerators—one in the parlor and the other in the bedroom—and the trio of closets, the huge Jacuzzi, the steambath, the king-sized bed with the fur throw and explosion of pillows, the wine-colored velvet chaise longue turned to face the ocean.

He showed her the bathroom fixtures, the button for the living room draperies hidden behind the statue of Caesar and Cleopatra, the four separate phones, and the safe—and it wasn’t until he started to show her everything all over again that she realized what he was doing and why. A tip. Of course, he wanted a tip. He carried her bags; he deserved a tip. She fumbled in her purse, praying she’d come up with the right amount. A dollar a bag? Five dollars for everything? Would he laugh in her face then call the front desk and tell them to toss her out on her ear? She settled on a ten-dollar bill. He thanked her and didn’t slam the door behind him when he left, so she was reasonably certain she hadn’t embarrassed either one of them.

“Now what?” she asked the statues of Caesar and Cleopatra near the window, but they had no answer for her. It was one o’clock on a Friday afternoon, and she hadn’t a clue what to do with herself. Her dinner reservation, courtesy of Claire and Ellie, wasn’t until eight at some place called Nero’s. The thought made her shudder. Lots of tiny tables for two, with couples cooing over candlelight and champagne. Cooing, that is, when they weren’t dancing to music soft enough to break what was left of your heart. Nothing like dinner alone in public on the night of your thirty-fifth birthday to lift a woman’s spirits. Nothing like knowing your ex-husband wouldn’t be eating dinner alone when his next birthday rolled around.

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