“I want you to live with me,” she told him, keeping her voice far calmer than she felt. “But if you prefer to stay with your grandparents, then that’s what you should do. Jack and I are going to be seeing quite a bit of each other. I don’t know what the future holds for us, but he and I have a right to find out.” She searched Seth’s eyes, hoping to see even a glimmer of understanding. “I have a right to be happy, don’t I?”

“Does he make you happy?”

“Yes, he does. He makes me very happy.”

“I heard Nana ask Grandmother if he was the guy you were in love with when you were a teenager. Grandmother said he was and that he was wrong for you then and he’s still wrong for you. Were you in love with him before you married Dad?”

“Yes. Jack was my first love.” And my first lover.

“Did you love him more than you loved Dad?”

“Oh, Seth.”

“Did you?”

“I loved Mark in a different way.”

“Did Dad know about him?”

“Yes, Mark knew all about Jack, just as I knew all about his first wife. Your father and I didn’t have any secrets from each other.”

Seth stood there, sulky and quiet, his eyes wide and an angry flush on his cheeks. “Does Jack Perdue mean more to you than I do?”

“No one means more to me than you do. Don’t you know that?”

“But you do love him, don’t you?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. We’re just getting to know each other again.”

“Does he love you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think even he knows for sure.”

“He could wind up hurting you. He could break your heart.”

“Yes, he could. And I could break his heart, too.” We did that to each other years ago, and there are no more guarantees now than there had been then. “It’s a risk you take when you go into a relationship, when you open yourself up to care about someone. I think maybe you might know a little something about that.”

“Huh?” He looked at her with a puzzled expression on his face.

“Am I wrong about your liking Missy Hovater?”

“Jeez, Mom, Missy and I are just friends.”

“But you’d like for there to be more between you, and if it doesn’t work out and she starts dating someone else, it’s going to break your heart just a little, isn’t it? You’re taking a chance by liking Missy. That’s what I’m doing with Jack. I’m taking a chance that in the end, we’ll feel the same way about each other.”

Seth stared at her, and for a moment she wasn’t sure she’d gotten through to him. Then suddenly she noticed a change in his expression.

“You don’t care that everybody knows?” Seth asked. “I mean, you were a preacher’s wife and here you are having sex outside of marriage. Granddad’s going to call that fornication.”

“Granddad can call it whatever he wants to call it,” Cathy said. “And no, I don’t care if everybody in town knows that I’m sleeping with Jack Perdue. Who I have sex with is no one else’s business. Not even yours.”

Seth swallowed. “Yeah, maybe you’re right. I don’t know. It’s just that I wish…I wish…” He turned from her, and she knew he was on the verge of crying.

She walked over to him, placed her hand on his shoulder and asked, “What do you wish?”

“I wish my dad were still alive. I wish he hadn’t died. I wish we were still a family. How stupid is that? Wishing for the impossible.”

Cathy wrapped her arms around her son and hugged him. “It’s not stupid at all. And if I could bring Mark back to us, I would. But I can’t. And we both have to find a way to go on without him. We have to build a new life for ourselves.”

“And that new life includes Jack Perdue, at least for you.”

“Maybe. And if that happens, I hope you’ll give Jack a chance to be a part of your life, too.”

Seth pulled away from her. “I’m not making any promises.”

“I don’t expect you to. Just be the wonderful, kindhearted and caring young man I know that you are. That’s all I ask.”

“If he hurts you, he’ll have to answer to me.”

Cathy barely managed to stop herself from smiling. How very sweet that Seth saw himself as her protector. Her heart sighed. She hadn’t lost him. He was still her son.

And in time…

Chapter Twenty-four

Maleah had enjoyed the time that Nic and she had spent with Nic’s brother in San Francisco, where he lived and worked as an up-and-coming young artist. His paintings had in the past few years garnered numerous wealthy patrons, including Nic’s husband, Griff. Of course, Maleah couldn’t afford the price of even one of Charles David’s sketches. She’d been surprised when, several evenings ago, he had asked her permission to sketch her and then only this morning had presented the sketch to her as a farewell gift.

If Nic’s brother wasn’t already involved with a very lovely woman-almost twice his age-Maleah might have fallen for him. He was handsome, intelligent and talented as well as kind and sensitive. Why were all the good ones unavailable?

While Maleah had filled her days with sightseeing, shopping and indulging in sleeping late and eating too much-she’d probably gained five pounds since they’d been here-Nic had simply put on a happy face. Each time Nic had spoken to Griff, she had come away from his phone call moody and depressed. It seemed that his business trip to Europe, which had been supposed to last only a few days, had required him to stay much longer than he’d intended. When he called yesterday and told Nic that he was coming home via San Francisco to pick up her and Maleah, you’d have thought that the news would have made Nic happy. It hadn’t.

“As long as he was out of the country, I could halfway pretend everything was all right,” Nic had said. “But once we’re face-to-face again…He’s keeping secrets from me, secrets that have to do with his past. Something’s happened in Europe, something I think Yvette and Sanders know about, but Griff hasn’t shared with me.”

Maleah understood her friend’s frustration. If her husband shared a mysterious past with another woman, she’d probably be as jealous as all get-out. And if he shared things with that woman he didn’t with her, and if that woman knew more about what was going on with him than she did, she’d be pissed enough to contemplate cutting off his balls. By nature, Maleah wasn’t a violent person, but by God, she had learned that if you didn’t stand up for yourself against the bullies of this world, they would knock you down and walk all over you. Not that Griff was by any means a bully. Not the way her stepfather had been. Nolan Reaves had been downright mean.

For the most part, she didn’t think about her stepfather. And that was one reason she would never go back to Dunmore to live. She wondered how in the world Jack could not only return to their hometown but actually move into the house of horrors where they had grown up under Nolan’s cruel domination.

Because Jack’s tougher than you are. He always was.

She didn’t like to think about what her brother had sacrificed for her, how many beatings he had taken in order to spare her Nolan’s wrath. The verbal lashes, the mental and emotional torment he’d put them all through year after year, had been bad enough. No one could have stopped that, not even Jack. Being a cruel tyrant had been who Nolan was, and no amount of threats could have changed his basic personality. Only when Jack got old enough-and big enough-to pose a physical threat to the old bastard had he stopped beating Jack.

Yeah, she might be a tough broad, but she was a marshmallow compared to Jack. And yet there he was in Dunmore, facing down his demons, rebuilding his life and rekindling an old romance. She hoped that this time he and Cathy got it right. After all, if Jack didn’t get married and produce a few kids, the Perdue line would die with the two of them. She sure as hell had no intention of ever getting married, of tying herself to some man who would expect to tell her what she could and couldn’t do. Yeah, yeah, so there were marriages that actually worked, where the husband and wife were equal partners. She’d thought that was the kind of marriage Nic and Griff had. Apparently, she’d been wrong.