It hadn’t gotten easier. Time wasn’t her friend. And as much as she tried to hold on to every single memory she had of Beth, it was all fading. Even now she couldn’t quite summon up the soft, musical sound of Beth’s laugh and it killed her.

  Shaking it off the best she could, she slid out of her car and forced a smile on her face. Sometimes you had to fake it to make it.

  Actually, more than sometimes.

  June in southern California could mean hot or hotter, but today was actually a mild eighty degrees and her mom’s flowers were in full, glorious bloom. She ducked a wayward bee—she was allergic—and turned to watch a flashy BMW pull in next to her, relieved to not have to go inside alone.

  Brock Holbrook slid out of his car looking camera ready and she couldn’t help but both smile and roll her eyes. “Suck up,” she said gesturing to his suit and tie.

  Brock flashed a grin. “I just know where my bread’s buttered.”

  He worked for her father’s finance company and no one could deny that Brock knew how to work a room. He was good-looking, charismatic, and when he looked at her appreciatively, she waited for the zing she used to get from that very look.

  But it’d been two years almost to the day since she’d felt a zing for anything. She sighed and Brock tilted his head at her, eyes softer now, understanding.

  He knew. He’d been there when she’d found out about her sister Beth’s death. But his understanding didn’t help.

  She’d rather feel again, dammit.

  The front door opened behind them and Quinn glanced over. Both her parents and Brock’s stood in the doorway, all four of them smiling a greeting at the chickens coming home to the nest, where they’d be pecked at for all the details of their lives.

  Quinn loved her parents madly and they loved her, but brunch was going to be more invasive than a gyno exam on the 405 South at peak traffic hours.

  Brock grabbed Quinn’s hand, tugged her into him and planted a kiss on her lips. It wasn’t a hardship. He also looked good, and he knew it. He kissed good as well and he knew that too.

  But though they’d slept together occasionally over the years, it’d been a while. Two, to be exact. Still, the kiss was nice, and normally she’d try to enjoy it—except he was only doing it for the show.

  So she nipped at his bottom lip. Hard.

  Laughing, he pulled back only very slightly. “Feeling feisty?”

  “I’m not sleeping with you.”

  “You should.”

  “Pray tell why.”

  “It’s been so long, I’m worried you’re depressed.”

  This was just uncomfortably close enough to the truth to have her defenses slam down. “I’m not depressed.”

  “Not you,” he said. “Your vagina.”

  She snorted and pulled free. “Shut up.”

  “Just keep it in mind,” he said, a smile in his voice. He took her hand back and held it as he led her up the front path, clearly having already accessed that she was a fight risk.

  “I should’ve bitten you harder,” she murmured, smiling at the parentals.

  “Next time,” he murmured back, also smiling. “Feeling vicious today, I take it?”

  “Annoyed,” she corrected.

  “Ah. I guess turning old does that to a person.”

  He was nine months younger than her and for just about all their lives—they’d met in kindergarten when he’d socked a boy for pushing her—he’d been smug about their age difference. She nudged him with her hip and knocked him off balance. He merely hauled her along with him, wrapping both his arms around her so that by all appearances he’d just saved her from a fall. His face close to hers, he gave her a wink.

  And suddenly it occurred to her that this wasn’t about her at all, but him. His parents must be on him again about giving them grandbabies. The truth was everyone expected them to marry. And she got it, she did. Brock had been her middle and high school boyfriend, and they’d gone off to college together until they’d had a wildly dramatic and traumatic breakup their first year involving his inability to be monogamous. Oh, he loved her. She had no doubt. But he also loved anyone who batted their eyes and smiled at him.

  It’d taken a few years, but eventually they’d found their way back to being friends. Best friends at times, and had gotten into the habit of being each other’s plus one. They even had a promise that if they were still single at age forty, they’d put a ring on it, but it was more a joke than a real vow.

  “You’re only making it worse for both of us,” she whispered as they got close to the front door.

  “If they think we’re working on things,” Brock said out the side of his mouth, “they’ll leave me the hell alone.”

  She shrugged, conceding the point. There were hugs of greeting and airy almost-but-not-quite cheek kisses. “Still not used to it,” Lucinda murmured to Quinn, clinging for an extra minute. “It never feels right, you here without her . . .”

  She didn’t mean it hurtfully, Quinn knew it. Her mom wouldn’t hurt a fly, but as always, a lump the size of Texas stuck in her throat. “I know, Mom.”

  “I miss her so much. You’re so strong, Quinn, the way you’ve moved on.”

  Had she? Moved on? Or was she treading water, staying in place, just managing to keep her head above the surface? One thing for certain, she’d buried her feelings, deep. It’d been the only way to survive the all-encompassing grief, which sat like a big fat elephant on her chest. She’d locked it away in a dark corner of her heart and built a wall around it, brick by painstaking brick to contain the emotions that had nearly taken her down.

  But she knew she was lucky. She had a job she loved, parents who cared, and a best friend slash fall-back husband if it ever came to that. Yes, she was turning thirty soon and that surprise party still lay in wait regardless of the fact that she didn’t want it. And while she’d like to pretend that wasn’t happening, it wouldn’t derail her because compared to what she’d been through, there was nothing scary ahead of her.

  Famous last words.

  A week later, Quinn was in line for her usual afternoon before-work latte when she felt the weight of someone’s gaze on her. Turning, she found a guy around her age with black tousled hair and black rimmed glasses, who looked a lot like a grown-up Harry Potter.

  He was staring at her with an intensity that had her blinking and then craning her neck to peek behind her. No one, which meant he was staring at her. She turned away and did her best to ignore him. The women in line in front of her were chatting . . .

  “Orgasms after the age of fifty suck,” one said to the other. “No one tells you that but they do.”

  Her friend agreed with an emphatic head bob. “I know. It’s like sand paper down there in Lady Town. Takes an entire tube of lube and a bottle of gin.”

  The first woman snorted. “Don’t get me started. Alan can’t give me ten minutes to find the G-spot but he’ll spend thirty minutes looking for a golf ball . . .”

  Quinn must have made some sound because they both turned to her with apologetic laughs. “Sorry,” Dry Vagina said. “But it’s just one of the many, many things coming your way, along with hot flashes and murderous urges.”

  Yay. Something to look forward to.

  “Excuse me,” someone said behind her.

  Harry Potter, her stalker.

  “I need to speak to you,” he said.

  Oh boy. “Sorry,” she said but before she could finish her polite excuse, one of her new friends spoke up.

  “No need to make a hasty decision, honey. He might be suitably employed with no baggage.”

  “Impossible,” Dry Vagina said. “That’d be like finding a unicorn.”

  “Are you a unicorn?” the first woman asked him.

  Harry Potter blinked at her and then looked at Quinn with more than a little desperation. “Can I please talk to you . . . alone?”

  “Not alone,” the first woman said. “That sounds like stranger danger. You can do your pickup line magic right here in the crowd, or better yet do it online like the rest of the world.”

  The guy never took his gaze off Quinn. “You’re Quinn Weller, right?”

  How did he know her name? “You’re going to need to go first,” Quinn said.

  “I’m Cliff Porter. I’m an attorney and I really need a word with you. Privately.”

  She stared at him, trying to come up with a reason why an attorney would be looking for her.

  “Porter or Potter?” Dry Vagina asked. “Because Potter would make more sense.”

  He looked pained. “I get that a lot but it’s Porter.”

  “How do you know my name?” Quinn asked.

  “Look, can we just . . .” He gestured to a small table off to the side of the line.

  Torn between curiosity and a healthy sense of survival, Quinn hesitated. “I’m late for work.”

  “This will only take a minute.”

  Reluctantly, she stepped out of line and moved to the table. “You’ve got one minute.”

  He took a deep breath. “As I said, I’m an attorney. I’m from Wildstone, a small town about two hundred miles north. I’m here to give you news of an inheritance.”

  Quinn blinked. “Okay first, I’ve never heard of Wildstone. And second, I certainly don’t know anyone from there.”

  “We’re a small ranching town that sits in a bowl between the Pacific Coast and wine country,” he said. “Would you like to sit?” he asked quietly, and also very kindly she had to admit. “Because the rest of this is going to be a surprise.”

  “I don’t like surprises,” she said, “and you have thirty seconds left.”

  It was clear from his expression that he wasn’t happy about having to go into the details in public, but as he was a stranger and maybe also a crackpot, too damn bad.

  He drew a deep breath. “The person who left you some property was your birth mother.”

  She stared at him and then slowly sank into the before-offered chair without looking, grateful it was right behind her. “You’re mistaken,” she finally said, shaking her head. “I wasn’t adopted.”

  He gave her a wan smile. “I’m really sorry to have to be the one to tell you, but you were.”

  “I have parents. Lucinda and James Weller.”

  “They adopted you when you were two days old.”

  The shock of that reverberated through her body. “No,” she whispered. Heart suddenly racing, palms clammy, she shook her head. “They would’ve told me. There’s absolutely no way . . .”

  “I’m very sorry,” Cliff said quietly. “But it’s true. They adopted you from Carolyn Adams.” He pulled a picture from his briefcase and pushed it across the table toward her.

  And Quinn’s heart stopped. Because it was Carolyn, the woman who she’d met here in this very coffee shop.

  Chapter 2

  Quinn blinked, shocked to find herself sitting on the curb outside the coffee shop staring blindly at the Lexus her parents had given her.

  Her parents. Who might not really be her parents.

  “Here,” Cliff said, pushing a cup of cold water into her hands as he sat next to her. “Drink this.”

  She took the cup in two shaking hands and gulped down the water, wishing a little bit that it was vodka. “You’re mistaken,” she said again. “Carolyn was just a woman I met here. We spoke only a few times.”

  “Three.” Cliff gazed at her sympathetically. “She told me about the visits. She drove down here to get a peek at you, borne out of a desperate curiosity.”

  “I don’t understand,” Quinn whispered.

  “She knew she was terminal and had set a trust in place,” Cliff said. “She had every intention of telling you herself, but she had a seizure driving back to Wildstone the last day you saw her. She died in the accident.”

  “Oh my God.”

  Cliff took the cup of water from her before she could drop it. “The funeral was five days ago,” he said.

  Quinn let out a sound that might have been a mirthless laugh or a half sob, she wasn’t sure. She shook her head for what felt like the hundredth time in the past few minutes, but it still didn’t clear.

  It wasn’t true, she told herself. Not any of it. Harry Potter here was just a stalker, a good one. Or maybe a scammer. She hated to think that the nice woman she knew as Carolyn could be a part of something so seedy, but she simply couldn’t accept that her parents wouldn’t have told her such a crucial thing such as being adopted. For God’s sake, she’d seen infant pictures of herself in the hospital with them.

  “Look,” she said, standing up. “I don’t want any part of this.”

  “There’s an inheritance.”

  “Especially that,” she said. “I don’t want it or any part of this game you’re playing. I wasn’t adopted and your minute is up and I’m leaving.”

  “Wait.” He stood up too, and looked at her with nothing but kindness and understanding in his gaze. “Take my wand.”

  She blinked, expecting to see a lightning bolt scar appear on his forehead. “What?”

  “My card,” he said, his gaze turning to concern. “Give yourself some time to think about it. Contact me when you’re ready. Are you going to be alright?”

  There was only one answer to that. “Of course.”

  Always.

  She drove to work on auto-pilot, Cliff Potter, er Porter’s, tale eating at her. She was clumsy in the kitchen, dropping and spilling things, plating the wrong entrees, mistaking shallots for onions, forgetful . . .

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Marcel had lost his temper with her somewhere around the time she’d dropped a platter of stuffed peppers. “Get out of my kitchen, you schlampe.”

  She wasn’t positive of the exact translation on that one, but she was pretty sure it was something along the lines of grungy or dirty woman. She carefully and purposely set down her knife so she didn’t run it through him.

  “You’re clumsy, forgetful, and making more work than food!”

  For once he was right. Because all she could think about was Cliff Porter’s visit.

  They adopted you when you were two days old . . .

  “Are you listening to me?” Marcel yelled up at her. Up, because he was five-foot-two to her five-foot-seven, something that normally gave her great pleasure.

  “Du flittchen,” he muttered in disgust beneath his breath, and the entire staff froze in the kitchen like dear in the headlights.

  Slut. She turned to him. “Schiebe es,” she said, which meant shove it. It was the best she could do, at least in German. Pushing past him, she walked out of the kitchen.

  “Where are you going?” he yelled after her. “You can’t just leave!”

  But leaving was exactly what she was doing. Outside, she pulled out her cell phone to call her boss, Chef Wade.

  “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “I have to leave early,” she said. “I’m sorry for the short notice but Marcel is here. He’s got things under control.” By being a tyrannical asshole, but that was another story.

  After she disconnected, she drove on autopilot to her parents’ house. She needed to straighten out this stupid adoption story and she needed to do so before her life imploded.

  Her mom and dad were in the living room in front of their lit gas fireplace, sharing a drink. It was June in LA and the air conditioner was on full blast, but her mother liked a nightcap with ambience.

  “Darling,” her mom said, smiling as she stood in welcome. “Such a lovely surprise. Where’s Brock?”

  “I’m alone,” Quinn said, not bothering to address the fact that she didn’t spend nearly as much time with Brock as they seemed to believe. “I met someone today.”

  Her mom blinked. “Other than Brock? What will people think?”

  “Mom . . .” Quinn pressed her fingertips into her eye sockets to ward off an eye twitch. “I keep telling you, Brock and I aren’t going to get married.”

  “Right now you mean,” she said. “Right?”

  A conversation she didn’t have the strength for. “I met someone who told me an interesting story. Do either of you want to guess what that was?”

  Her mom shook her head and looked at her dad, who did the same.

  “The story is that I’m adopted.”

  And at the twin looks of shock and guilt on her parents’ faces, she knew it was true. “Oh my God.” She staggered to the couch opposite them and sank to it, staring at them. “Oh my God, it’s not a story at all.”

  There was an awkward beat of utter silence and Quinn stood up and headed straight to the kitchen. She needed alcohol or sugar, stat. Thank Toll House, she found some ready-made cookie dough in the fridge.

  She was stuffing spoonfuls into her mouth when her parents appeared in the doorway. “It’s day one of my new raw food diet,” she said around a mouthful.

  “Quinn,” her dad said. “We need to talk.”

  Ya think? “I just have one question,” she said.

  In unison, they came up to the opposite side of the island as she chewed and swallowed cookie dough with enthusiasm. “Honey,” her mom said quietly, earnestly. “Me first, okay?”

  Quinn nodded.

  “If you eat that whole thing, it’s the equivalent of forty-eight cookies.”

  Quinn stared at her. “That’s the something you wanted to say? Really?”

  Her dad sighed and leaned onto the island. “Quinn . . .” He paused to nudge the block of knives out of her reach. “We never expected you to find out.”

  She felt her mouth fall open. She scooped up the last of the dough with her bare fingers and shoved it into her mouth.

  “Quinn,” her mom said but stopped when Quinn held up a finger.

  She chewed. Swallowed. Took a deep breath. “Why?” she asked. “Why didn’t you tell me? What possible reason do you have for keeping it a secret?”

  “Because I wanted you to be mine,” her mom said softly, her eyes soft and dammit, a little damp.

  Her dad slid an arm to her mom’s waist. “It wasn’t important how we got you,” he said. “We wanted a baby, and we couldn’t have our own.”