“Sorry, can’t.”

  “Dinner, then, tomorrow night? I’m free,” he adds, followed by a significant pause.

  She refuses to take the bait, and looks him squarely in the eye as she replies, “I’m not. But thanks anyway.”

  “No problem, Waltzing Matilda.”

  But it is a problem, obviously.

  Ray stares at her for a long moment, as though he wants to say something else.

  Is he going to come right out and ask her about the party? Does he want to know why he’s one of the few people in the office who isn’t invited?

  If he asks, she’ll just tell him the truth in as straightforward a way as she can. So much for the newly anointed Good-Deed-Doer. Sometimes, you have to be brutally blunt with a guy like this.

  But Ray doesn’t ask.

  He just turns and walks away, head bent, leaving her inexplicably disturbed.

  Oh, come on. Who cares if his feelings are hurt?

  Well, maybe Tildy does…just a little.

  She can’t help it. After all, she’s only human…and so is he. She doesn’t necessarily want to hurt him any more than she’d want to kick a dog nipping at her heels…

  But you do what you have to do.

  Ray disappears around a tall filing cabinet.

  So, in a matter of seconds, do Tildy’s thoughts of him.

  She flips her date book to the second weekend in October:next weekend. The date boxes are empty, of course.

  Two nights and almost three days alone with him. Maybe marking them on the calendar will make it seem more real.

  She doesn’t dare write his name there. She never does.

  She takes a pencil, and then, thinking better of it, exchanges it for a pen.

  Then she marks Friday, Saturday, and Sunday with aG.S.

  There. That’s better.

  Smiling smugly, she closes the date book.

  “Mr. Bingham is here.”

  Fiona doesn’t look up from the trade report she’s reading, having seen quite enough of Emily—and her oversized burnt-orange nubby wool pullover—for one day.

  “Send him right in.”

  “Okay.” Emily departs with a jangling of jewelry.

  Many times in the past month, Fiona’s spoken to her assistant about dressing in a more professional manner. Emily is always contrite, promises to do better—and does, for a few days. She’ll come in looking relatively sedate in a dark skirt, white blouse, and leather flats—basically the same outfit every day.

  Then, she presumably has to launder everything and lapses right back into her gauzy Indian print skirts, dangly earrings, sandals, or, now that autumn is setting in, thick-soled boots.

  “She dresses a lot like you do, actually,” Fee laughingly said to her sister Deirdre a few weeks ago, during one of their long-distance gripe sessions. Fiona was griping, rather; Deirdre was mostly listening and offering advice.

  Advice like: “I don’t know…Why don’t you try and look past the clothes, Fee?”

  “I tried. There’s nothing there, either. I have to fire her, Deirdre…and not just because she dresses like you.”

  And she will, just as soon as she finds a spare minute to look for a replacement. Business is booming; all the more reason she desperately needs someone she can count on. She’s even toying with the idea of hiring an associate to take on some of the actual client contact.

  But for right now, the firm remains a gloriously eponymous one-woman show playing to glowing reviews.

  The latest came from James Bingham himself, who yesterday complimented not just Fiona’s business savvy but the color of her eyes.

  “Back so soon?” she asks now, looking up to see him in the doorway.

  “So soon?” he echoes, crossing the carpet to take her extended hand. “I don’t know, it seems like ages since I saw you.”

  He’s flirting blatantly. Good. Flirting never hurt business.

  “It’s been less than twenty-four hours,” she says, shaking his hand, allowing her fingers to linger in his warm grasp an extra moment and her eyes to appreciate his rugged good looks.

  A younger Harrison Ford?

  No, that’s not it. He reminds her of someone, and, for the life of her, she can’t seem to put her finger on who it is.

  “Twenty-four hours? Is that all?” He relinquishes her hand and sits in the guest chair.

  “That’s all. I thought you were going back to Boston last night.”

  He’s based there, but also has an office at his weekend home in the mountains near Cedar Crest.

  “This time of year, I like to spend more time here. But I’m headed back east just as soon as I take care of a little business with you.”

  “Really? What can I do for you?”

  “I came to give you this.” He hands her an envelope.

  “What is it?”

  “The payment for the first month’s retainer. I got your invoice.”

  “You handle your own bills?”

  “Not usually. But I wanted to get this here promptly.”

  “You could have mailed it,” she says lightly.

  “I know. But I didn’t want to mail these.”

  She finds herself holding two glossy cardstock rectangles. Tickets…

  “Behind home plate, the Red Sox playoff game tomorrow night at Fenway,” he informs her. “Do you like baseball?”

  Not particularly, but…

  “Doesn’t everyone?” she asks with a coquettish tilt of her head.

  “So are you free to meet me in Boston tomorrow night?”

  “Sure.” She isn’t free, not with a nine-year-old daughter in her care, but isn’t about to turn down James Bingham.

  Why not?she asks herself.Because he’s a client? Or because he’s rich, sexy, and eligible?

  Both.

  “Unfortunately, I have to work out of my Boston office tomorrow, and I’ve got an early meeting Friday so I have to stay put there, but if you have no problem driving in and out by yourself…”

  “I have no problem with that at all.”

  No, the problem lies with Ashley.

  She’ll just have to ask Pat if he wants to take her overnight. He won’t be particularly eager to help her out, but if she asks in Ashley’s presence, he isn’t likely to say no.

  Dirty pool—that’s invariably the name of the game when she’s dealing with her ex.

  “I’ll make reservations for a late dinner at my favorite restaurant over on Newbury Street after the game. Do you like sushi?”

  Not particularly, but…

  “Doesn’t everyone?” she asks again, and he smiles.

  He leaves with a promise to call her tomorrow morning.

  What are you doing?she asks herself, leaning back in her desk chair and folding her arms across her ivory silk blouse.

  You don’t like baseball, and you don’t like raw fish, and you don’t particularly like driving in and out of Boston at night…

  No, but she likeshim .

  James Bingham isn’t the first man to pay attention to her since the divorce. But he’s the first who just might be worth her precious time.

  Glancing at her desk calendar, she notes that tomorrow is crammed with appointments from morning to night. She’ll have to rearrange the last two if she’s going to escape the office early enough for the two-hour drive to Boston. Now, if she can just find two free time slots where she can put them…

  As she glances over the next day’s agenda, she’s struck by the date.

  That’s Tildy’s thirtieth birthday.

  Cassie isn’t ready when the doorbell rings at six thirty. She’s half-dressed, and she still has to brush her teeth, put on makeup…

  But even if she was pulled together cosmetically, she’d still have a long way to go before she could possibly feel prepared for any of this.

  Seeing her mother, who’s just driven up from the city to spend the weekend…

  Being the guest of honor at a wedding shower tomorrow night…

  That’s what this weekend is all about. Cassie’s official transition intobride-to-be, which will imminently and fleetingly lead tobride before giving way permanently towife .

  No, she isn’t ready. For any of it.

  Well, you’d better get ready in a hurry, because it’s full speed ahead from here on in,she tells herself as she hastily pulls a tailored navy sweater over her head.

  The doorbell rings again as she’s about to answer it. Twice, actually: a pair of staccato jabs at the button.

  Patience never was a prominent character trait in Regina Ashford’s personal repertoire. Ambitious, sophisticated, industrious, brilliant…yes.

  Patient, never.

  Cassie opens the door and comes face-to-face with the formidable Deputy Mayor for Legal Affairs of New York City.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “There you are, Cassandra. I thought you might not be home.” Regina hugs her briefly, enveloping her in a cloud of expensive perfume. She, of course, is fully made up and impeccably dressed in a trim tweed suit, her black hair straightened and worn low at her neck in an elegant twist.

  “Come in, Mom.” Cassie reaches for the large black Coach satchel at her feet; a matching clutch is tucked under her mother’s arm.

  “Why don’t you let Alec get that, honey? It’s heavy.”

  “Alec isn’t here.” As she hoists the bag over the threshold, she glimpses the disappointment on her mother’s face.

  “Where is he?” Regina asks, stepping into the condo and giving it a sweeping visual inspection.

  Accustomed to her mother’s critical eye, Cassie glances around for cobwebs as she replies, “He’s still at his office. He had to take care of an emergency procedure.”

  Alec did use the wordemergency loosely when he called to tell Cassie about the delay. It seemed one of his regular patients was demanding a last-minute collagen injection before her daughter’s wedding this coming Saturday.

  “She’s the mother-of-the-bride from hell,” Alec confided into the phone, and Cassie pictured him rolling his eyes and shaking his head. “This isn’t going to be fun.”

  “Tell me about it. I’ve got a mother-of-the-bride from hell of my own to deal with on this end,” she replied wryly, and he laughed.

  “Don’t tell me this means he’s not going to dinner with us?” Regina is looking around Cassie’s living room as though she’s hoping to spot Alec lurking behind a potted palm.

  “He’ll try to meet us there.”

  Cassie fervently hopes he will.

  Otherwise, it will be just the two of them.

  She’s never been very good, one-on-one, with her mother. She still remembers the awkward solo visits Regina made to boarding school and college on weekends when Cassie’s father was otherwise occupied.

  Ironic that a woman who built an entire political career based on charisma has never learned to carry on a reciprocal conversation with her own daughter.

  “Before I forget to tell you, Lavinia Byers can’t make it tomorrow after all, but she’s still coming to the wedding.” Regina walks to the kitchen and takes a glass from the cupboard.

  “That’s too bad—that she can’t make it to the shower, I mean.”

  “She sends her regrets and her best wishes, and she said she had something sent from Tiffany’s. Probably place settings.”

  “That’s nice.” Cassie knows her mother’s colleague Lavinia Byers about as well as she knows the formal china pattern on her Tiffany Bridal Registry.

  She vaguely remembers picking it out one day last summer—gold and white Limoges, perhaps?—just as she vaguely remembers crossing paths with the equally sophisticated Lavinia at some political event.

  She never fully anticipated the impact of encountering either of them again.

  But the china is accumulating in telltale turquoise blue gift boxes at her future sister-in-law’s new house in anticipation of the upcoming shower, and the wedding is really happening, a formal affair with three hundred guests including Lavinia Byers.

  Of course it’s really happening…Did you honestly think it wasn’t going to?

  No, it isn’t that.

  It’s that she hasn’t allowed herself tothink at all, managing amid the bustling preparation to remain insulated from the full impact of her upcoming marriage.

  Whenever a potentially explosive manifestation zinged her way—visiting the bridal registry, being fitted for a gown, hearing Alec’s comment about five children—she somehow deflected it all.

  Until the last few days.

  Pelted by one prenuptial bombshell after another—the arrival of the boxed wedding invitations yesterday, vividly printed in undeniable black and white nearly did her in—her protective shield is beginning to crack, allowing the true implications to seep in.

  She, Cassandra Ashford, is about to pledge to share every day for the rest of her life with another human being.

  Not justany human being.

  Alec.

  Alec is wonderful. He loves her. She loves him.

  Yet is she really prepared to relinquish her independence before she’s ever had a chance to live her life on her own terms?

  Three decades of following the rules, meeting other people’s expectations, and now she’s on the verge of breaking free at last. She’ll be finished with her residency in a matter of months, after years of nonstop hard work.

  Free…

  “Free to start a family,” is what Alec said just the other day. “Who knows? Maybe next year at this time, we’ll be having our first child.”

  Cassie smiled.

  But she wanted to scream.

  She said, calmly, “I don’t know if I want to get pregnant that quickly.”

  Which was a lie, because shedid know that she didn’t want to get pregnant that quickly—she was a hundred percent certain of it.

  Alec protested, “You’re turning thirty this month. Your biological clock is ticking. Who knows how long it might take us to conceive? We should start trying right away.”

  At every turn, somebody is waiting to tell her what to do: Alec. Her mother. Her father. Dr. Prevatt, her attending physician at the hospital.

  When does she get to do what she wants to do?

  What is it that you want to do?

  She keeps asking herself that question, to no avail.

  The only honest answer she can conjure is:I want to get on my horse and ride away.