Mom,” she said with more assurance than she felt. “You don’t need to worry. We have an understanding.”
Lara muffled a snort. “You might. Does he?” she asked sceptically.
“Of course he does.”
“Mmm.” Lara’s doubts were evident. “If he’s like your father he can be very persuasive.”
“Mom!”
“I’m only saying,” Lara said defensively. “Max was very determined.”
Thank you for sharing, Neely thought, reasonably certain she could have done without the knowledge. “Speaking of whom, are you planning on seeing him while you’re here?”
“Not likely,” Lara said. “He wasn’t pleased that I took you and scarpered.”
Neely blinked. “You did?”
Lara made a noise that might have been agreement. “He was very bossy. And he expected me to just fall in with whatever he thought we should do. Or not do. And then, he worked all the time and I was just supposed to get the leftovers—a few minutes here and there, which there were damn few of,” she said darkly. “He didn’t even have time to get married.” She shrugged. “So I left.”
“Really?” The details had never been forthcoming before. It must have been coming back to Seattle that coaxed them out of her mother.
“Yes, really. What was I supposed to do? Just sit around and wait for him to come to his senses? Hardly likely. Max wasn’t the type. So I thought I’d do something dramatic, like leave. And he’d wake up.” She laughed a little bitterly. “The more fool I. He hated all that commune stuff so when I took off for the place near Berkeley, I was sure he’d come and grab us both back. But—” she shrugged “—he didn’t. So it’s good I left. He had a lousy sense of priorities.”
Neely had been barely four at the time they’d decamped for the commune. She had few memories of her father from those days. Mostly she remembered waiting and waiting for him to come and pick her up—and then her mother saying, “I guess something really important happened. Let’s you and I go to the park.”
Now she gave her mother credit for not bad-mouthing her father when she easily could have.
“I think he might have changed a little,” she said now. “He does go sailing with me.”
“Hasn’t stood you up?” Lara said with a wry look.
Neely shook her head. “I bet if we invited him to dinner, he’d even come.” Though in truth she wasn’t sure at all.
Lara just shook her head. “Don’t play matchmaker. Your father and I had our chance. I came out here to see you and to get together with Serena.” That was the friend she was staying with. “I’ve had a good marriage. I have no intention of trying to rekindle a fire that burned out a long time ago.”
“You don’t even want to see him while you’re out here?”
Lara shook her head. “Only if he were tied down so I could tell him a thing or two without him running off to a meeting.”
And given her father’s less than enthusiastic response to the news of her mother’s visit, Neely didn’t think that was likely to happen. She kept her eyes on the road. But as she took the off ramp for Lake Union, she thought there was something almost ironic in discovering that her mother might be able to teach her something about dealing with men after all.
“IS SHE gone?”
The voice on the phone was Max’s. It was midmorning on Sunday and Neely had just come back from taking Harm to the dog park to run with his buddies for an hour.
“From my place or from the state?” Neely replied, not having to ask who he was talking about.
“The state.”
“Nope. Not for a couple of weeks. But she’s not here if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m not worried,” Max said gruffly. “Thought I’d drop off the specs for Blake-Carmody, but not if she was there. Want to go sailing after?”
“I can’t. I’m meeting with Stephen Blake tomorrow morning. I need to get all the designs in order. Mom’s out on Vashon staying with a friend. Why don’t you take her sailing?”
“Don’t make me laugh.”
When Max showed up an hour later he still wasn’t laughing. In fact he was edgy and kept glancing around, as if he expected a jack-in-the-box to pop out of a cupboard, rather like she was whenever Sebastian was around.
Only it was more amusing to witness someone else’s agitation rather than feel her own.
“Why isn’t she staying with you?” Max asked without preamble. Again Neely didn’t have to ask who.
“Who would she sleep with? Sebastian?”
Max, who had been prowling the living room, jerked and spun to stare at her.
“Kidding,” Neely said lightly.
Max’s face cleared and he managed a grin. “Very funny.” He gave himself a little shake. “Sure you don’t want to come?” he nodded in the direction of the harbor where his new sailboat was moored.
Neely shook her head and picked up the portfolio she was working on. “Duty calls.”
“Carry on, then,” Max said, and left as quickly as he’d come.
In the silence he left behind, for the first time Neely actually did get some work done. Heaven knew there was plenty to do, and she’d been distracted all week. Now she didn’t sit around waiting for the other shoe to drop—or Sebastian to walk in the front door.
So she was deep in a sketch of one of the condos’ living spaces when the sound of the doorbell jolted her and sent her pencil skittering across the pad.
“Drat,” she muttered under her breath, but got up to answer it, nudging Harm out of the way so he didn’t launch himself enthusiastically at the kid selling cookie dough or magazine subscriptions or at Cody’s mother, come to ask if she could borrow a cup of sugar.
Mentally she prepared to say no to the cookie dough and magazines and yes to the sugar, provided they had any. But when she opened the door there was a young woman standing there looking as surprised to see her as Neely was.
She was probably close to Neely’s age, maybe a bit younger, certainly curvier, which her shorts and halter top all too clearly revealed. She was tall and tanned and had the most gorgeous honey-and-sunlight-colored windblown mass of hair Neely had ever seen.
They stared at each other in silence.
Then Harm, whom Neely held by the collar, said, “Woooof!” in his big deep bloodhound voice, and the other woman’s gaze jerked down
