The doorman helped an elderly guest into the lobby. Ted made himself ease back into the chair. Meg’s plane had landed well over an hour ago, so she should be walking in any minute. He still didn’t know exactly what he’d say to her, but he’d be damned if he let her see even a hint of the anger that still simmered inside him. Anger was a counterproductive emotion, and he needed a cool head to deal with Meg. His cool to her hot. His orderly to her messy.

But he didn’t feel either cool or orderly, and the longer he waited, the more anxious he got. He could barely sort out all the crap she’d thrown in his face. First she’d dumped on him about what had happened at the luncheon. So what if he’d known the women wouldn’t say anything? He’d still made a public declaration, hadn’t he? Then she’d announced she’d fallen in love with him, but when he’d tried to tell her how much he cared, she’d discounted it, right along with refusing to attach any importance to the fact that he’d stood at the altar three months earlier, ready to marry another woman. Instead, she wanted some kind of everlasting promise, and wasn’t that just like her—jumping into something without putting the situation in any kind of context?

His head shot up as the lobby doors once again swung open, this time admitting an older man and a much younger woman. Even though the lobby was cool, Ted’s shirt was damp. So much for her accusation that he stood on the sidelines where he didn’t have to sweat too much.

He checked his watch again, then pulled out his phone to see if she’d sent him a text, just as he’d done so many times since she’d disappeared, but none of the messages were from her. He shoved the phone back in his pocket as the other memory crowded in. The one he didn’t want to deal with. What he’d done to her that day at the landfill . . .

He couldn’t believe he’d lost control like that. She’d tried to brush it off, but he’d never forgive himself.

He tried to think about something else, only to end up stewing over the mess in Wynette. The town refused to accept his resignation, so his desk at City Hall sat empty, but he’d be damned if he was jumping back into that disaster. The truth was, he’d let everybody down, and no matter how understanding they all tried to be, there wasn’t a person in town who didn’t know he’d failed them.

The lobby doors opened and closed. In the course of one summer, his comfortable life had been destroyed.

“I’m messy and wild and disruptive, and you have broken my heart.”

The unbearable hurt in those green-blue eyes had cut right through him. But what about his heart? His hurt? How did she think he felt when the person he’d grown to count on the most left him in the lurch right when he needed her?

“My stupid heart . . . ,” she’d said. “It was singing.”

He waited in the lobby all afternoon, but Meg never appeared.


That night, he wandered through Chinatown and got drunk in a Mission District bar. The next day he pulled up the collar of his jacket and walked the city in the rain. He rode a cable car, drifted through the tea garden in Golden Gate Park, poked into a couple of souvenir shops on Fisherman’s Wharf. He tried to eat a bowl of clam chowder at the Cliff House to warm up but set it aside after a few bites.

“Just the sight of you made me feel like dancing.”

He woke up too early the next morning, hungover and miserable. A cold, thick fog had settled in, but he hit the empty streets anyway and climbed to the top of Telegraph Hill.

Coit Tower wasn’t open yet, so he walked the grounds, gazing out across the city and the bay as the fog began to lift. He wished he could talk this whole mess over with Lucy, but he could hardly call her up after all this time and tell her that her best friend was an immature, demanding, overly emotional, unreasonable nutcase, and what the hell was he supposed to do about that?

He missed Lucy. Everything had been so easy with her.

He missed her . . . but he didn’t want to wring her neck like he wanted to wring Meg’s. He didn’t want to make love with her until her eyes turned to smoke. He didn’t yearn for the sound of her voice, the joy of her laughter.

He didn’t ache for Lucy. Dream about her. Long for her.

He didn’t love her.

With a rustle of leaves and a chilly gust, the wind carried the fog out to sea.

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

A few hours later, Ted was headed south on I-5 in a rented Chevy Trailblazer. He drove too fast and stopped just once to grab a mug of bitter coffee. He prayed Meg had gone to L.A. with her parents when she’d left Wynette instead of heading off to Jaipur or Ulan Bator or some other place where he couldn’t get to her and tell her how much he loved her. The wind that had carried away the San Francisco fog had also swept away the last of his confusion. He’d been left with a blinding clarity that cut through all the turmoil of old fiancées and aborted weddings, a clarity that let him see how skillfully he’d used logic to hide his fear of having his easy life disturbed by chaotic emotions.

He, of all people, should have known love wasn’t orderly or rational. Hadn’t his own parents’ passionate, illogical love affair overcome deception, separation, and pigheadedness to last more than three decades? That kind of soul-deep love was what he felt for Meg—the complicated, disruptive, overpowering love he’d refused to admit was missing in his relationship with Lucy. He and Lucy had fit together so perfectly in his mind. His mind . . . but not his heart. It should never have taken him so long to figure that out.

He ground his teeth in frustration when he hit L.A. traffic. Meg was a creature of passion and impulse, and he hadn’t seen her in over a month. What if time and distance had convinced her she deserved something better than a boneheaded Texan who didn’t know his own mind?

He couldn’t think like that. He couldn’t let himself contemplate what he’d do if she’d gotten fed up with the whole idea of ever having fallen in love with him. If only she hadn’t cut off her phone. And what about her history of hopping on planes and flying off to the farthest reaches of the planet? He wanted her to stay put, but Meg wasn’t like that.

It was early evening by the time he reached the Korandas’ Brentwood estate. He wondered if they knew Meg hadn’t shown up in San Francisco. Although he couldn’t be certain they were the ones who’d put up the winning bid, who else would have done it? The irony didn’t escape him. What the parents of daughters most liked about him was his stability, but he’d never felt less stable in his life.

He identified himself over the intercom. As the gates swung open, he remembered he hadn’t shaved for two days. He should have stopped at a hotel first to clean up. His clothes were wrinkled, his eyes bloodshot, and he had a bad case of flop sweat, but he wasn’t going to turn back now.

He parked his car at the side of the English Tudor that was the Korandas’ primary California home. Best-case scenario, Meg would be here. Worst-case scenario . . . He wouldn’t think about worst-case scenarios. The Korandas were his allies, not his enemies. If she weren’t here, they’d help him find her.

But the cool hostility Fleur Koranda exhibited when she opened the front door did nothing to bolster his shaken confidence. “Yes?”

That was all. No smile. No handshake. Definitely no hug. Regardless of age, women tended to go all melty-eyed when they saw him. It had happened so many times he barely noticed, but it wasn’t happening now, and the novelty unbalanced him. “I need to see Meg,” he blurted out, and then, stupidly, “I— We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Ted Beaudine.”

“Ah, yes. Mr. Irresistible.”

She didn’t say it like it was a compliment.

“Is Meg here?” he asked.

Fleur Koranda looked at him exactly the way his mother had looked at Meg. Fleur was a beautiful six-foot Amazon with the same boldly slashed eyebrows Meg had, but not Meg’s coloring or more delicate features. “The last time I saw you,” Fleur said, “you were scrambling in the dirt, trying to knock a man’s head off.”

If Meg had the guts to stand up to his mother, he could face hers down. “Yes, ma’am. And I’d do it again. Now I’d appreciate it if you’d tell me where I can find her.”

“Why?”

If you gave mothers like this an inch, they’d mow you down. “That’s between her and me.”

“Not exactly.” The deep voice came from Meg’s father, who’d appeared at his wife’s shoulder. “Let him in, Fleur.”

Ted nodded, stepped into a grand entrance hall, and followed them to a comfortable family room already occupied by two tall younger men with Meg’s chestnut brown hair. One sat on the fireplace hearth, ankle crossed over his knee, strumming a guitar. The other tapped away at a Mac. These could only be Meg’s twin brothers. The one with the laptop, Rolex, and Italian loafers had to be Dylan, the financial whiz, while Clay, the guitar-playing New York actor, had shaggier hair, ripped jeans, and bare feet. Both of them were exceptionally good-looking guys and dead ringers for an old movie idol, although he couldn’t immediately recall which one. Neither resembled Meg, who took after her father. And neither appeared to be any more welcoming than the senior Korandas. Either they knew Meg hadn’t shown up in San Francisco and blamed him, or he’d gotten it dead wrong from the start, and they weren’t the ones who’d entered the contest for her. Either way, he needed them.

Jake made perfunctory introductions. Both brothers uncoiled from their respective seats, not to shake his hand, he quickly discovered, but to meet him at eye level. “So this is the great Ted Beaudine,” Clay said with a drawl almost identical to the one his father used on-screen.