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  All she had at the moment was a disposable she’d picked up at the Walmart next to the grocery store where she’d left her car in Jersey. She’d tossed her own cell into the Dumpster next to the parking garage exit of the condo building three days ago. Although she’d have to get another permanent one soon, there was a certain freedom that came with not being available to the rest of the world 24/7.

  There would be missed calls from Phillip. Charlie stood up, carried her cup over to the sink, and rinsed it out before putting it in Mary’s dishwasher. Let him call.

  “Well, will you look at what the tide washed in!”

  Charlie spun toward the kitchen doorway and took in the tall man strolling toward her. He was six foot three inches of break-your-heart, gorgeous male. Fortunately, he was one of only two men she knew she could trust to never break hers.

  “Blake told me I could find you here.” He held open his arms and Charlie walked into them.

  “Justin.” She wrapped her hands around his waist and held on, a deep, bittersweet comfort infusing her. “It’s so good to see you.”

  “Sorry I missed you yesterday. Gabriella and I took the kids to Ocean City for a few days. We just got back last night.” He held her away from him, at an arm’s length, and gave her a once-over. “Didn’t they feed you in…Connecticut, was it? You’re as thin as a blade of reed grass.”

  Charlie ducked her head. She’d never been overweight, but Phillip had criticized her constantly for not being model slim. And she’d shed pound after pound trying to please him, right along with her perspective and self-esteem.

  “Hey, Mary, you’re going to have to fatten our girl up. We don’t want to lose her again to a gust of wind.” Justin kept one arm around her waist and grinned down at her, his amber eyes, so much like her own, glowing with affection. “Good to have you home, Charlie. Blake says you’re back to stay.”

  “That’s the plan. I hear you’ve moved back as well, and you’re married.” She gave a half laugh and shook her head. “You and Blake both…and with kids!”

  She cleared her throat—embarrassed she hadn’t been there for either of them—or even known they’d gotten married until her return. “I’m sorry I missed the weddings. I should have been in touch before this.”

  It was just wrong she hadn’t known, been out of contact for so long without a word, distanced herself so completely from family—they were hers. “I never intended to—”

  “Hey, life gets away from us sometimes. It would have been nice to know where you were and that you were okay, but you’re home now and we’ll have plenty of time to catch up.”

  Justin cocked his head, studied her a moment, a shadow of concern darkening his eyes. “So, is everything okay? Is there any other reason besides missing your adoring family that you decided to come home?”

  “Everything’s fine.” Charlie slipped out of his arm and made a show of sauntering over to the table where she picked up a cookie and waved it in the air. “Crunchy Jumbles, Jus.” She quirked her lips, gave him a saucy smile. “These are the real reason I returned to Glebe Point.”

  He chuckled. “Okay, I’ll let Blake know; that should eliminate his concerns.”

  “What concerns?” Charlie asked. She wouldn’t be surprised if Blake had told Justin he was concerned about her. Despite whatever assurances she might voice that she was fine, she knew her appearance would set off alarm bells in their minds.

  She weighed almost fifteen pounds less than when they had last seen her. She hadn’t really taken a critical look at herself until that morning when she was getting dressed and caught her reflection in the mirror on the back of the bedroom door. What she saw was a woman who was clearly underweight. It had almost brought tears to her eyes—in part that she’d fallen so far under Phillip’s control, but more so, because she’d felt such a wave of relief that she’d escaped his control before he could crush her spirit completely.

  “That’s settled!” Mary returned to the table before Justin could answer Charlie’s question.

  “That was my friend Clara. She’s coming to dinner Sunday, and she’s going to invite her nephew Cooper to come along. I don’t think you’ve met him, Charlie. He’s only lived here about three years. Justin, you and Blake are friends of his, aren’t you?”

  “We are, and I like him, so I hope you didn’t tell Clara to bring him along because you’re trying to fix Charlie up with someone already. The poor girl hasn’t been back a week.”

  Mary put a hand on her hip and sputtered. “Why, Justin! I’m doing no such thing. Clara and I made plans a couple of days ago to get together. She just told me her nephew was stopping over on Sunday to help her with some painting, so I thought since he’d be there working all day, he might enjoy coming to dinner with her instead of having to fend for himself afterward.”

  “Hmmm.” Justin pulled out a chair and dropped onto it.

  Mary sat back down also and took a sip of coffee. “He is a very nice young man, though.”

  Charlie glanced at Justin and they rolled their eyes in unison.

  “Handsome, too.” Mary picked up a Crunchy Jumble and took a nibble. “He actually stopped by this morning to pick up some of the Inn’s brochures to put in his office for me. Why, you two just missed each other, Charlie. If you’d gotten here a couple of minutes earlier you probably would have run into him.”

  Charlie had a bad feeling she may not have missed him. And now the man with the piercing eyes who she’d been so rude to might be the same one joining them for dinner in a few days. She hoped she was wrong.

  Justin arched a brow at her. “I think you may be in trouble, cuz.”

  She might be, but not in the way her cousin was thinking. “It doesn’t matter if she’s scheming. I’ve declared a moratorium on men.”

  Charlie reached for another Crunchy Jumble and wondered if there was some psychological reason for her sudden desire to stuff her face with sweets.

  “Poppycock.” Mary waved her cookie in the air. “A nice young woman like you needs a good man in her life to take care of her.”

  “I can take care of myself, Mary.” Charlie chose to leave it at that. The last man who said all he wanted to do was take care of her had almost stripped her of her soul in the process. No, she didn’t want or need a man in her life. Now that she’d taken back her freedom, she intended to keep it.

  Justin sat with his arms crossed over his chest, watching her. If her cousins ever found out the truth about Phillip, she wouldn’t put it past either of them to pay her ex-boyfriend a visit. The less they knew the better for everyone. She cleared her throat. “So when do I get to meet the family?”

  “Tomorrow night. Gab and Delaney are already planning a barbecue in your honor, so I hope you don’t have other plans. They’re intrigued that Blake and I have this female relative we grew up with who they never knew existed. I think they’re hoping to pry stories of our youthful foibles out of you.”

  Charlie grinned broadly and wiggled her brows at him. “I can be bought.”

  “Can you now? Just remember, you were in on a fair number of our escapades.” Justin’s eyes sparkled with amusement as they held hers. “Payback can be hell, little cousin.”

  She chuckled, enjoying the lighthearted banter they’d always engaged in once again. “Point taken.”

  “So I can tell Gab you’ll be there?”

  “Yes. I’m looking forward to it. Thanks, Jus.” She set her mug on the table, thought of home and homecomings, all she’d given up when she’d moved away, and what she hoped to regain now that she’d returned.

  So what do you think?” Blake asked his brother the next evening as they stood near Justin and Gabriella’s back porch watching their wives and Charlie playing croquet with Chloe and Benjamin, the two oldest of the children.

  “I think you’re right. She’s definitely off.” Justin reached up, rubbed the back of his neck, and frowned. “Showing up without a word to either of us that she was coming; and look at her, she looks like hel
l. I’ve got a bad feeling she’s running from something.”

  “Or someone.” Blake glanced back across the yard at their cousin. “Did she tell you where the hell she’s been for the last few years?”

  “No, I’ve gotten about as much out of her as you have. The last I knew she’d gone back to school for her master’s in Connecticut. I got a Christmas card from her saying she was working for some old guy who owned a couple of luxury hotels. That was about three years ago.”

  “Yeah, same here, and then nothing.” Blake looked down at his daughter who was sitting in the grass near his feet and then made a sudden dive for her.

  “Oh, Kate, gross!” He scooped her up from the ground and pried a dirt-encrusted grub from her fingers before she could stick the thing in her mouth.

  “Sgetty!” Kate protested the loss of her find, reaching for the grub again with pudgy fingers.

  “No.” Blake held it away. “Not spaghetti, Kate. Bug! It’s a bug. It’s yucky!” He scrunched up his face and then threw the thing several feet away. “Bugs are yuck!”

  “Yuck,” she mimicked, wrinkling her little nose.

  “That’s right, pumpkin. We don’t eat bugs.”

  “Maybe you should let her have it. It’s probably full of protein,” Justin said, laughing.

  “Right.” Blake settled his daughter on his hip. “And you know Travis will want to try them if he sees her eating one. He wants to do everything she does.” He arched a brow at his twin.

  Justin glanced at his niece. Although his son was only seven months old, Travis had already developed an attachment to little Kate, following her around with his own unique version of scoot and crawl whenever he could. And Blake was right; Travis tried to emulate everything he saw his older cousin do.

  Kate looked at Justin and scrunched her nose again the way his brother had. “Bugs yuck!”

  Justin reached out and brushed the baby-fine, copper curls she’d inherited from her mother, away from her eyes. “That’s right, little darlin’, no more yucky bugs!”

  “Thought so.” Blake slanted him a knowing glance and then planted a kiss on his daughter’s cheek. “You hungry, baby girl?” He rested his forehead against hers.

  “Sgetty.” Kate stuck one of the fingers she’d been squeezing the bug between up his nose.

  “Okay. Let’s go get you some dinner, and then Daddy will wash the grub guts out of his nostril.”

  “Kate’s hungry,” Blake called across the lawn to Delaney. “I’m going inside to get her something to eat.”

  Delaney turned and lifted her croquet mallet in the air. “Thanks. Don’t let her have any junk food. And would you check her diaper, please?”

  “Justin,” Gabriella shouted after them, “would you feed Travis too? It’ll probably only take Chloe and Ben another ten minutes to beat us.”

  Justin raised a hand in acknowledgement, mounted the porch steps behind his brother, and retrieved his son from the playpen they’d set up in the shade. He looked at Blake and grinned. “Hooked good, aren’t you, Bro?”

  “Yup.” Blake pulled open the screen door.

  Justin nodded. “Know the feeling—hook, line, and sinker—and loving every minute.”

  CHARLIE SAT in one of the cream-colored wicker chairs with thick, orange and blue floral cushions, on her cousin’s back porch sipping a glass of sweet tea and sampling a piece of the strawberry-rhubarb pie that Delaney had brought over for dessert. The kids were tucked in for the night, tired out after swimming in the cove and two games of crocket, both of which they had thoroughly whipped the adults.

  It felt like years since she’d spent such a simple evening, surrounded by family, the sound of children’s laughter floating on the air, and no expectations weighing her down.

  “I can’t decide which is more delicious, Delaney, the crust or the filling,” Charlie said after swallowing another bite of pie. “I can’t make pie to save my life; cakes are my specialty, more specifically, cupcakes.”

  Blake and Justin burst out laughing, and Charlie gave them both the skunk eye. “Not funny, you two.”

  She looked between Gabriella and Delaney who she could tell were both wondering what they’d missed.

  “They’re thinking about the time I baked a cake for Aunt Lou. That was what I called their mom. They were giving her a surprise birthday party, and I wanted to do something special, so I said I’d bake a chocolate sheet cake for the occasion. Chocolate was her favorite.”

  Justin got up from the step where he’d been sitting and plucked another beer from the cooler. “She called it Black Bottom Cake. Translation: Burnt Bottom Cake.”

  Charlie stretched her legs out in front of her, crossed her ankles, and grinned at her two male cousins. “It didn’t stop either of you from eating it.”

  Justin popped the lid from his bottle and banked it off the side of a metal bucket next to the back door. “Not the bottom. We cut that off and offered it to the dogs, but even they weren’t interested.”

  “Okay, so it wouldn’t have won a prize at the fair, but I was only ten, and it was my first attempt. I’ve had a lot of practice since then. I even catered a little on the side to earn extra spending money in college. Nothing major—birthday parties, weddings, referrals from friends—that kind of thing. I loved doing it, and had a lot of fun experimenting with unusual flavors and ingredients. Some of my cupcakes were pretty unique. Whenever I did a catering job, people told me I should open up a cupcake shop instead of pursuing a career in marine biology.”

  Delaney cocked her head and looked at her, something clearly brewing behind her startlingly green eyes. “Maybe you should. You said earlier you needed to find a job. Why not do something you love?”

  “That’s a great idea!” Gabriella’s face lit up with the same enthusiasm Charlie saw in Delaney’s. “You could open a shop, cater from there as well, hold classes, and do cupcake decorating birthday parties, that sort of thing.”

  “And don’t forget online sales.” Delaney spun the possibilities further. “When I had my catering business in New York, we used to get a lot of business through our website.”

  They spent the next couple of minutes trying to convince her of what a great idea it would be for her to go into business for herself. If she let them, they’d probably go on all night, even volunteering to help her write a business plan.

  “Slow down, you two.” Charlie could easily get caught up in the dream, but that’s all it would be. She’d love to start her own business doing something she enjoyed, but it wasn’t realistic.

  “That all sounds great, but there are a couple of details that get in the way. I’d need a location to open a shop, and I’d probably need a lot more money than I have to get started, two big stumbling blocks.”

  “There’s an empty storefront a couple of doors down from my office.” Justin leaned against the porch post, using it to scratch a spot between his shoulders. “You could probably get a good deal on it; it’s been empty for almost three years, and I know the owner would love to sell it, or in the very least get a long-term tenant in there.”

  “I don’t have money to buy, or even rent a building right now, and since I’m currently unemployed, I doubt I could get a loan. Even if I could, I’d still need money for equipment, inventory, and everything else it would take to start a business.”

  “Are you talking about the old deli shop, Jus?” Blake asked.

  “Yeah. Smithy owned that and the building next to it. When he died, they became part of his estate and his kids sold them as a twofer, which was pretty smart on their part. The building’s in a good location, but as I recall the space wasn’t very big, probably not more than five or six hundred square feet. It would have been a tough sell on its own.”

  “Long and narrow is how I remember it.” Blake scratched his jaw. “Do you have any idea what kind of condition it’s in?”

  “I’m not sure, but my guess is it’s going to need some work. There used to be a kitchen in the back room. If it hasn’t
been torn out, that would be a major plus.”

  “We could fix it up ourselves, a few evenings, a couple of weekends, and we could probably save on cost by using some of the leftover materials I’ve got out in the workshop from other jobs.”

  Charlie stood up and put her hands on her hips. “Guys, didn’t you just hear me? I said I didn’t have the money for this, and you two are setting up a work schedule and ready to go rummaging for building materials.”

  All four of her cousins looked at her as if she’d just spoken Swahili. “Look, I appreciate that you all have my best interest at heart and that you’re so willing to give your own time to help me out, but it’s just not possible.”

  No one said anything for several moments, just continued looking at her. She felt bad for bursting their bubble, granted, a bubble of their own making, but she didn’t have the time or funds to go chasing after nice but unattainable dreams.

  Blake frowned at his brother. Gabriella cleared her throat and looked at Delaney. Delaney smiled at them all and gave the rocking chair she was sitting in a little push with her foot. “I’ve still got all my cooking equipment from my catering business stored at Mom and Dad’s, so there’d be little of that to buy; and I could help with the baking a couple of days a week when Ben starts back to school. I’d love that.”

  “I could pitch in, too,” Gabriella volunteered. “It would be fun, although I’d need a very detailed recipe. I’m not the magician in a kitchen you are, Delaney.”

  Charlie threw her arms up in the air. “What about you, porch post, did you hear me just say I had no money?” She made the rounds and gave them all a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll leave you all to keep planning an imaginary life for me, people, with all the imaginary dollars I keep telling you I don’t have, but I’ve got to go. I’ve got two un-imaginary interviews tomorrow, and I’m hoping one of them turns into a real job.”

  Cooper Barone strolled along the shoreline behind the Inn, where he’d been instructed to go take a walk with the woman walking beside him. He had a pretty good hunch what his Aunt Clara and her friend Mary were up to, but they were barking up the wrong tree with this one.