“He won’t wind up with nothing. Even if his career suddenly tanks, he’ll have what he’s already achieved. Besides, he’s always been charismatic. He could easily find someone else even if he wasn’t famous.” That was one of her biggest issues with the divorce. These days, she felt so inherently replaceable, as if there was nothing special about her, nothing worth hanging on to—ironic, given that in the beginning he’d made her feel as though she was the only person who could ever fulfill him.

Be careful what you wish for. She remembered her mother telling her that while Harper was working so hard to help Axel make it in the music biz.

She should’ve listened. Her mother, a superior court judge in Idaho, where the family had been raised, was always right. Her father, who was in commercial real estate, agreed that it was never wise to disregard her advice.

“You mean we won’t have the pleasure of even that much revenge?” Karoline asked.

“Probably not,” Harper admitted.

“That sucks.”

The door opened and the girls spilled into the house, laughing and talking about the party and how the Santa who’d shown up was someone they’d recognized, under that red suit, as one of their teachers from school. As she’d been doing for almost eight months, Harper pretended to be interested in regular life and tried to contribute to the conversation, but she was infinitely relieved when the kids were in bed and she could once again lay down the burden of putting on a good show.

The night wasn’t over, though. Once Harper was finally alone, Karoline knocked and poked her head into the room. “You okay?”

Harper forced one more smile. “Yeah, of course.”

“About that man who gave you the rose…”

Piper and Everly hadn’t noticed the flower on the island. At least, they hadn’t mentioned it. Maybe they assumed Terrance had given it to Karoline. It wasn’t elaborate enough to have come from their father, who used to send her vast arrays of flowers to try to placate her whenever he broke another promise. “What about him?”

“How old was he?”

“Around my age.”

“What’d he look like?”

She rolled her eyes. “He was just some guy, Karoline.”

“You don’t know what he looked like?”

“Of course I do, but…” Reining in her irritation, she let her breath go. “Okay, he was maybe six foot three with dark hair and really unusual, light-colored eyes.”

“How light?”

“I don’t know!” She’d been pretty defensive at the time, hadn’t been evaluating his looks.

“Seriously?”

“It was tough to see in the parking lot! The lights there aren’t very bright, but his eyes seemed to be a…a pale green, I guess. With thick eyelashes,” she added.

“So he was handsome.”