Because she had allowed it. She let him have that hold on her. No one could change that but herself. She’d found the courage to run, Nell told herself. Now she had to find the courage to stand.

Until she could think of him, until she could say his name without fear, she wasn’t free.

She held the picture of him in her mind, imagined it breaking apart, her will a hammer against glass. “Evan Remington,” she whispered, “you can’t touch me now. You can’t hurt me. You’re over, and I’m just beginning.”

The effort exhausted her, but she set Diego on the floor, then pushed herself to her feet, dragged on a sweatshirt and shorts. She would go back to work, design and evaluate her menu. It was time to figure out how to set up an office of sorts in the little bedroom.

If Gladys Macey wanted a party coordinator, that’s just what she was going to get.

She had dropped the file when she bolted into the cottage, and now she gathered up all the scattered notes, magazine clippings, and carefully written menu selections and carried them into the kitchen. She was mildly surprised to see that the sun still shone.

It felt as if she’d slept for hours.

The clock on the stove told her it was barely six. Time enough to reevaluate the Macey job proposal, to create a comprehensive list of menu and service selections for what she was going to call Sisters Catering.

She would take Mia up on the offer of the store computer and design a look for her handouts, her business cards. She had to calculate a budget, set up books.

No one was going to take her seriously unless she took herself seriously first.

But when she put her files down and looked around, she wondered why the prospect of putting on water for coffee seemed so far out of her scope.

The knock on the front door had her spinning around. Her first thought when she saw Zack through the screen was, not now. Not yet. She hadn’t had time to gather herself back to what she needed to be.

But he was already opening the door, already studying her across the short distance from the front of the cottage to the back. “Are you all right, Nell?”

“Yes.”

“You don’t look all right.”

She could imagine how she looked. “I wasn’t feeling well earlier.” Self-conscious, she scooped a hand through her hair. “I had a headache, and so I took a nap. I’m fine now.”

Hollow-eyed and pale, and far from fine, was Zack’s judgment. He couldn’t back off and leave her alone any more than he could have left a stray pup on the side of the road.