Why she found those last words so damning, she didn’t know, but as she hurried down the stairs she was struck by the feeling that her tightly woven little world was unraveling by the minute. First, as a widow and single mother, she had to deal with an adolescent boy who was on the verge of trouble. Possibly big trouble. Next, she’d suddenly been faced with her biological father—a man she’d been told throughout most of her growing-up years was dead. Now that man, John Cawthorne, was trying to become part of her life. And he didn’t walk alone. No, the man carried baggage and lots of it in the form of two other daughters—Tiffany’s half-sisters, whom she didn’t know and wasn’t sure she cared to. And lastly, J.D. and the Santini family. Too much. It was all too much.

“Wonderful,” she muttered in the second-floor hallway, where she peeked in on a napping Christina before continuing downstairs. “Just great.”

Why right now, when everything in her life was spinning out of control, did she have to face J.D. again? The mercurial and volatile nature of her emotions concerning her brother-in-law had been the bane of her existence ever since she’d married into the Santini family. Nothing would change now that J.D. had moved in. In fact, she was certain that things would only get worse.

* * *

“I just don’t get it,” Stephen said as he tucked his skateboard into a corner of the back porch. The board was battered and scratched, the decals for Nirvana and Metallica nearly worn off, the wheels not quite as round as they’d once been. He yanked open the screen door and walked into the kitchen where Tiffany was trying and failing to balance her checkbook while cooking dinner. “Why’s he here?” Stephen didn’t bother hiding the sneer in his voice or his dislike of his uncle, a man he thought was intruding into his life.

“Business.”

“Yeah, monkey business if ya ask me.” Stephen wiped his hands down the front of his jeans and tossed his too-long hair from his eyes. “I don’t like this.”

Neither do I, Tiffany was tempted to say, but held her tongue. Her feelings for J.D. were far more complicated than simple like or dislike. Too complicated to examine very closely. “He won’t be around that much,” she said as daylight was beginning to give way to dusk. She snapped her checkbook closed and put the statement back into its envelope until she had more time to go through it. It wasn’t that she couldn’t make the figures add up, it was that it seemed impossible to stretch her salary and the rent she collected far enough to cover all her expenses.

“Good,” Stephen grunted, eyeing the barbecue sauce that was simmering on the stove.