What did J.D. know about Philip? They were eleven years apart in age and light-years apart in maturity. Don’t let him rattle you, Tiffany, she told herself as she blew out the candles under the warming trays and chafing dishes. She knew the entire Santini clan was against her marriage to Philip. J.D. was just up-front about it.

She saw J.D. off and on that summer. Their conversations were brief, cordial and detached. He didn’t bother hiding his disapproval of her engagement, and she bit her tongue whenever she was around him, which, thankfully, wasn’t often. He dated several women, all sophisticated, rich and brittle, none of whom he spent enough time with to justify introductions to the family.

J.D. made Tiffany nervous and fidgety, too aware of herself and his all-too-virile presence. She’d found out through snippets of conversation that he’d finished college and was thinking of applying to law school, though Philip found it ironic that his brother, who had come as close to becoming a criminal as anyone in the family, would want to practice law.

“But there are all kind of attorneys, I suppose,” Philip had confided to Tiffany. “Some who believe in the system. others who try to use it to their advantage. I’m afraid James is going to be one who bends the law to fit his own skewed perception.”

Tiffany wasn’t so sure, because for all his faults—and there were more than she wanted to count—J.D. possessed an underlying strength. He had his own code of ethics, it seemed. Still, the less she was around him, the better she felt.

She made it through that summer and into fall, dealing with J.D. from a distance, talking with him as little as possible when they were forced together, and generally avoiding not only him, but the entire Santini family. Carlo had made it abundantly clear he thought his eldest son should, for the sake of the family and his children, wait to get married. J.D. thought his brother should forget about walking down the aisle altogether and Frances, Philip’s mother, didn’t like the fact that Tiffany was fifteen years her son’s junior. “She’ll get used to the idea,” Philip assured Tiffany, but his mother barely tolerated her.

“You can still back out,” her own mother said only two weeks before the wedding. It was early October and Indian summer was in full force. The days clear and warm, the nights crisp and bright.

Tiffany was feeling the first twinges of cold feet. She knew she wanted to marry Philip, to be his wife and the mother of his children, but everyone else seemed to be pulling them apart.