“And what about you, Bliss?” he asked.

“What about me?”

“Should I leave you alone, too?”

“Absolutely.” She tried not to notice the way his jeans settled low over his hips and the play of muscles in his forearms as he moved. Dark gold chest hair sprang from the V of his neckline, and she remembered exploring the springing curls that covered his nipples with young, interested fingers.

“I think you’re afraid of me.”

She laughed, and shook her head as she headed for the door again. “Don’t flatter yourself, Lafferty. You don’t scare me.”

“Maybe I ought to.”

“Maybe,” she admitted. “But you don’t.” The lie hovered between them in the air for a few seconds until she turned and shoved open the door only to find a young girl, somewhere between eight and nine, hovering on the landing. “Oh.”

“Dad?” the child asked, looking over Bliss’s shoulder.

“Dee Dee.” Bliss heard the smile in his voice and realized that she was staring at his daughter. With a fringe of brown hair and freckles bridging a tiny nose, Dee Dee looked from Bliss to Mason and back again.

“Bliss Cawthorne, this is my daughter, Deanna.”

“Glad to meet you,” Bliss said automatically, though she felt a stab of deep regret for the child she’d never had, had never had the chance to conceive with Mason.

“Yeah.” Dee Dee chewed on her lower lip for a second. “Mom just dropped me off.”

“And didn’t stick around. Figures,” Mason said, eyeing the street as if looking for Terri’s car. “Are you hungry?”

“Starved. Can we go to McDonald’s?” Dee Dee asked, her eyes suddenly bright with anticipation.

“Sure. You game?” he asked Bliss and she saw the girl’s shoulders droop a bit.

“No . . . uh, no thanks,” she said, not wanting to intrude on father and daughter. “Another time.” She hurried down the stairs and offered a pathetic excuse of a wave. It wasn’t Dee Dee’s fault that she’d been conceived when Mason was dating Bliss, and yet Bliss didn’t want to be reminded of the man’s faithlessness.

She skirted the main house and made it to her car without looking over her shoulder. As she slid behind the wheel, she told herself it didn’t matter that Mason had cheated on her, that he’d gotten another woman pregnant while he’d been seeing her, that he’d never loved her. He had an ex-wife and a daughter, and Bliss had her own life to lead—without him.

* * *

That night Bliss threw off the covers and glared at the digital readout on the clock near the bed. Two forty-five. Great. She’d been in bed since eleven and hadn’t slept a wink. Ever since returning to Bittersweet, she couldn’t wrench Mason out of her mind. Seeing him with his daughter hadn’t helped. She’d been reminded of just how he’d betrayed her, how much she wanted a child of her own.

Outside, rain fell steadily from the sky; fat, heavy drops pummeling the roof, splashing in the gutters and dripping from the leaves and branches of the old oak tree that stood near her window.