“Could we have stopped her?” It was a question he’d asked himself dozens of times over the last few years. “Could we have?”

“No,” Susan said after a long moment. “We might have postponed it, we might have persuaded her to wait. A few months, a year. But she was in love. She wanted what we have. That’s what she said to me tonight, Tommy. She wanted what we have.”

When he laid a hand on her shoulder, she reached back, gripped tight. “I hate that she couldn’t have it. That she was denied the security and excitement and beauty of it. Now she doesn’t believe she ever will have it.”

“She’s a young woman, Susie. A lovely and loving young woman. She’ll fall in love again.”

“She already has. She’s in love with Michael, Tommy. She hasn’t admitted it to herself yet; she protects herself by thinking of it as sex.”

“Please.” He winced. “It’s not easy to think of my little girl that way.”

It made her laugh and turn to him. “Your little girl is in the middle of a hot affair with Josh’s rebellious young friend.”

“Should I get the gun?”

So she laughed again, embraced him. “Oh, Tommy, here we are, with no way to stop it again. Nothing to do but wait and hope.”

“I could have a . . . little talk with him.”

“You could. I could. But nothing we say is going to change Laura’s mind, or her heart. He’s gorgeous.”

Intrigued, Thomas eased her back, frowned into her eyes. “Is that so?”

“Absolutely devastatingly, dangerously gorgeous. Sexy as sin.” Her lips trembled at the corners as his frown deepened. “And he still has that the-hell-with-it look in his eye, the one that makes every woman still breathing think she’s the one person on earth who could make him care.”

“Is that what you think?”

Flattered, she patted his cheek. “I think I admire her taste and, as a woman, her luck. As a mother—I’m terrified of him.”

“Maybe I will have a chat with him. Soon.” Then he blew out a breath. “Damn it, Susie, I’ve always liked the boy.”

“So have I. There was always something rawly honest about him. And whatever Annie thinks, he wasn’t, and isn’t, a hoodlum. What he is, is basic.”

“And do we want our daughter involved with a basic man who ran off to sea at eighteen and has done any number of things not discussed in polite company?”

She winced. The same thought had passed through her head. “That sounds so snobbish.”

“It sounds like parental concern to me. It doesn’t matter if she’s three or thirty, it’s still our job to worry about her.”