The fact that she hadn’t forgotten him made his eyes sting for the third time that day. She wriggled and caught him in the stomach with one of her sneakers, but he didn’t care. She smelled of baby shampoo, orange juice, and Nealy.

“Da!” Button drew back her head, puckered her lips, and gave him her familiar mulish look. It was a new trick, but he caught on right away and planted a kiss on the exact middle of that rosebud mouth. “Hey, stinker.”

“Tink! Tink!”

“That’s right.” With one arm around the baby and his other around Lucy, he prayed he was two-thirds of the way home.

The final third appeared at the back of the hallway, and the accusation in her beautiful eyes told him he wasn’t even close.

“What are you doing here?”

“I invited him,” Lucy piped up. “I knew you wouldn’t mind.”

Nealy turned on him. “When did you see her?”

Lucy didn’t give him a chance to answer. “He came to my school today.”

That legendary self-control couldn’t hide how much she wanted to take him apart for approaching Lucy without her permission, but she wouldn’t attack in front of the girls.

Her restraint made him even more aware of the perilous ground he was treading. Although he was prepared to fight to his last breath convincing Nealy he loved her, he’d live the rest of his life alone before he’d hurt the girls.

“I told the principal who I was. She let me talk to Lucy for a few minutes.”

“I see.” Icicles dripped from her words.

“I have presents for everybody out in the car,” he said quickly, “but the Service wanted to go through them before I brought them in.” He gazed at Nealy. “I didn’t know what color roses you liked, so I brought you an assortment.” An assortment of six dozen roses, in shades ranging from vermilion to a peach-tipped white. He’d hoped to use them as a distraction when he’d walked in the door, but the Secret Service had spoiled that.

Her lips barely moved. “How thoughtful.”

A ginger-haired woman in her forties poked her head around the corner. “Dinner’s on.” She regarded Mat curiously.

“This is the friend I told you I invited to eat with us tonight,” Lucy told her.

The woman smiled. “You high school kids get bigger every day.”

He smiled back. “Hope I didn’t disrupt anything.”

She flushed. “No . . . no, of course not. Come on, everybody, before the chicken gets cold.”

Lucy grabbed his arm and steered him past Nealy toward the kitchen. “Wait till you taste Tina’s chicken. She cooks it with all this garlic.”

“I love garlic.”

“Me, too.”

“Did you ever eat jalapeños?”

“Plain?”

“Yeah, plain. What are you, some kind of a wimp?”