Her sister stared at her with an open mouth for several long beats. She looked down at her cup. “I think I’m going to need another drink.”

They were on their third round of drinks and explanations when the front door burst open. “Mom! We’re home,” Hadley called.

“Mom!” Ian bellowed. “Did you remember Grandma and Grandpa’s anniversary? Grandpa said in school today it’s a big one and he thinks you and Aunt Remi forgot.”

Remi and Kimber shared a glance.

“Well, shit.”

38

“If you open that oven one more time, I’m going to skewer and marinate you.” Jenise Heffernan, supreme ruler of the Tiki Tavern kitchen, slapped Brick’s hands away with a wooden spoon. She was 6’1”, blonde, somewhere between the ages of forty-five and sixty, and did not tolerate people—including the boss—invading her space.

“I just wanted to check—”

“You’re acting like you’ve got stage fright. This isn’t Tiki Tavern’s first private party, and this sure as hell isn’t my first catering gig. Now get your ass out of my kitchen and go panic over something else. The food will be perfect,” she promised.

He took her advice—and the parting slap on his ass with the wooden spoon—and headed for the stairs. An unseasonably warm March Saturday had worked in their favor barely a week after Remi and Kimber had come to him with big eyes and pouty lips.

Between his off-the-books investigation, getting Remi naked as often as physically possible, and actual work, he’d managed to pull together what he hoped would be an appropriate celebration of the Fords’ thirty-five years together.

He jogged up the steps and pushed through the door into a Caribbean wonderland. So themed out of necessity rather than sentiment. Their decor choices were either country-western or island, and the girls had gone with tropical. He’d negotiated the use of a tent from the Grand Hotel, setting it and a dozen patio heaters up on the Tiki Tavern’s rooftop bar.

Darius and Ken had gone all out on the decorations. The big fake palms they kept in storage until spring had been dragged out and dusted off. Strands of white Christmas lights hung from the tent rafters. The tables were decked with colorful linens and floral centerpieces. Every item downstairs that fit the festive theme had been hauled up to join the party.

The buffet table stretched out along one wall, ready for Jenise’s tropically inspired eats.

The margarita maker at the bar had been filled with Darius’s latest cocktail concoction, the pink and frothy 35-to-life.

Kimber waved from the DJ booth where she was making the last-minute changes to the slideshow she’d put together. Thirty-five years in one highlight reel. Darlene and Gil had been married almost as long as he’d been alive.

“Need anything?” he asked her, wiping his hands over the seat of his jeans.

She shook her head. “Nothing besides making sure my kids don’t get at those signature drinks,” she said with a harried smile.

“Got that covered. I made virgin strawberry daiquiris,” Brick told her.