“You are the most ridiculous romantic,” she said, cupping his face in her hands as a few hundred gallons of water misted around them.

“’S not a party till someone’s in the fountain,” Dean yelled, dragging Michael into the water with him.

“Dean is going to be so pissed he ruined his shoes,” Maggie observed from Silas’s arms.

“Is that Wallace?” Silas asked incredulously. “Who’s he dancing with?” he asked, nodding toward the edge of the patio where Wallace, in his high-waisted pants, was slow dancing with a woman in a pink dress. The man was all but unrecognizable because of the thing his mouth was doing under his bristly mustache.

Wallace Pfeffercorn was smiling.

“That’s Flo, Wallace’s high school sweetheart,” Maggie said airily.

“You sure know how to throw one hell of a party, Nichols.”

She grinned at him and tightened her arms around his neck. “Imagine what the wedding will be like.”

He gave her a spin and then set her down in the water. “By the way, this is a conversation for a later date because I fully plan to spend the rest of the night necking with you, but the bridle on this horse has the date of the coach robbery etched into it,” he said, taking her hand and running it over the stone of the statue.

“You’re kidding!”

“I am not. Each horse has a different date. This one’s the robbery. Those two are the Campbells’ wedding day and the date this house was completed. Not sure what the third one marks. It’s between the robbery and the wedding day.”

Maggie grinned. “I think I have an idea,” she confessed. “But I’d rather neck with you for the rest of the night. We’ve got a whole lifetime to talk.”

“I am the luckiest man who has ever danced in this fountain,” he said.

“Look!” she breathed, pointing up. He caught it as it streaked across the night sky before winking out of existence. A shooting star, bright and bold.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he whispered.

“Do you think it’s a sign?” she asked.

“I most certainly do. I think your mom is here, looking down and feeling awfully proud,” he told her.

She nodded, eyes glistening. “Yeah?”

“And it looks like your dad’s here, too,” he said, leading Maggie to the side of the fountain where Sebastian stood, looking apart from everything.

He held Maggie’s hand out to the man. “Be good to her,” Silas warned.

When Sebastian Spencer toed off his trillion-dollar loafers and stepped into the fountain to dance with his daughter, Silas took it as another sign.

47

47

“Good morning,” Maggie sang as Dean, followed by Michael, slumped into the kitchen. “Who wants breakfast?”

Dean hissed at her and went straight for the coffeemaker. Michael eased himself onto one of the stools at the island and rested his forehead on the countertop. “Uhhhhhh,” he groaned.