“And if I get married, you will,” Audrey reassured Kathleen. If I ever do. “But for the hundredth time, Clarke and I are not actually getting married.”

Her father made a grumbling noise from behind the Wall Street Journal.

“Something to say, dear?” Kathleen asked, smearing raspberry jam onto her croissant and taking a dainty bite as she glanced at her husband.

He took his time folding the paper and setting it aside. “Well, it just seems that in my day—”

“Oh no,” Audrey said, reaching for a cranberry scone on the pastry plate her mother had had delivered from one of their longtime favorite bakeries. “That’s never a good opener.”

“In my day,” her dad said, undeterred, “matrimony was taken very seriously between two people who were committed to each other.”

“Can it, Richard,” Audrey’s mom said, wiping her mouth. “You and I got married because I was pregnant with Anderson.”

“I knew it,” Audrey said in a dramatic, scandalized voice.

Actually, everyone knew it. Her older brother’s birth certificate pretty much said it all. But shotgun wedding or not, her parents had made it work. No, that wasn’t quite right. What her mom and dad have went far beyond mere contentment or making the best of their situation. They were the sort of couple that somehow managed to maintain their individuality while simultaneously hating to be away from the other person.

It was love, pure and simple. The sort of love Audrey had once imagined she’d had with Brayden, and the sort of love that Audrey now approached with extreme caution.

“You already know why they’re doing this,” Kathleen said in defense of her youngest daughter. “Some jealous twats have gotten Audrey in their crosshairs and are trying to take her down. You know all too well what this world can be like. Though, I do miss this house. And Orwashers,” she said, looking lovingly at her pastry.

Audrey’s parents still owned the penthouse on Madison Avenue, and even now that Audrey had moved out, they kept a live-in housekeeper to ensure it was always ready for when they came into town, or when friends needed a place to stay while visiting the city. Audrey had come over for brunch to spend some time with them before they flew back this afternoon.

“I do know how this neighborhood can be,” Audrey’s dad said in agreement. “It’s why I moved to California.” He looked at Audrey. “You should move to California.”

“Yes, because LA is so wonderfully free of superficial gossip,” Audrey pointed out.

He wagged his head from side to side in acknowledgment of her point, then picked up the paper again, then put it aside once more, as though he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to continue the conversation or not.