“She’ll be happy to meet Connor, even if she wants nothing to do with us. I promised my mother I’d try to fix things with her, and that’s what I’m doing.”

Dan’s eyes got very wide as a look of utter distress overtook his face.

“Don’t come crying to me when the whole thing blows up in your face,” the man said.

“Sometimes I think you still care about her more than you care about me.”

“Honestly, Kelly, which one of you did I marry?”

“Go,” Grant whispered to Dan, who seemed frozen with shock. “Go to her.”

Dan pushed the pages he’d been reading across the table to Grant and was out of the booth like he’d been shot from a cannon. During their long day together in the water, Dan had told Grant about Kara’s sister Kelly, who’d married the man Kara had once expected to marry and how hurt Kara had been. Dan had been lucid for probably an hour all day, but he’d talked about Kara the entire time. They’d both been afraid they’d never again see the women they loved.

“Let’s get going,” the woman behind him said. “I want to get this over with.”

As he gathered up the papers Dan had abandoned, Grant could only hope that Dan got to Kara before her sister and brother-in-law could blindside her.

***

Dan had never driven so fast on the island’s winding roads, but he’d never been more frantic to get to Kara. Well, except for the day he’d spent fighting for his life in freezing water, thinking he’d totally blown it with her before he left on the ill-fated sailboat trip.

Flashing lights behind him made him groan with impatience and despair as he pulled his Porsche to the side of the road. He gave thanks when he saw his friend Blaine Taylor approach the car.

“In a rush, Counselor?”

“A big rush. I need to get to Kara. It’s a bit of an emergency.”

“What kind of emergency?”

“The kind that will hurt her badly unless I can get to her and warn her before it happens.”

Blaine took a step back. “Slow down, all right?”

“Yeah, sorry about that.”

“Go.”

“I owe you one.” Dan didn’t need to be told twice. He took off toward the McCarthy’s Marina in North Harbor, adhering more closely to the speed limit after his friend cut him a break. As he drove, he thought about the absolute audacity of her sister showing up out of the blue, expecting Kara to forgive and forget because there was now a baby involved.