“It sounds glamorous.”

“It’s mainly a diplomat’s job.”

Blue could understand that. “Convincing a fifty-year-old soap star to give up her minis?”

“Watch it, Blue,” Dean said. “You’re getting personal. April’s fifty-two, but you can bet she has a closet full of minis in every color.”

Blue took in his mother’s endlessly long legs. “I’ll bet every one of them looks fantastic.”

He moved away from the sink. “Let’s go into town. I have some things I need to get.”

“Pick up groceries while you’re there,” April said. “I have food at the cottage, but there’s nothing much here.”

“Yeah, we’ll do that.” With Blue in tow, he headed for the door.

Blue broke the thick silence as Dean shot out onto the highway. “I’m not lying to her. If she asks the color of our bridesmaids’ dresses, I’m telling her the truth.”

“No bridesmaids, so no problem,” he said caustically. “We’re eloping to Vegas.”

“Anybody who knows me knows I’d never elope to Vegas.”

“She doesn’t know you.”

“Presumably you do, and getting married there is like admitting to the world that you’re too disorganized to come up with a better plan. I have more pride.”

He turned up the radio to drown her out. Blue hated misjudging people, especially men, and she couldn’t get past his callousness toward his mother’s fatal illness. She turned the volume back down to punish him. “I’ve always wanted to go to Hawaii, but, until now, I couldn’t afford it. I think we’ll get married there. On the beach of some ritzy resort at sunset. I’m so glad I found a rich husband.”

“We’re not getting married!”

“Exactly,” she shot back. “Which is why I don’t want to lie to your mother.”

“Are you on my payroll or not?”

She sat up straighter. “Am I? Let’s talk about that.”

“Not now.” He looked so irritable that she temporarily fell silent.

They passed an abandoned cotton mill nearly swallowed up by undergrowth, then a well-maintained mobile home park, followed by a golf course that advertised karaoke Friday nights. Here and there an old plow or a wagon wheel held up a mailbox. She decided to make a stealth attack on her fake fiancé’s private life. “Since we’re engaged, don’t you think it’s time you told me about your father?”

His knuckles tightened ever so slightly on the steering wheel. “No.”

“I’m fairly good at connecting the dots.”

“Un-connect them.”

“It’s hard. Once I get an idea in my head…”

He shot her a killer glare. “I don’t talk about my father. Not to you. Not to anybody.”