“How do you even get these ideas? I wouldn’t have paired those, but they look fabulous,” April exclaimed.

“I took a personal course with a fashion consultant once.”

“You’re officially the coolest person I know.”

Val laughed. “I don’t know about that. But I’d just started my business, and since I wasn’t tied to a dress code like in my old job, I knew I was liable to go crazy. My sense of fashion has always been a little weird, but there is a fine line between different and ridiculous.”

“Well, I think you’re a knockout.”

Sometime during this exchange, my heartbeat had become erratic. They were having fun, I realized. Val wasn’t patronizing the girls or finding them an inconvenience. This was so far off my past experiences that I hadn’t even come to expect it any longer. It was partly why I liked to separate these sides of my personal life.

When April pulled her hair in a ponytail, trying out an outfit Val had come up with, I had déjà vu.

“You look just like Hannah,” I told her. I missed my sister so much that some days it felt like a physical ache.

“I do, don’t I?” April grinned before explaining to Val, “In all her pics, Mom looks like a runway model. She was definitely a fashionista.”

“Am I a fashionista?” Peyton asked, frowning at the mirror as if searching for signs.

I laughed, but Val replied smoothly, “You’re on your way to becoming one.”

When April went to bring her favorite scarf from the foyer, with Peyton trailing after her, I kept my eyes trained on Val. She caught me looking and blushed, but I didn’t take my eyes off her. Even though I was sitting in the opposite corner of the room, the sexual tension filling the air was palpable. Eventually Val focused on rearranging some outfits on the bed. I loved it when she wouldn’t even look at me because she was afraid that if she did, she wouldn’t be able to resist me.

I left the room shortly after the girls returned, partly because I couldn’t stand being so close to Val and not touching her or imagining how our life would look if she was permanently part of it, and partly because the activity was too girly for me. By the time I finished drafting the third document, it was ten o’clock. I pressed the heels of my palms against my eyes, which had started to hurt. I’d just opened up a document with some statutes I wanted to brush up on when Val joined me in my home office.

She came next to me and leaned against the desk.

“How are the girls?”