“Yeah, she’s here. Mom!”

Shay dropped her purchases on the couch and crossed the room to take the call. She was completely unprepared for the voice on the other end of the line, much as she’d hoped and dreaded to hear it earlier.

“You’ve heard about the party, I presume?” Mitch Prescott asked with that quiet gruffness that put everything feminine within Shay on instant red alert.

“Yes,” she managed to answer.

“I don’t think I can face it alone. How about lending me moral support?”

Shay couldn’t imagine Mitch shrinking from anything, or needing moral support, but she felt a certain terrified gladness at the prospect of being asked to go to the party with him. “Being a sworn humanitarian,” she teased, “I couldn’t possibly refuse such a request.”

His sigh of relief was an exaggerated one. “Thank you.”

Shay laughed. “Were you really that afraid of a simple party?”

“No. I was afraid you’d say no. That, of course, would have been devastating to my masculine ego.”

“We can’t have that,” Shay responded airily, glad that he couldn’t see her and know that she was blushing like a high-schooler looking forward to her first prom. “The Reeses’ beach house is quite a distance from town. We’d better leave at least a half an hour early.”

“Seven?”

“Seven,” Shay confirmed. The party, something of an obligation before, was suddenly the focal point of her existence; she was dizzy with excitement and a certain amount of chagrin that such an event could be so important to her. Shouldn’t she be dreading her son’s imminent departure instead of looking past it to a drive along miles and miles of moon-washed shore?

While Hank was taking his bath, under protest, Shay washed the dishes she’d left to soak and then got out her sewing machine. She was up long after midnight, adjusting the pattern and cutting out her silky skirt. Finally she stumbled off to bed.

The next day was what Hank would have called “hairy.” Three salesmen quit, Ivy went home sick and the people at Seaview called to say that Rosamond seemed to be in some kind of state.

“What kind of ‘state’?” a harried Shay barked into the receiver of the telephone in her office.

“She’s curled up in her bed,” answered the young and obviously inexperienced nurse. “She’s crying and calling for the baby.”

“Have you called her doctor?”

“He’s playing golf today.”

“Oh, at his rates, that’s just terrific!” Shay snapped. “You get him over there if you have to drag him off the course. Does Mother have her doll?”

“What doll?”

“The rag doll. The one she won’t be without.”

“I didn’t see it.”

“Find it!”

“I’ll call you back in a few minutes, Mrs. Kendall.”

“See that you do,” Shay replied in clipped tones just as Richard Barrett waltzed, unannounced, into her office.

“Bad day?”

Shay ran one hand through her already tousled hair and sank into the chair behind her desk. “Don’t you know how to knock?”