Half-buried in tissue boxes and decongestants of all sorts, Shay lay on her sofa, grimly watching game shows and soap operas and trying to be civil in the face of Hank’s determined attempts to nurse her back to health.

By the time he finally gave up and went out to play with his friends, Shay was in a dreadful mood. The telephone began to ring and she made her way across the room, grumbling all the way.

“Hello,” she said through her nose.

The response was a rich masculine chuckle. “Good Lord,” Mitch marveled. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m thick,” Shay answered with dignity.

He laughed. “I would describe you as thin.”

“Thick ath in not well,” Shay labored to say.

“I’ll be over in ten minutes.”

Before Shay could protest that plan, Mitch had hung up. Her head pounding, she stumbled back to the couch and huddled under the afghan she’d crocheted during her earth-mother phase. She coughed and pulled the cover up over her head.

It would save the paramedics the trouble.

Chapter Thirteen

The two small shops on the first floor of Shay’s building were all decorated for Christmas. She marveled at the industry of their proprietors; Jenna and Betty must have worked all of Thanksgiving weekend to assemble such grandeur, she thought.

Though her own office and kitchen were, of course, on the first floor, too, Shay climbed the stairs to see if Alice and the woman who owned the candle shop had followed suit. They had.

Shay crammed her hands into the pockets of her coat and went downstairs by the back way, feeling a little guilty because she hadn’t put out so much as a sprig of holly.

Both Barbara and Louise were busy in the huge kitchen, with its big tables and commercial refrigerators. Shay watched them for a few moments, unnoticed, trying to imagine what their lives had been like.

Barbara, a plump woman with beautifully coiffed hair, was rolling out dough for an order of quiche. She had signed up for the culinary program at the college after her husband of twenty-eight years had divorced her for another woman. Louise, a small and perpetually smiling blonde, had lost her husband in a car accident a year before. She, like Barbara, had never held a paying job in her life, and yet she’d been faced with the prospect of earning a living.

Inwardly, Shay sighed. These two women had given their best to their marriages, and where had it gotten them? They had been betrayed, abandoned.

At that moment Barbara spotted her and smiled. “Good morning, Ms. Kendall. Feeling better?”

The inside of Shay’s chest still felt raw and hollow, while her sinuses were stuffed, but the worst was past. Mitch had coddled her shamefully. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I feel better.”

“You look like you dragged yourself down here,” Louise observed in her forthright way. “Why don’t you go home and rest? We can manage things on this end.”

Shay looked upon the two women with admiration. Okay, so life hadn’t gone as they’d planned, but they were survivors. They had tallied what skills they had—neither was a stranger to cooking for a crowd—and they’d gone out and found a market for what they knew. “I’ve got some book work to do in the office,” she said in reply to Louise’s well-meant suggestion. “But it probably would be better if you two handled the cooking today.”