“Think about it. Just now, you reverted to your old thought pattern—your assumption that you’d been betrayed. It wasn’t until after you spoke that you remembered what had really happened.”

He was right. The words had slipped out easily, thoughtlessly.

“Our mothers are probably behaving in the same way. After all these years, they’re caught in this pattern of disparaging each other, and they can’t break the habit.”

Noelle wasn’t sure she agreed with him. For one thing, she knew her mother had desperately tried to end the feud. Every attempt had been rebuffed. “I don’t think it’s a good idea to discuss our mothers.”

“Why not?”

“Because we argue. You want to defend your mother and I want to defend mine, and the two of us end up fighting. Besides, weren’t we talking about the women in your life after I left Rose?”

He chuckled. “You make it sound like there were hordes of them.”

“There weren’t?” She pretended to be shocked.

He shook his head. “Not really. Two I considered marrying and a few others I saw for a while. What about you?”

“You keep asking. All right, I was serious once. Paul was a computer programmer, and we both worked for the same company, developing new software. It was an exciting time in the business and we got caught up in the thrill of it all.” Paul was actually very sweet and very brilliant, but their romance wasn’t meant to be. Noelle had been the first to realize it. She’d ended their brief engagement, and they’d parted on good terms, remaining friends to this day. “After the launch of Curtains, our new operating system, well…it was curtains for our marriage plans, too,” she said, smiling at her own feeble pun.

“Just one guy?” Thom asked.

“Don’t sound so disappointed.” Noelle had told him far more than necessary. He hadn’t said a word about either of the women he’d loved.

“Listen, what I said earlier regarding our mothers— I wonder if—”

“I don’t want to discuss our mothers, Thom.”

“We can’t avoid it forever.”

“Maybe not,” she agreed, “but does it have to be the first thing we talk about?”

“It’s not,” he argued.

“Look at us,” she said. “I haven’t been with you fifteen minutes and already we’re both on the defensive. This isn’t going to work.” She was ready to give up and go home, but Thom stopped her.

“Okay, we’ll leave our mothers out of the conversation.”

Now it seemed neither one had anything to say.

“I kept waiting to hear that you were married,” she said after a silence. “But I refused to ask. That’s silly I suppose.” It was like waiting for the dentist’s drill; when it happened there’d be pain and she hadn’t been in a hurry to experience it.