He set his knife and fork down. “Look, Kate. I realize it must be devastating and maybe even humiliating for your wedding fiasco to be public knowledge. But your God-given gift has always been to help troubled relationships. Ever since you were a little girl, you were helping people solve problems. You don’t need fame or notoriety or even a book contract to achieve that.”

Kate swallowed the bite of salad. He was right. She had enjoyed helping couples in counseling. However, it was more logical to prevent the impossible relationships than it was to fix them. And no one sought counseling until there was a problem. That’s why writing relationship books made sense.

But lately, Kate wondered if she knew anything about relationships at all. Everything that made sense in theory was more complicated in real-life application. Case in point: Lucas.

Her stomach clamped down on the food she’d eaten, and she pushed her plate away, the sirloin half-eaten.

“What’s really wrong, Kate?” Her dad’s brown eyes were an antique reflection of her own.

“My career is falling apart. Isn’t that reason enough to be depressed?”

Her dad sliced the steak with the serrated knife and placed it beside his plate. “Is that why you don’t eat? Why you stare off into space for minutes at a time? Why your eyes are so sad all the time?”

Kate’s head throbbed. She’d had a constant headache since she’d left Nantucket. Like her body was having withdrawal from the island.

Or from Lucas. She stifled the thought.

She stood and carried her plate to the sink. “I’d rather not talk about it.” She didn’t even want to think about it, but her mind never cooperated. She tried to put it behind her, but her thoughts returned to the island, to Lucas, like waves to a shoreline.

“It’s that Lucas, isn’t it?”

Kate gave him a warning look. He’d never been one to pry, and she hoped he didn’t start now.

“Don’t look at me like that. You’ve been moping around here for—”

“I am not moping.”

“—three weeks, and I may be a man, but I know lovesick when I see it.”

Kate gave a wry laugh. “Lovesick?” She pulled the sprayer from the sink and ran water over her plate. “It was an arrangement, Daddy, remember? You were there. You read the papers.”

Her dad’s chair scraped the ceramic tile as he stood. “And I saw the look in that boy’s eyes on your wedding day.” He held out his plate.

Kate pulled it from his hands. “That’s ridiculous.”

“Is it?”

She sprayed the salad dressing and A1 Sauce off the plate while her father cleared the table. Her father had imagined what he’d seen on Lucas’s face.

“Anyway,” Kate said. “It could never have worked. We were different as day and night.”