Which brought to mind last year. Maybe she’d been too hard on herself. Maybe she should have taken what she and Holly had done at face value. They had sex. They weren’t involved. There should have been no emotional entanglement. Yet she’d made it out to be a much bigger deal than it had been. So they slept together? It obviously hadn’t meant anything to either of them. Was it really any different than what she’d done last night? In fact, last night may have even been worse. Because in theory, last night had been a payment—compensation—for Nic’s services.

She stopped walking. When she thought about it like that, it sounded kinda dirty. Cheap.

Nic bumped her arm. “You okay?”

Abby met her blue eyes, holding them. “I’m not sure all of a sudden.”

Nic raised an eyebrow questioningly. But before either of them could comment, her mother had stopped, too, and turned around.

“The walk back to the house seems longer than when we came out.”

Nic moved on toward her mother. “I was thinking the same thing. My feet feel like blocks of ice.”

They walked on. Abby watched them for a moment, then followed. Maybe she would talk it out with Nic later. Or maybe she simply wasn’t cut out for cheap, dirty sex. She sighed. So, okay, she was complicating things. That seemed to be her specialty.

* * *

When they got back inside, Sandra headed down a hallway to the back of the house without even removing her coat. “I’m going to take a nice long hot shower.”

Nic nodded as she hung her parka beside Abby’s coat. “That sounds great, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, it does. Come on, let’s get the fire going first.”

Nic brought in a handful of logs that were stacked on the back deck. She put them in the rack beside the fireplace as Abby turned on the gas, catching some of the smaller limbs.

“I didn’t notice that last night,” she said, pointing to the gas flame.

“They only use it to get the fire going, then turn it off. Beats having to use kindling and newspaper and all that to start it.”

Nic held her hands out to the fire as Abby added a bigger log. Nic watched her, noting the frown on her face. She finally took her hand, tugging her around.

“Want to tell me what’s running through that pretty head of yours?”

Abby took a deep breath. “Yes, actually, I do.” She shrugged. “I’m not sure how I should be feeling.”

“Feeling? About last night?”

“Yes.” She held her hand up. “What I mean is, should I feel so comfortable about it? Because that’s so not me. Yet, I had, well, I had fun.”

“So did I.”