He grinned at her—a real grin—and one more loop in the snarl of negative feelings that resided inside her loosened its grip. Sometimes—not often, but sometimes—he smiled at her the same way he did at Lucy.

“Don’t take any crap from him,” Lucy had advised. “At the same time, look for chances to touch him. He’ll pull away. Do it, anyway.”

Bree had tried resting her hand on his shoulder when he was sitting at the kitchen table, but it felt forced, and as Lucy had predicted, he wiggled away, so she’d stopped. She wasn’t giving up the rest, however. An uncharacteristic stubbornness had taken hold of her. He was going to learn about the heritage he’d received from his father whether he wanted to or not.

He dropped his feet to the floor and scratched his ankle with his toe. “You don’t have to watch the movie with me. You can go work on your painting or something.”

Right now, that “something” included waiting for a dozen nonreturnable glass bumblebee Christmas ornaments to arrive. Every time she thought about the Internet order she’d placed over the library computer she felt sick. She was getting more customers every day, but who knew if any of them would want to buy Christmas ornaments in the summer?

“We always watch movies together,” she said.

“Yeah, I guess you should probably watch. Being white and everything, you’ve got a lot to learn.”

She did her best to imitate Lucy’s sarcastic looks. “Like you know so much, Mr. Brown Man.”

He liked being called a man, and he grinned. She smiled back at him, and he kept smiling until he realized what he was doing and exchanged the smile for a scowl. “Me and Big Mike are going horseback riding tomorrow.”

She still couldn’t believe Mike had befriended Toby out of the goodness of his heart. On the other hand, he’d kept his word, and the only times he’d spoken to her since they’d all gone to church two weeks earlier had been during a few brief telephone exchanges when he’d made arrangements to pick Toby up.

Toby scowled at her. “If you weren’t so mean to him, he’d let you go with us.”

“I can’t get away from the farm stand.”

“You could get away if you wanted to. Lucy would watch it for you.”

Toby had been calling Lucy by her real name ever since he’d overheard Bree call her that, but since daughters of past presidents weren’t on his twelve-year-old radar screen, he’d only commented that he’d known all along Viper couldn’t be her real name.