“I still can’t believe they brought the whole buffet down to the beach. It’s amazing.”

She was amazing. She had chatted with him throughout a long and leisurely dinner. They had talked about her childhood, her distant father, and her overbearing mother, and he had realized from her stories that Mandy had been given lots of material things growing up, but she had craved her parents’ attention more than anything. It made him want to put a call through to England and inform them they were idiots for neglecting their intelligent and compassionate daughter.

“My mother would be horrified at eating on the beach. ‘Think of the bugs!’ she’d say,” Mandy said with a laugh. “‘The germs! The sand. That soup probably has a tablespoon of sand instead of salt in it.’” She shook her head. “It’s not civilized enough for her.”

“She doesn’t like nature?”

“She likes nature when it’s been controlled. In a proper English garden.”

Damien sipped his water. “My mom would love it here. She hates Chicago winters. They’re hoping to move to Florida when my dad retires next year.”

He should call his own parents, see how they were. He hadn’t talked to them since Christmas. And they had never neglected him, far from it. Their house had been a happy one, with lots of love and laughter.

“You’re from Chicago?”

He nodded, suddenly shocked at the overwhelming sense of homesickness that swept over him. He hadn’t been back since, well, since he’d left. “Born and raised. Just a regular kid, in a middle class suburb, Dad’s an engineer, Mom a homemaker. I had a brother, a dog, and a passion for baseball.”

Mandy smiled at him, slow, relaxed, her finger wiping a stray bit of whipped cream off her dessert plate. “What happened to that regular kid? The brother, the dog, baseball?”

That boy had wanted to pitch for the White Sox, marry a pretty girl, move into a rambling house down the block from his parents in Beverly, and have a couple of boys of his own. Damien remembered the dreams, but wasn’t sure he even knew how to relate to them anymore. That’s not who he was at thirty-three. Life had taken him to New York, where he was very successful, lived in an apartment building with a doorman, and worked twenty hours a day.

He had very few friends, never saw his family, and had long ago given up the idea of ever having children.

This was why he never got introspective. It was damn depressing.

“The brother lives in Seattle and I never see him. The dog’s long gone, and there’s no time in my schedule for baseball.”