“I didn’t fire you, Amelia. I would never do that.”

I was calmer now. Maybe it was the lilac scent from the flowers on the coffee table or the pair of white couches flanking the fireplace with the mirrored coffee table and the abstract art. “I know,” I said quietly.

“Greer would not have wanted someone with your talent and drive fired.”

I took a sip of my espresso. “Smart woman.”

“Hang on a second, and let me make a call,” Parker said.

“No!” I protested from a place of pride inside myself that I didn’t know I still had. “I can’t get my job back because Parker Thaysden made a call.”

He studied me. “But isn’t that why you came here? So I could fix this for you?”

I wrapped my hands around the coffee mug, feeling the warmth seep into my hands and fingers. Why had I come here? Had I wanted to see Parker? I took a sip of coffee, allowing myself a pause before I answered. Maybe, I realized, I had relied for far too long on other people to fix things for me. “I think this is something I have to fix for myself, unfortunately,” I said. “I just don’t really know what that looks like yet.”

Parker smiled at me. “You’ve always been so brave, Lia. Maybe this as an opportunity, a time to write a new story.”

Greer hadn’t been around to see the new story I wrote for her play out. She hadn’t gotten to spend a lifetime with the man who loved her more than the moon and the stars. She hadn’t gotten to have her babies and watch them grow. I had been one of the ones who had let her believe in a miracle. A miracle that hadn’t come. And now I was sitting here complaining about a job? She had lost her life. Her bright, beautiful life. Compared to that, a job was meaningless.

“I’m sorry, Parker,” I said. “I feel really dumb. I’m going to go now.”

“Please don’t,” he whispered.

“What?” I asked, surprised.

“Please don’t go. I couldn’t sleep last night, and I need some company this morning.”

I understood that. “Are you still thinking about… well, you know.”

He nodded. “I can’t move on,” he said. “Greer was just it for me.”

I nodded knowingly, looking down into my mug. “Yup. Thad was pretty much it for me, too.”

We both laughed. Same sentence, totally different meanings.

He smiled at me. “I just can’t imagine that Thad was actually it for you, Lia. That as much as you have to offer, as kind and beautiful and brilliant as you are, you won’t eventually give in to one of the men flinging themselves at you.”

I laughed again. “Flinging themselves at me, huh?” It sliced through me how untrue that was. My friends always complained about the dating scene, but it never affected me because I had Thad. A study I’d read said that women find men most attractive that are their own ages, but the women most attractive to men were always twenty-two. I would never be twenty-two again. And thank God, really. But, at thirty-five, in Palm Beach, I had a solid chance of becoming a fourth trophy wife. That was about the extent of my options.