Daughter of the Spellcaster. Maggie Shayne

his way to be very clear with every woman, right from the start, that he was not the getting serious type. He’d tried even harder to play the playboy for Lena’s benefit. The more she got under his skin, the harder he played the role. Apparently she’d realized she was making no progress and walked.

      The ironic part was, she was the one woman he’d ever been with who might have had a shot at making him want to get serious. If she’d waited around, maybe…

      But in the end, he knew it was for the best. He never wanted to find himself mired in grief the way his father was. To love someone so much that he fell apart when she left. Hell, he’d had a taste of it, the sleepless nights, the recriminations, the missing her, the getting sappy every time any TV show or radio song or meal reminded him of her. If it had been that bad after two months, he’d definitely been heading for trouble. Doing exactly what he’d sworn he would never do.

      It was good that she’d left. Now he was back on track again, cool and free, and not caring. Playing the playboy. It was easier to maintain that image without her.

      The crowd of people filling the pews of St. Pat’s were muttering, which was his signal to stop reliving the past and start paying attention again to his father’s funeral service. It didn’t matter anyway. She’d dumped him and run away. It was over. She had come here to pay her respects to his dad. It was the decent thing to do, and she’d always been decent.

      The priest had finished, and the pallbearers were moving up to take their places beside the coffin. Bahru and Ryan were the lead pair, so he had to get in gear. Reaching the front, where the casket rested on a stand, he took hold of the brass handle. It was cold to the touch, and the coffin wasn’t as heavy as he would have expected it to be. Then again, there were six of them. The other four were all on his father’s board of directors.

      Fine showing at the end of a life. An estranged son, a Hindi con man and a handful of business partners as pallbearers. That said a lot. Said it all, really.

      He didn’t want to go out that way, he thought. Friendless and alone.

      And then he wondered, as that thought flitted into his mind and he carried his father’s casket down the aisle toward the big doors, if he died right now, today, who would be carrying him to his waiting hearse? Paul, he guessed. And a handful of other men he’d helped in their businesses and who he supposed were friends. Sort of.

      He really didn’t have any friends other than Paul.

      Maybe he wasn’t as different from his old man as he liked to think he was.

      As he passed by the pew in the back where Lena had been sitting, he looked for her, but she was gone, and a sigh of disappointment rushed out of him. Involuntary but unavoidable. Maybe she would be at the graveside service.

      He hoped so.

       2

      Lena ran into Bill Bennet, her former boss, outside the cathedral under bright sunny skies. Manhattan winters were so different from winters anywhere else in New York State. No snow on the ground here, though sometimes there was, and it rarely lasted long. The temps ran ten degrees higher than they did outside the city, because heat radiated from the pavement and was held in by the buildings and the smog, and Lena had always thought still more was generated by all the bodies, all the machines, all the frenetic human energy. Today it was warm even for January in New York City, maybe forty degrees on the sidewalk outside the cathedral.

      Bill was standing in one of those little huddles of humanity that always form outside funerals. People leaning close, all dressed in dark colors, speaking in low tones about what a shame it was and how the family was doing, and who else had died in recent memory. There was never a positive conversation at a funeral. It was all about death and dying and mourning and loss, insurance and health and diseases and accidents. It put her head right into the frame of mind to attract something she did not want.

      Lena hated funerals.

      But not as much as she hated seeing the stunned looks on people’s faces when they got their first glimpse of her midsection, which looked roughly like an over-inflated beach ball, minus the stripes.

      Bill saw her face, started to smile underneath his gray-with-a-lingering-ginger mustache but then froze when his gaze found her belly. It was comical, in a way, or would have been if the belly had been attached to anyone besides her. His blue eyes went wide, and he walked right up to her, hugged her and said, “So that’s why you left.”

      “Pretty much, yeah.”

      “Are you—I mean, is the father—”

      “I’m doing this alone. That’s the way I want it, Bill.” She patted his back twice, the international signal for “this hug is about to cross the boundary from friendly to awkward,” and he let go and backed a step away.

      “You look wonderful,” she said before he could continue on the topic of her pregnancy. “Better than before the heart attack, honestly. You’ve lost weight.”

      “Thirty pounds.” There was pride in his voice. And then he was going on about his new diet, and having given up alcohol, cigarettes and mayonnaise.

      She listened, because she was not only polite but truly interested in how her former boss was doing. But she still glanced back toward the ornate doors of St. Pat’s whenever she could manage it without being rude, and on the third such peek she spotted Ryan. He hadn’t seen her yet, and she scooted around to Bill’s other side so he wouldn’t. She just wasn’t ready to see his reaction to her baby bump. Not yet. Not there.

      She guessed there would be no hiding it at the graveside, but she felt she had to go. And really, she couldn’t keep it from him forever. Had never intended to. Just… well, the more time she had let slide past, the easier it had become not to call. And now there she was, and there he was, and it was time. Past time.

      “Do you mind if I ride with you to the cemetery?” she asked Bill, cutting him off in mid-cholesterol count.

      “Well, of course not. We’re parked back here.” He put a hand at the small of her back and steered her further away from the cathedral, thank goodness, and around a corner. It was going to be a long ride to the cemetery, she thought, as he began listing off the others from the firm, and the spouses of same, who were riding in the stretch limo they’d hired for the occasion. The thing was huge, and there was definitely room for one more.

      She eased herself into the vehicle, and spent the next forty-five minutes catching up with former co-workers and trying to describe her new life in a way that didn’t sound painfully boring to them. And it was boring, really. Utterly tranquil, filled with peaceful bliss. Lonely, of course, but she had her mom. And aside from that loneliness and the odd presence they referred to as their house ghost and who was, they’d decided, harmless, their lives were perfect. Besides, Lena figured the loneliness would be gone the minute the baby arrived, so…

      Yes, she thought, it was a long ride to the cemetery.

      But not long enough.

      She stood behind a crowd of people, wearing a capestyle coat, and holding her purse, brown knit beret-style hat, matching scarf and leather gloves in front of her belly.

      It was roughly like a bear trying to hide behind a dandelion, but trying was automatic. Ryan was up front, near the graveside, which was clearly a hole in the ground even though it was decorated in an effort to keep it from looking like one. The shiny brass frame that held the casket was draped in fabric. But nothing could hide the fact that it covered a rectangular pit in the dirt.

      As the priest spoke, Lena caught Ryan looking for her, his probing eyes scanning the crowd as she tried to shrink into herself. Eventually he spotted her, as she had known he would. Their eyes met, and just like that her heart flipped in her chest. Was he really more beautiful than he’d been before? Was she really that hungry just for the sight of him? Emotions started hurling themselves, like rampaging waters demanding release, against the floodgates that had been keeping them where they belonged for the seven months since she’d left