This Time For Keeps. Jenna Mills

her cousin looked dressed for a job interview in New York. Pecan Creek was a small, sleepy town. Casual. Everyone didn’t quite know everyone, but someone always knew someone, who knew someone. Three degrees of separation, they joked.

      There was no need for a severely tailored navy suit.

      But Julia was…well…Julia.

      Meg had never understood why her cousin stayed.

      “It’s all in there,” Julia said. “He talked to the editorial staff at three different regionals. His notes are in the back.”

      Meg flipped through the folder, saw the pages in question. “Great.” But her stomach knotted. It was a good offer, the kind of money that could keep the Gazette—and all of its employees—afloat. But it also meant the end of a legacy forged a century before.

      Meg tossed the folder on a desk badly in need of straightening, then dropped her briefcase in the chair and headed toward the break room. “Just give me a few minutes to get some coffee and we can get started with the staff meeting.”

      “Got it,” Julia said. “I can’t wait to tell you what I found out about the Brookhaven Institute. I’ll bet my last dollar there’s more than sleep research going on there.”

      Meg tossed her cousin a look, but before she could say anything about Julia’s wild conspiracy theories, their office manager joined them. After all this time, it still felt weird thinking of Lori Bradshaw as an employee. Meg could still see her on the first day of school freshman year, a shy, slightly pudgy girl with braces, glasses and the most ridiculous pigtails imaginable.

      “How’s that sweet baby?” Lori asked as soon as she entered the room. Who would have guessed that beneath the awkward ugly duckling of high school lay the makings of an all-American knockout? “She didn’t hurt herself, did she?”

      “No worse than any other day,” Meg said, pouring her coffee. She’d never gotten around to touching the pot she’d made at home. “A bump on her noggin, but she was laughing with Rosemary when I left.”

      “Such a sweetheart,” Lori said, and Meg had to wonder if her friend even realized the way she drew her hands to her stomach. But Meg noticed…and Meg knew. Lori and Trey had been trying for a baby for over five years. Recently they’d begun tests to figure out why they’d been unsuccessful.

      “How’s Trey?” she asked.

      “Fine,” Lori said with an odd briskness. Once, she would have smiled and launched straight into her latest Trey story. Now she again changed the subject. “I’m so glad you found someone to watch Char at your place.”

      Meg saw no point in pushing. The pace was Lori’s to set. “Rosemary’s a godsend,” she agreed. A friend of her mother’s, the former schoolteacher was itching for grandkids—and happy to practice with Charlotte.

      “Oh.” Lori put a dainty little mug with a Pisces sign on it into the sink. “That guy called for you again.”

      Meg looked up from the sugar packet she’d just opened. “The same one from yesterday? Did he say what he wanted?”

      “Nope.” Lori frowned. “Wouldn’t leave a message or a name—but he had a great voice.”

      “Did you get his number?” Julia asked.

      “Came in as Out-of-Area.”

      Julia’s eyes took on a rare twinkle. “You hiding something, cuz?”

      Meg dumped the sugar into her coffee. “I wish.” It had been a long time since there had been anything worth keeping to herself, certainly nothing in the man department.

      With sobering speed, Julia became all business again, reaching into her blazer pocket. “Then here,” she said, handing Meg a square, pink sheet of message paper.

      “What’s this?”

      Julia’s eyes, all steely and serious, met hers. “His number.”

      Meg stilled. Her throat burned. Something in her gut jumped. She didn’t need to see the number to know that the subject of their conversation had shifted. Whereas Meg preferred to let sleeping dogs lie, Julia was all about meeting them head-on.

      “I called the bureau,” she said. “He’s in Venezuela.”

      Against the thin paper, Meg’s thumb and forefinger tightened.

      “They said he’s out on assignment, but they expect him back—”

      “No.” But Meg glanced at the string of fifteen numbers anyway. A phone number, such a simple thing really. Dial the numbers, hear the voice.

      His voice.

      I’m here…with you, he’d promised.

      “Meg, you can’t pretend he doesn’t exist.”

      He’d said something almost identical right before he walked out the door: I can’t stay here anymore, can’t pretend.

      Why didn’t anyone understand there was a difference between prevention and pretending?

      “I told you to leave it alone,” Meg said, looking up.

      But Julia wouldn’t back down. She’d been on Meg about this for almost two months, since shortly after the car accident that changed so many lives. “Russ was her brother.”

      Meg told herself to walk away. To wad up the paper and toss it in the garbage, go back to her office and prepare the agenda for the staff meeting or read Henry’s report. Review plans for the silent auction, which she was in charge of.

      But something inside her just broke.

      “A lot of good that did her!” she snapped in a rare display of emotion. “He didn’t even come for her funeral!” Didn’t call to check on arrangements for her child, didn’t acknowledge in any way, shape or form that the little sister who’d picked up her life in Scotland and traveled all the way to Texas, to be with her big brother, had died, here in a country so far removed from her family. Alone. Except for Meg—and Charlotte.

      “Maybe he didn’t find out in time.” Lori’s words were quiet, hopeful. A romantic down to the bone, she couldn’t give up her belief in happy endings. Russell’s rich brogue didn’t help matters. In her book, just because he talked like a poet, he walked on water. “Maybe he couldn’t.”

      “Of course he couldn’t.” Meg saw Lori wince, but it didn’t change the truth. “Because that would have required him to come…” Back. Home. “Here.” It still stunned Meg that someone Ainsley’s age had actually made out a will. And that a nineteen-year-old from a small town in Scotland would choose to have her final resting place here in small-town America. Among strangers.

      Of course, from what Meg knew of Ainsley’s relationship with her parents, they, too, had become little more than strangers.

      “Meg.” Lori’s voice was soft, pleading. “He’s Charlotte’s uncle, your—”

      “Past.” Meg swallowed hard, didn’t want to hear the word. “He’s my past, that’s all.”

      Julia snatched the paper from Meg’s fingers. “If you don’t call him, I will.”

      The glare was automatic. Meg hated confrontation, but this wasn’t a game or contest. It was real and it was absolutely none of Julia’s business. “Don’t.”

      She hated the way her voice broke on the word.

      “Meg…” The lines of Julia’s face softened. “It’s not fair that you have to do this alone. Maybe he can help.”

      He. Him. Meg couldn’t remember the last time any of them had spoken his name aloud. They didn’t need to. They all knew. “He left, Jules.” Packed up, walked away. If she’d come home that night a little later, she still wondered if he would have said goodbye.

      Just for a few weeks,