Her Bachelor Challenge. Cathy Gillen Thacker

his best to conjure up an answer. “Because you’re too young to get that serious about someone,” he said finally.

      “I’m thirty-two,” Bridgett shot back, temper sparking her beautiful brown eyes. “If I want to have a family of my own—”

      “You’ve got plenty of time for that.”

      Again she looked down her nose at him, as if he just didn’t get it. “I’m ready to get married and settle down now,” she explained as if to a moron.

      Chase frowned, and unable to help himself, blurted out in frustration, “At least find someone who can make you happy while you do it!”

      Bridgett propped her hands on her hips. “What makes you think Martin won’t make me happy?”

      Because I just know, Chase thought, uneasiness sifting through him. Aware how lame that would sound, he remained silent.

      Bridgett stared at him as if she had never seen him before and had no clue who he was. “Like I said, I’ve got to go.” She ducked around behind him and exited the powder room without another word.

      CHASE WAS DISAPPOINTED he hadn’t been able to make Bridgett see what a mistake she was making even dating Mr. Wrong. But that didn’t mean he was giving up. He figured it would take time—and persistence—to make Bridgett see the error of her ways. But he figured she’d be grateful to him in the end. He didn’t want her suffering the way he had when he’d been betrothed to the wrong person.

      In the meantime he needed to check on his mother. He found Grace upstairs in the guest room where she always stayed. She had changed out of her travel clothes and into a slim apple-green dress that only seemed to emphasize her recent weight loss. The strain lines on her face seemed all the more pronounced in the late-afternoon sunlight streaming in through the windows. “Are you going to be okay?” He didn’t know why, but she seemed more vulnerable now than when she had first arrived and told them she’d been fired. He wasn’t used to his take-charge, kick-butt mother being weak.

      “Of course I’ll be all right,” Grace said in the firm parental voice she had used on him and his siblings. She looked at him sternly. “I don’t want you worrying about me.”

      “Can’t help it.” Chase sauntered into the bedroom and shut the door behind him, so they could talk privately. “In the first place, I’m the oldest son.”

      “Which does not make you responsible for me.”

      Maybe that would’ve been true had there been someone else—like a husband around all the time—to protect her. But there wasn’t. “Even so, in your place, I’d be reeling,” Chase told her frankly.

      Grace opened the first of several suitcases with a beleaguered sigh. “I’ve suffered setbacks before, Chase.”

      Chase knew she had. First and foremost among them had been her legal separation from his father, a year after she had moved to New York City to work on Rise and Shine, America! Another year after that, there’d been the finalization of the divorce. None of which Chase understood to this day. Oh, he knew marriages didn’t last anymore. And maybe they never should have lasted for decades even in years past, when that was the norm. Most of the married couples he knew did not seem all that happy once the wedding rings were on their fingers, the shackles around their ankles.

      “Plus, I work in television,” Grace continued, as she took out a stack of clothes and put them neatly in a dresser drawer. “Being hired and fired is all part of the routine business cycle.”

      “It still must hurt,” Chase persisted, taking a seat on the ivory chaise in the corner.

      Just as the divorce had hurt. Not that Grace and Tom had ever let their kids see them quarrel. It had been their strict policy not to let their four children be privy to anything going on in their marriage, especially anything bad. The idea, of course, had been to protect Chase and his siblings from any unpleasantness. And so all their kids had thought everything was fine when it was not, and had ended up feeling baffled and distressed when Grace and Tom—for no reason any of their children could fathom—suddenly stopped speaking to each other and began living separate lives. Chase had often wondered what the breaking point had been. Had one of them been unfaithful or done something equally unforgivable? And if so, why? Was the love between a man and a woman something that could just end without warning or reason? Frustratingly these weren’t the kinds of questions his parents fielded. All he knew for certain was, after they’d split, the anger and bitterness between Grace and Tom had been fierce and unrelenting. And that tension had gotten worse, before it had ever gotten better. These days, of course, the two were able to be cordial to each other—at least on the surface. But deep down, Chase still felt there were problems that remained unresolved to this day. Divorce or no divorce.

      “I admit my pride is wounded,” Grace said in a way that reminded Chase that this was the first time his mother had been fired from a job. Previously whenever Grace had left a television show, it was to take a better position at another show.

      Grace took out several pairs of shoes and carried them to the shelf in the closet. “It hurts having the failure of the show blamed on me and my cohost. But that’s just the way it is in the business.” Grace returned to her suitcase for her toiletry bag. “Whoever is out in front takes the credit or the blame, and in this case it was blame that needed to be apportioned out to appease the sponsors.”

      Restless, Chase got up to help. “Something better will come along. Before you know it, you’ll be back in New York on another network,” he assured his mother as he unzipped the first of her two garment bags.

      Grace smiled ruefully as she lifted out the clothes already on hangers and carried them to the closet. “I’m not sure I want to work in early-morning television again. Getting up at three-thirty every morning did not do much for my social life. I was going to bed for the night when everyone I knew was just getting off work for the day.”

      “Then something that airs later in the day,” Chase persisted, pushing away the disturbing thought of his mother wanting to keep company with any men besides his father. It had been bad enough occasionally coming face-to-face with his father when he was squiring other, usually much younger, women around. Now he’d probably be seeing his mother going out on dates, too. “An afternoon talk show, maybe,” Chase suggested.

      Grace made a face as she set out her hairbrushes and combs on the old-fashioned vanity. “Right now that sounds like even more of a grind. No. What I want to do right now is spend more time with you and your brothers and sister, Chase. I’ve missed that.”

      Chase warmed at the idea of being able to see and talk to his mother whenever he wanted again and still live and work in the city he had grown up in and come to love like no other. “We’ve missed you, too, Mom.” More than she would ever know. It was their dirty little secret, but without Grace around, the Deveraux did not seem like much of a family. Not the way they once had been, anyway.

      Grace enveloped Chase in a warm hug. “And besides, I’ve always wanted to learn how to cook.”

      “I THOUGHT YOU’D BE happy for me,” Bridgett told her mother emotionally. She had just shown her the emerald ring Martin had given her after picking her up at the airport and taking her to dinner the evening before. “I thought you wanted me to be happy.” And frankly she was hurt that her mother wasn’t more enthusiastic about the serious turn her relationship with Martin was about to take.

      “I do want you to be happy,” Theresa explained gently. “Which is why I want you to spend time with someone whose background is similar to yours.”

      “Not to mention,” a deep male voice said from the doorway, “someone your own age.”

      Theresa beamed at Chase the way she always did whenever he entered a room. “See, he agrees with me,” Theresa said as Chase kissed her cheek.

      “Chase just doesn’t want to see anyone get serious,” Bridgett said, more irritated than ever to have Chase putting his two cents in about her personal life. She stopped folding napkins