The Cliff House. RaeAnne Thayne

Sorry. I’ll take care of the candles and grab a bottle of wine.”

      Bea snatched several other magazines with Cruz’s face on them from the racks and tucked them into Daisy’s basket.

      Daisy hurried to the bakery. Though located in the grocery store, where one might not expect to find gourmet fare, they still made the best cakes in town.

      For months, Stella had been insisting she didn’t want a grand party to mark her fortieth birthday. She said she only wanted their family—the three of them and Bea’s daughter, Mari—together for dinner, in the garden of Three Oaks, Stella’s two-story Craftsman.

      Her aunt deserved a party attended by everyone in town. She deserved a freaking ticker-tape parade, as far as Daisy was concerned. She knew all the other lost souls Stella had rescued over the years would certainly agree with her.

      She couldn’t go against Stella’s wishes, though. She loved her aunt too much. If Stella only wanted her immediate family to celebrate her milestone birthday with her—and the money they would spend donated to her charity instead—Daisy would make sure that was exactly what happened.

      She picked up the cake they had ordered weeks ago, threw in some crusty Italian bread and some of the high-quality olive oil the store stocked, then headed for the checkout.

      The cashier in her line had worked at the grocery store as long as Daisy had lived in Cape Sanctuary, while the bagger was another of her aunt’s rescues.

      “Hey, Daisy,” he said, not quite making eye contact. Tommy Mathews was on the autism spectrum. When he had come to Stella, he had been considered unmanageable and difficult, close to being institutionalized after his mother died. He had lived with Stella for two years, from seventeen to nineteen, and had thrived with her loving care before moving into his own apartment with two other young adults who had special needs.

      Now twenty, Tommy had a steady job at the supermarket and was taking classes to earn an associate’s degree at the community college in the next town over.

      He had come so far because of her aunt, whose circle of influence was legendary.

      “Hi, Tommy.” She adored him and all the other young people who had come in and out of their lives since Stella began opening her home up to other foster children in the years since she and Bea had moved out.

      They were the first, she and Bea. Stella’s nieces. Her aunt’s influence started there and rippled out like concentric waves from a tiny pebble thrown into a pond.

      The tears suddenly burning behind her eyes took her completely by surprise. She usually kept much better control over her emotions.

      “Is that cake for Stella?” Tommy asked. “It’s her birthday tomorrow.”

      “I know. It’s a big day, isn’t it?”

      “She said she didn’t want presents but I have one for her anyway. I’m going to take it to her tomorrow.”

      “Oh. That’s so sweet of you.”

      “It’s a plant, the kind she likes with pink flowers. I can get it for a discount from the floral department here. It was only sixteen dollars and twenty-three cents with tax, but don’t tell her, okay?”

      “I won’t say a word, Tommy. I know she’ll love it.”

      “Yeah. She will,” he said with a confidence that made her smile.

      Stella had fostered about twenty other children, some with special needs like Tommy and others just in need of a temporary home for a while, like Cruz Romero.

      So many lives, changed for the better because Stella was a generous, kind soul who loved to help people.

      Unlike Daisy, who hid away in her house on the cliff, afraid to even smile at men she didn’t know who talked to her in the toothpaste aisle.

      The checker had rung up the last item when Bea hurried up, candles and a wine bottle in hand. “Sorry. Took me a while to find them. Hi, Janet. Hi, Tommy! Daisy, put this on your check and we’ll split the total.”

      The cashier gave a rather sour smile as she ran the candles and the wine through and added them to Daisy’s total. Her sister would pay her, Daisy knew, minus the cost of the toothpaste. These days Bea was much more careful with her money, though it had taken Daisy several years to convince her the healthy alimony and child support she received from Cruz wasn’t exactly a blank check.

      Tommy looked happy to see her sister. “Hi, Bea,” he said. “Tomorrow is Stella’s birthday. She’s going to be forty.”

      “Isn’t that great?”

      “I bought her a present from here, a plant with pink flowers. I get an employee discount.”

      “Oh, she’ll love that. Nice job, Tom.”

      He beamed, as charmed by Bea as everyone else in the world.

      “See you later,” Daisy said, used to being invisible around her more vivacious younger sister.

      He gave an almost-smile as he handed her the cake. Bea reached in and grabbed the wine and the bag with the rest of the groceries.

      “Bye, Tom,” Bea said. She stopped to give him a quick hug, which seemed to please him, though he didn’t hug her back.

      As they walked out of the store, they had to pass a late-model luxury SUV limousine that was idling in the fire lane, one of Daisy’s pet peeves. It wasn’t just because of environmental reasons and the pollutants their idling vehicles were sending into the atmosphere. She hated the sense of entitlement, when people thought they were so important, they shouldn’t have to walk fifteen more feet to a parking space like the rest of the peons.

      A man was climbing into the back seat as they passed. He looked up, and for just an instant, their gazes met. She should have known. It was the gorgeous man with the sexy accent.

      He gave her a rueful sort of smile and a wave, which she pointedly ignored as she marched behind the vehicle toward her own fifteen-year-old BMW.

      “Who was that?” Bea stared after the limo.

      “No idea,” Daisy mumbled.

      “He looked like he knew you.”

      “He doesn’t.”

      “Are you sure? He waved at you and everything. He looks familiar. Is he some kind of celebrity?”

      Maybe. Daisy didn’t watch much television and her knowledge of pop culture was nonexistent. She couldn’t even tell which Kardashian was which and had no idea why she should care.

      “You’re the one who reads all the tabloids. You tell me. I don’t know who he is. I only know I’ve never met him before in my life.”

      Before she bumped into him ten minutes earlier, anyway.

      “It doesn’t matter,” she said. “We’ve got to go or we’ll be late.”

      “Trust me, Stella won’t notice. Mari’s over there already and the two of them are probably in the middle of a hot game of slapjack.”

      She had to admit Bea was probably right. Stella hadn’t wanted them to make a fuss over her birthday anyway and wouldn’t care if they were a few moments late. “Here. You hold the cake. I don’t want to set it on the seat and risk it falling off.”

      Bea made a face but held out her arms for the cake. After a quick stop at the Italian restaurant their aunt loved so they could grab the preordered meal, Daisy drove to Three Oaks, the sturdy, graceful Craftsman house Stella had purchased for a song when she brought the girls here to Cape Sanctuary all those years ago.

      It had been a mess when they first moved in, she remembered, with only one tiny working bathroom and two inhabitable bedrooms. She and Bea hadn’t minded sharing, so grateful to be together again and with their beloved aunt.

      The three of them had worked