"Getting ready to cut into a slice of strawberry cheesecake."

Spring groaned. "You're at Sweetings?"

"Better than that," Winter said.

Spring knew what that meant. Winter was at Summer's place. And if Summer was baking, there had been some sort of trauma or drama related to the wedding planning. "How much is left?"

"I'll hide a slice for you."

She didn't have a shift at the Common Ground clinic today. Deciding that talking about Summer's wedding plans was preferable to thinking about David Camden's plans to turn her farmhouse and land into a condo development with convenience stores, she hung up with Winter and got up from the bench in City Hall Park.

Spring paused at the park bench where the elderly black man still sat. He'd placed the cup on the ground and watched as she approached.

"Hi, Sweet Willie," she said.

He bowed his head as if tipping a hat to her. "Afternoon, Doc. Heard I missed a good one in there."

Spring scrunched her face up as she sat next to him. "That's one word to describe it." She looked him over, trying to be subtle about the cursory exam but knowing he wasn't fooled. She opened her bag.

"Uh-uh, Doc. I don't need a handout and I gots plenty of them cards of yours for when I decide I need some doctoring." He tapped his forehead. "You done give me so many of 'em, I gots the address and the numbers memorized."

Then, as if to prove his words true, he rattled off the address of the Common Ground Free Clinic and both its main telephone number and her mobile number.

She smiled and closed the bag. "All right. You're on to my tricks."

He grinned, and Spring realized that for a homeless man, Sweet Willie was awfully grounded and seemed at peace. Other homeless men and women that she encountered at the clinic or on the street seemed to have a ready tale of woe to share with anyone who would listen.

Sweet Willie seemed, for lack of a better word, content.

She wondered if maybe not doing so much was the key to contentment. She'd been searching for it for a while, but that particular emotional state always seemed to elude her. So she'd thrust her mind and her body into patient care at the hospital and at the clinic and during the hours when she wasn't doing that, she worked to restore old buildings and educate people about the history of the city.

Maybe she needed to adopt Sweet Willie's model. Just sit on a park bench on a pretty day and watch the world go by.

She regarded the man. "Would you at least let me give you a ride somewhere?"

He shook his head. "No, ma'am. I'm right where I need to be."

She patted his back and rose. "All right, then. You have yourself a good rest of the day."

"You, too, Doc."

Sweet Willie was still on her mind when she arrived at Summer's. She parked on the street in front of the house rather than block Winter in the driveway.

At the door, she girded herself for the happy discussion that would take place inside. The thought of it gave her a pang, and she almost turned around to head back downtown where she knew she could sit in companionable silence with Sweet Willie.

"Stop being ridiculous, Spring," she said.

"Who are you talking to?"

She hadn't even heard the door open, yet there stood Summer in shorts and a scoop-neck top looking like a model for a designer's casual-elegant line of sportswear, while Spring thought she herself looked positively matronly in the plain wrap dress she'd worn to work that morning in antic.i.p.ation of the afternoon meeting at city hall. The shoes were the only concession she'd made, but they had remained in the car until she'd arrived at city hall, where she'd met up with her mother and Mrs. Lundsford.

Spring shook her head. "Just muttering to myself," she said, entering. She kicked off her shoes in the foyer and dropped her handbag on a table just inside the door.

Summer trailed behind her toward the parlor where they usually gathered.

"It took you long enough," Winter said. "I had to fight them off to save a slice for you."

"After the day I've had, I think I need more than a single slice of cheesecake," Spring said.

Winter handed over the plate, and Summer chuckled. "I guess that's my cue to make espresso."

"Make it a double shot," Spring said.

"How can you sleep with that stuff in your system?"

"I built up an immunity while doing my residency. It's never worn off," Spring said, sinking her fork into the tip of the slice of cheesecake. "What's up with this?" she said lifting the plate.

They all knew that Summer only baked when she was stressed out.

Winter leaned back to make sure their younger sister was out of earshot.

"The wedding," Winter reported. "Summer wants a small affair, just family and close friends."

"And Cameron wants a royal to-do?"

Winter shook her head. "He wants whatever will make Summer happy and would just as soon have Reverend Graham marry them right here in the kitchen with the mailman and the trash collector as witnesses than go through with a big wedding that's starting to make her miserable."

"So, what's the problem?"

"Your mother and his mother," Summer said, reentering the parlor. "I knew you'd blab just as soon as my back was turned," she told Winter.

For her part, Winter didn't look repentant. "It wasn't blabbing. It was keeping Spring informed."

Summer handed Spring the little espresso cup and a coaster, then plopped into the chair facing the sofa where her sisters sat.

"What about me?" Winter complained.

"Blabbers can make their own coffee," Summer intoned.

Shaking her head, Winter rose. "I get no respect."

"And deserve none," Summer shot back.

Spring smiled at the bantering. Some things never changed no matter how old they were.

"Where's our merry fourth?" she asked of their youngest sister.

"Autumn has a game at the rec center tonight," Summer said. "Don't ask me which sweaty sport it is because I have not the first idea."

"It's a soccer clinic," Winter hollered from the kitchen, from where there suddenly came sounds of much clanging and swooshing.

"How can she hear over all that racket?" Summer whispered to Spring.

"I heard that!" came from the voice from the kitchen.

Summer's blue eyes widened, and she cast a glance toward the kitchen.

Spring laughed and shook her head. One of these days it would dawn on Summer that she always asked the same question about Winter's hearing, and, knowing her sister, Winter could always antic.i.p.ate Summer's next question to whomever was nearby. She didn't have to actually hear it to know Summer would ask.

After taking a sip of the espresso, Spring placed the little cup on the coaster on the end table. "What's going on with Mom and Cameron's mother?"

Summer sighed. "Lovie got it into her head that it would be just lovely to have the wedding at the country club and mentioned that to Carol, who just adored the idea of her son getting hitched at a country club."

"It's your wedding. The bride gets to decide."

Summer gave her a look, and Spring knew her sister was right. Once Lovie Darling got her mind wrapped around an idea, it was hard to let it go.

Winter returned with a cup of tea in one hand and a Diet c.o.ke in the other. "If I were evil like you, I'd just toss the can your way," she told Summer, handing her the soft drink.

"What was all that racket if you were making tea?"

"I was trying to use your fancy machine," Winter said.

"Guess it'll have to go to the repair shop now," Summer intoned. The comment earned another grin from Spring.

"Love you, too," Winter said, settling back on the sofa.

"We're thinking about eloping."

That earned Summer raised eyebrows from both sisters.

"Oh my," Winter eventually said.

"I know, I know," Summer said. "Lovie will have a cow. But I've had a big wedding before. And Cameron just wants to get married without all the hoopla."

"Then do it," Spring advised.

Summer tucked a foot under her on the chair and bit her bottom lip, then pulled a tube of lip gloss from her shorts pocket and applied it to her mouth. "It feels wrong," she said. "Like cheating."

With the elopement avenue closed, Spring asked, "Have you given either of the mothers a date?"

She nodded. "Next spring. In May. I like that month. The early flowers are in bloom."

"Mom isn't paying for anything, is she?" The question, which Spring had just been about to ask, came from Winter.

"Goodness, no," Summer said. "She and Daddy gave me a wedding already. I wouldn't hear of it. The engagement party is the concession-slash-compromise," she said with air quotes, "that we made on that score."

Spring bit back a sigh. The engagement party. This was the last thing she'd wanted to talk about.

"You know," Summer said, "I wouldn't be in this bind with her if one of you would bother to find a decent guy to marry."

"Operative word being decent," Winter said. "My last date was a disaster."

"When'd you go on a date?"

Winter stuck her tongue out at Summer in answer to the question.

"He was a decent enough guy," Spring said. "He just turned rotten when he forgot to tell you about the criminal convictions."

"What?" Summer squeaked. "Why don't I know this? What happened? Who is he?"

Spring reached for her espresso. Winter sipped her tea and then calmly said, "How many are on the guest list for the engagement party?"

Not so easily put off by the tactic, Summer narrowed her eyes at her sisters. "I want to know what's going on."

"Nothing," Winter said. "That's the point. Now, back to your little soiree."

Summer sighed. "At the rate you-know-who is going, we'll need to rent the country club for the engagement party."

"I thought it was supposed to be at The Compound," Winter said.

"It is. In the garden. You know, a nice little backyard garden party. How are you two coming along on dates, by the way? It'll be so much better if all four of us have some eye candy on the arm."

"Eye candy? Since when do you talk like that?"

Summer blushed. "I heard someone at Manna say that. She was talking about a couple of the firefighters who have been volunteering there."

"Uh-huh," Winter said.

Spring had already made her position on this known on two previous occasions and had no intention of changing her mind. The last thing she needed was some hapless man getting the wrong idea about her interest in him by inviting him to escort her to a family affair like an engagement party. She'd already run through a mental list of potential doctors and staffers at the hospital, and every single one of them would come to the wrong conclusion about such an invitation. The rest of her social acquaintances were married or nonexistent.

She could, of course, ask Sweet Willie to escort her. The fact of the matter was she felt far more comfortable with him than with someone who might be considered more socially acceptable. The leech she'd almost married years ago had the sort of pedigree that would appeal to most women. He'd said and done all the right things to woo her and sweep her off her feet. What he lacked was human decency or a conscience. He was after one thing, and Spring's heart was not it. The only good thing that had come of the debacle was that vows had not been exchanged between them.

"Spring?"

She blinked and focused on her sisters. "Yes?"

"You weren't listening to a word I said," Summer accused.

"Guilty as charged," Spring said. "I was thinking about-"

"Oh, my goodness!" Summer exclaimed. "Today was the planning commission meeting. I totally forgot. How did it go?"

From one topic she didn't want to talk about straight into another.

Spring sighed and resigned herself to rehashing the fiasco that had been the meeting-leaving out the parts about her private interactions with David Camden.