"Well," Ford said when a Mustang convertible in fire-engine red pulled in behind Cilla's car, and Spock tore down the steps to spin in delirious circles, "it had to happen sometime."

The vivid color of the car had nothing on the windswept red mop of the woman who waved from the pa.s.senger seat, who tipped down her big, Jackie O sungla.s.ses to peer at Cilla over the top as she stepped out onto peep-toe wedges to greet the bouncing, spinning dog.

The driver unfolded himself. It was the height and the build that alerted Cilla, even before she got a good look at the shape of the jaw.

Her palms automatically went damp. This was definitely meet- the-parents. An audition she invariably failed.

"h.e.l.lo, my cutie-pie!" Penny Sawyer clamped her hands on Ford's cheeks once he'd walked down the slope to her. She kissed him noisily. Her laugh was like gravel soaked in whiskey.

"Hey, Mama. Daddy." He got a one-armed bear hug from the man with hair of Cary Grant silver. "What are y'all doing?"

"Heading out to Susie and Bill's. Texas Hold 'Em tournament." Penny poked Ford in the chest while Ford's father squatted to shake hands with Spock. "We had to drive right by, so we stopped in case you wanted in."

"I always lose at poker."

"You don't have gambling blood." Penny turned her avid eyes on Cilla. "But you do have company. You don't have to tell me who this is. You look just like your grandmama." Penny moved forward, hands outstretched. "The most beautiful woman I ever saw."

"Thank you." Left with no choice, Cilla wiped her hands hurriedly on her pants before taking Penny's. "It's nice to meet you."

"Cilla McGowan, my parents, Penny and Rod Sawyer."

"I know your daddy very well." Penny shot a sly glance at her husband.

"Now you cut that out," Rod told her. "Always trying to make me jealous. Heard a lot of good things about you," he said to Cilla.

"Heard hardly a syllable out of this one." Penny poked Ford again.

"I am the soul of discretion."

Penny let out her quick, rumbling laugh again, then dug into her purse. She pulled out an enormous Milk Bone that sent Spock into a medley of happy growls, grunts and groans while his body quivered and his bulging eyes shone.

"Be a man," she said to the dog, and Spock rose up on his hind legs to dance in place. "That's my sweetheart," she crooned and held the biscuit out. Spock nipped it and, with a full-body wag, ran off to chomp and chew. "I have to spoil him," she said to Cilla. "He's the closest thing resembling a grandchild I've gotten out of this one."

"You have two of the human variety from Alice," Ford reminded her.

"And they get cookies when they visit." She gestured to the house across the road. "It's a good thing you're doing, bringing that place back to life. It deserves it. Your grandfather's going to be at the game tonight, Ford. My daddy was madly in love with your grandmother."

Cilla blinked. "Is that so?"

"Head over. He has scores of pictures she let him take over the years. He wouldn't sell them for any price, even when I had a notion to frame a few and display them at the bookstore."

"Mama owns Book Ends in the Village," Ford told Cilla.

"Really? I've been there. I bought some landscaping and design books from you. It's a nice store."

"Our little hole in the wall," Penny said. "Oh now, look, we're going to be late. Why do you let me talk so much, Rod?"

"I have no idea." "Y'all change your mind about the game, we'll make sure you get a seat at a table. Cilla, they'd just love to have you, too," Penny called out as Rod pulled her down to the car. "I'm going to have Daddy bring those pictures over for you to look at."

"Thank you. Nice to meet you."

"Ford! You bring Cilla over for dinner sometime."

"In the car, Penny."

"I'm getting, I'm getting. You hear?"

"Yes, ma'am," Ford called back. "Win a bundle."

"I'm feeling lucky !" Penny shouted as Rod zipped into reverse, then zoomed on down the road.

Cilla said, "Wow."

"I know. It's like being lightly brushed by the edge of a hurricane. Leaves you a little surprised and dazed, and sure that much more and you'd be flat on your a.s.s."

"You look a lot like your father, who is very handsome, by the way. But your mother? She's dazzling."

"She is, as her own father likes to say, a corker."

"Corker." Cilla laughed as they walked into the house. With a polite burp, Spock trotted in with them. "Well, I like her, and I tend to eye mothers suspiciously. Speaking of corks. Where's the champagne?"

"Spare fridge, mudroom."

"I'll get that, you get the pizza."

Moments later, she came back into the kitchen with a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and a puzzled frown. "Ford, what are you doing with all that paint?"

"The what?" He looked over from setting the oven. "Oh that. There's a zillion gallons of primer, a zillion of exterior red, and a slightly lesser amount of exterior white, for trim."

As her heart did a slow somersault, she set the bottle on the counter. "You bought the barn paint."

"I don't believe in jinxes. I do believe in positive thinking, which is just really hope anyway."

Everything inside her shifted, settled. Opened. She stepped to him, laid a hand on his cheek, laid her lips on his. Warm as velvet, tender as a wish, the kiss flowed. Even when he shifted so she pressed back against the counter, it stayed slow and silky, deep and dreamy.

When their lips parted, she sighed, then rested her cheek against his in a gesture of simple affection she gave to very few. "Ford." She drew back, sighed again. "My head's too full of Steve to meet your requirements for s.e.x tonight."

"Ah. Well." He trailed a fingertip up her arm. "Realistically, they're more loose guidelines than strict requirements."

She laughed, caressed his cheek once more. "They're good requirements. I'd like to stick to them."

"Got no one to blame but myself." He stepped around her to slide the pizza into the oven.

"So we'll eat bad pizza, get a little buzzed on champagne and not have s.e.x."

Ford shook his head as he removed the foil and the cage on the bottle. "Almost my favorite thing to do with a beautiful woman."

"I don't fall for guys. It's a policy," she said when he paused and glanced over at her. "Considering the influence of inherited traits-and the track record of my grandmother and mother in that area-I've taken a pa.s.s. Steve was an exception, and that just showed how it can go. So I don't fall for guys. But I seem to be falling for you."

The cork exploded out of the bottle as he stared at her. "Does that scare you?"

"No." He cleared his throat. "A little. A moderate amount."

"I thought it might because it's got me jumpy. So I figured heads-up."

"I appreciate it. Do you have, like, a definition for the term 'fall for'?" G.o.d, she thought as she looked at him. Oh my G.o.d, she was a goner. "Why don't you get the gla.s.ses? I think we could both use a drink."

SHE HIRED PAINTERS, and had some of the crew haul the paint to the barn. She talked to the cops, and made a deal with a local body shop to paint the door of her truck. Whenever she caught sight of the white van, she had no qualms about shooting up her middle finger.

No evidence, the cops said. Nothing to place Hennessy at the scene on the night Steve was attacked. No way to prove he decorated her truck with hate.

So she'd wait him out, Cilla decided. And if he made another move, she'd be ready.

Meanwhile, Steve had been b.u.mped down to a regular room, and his mother had hopped back on her broomstick to head west.

Dripping sweat from working in the attic, Cilla stood studying the skeleton of the master bath. "It's looking good, Buddy. It's looking good for tomorrow's inspection."

"I don't know why in G.o.d's world anybody needs all these shower-heads. "

"Body jets. It's not just a shower, it's an experience. Did you see the fixtures? They came in this morning."

"I saw. They're good-looking," he said, grudgingly enough to make her smile.

"How are you coming with Mister Steam?"

"I'll get it, I'll get it. Don't breathe down my neck."

She made faces at his back. "Well, speaking of showers, I need one before I go in to see Steve."

"Water's turned off. You want this done, water's got to stay off."

"Right. s.h.i.t. I'll grab one over at Ford's."

She didn't miss the smirk he shot her, but opted to ignore it. She grabbed clean clothes, stuffed them in her purse. Downstairs, she had a few words with Dobby, answered a hail from the kitchen area, then spent another ten minutes outside discussing foundation plantings.

She dashed across the road before someone could catch her again, and decided to slip into the shower off the gym rather than disturb Ford.

It wasn't until she was clean, dry and wrapped in a big white towel that she realized she'd left her purse-and the clothes in it-sitting on her front veranda.

"Oh, c.r.a.p."

She looked down at the sweaty, grungy clothes she'd stripped off and dragged a hand through her clean hair. "No, I am not crawling back into them."

She'd have to disturb Ford after all. Bundling her underwear and baggy work shorts in her T-shirt, she tied it off and carried the bundle with her.

She opened the door to the kitchen, to a very surprised Ford.

"Oh, hi. Listen-"

"Ford, you didn't tell us you had company."

"I didn't know I did. Hey, Cilla."

Her expression went from slightly harried to mildly ill as she looked over and saw Ford's mother sitting at the kitchen bar with an older man.

While she stood frozen, Spock dashed over to rub against her bare legs. "Oh G.o.d. Oh G.o.d. Just ... G.o.d. I'm sorry. Excuse me."

Ford grabbed her arm. "Back up like that, you'll pitch right down the steps. You've met my mother. This is my grandfather, Charlie Quint."

"Oh, well, h.e.l.lo. I apologize. I'm, well, what can I say? Ford, I didn't want to interrupt you. I thought you'd be working. They had to turn the water off at my place for a while, so I ran over to use your shower downstairs-thanks for that. And then realized that when I was being distracted by varieties of spirea, I left my bag and my clothes sitting on the veranda. I came up to ask if you wouldn't mind running over there and, you know, getting them. My clothes."

"Sure." He sniffed at her. "My soap smells better on you than on me."

"Hah."

"Cilla, I bet you'd like a nice gla.s.s of iced tea." Penny rose to get a gla.s.s.

"Oh, don't bother, I-"

"No bother. Ford, go on now, get this girl her clothes."

"All right. But it's kind of a shame. Isn't it, Granddad?"

"Pretty legs on a pretty woman are easy on the eyes. Even old eyes. You look more like her in person than you do in pictures I've seen of you."

How much more awkward could it be? Cilla wondered when Ford winked and slipped out. "You knew my grandmother."

"I did. I fell in love with her the first time I saw her on the movie screen. She was just a little girl, and I was just a boy, and that was the sweetest kind of puppy love. You never forget your first."

"No, I guess you don't."

"Here you go, honey. Why don't you sit down?"

"I'm fine. Thanks." She stared at the gla.s.s Penny offered and wondered how to take it as she had one hand holding the bundle of filthy clothes, and the other clutched on the towel.

"Oh, are those your dirty clothes? Just give those to me. I'll toss them in Ford's machine for you."

"Oh, no, don't-"

"It's no trouble." Penny pulled them away, pushed the cold gla.s.s into Cilla's hand. "Daddy, why don't you show Cilla the pictures? We were going to drop by to do just that," Penny continued from the mudroom. "Just stopped to say hi to Ford first. My goodness! You must've worked up a storm today."

Casting her eyes to the ceiling, Cilla moved closer to the counter as Charlie opened the photo alb.u.m.

"These are wonderful!"

At the first look, she forgot she was wearing only a towel and edged closer. "I haven't seen these before."

"My personal collection," he told her with a wistful smile. "This one here?" He tapped a finger under a picture. "That's the first one I ever took of her."