“No. But thank you.”

“Tess—”

“You’ve helped me in other ways. Speaking of which, we need to go over marketing plans. How about tonight? Or tomorrow night? Doesn’t matter really, I suddenly have a lot of free nights.” Her voice got quiet and a whole lot less excited. “I don’t know how you do it,” she said softly, letting her pain be heard. “I loved feeling committed again.”

“I’m perfectly happy alone.”

Liar, liar.

“With no hold on Kevin? Really? Even knowing another woman could come along and snag him at any time? I’m just not built like that. I want a tie to a man. I want a diamond, damn it. I wanted that from Mike.”

“Tess—”

“When you meet the right man, you’ll understand.”

“And how am I supposed to know when I meet the right guy?”

“Because it will hit you like a one-two punch,” Tess answered softly. “You’ll realize he makes you smile, he makes you laugh, he makes you think.” She sighed. “And you don’t think you can live without him.”

“Jesus, Tess.”

“I know, it sounds so dramatic, but it’s the truth. You’ll just know.”

Mia supposed the problem wasn’t the knowing, but whether or not she even had the gene to love like that. For so long it hadn’t mattered. She’d had other things to obsess over, things like surviving, and her job. Meeting her goals.

But she’d done all that, and suddenly the life she’d always pictured herself with—the great job, great house, fat checkbook—all seemed just as Hope had told her…

Lonely. Everything.

And deep down an even scarier truth hit Mia—she no longer was satisfied by any of it.

Which meant she needed that elusive “more.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Mia had her doubts about the day when she got a message that Dick needed to see her. In his office, he looked at her solemnly. “Have a seat, Mia.”

She shifted on her heels, feeling suddenly extremely vulnerable. “Okay.” She sat. “Let me be hopeful. You’re going to tell me you’re firing Ted for all his erratic behavior.”

“No.” Regret actually tweaked his features, and for a moment he looked almost human. “It’s you I have to let go.”

She stared at him as her world tilted off its axis. “What?”

“I’m sorry, Mia. We’re having cutbacks, you know that. I have to lose three account execs. You’re not meant to work in a place like this, as part of a team. You need to run your own ship, and helm it. It’s nothing personal.”

“Oh, it’s personal,” she bit out. “It’s extremely personal. Ted—”

He was shaking his head. “Had nothing to do with it. This was a decision based on your inability to play as part of a team. I’m sorry, Mia, but I’m going to have to ask you to pack up your things and leave.”

Mia’s heart had been racing, but right then it seemed to screech to a shocking halt. As if in slow motion, she stood up and gathered her pride to shake his hand. “Don’t be sorry. I’m going to be okay.”

“I know it. I’m banking on you being extremely successful on your own. Good luck, Mia.”

Somehow she walked out of there. I’m going to be okay? Had she really said that?

How? Her job was gone. She was her job!

Turning the corner she came face-to-face with Margot, who was smiling. “Hey, Mia, you should see the guys, they’re—” She frowned. “What’s the matter?”

“I—” She couldn’t bring herself to say it. She’d lost her job, her identity, and, with it, apparently her bravado. “I have to go.”

“You look pale. What’s happened?” She looked back at the direction Mia had come from, Dick’s office, and gasped. “Ohmigod! He let you go.”

Mia narrowed her eyes at Margot. “Why would you think that?”

“He did, didn’t he?” Margot couldn’t quite keep her satisfaction in.

Mia stared at her, thoughts racing as she remembered all those times she’d been sure it had been Ted out for her blood.

But had it really been Ted?

Or Margot? How many times had Margot whined about Mia’s accounts, her office, her everything? “You know what I think, Margot?” Mia asked softly. “That you’ve been the one messing with me. That you started that fire in my office. That you messed with my files.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Margot crossed her arms, stepped back. “I didn’t even know how to access that Runner account. And as for the Anderson—”

“Wait.” Mia shook her head, then let out a laugh. And another. Because if she didn’t laugh, she was going to strangle the woman in front of her. “No one knew about the Runner account except me and—”

“Margot.” This from Dick, who’d opened his door at some point. He was frowning, fiercely. “I’d like to see you. In my office.”

“Um, I’m due in a meeting—”

“Now,” he said.

“And I bet you poisoned my plant,” Mia whispered as Margot moved past her.

Margot whipped around, all pretense gone, face furious. “No, that you killed all on your own.”

Dick pointed at Mia. “Please wait right there.”

Mia watched them vanish into his office, then felt an odd ping between her shoulder blades.

At least ten people had stopped working or walking or talking, and were staring at her.

She stared back and everyone galvanized into action, hustled to become busy again. She herself was nearly overcome with a need to look busy as well, but Dick had asked her to wait. Despite his faults, he was a man with ethics. When he discovered what Margot had done, he’d probably fire her instead and offer Mia back her job.

She went to her office and looked at her gorgeous desk. Damn, she was going to miss the desk. The plant sat on it, leaves all gone, dying, mocking her.

Lifting her chin, she picked up her purse and walked out, prepared to go as she’d arrived, with only the clothes on her back.

And yet at the last minute, she ran back in for her nearly dead plant. It would go well with the freshly fumigated house.

Mia’s cell phone began ringing before she’d gotten on the freeway. Dick. She let him go visit her voice mail. Pride was a terrible thing but, damn it, at the moment it was all she had.

Traffic sucked, of course, but she looked at it as a silver lining. She wouldn’t be dealing with it again, seeing as she no longer worked downtown.

Not a team player.

Maybe she was having a nightmare, and when she woke up she’d be standing in the middle of a single-wide next to a sewer plant, with eight kids and a husband in a wife-beater T-shirt with his beer gut hanging out, screaming for his pork chops.

The thought made her weak in the knees and she pinched herself to make sure she wasn’t asleep.

Nope, she was wide awake, and this shocking reality was her life.

A little while later Mia picked up a suspiciously quiet Hope at the teen center. The kid hopped into the Audi, slapped on her seat belt, and stared straight ahead.

“How was your day?” Mia asked, as if things were normal.

“Can we just go?”

Mia looked at the teen center, then back at the antsy teen. “What, you rig the place to blow and you need a getaway car?”

“You think I have that much talent?”

“Honey, I know it.” She pulled away from the curb. Silly to be wishing she’d caught even a little glimpse of Kevin. She didn’t need a glimpse of the man.

But, God, she did. Today she really did, even if he was imprinted on her brain, the whole tall, lean, rangy length of him, with those smiling eyes and wicked smile…Yeah, probably a mind-blowing orgasm from him would be greatly beneficial in lowering her stress level. “The house should be cleaned and ready, I had a service come in today.”

Hope nodded and said nothing.

They drove home in silence, with Hope not noticing—or caring—that Mia had an elephant of panic in the car with them. “Yeah, I had a great day, thanks,” Mia said as Hope left the car and walked ahead of her into the house.

Mia just shook her head and felt her phone vibrating in her pocket. Tempted to answer it and agree to take her job back, pride be damned, she shut the thing off entirely. “You hungry?” she asked Hope as they went inside.

The girl had headed for the stairs, but went still. “Um…no.” She looked down, her expression giving out a big warning to Mia.

“What?” Mia asked. “Look, are you sure you didn’t blow up the teen center or something?”

“Okay, you caught me. I’m in cahoots with Satan, and occasionally I blow up entire teen centers just for fun.”

“You know what? Go ahead, step on my last nerve, see if I care. My head is only about ready to blow off my shoulders at the moment.”

“It’s always ready to blow,” Hope pointed out.

“Today I mean it.”

Hope rolled her eyes.

“Now what did I tell you about doing that? Speaking of which, could you stop telling people I’m threatening you with physical violence? It makes the other parents a little anxious, and I wouldn’t want you to lose out on friends on my account.”

Hope’s smile vanished. “I don’t have any friends.”

“Gee, really? With your warm, soft attitude? Imagine that.”

Hope went taut as a bow, and Mia could have smacked herself upside the head. This was one of those tread-carefully moments that Tess had told her about, where bull-in-a-china-shop Mia wasn’t needed, but a gentler, kinder Mia. “Okay, listen. I had a bad day. I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re right.” Hope’s face crumpled and she sat on the step, burying her face in her hands. “I got Adam suspended and now all the kids hate me. God, I hate boys! Every one of them are worthless and annoying.”

Mia climbed the stairs and heavily sat down next to her. “Actually not all men are worthless and annoying. Some are dead.”

Hope let out a sound that might have been a snort of agreement, or a sob.

Mia lifted a hand to touch her, then let it fall back at her side, but another sound came from Hope, a definite sob this time. “The hell with it,” Mia muttered and scooted closer, wrapping an arm around Hope’s skinny shoulders, feeling a little like crying herself. If there was a worse day since the one all those years ago when she’d driven herself west and never looked back, she couldn’t remember it—and there’d been some pretty bad ones, especially in the beginning.

They sat that way for a long moment, silent, miserable, with Mia wishing things were different, that she could actually help make things better for Hope, or at least take away her misery. She cared about the kid, damn it, far more than she’d thought possible.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. Mia lifted her head hopefully, thinking maybe it was Kevin. He could fix this; he could fix anything. But the damn truth was she just wanted to see him. “Just a minute,” she whispered to Hope and got up.

A tall, skinny, dark-haired kid stood on her doorstep. “Hi,” he said, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “Um, is Hope home?”

Mia looked over her shoulder. Still out of view on the stairs, Hope lifted her head, swiped quickly at her tears, and rose to her feet. “Cole?” she said, and came down the stairs.

He flashed her an uncertain grin that for some reason endeared him to Mia. “I just thought I’d see if you wanted to do tonight’s science project with me.”

Hope had black makeup smeared beneath her reddened eyes. Her hair had fallen out of its ponytail. She looked young, uncertain, and adorable, and right then and there, like the last piece of a puzzle falling into place, Mia fell the rest of the way in love with her.

“I don’t know if we can,” Hope said and jammed her hands into her pockets.

They both looked at Mia. “It’s homework, right?”

Hope nodded.

“Well, then what a perfect way to torture you.”

Hope rolled her eyes but couldn’t hide her pleasure. The two of them started to walk into the kitchen, but the doorbell rang again.

Mia opened the door and this time was caught utterly by surprise at the sight of Kevin. Wearing jeans and a white T-shirt, he looked so good she stood there for a startled second, just taking him in.

He didn’t help the situation any by shooting her his smile, the one that always went straight to her throat. He lifted a bottle of wine. “So what’s cooking?”

She couldn’t have heard him right. “Cooking?”

“Uh oh,” Hope said behind her.

Mia turned to look at her. “Uh oh what?”

Hope rolled her lips inward. “Can I, like, talk to you for a minute?” Without waiting for a reply, she came forward and pulled Mia into the hall, out of hearing range. “Okay, listen, this isn’t going to go over well, but just remember, I was looking to piss you off.”

Mia crossed her arms. “Keep talking.”

Hope winced. “I sort of told him you were cooking him dinner.”

“You what?”

“Shh.” Hope put her hand over Mia’s mouth. “I’m sorry,” she said earnestly. “I was being a stupid teenager, okay? I was mad because everyone in the world was happy except me.”

Mia pulled her hand from her mouth. “Oh, no, you don’t. You read that in my Cosmo mag. Ten Reasons Why Teens Act Out.”