“Of course we did. Extremely. But your mother and I wanted so badly to have children and couldn’t. We were young and in love and would have done just about anything to have a family of our own. Since both of us came from small towns to begin with, we took it as a sign to return to our roots. We visited dozens of towns, finally settling on Ashford. I was a successful attorney and pulled every string I could to push the adoption through. We signed all the documents, including the list of requirements, and in no time, we were proud parents living in a great little town where everyone believed you were our biological daughters, leading the life we’d always dreamed of.” He smiled, reminiscing. “We fell in love with you girls the moment we saw you. Alina was wearing this yellow skirt and sweater set, and you were dressed from head to toe in pink, Mac, with a little rainbow ribbon tied around a blond wisp of your hair.”

I gaped. Does the infant mind remember? To this day, pink and rainbow hues are my favorite.

“What other strange requirements did the woman have?” I couldn’t call her “our mother.” She wasn’t. She was the woman who’d left us.

He closed his eyes. “I no longer recall most of them. There’s a legal document tucked away in a box somewhere that your mother and I signed. But there’s one I never forgot.”

I sat up a little straighter.

He opened his eyes. “The first promise we had to make to the adoption agency before they’d even consider putting us on the list of prospective parents was that under no circumstances would we ever let either of you set foot in Ireland.”

I couldn’t get him to go home.

I tried everything.

In his mind, he’d violated his most sacred trust the moment he’d caved in to Alina’s radiant face when she’d announced that she’d won a full scholarship to study abroad—at Trinity, of all places!—by not locking her in her room and forbidding it. He should have threatened, he should have taken her car away, should have tempted her with the offer of a sporty new one if she stayed home. There were a thousand ways he could have stopped her from going, a thousand ways he’d failed.

She’d been so excited, he told me sadly. He hadn’t been able to bring himself to stand in her way. Those conditions they’d agreed to so long ago had seemed as insubstantial as ghosts in the warm, sunny light of day. More than twenty perfect years had passed, and the odd demands accompanying us had lost their immediacy, become the phantom fears of a dying woman.

“She’s dead, then?” I asked in a hushed voice.

“They never told us. We assumed. It was easier that way; we liked the finality of it. No worries that one day someone out there might come to their senses and try to take our girls away. Legal nightmares like that happen all the time.”

“Did you and Mom ever go back and try to find out more about us?”

Dad nodded. “I don’t know if you recall, but Alina was very ill when she was eight and the doctors wanted more information about her medical history than we had. We found the church had burned to the ground, the adoption agency had closed, and the private investigator I hired to look into things couldn’t locate a single ex-employee.” He absorbed the look on my face and smiled faintly. “I know. Odd again. You must understand, Mac, the two of you were ours. We didn’t care where you’d come from, only that you’d come. And that you’re coming home with me now,” he added pointedly. “How long will it take you to pack?”

I sighed. “I’m not packing, Dad.”

“I’m not leaving without you, Mac,” he said.

“You must be Jack Lane,” said Barrons.

I nearly jumped out of my skin. “I wish you’d quit doing that.” I craned my neck to shoot him an over-the-shoulder glare. How did such a large man move so silently? Once again, he was standing behind me while I was having a conversation, and neither of us had heard him approach. It aggravated me even more that he knew my father’s first name. I’d never told him.

Dad rose in that way big, self-assured men have, slowly, stretching to the last quarter inch of his height, and seeming to fill out even larger along the way. His expression was reserved but interested; he was curious to meet my new employer—despite the fact that he’d already decided I wouldn’t be working for him anymore.

His expression changed the instant he saw Barrons. It frosted, shuttered, hardened.

“Jericho Barrons.” Barrons extended his hand.

Dad stared at it, and for a few moments I wasn’t sure he’d take it. Then he inclined his head and the men clasped hands, and held.

And held. Like it was some kind of pissing contest, and whichever man let go first might have to forfeit a ball.

I looked from one to the other, and realized that Barrons and my dad were having one of those wordless conversations he and I have from time to time. Though the language was, by nature, foreign to me, I grew up in the Deep South where a man’s ego is roughly the size of his pickup truck, and women get an early and interesting education in the not-so-subtle roar of testosterone.

She’s my daughter, you prick, and if you’re thinking about your prick when you’re looking at her, I’ll rip it off and hang you by it.

Try.

You’re too old for her. Leave her alone. (I wanted to tell my dad he was way off base with this one, but despite the dogged determination with which I tried to interrupt and force my ocular two cents’ worth in, neither of them would look at me.)

You think? I bet she doesn’t think I’m too old. Why don’t you ask her? (Barrons said that just to irritate him. Of course, I think he’s too old for me. Not that I think about him that way at all.)

I’m taking her home.

Try. (Barrons can be a man of annoyingly few words.)

She’ll choose me over you, Dad told him proudly.

Barrons laughed.

“Mac, baby,” my dad said without ever taking his eyes off Barrons, “get your things. We’re going home.”

I groaned. Of course, I’d choose my dad over Barrons, if given a fair choice. But it wasn’t a fair choice. I hadn’t been given many of them lately. I knew my refusal was going to hurt him. And I needed to hurt him, because I needed to make him leave.

“I’m sorry, Daddy, but I’m staying here,” I said softly.

Jack Lane flinched. His gaze cut away from Barrons to stab at me with cool reproof, but not before I saw the hurt and betrayal beneath the lawyer-face he didn’t paste on quick enough to mask.