Miles grinned at him over the postcard.

“Go, Vivian! Brilliant, I really liked her. What did you say? You love her, too, don’t you? Is she coming back soon?”

Malcolm sighed.

“No.” He looked over at the book Vivian had finished while she was there and left on his end table for him to read. “No, she isn’t.”

Miles dropped the postcard on the table.

“No? Why not? Wait.” Miles gave him that superior teenager look he hated. “What did you do? How did you manage to screw this one up? Did you even answer her?”

Malcolm glared at his nephew.

“None of this is any of your business. You shouldn’t be reading my private correspondence anyway.”

Miles rolled his eyes.

“Well, you shouldn’t be leaving your ‘private correspondence’ around for the whole world to read, especially if it’s on a postcard!” Miles shook his head. “I can’t believe you did this to Vivian. I thought you liked her! You certainly talk about her enough.”

He wanted to wipe the smirk off the little jerk’s face.

“I do like her. Unfortunately, I’m an adult, not a teenager. Just liking someone—even loving someone—isn’t enough to change your whole life. She lives in California, I live in London, there’s no future for us. We shouldn’t have gotten this entangled in the first place.”

Miles sat down next to him.

“That’s your only reason? Are you forgetting airplanes exist?”

Malcolm sighed.

“Miles, it’s not just about the distance; that was only one example. We’re just very different people, and the whole idea is impractical. It’s too risky.”

Miles laughed.

“Risky? What are you risking here? Ooh, is it your feelings?”

He needed to throw his nephew out of his apartment.

“I told you, this is none of your business.”

Miles took another sip of beer.

“So what, then, you’re just going to live the rest of your life knowing that you love her and she loves you but you’re too scared to just go for it?”

“I’m not scared, and I didn’t say I loved her!” Malcolm said.

Miles smirked again.

“You didn’t have to.”

Malcolm stood up to get another beer. And to get away from this conversation. Miles glanced in his direction, opened his mouth once or twice, but didn’t say anything else.

For the next hour, Malcolm tried to concentrate on the football match, but instead he stewed about his conversation with Miles. There were plenty of reasons he hadn’t responded to Vivian. He wasn’t scared; he was just practical. They lived in very different places, they had very different careers, she was direct and effusive and chatty; he was the opposite of all of those things, and it would never work between them.

“You’re right: it’s none of my business,” Miles said out of the blue. “But . . . you’ve said a lot lately about how I should have a baseline of success and respect from the world before following my dreams. But you have that! People respect you more than anyone I know, and instead of taking advantage of that now, it seems like the rest of your life is standing in your own way.” He shrugged. “I just . . . I really liked her.”

Malcolm sighed.

“Yeah. Me too.”

But that was a lie. He knew it was a lot more than that. He just had no idea what to do about it. It all seemed impossible. Too hard, too risky, too complicated. And it might be useless—what if he tried, and it didn’t work out between them, and they’d both sacrificed for no reason? What if she was so angry at him for ignoring her for weeks that she’d realized he wasn’t the person she thought he was?

But what if it was all worth it?

Chapter Eighteen

Vivian had never been one for wallowing. She’d always been in the “let yourself have a good cry and get it all out, then move on to the next thing” camp. At least, that’s the advice she’d always given to Maddie, and to various patients and friends.

She’d tried hard to take her own advice, over these past three weeks since she’d sent that postcard to Malcolm. But the tears just wouldn’t come.

They’d hovered, so close she could feel them, ever since she’d dropped that postcard in the mailbox. When she sent it, she’d hoped he’d call her as soon as he got it, time difference or no time difference, to tell her he was falling in love with her, too. She’d thought she had reason to hope; that the tiara was a symbol of how he felt for her.

But then she worried she’d read it wrong, and that he might send her a card back to say he had feelings for her, but that their lives were too different and far apart to do anything about how they felt. And of course, at three in the morning, she thought he’d say he’d had a great time with her over the holidays, but love didn’t come into it, or sometimes that he’d send her a postcard and not mention her declaration at all.

She didn’t, however, think he might just leave her in limbo like this. Forever.

It had taken her a while to realize that was what he was going to do. For the first week, she’d checked her phone and her mailbox obsessively. After a week had gone by, she’d gotten worried, that maybe something was wrong, that something had happened to him. But no, that was the useful thing about him being an actual public figure—she’d googled him, and everything seemed fine. Then she wondered if he’d never gotten her card at all, and that’s why he hadn’t responded to it. But she’d rejected that idea; he would have kept writing to her if that had been the case. No, this silence seemed pointed.

She’d thought he was better than this.

She knew she deserved better than this.

At least she was glad he’d helped her realize how much she loved her job. She was still the interim director until they hired someone permanently, but she’d gotten called in to deal with a tricky case earlier that week, one that had made her proud of the work she’d done, and happy she’d get to go back to that work full-time soon. She’d helped a family deal with the aftermath of a car accident, navigated the various services that applied to them, and repaired a few relationships between family members on the way. She didn’t flatter herself that those relationships would stay repaired forever, but at least it was a step, and the whole family had seemed genuinely grateful to her for her work with them. The teenage patient had been released that day, and she hoped he’d come back to visit, in maybe a few months, or a year, and let her know how he and his family were all doing.

She knew she was doing the right thing, she knew she was in the right place, she knew she’d made the right decision about that job. This was her talent, this was her skill, this was what she loved to do.

She just wished . . .

She shook her head and turned on the radio.

Ten minutes later, she pulled into her driveway. She smiled at the flowers in her yard as she got out of her car; thank goodness spring seemed like it was finally here. When she turned to her front steps, she jumped. Why was someone sitting on her front steps?

She backed away, ready to duck inside her car and decide whether to call the police or to just wait the guy out. She usually tried to avoid calling the police, but she didn’t know what to do in a situation like this. She was a social worker, sure, but—