The Cliff House. RaeAnne Thayne

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      “Of course you should have. It was your idea in the first place! We were miserable together.”

      “I don’t remember being miserable. I remember being madly in love. You’ve always been the only one who gets me, babe.”

      She so did not want to have this conversation. Not when Mari could come back into the room at any moment.

      Once, this man had been everything to her. When she found out she was pregnant, she had been over the moon, couldn’t wait to run away with him to Los Angeles so they could get married and he could become the big star they both seemed to know was his fate.

      She had sacrificed everything for his music career. Even while pregnant and in the months after having Mari, she had worked three jobs, checking in a supermarket in the mornings, delivering pizzas in the afternoon and waiting tables at night.

      When his momentum started to build and he found representation that believed in their vision of him, too, they thought all their dreams had come true.

      She and Cruz might have made it work. There were certainly couples that could handle juggling a family and standing in the limelight, too, when one of them had a high-powered, very public career. Beatriz and Cruz Romero hadn’t been one of those couples.

      They started to fight about his drinking and drug use, about his friends, about the other women he couldn’t seem to resist.

      They had loved each other passionately, but little by little that love had dried up, until there had been nothing left but the empty husks of what they had once been to each other.

      Now, apparently, Cruz wanted to see if they could resurrect those seeds.

      “I want you and Mari in my life again,” he said with the same earnestness he brought to his ballads that made teenage girls everywhere go weak-kneed. “Every day. The three of us against the world. I want the chance to prove to you I’ve changed. I’m a different man than the one who let you go.”

      “Because a crazed fan came at you with a knife.”

      “Because I’ve grown up. I’ve come to realize nothing else matters but you and Mari.”

      He reached for her hand, wrapping both of his around it. “You were the best thing I ever had going for me, babe. I’ve always known that. I would never have come this far without you.”

      She couldn’t deny there was some truth to that. She had helped shape his early career, cowriting some of his early songs and laying the groundwork for the awards, sold-out tours and multiplatinum record sales that would follow.

      She had walked away from that world, had devoted the past five years here in Cape Sanctuary to giving their child a normal life and rebuilding the jagged pieces of her heart.

      How could he simply stroll into her home, utter a few words and think she would be willing to jump right back into the mess?

      She slipped her hand from his and moved to put a chair between them.

      Cruz noted her movement with a frown. “You have that look on your face.”

      “What look?”

      “The Cruz-is-loco look.”

      “Of course I think you’re crazy! I’m sorry, but you can’t just walk in here after we’ve been happily divorced all these years and drop a bombshell like this on me without any warning!”

      “I’m laying my cards out on the table from the very start. I want another chance with you. You don’t have to make any decisions right now. I knew it wouldn’t be that easy. I betrayed your trust.”

      “Again and again and again,” she pointed out.

      He stuck his lower lip out, looking remarkably like Mari used to as a toddler when she wanted a toy in the store. “I know there’s a price for my bad behavior but I think I’ve been paying that all these years.”

      “Have you?”

      “I’ve been without you and my little girl. Isn’t that enough of a price? I don’t want to spend the rest of my life alone. I still care about you and want to see if we could rebuild something on the ashes of what we burned down.”

      “Let me guess. That’s a new song you’re working on.”

      “It should be, right?” He grinned, teeth gleaming, and she could feel herself weaken. She was as susceptible to that famous Cruz Romero smile as the rest of the female population of the world, she couldn’t deny.

      Fortunately, she was saved from having to answer and from her own weaknesses by the appearance of their daughter, who hurried into the room and right back to her father’s side.

      “Can I stay at Casa Del Mar tonight, Daddy?”

      A few years ago he probably would have said yes, leaving Bea to explain to her child that there were certain steps that had to be taken first. This time, after a quick glance in her direction, he shook his head. “Not tonight. I’m sorry. But soon, I promise.”

      Marisol huffed a little but accepted his words. She couldn’t seem to stop hugging her father, clearly delighted to have him in town.

      Bea suspected that if it was up to their child, she and Cruz would have reunited years ago. Marisol would love nothing more than for the two of them to get back together. Whenever Cruz left after one of his infrequent visits to town or whenever she returned from staying with him somewhere on the road or at his house in Southern California, she would mope around for days.

      Bea knew too well how that felt, to pine for something she couldn’t have.

      Shane Landry wants more than friendship from you, Cruz had said. You’re the only one who doesn’t see it.

      It wasn’t true. It couldn’t be. She would have picked up on the signs earlier.

      Still, the very idea that Shane might want to deepen their friendship left her ridiculously breathless. She would rather think about that than try to figure out what she was going to do about Cruz and his sudden, nonsensical desire to reunite.

       3

      STELLA

      This was one amazing fortieth birthday present.

      Stella Davenport looked at the array of tests laid out on her bathroom counter, a half dozen of them, all giving her the same message.

      She had done it. She was pregnant.

      She couldn’t deny the truth when it was staring at her from six different pregnancy tests. Positive signs in every direction confirmed everything she had been suspecting for the past two weeks but had been too afraid to verify at the doctor’s office.

      Preggers. Expecting. Knocked up. A bun in the oven.

      She still couldn’t seem to believe it.

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