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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  St. Martin’s Paperbacks Titles by Cheryl Anne Porter

  About the Author

  Copyright

  THE DOOR TO THE ladies’ room swung open and Hank Madison swooped in. Standing at the marble-topped vanity that featured four sinks, and clutching her damp white hand-towel to her chest, Maddie gasped.

  “Hank!”

  He looked around at this female territory he’d invaded. “Nice.” Then he focused on her, his gaze roving over her face. “We need to go. We need to begin the meeting.”

  “Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m in here. I told you I suffer from stage fright.”

  “Maddie, Maddie, Maddie,” Hank said slowly, sensually. “I can’t make you go out there. And right now I don’t care if you do or if you don’t. I’m happy just to be in here with you.”

  He approached her with a slow, rolling gait that had Maddie involuntarily tensing. When Hank stood directly in front of her, he looked down into her eyes.

  “Maddie, I want to—”

  “Me too,” she breathed, grabbing his tie and pulling him to her. She raised her face for his kiss. And Hank obliged, lowering his head until her mouth met his.

  “Cheryl Porter writes with charm, wit and imagination. A wonderful storyteller, a wonderful story. This book is a delight to read—don’t miss it!”

  —Heather Graham, New York Times bestselling author

  To Pup … who is the most wonderful and most beloved kind of creature, you know.

  PROLOGUE

  FUNERALS AREN’T SUPPOSED TO be funny. And this one, by anyone’s standards, wasn’t. But seated in the small and crowded church’s front pew, as befitted her status as chief mourner, Maddie Copeland sat appalled at her own behavior. This nervous silliness was so unlike her. She’d heard of the phenomenon, an “inappropriate laughter” response, but she’d never experienced it before. Certainly she was saddened by the passing of her very elderly friend, James. And she’d cried. A lot. But today—in the church, during the funeral, with the Reverend Hobbs delivering the eulogy—all she could think about were the funny moments during her three-summer-long friendship with James Madison.

  Maddie stifled yet another guffaw by digging her fingernails into her palms. Yes, she told herself, it was healing to think of the good times. To celebrate a life. To remember the fun. Just don’t sing and dance at the man’s funeral, Maddie. Get yourself under control. She was trying to do that. Yet even picturing how disrespectful a belly-busting guffaw into this hushed atmosphere would be didn’t sober her. Instead, the very idea that she might laugh out loud made the possibility all the more real that she would.

  Awash in an embarrassed heat, Maddie put a hand to her forehead and rubbed. Dear God, I have got to get a grip. That darned James, the dearly departed. Maddie allowed herself a surreptitious grin. James Henry Madison, Sr.—eighty years senior, to be exact. He had been so funny. Suddenly the word funny seemed funny, triggering yet another rising tide of hilarity that rumbled its way up from deep inside Maddie. She all but stuffed her lace hanky into her mouth. Her shoulders shook and tiny choking noises escaped her. Please, God, let everyone think I’m crying.

  Focusing purposefully on her black-clad lap, Maddie took several deep breaths and tried to concentrate on the eulogy. She couldn’t. Into her mind popped the words “lobster clock.” She held a fist against her mouth and pressed hard. Don’t think about the stupid lobster clock or you’ll embarrass yourself for life. Think about anything that’s not funny. Your surroundings. The weather.

  Maddie willed herself to take her own advice. Okay, weather. It was a brilliant August day in her hometown, the coastal village of Hanscomb Harbor, Connecticut. A time of year when life was languid and good. Unless you’re dead. Horrified, Maddie choked back a traitorous chuckle. Stop that. People will think you’ve lost your mind. In desperation, Maddie pinched herself hard on the arm until the pain sobered her. She breathed in a huge gulp of air.

  There. That’s better. Poor James—and his lobster clock. Go back to the weather. Warm and sunny and muggy. As Maddie had seen on the way to church, hordes of gleeful tourist-locusts lolled on the broad swathe of pristine beach. Their children happily thronged the game arcade. Still other visitors crowded the various eateries and shops that nestled side by side on the boardwalk upshore from the cool waters of Long Island Sound.

  There. Sanity. Feeling more in control of herself now, Maddie again directed her attention to the Reverend Hobbs, who was endlessly holding forth in a religious way from the pulpit. Within moments, though, Maddie had once more lost the thread of the eulogy, impersonal as it was since the preacher had never met James, a summer resident only. Maddie smiled to herself. Dear, sweet James. She recalled first meeting him three summers ago when he’d rented one of those ramshackle cottages from Mr. Cotton Hardy.

  James. Always cheery, always sweet, with no mention of his illness or the pain he had to have been enduring. So stoic. So brave. And now he was gone. Maddie felt herself tear up, this time with the appropriate emotion. She sniffed away tears as her mind leapt back three days to that horrible ride in the back of the ambulance with James. They’d sped toward the small community hospital in the next township over. It had been awful. But not as awful as the ride today with her in the limo behind James’s casket in the hearse ahead.

  From there, Maddie’s mind made a natural leap back to a cold day five years ago when she’d buried her parents. A car wreck on an icy road had taken their lives. And this was the same church where she’d sat through that sad affair. The church hadn’t changed any. Tucked away on a cobblestoned side street, the structure sat surrounded by a Kelly-green lawn and bright, blooming flowers. The white-painted building, with its tall steeple that pierced the treetops, contained hardwood pews, a simple altar, and a reverent congregation.

  Maddie dabbed at her eyes with her hanky and tucked that too, too painful memory back into her mind’s vault. What she ought to be focusing on, she told herself, was James’s impending cremation. An involuntary expression of squeamishness claimed her features. Forget that. She skipped forward to the point where she could visualize herself retrieving his ashes from the funeral director. A solemn moment. Mistake. Sadness ended right there, and the wacko images again took over. Maddie put a shielding hand over her eyes as if that would stop the renewed fit of giggles that lurked right behind her sadness.

  Why had she ever promised James that she would honor his last wish? Maddie doubted seriously if she could bring herself to pour her friend’s fine-ground ashes into the hollowed-out belly of that hideous, red-glazed ceramic monstrosity of his: a souvenir lobster clock he wanted as his urn. Over a foot tall, the broad and hefty thing stood balanced on its
fan of a tail. Its claws were raised over its head and clutched in them was a cheap clock that ticked loudly. It took both hands to even hold on to the darned thing. To Maddie it looked like a cartoon version of Atlas holding up the universe. And that lobster face. Could it be worse? A big cheesy grin and huge black cheerful eyes painted on its face.

  In Maddie’s estimation, the clock certainly was not an appropriate vessel to be used as an urn. But James had been adamant that this tacky Hanscomb Harbor souvenir be his final resting place. All she had to do, he’d said cheerfully while showing her how, was unscrew the cap on the back of the lobster’s head and, using a funnel, pour his ashes into the hollow interior. Originally, he’d explained proudly, that space had held bath salts.

  Bath salts, for heaven’s sake. Maddie put a hand to her aching forehead. How … undignified. She could just see herself now, there in her kitchen and handling James’s ashes. What if she dropped them and they scattered everywhere? Could she bring herself to take a broom and sweep him up into a dustpan? Or what if she sneezed at a crucial moment and blew James all over the countertops? Was she really supposed to dust him up with a rag? Or what if the darned lobster clock got broken? Or stolen? The nightmares were endless. A shudder for the possibilities shook her.

  “I just knew it, Maddie. You’re shivering again. I told you to bring a sweater. But do you listen to me? No.”

  Celeste’s whispered words, with their undertone of genuine if fussy concern, brought Maddie back to the moment. Leaning toward her elderly friend and employee who sat at her side on the hard pew, she whispered back, “I’m not cold, Celeste. I was just thinking about … well, cremation. It seems so … icky, somehow.”

  With every white hair in place in a soft bun at the back of her head, and with a sympathetic expression lighting her sweet and grandmotherly face, Celeste McNeer gave Maddie’s hand a pat. “Not the least bit icky, dear. Pretty efficient, if you ask me. Get cremated and save the little pitchforked devils of hell the trouble of having to cook up some brimstone to fry you with. Seems to me they’d appreciate that so they could get on with the uglier torments. Like gouging out your eyes.”

  Maddie’s mouth opened in indignant shock—everyone’s usual response to Celeste’s outrageousness. “Celeste! James is not going to hell.”

  Celeste pursed her lips. “Haven’t you been listening to the Reverend Hobbs? Hellfire and brimstone. What an old puritanical patoot he is. I tell you, this is one tough and stringy eulogy to have to digest. And long, too. ‘Kingdom come’ could already have come and been long gone before he’s done.”

  “You’re terrible,” Maddie hissed, hiding her amusement and thinking how James would have enjoyed this conversation. “We’re supposed to be mourning here.”

  “Well, then, wail and sob a bit and I’ll comfort you—anything to drown out that man’s ranting up there.” Then, with a sudden softening of her expression, Celeste whispered, “I mean it, though, honey. You and James were dear friends, so cry if you feel like it. I sure did when my Angus passed on, God rest his soul.”

  With a surge of affection, Maddie gently squeezed the bony, freckled, and blue-veined hand of her incorrigible friend. “I know how much you miss Angus,” she whispered. “He was a wonderful cat. But to tell you the truth, I was just … well, picturing everything that could go wrong when I’m trying to get James’s ashes into that silly lobster clock of his.”

  Celeste soberly nodded, as if Maddie’s were the most natural of comments in the world. As if everyone at some time or another had faced this same dilemma. “That’s a poser, all right. I expect this will be the first time a lobster’s ever ingested a man. Outside of Jules Verne, that is.”

  Caught off guard, Maddie burst out laughing. Quickly, guiltily, she slapped both hands over her face and shook with the force of her emotion. Even though she had to know Maddie was laughing, Celeste put an arm around her and patted her shoulder. Maddie’s embarrassed ears told her the church was deathly quiet except for the ragged sounds she was making. Even Preacher Hobbs hesitated.

  Celeste took control, announcing loudly for the benefit of the supremely uncomfortable congregation, “There, there, honey. You let it all out now. Crying’s good for what ails you.” She pounded Maddie’s shoulder mercilessly. “You’re supposed to be crying.”

  Choking and coughing, Maddie wailed … with disguised laughter.

  Over this, Preacher Hobbs proceeded, every bit as loudly and with great determination, to harangue the mourners with some cryptic verse from the Bible.

  It was hopeless. The more Maddie tried not to laugh, the worse sounds she made. She was sure of only one thing: James would have loved this. He’d probably have laughed right along with her. But she doubted that most of the people packed with her into the small church would understand. Or approve. Especially Miss Lavinia Houghton, tyrant librarian, who sat directly behind Celeste and had already twice sniffed loudly and tut-tutted disapprovingly. Why, if she knew Maddie was laughing, she wouldn’t hesitate to have her burned at the stake.

  Fearing a raging case of the hiccups, Maddie struggled for a composure that was slow in coming. When she finally wiped at her eyes, her only thought was to thank God that real tears stood in them.

  Celeste poked at Maddie with her elbow and nodded her head not so subtly toward the strait-laced woman in the pew behind them, and whispered heatedly, “If Lavinia shushes us one more time or snorts at us through her big beak of a nose, I’m going to turn around and wallop her. Just give her a bloody nose. Let’s see if she can sanctimoniously sniff at us around that, the old biddy.”

  Fearing Celeste would actually pop Lavinia Houghton in the nose—and right here in church—Maddie quickly gripped her employee’s hands in hers and lifted her chin toward the man in the pulpit. “I believe Preacher Hobbs is finally winding down.”

  “Well, hallelujah. There is a God, and He made that man shut up.” Celeste’s whisper was more of a hiss as she got in the last word before joining Maddie in paying attention to the closing remarks.

  For her part, and as the preacher called for the mourners to begin filing past the casket, Maddie sighed soberly and took a last look at the man whose body reposed in the open coffin.

  Goodbye, James, my friend. I wish we’d had more time together before you had to go. I loved you for all the wacky things you did, although I didn’t always understand your reasons. But you always displayed a kindness and generosity of spirit. How rare is that? And I thank you for how interested you always were in listening to me talk about myself. Hope I didn’t bore you to death. Maddie’s eyes popped open wide. She put a hand to her forehead. God, sorry. Poor choice of words. But … goodbye. Oh, one last thing: I wish there were more men around like you, James. Only more my age. No offense.

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE BIG STRETCH LIMO slowly snaked its attention-grabbing way through the small fishing village of Hanscomb Harbor. In the spacious and luxurious passenger cabin behind the chauffeur reposed James Henry “Hank” Madison, III. Accompanying him was his very recently deceased grandfather’s longtime friend and family attorney, Jim Thornton, a man only a little younger than James Senior had been at the time of his death less than a week ago.

  This was no social outing, which was just as well because Hank was in no mood to enjoy anything about this trip. Not the usually pleasurable ride in his Learjet, which he sometimes piloted. Not the beautiful countryside they’d passed by on their way here. Certainly not this damn backwater village. And especially not one particular woman who lived here.

  “I swear, Jim, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. This is just like the old man to pull a stunt like this.”

  “Stunt? How in God’s name could his sudden death be a stunt, Hank? This just happened. It wasn’t planned.”

  Hank exhaled, feeling guilty. “I didn’t really mean that. It’s just unfair, dammit. I wanted to be here when this happened. But there I was in Australia. Halfway around the world.”

  Jim sat forward to give
Hank’s knee a quick and comforting pat. “Now, don’t beat yourself up, son. You got back here as quick as you could. Think of this as a sad and unfortunate event of timing. No one saw his end coming this quickly. Not even his doctors.”

  “I know that. I’ve settled that in my mind. But what about the rest of it, Jim? What do I do with that? If I’d known at all that he’d die and rush his own funeral in some out-of-the-way town I’d never heard of before, I wouldn’t have gone to Australia. Hell, I would have stepped in a lot earlier and put a stop to things with that woman.”

  “I know you would have.” Jim Thornton, a bulldog of a man more than forty years Hank’s senior, bore many titles, among them the presidencies and chairmanships of many political and charitable foundations. But today he rode along in his capacity as trusted family friend as much as senior partner in an internationally famous law firm that handled the affairs of the rich and famous, both of which Hank was. “You look exhausted, son.”

  Hank rubbed at his gritty-tired eyes. “I am. Over thirty hours of flying time just to get to the East Coast. I barely had time to shower and catch a meal.”

  “We didn’t have to come here today, Hank. You could have rested.”

  “No,” Hank said stubbornly. “We had to come here today. The sooner the better. I just want to meet this woman, see what I’m up against, and then we can get out of here.”

  Jim exhaled dramatically. “It’s not that simple.”

  “Nothing ever is where my grandfather is concerned.” Hank shook his head. “Or was. Did you know about this place, Jim? Or this woman? Before now, I mean. Hell, did anyone know what was going on with him?” Hank beat himself up with the guilty judgment that he should have known. But how could he? James Senior had been, to put it mildly, eccentric.

  “Your grandfather and I were friends, Hank. I wasn’t his keeper or his nursemaid. He didn’t owe me—or you—an explanation for his whereabouts or his activities. But, hell, I thought he was at his house on Long Island and under the eye of his housekeeper. I had no idea he was slipping away to come here. In fact, I only found out about this place when he was rushed to the hospital in Indian Neck, like I told you.”