The Debutante's Second Chance. Liz Flaherty

an injured air. “Not long enough, evidently. I didn’t hear one thing that was interesting. Holy sh—shmoly, Landy, what have you been doing with that salad? It’s all the way from one end of the kitchen to the other.”

      “Take it,” she ordered, plunking the salad bowl into Eli’s still-open hands and giving the sectioned vegetable platter to Jessie. “We’ll be right out.”

      He moved toward the door, but stopped before he got there. “You might try it,” he said quietly, “the experiment thing, I mean. Not all men are pigs. Not all reporters are untrustworthy.”

      Micah was standing at the edge of her brick sidewalk with Lindsey in his arms when Landy went outside. “Your walk’s coming apart,” he said.

      “I know. It’s on this spring’s to-do list.” She stroked Lindsey’s strawberry blond hair back from her face. “Hungry, Linds?”

      “Oh, you’ve met my new girlfriend?” Micah looked at her past the child’s face, his eyes warm. “Be careful. She’s the jealous type.”

      “He’s silly, Aunt Landy,” Lindsey announced, planting a noisy, wet kiss on his cheek and pushing herself out of his arms. “Let me go, Uncle Mike. The hot dogs are done.”

      Landy watched the little girl run to join her siblings and Jessie’s children around a platter mounded with hot dogs. “Uncle Mike, huh? You’ve made a conquest.”

      “Oh,” he said, “I’m a whiz with the five-year-old set. And Wendy and Jessie’s girl Hannah assured me I didn’t do too bad as an umpire.” His hand lifted, pushing her hair back from her face in much the same way as she had Lindsey’s, although his touch was much more tentative. “How am I doing with the thirty-somethings?”

      His hand lingered at her hairline, then slipped down to cup her cheek. She looked up at him, and it seemed that she could become lost in the foggy depths of his gray eyes. And she wanted to. She wanted to be lost in that way that happened to other women but eluded her.

      When she spoke, her voice was thready. “Not bad,” she said. “Not bad at all.”