His Brother's Baby. Laurie Campbell

thin. Still, it shouldn’t take too much longer to get back into the swing of things.

      At least she hoped not.

      “Oh, the chorizo!” a woman exclaimed, and Lucy turned with a practiced smile to offer the tray. Tonight’s guests were a cordial group, celebrating somebody’s fortieth anniversary, and it was encouraging that most of them looked old enough to go home early. With any luck she’d be finished by ten, the Joseph’s van would already be waiting to shuttle everyone back to the restaurant, and she could get enough sleep that Emma wouldn’t need to wait more than thirty seconds while she dragged herself awake for the two o’clock feeding.

      But first she had to circulate these tarts. Then the jalapeño crackers, the miniature tacos and another round with the chorizo.

      Working inside would be more fun, she knew, because the hosts had set up a dance floor in the great room, and she’d enjoyed the music whenever she returned to the mansion-size kitchen to refill her tray. On her last trip they’d been playing a song she loved, a song she’d danced to a hundred times on the radio, and she had entertained herself by peeking at the couples out there. Some of them were good; some of the younger men were the kind she’d have chosen for herself if she had her pick of partners.

      I’d rather have Conner.

      The thought startled her—what was she doing, envisioning him as any kind of a partner? Lucy hastily returned her attention to the hors d’oeuvre tray. She wasn’t going to think that way, she told herself as she offered tarts to a cluster of people by the pool. Not when she’d finally made it through almost an entire day without remembering their kiss in the park.

      Not now that she was finally regaining her independence.

      She’d held the thought of independence like a talisman, every time she handed Emma over to Lorraine and changed from her diner clothes to her catering uniform. With every hour of evening and weekend work, she was closer to acquiring the money she’d need to move out before Christmas. And with every hour of circulating trays, directing guests to the bar and collecting crumpled napkins from the patio planters, she was proving that Lucy Velardi could pay her own way in life.

      That she didn’t depend on anybody’s goodwill. Especially not a “gentleman’s.”

      It had surprised her, Lucy remembered as she returned to the kitchen, the first time her third-grade teacher addressed the girls and boys as “ladies and gentlemen.” She had always thought the term applied solely to those friends of her mom who visited at random hours and occasionally presented her with a pack of gum or a comic book.

      Those gentlemen who had made it clear, through years of gifts and favors granted or withheld, that nobody mattered more than the man providing the money.

      But by now she had moved beyond the humiliation of depending on any gentlemen. Which was why, Lucy reminded herself as the party wound down and the crew supervisor directed her to collect all the glassware left outside, she needed to pay Lorraine as soon as she got home. Before Conner could offer his help and whip out a checkbook, the way he’d done a few nights ago when he dismissed the sitter twenty minutes early.

      Lorraine wouldn’t have left, of course, if she hadn’t trusted him with the baby, so Lucy had decided she wasn’t going to fuss about Con sending the sitter home. But she drew the line at letting him pay someone she’d hired herself. As long as she and Emma were living under his roof, she needed to guard her pride.

      Still, she admitted while she finished her share of the cleanup, pride was costly. It was costing her tonight, in aching muscles and growing fatigue, but the power of independence was worth it. And when she finally made her way to the desert-landscaped front yard to wait for the shuttle, with her first week’s pay voucher safe in the pocket of her black slacks, Lucy felt taller than she’d felt in a long time.