Humming to herself, she put on a CD of Verdi’s Aida and turned up the volume until the music echoed against the kitchen walls. The emotional intensity and dramatic characterizations of the Italian composer suited her mood.

She found an old white apron her father had used years before whenever he barbecued. Wrapping it around her waist, she drew the long strings around to the front and tied them.

Half an hour later, she was stirring the last of the tomato paste into the pot. She added a generous amount of red wine, all the while singing at the top of her lungs. The sound of someone pounding at the back door jolted her back to reality.

Running barefoot across the kitchen, she pulled open the door and saw Charles standing there, holding a pot of purple azaleas.

“Charles! What are you doing here?”

“No one answered the front door,” he remarked dryly.

“Oh. Sorry.” She walked to the counter to turn off her CD player. “Come in.” The silence was nearly deafening.

“I thought you said your father was home from the hospital?” As though self-conscious about holding a flowerpot, he handed it to Steffie.

“He is,” she said, setting the plant aside. “How thoughtful. I’m sure Dad will love this.”

“It isn’t for David.”

“It isn’t?”

“No, I was…we just got a full-page ad from How Green Is My Thumb Nursery and I felt it might be a gesture of good faith to buy something. I thought you’d appreciate an azalea more than your father would.”

Steffie wasn’t quite sure what to say other than a soft “Thank you.”

He shrugged, apparently eager to leave. He stepped toward the door and she desperately tried to think of something to keep him there, with her.

“Have you eaten?” she asked quickly, even though the sauce was only just starting to simmer and wouldn’t be properly ready until the following day.

“What makes you ask?”

“I was just putting together a pot of spaghetti sauce for tomorrow. Dad asked me to cook him an Italian meal and…well, if you wouldn’t mind waiting a bit, I’ll be happy to fix you a plate. It really needs to simmer longer, but I know from experience that it’s perfectly edible after an hour.” She sounded breathless by the time she’d finished.

“I’ve already had dinner, but thanks, anyway,” Charles told her. “I could do with a cup of coffee, though.” He nodded toward the half-full pot sitting beside the stove.

“Sure…great. Me, too. I’d get Dad but he’s sleeping,” she explained as she poured him a cup, then one for herself.

“Through that?” Charles motioned toward the CD player.

“Sure. He loves listening to the same music I do. Besides, he’s way over on the other side of the house. I doubt he could even hear it.” She didn’t mention that a tragic love story might suit Valerie’s mood, however. And since her sister’s bedroom was directly above the kitchen she was the one most likely to have been serenaded.

Charles held the mug in both hands and walked over to examine her efforts. “So you learned to cook while you were away?”

“A little,” she admitted.

“I wouldn’t have guessed you were the domestic type.” He stirred the sauce with a wooden spoon, lifted it out of the pot and tasted it, using one finger. His brows rose. “This is good.”

“Don’t sound so surprised.”

“There must’ve been some Italian man you were hoping to impress.”

The only man she’d ever wanted to impress was the one standing in the kitchen at that very moment.

“I was too busy with my studies to date much,” she said, dumping the empty tomato-paste cans in the recycling bin.

“That isn’t the impression you gave me the other day.”

She hesitated, her back to him. “I know. I certainly seem to make a habit of playing the fool when I’m with you.”

Charles’s voice was rueful. “I’ve occasionally suffered from the same problem.”

The unexpectedness of his admission caught her off balance, and she twisted around to face him. For a long, unguarded moment she soaked in the sight of him.

“There wasn’t anyone I dated very often,” she told him in a raw whisper.

“Surely there was someone?”

She shook her head. They gazed silently into each other’s eyes, and Steffie seemed to lose all sense of time.

Charles was the one who broke the trance. “Uh, your pot seems to be boiling.”

“Oh, darn, I forgot to turn down the burner.” She raced across the kitchen, flipped the knob on the stove and stirred the sauce briskly, praying it hadn’t burned.

While she stood at the stove, Steffie basked in a glow of unfamiliar contentment. It felt so wonderful to be with Charles—not fighting or defensive, not acting like a love-struck adolescent. For the first time, she was truly comfortable with him.

“I’m sure the sauce will be fine,” she murmured, picking up her coffee mug.

He pulled out a chair and sat.

As she was getting cream, sugar and teaspoons, she thought she heard some noise from upstairs. Glancing at the ceiling, she frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

Steffie joined him at the table, adding only cream to her own coffee and pushing the sugar bowl toward Charles. “I’m worried about Valerie,” she said frankly. “So is Norah. Everyone is, except Dad, which is for the best—I mean, he’s got enough on his mind healing from the surgery. He shouldn’t be worrying about any of us.”

Charles added a level teaspoon of sugar to his coffee, then paused, the spoon held above his cup. “How’d you know I take sugar?”

Her gaze skirted away from his. “We had coffee together once before, remember?”

“No” came his automatic response.

Steffie preferred not to dredge up the unhappy memory again, especially since he didn’t even seem to recall it. She stared down at the table. “It was the first time you asked me to—you know, leave you alone.”

He scowled. “The first time,” he repeated, then shook his head in apparent confusion. Just as well, Steffie thought to herself, astounded that he had absolutely no recollection of an incident she remembered in such complete and painful detail.

She decided to change the subject. “Norah baked cookies the other day, if you’d like some.”

Charles declined. “Tell me what’s going on with your sister.” His eyes darted to the ceiling.

Steffie wondered how much of Valerie’s dilemma she should confide in him, but then remembered Norah’s telling her that Charles had been with them the night of her father’s surgery. More than likely he knew how Colby and Valerie felt about each other.

“She’s in love,” she said after a moment.

“It’s Doc Winston, isn’t it?”

Steffie nodded. “They both seem to have fallen hard.”

“So what’s wrong?”

Steffie wasn’t sure she could explain, when she didn’t entirely understand it herself. So she shrugged and said, “I think Colby wants her to be something she can’t. Valerie’s an incredibly gifted businesswoman. But I gather he wants a woman who’d be happy to stay home and be a housewife—there’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but it just isn’t right for Valerie. It doesn’t look like either one of them is going to compromise.”

“If she loves him, maybe she should be willing to compromise first,” Charles said, then sipped his coffee. “Take the first step.”

“What about Colby? Why does it always have to be the woman who compromises? Don’t answer that, I already know. Women have been forced to adapt to men’s fickle natures for so many generations that it comes to us naturally,” she said with heavy sarcasm. “Right?”

Charles was silent. “I didn’t come here to argue about your sister,” he finally said.

“I know, it’s just that I found your statement so—” She stopped in midsentence because she didn’t want to fight with him, either. They’d done so much of that. And she didn’t want this encounter to end the way all the others had.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m concerned about her, and I can’t help feeling a bit defensive. I’m pretty sure she’s making arrangements to return to Texas—and I wish she wouldn’t.”

“You haven’t had much time with her, have you?”

Steffie tapped the mug with her spoon, staring into the dregs of her coffee. “That’s not the whole reason I wish she’d stay.” She was silent for a moment. “Leaving your problems behind simply doesn’t work. Not unless you’ve exhausted every possibility of reaching a compromise. In fact, I think leaving can make everything much worse. The problem is, I can’t tell Valerie that. It’s one of those painful realities we each need to discover on our own, I guess. I’m going to talk to her, but I doubt it’ll make any difference.”

Charles’s dark eyes were sympathetic. “I hope she listens.”

Steffie thanked him with a smile. “I hope she does, too, but the three of us seem to share a wide streak of stubbornness.”

Charles rubbed his eyes, and she realized he must be exhausted. “You won’t get an argument out of me,” he said with a tired grin.

“Are you still working as many hours?”

He nodded. “Fifty to sixty a week. We publish twice weekly now and eventually we’re looking to go daily. Some days I feel like I’m married to that paper.”

The word “married” seemed to hang in the air. At one time Steffie had been convinced beyond any doubt that they’d be married, she and Charles. It was this unshakable resolve that had created so many difficulties in her relationship with him. Naively, she’d assumed that all she had to do was show him they were meant to love each other and after a few short object lessons, he’d agree. Now she knew that life—and love—didn’t work that way.

“Are you still a jack-of-all-trades at the paper?” she asked, remembering that his job meant he had a hand in every aspect of publishing the newspaper—from writing, editing and layout to distribution.

“Everything except the classifieds.”

“Do you still have an intern?”

Charles relaxed against the back of his chair and nodded. “Wendy. She’s a recent graduate from the University of Portland.”

He smiled as he spoke, and a red light went on in front of Steffie’s eyes. “What happened to Larry? I thought you were working with him?” The idea of Charles spending long hours with an attractive college student filled her with a sense of dread.

“No, he moved on to an Internet news service. So, Wendy’s with me now.”

Wendy’s with me now? Then it came to her. She didn’t need to worry about competing for Charles anymore.

She was out of the running.

Five

“Is someone here?” Steffie heard her father even before he entered the kitchen. He was wearing his plaid housecoat, cinched at the waist, which emphasized the weight he’d recently lost. His white hair was rumpled from sleep.