he timing of Greer’s announcement did not seem accidental. She runs into my mom. My mom exchanges pleasantries with her husband, and suddenly, Greer Waters is making a grand and public pregnancy announcement.

Maybe that was just me being paranoid. Either way, Sadie-Grace reacted markedly less well to Greer’s news than she had to the bombshell I’d dropped a moment before. Then again, if I’d been watching my stepmother slowly replace any and all pictures of my mother, I probably would have taken a pregnancy announcement as an indication that she was trying to replace me, too.

“I can’t do this.” Sadie-Grace looked like she was on the verge of prettily vomiting all over a nearby floral arrangement.

I steered her toward Lily. My cousin might not have taken the revelation of my Who’s-Your-Daddy list well—and I might have avoided saying a single word to her since my mom had shown up on our doorstep—but Lily was Sadie-Grace’s best friend. She could handle this far better than I could.

“Breathe,” Lily ordered the moment she saw Sadie-Grace’s face. “You just have to make it through tonight, and then you and I will go out and buy picture frames. Tasteful, elegant, approved-by-Lillian-Taft sterling silver frames that we’ll have sent to your house as a late wedding present. I’m over often enough that it would be just terrible manners not to put them to good use. You’ll get your mama’s pictures back.”

Sadie-Grace nodded.

“Sawyer…” Lily dragged her attention away from her friend long enough to glance over at me. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I said, clipping the words.

Lily looked down at her hands for a moment. “Maybe you are,” she said. “But I’m not. Your mother is here.” When that didn’t get a response, my cousin changed tactics. “Worrying gives you wrinkles, so I have been trying my best to keep calm, but I can only conclude that I have been less than successful.” She paused. “Walker took one look at me and knew that I was upset.”

Upset on my behalf? Or upset about that picture and my ­mother’s sudden reappareance?

“He talked to me, Sawyer.” Lily looked over at Sadie-Grace and then continued. “Really talked to me, like he used to.”

Confiding that to me was an olive branch, Lily’s way of trying to go back to the moment when she’d been zipping up my dress, right after I’d zipped up hers.

But I couldn’t.

I knew, objectively, that my cousin’s reaction to finding out her father was on my list hadn’t been entirely unreasonable. I knew that it didn’t make sense to be mad at her and give my mom a free pass, but there was a reason I’d never made friends easily. Letting people in was a risk.

I’d forgotten that, right up until the point when my cousin had seen that photograph and snapped.

“Take care of her,” I told Lily, nodding at Sadie-Grace. “I should go look for my mom. After all,” I added pointedly, “she’s trouble.”

Without waiting for a response, I walked away. I was mere feet from making my escape, when Walker Ames snagged me by the hand. I glanced back toward Lily, but she was already lost in the crowd.

The next thing I knew, I was on the dance floor. The music was the kind that brought people my grandmother’s age out. Frank Sinatra seemed to be the vibe they were going for, with a side of crooning Elvis and Nat King Cole.

“I’m not an expert at good Southern manners,” I told Walker, “but aren’t you supposed to ask me to dance?”

“That does seem like something we covered in cotillion.” Walker settled his free hand on my lower back. “But this way, if you feel like insulting me, you can do it away from prying ears.”

“Maybe I don’t feel like insulting you.”

Walker pretended to be shocked. “Does this have anything to do with your scandalous mother’s scandalous reappearance in society?”

“Walker?”

“Yes?”

“Shut up.”

He spun me out and didn’t speak again until I’d spun back in and my hand was safely trapped within his own.

“Lily’s worried about you,” he commented.

“Since when are the two of you on speaking terms?” I shot back.

“She needed someone.”

I gave him a look. “Given your history, she probably didn’t need for that person to be you.”

I told myself that I wasn’t being protective of Lily. I was simply stating the obvious.

“You’re probably right,” Walker admitted. “It took a long time and a lot of effort to convince her she’s better off without me.” He stared at me for a moment, an expression I couldn’t quite read in his eyes. “I’d hate to undo all of that in one evening.”

“Then don’t.”

One song faded into the next, but he didn’t give me the opportunity to break away.

“I had lofty ideas about comforting you,” Walker informed me. “Helping you and Lily patch things up.” He leaned me backward in a slight dip. “But you’re right. The part of me that wants to believe that I can be better, that I can swoop in and say all of the right things and be everything to everyone… that’s the dangerous part.”

My right hand was enveloped in his left. His other palm rested on the small of my back; he used it to to pull me closer.

“Walker,” I said lowly. “What are you doing?”

No matter what kind of fight Lily and I were having, she didn’t need to see this.

“A part of me will always miss being that guy, being a good guy.” Walker’s body was nearly touching mine now. “Maybe what I need—what Lily needs—is someone to help me remember that I’m not.” Walker paused. “Maybe what you need is a distraction.”

The song ended, and as easily as he’d gotten me out to the dance floor, he guided me to the hall. The light was dimmer here, but I could very clearly make out the plant that hung overhead.

Mistletoe.

“Walker, what are you—”

“Kiss me.”

He had officially lost his mind. “Pass.”

“Just once,” Walker insisted, his voice quiet and rough. “Just now. I could want this, if I let myself. I think you could, too. And Lily…”

Lily would know that you’re not a nice guy.

“You are unhinged,” I told him. I forced myself to take a step back. I should have torn a strip off him.

I didn’t.

Eyes still on mine, he shuddered, and the next thing I knew, the two of us weren’t alone.

“There you are, Walker.” His mother greeted him with a hug that struck me as territorial more than a sign of affection. “Your grandfather wants to get another photograph in front of the tree—just him and the grandchildren this time. Be a dear and find your sister and Boone, would you?”

The would you? somehow made it crystal clear that this wasn’t a request.

“I haven’t seen Campbell since we got here,” Walker replied.

His mother gave his arm a little squeeze. “Then I imagine you should get to looking.”

There was a moment when it seemed like Walker might push back, but he didn’t. Instead, he made eye contact with me one last time, then left. I made a valiant attempt at taking my own leave, but Walker’s mother slid to block my exit.

“You look lovely tonight, Sawyer. Just lovely.”

I wasn’t sure which was more foreboding: the fact that she’d opened with a compliment, or her tone.

“You’re not as put together as Lily is, I suppose, but you do have a certain charm.” Charlotte touched the ends of my hair lightly, then tucked a stray strand behind my shoulder. “You’re different. You’re new. Most of these kids have known each other since they were in diapers. When your aunt Olivia went into labor with John David, your uncle dropped Lily off at my house. We had an impromptu slumber party—Lily and Campbell and Sadie-Grace. We did the same when Sadie-Grace’s poor mama passed when the girls were tiny, and of course I had Walker and Boone and a whole passel of little boys at my house as often as not.”

“Sounds nice,” I said flatly, because it did—and because I knew that the subtext here wasn’t nice at all.

“You weren’t a part of that,” Charlotte continued, like I needed the reminder. “Your mama left. If Lillian had raised you, things might be different, but as it is, you’re a bit of an oddity. I’m not saying you’re odd, of course—”

“Of course not,” I put in dryly.

“I’m just saying that I can see how my son might find you… intriguing.”

“As absolutely charming as this has been,” I said, mimicking her style of speaking, but not her tone, “I really should be going.”

I tried to walk past her, but she caught my arm—hard. Her manicured fingertips dug into my skin and the pads of her fingers pressed down into the bone with affectionate, bruising force. “Your mother has no business being here tonight.”

Far be it from me to point out the obvious, I thought, but…

“I’m not my mother. Maybe you should talk to her.”

Charlotte’s grip on me didn’t loosen. She had about half a second to change that before I loosened it myself.

“Stay away from my son.” Her voice was barely audible, but in no way could it have been described as a whisper.

“Maybe you should tell your son to stay away from me,” I suggested, tearing my arm from her grip. “He’s the one with the hair-trigger self-destruct button.”

“You and Walker…” She stepped toward me. “It’s just wrong.”

There is no me and Walker, I thought, but I didn’t say it, because suddenly, my mouth was dry. Suddenly, I couldn’t feel the ghost of her grip on my arm.

I couldn’t feel anything.

“Wrong,” I repeated, struggling to hear my own voice over the echoing in my ears. “Walker and I… would be wrong.”

She said nothing, but the look on her face gave away the game. You and Walker, it’s just wrong.

I knew then. I knew, but I had to be sure.

“Wrong,” I repeated a second time, “because I’m trash?” My heart jumped into my throat, beating out an incessant rhythm that warned me against continuing. I did it anyway. “Or wrong because your husband is my father?”