Cameron. “Where are the girls?” she asked him, not even attempting to hide her worry.
“With Becky,” he said. “They’re fine.”
“And your uncle?”
Cameron gestured behind him. In the distance, workers were breaking down the bleachers and ropes, loading them into trucks. A lone figure, silhouetted against the sunset, stood at the edge of the last fairway.
As she stood there, torn by indecision, Cameron said, “Coach Duncan knows. My uncle told him last night.”
She caught her breath, struggled to find her voice. Disbelief and then elation stole the words from her for a moment. So he had done it after all. Despite what they’d said last night—or perhaps because of it—Sean had told Greg the truth, and Greg had still elected to leave. She didn’t know why Sean’s wisdom about human nature always seemed to surprise her, but it did.
She took Cameron’s hand, needing to touch him when she finally spoke. “Are you all right?”
With a curiously adult dignity, he gently removed his hand from hers. “So long as Ashley’s with us, we’ll all be fine.”
When had this boy grown so tall? Lily wondered, looking up at him. “Your mother was the best friend I ever had and I loved her with all my heart,” she said. “But I’m not going to make excuses for her. She made mistakes, just like everybody else. And this one was a doozy.”
“Lily, no one says ‘doozy’ anymore.”
She tried to smile. “What I’m trying to say is that being angry with your mother—and your father, for that matter—is a bad idea.”
“I loved them, okay?” he said in a low voice. “That’ll never change.”
Lily’s eyes blurred. “There was so much good in them, in your mother and father. So much love. They adored you from the first breath you took. You’re the best part of both of them, Cam, you know that?”
He shuffled his feet. “Yeah. Whatever.”
“All right. I won’t embarrass you anymore.” She looked at the ridge above the fairway. “I have to go,” she said.
He smiled a little. “I know. We’ll watch the girls.”
Burnished by the colors of the sunset, Sean looked like a figure out of a dream, and for a moment, Lily was afraid to say anything, for fear that she’d wake up and he’d disappear, unremembered. Then he turned to her and she felt silly. Nothing in her life had ever been as real as this moment.
“You’ve been busy,” she said.
He hooked his thumbs into his back pockets. “Yep.”
“You might have told me.” She tried to sound reproachful but couldn’t keep the happiness from her voice.
“I intended to, but there was this small detail about a tournament…”
“Sean.”
He opened his arms and she pressed herself against him, safe and sheltered, her heart so full she couldn’t speak.
“It’s going to be okay, Lily. There’s nothing Duncan wants from this.”
Because he already has what he wants, she thought. A hot sports agent, a dream career. “You gave it to him,” she said, drawing back to study Sean’s face. “You made sure he won today.”
“You,” he said, slowly lowering his mouth to hers, “have quite an imagination.”
It was, she realized, as much of an admission as she’d ever get from him. A moment later it didn’t matter, because his kiss sealed a promise he had made to her long ago.
The evening breeze held the subtle chill of autumn and she pressed even closer, hearing the steady thud of his heartbeat. Tell him, Lily, she urged herself, and it sounded like Crystal’s voice. Tell him now.
She was afraid, but for once she was going to ignore it. She stepped back, keeping hold of his hands. The potential for giddy joy was, she discovered, even greater than fear. Loving Sean had changed the way she looked at the world. Some days she felt like Dorothy in Oz, seeing things in color for the first time, and she was finally ready to tell him. “This isn’t the life I’d planned for myself,” she said. “I’m always a planner. Sometimes I plan right down to the last moment, and being with you, with this family, well, all my careful planning goes out the window.”
“I’ve never planned anything at all, and look. We both wound up in the same place. It’s because we’re supposed to, Lily. Believe it.”
“We might be a disaster together.”
“We probably are. So what? I love you, Lily. I love who I am when I’m with you, and I love that we’re both crazy about the kids.” He bent and gave her another lingering kiss. “In fact, we