in the wash or scrubbing at. She was Hope, offering a drink to John, who was her friend, a person in her life. A life she hadn’t even known existed two weeks ago. A life that she was starting to like an awful lot.
With a smile, she excused herself and passed the bottle off to Gemma. “I’ll check on Ellie,” she said.
“Good idea,” Gemma said. She picked up the cheese plate and went back to the porch.
Of course, the girls had been asleep since six thirty. No nap and a long day playing in the sand had tuckered them out early, as Hope had planned.
She walked quietly up the creaking floorboards of the stairs, careful not to wake them. As expected, the second floor was quiet, and the bedroom door to the room that the girls shared was closed, along with her own.
Straining for any hint of sound, she tiptoed down the hall to Ellie’s room and tapped quietly.
The door flung open immediately, and Ellie stood on the other side, looking a bit wild-eyed. Hope stared at her.
“Is everything okay?”
“Of course!” Ellie blinked rapidly. “Why wouldn’t it be okay?”
“It’s just that you’ve been gone for…a while.” A solid fifteen minutes, really. Not that she was counting. “Are you coming down? John and Leo are here.”
“Ah, so your dates have arrived.” Ellie nodded.
“John is not my date,” Hope clarified, even if she wasn’t sure that was exactly the truth. “He’s my guest.” Yes, that was the best word for what he was.
Ellie was still nodding. “So now there are seven. Three couples. And me. And you don’t need me making a scene.”
Hope pulled in a breath and let it out. Now she saw where this was going. “This isn’t about appearances. And we aren’t three couples. John is just a guest,” she clarified again. “And I’m pretty sure that there is nothing going on between Gemma and Leo either.”
“Yet.” Ellie raised an eyebrow and Hope had to grin. She’d seen the way that Gemma smiled when Leo came onto the porch. She was nervous; all signs were there.
“Did you know that Simon was engaged?” she asked. Of course this was news to her, but Ellie’s reaction was one of such obvious disappointment, that she needed to be sure before she asked the guy to leave her house and never return again.
But Ellie nodded, slowly. “I knew.”
Hope sighed and leaned against the doorjamb. “You knew? Oh, Ellie.”
“I thought…” Ellie swallowed hard as tears filled her big, blue eyes. “I don’t know what I thought. I just knew that I loved him.”
“Oh, honey.” Hope reached in and gave her sister a good, long hug, and she didn’t release her until Ellie pulled back.
“I was so stupid,” Ellie said quietly, brushing a hand from her cheek.
“People do stupid things when they’re in love,” Hope said, pushing away the frown she felt when she considered that she had invited John here tonight, not because she was in love with him—obviously! But because…she had been thinking with her heart, not her head. “Besides,” she said, eager to focus on Ellie’s dilemma instead of her own, “if anyone should feel stupid, it’s Simon. He’s here, with her, and he knows that wasn’t how the invitation was made. You’re in your house, and you should enjoy your party.”
“I thought it was your party,” Ellie grumbled.
“It’s our party,” Hope corrected. She tipped her head toward the landing. “Come on down,” she urged, putting her arm around her sister’s shoulder. “Hold your head up high. You’ve done nothing wrong here. Besides, I know you want that cheese plate.”
She managed to get a grin out of her sister for that one. “Okay,” Ellie said, a little reluctantly. “But only because you talked me into it. How do you do that?”
“I’m a mother,” Hope said simply.
And as she walked back toward the stairs and passed the closed door to the room where her girls were tucked under the matching pink quilts, dreaming about unicorns and fairies and all the other wonderful things that little girls should dream of, for just one moment she wished she could go into their room, sit there for a while, or stay the entire night.
But a party was waiting for her. And so was her guest.
***
Any concerns that Hope had about John being the odd man out had been replaced with the obvious tension that was made by Simon’s fiancée. Ever the hostess, she swiftly moved Ellie’s place between her and Gemma when she added a new