Ain’t She Sweet?

“’Tis no wonder we grew up like snarling dogs.”

GEORGETTE HEYER, These Old Shades

Sugar Beth watched the smoke trailing from the window. The lights were on. Winnie was up there.

She dove for the phone and called 911. After she’d given the dispatcher the information, she hung up, thought for a moment, then grabbed the stapler from the counter, unlocked the door, and rushed across the street.

Smoke was still coming out. “Winnie!” she yelled up toward the window. “Winnie, can you hear me?”

There was no response. She peered through the front window but couldn’t see any smoke on the first floor. She rattled the knob and, when it didn’t give, stepped back and flung the stapler at the door. The safety glass shattered into a thousand round pebbles.

The faint smell of smoke hit her as she stepped inside. “Winnie!” She made her way to the back of the store. “Winnie, are you up there?” The smell of smoke grew stronger. She saw a narrow wooden staircase leading to the second floor. It had death trap written all over it.

“Winnie!”

She heard a thud, then an un-Winnie-like curse. “Call the fire department!”

“I did. Come down!”

“No!”

She strained to hear sirens, but there hadn’t been enough time. Reluctantly, she grabbed the handrail and made her way up the stairs.

Three rooms opened off the dingy hallway at the top, with a smoky haze coming from the center one. She headed toward it. “Winnie?”

“In here!”

The room was long, high-ceilinged, and old-fashioned, a combined living area and kitchenette. Smoke poured from the area near the stove. Winnie was beating at the cupboard next to it with a bath towel. Although Sugar Beth couldn’t see any leaping flames, the situation was far from under control, and Winnie should be getting out.

“I was making fried chicken, and—” She glanced over her shoulder and started to cough. “What are you doing here?”

“Do you want me to leave?”

“I don’t care what you do.”

“I should let you burn.”

“Then get out.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

Winnie gasped as a stack of paper napkins sitting on the counter burst into flames. While she swung the towel at them, Sugar Beth snatched a scatter rug from the floor and began beating at a wisp of flame licking at a wall calendar. She heard the sound of a siren. Her eyes were stinging, and it was getting harder to breathe.

“This is stupid. The fire department’s coming. Let’s leave while we can.”

“Not till they get here. I can’t let this spread downstairs.”

The store held irreplaceable antiques, and Sugar Beth could almost understand. Almost. She slapped at the cupboard door. “Say, ‘Pretty please, Sugar Beth. Stay and help my stupidass self.’”

“The towel!”

Sugar Beth spun around in time to see a dish towel drop to the floor in flames. She smothered it with the scatter rug, coughed. “You’re giving me back Diddie’s pearls, or I swear to God I’ll lock you up in here.”

“Bite me.”

The smoke was getting thicker, the sirens closer, and Sugar Beth decided Winnie had pressed her luck for long enough. She tossed down the scatter rug, took a quick step forward, and threw a hammerlock around her neck.

“What are you doing?”

“Putting an end to negotiations.”

“Stop it!”

“Shut up. The trucks are almost here.” Sugar Beth pulled her toward the door.

“I’m not going anywhere!” Even though Sugar Beth was taller, Winnie must have been working out because she was strong as an ox, and she started to break away. Sugar Beth used a neat trick she’d learned from Cy Zagurski and dragged her into the hallway.

“Ouch! That hurts. You’re twisting my arm off.”

Sugar Beth began maneuvering her down the steps. “Play nice, and I won’t break it.”

“Quit it!”

“Save your breath.”

They were nearly at the bottom when she made the mistake of easing the pressure. Winnie immediately tried to bolt back up the stairs, but she’d breathed in just enough smoke to slow her reflexes, and Sugar Beth put her in another choke hold. “Quit being an idiot!”

“Let me go!”

She wasn’t certain how much longer she could have held on to her if the first fire truck hadn’t pulled up in front of the store just then. Winnie saw it, too, and finally stopped struggling. Through the broken door, Sugar Beth watched people getting out of their cars and realized a small crowd had begun to form.

She also realized she’d just been handed a golden opportunity. Granted, it was the kind of opportunity a more honorable person would resist. Colin, for example, wouldn’t think of it. Neither would Ryan, and certainly not Winnie. But the fire didn’t seem too serious, and none of those stuffed shirts had Sugar Beth Carey’s particular gift for enjoying the moment.

The firefighters jumped from the truck and rushed toward the broken door, but before they could get there, Sugar Beth stuck out her foot and tripped Winnie. Since she was a naturally considerate person, she made sure she caught her before she fell into the broken glass.

“I’ve got her!” she called out to the pair of firemen who’d just broken into the store. “I didn’t think I was going to be able to carry her all the way down the stairs—she weighs a ton—but the Good Lord was watching over both of us.”

“What do you think—”

She plastered her hand across Winnie’s mouth. “Don’t try to talk, honey. It’ll make you cough again.” She waved the fireman toward the stairs. “She’s fine. I’ll get her outside.”

One of them began to break away to come to her aid, so she took her hand off Winnie’s mouth just long enough for her to start to sputter again. “See! She’s breathing fine. But it’s a mess up there.”

He joined the others, and as they stormed past, Sugar Beth dragged Winnie out onto the sidewalk, not an easy task, since Winnie was fighting mad. “You’re going to be okay now, honey,” Sugar Beth announced just loudly enough for the small group of onlookers to hear. “I’d have died myself before I left you up there to burn. And I’m no heroine, so don’t you dare thank me again.”

The EMTs rushed up and grabbed Winnie, which was a good thing, because she was starting to bite. Sugar Beth hurriedly backed away. Dulane Cowie, who looked a lot better in a cop’s uniform than he’d looked picking his nose in fourth-period study hall, rushed up to her.

“Sugar Beth? Did you carry Winnie out by yourself?”

“It’s amazing what you can do when a person’s life is at stake,” she said modestly.

Winnie had begun arguing with the EMTs, and a woman Sugar Beth recognized as an older, chubbier version of Laverne Renke waved from just behind the police line. “Hey, Sugar Beth, what happened in there?”

“Hey, Laverne. I saw smoke when I was leaving the bookstore and ran over to see if I could help. Winnie was being so brave trying to fight the fire by herself. I’m just glad I was around to help.”

“I’ll say,” Laverne replied. “It looked like she was unconscious when you carried her out.”

Winnie heard that, and she stuck her head around the EMT to shoot Sugar Beth a furious glare.

“Probably just breathed a little too much smoke,” Sugar Beth said quickly.

Dulane gazed toward the second story. “She was lucky you were there.”

“Anybody would have done the same thing.”

The EMTs still had Winnie, and the smoke had begun to clear from the upstairs window. Sugar Beth watched along with the crowd. Before long, one of the firemen emerged and headed toward Winnie. Sugar Beth decided this was an excellent time to make herself scarce, but just as she began to head to her car, a tan BMW screeched to a stop behind the fire trucks and Ryan leaped out, barefoot and dressed in jeans and a gray T-shirt.

He ran for Winnie and pulled her to his chest. Since they were barely eight feet away, Sugar Beth could hear every word. “Are you all right?” he said.

“Yes, I—I was frying chicken—Charise has been sick, and . . . The phone distracted me. The oil got too hot. It was stupid.”

“I’m so sorry.” The emotion in his voice made Sugar Beth suspect he might be talking about something more than the fire. She’d seen a lot of men in love, and Ryan fit right in.

She lost the thread of conversation for a few minutes as she convinced another EMT that she hadn’t suffered any harm. When she finally got rid of him, she saw Ryan push a lock of hair from Winnie’s grimy cheek and search her face. “What I said yesterday . . . I didn’t mean any of it.”

Winnie gave a wobbly nod.

A young fireman Sugar Beth didn’t recognize came forward. “You’ve got a lot of smoke damage, Mrs. Galantine, but it could have been worse.” He turned to Ryan and indicated Sugar Beth with his thumb. “It’s a good thing the lady over there showed up. She carried Mrs. Galantine downstairs. Your wife could have been seriously hurt.”

Winnie had temporarily forgotten about Sugar Beth, but the fireman’s praise brought it all back, and her eyebrows slammed together. Ryan spun around. “Sugar Beth?”

Winnie opened her mouth, all ready to blast her, only to have Ryan pull her to his chest again. “My God . . . Are you sure you’re all right?” He seemed to be having a hard time breathing. “You have to come home now. It’s over, Winnie. You don’t have any choice.”

He didn’t gloat, and he wasn’t even the tiniest bit smug, but Sugar Beth could see Winnie withdrawing. Looking deeply unhappy, she took a small step backward and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear with sooty fingers. “Not yet. Not until we’re both sure.”

“I’m sure,” Ryan said, his voice thick with emotion. “I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

“I’m glad for you.” Winnie reached out and touched his cheek tenderly. “A little longer.”

Even from where she was standing, Sugar Beth could feel Winnie’s love for him, but Ryan didn’t seem as perceptive. Instead of relaxing and giving her the room she needed like any person with half a brain would do, he continued to press. “You have to come home. You don’t have anywhere else to go.”

Winnie got all starchy, and Sugar Beth found herself thinking that even the best of men could be stupider than dirt.

“I’ll stay at the Inn,” she said.

“Aaron’s hosting the chamber of commerce conference right now, remember? Everything’s been booked for weeks.”

“I’d forgotten.” Winnie began to look cornered. “I’ll—I’ll work something out.”

“You can work it out later. In the meantime, I want you to come home.”

“Ryan, please . . .”

“It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“If I come home now, we’ll never get fixed!” she cried.

“We aren’t broken,” he insisted. “Not anymore.”

“We’re still damaged,” she said more quietly. “And we need to make it right.”

But he wouldn’t back down. “Just for tonight, then.”

Winnie looked like an animal caught in a trap, and the same impulse that had made Sugar Beth trip her now suggested she do something else entirely, something not nearly as much fun. Something not fun at all.

She ordered herself to walk away, but instead, she heard herself speak. “You could . . .” Shut up, you dummy. “You could . . . you know . . .” She started to cough and patted her chest. “Smoke.”

Don’t say another word. Not one more word. Just walk away.

Their impatient expressions made her feel like a child who’d interrupted the grown-ups’ important business. She pressed her hand to her throat. “You could . . . uh . . . stay with me, Winnie. Just for tonight . . . Tomorrow, maybe, if you have to, but . . . Not more than . . . Whatever, damn it!”

“With you!” Ryan laughed. “That’s a good one. Save your breath. Winnie is not going to stay with you.”

The bigger they were, the dumber they were.

“All right,” Winnie said slowly, her expression remote. “Yes, thank you. I will.”

Ryan looked as though somebody’d knocked him in the head with a two-by-four. “Are you out of your mind? That’s Sugar Beth!”

“I’m well aware of who it is.” And then, with a completely straight face: “She did save my life.”

Sugar Beth tried her best to look humble. “It was nothing.”

“Believe me, I’m the best judge of that,” Winnie said, tight-lipped.

Ryan gazed at them both, as if they’d lost their minds. “I don’t understand any of this.”

“You can come by as soon as you’re done here,” Sugar Beth said to Winnie. “I’m going home to hide the knives.”

An hour later, after Ryan had checked on Gigi to make sure she was still asleep, then downed a stiff drink, he called Colin and told him what had happened. “You’re sure they’re both safe?” Colin asked for the third time.

“From the fire, yes, but who knows about tonight. Go over and check on them, will you? I’m so upset with Winnie right now, I don’t trust myself to get near her.”

“Forget it. I’d do anything else for you, but as long as I know they’re safe, I’m not going near that house. They’ll have to work this out for themselves.”

“Sugar Beth doesn’t want to work anything out. This was pure spite on her part. She’s scheming to keep Winnie from coming home.”

Colin sincerely doubted that. At the same time, who knew what was going through her mind. “You say Sugar Beth saved Winnie’s life?”

“That’s what they’re telling me. God knows, I’m grateful, but— Why did it have to be her? Everything’s so screwed up. One minute I had life by the balls, and now it’s got me.”

“Things’ll look better in the morning, no doubt.”

“I’d like to believe that.”

After they hung up, Colin had to keep reminding himself that Sugar Beth wasn’t hurt, so he didn’t rush over to the carriage house. His presence would make her feel as if she had two battles to fight instead of one. As he gazed out the window, he saw Winnie’s Benz parked by the house. He turned away only to be greeted with the sight of his unmade bed. He wanted Sugar Beth there—naked, legs twined through rumpled sheets, arms reaching out for him.

Now that he knew about Delilah, all the parts of her that wouldn’t fit together had snapped into place. She was a woman of strong principles and sterling character, the kind of woman who, in days of yore, had driven ordinary men to scale castle walls or sent a prince door-to-door with a glass slipper in his pocket.

Who could have imagined a hardheaded realist like himself would have fallen under the spell of Sugar Beth Carey? But fall he had, and now he needed to figure out exactly what he intended to do about it.

Sugar Beth was fairly certain Winnie wouldn’t go home to pack a suitcase, so she set out a toothbrush, along with a change of clothes, in the small bedroom. She was in no shape to deal with her natural-born enemy tonight, so after a quick bath, she went to bed.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t avoid her the next morning. A little after eight, she heard Winnie coming downstairs. Sugar Beth shut off the kitchen faucet and spoke to her without turning around. “I’ve got Fruity Pebbles or Doritos. Take your pick.”

“I’ll get something on my way to the store.”

“Good choice.” Sugar Beth glanced at her over her shoulder, then snorted. She’d known Cy’s old Matrix T-shirt and her own ratty gray sweatpants wouldn’t look good on Winnie, but she hadn’t been prepared for quite how oversize they’d be. “Nice outfit.”

Winnie, as usual, was the better person and didn’t rise to the bait. “It’s fine,” she said stiffly. Gordon slithered from under the table to check out the new houseguest, bared his teeth at her, and headed for the living room. “I appreciate your letting me sleep here last night.”

“It was the least I could do. After saving your life and everything.”

That set Winnie off. “You could have hurt me when you tripped me like that.”

“No risk, no reward.”

“It was my risk.”

“Exactly what made it irresistible.”

“You always have to be the center of attention, don’t you?”

“Let’s just say I seize my opportunities.”

“And everybody else’s while you’re at it.”

“Has anybody mentioned that you have no sense of humor?”

“Everything isn’t a joke.”

“Is anything a joke to you? Or do you look like you’re sucking on prunes all the time.”

“Lemons. The expression is ‘sucking on lemons.’”

“You should know.” Gordon started barking in the living room. “Quiet!” And then Sugar Beth realized he was barking because somebody was banging on the front door. With a hiss of exasperation, she stalked off to answer it and found Gigi wearing a sweater and jeans that actually fit. Even with her mangled hair, she looked pretty cute.

“Were you guys yelling?”

“Hey, kiddo.”

Winnie shot out of the kitchen. The teenager rushed over and gave her an awkward hug. For a moment Winnie closed her eyes and simply held her. When she finally let her go, Gigi looked embarrassed and knelt to greet Gordon. “Hey, boy. Missed me?”

Gordon rolled on his back to let her scratch his stomach. As she rubbed, the dog cast a hostile eye toward Winnie. Gigi took in her mother’s outfit and wrinkled her nose. “Gross.”

“Not mine. You’re up awfully early for a Saturday.”

“I think I might have had a premonition that something was wrong.” She gave Gordon a last pat and rose. “Dad told me what happened. He said I could come here.”

“Want some cinnamon French toast?” Sugar Beth asked, moving back into the kitchen.

“Sure.”

Winnie immediately got pissy. “You offered me Doritos.”

“Dang, I must have forgotten about the French toast.”

Hope flickered in Gigi’s eyes. “Are you guys friends now?”

Sugar Beth occupied herself with the eggs and let Winnie answer that one. “Not friends. No.”

Gigi’s forehead crumpled. “You still hate each other, don’t you?”

“I don’t hate anyone,” Mother Teresa replied, pouring herself a cup of coffee. Sugar Beth hid another snort by cracking an egg.

“If I ever had a sister, I wouldn’t hate her.” Gigi sat on the floor by the door so Gordon could snuggle up to her.

“We aren’t regular sisters,” Winnie replied, taking a seat at the table.

“Half sisters. You had the same father.”

“But we weren’t raised together.”

“If I found out I had a half sister, even if we weren’t raised together, it would make me happy. I hate being an only child.”

“As you’ve mentioned at least a hundred times.”

Gigi gave her mother a reproachful look. “I don’t understand why you have to hate her so much.”

“Gigi, this isn’t any of your business.”

The temporary truce between mother and teenager came to an end, and silence fell over the kitchen, broken only by the soft, contented moans of a basset having his ears rubbed. Sugar Beth tapped the whisk against the sides of Tallulah’s old spongeware bowl. Gigi intended to cast her mother as the bad guy, with Sugar Beth as the injured party, which meant it was time to come clean. She consoled herself with the reminder that she owed Winnie one after the trick she’d pulled last night. All right. She owed Winnie more than one.

“The truth is, cupcake, I pretty much made your mother’s life miserable.”

Gigi abandoned Gordon’s ears to gaze up at Sugar Beth. “What did you do?”

“Everything I could think of.” Sugar Beth concentrated on dredging the bread so she didn’t have to look at either one of them. “Your mother was shy, and I used that to my advantage to make her look bad in front of the other kids. Whenever somebody wanted to be her friend, I found a way to break it up. I made fun of her behind her back. I even found this diary she kept and read it out loud to everybody.”

“I don’t believe you,” Gigi replied, too loyal to abandon faith in her new aunt so quickly. “Even Kelli Willman wouldn’t do something like that.”

“Believe it.” Sugar Beth threw a slab of butter into the skillet. She’d forgotten to turn the burner on, so it sat there in a hard lump. She picked up a tea towel to wipe her hands, then turned to face them both. Winnie had the coffee mug cradled in her hands, her expression unreadable.

“My senior year, I did the worst thing to her I’ve ever done to anybody.” Sugar Beth looked at Gigi because she didn’t want to look at Winnie. “Your mom was in a show at school—”

Winnie rose from her chair. “There’s no reason to go into this.”

“It’s my shame, not yours,” Sugar Beth shot back.

To her credit, Winnie sat down again. Maybe she realized, as Sugar Beth did, that the time had come to drag the old ghosts out into the sunlight.

“She had paint all over her,” Sugar Beth said, “so I knew she’d have to go to the locker room to get cleaned up when it was over. I waited till she had time to get into the shower, then I sneaked in and hid all her clothes. I hid the towels, anything she could use to cover up with.”

She half expected Winnie to make another protest, but she simply cradled her mug and gazed straight ahead.

“That wasn’t as bad as reading her diary to everybody,” Gigi said.

“I haven’t finished.”

Gigi drew Gordon’s head farther into her lap while Winnie sat stone-faced.

“I was with some boys,” Sugar Beth said, “and I dared them to go into the locker room. I made a big joke out of it. They didn’t know your mom was in there, so they went along with me.” She fiddled with the tea towel. “Your dad was one of those boys.”

The muscles worked in Gigi’s throat as she swallowed. “Did he see her?”

Sugar Beth nodded. “Yes. And she had this huge crush on him. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have been so bad. But she liked him so much, and she was humiliated.”

“Why would you do something so mean?”

Sugar Beth gazed at Winnie. “Maybe you’d like to explain this part.”

“How can I explain it when I never understood it myself?” Winnie said stonily.

“Sure you did.”

“There was no reason for it,” Winnie retorted. “You had everything. You were legitimate. You had a real family.”

“And you were popular, too,” Gigi said. “So what did you have to be jealous of?”

Winnie knew, but she wasn’t going to say it.

“My father loved your mother, but he didn’t love me,” Sugar Beth said. “The truth was, he could barely tolerate me. I giggled, I got lousy grades, and I made too many demands on him.”

“I don’t believe you,” Gigi said. “Dads love their kids, even when they screw up.”

“Not all dads are like yours. Mine didn’t hit me or anything. He just didn’t like being around me. But he loved being with your mother, and that made me hate her.” Sugar Beth turned back to the stove and flipped on the burner, aware of how much the past still hurt. “Whenever I saw them together, he looked happy with her in a way he never looked with me. I couldn’t punish him for it, so I punished her.”

Gigi swallowed hard, trying to make the best of it. “Teenagers do dumb things. I don’t see why it should still be a big deal.”

“You’re right,” Sugar Beth said. “It shouldn’t be.”

Winnie continued being unhelpful by taking another sip of coffee and not saying a thing. Sugar Beth concentrated on the French toast. Finally, Gigi set Gordon aside and rose to her feet, a little furrow in her brow. “Did you take my dad away from my mom in high school?”

“Now that I didn’t do.”

“He was your boyfriend for a long time, right?”

“Until we went to college. Then I dumped him for another guy. A guy who wasn’t half as nice as your dad. But you have to admit that turned out to be a good thing because, if I hadn’t cheated on him, your dad and mom wouldn’t have gotten to know each other, and you wouldn’t have been born.”

“They had to get married. Mom got pregnant.”

Sugar Beth glanced at Winnie, but she had that miles-away expression she used to wear sometimes in school.

“I’d never be stupid enough to get pregnant if I wasn’t married,” Gigi said.

“That’s because you’re not going to have sex until you’re thirty,” Sugar Beth replied.

Something that might have been a smile caught the corner of Winnie’s mouth, but Gigi didn’t see the humor. “Are you, like, going to try to take him away from her again?”

“No!” Winnie smacked her hand so hard on the table her mug rattled. “No, Gigi. She’s not going to do that.”

Gigi moved to her mother’s side, relaxing almost imperceptibly.

Sugar Beth tossed the bread into the skillet. “Honey, I couldn’t take your dad away from your mom even if I tried. He loves her. He doesn’t love me.”

Still troubled, Gigi gazed at her mother. “I don’t understand how you could let her do so many bad things to you. Why didn’t you stand up for yourself?”

“I was a wimp,” Winnie said, looking surprisingly formidable in her oversize clothes.

Gigi nodded with the wisdom of the ages. “You didn’t claim your power.”

“I didn’t know I had any. You should have seen her, Gi. She was so beautiful, so confident. Her hair was perfect, her clothes perfect, her makeup always right. And she had this amazing laugh that made everybody want to laugh with her. Nothing was ever boring when Sugar Beth was around. When she walked into a room, you couldn’t look at anybody else.”

“She’s still kind of like that,” Gigi said. “People pay attention to her.”

“Hey, I’m standing right here, in case you’ve forgotten,” Sugar Beth said. “And nobody outside of Parrish even notices me.”

“I seriously doubt that,” Winnie said. “You’re just so used to it you don’t see it anymore.”

Gigi got her mulish look. “I think you should say you’re sorry, Sugar Beth. And, Mom, I think you should forgive her because she’s not like that now.”

“It’s not that easy,” Sugar Beth replied, so Winnie didn’t have to be the bad guy. “I am sorry, but there’ve been too many years of animosity.”

Winnie’s expression held the hint of a smile. “Griffin Carey did love me more.”

“Mom! That’s mean.”

“Well, he did,” Winnie replied. “But I was still jealous because Sugar Beth had Diddie.”

“You had Grandma Sabrina.”

“Believe me, there was no comparison. Diddie was like a movie star. She was beautiful and glamorous, and she had this amazing laugh. She and Sugar Beth were more like girlfriends than mother and daughter. If Sugar Beth wasn’t with your dad or the Seawillows, she was with Diddie. Everybody knew not to schedule meetings for Saturday mornings because they always watched Josie and the Pussycats together. When they were out in public, they’d whisper secrets to each other, and if you walked by Frenchman’s Bride, you’d see the two of them sitting on the front porch, drinking sweet tea and gossiping. All Grandma Sabrina and I ever did was get on each other’s nerves.”

“Grandma’s nicer now.”

“Old age mellowed her. When I was growing up, she only had room in her life for one person, and that was my father.”

Sugar Beth flinched to hear Griffin referred to that way. At the same time, she acknowledged that Winnie had the right.

“So what are you going to do?” Gigi said. “Are you going to keep hating each other? Or do you think you could be friends, now that you’ve talked out your problems.”

“Not likely,” Sugar Beth said. “Or at least not until somebody’s handed over somebody else’s pearls.”

Gigi looked at her mother for an explanation.

“I have Diddie’s pearls,” Winnie said. “They should be Sugar Beth’s, but they aren’t, and I’m not giving them back.”

“That’s pretty mean.”

“As mean as what happened in the locker room?”

“No, not that mean.” Gigi returned her attention to Sugar Beth, a pint-size secretary of state trying to negotiate a treaty between warring nations. “I think Mom should keep the pearls to make up for what you did, even if they look dumb on her.”

“They don’t look dumb on me,” Winnie said, “which is why I wear them all the time.”

“You should be glad Mom’s keeping them. They’d look dumb on you, too.”

“That’s not the point,” Sugar Beth said. “The point is . . . Oh, never mind. I know where this is leading, Gigi, and don’t waste your breath. Your mother and I will never act like sisters, no matter how hard you push. The best we can hope for is politeness.”

“I guess. But, Sugar Beth, did you ever think . . .” Gigi touched her mother’s shoulder. “Me and Mom are the only two people in the world that have the same blood as you.”

Sugar Beth got that old tight feeling in her throat and did her best to shrug it away. “Them’s the breaks, kid.”

“Can I take Gordon to see Dad?” she said abruptly.

“Leaving us alone together won’t work,” Sugar Beth said.

“I just want Gordon to meet Dad.”

“What about your French toast?”

“I’ll take it with me.” She grabbed a piece from the plate, called to Gordon, and a few moments later, they were out the door.

Winnie rose and headed for the coffeepot. “I knew you were jealous of me. I guess I never quite realized how jealous.”

“You don’t have to look so happy about it.”

“Life doesn’t hand you too many perfect moments. I’m savoring.” She smiled, transferred a piece of French toast to her plate, then regarded it critically. “This was supposed to have cinnamon on it.”

“I got distracted humiliating myself in front of your daughter.”

Winnie squeezed out a dab of syrup, then picked up a knife and fork. Still standing at the counter, she began to eat, but she no longer looked quite so full of herself. Finally, she said, “I’d like to stay here for a few more nights if it’s all right.”

“You’ll have to deal with him sooner or later.”

“Later.” She took another bite. “What’s going on with you and Colin?”

“I’m toying with him.”

Winnie laughed as she set down her plate. “You’re nuts about him.”

“Says you.”

Winnie headed for the living room and picked up her purse. “It’s going to be so much fun watching you get dumped.”

“Yeah? We’ll just see about that.”

Winnie snickered, and the door shut with a firm thud.

Sugar Beth lunged for the maple syrup. “And isn’t it nice having our old animosity behind us.”