“You can’t have an American cooking English pub food,” George argued.

“Why not?”

“It’s not seemly.”

“She’ll be in the kitchen. Who’ll know?”

“You must be joking. Everyone in the village will find out. No, really, Max.”

She swung around. “ Cal ’s been gone a whole year and she’s not moving on. At all. At least she had her work. Now, the restaurant’s closed. Every time I talk to her she has a harder time faking that she’s fine. She is not fine. Traveling here would do her good, and besides, I miss her.”

“Fair enough. Have her to stay. We’ve got loads of bedrooms. She won’t be in the way.”

“She needs work, a sense of purpose. She needs to cook.”

“Well.” He spread his hands in a reasonable way. “She can cook for us.”

“Rachel needs a real job that earns real money.” She turned to him. “Come on. It would only be for a few months. Please?”

“Stop looking at me with those melting eyes. It’s not working.”

But his mouth was having trouble remaining serious and she knew she had him. In the months she’d known George, she’d yet to find an argument that couldn’t be resolved between them. She walked up to him and put her arms around his neck. “You know, for an earl you’re pretty damn sexy.”

“I’ll speak to Arthur. That’s all I can promise.” Then he bent her back over the desk, and had begun showing her exactly how sexy he could be when the phone rang.

“Ignore it,” George mumbled against her skin. His lips and tongue were seducing her whole body by kissing the spot where her neck met her shoulder. His hand was already sneaking under her shirt, headed north for her breasts. Knowing the service would pick up, she ignored the ringing until it stopped, putting her arms around George’s neck and kissing him until they were both breathing hard.

Wiggins’s heavy tread could be heard crossing the foyer, so George slipped his hand out of her shirt, took a step back, and said, “My friend Jack’s sister Chloe wants to have her wedding here.”

George was so smooth it was obvious he’d been used to having servants around all his life. She was still having trouble adapting. But she was learning. She hauled herself upright and pushed a hand through her hair. When Wiggins walked past the open door of the office, she said in a voice that was only the tiniest bit husky, “Fantastic. Will it be a big, expensive wedding?”

“Should be. She’s marrying an Italian ski racer. His family owns half the Italian Alps. Pots of money.”

“Perfect,” she said, forgetting sex at the prospect of making more of the money they needed to pay off the bank debt. “Oh, but if we’re doing a wedding for people like that, we’re going to have to do something about the catering. We can’t have those clowns we hired the last time. That mother-and-son duo from the next village. We’ll have to-” She stopped midsentence and smacked herself in the forehead. “Rachel!”

Rachel’s intercom buzzed, waking her up from her second nap of the afternoon. Soon, this laziness would really have to stop. One more week, she promised herself. Then she’d go out, start assimilating back into society. Think about another job.

She dragged herself off the couch. Must be the groceries she’d ordered by phone.

The thing was, she’d already had offers to work again. By e-mail, by phone message, by mail. All so far unanswered. She didn’t want to work for someone else and risk losing another restaurant. If only one of those calls, letters, or e-mails said, “Here’s a couple million bucks. Open your own place. Pay us back when you can.” That message she’d have answered.

She let the delivery guy up, and when he got to her door she peeked through the peephole. She didn’t recognize him, but he wore a uniform. She opened the door with the chain on it. “Yes?”

Now she recognized the uniform. It was a courier holding not groceries but an envelope. He was cute, with sun-streaked hair and a fresh scrape on his knee. Surfer boy/courier guy. “Is that a check for two million?”

“If it is,” he said, “can I get your number?”

She managed a laugh, unhooked the chain, and took the envelope. Checked the address and wished she could reverse time far enough to ignore the door. Max + special delivery package = bad news.

She considered throwing the envelope away unopened, but with her bossy, tenacious sister, avoidance was pointless.

Inside the package was a plane ticket to London and a letter. There wasn’t much in the way of chitchat.

Dear Rachel,

I miss you, and need a favor. I’ll tell you when you get here. Don’t even think about not coming. Mom and Dick are going to drive you to the airport.

If you’re not packed when they get there, Mom will pack for you. You don’t want that to happen.

There is no escape.

Love, Max.

Rachel fingered the ticket.

She could be bitchy about the fact that her big sister was interfering-again. Or she could appreciate that Max had gone to a lot of trouble for her, and she missed her.

Besides, she could use a holiday. The first spark of excitement she’d felt in weeks flashed through her. Oh, what the hell? Maybe it was time to get off the couch.

A carefree vacation in an English mansion was exactly what she needed.

“You didn’t tell me you were marrying Hugh Grant.” Rachel and Maxine were having tea served in dainty china cups while they sat curled up on an overstuffed couch in a bright sunny room of Hart House and munched the Oreos that Rachel had brought from home, since they were Maxine’s favorite cookie in the world and she doubted Maxine could buy them in England.

“He does look sort of like Hugh Grant, doesn’t he? It’s the eyes, I think.”

Rachel narrowed her own eyes. “So you are marrying him. I knew it.”

“We haven’t decided anything yet,” Max said, trying unsuccessfully to look nonchalant, but her heightened color and extra sparkle gave her away. Then she dropped the airy pretense and complained, “Anyway, you could at least sound happy about the possibility of your sister getting married.”

“Marriage is a patriarchal institution designed to enslave women.”

But Max had known her longer and better than anyone on the planet, and she wasn’t buying it. “You picked the wrong guy, Rach. You made a mistake. It happens.”

“I guess.” She shrugged. “Getting divorced and losing the restaurant was a lot of failure for one year.”

“I know. And we don’t take failure well.” Max hugged her, something they hadn’t done much of since they’d both grown up. It was nice, Rachel thought, hugging her back. “So,” her sister said, all girlish and un-Max, “do you like him?”

“Hugh Grant? I adored him in Love, Actually.”

Her sister’s glare sent her back to childhood. “George, moron.”

Somehow discussing a distant movie star was a lot easier than talking about a man who could become part of her family. “He seems very nice,” she said slowly. Seems being the important word there. It was the character lurking underneath the charming veneer that counted, as she knew from bitter experience.

Rachel had been looking forward to a relaxing vacation, but now it seemed she was also here to check out Max’s prospective husband. Right now, that seemed like too big a job. Okay, so she hadn’t worked in two months. Hadn’t done much of anything but catch up on soaps she hadn’t seen since college. It was amazing how you could pick up the story lines again. She’d watched and rewatched classic movies and sitcoms, reread her entire collection of Sherlock Holmes, Anne of Green Gables, and the Harry Potter series which she’d somehow missed. With cable TV, online bill paying, and a grocery store and restaurants that delivered, she’d hunkered down in her apartment for weeks. The final divorce papers were in her filing cabinet under D, for disaster.