What is it that makes me her type? My looks? My personality?

The fact that you're not Italian and you have a job. That about does it.

Matt's face went blank.

See, she's always talking about how she's sworn off men, Italian men in particular. All her husbands have been Italian, and most of them either were unemployed at the time they married or got that way real quick.

Nola earns good money as a paralegal.

One of Matt's eyebrows shot high on his forehead. How many husbands were there?

Three.

Matt whistled.

But none of them lasted very long, Aidan added, as if that would be reassuring.

Matt grimaced. You're not saying they're all /dead/, are you?

Aidan and Riley howled with laughter. Not that I'm aware of, Aidan said, catching his breath.

Riley patted Matt's arm. This sounds like a match made in Hades.

You should know, his brother snapped.

Kat sat in the fading evening light, her legs tucked up underneath her, the mug of cocoa now cold in her hand. On the side table was the book she'd been reading, one she'd originally bought to enjoy on the beach, but mindless beach reading it didn't turn out to be. So now that she was back in the privacy of her own little city apartment, she'd spent most of the day with her nose buried in the print, reading about the psychology of suppressed memorieswhy they pop up when they do, how to handle them, and why people push them down in the first place.

She was hoping the book might help her remember everything that had happened in her dad's studio the evening she left Persuasion. It seemed impossible that the memory had ever existed in one piece in her brain, because she didn't even remember when she'd begun to forget. A week after she came to Baltimore? A month? Two years? She'd never mentioned anything about that night to Phyllis or Nola, because until recently she didn't realize there was anything to tell.

Kat rubbed hard at the back of her neck, pressing her fingers into the knotted muscles. The first snippets of memory about that evening had come when she and Nola sat in the ER of Davis Memorial, staring at Kat's father's limp hands. But the event didn't really come alive until the other day on the beach, talking to Jeff. When she'd said it out loudtelling him a story like it had happened to someone elsethe memory had suddenly become real, taken root, and she'd been drowning in the emotional fallout ever since.

She needed a break. Kat got up out of the old chair and stretched, reaching toward the ceiling and then down to her toes. She shuffled to the bathroom and threw cold water on her eyelids, noticing the tanned but frowning face staring back at her from the mirror. She was thirty-seven now. She wasn't a girl running away anymore. She was nobody's victim and she wasn't hiding a damn thing from anyone. On top of all that, thanks to Phyllis, Kat would never have to rely on anyone for anything again for as long as she lived.

Whatever she had to deal with, she'd deal with it, whether it be something outside herselflike Aidan's furyor something inside herself.

Like her own buried memories.

Leaning closer to her reflection, Kat studied every fine line that fanned out from her eyes, every freckle that had survived the Fifth Avenue glycolic acid facial. She was still pretty enough. If she decided she wanted a man's company for casual dating, she could probably find a good one if she really put her mind to it.

Stranger things had happened.

Kat patted her face dry with a towel and headed into the kitchen to get a snack. On her way she flipped on the remote to her new Bose CD changer, and her apartment came alive with Bonnie Raitt's slide guitar and sweet lament. Kat sang along, slapping together a turkey and Swiss on rye as she wailed about good lovin' gone bad, and had just taken a large bite when she heard the banging sound. /Great/. Kat tossed her sandwich to the paper plate. She'd been sitting down here quiet as a dead mouse the whole day, and the second she turns on some good music, Mrs. Brownstein starts pounding on her floor with her broom handle. Kat really looked forward to moving into the row house when it was remodeled. At least at Phyllis', there were no upstairs neighbors, and the shared walls were thick enough to give a person some privacy.

Kat turned the volume down until Bonnie's roar became a mewl, and took a seat at the dinette table. Just as she got another big bite into her mouth, the banging started up again. This time, it was her front door.

Kat was pissed. She'd lived under Mrs. Brownstein now for twelve years, and the older that woman got, the crankier she became. The broom had been plenty to get the message across. There was no need to come down here and make a fuss in person.

Kat flung open the door, already aligning her gaze to where she expected to find a pair of crinkly, angry eyes behind thick glasses. Instead, she encountered a man's chest. Not just any man's, either. She didn't need to adjust her gaze upward to know it was Riley.

You've got something on your chin, he said, and because he said it in that unmistakable West Virginia baritone, Kat thought it was just about the sexiest sentence she'd ever heard in her life. She reached up to wipe away the mayonnaise, but Riley got there first, running his finger just below and to the left of her bottom lip.

She refused to look up at his face. She couldn't handle this. Why did he come here? He was about to get married! This was just torture! Oh, but she had to lookshe knew he would be taking that dollop of mayonnaise and putting it in his own mouth, and she just had to watch! When it came to Riley Bohland, she'd always been so damn /weak/!

Kat raised her chin and dared to look at him. Riley was grinning, and his rich blue eyes were laughing, and he took that bit of mayonnaise and opened his gorgeous, soon-to-be-married mouth and flicked out his tongue to gobble it right up.

Kat thought she'd wet herself.

This is so unfair, she whispered, not even realizing she'd said it out loud.

It's about as fair as it gets. Now that I've dropped by unannounced the way you did, I'd say we're even.

Kat shook her head, overwhelmed at all the reasons that this was such a bad development, the most important being that Riley was engaged. Coming in a close second was that little complication that she hated him, followed by the fact that she was probably still in love with him.

Really, all she wanted was to jump him right now, in her doorway, and give Mrs. Brownstein something to bang her broom about for once. But she wouldn't.

Aren't you going to invite me in?

Kat snorted. I think not.

Why's that?

I'm eating.

I'll keep you company while you eat.

No thanks.

Then come out somewhere with me.

I'm not dressed.

Then put on those slutty fur-trapper boots I liked so much and let's go for a walk.

Kat's mouth fell open. My /what/?

What you're wearing is fine, but if you're not comfortable for some reason, just put something else on.

Kat looked down at herself and laughed, knowing full well that her ratty cotton sweatpants and T-shirt weren't even fit for the Early Bird Tavern at the corner, an establishment famous for its complete lack of standards of any kind.

I don't want to put anything on.

That'll work, too, Riley said, grinning.

This isn't a good idea, she said.

C'mon now, Scout. Riley winked. You know you're going to let me in.

At the sound of that ancient nickname, Kat gasped. She stared at Riley in wonderyet another detail from her past she'd managed to shove down.

Or maybe, if she believed the stuff she'd been reading in that book, she'd blocked the nickname from her memory because the idea that someone ever loved her like thatthen dumped herhurt too much to handle.