He swung his legs over the side of the bed and rubbed his eyes. He needed sleep, and yet he couldn’t sleep. It was 3:00 A.M. Too early to call the hospital to check on Sophie. He’d wanted to stay in the waiting room last night, in case she awakened and asked for him, but the nurses chased him off, telling him that Sophie would be just fine without him and promising to call if she did awaken.

Celia had decided to stay with her great-aunt in one of the guest rooms at Cherry Hill. The old lady was overwrought from all the excitement of the day, and Sallie had hinted broadly that she herself was in no condition to play nursemaid.

Just as well, Mason thought. He was in the damnedest mood. Jumpy and irritable. Well, the day had been a disaster, hadn’t it?

He’d left Celia in tears, back at Cherry Hill.

“Our beautiful day,” she’d said, peeling off the false eyelashes and depositing them in the ashtray of the Saab. “All our plans, everything. Ruined.”

“I know,” he’d said, kissing her, trying to soothe her. “And I’m so sorry. But it wasn’t really ruined, was it? I mean, you looked amazing, and everything was just the way you planned it.”

She pulled away and stared at him. “Are you out of your mind? Your daughter collapsed at the altar and had to be rushed to the hospital. All of our guests were just sitting there … stunned. And don’t forget, we never did actually get married. There’s a $3,500 wedding cake at the country club, getting stale even as we speak.”

“The cake? Can’t we just, freeze it or…”

“No,” she cut him off. “We can’t.”

“Oh-kaaay,” Mason said, trying to tread lightly. “But we will get married. I promise. We’ll do it all over again. We’ll get another cake. Just as soon as we get Sophie home and recovered from surgery.”

“It won’t be the same,” Celia said sorrowfully. “You’re a man, and you’ve already had one wedding. I guess I can’t really expect you to understand. A girl dreams of her wedding day her whole life. She has just one shot at one perfect moment. No matter how hard you try, you don’t get that moment back again.”

“I’m sorry.” It was all he could say. As she’d pointed out, he couldn’t fix it, no matter how hard he tried.

He got up to go to the bathroom and stubbed his toe hard on the foot of a damned chair. Christ! Since Celia had redecorated the house, or decorated it, since, as she aptly pointed out, it had never been decorated at all before she moved in, he was always bumping into things, knocking things over, breaking things.

Mason limped downstairs and into the kitchen. He stood in front of the open refrigerator door, not really hungry, but wanting … what?

Celia’s nonfat yogurt containers were lined up in neat rows, as were the bottles of mineral water. Half a roast chicken nested on a plate under a tinfoil wrapping. There were containers of strawberries and blueberries and raspberries, packages of cheeses he’d never heard of, a crisper drawer full of things like scallions and leeks and arugula, carrots and baby spinach and celery sticks. Everything looked healthy and wholesome and totally uninteresting. At the very back of the top shelf, he spied the comforting sight of a tall-necked brown bottle.

He took the beer and a chunk of the least stinky cheese he could find and went into the room Celia called his study.

It was a handsome room, he had to admit. Celia had taste to spare, even Pokey grudgingly gave her that. She’d had the builder-beige Sheetrock walls covered with weather-beaten boards taken out of an old barn out at the farm, had bookshelves built to line two walls, and had conjured up rows and rows of old leather and vellum-bound books to line the shelves. He’d opened one once, just to see what she thought he should be reading. But it was in German. He didn’t know German. The rug underfoot was some kind of rope-textured thing, sisal maybe—and it felt sandpaper-rough under his bare feet. He’d asked about keeping the old red and blue oriental rug he’d originally brought over from the attic at Cherry Hill when he’d bought the house, but Celia had just laughed and promised she’d find a better place for it when she finished redecorating.

He sat down at his desk and thrummed his fingers on the leather top. The desk was one of the very few things he’d insisted on keeping from his short-lived bachelor years. It had come out of his grandfather’s old office at the bottling plant. It was beat-up mahogany, with two banks of drawers that stuck and a deep knee-hole recess, where he could remember playing with his army action figures as a little kid, pretending that he was in a bunker. The chair had been his grandfather’s, too; it was high-backed, with cracked and peeling green leather upholstery that creaked loudly when he reclined in it.

Mason switched on his computer and idly glanced at his e-mails. Nothing that wouldn’t keep. He’d inherited Voncile as his assistant after his father’s death, and she was ruthless about weeding out e-mails he didn’t need to deal with—especially since he was supposed to be on his honeymoon right this minute.

His honeymoon! A week in Aruba, their own villa overlooking the ocean. He shrugged. Knowing Voncile, he was sure she’d gone straight to the office from the church, and begun canceling flights and arranging for refunds.

Thinking of the office reminded him of Annajane, and he frowned. Stuffed in the back of that ambulance, and then later, in the waiting room at the hospital, he’d seen glimpses of the old Annajane. She was as terrified as he, but they were together again, if only briefly, as a team. And then, in the car, she’d been so prickly, hostile almost.

She really thought she was something, getting remarried, telling him all about this Shane guy.

As though he hadn’t already thoroughly checked him out.

Mason clicked a few keys and opened up the file he’d started on this Shane Drummond clown the day Annajane returned from a trip to Atlanta—and announced her engagement.

From what Pokey told him, Annajane had only been seeing the guy since early fall. And three months later they were engaged? Fast work.

Voncile had been only too happy to conspire on this little research project. She’d nosed around the Internet for a few days, made some discreet calls to a security firm recommended by a business associate in Atlanta, and put together a fascinating dossier.

He was looking at that dossier now. Voncile had even managed to scrounge up photographs. Mason studied the largest of these, a color publicity still she’d found on Drummond’s agent’s Web site. So this was the kind of guy Annajane was attracted to?

In the photo, Drummond was dressed in a plaid lumberjack-type jacket and scruffy jeans. His curly hair looked unkempt, and he had those dark, brooding, soulful-looking eyes women like Annajane probably found irresistible. And was that a tiny gold hoop earring in his left ear? What the hell was it with women and musicians? Why did chicks always fall for the bad boys?

He shook his head and returned to the document Voncile had assembled.

Hmm. Matthew Shane Drummond, thirty-two. Hah! A younger man. Annajane had resorted to robbing the cradle. Born in Gastonia, he’d received a bachelor’s degree in English at Middle Tennessee State University. He’d knocked around the country for the past few years, working as a bartender and a short-haul truck driver, but mostly earning a living playing in country music dives.

From what Mason could tell, Annajane’s fiancé had formed his current group, Dandelion Wine, in 2008. He found a brief mention of the group in an obscure music magazine, about a recording contract with a Nashville label he’d actually heard of. So what? Did that mean this guy was the next Rascal Flatts? Mason highly doubted it.

Drummond owned a car, a 1999 Dodge Aerostar van, and a house, located in what looked like a rural area outside Atlanta, and valued, for tax purposes, at $82,700.