Chapter 1

      "Your brother's coming home."

      Ia bit into a piece of homemade shortbread, not looking up. "Bully for him."

      Taffy Waite Baldwin put the phone back in its cradle, turning to continue fiddling unsuccessfully with the antennae on the TV. "Dammit! Now I'm going to miss The Edge of Night!" She smacked the side of the TV sharply, hoping it wouldn't be enough to cause any harm but just enough to put the fear of God into it so that she didn't miss her stories. She certainly didn't want to break the thing, knowing that there would definitely be consequences to having broken the very expensive machine. It had an enormous fourteen-inch screen and a beautiful black and white picture, when it came in. And, it—unlike the set in the living room—had a big handle on the top that made it portable.

      Her generous, loving husband had given it to her for her birthday, knowing that when she was in the kitchen making dinner or whatever, she couldn't see the soap operas she dearly loved.

      But Taffy knew that neither the fact that he loved her nor the fact that it was a gift from him would stop her from exacting a painful price if she damaged it in any way. It was of little use to her, though, when she couldn't get the channel she needed, with it sitting on the kitchen counter.

      "You don't need to sound so excited about the prospect," Taffy commented absently, more involved with the TV than the conversation. "And don't talk with your mouth full."

      "Oh dear. Was I sounding excited?" Ia droned in a monotone, ignoring her sister-in-law's warning. "Bully for him."

      Slipping down off the snack bar stool, Anna Maria—long since shortened to "Ia" when she could only say that part of her own first name—headed for her room, nose buried in a well-worn copy of Jane Eyre, having just gotten to the thrilling part where Mr. Rochester was finally acknowledging his feelings toward Jane. Her heart began to ache in what she imagined to be much the same way Jane's would have—if she'd been real—when she began to read those unbearably romantic lines about how his heart was connected to hers by a string.

      Nothing like that was ever going to happen for her. She was quite sure about it. For one thing, as much as her mother used to tell her that she needed to modify her tendencies, she was smart, and she refused to hide that one light she did have under a bushel.

      But it wasn't as if she was downright ugly—she was just average looking, at best. So much so, that she'd managed to grow up, graduate from high school, go to college, and had even found a job for herself without anyone of the opposite sex noticing much of anything about her that wasn't in relation to her football quarterback, straight A, student body president, all round annoyingly successful brother Daniel.

      Even though he'd preceded her through school by more than ten years—his father having married her mother when he was twelve, and them producing Ia a year later—he was all she heard about from the faculty as well as the students. Not only had he gone on to play college ball for the Vols—nearly being drafted into the NFL—but he was a bit of a business whiz, too, of course. After interning throughout college at a local business that was involved in communications engineering, he'd struck out on his own and had built an amazing company that had brought commerce to their small town, jobs to its residents, and had lined his own pockets nicely in no small way in the process.

      She'd been so glad to finally get to college, having deliberately chosen one that he had not attended, despite the fact that he'd suggested that as an alumnus, he might be able to help her get into the University of Tennessee. UT would have been closer, and she could have lived at home, he'd suggested one of the many times he'd talked to her about her college choices.

      Ia had known that he was probably on the verge of it many times, but he'd never tried to mandate where she went, and she knew him well enough to know just how hard that must've been for him.

      Their parents had died when she was ten, and he had slipped frighteningly easily into the parental roles that void had left—better as a father figure, of course, but he did his best to deal with the side of things that were much less comfortable to him, too. She'd idolized him as a little girl, but by the time she'd been orphaned, they were good friends. He was gone a lot and had his own place by that point, but he had immediately moved back into the house in which he'd grown up, too, not wanting to uproot Ia and cause her any more upset than she was already feeling.

      The truth was that he'd been amazing with her while she was struggling with the loss. Big he-man that he was, he'd never flinched from comforting her, and the first thing he'd done once he'd gotten home after finding out about what had happened was to lift her into his arms and hold her while she wept. He didn't try to stop her from crying, didn't rush her or chastise her for her tears, then or ever.

      He had given her a week out of school to help her adjust, then he'd taken her back to school himself, developing a habit of dropping her off and picking her up,