Contents

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Chapter One

      Carlee held Alicia’s thirteen-month-old baby in her arms as she stared through her tears at the grave.

      She still found it hard to believe that Alicia was gone. It had happened so fast. One minute they were having their Sunday-morning treat of Danish pastry with their coffee and looking forward to taking Scotty to the beach that afternoon, and the next Alicia gasped, clutched her chest and collapsed. Carlee had instantly dialed 911. After a frantic ambulance ride, Alicia was whisked into the trauma unit, and a little while later a doctor came out to say she had died.

      He said it was her heart. Probably a congenital condition she’d had since birth. He asked Carlee if she knew about any heart problems in Alicia’s family. She told him that Alicia had experienced a difficult labor and delivery when Scotty was born and afterward was told a heart murmur had been detected. Alicia had been advised to undergo cardiac evaluation, but she had no insurance and couldn’t afford it. She didn’t think the murmur was anything to worry about, anyway. She’d always been healthy. Besides, she was too excited about Scotty and wasn’t thinking of anything else.

      Too bad, the ER doctor had said. Had she been tested, there was a good chance the problem would have been diagnosed and corrected.

      Alicia was dead, and Carlee suddenly found herself a mom, because after the paramedics had revived Alicia before loading her into the ambulance, she had asked Carlee to promise she would take care of Scotty if anything happened. Carlee hadn’t hesitated and told Alicia not to worry. Then, while she was standing in the hallway of the emergency room, clutching little Scotty in a daze, the doctor had handed her a slip of paper. Alicia had asked a nurse to write a note declaring Carlee to be Scotty’s guardian and managed to sign it before she slipped away.

      The doctor had asked if they were sisters. “Best friends,” she had whispered, not about to confide how their friendship had been forged by the worthless, cheating men in their lives, or how they’d clung together and vowed never again to be so foolish.

      Carlee’s parents had divorced when she was only ten. The court had awarded her mother custody, but her father had never paid the court-ordered child-support, and she’d refused to make him. She’d said that was begging and vowed she’d rather die. So times had been hard, and Carlee blamed her mother for her spinelessness and her father for shirking his responsibilities. The year she graduated from high school, her mother remarried and moved to the West Coast, leaving Carlee on her own in Florida. Carlee fell in love, married before she was twenty, and five years later her husband had driven them into bankruptcy and left her for an older woman who could support his extravagant lifestyle.

      It was at the time of her divorce that she had met Alicia. They lived in the same apartment complex. Alicia was going to school during the day to study computers while working as a waitress at the Blue Moon Lounge on Cocoa Beach at night. She was also pregnant but didn’t want to talk about the father, and Carlee didn’t pry.

      Carlee had been working in the gift shop at Jupiter Orange Groves since high school, but the work was seasonal. Still, she enjoyed it so much that during the rest of the year she took what jobs she could find so she’d be free to return. After her divorce, however, she needed more financial security, and Ben Burns, owner of the groves, had said he would give her a raise and put her to work year-round in the office if she would take a bookkeeping course and learn some computer programs. So when the season ended, she had enrolled