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      We dedicate this book to everyone who wrote demanding Gauge’s story. In this increasingly politically correct world it’s nice to know that so many agree that a man as flawed as Patrick Gauge warrants a second look and a happy ending all his own. However unconventional…

      And to our editor Brenda Chin, for trusting us to push that envelope ever further.

       1

      THE WEEK-OLD TEXT MESSAGE read: Gone back 2 Jen. Been nice. Sorry.

      Lizzie Gilbred sat on her family-room sofa, clicking the cell phone to reread the message from her boyfriend—scratch that, her ex-boyfriend—Jerry, her thumb hovering over the delete button. It had been seven days. Surely the words were burned forever into her brain by now. She saved the message instead, then sighed and tossed the cell to the leather cushion next to her, where she knew she’d just pick it up again in two minutes.

      She took a hefty sip from her wineglass, leaned her elbow against the sofa back and stared out the window at the snow swirling in the yellow security light over her driveway. The weatherman was calling for three inches of the white stuff to fall again tonight, casting a festive glow on the two-week countdown to Christmas.

      Blizzard Bill the weatherman’s words, not hers. As far as Lizzie was concerned, they could cancel Christmas this year and she wouldn’t even notice.

      She took another sip of her wine, feeling a blink away from jumping out of her skin. She’d returned late from the law offices of Jovavich, Williams, and Brentwood, Attorneys-at-Law, as was usual for a Wednesday, and fought to stick to routine even though she’d felt anything but normal since receiving Jerry’s cold text message goodbye. She’d kicked off her shoes at the door, removed her suit jacket, cranked up the heat, poured herself a glass of her favorite Shiraz, started a fire in the family-room grate, then sat on the rich leather sofa she and Jerry had picked out together. Usually at this point she went through her mail or reviewed the briefs or depositions she’d brought home from the office. Tonight it was a brief she’d had one of the junior attorneys write up for her. But damn if she could make it through a single sentence, much less comprehend the entire ten-page document.

      She thought about making herself dinner. She hadn’t had anything since the bagel with jelly she’d half eaten at the office meeting this morning. But she couldn’t seem to drum up the energy to reach for the television remote, much less that required to actually rise from the sofa and go into the kitchen to either heat a frozen dinner or open a can of soup.

      So she sat staring out at the snow instead, wondering what her ex-boyfriend, Jerry, and his once-estranged wife, Jenny, were doing right then.

      She groaned and rubbed her forehead. She hadn’t thought of Jenny as Jerry’s wife in a long time. More specifically, for the past six months—ever since Jerry had left Jenny and appealed for a legal separation. One that had ended with his surprise text message and virtual disappearance from her life a week ago when she’d come home from work after retrieving the missive to find he’d taken everything he’d had at her house, including the waffle maker he’d bought her for her birthday last month.

      What did he want with a freakin’ waffle maker? Had he taken it to Jenny and said the equivalent of, Something for you, honey, to show how serious I am about sharing Sunday-morning waffles for the rest of our lives? Or, See, I even took back every gift I ever bought her.

      Well, that wasn’t entirely true. Because to take back every gift, he’d have had to go back six years, when he and Lizzie were the established couple on the verge of an engagement and Jenny had been the other woman.

      God, she couldn’t believe she’d let him do this to her again. Six years ago, it hadn’t been a text message; rather, he’d left a quickly scribbled note on her car windshield, secured by the wiper: “It’s over. Sorry.” With it had been the announcement of Jenny and his engagement from that day’s newspaper.

      The cell phone chirped. Lizzie scrambled to pick it up, punching a button and answering.

      “Hello?”

      “Lizzie?”

      She sank against the cushions and pulled the chenille throw up to her neck. Not Jerry.

      “Hi, Mom. How are you?”

      “Okay, considering.”

      Lizzie made a face. Ever since her parents had announced their impending divorce, the War of the Roses Revisited had begun at the Gilbred house. Both of them, it seemed, were all for the separation. But neither was willing to give up the house. So her father had taken up residence in a downstairs guest room, and her mother went about life as if he wasn’t there, up to and including a candlelit dinner with some guy she’d picked up at the country club last month.

      Her father had had a fit and nearly clunked the guy in the head with one of his golf clubs, which her mother had tossed into the driveway after he’d taken advantage of an unseasonably warm day and gone out for a few rounds, missing an appointment with their divorce attorneys.

      The clubs had gone completely missing the following day and Lizzie had gotten a call from her father asking her to help him find them since he’d had the set specially made. They’d finally hit pay dirt at a Toledo pawnshop, where they found them with an abominably low price tag…until the new owner figured out that they must be worth more and jacked up the price while her father fumed.

      But maybe her mother was beginning to come to her senses. Usually she began conversations with whatever outlandish thing her father had done that day. That she was actually quiet and appeared pensive was a positive sign. Wasn’t it?

      “How