Her Mother's Shadow by Diane Chamberlain Page B

first wife, and Walter, Gina’s grandfather, were both there. The two elderly men were frequent visitors to the house, especially now that Rani had arrived. The men had lost their dear, longtime friend, Brian Cass, over the winter and some of the joy had gone out of them. Rani, though, had brought it back.
    Rick had handled all the introductions easily, and this morning at breakfast, Clay and Gina had given him their stamp of approval.
    Her father snipped the final stitch and straightened up. “I’m sorry, hon,” he said, reaching for a dog treat from the bowl on the counter.
    â€œI feel like a kid who gets an A-minus on a test and you yell at her for not getting an A,” Lacey said, still wounded.
    He smiled at that. “I know you’ve tried hard to change, Lace,” he said. “I’ve admired that. And I do trust you. I just flipped out there for a sec.”
    He was backpedaling so fast she felt sorry for him. “It’s okay,” she said. She helped him lift the dog from the table and set him on the floor. The dog instantly ran to the door of the room, pawing to be let out. She reattached his leash to his collar.
    â€œI’ll take him out,” Alec said, taking the leash from her hand. “Your shift’s nearly over.”
    â€œThanks,” she said. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
    The roses, resting in a glass vase on the reception counter, were beautiful and just about to open fully. Ordinarily, she would stop at a restaurant, usually Sam and Omie’s, for lunch between her morning at the animal hospital and her afternoon in her studio, but she wanted to take the roses home with her and they would bake in the car while she was eating. So, instead, she bought a sandwich from the Subway around the corner and settled into the small kitchen at the animal hospital to eat and read.
    The book she was reading was titled Making Good Choices: A Woman’s Guide to Relationships, and was one of a half dozen her therapist had recommended to her. Most of the books, filled with psychobabble, had not spoken to her, but this one did. She could see herself in the anecdotes the author used to illustrate her points. And this author was forward-looking rather than focusing on the past. Lacey appreciated that. She did not want to be analyzed. She didn’t want to look at how, in some bizarre way, she had followed her mother’s promiscuous footsteps without even knowing about them. She just wanted to stop. This author made sense. It’s so much easier to stop an old behavior when you have a new behavior to take its place, she suggested. The author was big on relationships that started as friendships, that did not rush toward physical intimacy, that involved deep and open communication. The person selected for that relationship should be someone different from the type of person the reader was ordinarily drawn to, the author advised. Someone who would not trigger those old behaviors. Someone, Lacey knew, like Rick.
    He had kissed her for the first time last night. She doubted she had ever been on three dates before without kissing. In truth, she had not been on three dates before without goingto bed with the guy. Last night’s kiss had been chaste, closed-mouthed, and that had been fine with her. She’d wanted nothing more than that. She was a bit worried she had permanently frightened the libido out of herself, but maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. She knew she should be thrilled that Rick had come along at this point in her life. Someone decent, who listened to her when she said she needed to move slowly, who made no demands on her. It felt like a gift, like some greater power was telling her, “You’ve been a good girl for a whole year, Lacey. Now you have earned this truly decent man.” And yet, something was missing.
    She was now reading a chapter she desperately needed: Discovering Attraction Where There Is None. “Often,”