Chapter 1

The champagne flute was cold against Mara's palm, and that was the only thing she let herself feel.

She stood at the edge of the sweetheart table, one hand wrapped around the slender stem, the other resting at her side with the silver bracelet warm against her wrist. The string quartet had just started a slow, familiar song, and somewhere behind her a waiter was clearing plates with a soft clink of porcelain. The harbour light through the tall windows had gone that deep blue that comes just before full dark, and the whole ballroom — twenty tables, tall white floral arrangements, the murmur of a hundred conversations — hummed with the particular energy of a wedding where everyone is trying to have a good time.

She had been having a good time. That was the thing she would keep coming back to, later. Her younger cousin had married at noon in the garden, and now the reception was in full swing, and Mara had spent the past hour catching up with aunts she hadn't seen in years, eating shrimp off a plate she didn't have to share, and letting herself feel like somebody nobody knew her history with.

Then she stepped out to the terrace for air. Just for a moment. The Gulf breeze had been cool against her face, the water dark and endless, and she had stood there for maybe two minutes before coming back in.

She heard the voice before she saw the man.

"Mara."

Five years. Five years since she'd heard that voice, and she would have recognized it in her sleep. The particular way he said her name — two syllables, flat, as if he were reading it off a page.

She turned, and there he was.

Douglas Prine stood a few feet away, and he looked exactly like a man who had rehearsed this moment. Navy tuxedo, black onyx cufflinks catching the chandelier light, dark blond hair slicked back so perfectly it looked painted on. He stood with his shoulders squared, his jaw set, his chin lifted just slightly — the posture of a man walking to a podium, not a man running into an ex-wife at a cousin's wedding.

Beside him, a petite woman in a deep emerald dress watched the room the way someone watches a room when they're counting exits. Auburn hair swept over one shoulder, pearl stud earrings, warm beige skin. She smiled at nobody in particular, and the smile didn't reach her eyes.