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cheeks flushed with color “—if I was going to marry you.”

      Despite her obvious embarrassment, he couldn’t resist teasing her a little. “Did you tell her that I hadn’t asked you … yet?”

      “Will you stop joking about this?” Ashley demanded, obviously not amused. “She’s at an impressionable age and obviously looking for a mother figure.”

      “I know,” he admitted. “I just didn’t realize how much until recently.”

      Ashley sipped her latte.

      “You told me she doesn’t see her mother on a regular basis,” she reminded him gently. “Is there anything you can do to change that?”

      “Not likely. Danica comes to visit whenever it’s convenient for her, and that’s not more than two or three times a year. The four weeks that Maddie spent in London this summer is more time than she usually spends with her mother in a whole year.”

      And he wasn’t entirely sure she’d spent most of that time with her mother, because she’d come home with a new handheld video game system and half a dozen games that Danica had bought to keep her busy while she “finished up some work.”

      “What about telephone calls?” Ashley prompted.

      “Her mother tries to call once a week.”

      “Tries?”

      He sighed. “What do you want me to say, Ash? I knew when I married Danica that she was committed to building her career. I didn’t know that she was committed to her career at the expense of all else, but that’s the way it is.”

      “Okay, so maybe she isn’t a candidate for mother of the year,” Ashley allowed, “but Maddie is her daughter and she needs her mother.”

      “Danica doesn’t see it that way.”

      It was obvious that Ashley didn’t understand. Hell, he wasn’t sure he understood, but he’d long ago accepted that Maddie would never have a close relationship with her mother.

      “The truth is,” he heard himself say, “Danica never wanted to have children.”

      Ashley stared at him, as if she couldn’t believe what he was saying. He could hardly believe he was telling her. But this was Ashley, and if he wanted a second chance with her—and he’d finally accepted that he did—he had to be honest with her, and he had to trust that she would understand.

      “I’ve never admitted this to anyone else—not even my parents—but Madeline wasn’t planned,” he confided to her. “In fact, Danica wasn’t very happy when she realized she was pregnant.”

      That was an understatement, but he couldn’t admit to anyone, even so many years later, that Danica hadn’t been happy at all. In fact, she’d been furious. Having apparently managed to put aside the grief of a previous miscarriage, she was too busy building a career to want to have a baby.

      Cam had tried to understand. Maybe it wasn’t what either of them had envisioned for a marriage that was barely into its sixth month, he’d admitted, but her pregnancy didn’t change their plans, it merely accelerated them. Or so he’d believed, until he’d realized that, despite claiming to be pregnant when they married, Danica never really wanted to have children.

      He’d been stunned by her attitude—and furious when she’d suggested terminating her pregnancy. She wasn’t an unwed teenager, but a married woman and no way in hell was he going to agree to abort their child.

      And so was laid the first brick in the wall that built up between them.

      “But she fell in love with her baby when she held her in her arms,” Ashley guessed, obviously unable to imagine any other possibility.

      Which was exactly what Cam had hoped would happen.

      But the truth was, Danica only agreed to have the baby so long as he assumed complete responsibility for their child after the birth. And he’d gone along with her demands, certain that her attitude toward their child would change through the course of her pregnancy. But the distance between them continued to grow along with the baby in her womb.

      “She tried to be a good mother,” Cam said in defense of his ex-wife, because he wanted to believe it was true. And because, when he realized some hard truths about her own childhood, he knew she’d handled the situation in the way that she believed was best for their child. “But Madeline was a difficult baby and after working fourteen hours at the office, Danica didn’t have the patience for a demanding infant.”

      “She went back to work right after having the baby?”

      “Her career meant a lot to her,” he said, all too aware that it didn’t just sound like a lame excuse, it was a lame excuse.

      “More than her family?” Ashley demanded incredulously. “And what about your career?”

      “I was still finishing my internship.”

      “And taking care of the baby,” she guessed.

      “There was a retired woman who lived above us who helped out a lot, but I was happy to do as much as I could between shifts at the hospital.”

      “That couldn’t have been easy.”

      “It wasn’t easy,” he agreed. “But I was happy to do it, to be the one who was there when she cut her first tooth, when she spoke her first word, when she took her first step.” And each one of those precious moments was indelibly imprinted on his memory.

      “I know I’ve said it before, but Madeline’s lucky to have a dad like you,” Ashley told him.

      “And a teacher like you,” he said.

      She finished her latte. “I just thought you should know what was going through her mind.”

      “I’m a little surprised,” he admitted. “She’s never mentioned the possibility of me finding a new wife before.”

      “It might be a factor of her age,” Ashley suggested. “She’s making friends at school, and they talk about their mothers—it’s not surprising that she might look for someone to fill that role for her.”

      “And that she would gravitate toward you.” He reached across the table, touched her hand. “When I came back for the reunion, I was surprised to find that you weren’t already married with the half a dozen kids you always wanted.”

      She pulled her hand away. “Life doesn’t always turn out the way we plan.”

      A truth of which he was all too aware. And yet, coming back to Pinehurst had helped him to see beyond the boundaries imposed by the choices he’d made to the opportunities that might still be found.

      “Do you believe in second chances?” he asked cautiously.

      She was silent for a minute, and when she finally spoke, it was only to say, “I believe that Maddie’s class will be finishing soon, and I need to get home.”

      Cam pushed back his chair to walk her out.

      “Thanks—for the update.”

      She just nodded.

      He watched her go, wondering why she’d refused to answer his question.

      Because she didn’t believe in second chances?

      Or because she did?

       Chapter Seven

      The Fall Festival was an old but ever-evolving Pinehurst tradition. What had started as a single-day celebration of the harvest back in 1859, when most of the town’s residents were farmers, had become a four-day mid-October event.

      For Ashley and Paige, it was an annual ritual that brought back mostly fond memories of their teenage years. Because she’d been a bookworm rather than a social butterfly, Megan’s memories weren’t quite so

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