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for you, Dinah! It’s the right thing to do.”

      Maybe so, she thought despondently, but just in case she’d made a huge mistake, maybe the first thing she ought to do when she got back to South Carolina was look up Bobby Beaufort. Maybe he was meant to save her from the kind of lonely life Ray was describing. She’d know when she saw him.

      Bobby had never made her palms sweat or her pulse race, but he was a good guy. Soothing and dependable, he’d never, ever let her down. In fact, his sweet attentiveness had nearly suffocated her, but maybe she’d changed. Maybe she was ready for someone to lavish her with love and attention.

      She thought of that and her lips curved once more. Yes, indeed, a woman who’d just impulsively quit her dream job needed to keep her options open.

      2

      After four dinner parties in a row to welcome her home, Dinah called a halt.

      “Mother, that’s enough! I’m pretty sure there’s not a soul in Charleston, at least in certain social circles, who doesn’t know I’m back in town.”

      Dorothy Davis regarded her with dismay. “Just one more,” she coaxed. “A few people from the committee to save Covington Plantation.” Her eyes suddenly lit up. “In fact, Dinah, if you’d give a little talk, we could turn it into an impromptu fund-raiser. I’m sure people would be fascinated with all your adventures. And these renovations are going to cost a fortune. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could work together to raise some additional funds?”

      Dinah glanced at her mother. Her adventures were precisely what she was trying to forget. If Dinah tried to explain that to Dorothy it would heighten her mother’s overprotectiveness. It had taken her several unnerving calls months ago to convince her mother that she was fine and that there was nothing for her to worry about. Apparently she’d been successful in downplaying what had happened because her mother hadn’t mentioned a word about it. Dinah didn’t want anything to kick those maternal antennae back onto alert now. She tried another tactic.

      “Haven’t your friends pumped me for every bit of information they’d care to hear, Mother? No one wants to know what it’s really like over there.” Dinah was a hundred percent certain of that. “It’s not great dinner table conversation,” she added. “They’re content knowing it’s happening on the other side of the world.”

      “Not everyone here is shallow, darling,” her mother scolded. “You’ve always sold us short.”

      Dinah sighed. It was true. She had. But she’d heard nothing since coming back to change her impression of her parents’ friends. They lived in their monied, insulated world and were happy enough if it didn’t rain on their golf games.

      “Forget the fund-raiser, Mother. I’ve never been any good at that sort of thing. And please don’t plan another dinner party. I came home for some peace and quiet. As it is, I’ve barely had a minute alone with you or Dad or Tommy Lee and his family.” Not that she was all that unhappy about missing out on the questionable joy of being around her brother’s children. From what little bit she had seen, they were holy terrors.

      Still, there had been precious little of the quiet she’d anticipated. Aside from the dinner parties her mother had held at their house, she’d been trotted out to lunch with her father’s business cronies half a dozen times. She had yet to see a single one of her own friends, not that she’d kept in touch with that many of them since she’d left for college.

      She wasn’t exactly excited about seeing anyone at all. Every chance she got, she stole off to the solitude of her room or sat in the back garden with an unopened book in her hands. She’d told herself the inertia was only temporary, that she’d snap out of it in a few days, but she was beginning to wonder if it wouldn’t be easier just to give in to it.

      Judging from the worried frown that creased her mother’s otherwise unlined face, Dorothy had taken note of Dinah’s reluctance to leave the house.

      “Is something going on that you haven’t told me?” her mother asked. “Sitting around in this house all day is not like you.”

      “I don’t just sit in the house. Sometimes I sit in the garden.”

      Her comment drew another chiding look. Dorothy Rawlings Davis had never known what to make of her only daughter. Dinah had scoffed at tradition. Though she’d reluctantly agreed to go through with it for her mother’s sake, Dinah had made a mockery of her debutante ball. She’d attended private school under protest and, worse, had chosen to go to college out of state, to New York, no less. It had grated on her father, who’d attended the Citadel and then Clemson, and her mother who’d graduated from the University of Charleston without ever leaving home.

      Her brother had thankfully followed tradition or her parents would most likely have died of shame. Dinah’s celebrity had allowed them to hold their heads up just a bit higher these last few years. She wondered what they would think if she told them she was thinking of giving it all up forever.

      Even at eight o’clock in the morning the vast differences between Dinah and her mother were apparent. Her mother was wearing an expensive, tailored suit, antique gold jewelry that winked with diamonds, Italian designer pumps, a perfect French manicure and had every strand of her perfectly highlighted hair in place. Dinah wore a favorite pair of old shorts, a halter top and she was barefooted. She hadn’t had a manicure or pedicure in years and her hair was cut in a haphazard style that could best be described as wash-and-wear. In less than a week she’d fought off six attempts by her mother to change that with a spa day. When it came to style Dinah was still a bitter disappointment to her socialite mother.

      Even so, her mother did seem to be touchingly happy to have her home. Dinah could even understand her desire to cash in on Dinah’s reflected celebrity. She wasn’t a bit surprised that her mother wasn’t taking no for an answer.

      “Darling, it’s just that you’re so rarely here,” her mother said. “I want to be sure that everyone gets a chance to see you before you go gallivanting off on your next assignment.”

      Dinah told herself she should admit that she wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, but she wasn’t ready to do that. Silence allowed her to go on pretending that this was a temporary sabbatical. It would be another few weeks before she started to wear on her mother’s nerves. Then her parents would start asking the really tough, unanswerable questions about how such a fabulous career had wound up in the toilet. Right now they were proud of her and it was nice to bask in that, at least in small doses.

      She forced a smile. “I know, Mother, but let’s put it off a few days, okay? Let me catch my breath. I haven’t even seen Maggie yet or any of my other friends.”

      Maggie Forsythe was the one person Dinah truly was anxious to see aside from Bobby. She was the only one Dinah dared to mention. If she uttered a peep about tracking down Bobby Beaufort, her mother would draw the wrong conclusions. The prospect of a wedding was just about the only thing that might distract Dorothy from her daughter’s news about being all but kicked out of Afghanistan by her worried boss.

      “Okay, if you insist, I’ll reschedule for the week after next,” her mother finally relented. “You will still be here, right?”

      “I’ll be here,” Dinah assured her.

      Satisfied, her mother rounded the dining room table and pressed a kiss to Dinah’s cheek. “I’m so glad you’re home. Your father and I have missed you.”

      Dinah’s eyes stung at the sentimental tone in her mother’s voice. She had always shunned her mother’s overt displays of affection, but all of a sudden the little impromptu hugs and kisses made her weepy.

      “I have to run. I have a meeting about the renovations at the plantation this morning. It’s likely to drag on all day,” her mother said. “What will you do today? If you don’t have anything in mind, you could come with me and take a look around. We’re making excellent progress. I think you’d find it fascinating.”

      Dinah knew

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