“I’m trying, but I keep getting flashes of the girl fight. You know, with the rolling around on the floor and ripping each other’s clothes.” Bob lifted his skinny cinnamon latte. “It’s pretty vivid.”

“There was no fight.”

“There could have been. Okay, so you don’t want to try juggling the two of them. Me, I think you’ve got the skills for it, but I’m sensing you want me to help you figure out which one to pick.”

“No. No. No.” Carter dropped his head in his hands. “They’re not ties, Bob. This is not a comparison study. I’m in love with Mackensie.”

“Seriously? Well, hey, you never said you had the Big L for her. I thought you just had a thing.” Rubbing his chin, Bob sat back. “This is a different equation. How pissed off was she?”

“Take a guess, then double it.”

Bob nodded wisely. “Beyond the taking her flowers and apologizing. You’ve got to get your foot in the door first, that’s the thing. Something like this, when you’re the innocent party . . . You are an innocent party, right?”

“Bob.”

“Okay. You’re going to have to let her kick your ass first, that’s my advice.” Considering, Bob sipped his latte. “Then you’ve got to tell her how you’re innocent. Then you’ve got to beg. You’re going to want to top it off with something that sparkles in a case like this.”

“Jewelry? A bribe?”

“You don’t look at it like a bribe. It’s an

apology. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t do anything, Carter. It never does. You want this to go away, get things back, get her back and have sex with her again in this decade, you spring for something shiny. It’s coming up on Valentine’s Day anyway.”

“That’s shallow and manipulative.”

“Damn right.”

Carter laughed. “I’ll keep the something shiny as a backup plan. But I think you’re right about the rest. Especially letting her kick my ass first. It looked bad. It looked very bad.”

“Did you take the brunette for a tumble?”

“No. God.”

“Then you’re a righteous man. Remember that. You’re a righteous man, Carter. But you’re also the big, bad dog. I’m proud to know you.”

IN HER STUDIO, MAC FINISHED A SET OF PROOFS. SHE BOXED them for the client, along with a price sheet, her business card, and a list of options.

She glanced at the phone and congratulated herself for having the spine

not to return Carter’s calls. Maybe Corrine had been playing games. Probably she’d been playing games. But he’d still been on the field.

It would take more than a couple of apologetic phone calls to make up for that. Besides, if he hadn’t done anything, what was he apologizing for?

Didn’t matter, she reminded herself.

She was going to reward herself for a productive day with a bubble bath, a glass of wine, and an evening of popcorn and TV. An action movie, she decided. Where lots of things blew up, and there was absolutely not the slightest whiff of romance.

She set her completed work in a Vows shopping bag for delivery, then whirled around as she heard her door open.

Linda, in full, spitting rage, stormed in. “How dare you? How dare you have my car towed to some second-rate garage? Do you know they expected me to pay two hundred dollars to release it? You’d better write me a check right this minute.”

Okay, Mac thought, there’s the bell for this round. And for once, I’m ready. “Not on your life. Give me my keys.”

“I’ll give you your keys when you give me my two hundred dollars.”

Mac stepped forward, grabbed her mother’s purse, and emptied the contents on the floor. Linda’s utter shock gave Mac time to crouch down, shove through the debris, and pocket her keys.

“How—”

“Dare I?” Mac said coolly. “I dare because you borrowed my car on Sunday, because you didn’t return it, or my calls, for five days. I dare because I’m finished being used and abused. Believe me when I say I’m finished. I’m done. This stops now.”

“It

snowed. You could hardly expect me to risk driving home from New York in a snowstorm. I could have had an accident. I could have—”

“Called,” Mac interrupted. “But leaving that aside, there was no storm; there was a dusting. Less than a quarter of an inch. That was Sunday.”

“Ari wouldn’t hear of me driving home. He invited me to stay over, so I did.” She shrugged it off. “We spent a few days together. We went shopping, to the theater. Why shouldn’t I have a life?”

“You’re welcome to one. Have it somewhere else.”

“Oh, don’t be such a baby, Mackensie. I left you my car.”

“You left me a car I couldn’t use, even if you’d bothered to also include the goddamn keys.”

“An oversight. You pushed me out the door so fast that day, it’s no wonder I didn’t remember. Don’t swear at me.” She burst into tears, lovely drops spilling copiously out of shattered blue eyes. “How can you treat me this way? How can you begrudge me a chance for happiness?”

It won’t work, Mac told herself even as her stomach cramped. Not this time. “You know I used to ask myself those questions, reversing the you and me. I’ve never been able to find the answer.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m in

love. You don’t know what it’s like to feel this way about someone. How it takes over everything else so it’s only the two of you. It was just a car, Mackensie.”

“It was just

my car.”

“Look what you did to mine!” Even with tears still gleaming on her cheeks, the outrage came through. “You had it towed to that—that grease pit. And that horrible man is holding it hostage.”

“So pay the ransom,” Mac suggested.

“I don’t know how you can be this mean to me. It’s because you never let yourself feel. You take pictures of feelings, you don’t have them. Now you’re punishing me because I do.”

“Okay.” Mac crouched again, scooped, shoved, pushed the scattered contents on the floor back into her mother’s bag. “I have no feelings. I’m a horrible daughter. And in that vein, I want you to leave. I want you to go.”

“I need the money for my car.”

“You’re not getting it from me.”

“But . . . you have to—”

“No.” She shoved the bag into Linda’s hand. “That’s the thing, Mom. I don’t have to. And I’m not going to. Your problem, you fix it.”

Linda’s lip trembled, her chin quivered. Not manipulation, Mac thought, not entirely. She felt what she felt, after all. And believed herself the victim.

“How am I going to get home?”

Mac picked up the phone. “I’ll call you a cab.”

“You’re not my daughter.”

“You know, the sad thing for both of us is I am.”

“I’ll wait outside. In the cold. I’m not going to stand in the same room with you for another minute.”

“They’ll pick you up in front of the main house.” Mac turned away, shut her eyes as she heard the door slam. “Yes, I need a cab at the Brown Estate. As quickly as possible.”

With her stomach in ugly knots, Mac walked over and locked her door. She’d need to add aspirin to that post-workday relaxation plan, she thought. A whole bottle ought to just about do it. Maybe she’d take the aspirin and lie down in a dark room, try to sleep off the feelings she apparently didn’t have.

She took the aspirin first, washed it down with a full glass of icy water to try to soothe the rawness in her throat. Then she simply sat down on the kitchen floor.

That was far enough.

She’d sit there until her knees stopped shaking, until her head stopped throbbing. Until the urge to burst into wild tears passed.

When the phone rang, she reached up, managed to grab it from the counter. She read the ID, answered Parker. “I’m all right.”

“I’m here.”

“I know. Thanks. But I’m all right. I called her a cab. It’ll be here in another couple minutes. Don’t let her in.”

“All right. I’m here,” she repeated. “Whatever you need.”

“Parker? She’s never going to change, so I have to. I didn’t know it would be so painful. I thought it would feel good, good and satisfying. Maybe with a little triumphant thrown in. But it doesn’t. It feels awful.”

“You wouldn’t be you if it didn’t hurt. You did the right thing, if that helps. The right thing for you. And Linda will bounce. You know she will.”

“I want to be mad.” Weary and weepy, Mac pressed her face into her updrawn knees. “It’s so much easier when I’m mad at her. Why does this break my heart?”

“She’s your mother. Nothing changes that. You’re miserable when you let her use you, too.”

“This is worse. But you’ve got a point.”

“The cab’s here. She’s going.”

“Okay.” Mac closed her eyes again. “I’m all right. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

“Call if you need me before.”

“I will. Thanks.”

SHE COULDN’T WORK UP THE ENTHUSIASM FOR BUBBLES AND candles and wine, but took the hot bath. She put on her oldest flannel pants, a soft comfort. She no longer wanted sleep and thought drudgery might be an answer. She’d clean her bedroom, organize her closet, her dresser, scrub the bathroom for good measure.

It was way past time for household chores and it would keep her busy for hours. Possibly days. Best of all, it was a cleansing, she decided, a symbolic act to go along with her stand with Linda.

Out with the old, in with the new. And everything fresh and ordered when the task was done. Her new life order.

She opened her closet, puffed out her cheeks, expelled a balloon of air. The only way to approach it, she decided, was the way they did it on the improvement shows on TV. Haul it out, sort, toss.

Maybe she could just burn everything and start over. Burning bridges seemed to be her current theme anyway. Squaring her shoulders, she grabbed an armload, tossed it on the bed. By the third load she asked herself why she needed so many clothes. It was a sickness, that’s what it was. No one person needed fifteen white shirts.

Fifty percent, she decided. That would be her goal. To purge out fifty percent of her wardrobe. And she’d buy those nice padded hangers. Color coordinated. And the clear, stackable shoe boxes. Like Parker.

When the contents of her closet lay heaped on her bed, on her sofa, she stood a little wild-eyed. Shouldn’t she have bought the hangers, the boxes first? And one of those closet organizer kits. Drawer dividers. Now all she had was a big, terrible mess and no place to sleep.

“Why, why in God’s name can I run a business,

be a business, and not be able to cope with my own life? This is your life, Mackensie Elliot. Big heaps of stuff you don’t know what to do with.”

She would fix it. Change it. Deal with it. God, she’d kicked her own mother out of the house, surely she could deal with clothes and shoes and handbags. She’d cut down on the clutter in her life, in her head. Minimalize, she decided.

She’d go Zen.

Her home, her life, her damn closet would be a place of peace and tranquility. In clear plastic shoe boxes.

Starting now. Today was a new day, a new start, and a new, tougher, smarter, more formidable Mackensie Elliot. She went downstairs for a box of Hefty bags with a gleam in her eye.

The knock on the door struck her with such profound relief she actually shuddered. Parker, she thought. Thank God. What she needed now were the superpowers of Organizer Girl.

Eyes crazed, hair sticking up in spikes, she wrenched open the door. “Parker—oh. Oh. Of course. Perfect.”

“You wouldn’t answer your phone. I know you’re upset,” Carter continued. “If you’d just let me come in, just for a few minutes, to explain.”

“Sure.” She threw up her hands. “Why not. It just caps it off. Let’s have a drink.”

“I don’t want a drink.”

“Right. Driving.” She waved her hands in the air as she stomped toward the kitchen. “I’m not driving.” She slapped a bottle of wine on the counter, got out a corkscrew. “What? No date tonight?”

“Mackensie.”

Somehow, she thought as she attacked the cork, he managed to make her name an apology, and a mild scold. The guy had skills.

“I know how it might have looked. Probably looked. How it looked.” He stepped to the other side of the counter. “But it wasn’t. Corrine . . . Let me do that,” he said as she struggled with the cork.

She simply shot a finger at him.

“She just dropped by. Came over.”

“Let me tell you something.” She braced the bottle between her knees, raging as she yanked on the corkscrew. “Just because we had a fight, just because I felt I needed to set some reasonable boundaries, doesn’t mean you get to entertain your mysterious, sexy ex five minutes later.”