“My misguided-”

His teasing chuckle was tentative. “I was just kidding,” he said gently. “There’s no reason why it should be difficult for us to sit down to dinner together. I said you could have the money, Misha, and you can-no strings attached. But if you want to talk to someone about it-”

“I do. For one thing, I don’t want you to think I want the money for some whim…”

Brilliant, aren’t you? Lorna scolded herself as she pulled the Camaro onto the highway. Matthew’s low-slung Morgan was directly behind her. Thanks to her big mouth.

A real friend would have committed her. Where were her real friends when she needed them? Now she remembered that Johnny was capable of taking an instant dislike to any man who walked in the door, that meat loaf was not exactly a gourmet dish fit for a Whitaker, that she had no tactful way to explain Matthew’s last name to her son, and that the only thing she wanted to talk to Matthew about-Johnny-was the only subject that was clearly forbidden.

And Matthew… What he’d been thinking of, she just didn’t know. She’d never really understood him. So often after she and Richard were first married, he would pop over for dinner, even though he knew what a terrible cook she was. Occasionally, he would appear for an evening the same way, unconsciously smoothing troubled waters between herself and Richard when he couldn’t possibly know there were troubled waters; seemingly, he had come for a cup of coffee and conversation. Lorna had always thought he should have been spending his free evenings with an attractive blonde on his arm. Or brunette. Whatever his choice. All right, for some strange reason she and Matthew had always had a certain rapport, but that was before…

Before Richard had found her in a compromising position with another man. And it couldn’t have been much more compromising, she reminded herself wearily as she set the cruise control and tried to relax for the trip home.