"if i was trying to escape my responsibilities, i'd never have married you." ian knew the minute he uttered the words that he'd said the wrong thing.

cecilia flew across the room. "i never wanted you to marry me because of allison! we would've been fine...." she faltered and abruptly looked away. "i didn't need you...."

"the hell you didn't. you still do." if for no other reason than the health benefits the navy provided, his wife and daughter had needed him.

"you would never have married me if it wasn't for the pregnancy."

"not true."

she swept the hair away from her face. "i can't believe i was so stupid."

"you!" he burst out. apparently cecilia thought she was the only one with regrets. he had his own, and every one of them included her.

"allison and i were..." she hesitated, suddenly inarticulate. "we..."

"allison was my daughter, too, and i'll be damned if i'll allow you to tell me what my feelings are. don't go putting words in my mouth, or discount the way i felt about her. just because i couldn't be here when she was born doesn't mean i didn't care. for the love of god, i was under the polar icecap when you went into labor. you weren't even due until-"

"now you're blaming me." she thrust her hand over her mouth as if to hold back emotion.

it didn't do any good to talk. he'd tried, damn it to hell, he'd tried, but it never got him anywhere. he just couldn't find any middle ground with her.

rather than prolong the agony, he stormed out of the apartment. the door banged in his wake, and he wasn't sure if he'd closed it or cecilia had slammed it after him.

he left the building, fury propelling his steps, and got into his car. feeling the way he did just then, ian realized he shouldn't be driving, but he wasn't about to sit outside this apartment. not when cecilia might think he sat there pining for her.

he revved the engine and threw the transmission into drive. the tires squealed as he sped off, burning rubber. he hadn't gone more than a quarter mile when he saw the red-and-blue lights of a police car flashing behind him.

a cop. damn it all. he eased to a stop at the curb and rolled down his window. by the time the officer reached his vehicle, ian had removed his military driver's license from his wallet.

"'morning, sir," he said, wondering how good an actor he was.

"in a bit of a hurry back there, weren't you?" the policeman asked. he was middle-aged, his posture rigid, his hair worn in a crewcut. everything about him screamed ex-military, which meant he just might be inclined to cut ian a little slack.

"hurry?" ian repeated and forced himself to relax. "not really."

"you were doing forty in a twenty-mile-an-hour zone." he glanced at the license and started writing out a ticket, apparently unimpressed by ian's military status.

from the looks of it, ian wasn't going to get the opportunity to talk his way out of this one. he quickly calculated what the ticket would cost him, plus the rate hike in his insurance.

thanks, cecilia, he thought bitterly. the price of marriage just kept going up.

grace sherman and olivia lockhart had been best friends nearly their entire lives. they'd met in seventh grade, which was when students from both south ridge elementary and mariner's glen entered colchester junior high. grace had served as olivia's maid-of-honor when she'd married stanley lockhart soon after her college graduation and was godmother to her youngest son, james.

the summer following their high-school graduation, grace had married daniel sherman and they quickly had two daughters. when kelly, her youngest, turned six, grace had gone back to school and earned her bachelor of library science degree. then she'd started working for the cedar cove library, and within ten years had been promoted to head librarian.

even while olivia was attending a prestigious women's college in oregon and grace was an at-home mother with two small children, they'd remained close. they still were. because their lives were busy, they'd created routines to sustain their friendship. lunch together once a month. and every wednesday night at seven, they met for an aerobics class at the local ymca.

grace waited in the well-lit parking lot for her friend. she hadn't felt good when she left the house. the sensation was all-encompassing. physically, she was tired, her weight was up and she didn't have her period to blame anymore. for years, she'd managed to keep within ten pounds of what she'd weighed in high school, but during the past five, she'd gained an extra fifteen pounds. it had happened despite all her efforts. somehow the weight had crept on. she was dissatisfied with other aspects of her appearance, too. her salt-and-pepper hair was badly in need of a cut. on second thought, perhaps she'd live dangerously and let it grow. she was in the mood for a change-although she wasn't convinced it would make much difference.

emotionally, she wasn't feeling any better. after thirty-five years of marriage, she knew her husband as well as she did herself. something was troubling dan, but when she'd gently asked him about it, he'd bristled and they'd had an argument. he'd hurt her feelings and grace had rushed away without resolving the issue.

for most of their marriage, dan had been employed as a logger. when hard times fell on the industry, he'd taken a job with a local tree-trimming service. the work wasn't as steady as either of them would have liked, but with her income and some inventive budgeting, they managed. there wasn't any extra for small extravagances, but those had never mattered to grace. she had her husband, her children, her friends and a decent roof over her head.

she watched olivia's dark-blue sedan pull into the parking lot and saw her climb out, gym bag in hand.

grace slid out of her vehicle. "so, how does it feel to be a celebrity?"

"not you, too?" olivia complained as they walked toward the building. she held open the door for grace. "i've had nothing but grief over that stupid article."

grace smiled as color instantly flooded her friend's cheeks.

"i let him have a piece of my mind," olivia muttered, as they marched past a group of youngsters headed for the swimming pool. once inside the locker room, they placed their bags on the bench, stripped out of their sweats and changed their shoes.

one foot braced on the side of the bench, grace tied her running shoe. "you met griffin? when?"

"saturday."

grace raised both eyebrows. she found it interesting that olivia was skimping on the details. "where?"

"in town."

"hey, what's up?"

"up? not one thing," her friend said. "i just happened to run into jack at the safeway and we...chatted a bit."

"why do i have the feeling you're not telling me something?"

olivia slipped the sweatband around her forehead. "there's nothing to tell, trust me."

"trust you?" grace echoed, following her out of the locker room and into the aerobics area of the gym. children and adults milled about, and grace and olivia had to stop several times to allow others to pass by. "have you ever noticed that the only time people ask you to trust them is when they probably shouldn't be trusted?"

olivia paused, then started a few warm-up exercises on her own. "i hadn't, but you're right." she propped her leg on the ballet bar and bent her forehead to her knee.

grace leaned against the bar, envying her friend's suppleness. her own body was far less flexible. "did you know people have been talking about the article all week?"

"great."

disregarding her sarcasm, grace continued, her voice deceptively mild. "actually a lot of the talk has to do with jack griffin."

olivia raised her head. "anything interesting?"

grace shrugged and adjusted the waistband of her spandex shorts. "oh, a few things."

"such as?"

grace was determined not to make this easy. olivia had never, to her recollection, shown this much interest in any man since her divorce. grace had felt for some time that her friend should "get back into circulation," as people called it. appropriate comment for a librarian, she always thought. "you really want to know?"

the question seemed to require a great deal of thought. "no-forget it." then in the next breath, olivia changed her mind. "all right, i'm curious. what have you heard?"

"he moved to cedar cove three months ago."

"old news," olivia muttered. "if that's all you have..."

"from the spokane area."

this appeared to be something olivia didn't know. "newspaper background, obviously?"

"yes, from a paper with ten times the circulation of the chronicle." grace wasn't a gossip by nature, but she'd been wondering about jack griffin since she'd read his first saturday column. she'd liked what he'd had to say, and it was apparent he approved of olivia. she'd met him briefly at a chamber of commerce meeting shortly after he'd come to cedar cove but hadn't formed an impression one way or the other.

"why does a man give up working for a prestigious newspaper and move across the state to a town the size of cedar cove?" she asked olivia.

her friend shrugged. "your guess is as good as mine. perhaps he wanted to be closer to his son."

"he has a son?" no one grace had spoken to knew that.

"eric. he lives in seattle."

that was interesting. but before she could comment further, their instructor, shannon devlin, entered the room, clapping her hands to gather her students around her.

"trust me. there's more to this career change than meets the eye."

"trust you!"

"yeah, trust me," grace joked.

olivia grinned and placed her hands on her hips as she rotated her waist, making deep bends as shannon led the class in warm-ups. "you've been hanging around the mystery section of the library too long," she whispered as they took their places in front of the floor-to-ceiling mirror.

shannon was twenty, if that. a pretty girl with pliant limbs and a body devoid of fat. grace's own figure had once been that slim and perfect, she reminded herself-before two children and the onset of menopause.

the music, impossibly loud, gave her a surge of energy. she had a love/hate relationship with this class. if not for olivia, she would have dropped out a dozen times. unfortunately she needed the benefits of all this huffing, puffing and stretching. despite the muscle pain, she didn't mind the mat exercises, the sit-ups and such, but she hated shannon's little dance routines. step back, slide left, cross right... olivia never seemed to have a problem with the complicated patterns; grace, on the other hand, had trouble living up to her name.

after fifty minutes of sweating and grumbling under her breath, plus cool-down exercises, they were finished. none too soon, as far as grace was concerned. not until they'd showered and changed back into their sweats did olivia mention jack again. the fact that she wanted to continue the conversation surprised grace.