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PROLOGUE

Matty Stewart was well educated, mature and unfailingly responsible. She was also a wide-eyed adolescent when it came to resisting the siren call of champagne, particularly when her best friends were in charge of the bottle.

“Come on, Matty. A swallow for every year of your life.” Liza Fitzsimmons crooked a finger sporting a fire-engine-red nail that was longer than the brown hair that spiked her elegant head. “I’ve been counting. That was sixteen. Only sixteen.”

“Sweet sixteen and never been…” Felicity Brown wrinkled her forehead in concentration. “Never been…”

“Never mind what I’ve never been.” Matty giggled, and the sound alarmed her. Matty was not a giggler. Not a giggler, not a whiner, not a woman of extremes. She was just Matty, plain, intelligent, dependable Matty, who had turned twenty-seven that morning and been turned down for promotion that afternoon.

“Here goes…” Liza filled Matty’s glass again. “Seventeen and counting.”

Matty had never developed a tolerance for alcohol. In high school her small circle of friends had been “good girls,” relentlessly dedicated to keeping their heads in the unlikely case any “good boys” lost theirs. By the time she was in college, she was too busy caring for her invalid father to frequent fraternity parties or to sit for hours over pizza and pitchers of beer. And afterward, his comfort and happiness during the final years of his life were far more important than sowing her wild oats. But tonight there was no longer any reason to be good.

Which was why she was fast getting tipsy.

“Drink up now,” Liza insisted. “You’re not nearly done.”

The sensible part of Matty was off duty today or sleeping soundly. The champagne was cheap but effective. It had nearly silenced the memory of her supervisor’s voice regretfully explaining that once again a choice administrative position at Carrollton Community Hospital had gone to someone with less seniority but more guts. “Everyone likes you, Matty,” she had said, without quite meeting Matty’s eyes, “and that’s the problem. You get along too well. You compromise when you should confront. You give too much of yourself and don’t ask enough in return.”

Now Matty wrapped her fingers around the glass, sturdy, capable fingers with blunt trimmed nails and skin scrubbed so clean she sometimes wondered if her fingerprints would survive into middle age. She lifted the glass to swallow the contents, then thrust it out again. “More…”

“Thata girl…”

“You ever been sloshed, Matts?” Felicity, who worked in the hospital’s public relations department, was two years younger than Matty and Liza, with a yard of golden blond hair and eyes as blue as an Oklahoma sky. Coming to Minnesota as a teenager had softened the edges of her Tulsa accent, but the champagne was honing them again.

“To firsts…” Matty shook her head and thrust out her glass at the same time. The simultaneous movements almost un-did her.

“I like the sound of that. Firsts,” Liza said.

“Your firsts are definitely over,” Felicity told her. “S’nuthin’ you haven’t done.”

Liza patted Matty’s knee. “But Matty’s a different story, aren’t you, baby?”

“What first shall I try next?” Matty managed a smile by making sure she wasn’t doing anything else at the same moment. Smiling seemed easier now than it had that afternoon. She could almost pretend away her failures and loneliness. She was with her best friends, in the living room of the brick house she had lived in since her birth, and the champagne seemed to be opening up a world of possibilities.

“Travel? Distant exotic places?” Felicity laid an index finger against her soft pink lips.

“Flashy clothes and fast cars?” Liza closed one eye as if to see her friend better. “Dye your hair?”

“Sex?” Felicity said.

Matty sputtered and set her glass on the coffee table. “With whom?”

Liza wiggled her eyebrows. “Funny you should ask.”

“The question seems rev…rev…relevant.” Matty made a stab at dignity.

Liza drew a scrap of paper from her pocket and reclined regally against a stack of cushions they had removed earlier from the sofa and armchairs. The tiny living room was beginning to resemble the site of an orgy instead of the neat, uncluttered quarters of three of Carrollton Community’s most reliable staff members. White cartons of partially eaten Chinese takeout dotted the floor amidst birthday cake crumbs, discarded champagne bottles and wadded napkins. Soft rock rumbled softly from an outdated stereo system, and candles melted into wax pools on unmatched china saucers.

“I shall acquaint you with his attributes.” Liza waved the sheet of paper.

“Singles ads.” Felicity wrinkled her snub nose.

“Not quite…” Liza snapped her t’s with military precision. “Carrollton Alumni News.”

Matty could feel her eyelids drooping. Sober and wide-eyed, she was nobody’s ideal vision of American womanhood. She had a long, almost rectangular face ungraced by one outstanding feature. Had the beauty mavens of the world united to establish an average by which to judge young women, Matty would have set their standard. Nothing about her was too large or too small, too long or too short, too wide or too thin. Her hair was dark blond—dishwater blond, to be exact—her skin neither rosy nor sallow, her eyes neither clearly green nor brown. Her body was much the same, small-breasted and wider at the hips, with legs Lloyds of London would never have to insure and feet one size too large to look sexy in flirty little sandals.

“Alumni News?” Matty tried to discern a connection between eligible, beddable men and the newsletter of the college she and Liza had attended together.

“It came today. There’s an interview with Damon Quinn.”

Matty’s eyes were wide-open now, and the sudden explosion of pink in her cheeks wasn’t alcohol-induced. “Damon Quinn?”

“I believe you have eight good swallows to go.” Liza gave a vague wave toward the last of the champagne.

Matty held up her glass and let Felicity fill it again. Neither of them was as steady as she should have been, but luckily they wavered in the same rhythm.

When Liza seemed satisfied with Matty’s progress, she began to read. “‘Where Have All the Alumni Gone?’”

Felicity groaned.

Liza looked up. “Your alumni newsletter is better, I suppose?”

When Felicity answered by sticking out her tongue, Liza looked down and began to read. “‘The old newsletter caught up with Damon Quinn this week.’” She paused, obviously skimming before she continued. “‘Quinn, Carrollton’s science wunderkind, is still planning to cure cancer in between his other projects. And he has projects aplenty, including a brand-new daughter he is trying to raise by himself on a remote Caribbean island. When asked what he yearned for more than anything else, Quinn replied,” A wife. “It seems our wunderkind is up to his ears in dirty diapers and the cure for cancer is coming in a distant second. Any Carrollton ladies with fond memories of Damon, a penchant for Goombay smashes, and a deft hand with baby powder just might want to apply for the job. Send Damon a note care of the post office at George Town, the Bahamas. Who knows what might happen?’”

Liza looked up. “You can’t go wrong, Matty. Caribbean cocktails, Damon Quinn and tropical sunsets, with a baby thrown in for good measure. Beats staying around here and getting passed over for promotion again because you’re so good at what you do that none of the pediatricians wants to lose you.”

Matty worked in neonatal intensive care, and Liza and Felicity had been telling her all evening that the only reason she hadn’t gotten the promotion was that the pediatricians who staffed the unit had demanded that Matty stay right where she was. With Matty on staff, they knew their smallest charges had at least a fighting chance for survival. Matty was renowned for her persistence, her compassion and her creative solutions to even the most difficult problems. But Matty wasn’t thinking about that now or weighing the possibility that her friend might be right. She was thinking about Damon Quinn.

“You remember Damon, don’t you?” Liza sat up again.

Matty considered a denial, but the champagne was behaving like truth serum. “Clearly.”

“Who is this Damon person?” Felicity said.

“The dark prince of Carrollton College. The brightest of the bright, with a face for the Bront;aue sisters to write about and a body that…” Liza paused and shrugged, as if she’d run out of superlatives. “A grrr…eat body.”

“Why does a guy like that have to advertise?”

“He’s not,” Matty said. “It sounds like something he tossed up—off—in conversation.” The last word came out in four separated syllables, and she felt proud to have gotten them in the correct order.

“Damon Quinn wouldn’t be anyone’s vision of the perfect husband,” Liza said. “He’s so brilliant he probably can’t concentrate on anything as mundane as earning a living or raising kids. Ask a guy like that to go to the store for a gallon of milk and he’ll stop by the lab on the way home to reformulate its proteins.”

“No. He’s not…he wasn’t that way.” Matty shook her head and wished that she hadn’t.

“What way was…is he?” Felicity asked.

“Kind. Access-ible.”

“Did you really know him that well, Matty?” Liza turned the champagne bottle upside down, but not a drop remained. “He never gave me the time of day.”

“I didn’t really know him.” But Matty had shared one experience with the great Damon Quinn that had convinced her of his integrity. And that day so many years before, she had fallen instantly in love with him, one hundred percent in love, as only a plain young woman with expansive romantic fantasies and a difficult reality could do. She had loved him desperately, completely, as well as from afar, until the day he had walked out of Carrollton and her life into a prestigious Ivy League fellowship.

Felicity’s eyes were glazing over, and her words drifted into whispers. “Well, why is this guy off on some deserted island if he’s so brilliant? I mean, why isn’t he working for a big pharmaceutical company, or the government, or…something?”

“I don’t know,” Liza said. “‘Sa mystery.”

“Whatever the reason, it’s a good one.” Matty closed her eyes.

“Devoted,” Liza said to Felicity. “She’s obviously devoted to this guy.”

“Write him.” Felicity widened her eyes, as if to demand that they stay open. “You can be his wife, Matty.”

Matty had been trying to picture Damon Quinn’s face, and for a moment she didn’t notice the silence. Then her eyes flew open. “What?”

But Liza was already scrambling through the drawers of the old walnut secretary that stood in the nook by the entry hall. “You’ve got to do something. You’re going to live your whole life in Carrollton if you don’t. You’re going to die in this house, Matty. You want adventure, don’t you? A husband? A baby?”

Liza found a box of notecards and held them up victoriously. “Your ticket to a new life.”

“I’m sure this Damon person will want you, Matty,” Felicity said. “We’ll just tell him the truth.”

Liza plopped back into position on the floor. “I’ll write it for you. He won’t know. What’ll I say?”

“‘Dear Damon,’ for starters,” Felicity said, ignoring Matty’s bursts of laughter.

“Got it. How about ‘You don’t remember me,’?” Liza looked to Matty for approval.

Matty managed a small nod. It would be true, of course. “Say I was two years behind him, but we were in Evolutionary Biology together. And Advanced Biochemistry.”

“Matty was studying for medical school,” Liza told Felicity, although the other woman already knew. “She graduated at the top of our class.”

Felicity didn’t ask what had happened to Matty’s dreams. She and Liza had moved into Matty’s house after Frank Stewart’s death two years ago. Both women knew about Matty’s sacrifices. “Be sure you tell him about Matty’s work in neonatal. Tell him how good she is with babies. Nobody’s better.”

Liza scribbled frantically. “‘I have always lived in Carrollton,’” she read as she wrote. “‘I’m ready for new adventures and a warmer climate. I’ve always done the expected and the safe. Now I’m looking forward to taking risks.’”

Matty wondered if that part, at least, was true. The letter to Damon was just a joke, but even her alcohol-fogged brain cells could realize that at their root the things that Liza was writing were no laughing matter. She could spend her entire life in Carrollton, living in this house, working at the hospital taking loving care of newborns someone else would have the joys of raising. She had respect and friendship here, an adequate income. But unless she took some drastic steps, she would never have anything else.

“Say, ‘I’m slender and attractive, with a terrific smile.’” Felicity tapped her lips again. “And say, ‘I’m bright enough to understand at least half of what you talk about.’”

“More than half.” Liza scribbled some more. “Anything else?”

Matty spoke up. “Tell him I’ve never forgotten the way he came to my rescue one day, and now I’d like to return the favor.”

Liza frowned. “What?”

“Just tell him.”

“It’s your proposal, not mine.” Liza finished with a flourish. She reread the letter silently, then slipped it into its envelope, which she addressed with a bold scrawl. “Stamps?”

Matty was suddenly all too aware of how much champagne she had drunk. She watched Liza rise to rummage through the drawers again. “Liza, don’t waste stamps. We’ve gone far enough.”

“Of course we haven’t.” Liza gave a lopsided grin. “Damon Quinn’s not nearly good enough for you. Nobody is. But he’s a start.”

“We’re not mailing that letter….”

“Watch me.” Liza glued a row of stamps in the proximity of the right-hand corner of the envelope, then wove her way to the mail slot in the entry hall and stuck it halfway through. “There!”

Matty began to giggle again, and by the time Liza had rejoined them on the floor, all three women were laughing so hard they were gasping. They fell asleep that way, heads pillowed on cushions, bodies covered by worn afghans they’d thrown over each other, cuddled together like teenagers at a birthday sleepover.

Matty didn’t even bother retrieving the envelope before she fell asleep. The mail always arrived in late afternoon, as it had every day since her childhood. Damon Quinn would never see the letter that had been nothing more than a birthday salute from her best friends. He would never know that Felicity and Liza had used him to try to open her eyes to the world of possibilities that existed beyond the safe, familiar confines of Carrollton, Minnesota.

She fell asleep trying to visualize Damon’s face, and she was still sleeping soundly early the next morning when the mail carrier, following the map of his newly divided route, removed the letter addressed to Damon and stuck it in his pouch.