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him too many questions. He’d never been a liar, and it wasn’t coming to him naturally, as it did to some people who just lied for the sake of lying.
    Julie laughed again. “No, not really. I have the dogs. My kids live within walking distance. I keep busy. Friends, that kind of thing. You live alone, or do you have a significant other?”
    Hah. There it was, tossed right back into his lap. “No significant other. To be honest, there aren’t enough hours in the day to do everything I have to do. I’m rarely home, and when I am, all I do is sleep.” That was true, too. Oliver didn’t have anyone special in his life at the moment. A lie is a lie, he warned himself.
    “And yet, here you are,” Julie said lightly, almost playfully.
    One more lie coming right up. “Yes, here I am. I needed some downtime to prepare for an upcoming trial. Away from interruptions and distractions. It’s a very important trial.” It wasn’t exactly a lie; it was Oliver’s life he was talking about. Somehow, though, he didn’t think Julie Wyatt would look at it like that. To her, a lie would be a lie no matter what. Maybe he needed to quit while he was ahead and go back to the cottage he’d just rented. But he didn’t want to leave. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this much at peace, so contented. The answer was probably never.
    “Do you think you’ll win?”
    “Oh, absolutely. There is no doubt in my mind.” Oliver always won when he went to court. Even though Oliver’s specialty was corporate law, he also happened to be a superlative litigator. Before Julie could ask another question, Mace dived in with a question of his own. “What is it like to host a TV show? And what about the cookbook you say you will probably never write?”
    “I used to do a little locally produced program on cooking for a PBS station in Vermont. It was pretty much of a hobby. I guess some people on the Food Network happened to see my show and asked if I would like to host one of their programs. I said I would, and here I am.
    “When I was a teenager, I used to read romances and thought that maybe I would try my hand at that when I grew up. Never happened. Never actually wrote anything.
    “But as I continue to host cooking shows on the Food Network, I keep thinking about different ways to present recipes in a cookbook. I keep meaning to start the book, but, somehow, it never happens.
    “My life took a change when I started at the Food Network, and, no, it had nothing to do with the death of my husband. He passed away while we were living up in Vermont, a few years after I started hosting.”
    Julie got up off her chair to turn the misters off. When she sat back down, Mace should have been intuitive enough not to ask any more questions, but he didn’t listen to the inner voice whispering in his ear that enough was enough.
    “That’s so interesting. You mentioned that your children live close by. Tell me about them. Do you have any grandchildren to dangle on your knee?”
    Mace knew in an instant that he’d asked the wrong question. Even in the lavender twilight, he could see the pain in Julie Wyatt’s eyes.
    He tried to cover up his question with a statement. “Well, would you look at the time! I hope you won’t think me rude, but I’m really tired, and I think Lola is, too. I know a guest should never eat and run. But all of a sudden, I just can’t keep my eyes open. Hopefully, we can talk about kids and everything under the sun tomorrow or some other day when you have free time.”
    Mace was up and off his chair like he’d been shot in the tail with a load of buckshot. He scooped Lola up and waved wildly as he rushed down the steps to the footpath that would take him to the alpine cottage.
    Julie barely noticed her guest’s departure. She sat a while longer as the solar lights in the yard came on one by one. For some reason, she always thought of the solar lights as fairy lights, something to make her smile.
    Cooper,