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issues.”
    “I know. I know.” And she did know. Things had never been the same between them since she had left Georgia the way she did. “I’ll talk to him. I promise.”
    “I’ve heard that before,” Tess pressed.
    “Okay. Is there another reason you called—other than to make me feel like crap?”
    “Nope. I just wanted to check that off my to-do list.”
    “Great. Fine. Consider it done.” She was tempted to slam the phone down, but she still had more questionsabout Lyfe that kept her from introducing Tess to Mr. Dial Tone.
    “So. There’s nothing else you want to ask me?” Tess said, sounding like she knew exactly why her sister hadn’t slammed the phone down.
    Silence.
    “Say … anything about Lyfe Alton that you’re curious to know?”
    “How … did he look? I mean—”
    “Honey, let me tell you—that brother is sooooo freaking fine that the sheriff needs to be handing out tickets.” Tess roared to life. “I ain’t even lying. Tall as a mountain, muscle like POW! and POW! I mean, arms and thighs—but not like those gym muscleheads. I would give my right arm to drip some strawberry sauce all over Mr. Man’s body.”
    “Have you forgotten just who in the hell you’re talking to?” Chloe snapped.
    Tess cleared her throat. “Uhm … actually, yes.” Cough. “Sorry about that. But, Corona, I’m telling you. Out of the Alton six-pack, baby boy ain’t a baby no more.”
    “Thanks.”
    “I mean it. He’s—”
    “I said thanks. I get it. He’s good looking. I kind of figured that much.”
    “Can I have him?” Tess asked meekly.
    “What?”
    “Look, I know that there’s some unwritten rule about dating your sister’s exes. But hell. You don’t come around here no more anyway.”
    “I’m about to hang up on you.”
    “Is that a ‘no’?”
    “Hell yes, it’s a ‘no,’” Corona thundered. If her sister was standing in front of her right now, she was certain that she would have wrapped her hands around the child’s neck and squeezed until she was the same color as a Smurf.
    “Well, I don’t see what the big damn deal is. You’re about to get married and expand the family. Don’t you want to see me happy?”
    “You so much as bat an eyelash at Lyfe, I’ll see you six feet under.”
    “Ooh. Testy. Could it be that you’re not quite over your first love?”
    “I’m hanging up now.”
    “That’s all right. I know how to call back.”
    “You’ll get the answering machine,” she warned.
When in the hell is that Excedrin going to kick in?
    “I’d imagine that if you really cared about Lyfe’s feelings that you probably wouldn’t have left him standing at the altar.”
    “There was no altar,” she grudgingly pointed out.
    “Fine. You wouldn’t have left him standing in our backyard in a suit that barely fit and with Daddy pointing a shotgun at his back.”
    “Oh, God, are you ever going to let me live that down?”
    “Uhm, no. Can’t say that I will,” Tess said. “What you did was foul.”
    “Well, excuse me. Shotgun weddings went out about a hundred years ago. My ditching Thomason to come live in New York was the right thing to do and you know it.”
    “Humph!”
    “Fine. I’m the bad guy. I get it. Foolish me. I thoughtthat you only called to remind me of that on Christmas and my birthday.”
    “Consider today a special occasion.”
    “Your snarky sarcasm is getting old.”
    “And believe it or not, our worlds don’t revolve around you. Other people have feelings, you know?”
    “Yes. I do know that!”
    “Do you? Is that why you were all up on the television telling the world that you’re getting married but you didn’t even find time to call your family?”
    “I said I was going to call,” she said.
    “Uh-huh.”
    “I was just … waiting for the right time. That’s all.”
    “You had time to call a television crew, but not your own family? Right. You know, you usually only blow smoke up my butt on Christmas and your birthday,