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family business. We’ve always known that. But we’ll work it out if she has any concerns.”
    It took effort to push air past her constricted throat. “I’m not worried about Lindsey.”
    For the first time since he’d shut the door, he looked at her, really looked at her. His eyes tightened, his head tilted. “Natalie? What’s going on?”
    Caught .
    She needed more time to put her thoughts together. To explain this rationally.
    To figure out what her future would hold once Knot Fest and the Golden Husband Games were over.
    To come clean, but still make him think this was her choice. “Just getting hungry,” she said. “Makes it hard to concentrate. I was thinking about dinner. How’s Italian sound? Noah keeps asking for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs , and I make a mean can of SpaghettiOs.”
    “Natalie…”
    She hated that warning note in his voice. She hated worse that her decisions in life meant she couldn’t smooth it away. “I could stop at the store for some frozen garlic bread.”
    Dad’s eyes narrowed to dark slits. “Is someone giving you trouble?”
    Natalie would’ve rather taken a flogging before she had to explain to him that she’d failed him and Mom again. And she’d done that herself. Maybe the QG was behind some of it, but she could’ve tried harder. Sought better advertising. Experimented more. Offered better sales.
    Stayed away from high-profile weddings where she’d known CJ Blue would be in attendance.
    Except the truth was, she’d done most of those things. In a lot of ways, she’d done them better than La Belle and Mrs., the other two boutiques in town. But neither of the others were having problems. The Queen General was still winning her war to keep divorced people off The Aisle.
    Dad’s interference would do nothing more than earn him the same kind of heartburn Natalie had. He’d already served his time on The Aisle. This wasn’t his fight anymore. It was Natalie’s, and the truth was, it was over.
    She stood and moved toward the door. “It’s fine, Dad. Just been a busy week.”
    “That’s not the problem here, though, is it?” His voice crunched through her ears like tires on gravel. It wasn’t a question. It was an accusation.
    She’d never wished so hard her mother were still here to smooth things out.
    But Mom wasn’t, and Natalie could never take her place. But Nat could be a grown-up. Accept her place. Own her mistakes. And move on.
    Natalie opened her mouth and forced her dry tongue to form the seven words that would probably make three generations of her mother’s family split the seams of their coffin liners.
    “I think you should sell the shop.”
    Dad’s face turned a shade of gray Natalie hadn’t seen since the summer he coached softball and Kimmie Elias smacked a line drive into his dad parts. He shook his head so hard his hair shifted. The gloss in his eyes turned to brittle glass. “Excuse me?”
    Natalie almost buckled. Just kidding! she’d say. Except she wasn’t. “You should sell the shop.” Her voice wavered with her conviction. “It’s the right thing to do.”
    The heater kicked on, and the first blast of semi-cool air from the vents overhead sent a shiver between Natalie’s shoulders.
    The angry vein throbbing in her dad’s forehead made her knees quake.
    “The right thing for who?” he said.
    Uh-oh. That was the calm voice that came between the warning zone and the danger zone.
    Natalie gulped. “For all of us.”
    “It sure as hell isn’t the right thing for me!” He stood and pounded on the metal filing cabinet by the door, one of the few things that had survived the flood. “You think I spent my whole damn life working your mother’s dream so you could prance around here and tell me this shop isn’t good enough for you? That you don’t give a damn about how we fed you, clothed you and sent you to college? That you want to wash your mother’s legacy down the crapper?”
    Righteous indignation and her own