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one of the few remaining chocolate chip muffins she and
Katy had made.
    "A grandma bodyguard, you mean?" Chloe brushed crumbs from
Simone's blouse. "He won't be violent. Seb's apologizing to him, remember? Anyway, he has a wife and child."
    "He might be a wife beater." Simone pressed a fingertip onto a
crumb and transported it to her mouth.
    "Doubt it. He sounded quite-"
    "What?" The gray eyes flashed to Chloe's face.
    "Subdued." Chloe thought for a moment. "Normal." He probably
was a normal man. People under extremes of emotional stress reacted in all sorts of unpredictable ways.
    Simone popped the last of the muffin into her mouth, chewed,
and swallowed. "He had a lovely voice on the phone. Very sexy." She
smiled, but her expression suddenly became serious, and she took
Chloe's hand in hers. "I worry about you, lovey. You're too serious,
and your pretty face is always worried. You've missed your youth, my
pet. Old before your time."
    "I didn't have any choice," Chloe managed to say through the
choking in her throat. Simone was right. Too serious, too stressed,
her life and her focus too narrow. But she had responsibilities, and
they weren't going away anytime soon. Katy was only eleven.
Anyway, Chloe loved her half siblings dearly-they were all she
had.
    Simone sighed. "All I mean is, you don't give yourself much of a chance to fall in love. Katy told me you haven't been out on a date in
years. Not since that Lachlan-"

    "I'm only twenty-six," interrupted Chloe before Simone could get
started on Lachlan's failings. Lachlan, who'd found dealing with a
grief-stricken girlfriend completely beyond his capabilities or his
love. But her protest was a weak effort, and they both knew it.
    "I'm not desperate to find a man," she said firmly. "And Katy's as
bad as you are. She raved about the really cool teacher at school until he got married and she had to rethink her plans." Chloe laughed
wryly.
    "You should finish your degree," said Simone with an abrupt
switch of attack. This conversation had been had before, many times.
The answer was always the same.
    Chloe shook her head. "I can't, not yet. When Katy's in high
school, I'll think about it."
    "That's two years away."
    "I can't afford not to work. It was tough enough when I was a student and there was just me to think about. It'd be impossible now."
She'd love to go back to full-time study, finish her performing-arts
degree, immerse herself in that musical world again. At the moment
it was a dream shoved to the furthest reaches of her mind.
    "You could use some of the inheritance money," suggested Simone.
    Chloe firmed her mouth into a straight line and folded her arms.
"No. You know I won't dip into that if I can help it. They'll all need it
when they grow up. We have the house unencumbered, and, thanks
to that amazing public donation, we can scrape by on my earnings."
She would not fritter away the children's inheritance on daily living.
Not when the money would set them up for good educations and a
nest egg when they reached twenty-one. Bevan and Mum would have
wanted that.
    "I wish you'd let me help," grumbled Simone. "Bevan wanted you
to have everything he could provide for you. He loved you and Terry
as his own."
    "I know, and we loved him. He was our father, far more so than
the real one."
    "Bevan told me you were Honors material. You play so beautifully. He was extremely proud of you. He'd be very disappointed that you
let it slide this way."

    Chloe bit her lip. That remark had so much wrong with it, was so
unfair and thoughtless, she couldn't begin to correct Simone. Best ignore it. She wouldn't have knowingly disappointed Bevan in a million years. She wouldn't have dropped out of university in an ideal
world, but life wasn't ideal, as they'd learned so painfully.
    Bevan had died. Mum and Terry had died. Simone was an emotional
mess for the first two years after the bombing, hardly any help at all.
Three young children were left