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bad,” Gideon said evenly.
    Kate smothered a smile. For all their extraordinary appearances and circumstances and hardships, they were just like any father and son she’d ever met. Simultaneously at odds and tethered at the heart.
     
     
    “How come you’re having dinner with us tonight?” Jude wanted to know when Gideon sat across from him at the kitchen table.
    “Why?” He set a roll on his bread plate and one on his son’s. “You’ve got a problem with that?” A phantom smile crossed the boy’s face. “No. I just thought you had a date. Mrs. Shelton said—” “Mrs. Shelton was mistaken.” Gideon glanced at Kate beside him and reached for the linen napkin folded artfully at his elbow. “No date tonight.”
    “Want to know what my dad does for a living?” Jude asked Kate in the pregnant silence that followed.
    She avoided Gideon’s gaze. “Something with plants, right?”
    “He invents flowers.”
    “Horticulture,” Gideon added. “Specifically rose-breeding. I take it you saw the greenhouse this afternoon when you walked the grounds, Ms. O’Brien.”
    “I didn’t go inside, though.” She started to take a bite of her baked potato, but then set down her fork, mildly irritated. “You know, while my name is, technically, Ms. O’Brien, I’d feel far more comfortable if you and Jude would call me Kate.” Jude raised his brows. “That’d be weird.” “No, it wouldn’t.” Gideon stabbed a chicken leg and forked it onto Jude’s plate. “If she wants to be called by her first name, you can extend her that courtesy.” “Can she call me Mr. Renaud?”
    Kate choked on a sip of iced tea.
    Jude ignored his father’s warning look and smiled at his chicken leg.
    The rest of the meal passed with polite conversation, but Kate was ever aware of Gideon’s electric presence beside her, and of Jude’s watchful gaze across the table. The two of them were more enigmatic a pair than any she’d ever met, and she longed to sit back in her chair and study them more closely. She couldn’t quite pinpoint what made them so different, beyond their striking good looks and the intensity they both radiated.
    But there was something…and now wasn’t the time to examine it.
    Betty had left for the weekend directly after preparing dinner, so when they finished eating, Kate rolled up her sleeves and rinsed the dishes before setting them in the multi-featured dishwasher. Behind her, Gideon and Jude cleared the table, then the boy slipped outside to entertain himself under the protective cover of night, and Gideon crouched in front of the dishwasher to examine the controls.
    “Hell of a contraption,” he said after pressing several buttons. He finally hit the right one and the machine hissed to life. Rising, he leaned on the counter and watched Kate dry her hands on a towel.
    She reached for the lotion pump near the soap dish, trying to ignore him as she worked the lotion into her skin, but his gaze was hot on every inch of her. A wave of warm discomfort crept up her neck, and finally she glared at him. “Am I supposed to say something?” He straightened. “No. I’m sorry. I just want to know more about you.” “Fire away,” she said with forced confidence.
    “Why aren’t you married?”
    “I was. But he turned out to be gay.” The surprised look on his face tightened her posture, an automatic response to a fading injury. “I didn’t make him that way, you know. He never told me he was bisexual to begin with.” Gideon opened his mouth to respond, then seemed to think better of it. “How about a cup of coffee?” It sounded suspiciously like a peace offering for the morning’s conflict, although she still didn’t know what had caused the tension in the first place. Hesitantly she agreed, and found two mugs in the cabinet beside the refrigerator while he retrieved the pot from the coffeemaker.
    “Tell me something, Kate,” he said, pulling out a chair to sit at the table. “What made you give