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She shook her head. They gazed silently into each other’s eyes, and Steffie seemed to lose all sense of time.

Charles was the one who broke the trance. “Uh, your pot seems to be boiling.”

“Oh, darn, I forgot to turn down the burner.” She raced across the kitchen, flipped the knob on the stove and stirred the sauce briskly, praying it hadn’t burned.

While she stood at the stove, Steffie basked in a glow of unfamiliar contentment. It felt so wonderful to be with Charles—not fighting or defensive, not acting like a love-struck adolescent. For the first time, she was truly comfortable with him.

“I’m sure the sauce will be fine,” she murmured, picking up her coffee mug.

He pulled out a chair and sat.

As she was getting cream, sugar and teaspoons, she thought she heard some noise from upstairs. Glancing at the ceiling, she frowned.

“What’s wrong?”

Steffie joined him at the table, adding only cream to her own coffee and pushing the sugar bowl toward Charles. “I’m worried about Valerie,” she said frankly. “So is Norah. Everyone is, except Dad, which is for the best—I mean, he’s got enough on his mind healing from the surgery. He shouldn’t be worrying about any of us.”

Charles added a level teaspoon of sugar to his coffee, then paused, the spoon held above his cup. “How’d you know I take sugar?”

Her gaze skirted away from his. “We had coffee together once before, remember?”

“No” came his automatic response.

Steffie preferred not to dredge up the unhappy memory again, especially since he didn’t even seem to recall it. She stared down at the table. “It was the first time you asked me to—you know, leave you alone.”

He scowled. “The first time,” he repeated, then shook his head in apparent confusion. Just as well, Steffie thought to herself, astounded that he had absolutely no recollection of an incident she remembered in such complete and painful detail.

She decided to change the subject. “Norah baked cookies the other day, if you’d like some.”

Charles declined. “Tell me what’s going on with your sister.” His eyes darted to the ceiling.

Steffie wondered how much of Valerie’s dilemma she should confide in him, but then remembered Norah’s telling her that Charles had been with them the night of her father’s surgery. More than likely he knew how Colby and Valerie felt about each other.

“She’s in love,” she said after a moment.

“It’s Doc Winston, isn’t it?”

Steffie nodded. “They both seem to have fallen hard.”

“So what’s wrong?”

Steffie wasn’t sure she could explain, when she didn’t entirely understand it herself. So she shrugged and said, “I think Colby wants her to be something she can’t. Valerie’s an incredibly gifted businesswoman. But I gather he wants a woman who’d be happy to stay home and be a housewife—there’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but it just isn’t right for Valerie. It doesn’t look like either one of them is going to compromise.”

“If she loves him, maybe she should be willing to compromise first,” Charles said, then sipped his coffee. “Take the first step.”

“What about Colby? Why does it always have to be the woman who compromises? Don’t answer that, I already know. Women have been forced to adapt to men’s fickle natures for so many generations that it comes to us naturally,” she said with heavy sarcasm. “Right?”

Charles was silent. “I didn’t come here to argue about your sister,” he finally said.

“I know, it’s just that I found your statement so—” She stopped in midsentence because she didn’t want to fight with him, either. They’d done so much of that. And she didn’t want this encounter to end the way all the others had.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m concerned about her, and I can’t help feeling a bit defensive. I’m pretty sure she’s making arrangements to return to Texas—and I wish she wouldn’t.”

“You haven’t had much time with her, have you?”

Steffie tapped the mug with her spoon, staring into the dregs of her coffee. “That’s not the whole reason I wish she’d stay.” She was silent for a moment. “Leaving your problems behind simply doesn’t work. Not unless you’ve exhausted every possibility of reaching a compromise. In fact, I think leaving can make everything much worse. The problem is, I can’t tell Valerie that. It’s one of those painful realities we each need to discover on our own, I guess. I’m going to talk to her, but I doubt it’ll make any difference.”

Charles’s dark eyes were sympathetic. “I hope she listens.”