HE VET’S OFFICE is a few blocks from here,” Mitchell said as he helped her off the boat at Captain Hodges Wharf in Philipsburg, a bustling, picturesque little town on the Dutch side of St. Maarten. “We could walk there easily, but with your suitcase and the dog, we’ll be better off with a taxi.”

“You’re probably right—” Kate began, but her cell phone rang and she paused to take it out of her purse and look at the caller’s name. “I need to take this phone call. I left a message for a business associate to call me at this number.”

“I’ll take the dog and your suitcase and find a taxi,” Mitchell said, already walking toward the street.

Kate put the phone to her ear and covered her other ear with her hand, but there was so much background noise from street traffic and boat motors that she finally took the phone away from her ear and turned the volume all the way up. “I couldn’t hear you before, Louis, but I can hear you now. Did anything happen yesterday that I should know about?”

Following slowly behind Mitchell, Kate listened to Louis Kellard go over one day’s events at the restaurant: The vegetable supplier had delivered only half their order, and the featured evening entrée had to be changed partway through the night; the bartender had refused to serve any more liquor to an inebriated customer who made a scene and had to be escorted out; this morning his attorney had called, threatening to sue the restaurant for causing embarrassment to his client; the wine cellar needed to be replenished before Kate returned...

Kate slid into the backseat of the taxi and Max jumped in behind her, so she scooted to the middle of the seat while she gave instructions to Louis: “If the attorney calls back, do not say anything to him, just refer him to our attorney. Which bartender was involved?” When Louis told her it was Jimmy, she said, “Tell Jimmy to exercise more tact from now on. My father told me Jimmy was becoming a prima donna, and he was thinking of letting him go. Did you talk to our vegetable supplier and find out why we got only half our order?”

While the taxi made its slow way along Front Street, which was lined with shops and crowded with tourists, Kate listened to the rest of Louis’s litany of problems, and she did her best to help solve them, but most of the time she could only answer Louis’s questions with a question of her own: “What would my father have done?”

By the time Louis was finished, Kate felt panicked and helpless. “Call me back this morning, as soon as you find out what happened to our vegetable order and why our linen inventory is suddenly so low,” she reminded him before he hung up. She turned her cell phone off and slipped it into her purse; then she glanced at Mitchell and found him watching her, his dark brows drawn together in puzzlement. “I imagine you’re wondering about that phone call,” she said.

“I couldn’t help overhearing it. I was under the impression that you’re a social worker and that your father owned a restaurant. Just now, it sounded as if you’re running it for him.”

Kate drew a shaky breath but managed to keep her voice steady. “My father is dead. He was killed on his way home from the restaurant three weeks ago. It was late at night, and the police think it was a random, drive-by shooting, because there had been another one in the same neighborhood a few days before.”

“And you’re going to try to run the restaurant in his place, is that it?”

Kate nodded. “I quit my job at DCFS so that I could give it my best effort. I worked at the restaurant part-time during high school and college, but I’m not at all sure I know how to run it the way my father did. I’m—” She broke off and looked down at her lap, belatedly realizing that Max’s head was resting on her knee, his eyes fixed worriedly on her face.

Mitchell quietly finished the sentence she’d been unable to complete. “You’re afraid you’re going to fail.”

“I’m terrified, ” Kate admitted.

“Have you considered trying to sell it?”

“That’s not as easy to consider doing as it seems. My father loved that restaurant, and he invested his whole life in it. He loved me, too, and because he spent most of his time there, most of my happy memories of being with him are centered right there. The restaurant was a part of both of us. Now, it’s all I have left of him—and it’s also all that’s left of ‘us.’ It’s difficult to explain...”

Surprised by a sudden desire to tell Mitchell about her life with her father, she reached out and stroked Max’s head, trying to resist the impulse. After several moments of indecision, she stole a look at Mitchell, half expecting him to look preoccupied or bored.

Instead, he was watching her intently. “Go on,” he said.

Kate tried to think of a good example of why the restaurant held such cherished memories of her life with her father and settled for the first one that came to mind. “Normally, the restaurant was closed in the afternoons between three o’clock and five o’clock, so when I was young, I used to do my homework sitting beside my father at the bar while he did whatever work he had to do. He sat next to me so he could help me with my homework anytime I needed it. Actually, he sat next to me because that was the only way he could be sure I did my homework. Anyway, he enjoyed math and history and science, but I knew he hated English grammar and he hated drilling me on spelling.” With a rueful smile, Kate finished, “I hated homework, period, so I used to make him help me with English grammar and drill me on spelling, day after day after day, just to get even with him.”

Instead of commenting, Mitchell lifted his brows, silently inviting her to say more. A little surprised that he seemed genuinely interested, Kate tried to think of another example to give him. “When I was in fourth grade,” she said after a moment, “I decided I wanted to take roller-skating lessons at the rink. My father disapproved of the sort of kids who hung around there, so he enrolled me in ballet classes twice a week instead, even though I didn’t really want to take ballet lessons. The ballet school burned down the day after I started my lessons—I had nothing to do with that, in case you’re wondering.”

“The possibility never crossed my mind,” Mitchell said.

Kate realized he was completely serious and bit back a laugh at his apparent belief that she was a little angel, rather than the little brat she had actually been. “When the ballet school burned down, the nearest one was a bus ride away, and I knew he’d never let me take the bus to it, so I went on and on about how bad I felt for the ballet teacher and how disappointed I was not to be able to take ballet lessons any more...”

“And?” Mitchell prompted when Kate drew a laughing breath.

“And so my father invited the ballet teacher to conduct her classes at the restaurant instead. God, it was so funny to see him trying not to grimace while thirty ballerinas in little tutus pirouetted around his dining room twice a week and a three-hundred-pound woman pounded away on his antique piano.”

Kate fell silent, smiling... thinking of the birthday parties her father gave for her at Donovan’s. When Mitchell seemed to be waiting for her to say more, she told him what she was remembering: “Every year on my birthday, he threw a big ‘surprise’ party for me at the restaurant and invited all my classmates from school. He had balloons all over the place and a beautiful cake—always a chocolate cake decorated with pink frosting, because I was a girl. For weeks beforehand, he’d try to fool me into thinking he wasn’t going to have the party. He’d tell me he’d booked the dining room for someone else because we needed the money, or he’d tell me he had to be somewhere else that day. He wanted me to be surprised when I walked into the restaurant after school and saw everyone there.”

“And were you surprised?”

Kate shook her head. “Never. How could he possibly have expected me not to notice a big vat of pink frosting in the kitchen the day before my birthday, or all the extra containers of chocolate ice cream in the freezer, or two hundred balloons and a helium machine in the back room? Besides that, he always asked one or two of my friends to be sure all my classmates were invited, so of course I heard about it from one of them.”

“I see why you were never fooled,” Mitchell said with a grin.

Kate started to return his smile, then she sobered and said, “Actually, I did get fooled once—on my fourteenth birthday.”

“How did he fool you that time?”

“By deciding not to have a party for me at all.” To divert him from asking about that one miserable birthday, Kate ended her reminiscences completely and returned to his original question about whether she’d considered selling the restaurant. “Even if I decide I should sell the place, I’d still have to keep it open in order to do that, so I really have no choice right now except to run it—if I can.”

Rather than offering her empty words of encouragement about her ability to do that, which was what Kate expected him to do, he put his arm around her shoulders and curved his hand around her arm, sliding it slowly up and down in a gesture of comfort. Kate leaned against him, letting the movement of his hand soothe away her qualms about the future, at least for now.

“I’m sorry about your father’s death,” he said after a minute. “I wondered why you had a book about coping with grief with you in the restaurant yesterday.”

Kate shot him a startled look. “You don’t miss anything, do you?”

“Not when I’m concentrating on something. Or someone, ” he added, and shifted his gaze meaningfully to her lips.

Kate knew he was deliberately flirting with her in an effort to distract her and cheer her up, and she smiled and went along with his plan. “You were concentrating on your shirt yesterday, not on me.”

“I have a rare gift—I can concentrate on two things at the same time.”

“So can I,” she teased, “which is why I’m aware the taxi has stopped and the driver is waiting for us to get out.”