The thought startled her. She’d already been the dangerous-man route. Just the once. But a smart woman learned the first time. Or she ended up dead on the town green. She didn’t want to be the kind of woman who picked the wrong man. Like her mother.

Kat shoved that thought away and hit the play button on the answering machine.

“Hi, it’s Ross.”

Her head jerked up, her attention dragged from her date—to the voice on the answering machine.

“Sorry about tonight. I really wanted to meet you in person, but something came up at the last minute. Maybe we could do it another time? See you online.”

Disbelieving, she pushed rewind and listened to the message again. Her online date had stood her up?

She felt a chill. Then who had she just spent dinner with?

Desperately, she tried to remember what the man had told her about himself during their meal. Only vague generalities that could have fit any man! No wonder he’d seemed surprised when he’d come into her office. No wonder he’d seemed so interested in her, in her work. Because he knew nothing about her! And he didn’t want her asking too many questions about him. She’d been so nervous, she hadn’t even noticed. Until now.

A thought struck her. Maybe his interest in her hadn’t been just to cover his deception. Scared, she tried to remember what she’d told him about herself. Why had he pretended to be her date?

She felt sick inside. Normally, she was damn good at reading people. But dating—God, it made her so anxious. Probably because it had been so long and she’d been so scared that he would turn out to be another Mr. Wrong. Mr. Dead Wrong. And maybe he had been. Thank God she hadn’t let him walk her home. She hugged herself, suddenly cold. Had his been one of the set of footsteps she’d heard following her home? The thought froze her to her core.

“Sorry about your date.”

Kat looked up the stairs as Emily leaned over the railing in her favorite, worn-thin teddy-bear pajamas. Emily was small and slim with their father’s gray eyes. She’d pulled her dark, shoulder length hair into a ponytail, making her look even younger than her seventeen years. “I saved the message for you. What a jerk. He didn’t even come up with a decent excuse for standing you up.” She frowned. “Have you been working all this time?”

She considered lying. “No, I…went out to dinner.”

“By yourself?” Emily made it sound as if she couldn’t imagine anything worse. She probably couldn’t.

“No, actually, I met someone.” She tried to assure herself that it had been innocent, needing desperately to believe that. He’d just taken advantage of the situation. What man wouldn’t who saw the chance to have dinner with a young woman in a sexy black dress? An honest man. A man with nothing to hide.

“Who was this guy?” Emily asked, coming down the stairs to eye her more closely.

Kat wished she’d lied and said she’d worked late. “No one you know,” she said defensively, unable to forget that she’d been attracted to him, a man who lied to her. “I don’t need to have my dates checked out by you.” She flipped off the downstairs light, picked up her black platform heels where she’d dropped them by the door and started up the steps past her sister, hoping that was the end of it.

“As if you don’t give me the third degree about every guy I date,” Emily said, trailing after her.

“That’s different,” Kat said, stopping on the landing. “I’m twenty-three. You’re seventeen and you still have a lot to learn about men.”

Emily rolled her eyes. “As if you’re the authority on men. I’ve dated more this year than you have in your life!” She swept into her room, slamming the door behind her. Emily always had to get in the last word.

Kat stared after her, just wishing the last word hadn’t been the truth. Tonight proved how little Kat knew about men. In spades.

She climbed to her own bedroom on the third floor, not bothering to turn on a light. The room was large with two bay windows on each side and a tiny, railed widow’s walk at the end facing the town green and, past it, Raven’s Cove and the Atlantic. Light filtered in from the pale gray fog.

She dropped her shoes beside the bed and, opening the French doors, stepped out onto the walk into the damp mist, feeling oddly vulnerable. She no longer felt safe—not when she couldn’t trust her judgment any more than she had tonight. Who had she gone to dinner with?

She drew in a breath of the cool, wet night air and looked out at the wisps of mist moving like ghosts through the town green, trying to convince herself that she wasn’t her mother. But more and more when she looked in the mirror, she saw the startling resemblance to the old photographs of her mother.