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safe with me.”
    He snorted.
    “Okay, it’s not, but I won’t say anything as long as you behave yourself. Within reason,” she added with a smirk.
    “You know what? I kinda like you.”
    “You’re not bad either.”
    That settled, he hunched comfortably into the bar. “So tell me about your shop.”
    George shrugged. “My parents traveled all the time. My grandfather took care of me when they were gone. Poppy owned the garage, and his dad owned it before him. I just followed in their footsteps. I like fixing things.”
    “So you’re literally grandfathered into the neighborhood.”
    “Yeah, that’s one way of putting it.” She chuckled.
    “You’re an institution in this neighborhood, as much as this wine bar or the strange optometrist shop across the street.”
    “So you’ve noticed the Barbies,” she said with a crooked grin. “Wait till you see what he does for holidays. Halloween is particularly entertaining.”
    He thought of Ariana and hoped he’d still be around to see it. “So I called your shop today to check it out before our meeting. I had a feeling Ariana wasn’t being completely honest.”
    “I do okay.” George’s nose wrinkled. “It was hard when I first started working there, because no guy wants a girl touching his ride, but Poppy told them they could take their car someplace else if they didn’t want to trust me, because that was the same as not trusting him.”
    Sebastian watched her eyes soften with affection. “You loved him.”
    “With all my heart,” she said with candor. “I’d give anything to have him back, even the garage, and I love it.”
    He could tell. “He passed away.”
    “Last year.” She looked away, obviously composing herself. “The shop’s mine now.”
    “You think I can get a grand tour sometime?”
    “Sure.” She looked at him askance. “How long are you going to be around?”
    He thought of Ariana’s delicious scent and the adorable way her dimple winked when she was amused. “A little while, I hope.”
    She tapped her glass up to his. “Good.”

Chapter Nine
    ‡
    H ow many mornings had he sat at this precise spot, in the nook overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge, reading the paper while Lillian moved around the kitchen doing—
    What? What did she do as she bustled around?
    Edward stared at her, standing by the sink. He had no idea who his wife was. He wasn’t sure he had in a long time.
    Unless she laughed. In her laughter, he recognized the woman he’d fallen in love with. She just never laughed with him anymore.
    Not that she was around much. If she wasn’t with the girls, she was in her studio, painting.
    He never went up there. He figured it was her domain, her version of a man cave. He didn’t want to invade her privacy.
    Frankly, it was safer this way. When she’d shown him the first painting she’d done, he hadn’t known what to say except that it was interesting.
    That hadn’t gone over well.
    He hadn’t considered it a negative comment like she had. She’d decided to start painting out of the blue several years ago, without any sort of training. He couldn’t be faulted for not thinking she was going to be Picasso. Since, he avoided her artwork because he didn’t want to lie or say something that’d hurt her feelings.
    Frowning, he lowered his head over his newspaper. Old-fashioned, his daughters would tease. But the words on the page weren’t his focus—what Diane had said to him earlier that week was.
    It’d have been so easy to dismiss her advice and find someone else to distract him, but her words haunted him.
    He did love his wife; he just wasn’t sure this was the same woman. They no longer shared a life, instead living two separate ones.
    His life felt old, while she still looked young and vital. She dressed like their daughters in jeans and a T-shirt, her feet bare and her hair in a ponytail. From behind she could have been a teenager.
    It was depressing. He started to look away when her right ankle caught