Justine's smile grew fractionally at Alice's look, but otherwise she did nothing to acknowledge it. She knew Thomas even better than he knew himself, sometimes, and, just looking at him, she knew it would be like pulling teeth to get him to do anything. Sometimes he needed blindsiding. Hard.

"If you had just dropped in, things would have looked suspicious, unfortunately," Justine continued. If Alice had ever seen Thomas' future outside the house, Justine suspected the other woman would know just how carefully she and Thomas stepped around Lara. How meetings, phone calls, and letters were all scripted and couched in a hundred layers of meaning. "But you're right, now we can chat." She ignored Thomas' groan at the word.

Gently untangling herself from Thomas, Justine stood and walked over to the dining room table, where a small mountain of wrapped packages rested. Picking up the top one, a thin, pink garment box wrapped with a black and white bow, she returned to the couch and handed it to Alice. "First things first. For not pitching him off on the side of the road."

Even as Thomas grumbled in dark, masculine protest, he reached into the bag he'd brought with him and pressed a small package into Justine's hand. She glanced down at the earrings and smiled again, hand tightening carefully against his.