Once upon a time there was a young woman named Madison, whose prince had married another princess a long time ago.

Madison had known him since high school and had never thought he was her prince until recently. Timothy had fallen in love and gotten married to one of her good friends, had a daughter with her, and still didn’t want to let her go, even two years after his wife had died. Madison’s feelings for him had started to change last year, when he’d stopped being Emily’s husband in her mind, but Timothy’s feelings had remained exactly the same. He was never going to be the love of her life. He didn’t look at her that way, and it was becoming clear he never would.

So she needed to focus on finding a different prince—one who might actually want her.

It wasn’t as easy as it sounded.

For one thing, she took care of Timothy’s daughter at least three times a week, and she loved the little girl as much as she did him.

For another thing, her father had had a heart attack six months ago, and her life since then had been made up of nothing but work and doctor’s visits and caregiving, so she simply didn’t have time or energy to find another man to think about.

And her heart wasn’t easily convinced that Timothy wasn’t her prince.

On Wednesdays, Madison picked up his six-year-old daughter, Jenny, from school and stayed with her until Timothy got back from the evening class he taught. Usually he was home before Jenny went to bed, but on one evening he wasn’t.

Madison and Jenny read together for about a half hour, but then it was time to put the book away and turn off the lights.

Jenny was tucked under the purple comforter, staring up at Madison with sober brown eyes. “Daddy isn’t back yet.”

“I know he isn’t. He said he might need to stay and finish grading papers after his class.” Timothy had finished his PhD program in anthropology last year and was in his first year as an assistant professor at a local university. He was a really good father. He only worked late one day a week, and Jenny wasn’t a neglected child by any stretch of the imagination. Her comment had been more a statement of fact than a complaint.

Jenny nodded without smiling. Timothy was Korean American, adopted by a white family as an infant, and his wife, Emily, had been a redhead whose family was mostly Irish. With her dark hair and brown eyes, Jenny looked a lot like her father, and she was just as smart and thoughtful as he was. “Grading papers is the bane of his existence.”

Madison chuckled, having heard those exact words from Timothy dozens of times. “Yes. That’s true. I think he just wants to get the papers done tonight. He’ll come in and give you a kiss when he gets home even if you’re asleep.”

“I won’t be asleep.”

“You might be.”

“I won’t be.”

“Okay. But being asleep doesn’t make a good-night kiss invalid. It counts whether you’re awake or asleep.”

“Yes. It still counts.”

Madison stood up and went to the window to close the blinds since she and Jenny had been looking at the stars earlier. “Oh look,” she said. “The moon came out from behind that big cloud at last.”

Jenny leaned up so she could see, staring with wide eyes at the almost-full moon. Then she flopped back down as Madison closed the blinds. “The moon doesn’t have any light of its own.”

Madison was startled by the change in subject, but she wasn’t surprised. Jenny liked to rehearse all the information she learned at school and was always informing her of interesting facts. “I remember learning about that in school. It only reflects the sun’s light.”

For a minute Jenny was silent, but she was clearly thinking and not yet done with the conversation. “Is the moon only beautiful because of the sun?” she asked at last. “Or is it beautiful in itself?”

That question did surprise Madison—and it momentarily struck her as strangely profound. She had to think before she answered. “I don’t know,” she said slowly when she’d sorted through her thoughts. “I suppose it’s both, isn’t it? The moon is beautiful in itself, but the sun lets all of us see it. Without the sun, we wouldn’t know how beautiful the moon really is.”

Jenny pulled her eyebrows together in a reflective frown. Then she suddenly smiled. “I like that.”

Madison smiled back at the girl as she leaned down to kiss her cheek. “I like it too. A lot of things are beautiful, but we’d never see how much until they’re finally brought into the light.”

Visibly pleased with their conclusions, Jenny kissed her back and then settled under the covers. Her eyes were closed when Madison turned off the light and left the room.

***

An hour later, Madison was sitting on the sofa in Timothy and Jenny’s apartment in Georgetown, working on her laptop.

Madison’s parents owned a very successful fine art and antiques business, and she had been working with them ever since she’d graduated from her exclusive prep school. She’d worked part-time all through college, and in the past few years she’d taken on more responsibilities. Since her father had had the heart attack, she’d had to do more than her share, which was why she was still working this late in the evening. She knew her parents expected her to take over the business when they retired, and she was happy to do it.

She loved art and antiques, and she knew a lot about them since she’d been raised surrounded by them. She thought she had a pretty good head for business too. She was practical and detailed oriented, and while she wasn’t a smooth-talking extrovert, people usually liked her well enough. She was good at her work, and most of the time she enjoyed it.

She’d rather not have to do both her father’s job and her own, however. And right now she was hassling with a spreadsheet. Something wasn’t adding up in it, so she was scowling at her laptop screen. She was so absorbed she hardly noticed when the front door of the apartment opened and Timothy came in.

He’d stepped into the living room, dropping his leather bag on the floor and his keys on a little table before she looked up at him.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

He was a very attractive man with his dark hair, brown eyes, lean, fit body, intelligent demeanor, and dry humor. She’d always thought so, even back in school when he’d been two years ahead of her. He’d dated Emily through most of high school, however, and then ended up marrying her, so he’d never been available to Madison in any way. As such, she’d always been careful to put him in an “unavailable” category of her mind.

Until recently.

For the past year, it had been very hard to keep him there.

“Nothing,” she said with a tired smile. “Just work.”

“Problems?”

“Just an uncooperative spreadsheet.” Madison saved her work, closed her laptop, and slid it into her bag. “Did you get your papers graded?”

“Yes. Finally.” He made a face. “They’re the bane of my existence.”

She couldn’t help but laugh at that as she stood up.

“What?” Timothy asked, coming closer to her. He was four inches taller than her, so she had to look up at him.

“Nothing.”

“You were laughing at something just now.”

“It’s just that Jenny said before bedtime that papers were the bane of your existence.”

“Ah.” A smile tugged on the corners of his mouth. “She knows me well.”

Their gazes held for a minute, and Madison had to fight against the sudden surge of attraction.

Earlier this year, Madison had thought she’d seen some signs that he might be growing interested in her romantically. They’d ended up having a lot of meals together—just the two of them—and they’d occasionally gone to movies or museum exhibits on unplanned, spontaneous outings. She’d hoped they were significant, but when Timothy never said anything or made a single move, she’d had to conclude that what felt like “dates” really weren’t. He was probably lonely, and she was convenient. If he wanted more, he would have done something by now.

She wasn’t prone to romanticizing, and she was careful to talk herself out of any lingering hopes in that regard. She knew very well that she needed to turn her attention to other things, other men. She wasn’t the kind of woman to pine hopelessly for a man she couldn’t have.

Sometimes it was hard though. There was no one quite so kind and smart and sexy and funny as Timothy.

He cleared his throat and turned his head toward Jenny’s closed door. “How is she?”

“She’s fine. She was a little disappointed about you missing her bedtime.”

Timothy sighed. “Yeah. I’ll be right back.”

He went into the bedroom and returned after a minute.

“She’s asleep?” Madison asked.

“Yes. Did everything go all right this evening?”

“Yep.”

“Did you have any dinner?”

“I had some chicken nuggets and carrots with Jenny. About four hours ago.”

With a chuckle, Timothy went into the kitchen. “You must be hungry then. I’ll fix something. I’m ravenous myself.”

Recently Madison had been trying not to eat alone with him very often since it made her think things that were wrong. But she was hungry now, and Timothy was already pulling leftover vegetables and rice and chicken out of the refrigerator.

“Okay. I am kind of hungry.”

Timothy was a good cook, and in less than ten minutes he’d whipped up a very tasty stir-fry dish with random stuff he’d found in his refrigerator. Madison could never have done such a thing herself.

They chatted about Jenny as he worked, and she sat at a stool at the counter. She thought they’d eat right there at the counter, but Timothy set dishes and silverware on the small table and then poured two glasses of chardonnay from the partial bottle in the refrigerator.

Madison swallowed as she accepted the glass of wine he offered, reminding herself that this wasn’t a date, that it wasn’t an intimate dinner.

He was a nice guy, and he appreciated her help with Jenny.

Plus he probably wanted someone to talk to when he got home from work.

He was smiling wryly as he opened a drawer, pulled out a box of matches, and lit the two tapers set in cute little sheep candleholders that had been placed in the middle of the table. “Jenny saw these last weekend and had to have them. She keeps asking when I’ll ever light the candles.”

If the universe had been conspiring to torture her, it couldn’t have done better than this. Through a series of trivial details, she was now having a candlelit dinner with Timothy, complete with wine, good food, and his warm, clever smile.

Screaming at herself not to read into it what wasn’t there, she sat down and put her napkin in her lap.

He wasn’t her husband or her boyfriend. He was the widower of one of her best friends.

Madison had been devastated when Emily died twenty-two months ago from cancer that had killed her less than three months after being diagnosed. She’d promised Emily she would help with Jenny as much as she could, and she would never go back on that promise even if she’d wanted to.

If she were honest, she hadn’t been expecting to be so involved in their lives after two years. She’d assumed Timothy would start to move on, find a new girlfriend, resume a life that wasn’t dependent on her.

Both sets of Jenny’s grandparents were local, and he could afford to pay a babysitter, so he didn’t really need her help. But she couldn’t quite suggest that they change their routine, despite how busy she was with her work and her own family.

She sometimes wondered if it was healthy though. It made her feel like a part of Timothy and Jenny’s family, and she just wasn’t.

Timothy didn’t want to make her a real part of the family, so it wasn’t good for her to feel so much like she was.

She wasn’t sure what to do about it, however, and she wouldn’t hurt Jenny for the world.

She didn’t want to hurt Timothy either.

When she glanced up from her food, she was surprised to find that Timothy’s eyes were studying her closely.

She shifted self-consciously, unable to read the expression in his brown eyes.

“You look tired,” he said at last.

“Thanks a lot.”

“Well, you do.”

She let out a breath. “I am, I guess.” It felt like she hadn’t done anything but working and caregiving in ages. She’d almost forgotten what it felt like to go out and just have fun.

“How’s your dad?”

“He’s doing okay. He tried to come into the office a couple of times last week, but he still gets so tired he can’t do very much.”

“Has he… Have you all considered hiring someone else to help you out?”

She shook her head. “He won’t do that, and I don’t want to insist. It would really hurt him to believe that he’ll never be back where he was before.”

“I don’t want him to be hurt,” Timothy said softly, his eyes still resting on her face in that way that felt so intimate, so special. “But you can’t keep doing all the work for much longer. You need someone to help you.”

“I’m doing okay. Nothing has fallen apart.”

“I’m not saying you’re dropping the ball. I don’t know how you’ve done so much for so long. You’re amazing. But I don’t think it can be good for you. When was the last time you did anything except work and help out your parents?”

Madison opened her mouth to defend herself, but there wasn’t much she could say. So she ended up saying lamely, “I went over to Charlie’s last weekend to hang out with her and Hannah.”

“And what exactly did you do to have fun with them?”

She darted her eyes up to his face quickly before she looked down at her plate. “We drank some champagne and talked for a while, and then I fell asleep on the couch.”

He chuckled and reached over to touch her hand gently, the light sensation making her whole body shiver. “That’s what I’m saying.”

She was reminding herself he was just being nice—not being her boyfriend—so vigilantly she lost track of what she should have said in response.

“Madison?”

“Yes.” She was breathless, almost trembling.

“I’m serious.”

“About what?”

“About your talking to your dad about hiring some extra help.”

She let out her breath in a whoosh, embarrassed that she’d even for a moment thought he might say something else.

The candles and the wine and the soft look she sometimes saw in his eyes didn’t mean what she wanted them to mean.

“I’ll think about it. But I don’t want to hurt him.”

He nodded and ate a few more bites of his food, obviously thinking as he did so. Then he finally said, “You can always scale back with Jenny if you need to.”

“What?” The one word was a bit too sharp.

“You can always scale back with Jenny. Do fewer days with her. Or no days at all.”

Madison’s back stiffened as she wondered if this was what he’d been leading up to all along.

Maybe he was trying to gently push her away.

“I… I can if you think that’s best.”

His eyebrows pulled together in a frown. “I want what’s best for you, Madison. I don’t like how tired you always seem to be, and I’m not willing to take advantage of your generosity, just because Jenny and I love… having you around so much.”

Her heart leaped at his slight pause but sank again as he finished the sentence. What the hell was wrong with her tonight? She was usually better at keeping her foolishness under control than this.

She must be too tired.

“You’re not taking advantage of me. I love Jenny, and I like spending afternoons with her. She’s no trouble, and I can get a lot of work done while I’m here, so it’s not like it’s adding a lot to my workload.”

He didn’t answer. Just looked at her without wavering.

She was desperately afraid he was going to insist she stop babysitting, so she said, “It’s actually a nice… a nice break. Spending time with Jenny. I… I enjoy it.”

He nodded slowly. “Okay.”

“But if you think it’s better for Jenny or… or you… or anything, I’ll of course back off. You just need to say the word.”

“I don’t want you to back off, Madison. I want you to be happy.”

“I am happy.”

“Are you?”

His face blurred in front of her eyes for a moment, and her head felt like it might explode. She didn’t know why this conversation was hitting her so intensely, but it was. “Yes,” she whispered.

“And you’d tell me if you weren’t?”

“S-sure.”

He shook his head. “I hope so. But I don’t really know if you would. It feels like half the time you’re…”

“I’m what?”

“You’re hiding.”

She didn’t know what he meant, but she didn’t like that he thought she was lacking in some way. It bothered her. A lot. “I’m not hiding.”

“Aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

He didn’t look like he believed her, but at least he’d finally let the topic rest. They sat in silence for a minute until she found a way to change the subject. She reached for a fancy wedding invitation on top of a pile of mail on the counter behind her. “Are you going to go to this?” she asked.

“I guess I should. Jim was a good friend in school.”

The wedding was an elaborate affair in a historic hotel in West Virginia. Madison was already excited about it because it had been so long since she’d dressed up and done anything festive. “Going to a wedding isn’t supposed to be a burden. You sound like you have to get teeth pulled.”

“It’s not that. It just seems like such a production, and I’ll be gone all weekend and Jenny has stuff going on that weekend, so she can’t go with me. I don’t mind going to the wedding. It just seems like a pain in the ass.” With a little smile, he shook his head. “Are you going?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“Good. Maybe…”

Her heart leaped again in that ridiculous hopeful way—the way she was trying so hard to keep it from doing.

“Maybe it will be good for you,” Timothy concluded.

Madison tried not to slump back in her chair.

“Give you a chance to have some fun and relax, I mean.”

“I know what you meant,” she said quietly.

“Were you friends with Polly?”

“Kind of. Jim and Polly invited everyone, I think. Charlie and Hannah are going too.”

Charlie and Hannah were her best friends. They’d been her best friends in school, and they were still her best friends now.

“That’s good. Hopefully you’ll have a good time there. Jenny can stay with my parents that weekend.”

Madison nodded, staring down at her food. It was really good, and she’d almost finished her plate.

Timothy was silent for a minute, so long that the mood between them started to feel awkward.

When Madison finally raised her eyes to check his expression, he asked softly, “Are you sure I’m not taking advantage of you?”

“What?”

“Am I taking advantage of you?”

“No, of course not.” Madison suddenly felt guilty for making Timothy feel guilty. She should have managed her responses better. “Not at all.”

“I sometimes wonder if I am. I know I rely on you too much. I don’t know what Jenny and I would have done without you.”

It was something Madison wanted to hear from him so much she almost leaned into the words. But she reminded herself that they didn’t mean what she wanted them to mean.

They never would.

“I’ve wanted to help. You know I love Jenny as much as I loved Emily.’

“I know you do. But still…”

She let out a little sigh. “I’ll back off if you want me to.”

“I don’t want you to. Stop acting like I do.”

She blinked at the urgency of his tone. “Okay. Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I’m sorry.”

“What are you sorry about?”

“For snapping at you.”

Despite her flustered state of mine, she couldn’t help but giggle at that. “You think what you just did was snapping at me?”

“Wasn’t it?”

“It wasn’t even close to snapping. There was a slight edge of impatience in your voice.”

“Well, I shouldn’t be impatient with you.”

“You can be anything you want to be with me.” She said the words thoughtlessly, without planning them out or thinking them through. When she heard how they sounded, she blushed slightly.

Timothy held her eyes, something new in his expression.

She felt weird and nervous and excited and a lot of things she shouldn’t be feeling.

She opened her mouth to say something else, but she had no idea what to say.

“Madison,” he began.

She leaned forward, completely mesmerized by the look in his eyes. “Yes?”

There was a long pregnant pause. Then, “Do you want some more wine?”

Madison did slump that time.

This kind of thing had happened to her over and over again for the past six months. Thinking something would happen, something would be said, and then crushed when it wasn’t. Nothing was ever going to happen romantically with Timothy, so she needed to stop hoping that it would.

She needed to focus on something else, get excited about a different guy.

That would be the emotionally healthy thing to do.

Madison had always been a practical person. If she needed to go against her heart to be emotionally healthy, then that was what she was going to do.