Cassidy Harte and the Comeback Kid by RaeAnne Thayne

about everything. They’d been best friends since Ellie and Dylan moved to town the summer before and had connived and schemed to bring their parents together.
    Cassie had a feeling they also secretly took credit for bringing their fourth-grade teacher, Sarah, together with Jesse.
    She shuddered to think what would happen if they ever decided to turn their fledgling matchmaking skills in her direction.
    â€œWe’re starving,” Dylan moaned dramatically. “When are we gonna eat?”
    â€œYeah,” Lucy chimed in. “I’m so hungry I could eat my boots.”
    â€œFrom the looks of it, those boots have been in places I don’t even want to think about,” Ellie said. “Why don’t you take them off in the mudroom and then scrub all that barn grime off your hands and faces?”
    They groaned but quickly obeyed, then both reached for the potato chip bowl at the same time. Before they could reach it, Cassie whipped the bowl behind her back with a grin. “Nope. Neither one of you is getting anything to eat until you give me my hug.”
    This time they obeyed without the groaning. She put the bowl back on the table and gathered them close. Dylan was quick to return to the chips, but Lucy lingered in her arms and Cassie planted a kiss on the top of her dark curls, smelling shampoo and sunshine.
    All too soon Lucy pulled away and Ellie stepped into the breach. “Why don’t you girls help carry some of this food out to the picnic table and tell your dad and uncle to hustle with those steaks?”
    Cassie watched the girls obey, trying hard to ignore the sharp little niggle in her heart.
    It shouldn’t still bother her. Not after all these months. Everything had changed now that Matt had married Ellie. Lucy had a different family now—a stepmother and a sister. The four of them had forged a loving family and she couldn’t be happier for them.
    But she still couldn’t help an aching sense of loss that pinched her heart every time she was around her niece now.
    After Melanie left, she had taken over caring for Lucy. What else could she have done? There was noway Matt could handle a three-month-old infant by himself and run the ranch, too.
    And giving up her college plans and devoting herself to her niece hadn’t been completely unselfish on her part. She had needed the distraction, a firm purpose, something to help restore her shattered self-esteem. She found it in mothering the poor lost little baby.
    For nearly ten years she had been Lucy’s mother in everything but name. She had held her chubby little hands when Lucy took her first fledgling steps, she had cuddled her at night and read her bedtime stories, she had nurtured her when she was sick. She had given the little girl all the love in her heart and had it returned a thousandfold, with sticky kisses and tight hugs and whispered secrets.
    Everything was different now. She had moved away to give Matt and Ellie space to build their new life together. It was the right thing to do, she knew. But a part of her still grieved to know Ellie was the one who now heard those secrets of Lucy’s, who now received those sticky kisses and tight hugs, while she was relegated to the role of maiden aunt.
    Now Jesse and Sarah were getting married, and she knew it probably wouldn’t be long before they added their own little branches to the Harte family tree.
    She would love their children, just as she did Lucy and Dylan. She would spoil them with presents and take them to the movies and baby-sit so their parents could have a night on the town.
    And she would always be on the outside looking in.
    She ground her teeth, angry at the direction of her thoughts. She was childish to think such things, even for a moment. Her family loved her. She had absolutely no doubt about that. Lucy loved her. Their hearts wouldalways be knit together by those ten years she had nurtured her niece. Nothing could change