Chapter 1

Today was Halloween. It was also the seventh day since my mother’s death.

My fiancé, Lucas Reed, suddenly leaned close to my ear.

“Your mom didn’t die from her illness. She choked to death on a pumpkin hand pie.”

I trembled as I stared at the man I’d always thought was so gentle and refined.

“Chloe and I were behind the curtain in her hospital room. We got a little loud.”

“Your mom fell out of bed trying to get a better look. Choked to death on that pork-and-egg pie in her mouth.”

Chloe was the young caregiver my mother had adored.

She was also the “perfect daughter” Mom had always compared me to.

Lucas looked at my bloodless face and gave a mocking smile.

“Don’t blame me. Blame your mother for always being so hard on you—and insisting on making Chloe her goddaughter.”

“Besides, you’re not even half as good in bed as Chloe. You just lie there like a dead fish.”

“Chloe and I are getting married next week.”

“Make plenty of those pumpkin pies your mom loved. We’ll give them out as wedding favors.”

Lucas’s words pierced my ears.

He was about to say more when a slender figure rushed toward us.

She didn’t even look at me. She went straight into his arms.

“Lucas, don’t talk about Claire that way.”

Then she turned toward me, tears glistening in her eyes.

“Claire, please don’t blame Lucas. This is all my fault. Your mom was so good to me. I just couldn’t help myself.”

Couldn’t help herself.

My mother was barely cold in her grave. They’d screwed in her hospital room, and now they were embracing at her memorial.

I lunged at her.

Before I could touch her, Lucas shoved me away.

He stood over me, looking down.

Several distant relatives were still in the room. Every one of them turned to stare at me.

Lucas didn’t raise his voice, but everyone heard him clearly.

“Claire Bennett, look at yourself. Screaming and carrying on like a shrew.”

“Am I wrong? A woman like you has no idea how to please a man. You’re a dead fish.”

The sympathy in my relatives’ eyes slowly turned to contempt—and eager curiosity.

Chloe slipped out of Lucas’s arms and walked to the memorial table.

She picked up one of the savory pumpkin hand pies I’d made myself, filled with pork and salted egg, just the way Mom had loved them.

Right in front of me, she peeled back the orange paper wrapper.

“Lucas, Evelyn always said my pies tasted better than Claire’s. Try one.”

Lucas took it without so much as glancing at me and bit off a huge mouthful.

Still chewing, he mumbled, “Yours are definitely better.”

Then he shoved the rest straight into Chloe’s mouth.

Her cheeks bulged. With her mouth full, she gave him a sweet, bashful smile.

I shook all over. Tears blurred my vision.

I turned to Uncle Robert, my mother’s older brother.

“Uncle Robert, look at what they’re doing.”

I pleaded through my tears, hoping he would say something for me. For Mom.

His lips moved, but in the end, he only turned away and let out a heavy sigh.

“Claire, stop being difficult.”

“Lucas is holding our family’s food company together. We can’t afford to lose him.”

That single sentence plunged me into ice.

Lucas sneered.

He came over and wiped his mouth.

“Hear that? Holding it together.”

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. I’ve already launched our new product line.”

“I’m renaming the brand your mom founded. Hart’s Kitchen is becoming Chloe & Lucas Gourmet.”

Chloe and Lucas.

Her name. His name.

They were going to turn my mother’s life’s work into a monument to their “love.”

He bent down and hauled me off the floor.

“I give you an inch, and you actually think you’re still the princess of the Hart family?”

The candles flickered around my mother’s portrait.

Alone, with no one on my side, I looked at them. Then I looked at Mom’s stern face in the photograph.

I hadn’t just lost my mother.

I’d lost everything connected to her.