So this is what it feels like to be the unpredictable one in the family. A definite first for Neely Mason. One of four siblings, forty-five-year-old Neely was known for being reliable, hardworking, pragmatic...and single, much to the chagrin of her cheerfully opinionated Southern relatives.

But running the risk of becoming a sixty-year-old unwed cat lady had been Neely's sole nod toward eccentricity; it was her twenty-six-year-old sister, Vidalia, who habitually caught people off guard. Vi had been a surprise from the moment Mrs. Mason learned that her "early menopause" was actually a pregnancy. The unexpected late- in-life baby had grown into a quirky career student who still delighted in startling others. For a change, Vi's pretty bow-shaped mouth was hanging open in the same gape as everyone else's.

Ten minutes ago, the clank of silverware had been the background music to Savannah fussing that everyone got enough to eat and Douglas charming their parents with the latest anecdote starring Douglas. Now, silent shock was as tangible in the dining room as the heirloom mahogany furniture and the brass antique chandelier — the one Neely had always thought looked like a spider with lightbulb feet. Though rarely fanciful, Neely could swear her announcement had halted not only conversation but the rhythmic ticking from the wall clock.

Well, how did you expect them to take it?

Since she'd never actually told her family that she'd been seeing Robert Walsh for the past six months, possibly the last thing they'd expected to hear from Neely was, "I'm getting married."

"To a man?" It was Vi who finally spoke. "I mean, you never bring guys home and rarely date, so I always wondered if you were a les —"

"Vidalia Jean!" Mrs. Beth Mason flushed red and actually crossed herself.

Neely rolled her eyes. "Mom, we're not Catholic. And, Vi, I'm not a lesbian."

"Well, congratulations on your engagement," Savannah put in smoothly. "I'm sorry Jason couldn't be here today, he'd want to pass on his felicitations, as well."

"Felicitations?" Vi snorted at their older sister — Savannah beat out Neely by eleven months. "I'm working on a second Master's, and even I don't talk like that. Can't you just say 'Way to go, sis'?"

Douglas, their thirty-nine-year-old brother, stopped eating long enough to tease Vi. "Criticism from someone who had to ask the fiancé"s gender?"

Vi shot him a look that was the slightly more mature version of sticking out her tongue, then studied Neely's left hand. "So, where's the rock?"

"We're going to pick it out together."

Robert had proposed last night, on her birthday, giving her two small jewelry boxes after the sumptuous dinner he'd prepared. The first had held a pin, the infinity sign in her birthstone, aquamarine. The second had been empty; he'd told her he'd found his perfect woman, and that if she'd do him the honor of spending the rest of her life with him, they'd find something perfect to fill the ring box. Her lips curved, remembering. He was such a sap, she thought affectionately, not at all who she would have pictured for her husband. Robert was definitely a surprise.

Especially to her family.

Beth cleared her throat, staring pointedly toward her own husband, Gerald Mason, who sat at the head of the table. "Don't you have something to add, dear?"

"Hmm?" The Professor, as everyone called Neely's father, glanced up, his faded blue eyes characteristically preoccupied behind his bifocals.

"For instance," his wife prompted, "asking about who this young man is we've never heard of before today!"

"You've heard of Robert lots of times," Neely said.

"I've worked with him for three years, ever since I left the accounting firm and went to work in-house at Becker. I think some of you have even met him."

"Yeah, but that's hardly the same as knowing you're bumping uglies with him."

"Vidalia Jean!"

"What?" Vi looked at their mother, all owl-eyed innocence. "She just turned forty-five. You don't think she's a virgin, do you? Douglas isn't married anymore, but I'll bet no one expects him to lead a celibate lifestyle."

"Hey," Douglas protested around a mouthful of potato salad, "my love life isn't the issue today."

Beth could have been a ventriloquist with the way she enunciated her words from behind primly set lips. "Some topics are not appropriate to the dinner table."

"But hearing about Uncle Darnell's colonoscopy last month was okay?" Vi muttered.

Savannah stood, a purposeful smile on her attractive face. "Vi, darlin', why don't you help me clear the table and get candles for Neely's cake? Mama did all the work preparing dinner and it's Neely's celebration, so I think we should be the ones to clean up, don't you?"

Neely was sure the answer to that question would be a resounding no, but Vidalia dutifully scooted her chair back across the gold-and-cream area rug. Then Vi grabbed a couple of dishes from the table, including her brother's plate.

"I was still eating that!"

"Come finish it in the kitchen," his younger sister said tartly. "I've been exiled from the discussion, I don't see why you should get to stay."

As the three of them went into the adjoining room, Douglas explained that if he had stayed, Vi would've had a mole who could fill her in later. Neely barely made out Vi's retort that, for a lawyer, Douglas was surprisingly unobservant, only noting "guy things" and skimping on pertinent details.

Neely couldn't decide if she was glad her siblings were gone, or if she felt more nervous facing her parents alone. Well, her mother, anyway, still formidable at sixty- seven. The Professor wasn't the sort who made anyone nervous, unless his history students had feared failing grades back when he taught at the community college.

"You children." Heaving a sigh at her end of the table, Beth Mason shook her head. Her steel-colored curls, set for the last twenty years at Lana's Beauty Shop, didn't move so much as a strand. "Some people think parenting stops when the kids leave the house, but that's just not so. Take Vidalia for instance — you know the nights I stay up worrying about that girl? And now you, who has been nearly as dependable as my Savannah, give us a heart attack with this news that you're getting married out of the blue sky. You're not...in the family way, are you?"

"Pregnant?" Neely choked on a horrified laugh.

"At my age?" She had the urge to make the sign of the cross herself.

"I was over forty when I had Vidalia. Turned out to be a good thing, since she would have driven me prematurely gray if I'd had her young. But it's nice to hear you aren't getting married for that reason. I'm glad you're in love. Still, you'd think that would be the sort of thing a girl told her family."

Neely squirmed in her chair. When Robert had kissed her on the beach during an administrative retreat in Key West, she hadn't told anyone — not even her best friend, Leah. What if the incident had been the by-product of fruity green umbrella drinks and nothing more? But shortly after, he'd asked her to come cheer him on at a pool championship and invited her to one of the meet-and-greet cookouts he and several of his apartment neighbors frequently threw. As she and Robert magically passed that invisible barrier between becoming a couple and actual coupledom, she'd shared the news with Leah, but neglected to bring it up during the monthly Sunday dinners with her family. She'd told herself she was forty-five and hardly needed anyone's permission to date, but that wasn't it.

Though her immediate family had finally stopped nagging her about having a man in her life, she knew the second they caught wind of one, the resulting matrimonial pressure would be intense. As would the pressure to have Robert over for dinner. Neely barely made it through these gatherings with her own sanity intact; she was reluctant to subject the man she loved to one.

Of course, she loved her family, too. She just didn't consider them confidantes. Vi was of a completely different generation, Douglas was normally wrapped up in his own life, and Savannah...well, Neely would just as soon keep her Savannah issues repressed. And Lord knew what Robert would make of her parents. He'd thought it was endearingly odd that the Masons had deliberately named all four of their children after Georgia cities, but that wasn't even the tip of her family's idiosyncrasies.

Robert was one of the few people not related by blood who could get away with calling Neely by her given name, Cornelia. The way her mother was glaring at her now, she was about to get the full "Cornelia Annette" treatment.

"I'm sorry, Mom. You know I'm...a private person. At first, I just wasn't comfortable telling you all about him because I wasn't sure where the relationship was going, if anywhere. Then, once a few months had passed, trying to figure out how to backpedal and tell you we were involved was awkward."

"So you waited until the engagement?" Beth arched an eyebrow. "At least we found out before the wedding invitation showed up in the mail. I suppose that's something."