Isobel Morgan, often the paragon of patience, cast her eyes to the ceiling and prayed for the strength not to shove her fiancé down the stairs.

"I can't believe you're kicking me out of bed before dawn. Again."

"Baby . . ." She sighed, hands clenching and unclenching in impatient fists. "It's nearly eight. You know he'll be up soon."

"Seriously—come on, Tink, we're engaged now. I think we can stop the charade." At the base of the stairway,
Kyle Peterson whirled around, and, even with a scowl on his face, she was struck by the beauty of him. Broad shouldered and lean, his face dominated by tempest-gray eyes, sullen full lips, and a chiseled jaw. Even brooding, he was breathtaking. Maybe more so. He could've easily modeled if his heart hadn't been set on soccer.

It was staggering to think in three short months she was going to be his wife.

They'd met as kids at summer camp but had gone separate ways until high school. That first moment she'd seen him again, when he'd smiled at her from across the field, her heart had tumbled right out of her chest and onto the shorn grass at his feet. Every single girl in school, even the seniors, wanted him, but it was Isobel Morgan he'd asked to be his date for the fall dance, and shortly thereafter to be his girlfriend.
Kyle "the Pan" Peterson—the fearless boy who flew on the field, and Isobel Morgan, his Tinker Bell.

Because you bring magic to my life. And I bring adventure to yours.

"It's his house. I have to respect it." Isobel looped her arms around his waist and wiggled Kyle back toward the doorway. Three feet. Just three more feet.

"Which is why you should come to the condo instead." Kyle planted himself like a tree on the threshold and arched a brow. "You are coming over tonight, yes?" Isobel held her breath. "It's your turn, Tink."

Yes, it was. He'd made the effort every day for the past two months, but nights away from home made her anxious and too stressed to sleep. Even in Kyle's arms, which was her favorite place to be, she found no solace from the nagging worry.

Did he take his meds?

Is he throwing up?

In pain?

Did he get dizzy and fall, again?

"Tink?"

Grabbing him by the collar of his shirt, she yanked him in for a pacifying kiss, mainly to stop the storm she saw brewing in his eyes from turning into a full-blown hurricane. "I'll call you later. Also, don't forget about our lunch meeting with the coordinator."

Kyle's frown slid into the pout of a toddler being told he had to eat his dinner if he wanted dessert. "Do I have to?"

"Well . . ." Isobel shuffled, barefoot. "Don't you want to be there to see the venue?" There weren't many locations in Toronto available for a late-summer wedding that matched her stringent, environmentally friendly perspective and vegan lifestyle with Kyle's need for . . . style, as he put it. But the loft space in the Distillery District was perfect, and this was her last chance to get in there to see it before signing the paperwork.

Kyle scraped a hand over his head, mussing short brown curls gilded from his recent trip to Miami with his team. "Babe . . . I've really got to rest up for the game tomorrow. Coach says I have to take it easy after stressing my ACL in practice."

"Right. Of course." Isobel's heart twisted, but she masked her disappointment with a smile. After signing with Toronto FC last summer, Kyle had pushed hard to keep up with his team. He wasn't a kid kicking a ball across the field anymore. He was a professional athlete, and that came with expectations. Responsibilities. Demands. He was living his dream; the least she could do was manage a coordinator meeting. "I'll take care of it. Don't worry."

"You're the best, Tink. How'd I get so lucky?" Kyle framed her face with his large, calloused hands and kissed her swiftly. God, she loved kissing him.

Isobel jolted as the sound of her father's alarm clock, loud as a foghorn, blasted overhead. "I'm sorry," she whispered, struggling to withdraw from his embrace. "You've got to go."

"Yeah, yeah." Kyle rocked back, tongue skimming the edge of his perfectly shaped teeth. "Later."

Bruised with guilt, Isobel eased the door shut—gently—and winced at the whine of the hinges. They were overdue for a bit of grease. Once it was shut and locked, the chain latched in place, she gave the foyer a quick whisk before sprinting into the kitchen to start the kettle.

She hated forcing him out. Quiet mornings with Kyle were always her favorite part of her day, to be lost with him in the filmy glow of light running along the crease of the horizon where nothing existed beyond Kyle's arms and the rhythm of his breathing. Those moments brought her the most peace. The most joy. The most love. All before the chaos of the day swooped in and spun her through the gamut of work, chores, bills, and lawyers.

Floorboards shifted and creaked overhead. She'd give her dad five minutes of wrestling on his own before heading up to check. To keep her hands and mind busy while waiting for him to dress and the kettle to boil, she unlocked her iPad and opened her ever growing to-do list.

The wedding was three months away, and though she'd gone to considerable lengths to keep everything simple, Kyle wanted fireworks. More than half of his guests were people she'd never met, but he insisted they were vital. Even with the wedding coordinator and a ruthlessly planned checklist to keep her on task, there was still so much left to do. She'd struck gold with her dress, at least. A vintage 1950s gem found in an online LA thrift store.

Seating plan revisions – 5.0, remind Kyle to email his additions

Track dress shipment to confirm customs clearance

Cake tasting on Tuesday at 4 p.m. Kyle?

Sisters: dresses—final measurements and color preferences

Call Priya re: lawyers/settlement advice, she added.

Isobel smiled as she thought about her sisters. God, it had been so long since she'd made a trip down to New York. Even though she and Priya lived the closest—before Caitlin temporarily relocated last fall for her fashion internship—they'd both been far busier in the last few months than Isobel cared to think about.

Priya and Shayne had been the first to meet just before starting high school, and Eshe the winter thereafter, when Priya had gone to London for one of her mom's speaking engagements, then Caitlin a year later. Isobel had joined the Sisterhood last during one fateful summer when she'd gone to Manhattan with her dad to see relatives visiting from Ireland.

A truly glorious day. The kind that hummed with promises and changed lives.

While she had been in line at a Starbucks, nose in a book as usual, some guy had dumped his iced latte over her head and cackled with his friends. Isobel stood there, locked in a mortified tableau that stuttered in halting frames of movement as the cold, slushy brew slid down her face.

Isobel was no stranger to being bullied, but it never got any easier to swallow every time some jerk thought it would be hilarious to humiliate her because of her huge reading glasses and the wild curls she had no idea how to tame.

Four-eyed mutt!

Three simple words that, when strung together, became something sinister. Dangerous. And that flung her back to when she'd been six and playing with some kids who'd just moved into the area. They'd invited her and two others back to their house a few doors down. Thrilled, Isobel had raced down the street with them, but being smaller, she'd lagged behind and was the last to reach the porch when their mother, wearing a robin's egg–blue dress, glared at Isobel through the mesh screen and snarled, I don't let mutts into my home, before shutting the door solidly in her face.

Isobel had stood there for what felt like a year, frozen with a shame she couldn't understand. Mutt. A confusing, degrading word. It didn't make sense.

I'm not a dog, she'd wanted to say. I'm just Isobel. Just a little girl who wanted to play with the rest of the kids, and for reasons she couldn't understand, was being pushed out. Ostracized. Told no when she hadn't done anything wrong. But tears came instead of words, and Isobel raced home to the comfort of her father's arms. She'd cried for weeks after, and those kids never asked her to play again.

Thankfully, more often than not Isobel escaped notice thanks to the white-passing attributes of her fair skin and green eyes, but even then, she'd never forgotten that day. Even now, if she closed her eyes she could remember the slate-colored sky carrying the chill of early fall, the exact shade and texture of the brown, bricked house. Five terrible minutes stamped into her little mind with such alarming clarity that they left a brand.

A scar.

And that moment in Starbucks had, too, but she wouldn't have changed it for anything, because it was when she'd met Shayne. Even back then, barely sixteen, Shayne moved with a kind of swagger that was all attitude and honesty. Though there wasn't a single tattoo or piercing in sight (those didn't start to appear until she hit twenty), she didn't need them to convey her confidence. Or defiance.

It was in the set of her sullen mouth and the gleam of her vivid, burnt-whiskey eyes as she'd stepped forward to defend Isobel when no one else would. A shy little nerd whom Shayne dusted off after breaking the guy's nose with two sharp jabs. Afterward, in the bathroom, she gave Isobel a spare shirt from her bag to wear and introduced Isobel to the other girls who would become the greatest loves of her life. Her sisters.

And for the rest of the summer, Isobel was sucked into a whirlwind of female company unlike anything she had ever experienced before. Every day she wondered when it would end. Would they cast her out as quickly as they had roped her in? Isobel wasn't beautiful like Eshe or smart like Priya; she wasn't popular like Caitlin or confident like Shayne, or even really all that interesting. Or so she'd thought, until these girls showed her different, and the longer she spent in their company, the more she'd started to dream. To hope. And finally, believe.

But as the days of summer grew shorter, it became harder not to lose that newfound sparkle. And perhaps it was sensing Isobel's unease about what would happen when they all parted ways that spurred Shayne into action.

They'd gathered in Priya's apartment in Chelsea on their last afternoon together. Her parents were off vacationing in Dubai but had left Priya with a hired chaperon, Ms. Mills. As Ms. Mills had a penchant for muscle relaxants on a Sunday afternoon, they'd snuck a couple of bottles of rosé upstairs to the master bedroom's massive walk-in closet; the entire space was as large as Isobel's bedroom.

That closet had become their inner sanctum, their place of worship. Even Shayne seemed mesmerized by the beauty of towering heels. There, they'd gorged on greasy pizza, surrounded by hundreds of gorgeous stilettos stacked on shelves, glittering like jewels in the light, and toasted the end of a glorious summer and the forging of new friendships.

That was when Shayne sat up. "Swear," she said, casting her stern gaze to each of them in turn, her Spanish accent thickened with wine, "no matter what happens, we will always be friends. Nay, more than friends—sisters. And let nothing sever our vow: not distance or whatever bullshit life throws our way. We will stand together. For each other. We will inspire each other, and together we will take over the world. Own it." Drunk on excitement as much as she was on alcohol, she'd tried to stand but could only manage to stagger to her knees. "We need something to swear on."

"Like a Bible?" Isobel mused.

"Too religious," Eshe answered.

"Too patriarchal," Caitlin corrected.

"Let's use this!" Priya plucked a stiletto off the shelf. Black and glossy with a lipstick-red bottom.

"Why a shoe?" Caitlin mused, eyes crossing.

"Because they're powerful and sexy."

"Yes, but they're basically a modern-day corset meant to appease the male gaze."

"Then let's take it back." Priya grinned. "Reclaim it as an icon of strength and resilience. A weapon we will wield in the pursuit of our dreams."

"You know," Isobel chimed in, "the word stiletto means slender dagger."

"Stiletto Sisterhood," Eshe mused, letting the name settle and take shape. "Has a ring to it, yeah?"

Drunk and giggling, they stuck their hands in like athletes at a big game and swore a vow of sisterhood and fidelity. Five girls from different walks of life drawn to each other in unexpected ways, but once together, they'd found a love deeper than friendship. They were family.

Friends by chance but sisters by choice.

And true to their vow, even with distance dividing them, their friendship had held strong as they crossed the grueling academic gauntlet and entered the terrifying landscape of adulting. Textbooks were traded for budding careers built on the back of twelve-hour days for crap pay and acquiring things like actual bills in their own names that boomeranged every month—hounding for blood.

Some mornings Isobel lay in bed, gazing at the cracked plaster ceiling in her bedroom, and longed for simpler days of essays and exams. But nothing would ever be simple again. Especially not after the accident. Her stomach still clenched with terror at the memory of the day she'd received the phone call from the hospital.

Your father is in surgery.

Broken spine. Fractured skull.

We're not sure if he's going to pull through.

Prepare for the worst.

Her father, a construction foreman, had plummeted nearly three stories, but not before pushing aside the crewman working beside him when he realized that the faultily assembled scaffolding they were standing on wasn't going to hold—thereby saving the man from joining him on the way down.

It had been touch and go for weeks after, and by the grace of God and her father's sheer stubborn will, he'd pulled through. But it took nearly a year before he'd managed to walk unassisted, and the war was far from over.

"There's my best girl." Declan Morgan declared as he entered the kitchen, his glowing smile marred by the shadow of a grimace. Deep grooves of chronic pain slashed between his brows, furrowed around his mouth, and hung in bags beneath his eyes, aging him well beyond his fifty-two years, and robbing him of vitality. They'd been faint at first, but with the passing days and countless surgeries, she'd watched those cracks and crevices sink as deep as scar tissue.

In an effort to slow the erosion, Isobel made a concerted effort to be his constant source of happiness and hope, just as he had always endeavored to be hers. Abandoning her iPad, she plucked up her steaming cup of green tea, sweetened with a hint of agave syrup. "Did you sleep well?"

His answering laugh was bone dry. "Like the dead." Always the same answer. The same lie. She knew he slept poorly. The proof was in the weary bend of his back and the heaviness of his steps. Even with the prescribed painkillers her father hadn't had a good night's sleep in almost three years. He pressed a kiss to her cheek. "You're up early."

Isobel gestured guiltily to her screen. "Tweaking my pitch." It wasn't a complete lie. She had been editing it—mentally—all morning while Kyle slept next to her. Now she just needed to plug in the minor changes.

"That today?" His eyes brightened. "And here I thought it had to do with shoving Kyle out the door."

"You heard us?"

"I may be getting old, Bells, but I'm not dead." Reaching for her hand, he gave it a tender squeeze. "Why do you think I've taken to setting the alarm for eight instead of six thirty?"

Isobel winced. "Dad . . ."

"He's not wrong," her father interrupted. "You're a soon-to-be married young woman. Next time, let the poor lad sleep in." Declan pulled her in for a hug and tucked her head under his chin. "As for your pitch, you'll be wonderful, love. You have a talent with words. I'm sure your boss will be dazzled."

Though Isobel was grateful for the subject change, her stomach twisted into an anxious pretzel. "I hope so." Pushing for recognition or asking for more had never been her strong suit, but after being thoroughly pressed by her sisters, mainly Priya and Shayne, Isobel had relented.

As nervous as she was, Isobel knew it was time to ask for the change. She'd worked for The Six for three long years, and adored the local Toronto talk show with all her heart, but asking for a promotion from production assistant to writer was a huge step. The Six kept assistants on a part-time, hourly basis instead of salaried payroll, and if she was going to continue to support her father, she needed more money. Benefits.

Perhaps it would've been easier to leave and work elsewhere, but she loved The Six, and was passionate about storytelling—especially news that mattered. But it wasn't easy breaking into media without having finished university. She'd quit after her first year and gotten a job to cover expenses while her father recovered, but it was growing increasingly apparent her dad would never go back to work, and his settlement claim had been in court for three agonizing years, the finish line nowhere in sight. Even if she wanted to go back to finish her education, they could barely afford it before, with grants tempering some of the financial sting. It would be impossible now, with the weight of all the bills dragging her down like an anchor into a sea of debt.

Online certificates had helped supplement her résumé, but it wasn't nearly enough to make her stand out against someone with an actual degree. So Isobel had decided the only way to move ahead was to show them what she was capable of.

And, oh God, she really was going to be sick!

"Do you have time to join me for a bit?" her dad asked, reaching the breakfast nook containing a little half-moon shaped table with two mismatched wooden chairs, where they'd both sat just about every morning as far back as
she could remember. A chair scraped and stuttered across the tile in his shaking grip. Even the simplest tasks were a challenge, and Isobel had to stop herself from rushing in to help.

Growing up, he'd seemed invincible. Barrel-chested like a superhero, with strong arms, rough hands, a big heart, and an even bigger laugh. It had been the two of them against the world after she'd left them. Isobel swallowed that knot of betrayal and fear. She would not think of her mother, not now, and certainly not in front of him. It was too beautiful a day to be sad, and like a bloodhound, her father would sniff out the cause. She didn't want to upset him either.

"No, I have to rush to set for today's recording, and then meet the wedding coordinator for a late lunch," she said, brightening her voice with the eager anticipation of a bride-to-be.

Declan nodded as he sank into the chair, masking a wince as his weight settled into the uncompromising wooden frame. As she sipped her tea, Isobel's gaze shifted to the living room—to the beat-up leather recliner and the plush hunter-green sectional they used to cuddle on together to watch sports—and she wondered how she was going to steer him there without bruising his ego.

Maybe I should turn on the morning news. Lay out a sudoku puzzle. She'd encouraged him to do them for cognitive therapy. He'd hit his head in the fall, and she'd read somewhere that brain exercises were crucial to helping the rest of the body heal and restore memory and clarity. Fortunately for her, he'd taken a real shine to them.

At his wheezing grunt, her gaze flitted back to see him hunched over and struggling to tie the laces on his left shoe.

"Here." Setting her cup on the counter, she rushed to his side and urged him to ease upright. He'd dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt, the buttons misaligned by two. Her fingers itched to redo them, to smooth out those creases around his shoulders, but instead she busied herself with the task of his laces. "Why didn't you call me to help you?"

He swiped her question aside with a calloused palm. "I can manage well enough on my own. No need to fret over it." Maybe it was the Irish in him, or being a single parent for most of her life, but Declan Morgan had always been a proud man and would sooner yank out his own teeth than ask for help.

She clipped his nails, combed his hair, and on bad days, helped him climb out of bed or shimmy into his clothes. Over time the list of things she did for her father grew, shrinking his independence. Smothering him. So last fall she'd hired a contractor to modify a few areas around the house—installing a second handrail at the stairs, a bar in the shower so he could heft himself about as he needed or hold on to when he felt faint. Though the cost had been a blow to her meager savings, knowing it let him hold on to his dignity had been well worth it.

At least Kyle had shouldered most of the wedding expense, although Isobel had insisted on contributing where she could.

Finished with his laces, Isobel rocked back on her heels. "Can I make you something to eat before I go?"

"I'm fine, love."

"Dad, you need to eat." You're wasting away. His arms were pencil thin and his legs near to bone where they had all once been solid, chiseled muscle.

"Why must you always make a fuss?" The creases deepened around his eyes. "You should be out enjoying yourself, not rushing home to fuss over me."

"It's not a fuss to take care of someone you love." She rose and set her hands to her hips. "Besides, it's a gorgeous day out. Maybe we could stretch your legs at the park later this evening. Dr. Gora says you need to get out and walk more. Strengthen your muscles with those gentle exercises the physiotherapist taught you so we can start incorporating yoga into your routine."

Declan scrunched up his nose. "I hate walking almost as much as I hate the idea of yoga."

"We'll make it a short one," she promised, not backing down. Whether he liked it or not, she intended to follow the doctor's instructions to the letter. But she wasn't above bribery when necessary. "If you're good then I'll take you to the pub later for a pint of Guinness. One." That perked him right up. "But only if you do everything I ask without a grumble."

"Where'd you learn to be so tough?" His features slid into a frown but a smile shone in his eyes.

Isobel pressed another noisy kiss to his cheek. "From my dad, of course."