So the good reviews spurred me on, lol, and I was inspired for a couple of hours, and wrote on and off while trying to figure out where this is going to go...tell me what you think. Oh, and to those of you who mentioned that you want Kirsten and Sandy to get together? I'm not ruling it out, but I honestly don't know where this is going right now.

Kirsten walked back into the sitting room, still not sure what to say to the tall, willowy teenager she'd just learned was her stepdaughter. Grace looked up at her unsurely.

"So, um...let me show you your room?" The girl nodded with a look of relief at something to do. Kirsten led her to the elegant staircase just off the dining room, barely glancing at the photographs that captivated Grace's interest.

There was Kirsten, clearly pregnant, with her arms wrapped around a little boy of about one year. There were three small children dressed in neat private school uniforms, standing in front of what Grace could already recognize as the Cooper mansion. There was what was obviously a family portrait taken not long ago, Kirsten seated on a loveseat with the same three children as teenagers standing around her. The older boy was tall and slender but well-built, with golden hair and a warm, straight-toothed smile. The younger one was shorter and admittedly rather skinny. His hair was darker and he wore braces, but Grace could see clearly that he would be very handsome once he got past the awkward stage of adolescence. The daughter was breath-taking, a perfect miniature of her mother, only with slightly tawnier hair and eyes that, even in a photograph, Grace could tell were green and not blue. But Grace's eyes were drawn to the man seated next to Kirsten on the loveseat, his arm around his wife. This man was James Cooper, her father. It was a heady feeling, intensified by the last photograph: her father and Kirsten on their wedding day. The date noted that they were married on "December 19, 1986," and Grace's heart skipped a beat. Her own birth had been only two days prior to her father's wedding. Kirsten had been a lovely bride, she noted, with her long blonde hair falling in gentle waves about her face, and her father was most definitely a very handsome man. His hair was fair, and his brown eyes seemed kind and—it almost embarrassed Grace to notice—very much in love with the woman standing next to him.

"All right, Grace, this is it. I'm sorry it's not very personal, but..." She broke off and tried to smile. "We can change it, I mean, if..." But Kirsten couldn't quite finish the sentence and so she just tried to smile again.

"It's fine," said Grace, also trying to smile. "Beautiful, really." It certainly was. The walls were painted pale purple and a border had been stenciled with yellow roses. The double bed, which was in the center of the room perpendicular to the door, was done in ruffled white bedding with several pastel throw pillows at the head. There was a nightstand with a lamp and telephone on it, and a closet on the wall opposite a beautiful gable window, which was to the right of the bed.

"Look, Kirsten, you don't have to do this," she said abruptly. "I mean, you guys—you have your own life, you have your own kids. I'm really sorry Mr. Cohen and I sprung this on you. You don't have to, you know, take me in." Kirsten's face softened.

"If you're Jimmy's daughter, you're my daughter," she said firmly. "And even if you weren't, you need some place to stay, at least until we can figure out what to do. I'm sure Jimmy will be happy to see you. Do, um...do you need any help with your stuff?"

"No, thanks," said Grace politely, knowing that all she would do would be place her suitcases neatly in the closet. There was no way that this woman was being completely upfront with her; it was unnatural and frankly naïve of her to expect that everything would run smoothly. Grace knew that Kirsten Cooper was putting up a front of "mothering," at least until she and James Cooper—she and Grace's father—had talked. It didn't make her think less of the woman; on the contrary, it was the smart thing to do, and the kindest, really. She hadn't turned Grace away at the door, after all.

"All right," Kirsten said uncertainly with a smile. "Well...I'll let you get settled, then, and, um...I was actually working when you got here, so I'll get back to that. If you want something to eat or drink or...anything, Cara's around, and if she can't help you, I'll be in the downstairs office off the sitting room. If you want to watch TV, there's a rec room on the other side of the kitchen; the kids have all kinds of videotapes and DVDs and video games, if you're into those. They're all three out right now, but...um...yeah," she finished rather lamely. "I'm going to go now, okay?" Grace smiled and nodded. "I'll see you later, then."

After Kirsten had gone, Grace sat on the soft yellow rug by the foot of the bed and surveyed her surroundings. It was clearly a guest room, devoid, as Kirsten had noted, of any real personality, but it was very pretty and had clearly been made up by someone with a real sense of taste. Kirsten certainly didn't seem to lack taste, she noted, recalling her stepmother's casually elegant khaki pants and periwinkle blue blouse. There was no way Grace was going to watch television or ask for food, though, no matter how hospitable Kirsten was. She opened her bag and found a Stephen King novel that had been keeping her busy for the last few days. Tentatively, she walked over to the white bed and lay down, finding it soft but sturdy and very comfortable. The Coopers lived in a dream world, she decided, and then she remembered that she was, actually, also a Cooper. Grace turned and looked at her reflection in the full-length mirror hung on the closet door, wondering if Kirsten was telling the truth and she looked like her father. She had only seen the two pictures in passing and hadn't found time to really study them. Suddenly, she was startled from her pensive thoughts by the ringing of the telephone at her bedside. Hesitantly, she picked it up.

"Grace? It's Kirsten. Yeah, um, we have an intercom...it's a big house...Anyway, I'm going to the office for a bit; apparently, they need me, but Cara's still here, so you'll be fine."

"Okay," answered Grace neutrally. "Bye, Kirsten." She put her book on the table and looked out the window a bit. Sure enough, there was Kirsten coming out of the house. She watched her stepmother get into a dark blue sports sedan—Ryan would recognize the make, model, and year, she reflected with a grin—and drive off. The neighborhood was beautiful: So many tall, shady trees; opulent, lush grounds; wonderfully well-kept pools with incredible patios and pool houses. And beyond that, the Pacific Ocean, glorious in its vastness and tumultuousness. What a world it was in which the Coopers lived...

Grace got back to her novel, enjoying the familiarity of the story. Perhaps the bedroom in which she was reading it had changed, but at least the story had stayed the same. Unfortunately, she didn't get too far in the book, either; she was interrupted by a slam of the door. It was first instinct to rush downstairs, and she did so without considering whether that was the best decision to make.

A tall boy she recognized from the family photo on the stairs stood in the doorway. He studied her face and body appreciatively.

"James Nichol Cooper," he said, holding out his hand. "Nice to meet you."

"Grace Andrea Cooper," she responded, shaking his hand. "I'm...your half-sister." James pulled away in surprise. Grace braced herself for a barrage of questions, but all he did was roll his eyes.

"Please, please don't tell my girlfriend about this," he moaned. "She's on my case about girls enough as it is. 'God, Cooper, you're even hitting on girls you're related to!'" he screeched in falsetto. Grace smiled slightly and nodded. The door opened, and a short—well, in comparison to Grace's five feet, eight and a half inches—girl with long dark hair and a slender but curvy figure walked into the room.

"Jim!" she said in an annoyed voice, and Grace had to hold back a laugh, because Jim's impression of her moments ago had been spot-on. "When your girlfriend is parking her car after being kind enough to drive you home because you're still fifteen and don't have a license yet, it is considered good manners to wait in the car with her." She smacked him lightly on the back of his head.

"Yeah, it kind of is," agreed Grace with a slight smirk. The girl's dark eyes turned to her.

"Who are you?" she asked.

"I'm Jim's half-sister, Grace Cooper." The girl nodded, and stuck out her hand.

"Summer Roberts," she said, as she and Grace shook hands. "Jim's girlfriend. I didn't know he had a sister our age. You are our age, right? How old are you? What grade are you in?"

"I'm sixteen," replied Grace. "I'll be a junior as soon as school starts." Summer nodded.

"I'm a junior, too," she told her. "Wait...you're sixteen? Mr. and Mrs. Cooper have been married seventeen years—Mr. Cooper had an affair right after he married Mrs. Cooper? No way! How could people not know about it?—and, dude, how could he do it? Have you seen Mrs. Cooper?"

"Hey! That's my mom you're talking about," said Jim mildly, but the girls ignored him. Grace shrugged.

"I'll be seventeen in December," she said. "I think my mom and (she swallowed) dad had a really short affair before he and Kirsten got back together." Suddenly, Grace bit the bullet. "I've only ever lived with my mom and stepdad," she explained. "I hadn't met Kirsten until today. I still haven't met my father." Summer regarded her with what Grace could only assumed was a practiced gaze.

"Oh. So you're, like, almost a year older than Jim, then." She chose to ignore the rest of Grace's explanation, which Grace appreciated as she shrugged.

"I don't know anything about Jim. I met him today." The girls shared a smile.

"His birthday's October 29," Summer informed Grace. "He should be a sophomore; he missed the cut-off, but Mr. and Mrs. Cooper wanted him to start school before he turned five, and no one turns down Mr. and Mrs. Cooper around here. They're, like, the king and queen of Newport."

"Really?" asked Grace interestedly.

"Totally," Summer continued. "I mean, Mrs. Cooper's dad, Caleb Nichol, practically built this town, and Mr. Cooper's everybody's financial planner or whatever. Anyway, we all give him our money. They've been together forever," she enthused, and it was clear that she thought very highly of her boyfriend's family. "They even went to cotillion together. Mrs. Cooper was lead deb. So was I," she added, "at our cotillion this year." Grace had never heard of cotillion, but she imagined—correctly, as she would find out—that it was a fancy-dress debutante ball.

"That's...nice," said Grace, smiling. Her eyes caught Jim's—startlingly blue, just like his mother's.

"Anyway," Summer said, and Grace was beginning to realize that Summer didn't like to dwell on uncomfortable subjects. "I wanted going to do some back-to-school shopping, but my friend—Holly Fischer—bailed on me. I mean, I could bring Jim, but that wouldn't be any fun. Do you want to come?"

"Um..." said Grace helplessly. She liked Summer, and she liked shopping, but she had maybe forty dollars cash, total, in her wallet from her summer job, which it was clear she wasn't going to finish.

"You don't have to buy anything," assured Summer with a wave of her hands, which were decorated with hot pink and bright orange French-manicured nails. "Just, you know, keep me company and stuff. After all, I'm your brother's girlfriend, and I'll be one of your classmates soon, right? We should be friends." Grace smiled at how quickly Summer offered friendship. She was sure it was because she was a now a member of the Cooper family, and that the girl wouldn't have been half as kind if she had introduced herself as Grace Baldwin, from Riverside and, more recently, Chino, but it would be nice to have a friend.

"Sure. I mean...Jim...if that's okay with you?" He shrugged.

"Whatever. If you don't need me, I'll call up Luke and tell him I can make practice, after all." Summer snapped her fingers in annoyance.

"That's what Holly's dumping me for? Water polo practice? Bitch. She just said she was doing something with Luke. I'll see you later, then. Bye, Jim." She leaned over and kissed him. "Come on, Grace, let's go."

"Wait, let me leave a note first," said Grace.

"It's okay," Jim assured her. "I'll leave one for Mom and Dad when I go to practice; I'll say that you and Summer went shopping. It's cool."

"Thanks." She looked at the boy who was her younger brother with a thoughtful gaze. He seemed like a pretty nice guy. Did that mean that her dad was nice, too? Her stomach was churning. Summer had opened the door expectantly, and she followed. The other girl kept up steady chatter about the boys on the water polo team as they walked to her car, a silver BMW convertible.

"This is a really nice car," said Grace, raising her eyebrows. Summer nodded.

"Thanks. My dad bought it for me as a birthday gift."

"A birthday gift?" asked Grace, a hint of incredulity in her voice.

"Yeah, my sixteenth birthday was just two weeks ago," she said, missing the point. "You have a license, right?"

"Yeah," Grace confirmed, "but I don't have my own car."

"Well, if you're going to end up living with the Coopers, you will," said Summer casually. "They have more money than anyone in Newport, and they're not afraid of showing it. They have, like, four cars, and Jim doesn't even have his license yet. Four cars! We only have three," she explained. "My dad's Mercedes SUV, mine, and the stepmonster's—I mean, Melanie's—Audi TT." She sighed. "I liked them myself, but then Dad bought one for Melanie last year, and so of course I don't want one anymore. I mean, ew!" Summer looked at Grace with a sort of half-smile on her face. "You're lucky to have Mrs. Cooper for a stepmother. Mine's a real bitch."

"Where's your mother?" asked Grace curiously. Summer blinked and focused on the road, refusing to look at Grace even through her peripheral vision.

"She died seven years ago," she explained.

"I'm sorry..."

"It's not your fault," said Summer briskly as she pulled into the parking lot. She put the top up and they got out. But she smiled at Grace, a little bit bitter-sweetly.

Grace was a little bit overwhelmed by the mall. The clothes in the windows looked more or less the same as the ones she was used to, only they carried designer names and were much more expensive. Summer didn't seem to mind the prices at all, trying on outfit after outfit and encouraging Grace to do the same.

"Oh, my God, Grace, I am so jealous of your body," she gaped as Grace uncertainly stepped out of the dressing room in a tight pink sundress. The dress clung to her slender figure and set off her long, coltish legs to their best advantage.

"Why? You're the one with the boobs," teased Grace, to which Summer gave a small giggle and admitted, "True."

It was fun shopping with Summer, Grace realized, and if she just ignored the inflated prices, it was not really different from shopping at home with one of her other girlfriends. Grace had been fairly popular at her old school, and she worried about leaving Chino—which she was definitely doing, whether Mr. and Mrs. Cooper—Dad and Kirsten, she reminded herself—allowed her to stay in Newport Beach, or not. Summer was cool, and not only because she'd insisted on buying Grace the pink dress.

"It's my dad's money," she had shrugged. "Better spent on you than on Melanie."

On the drive back to the Cooper mansion, she had kept up the conversation to keep Grace's nerves from coming back, this time telling her all about her own girlfriends, especially Holly, with whom she was still angry.

"I mean, just because she's dating Luke and he's older," she explained as she turned onto the Coopers' street, "she thinks that she doesn't have to even, like, be polite to the rest of us. It's like, excuse me, he had to go to pre-first grade, so he's almost eighteen already, and this makes him ultra-special and ultra-worth ditching her friends. She's a whore, really, Grace, only she's worse, because whores at least get paid." Grace laughed.

"It's funny, isn't it, how whore is a worse insult than slut," she mused.

"Totally!" agreed Summer in a very Valley-girl sort of way, but Grace had already figured out that Summer's seeming empty-headedness covered a very shrewd intelligence. "All right, here we are. Mrs. Cooper's back," she noticed, gesturing to the blue car Grace had seen Kirsten driving.

"Thanks, Summer," said Grace with a smile. "That was fun."

"Yeah...call me sometime, okay? It was nice to meet you."

"Definitely." Grace got out of the car, and Summer drove off. As soon as she reached the porch, someone opened the door.

"Hi, Grace," he said, a bit uncertainly. Her eyes widened.

"Hi...Dad."

"Come in, come in," he urged, running his fingers through his brownish-blondish hair. "Dinner's almost ready."

"Oh," said Grace guiltily. "I'm sorry I wasn't around to help Kirsten." But Jimmy waved her off.

"Kirsten's a terrible cook. Nobody in this family really cooks, you know; that's Cara's job. Maid-slash-cook. Don't worry, we pay her well." He smiled. "We have to. We're very messy, and we're very hungry."

"Kirsten's messy?" Somehow, Grace didn't believe it.

"Well...no...she's not...but I am, and the kids are."

"You have three kids?"

"Four, counting you," said Jimmy carefully. "You really are Julie's daughter?" She nodded.

"If you want...I mean, you know, to be sure—a paternity test?" Jimmy shook his head vehemently.

"No, no," he said. "Julie's baby was my baby. No, I'm not naïve," he assured her. "If there's anything I knew about our relationship, it's that we were head-over-heels in love, or at least obsession, and there's nobody else's baby you could have been." He frowned. "Head-over-heels, that's pretty much normal. Wouldn't heels-over-head be weirder?" Grace smiled.

"But, yeah, I mean—Kirsten told me about your situation, and you can definitely stay with us. That is, if you want to..." Jimmy hesitated slightly.

"I do," said Grace with a smile. "At least, for now, as long as...you know...nothing..."

"Yeah, I know." He leaned over and gave her a quick hug.

"You're beautiful. You look a lot like your mother," he told her.

"Mr. Cooper, dinner is ready," said Cara politely, coming to the door.

"Right. Thanks, Cara. Grace?" She smiled and came in.

The two other children from the family portrait were already seated at the table and were quickly introduced as Caleb ("Cal") and Victoria ("Vicky"). Somehow, Grace managed to get through the meal, which was delicious. Cara was a good cook.

While the other kids—her brothers and sister, she reminded herself—wanted to stay up, Grace decided to go back up to her room. Her dad had been very friendly, just as nice as Lance, and...he was her real father. It was a little bit overwhelming to realize that she could just as easily have been brought up in this castle in Dreamland as in her two different homes in the real world.

Jimmy was lying on the bed, flipping through his newspaper, when Kirsten walked into the room. He smiled lovingly at her.

"Did I forget to tell you that you looked gorgeous today?" he complimented her lazily. She smiled.

"Thanks...Jimmy, we're going to need to do some things about Grace," she told him.

"What's that? She's pretty; she seems nice..." Kirsten nodded.

"I know that, but we don't know her very well yet. Yes, she's your daughter, but she's been raised by Julie. How well did you know Julie, really?" Jimmy frowned.

"Well...I slept with her a lot," he mused. "But, you mean, her personality, child-rearing ideas?"

"Yes," said Kirsten, sitting on the bed next to him.

"Not much, really," he confessed. "She was a lot younger than I was, like eighteen. And...God, Kirsten, no, I don't really know all that much about Grace. But...she's my daughter."

"I know," Kirsten agreed, laying her head on Jimmy's lap. He began to stroke her hair. "And I'm not saying I don't want her in the house. She seems like a nice enough kid—I mean, I don't know her very well yet, but she seems like a nice enough kid. But we should really get to know her, that's what I meant...and, you know, find out how she wants to do her room, enroll her in Harbor with Jim...all that stuff."

"Mmm...Kirsten? You're okay with the whole I-have-another-child thing, right? Because I could understand your not being okay with it." She sat up.

"Of course I am. I knew you had another child when I married you...or that you might have ended up with another child. I'm not upset at all. I got over Julie a long time ago, Jimmy."

"I have the greatest wife in the world," he told her lovingly, leaning over to kiss her. She pulled away.

"Jimmy, Grace is in the room next door. We should wait...you know, until she's definitely asleep..." Jimmy smiled and stroked Kirsten's cheek.

"Kiks, she's not going to mind it the way the other kids do," he told her, his hand slipping down her neck. "To her, we're just another couple, not really her parents yet, you know? And she'll be seventeen in a couple of months; it's not like we're going to have to administer any awkward conversations, and you...look really hot." She chuckled and kissed him softly.

"I'm not sure if I agree with you…but you make a good argument," she whispered, following with another, more passionate kiss.

"Is that a yes?" he asked when their lips broke apart. Kirsten kissed him again.

"I think so," she declared, and suddenly Jimmy's arms were around her, and he pulled her on top of him. She giggled.

"Come on, I want a definite answer," he teased, as his hands slid down to her ass. "Yes or no?" She bent and kissed him.

"Yes."

In the next room, Grace was trying to ignore the unmistakable sounds of sex, but it was getting harder as Kirsten's light giggles were juxtaposed against Jimmy's—Dad's—lower-pitched voice. And they were getting louder, too, as she realized, embarrassed, that the foreplay was becoming a bit more heated; they had definitely gotten past kissing. The sounds didn't disgust her the way Mom and Lance had, but after some of the things she heard, she was afraid she wouldn't be able to properly look Kirsten in the eye the next morning.

Suddenly, she was angry. He was her dad, and instead of marrying her mom and taking care of their family, a family of which she would be a part, he had married the "Queen of Newport" and started a family with her, and she, Grace, his first-born child, just as much his child as the blonds, was the outsider. It wasn't fair. After all, Kirsten Cooper was good-looking, but Mom was just as pretty. Prettier, thought Grace loyally; Mom really was beautiful, and Kirsten just looked—washed out, with her fair hair and fair skin and blue eyes and tiny body. There was no color to her, no fire; she looked just like a Scandinavian—

Goddess, she had to admit. Kirsten was gorgeous and kind, and she seemed smart and successful, and she had the effortless elegance that could only be achieved by coming from money. Grace knew that it wasn't fair to hold the fact that Mom had left her against Jimmy—Dad—and Kirsten, but she couldn't help it. It wasn't fair that Jim and Cal and Vicky Cooper got a perfect, white-bread family—it wasn't fair that Helen, Jerry, and new-baby Baldwin got a perfect, perhaps "brown-bread" family—and Grace was awkwardly suspended between them. It would have been easier, she realized, if Mom had raised her as Grace Baldwin, Lance's daughter, instead of clinging to the memory of James Cooper. Maybe then she really would have belonged.

Oh God. They were coming. Grace turned crimson as they got louder and louder, covering her head with her pillow, willing it to be over and—yes. Good. Time to go to sleep.