Charles tried to drown his bitterness in his cocoa. It didn't work. Cocoa just couldn't beat whiskey for that. He had to give an unpleasant little chuckle. "You know what my sister would say to that? She'd say, if we have it all figured out, why are we the ones sitting in a dreary dive on our own, and they're the ones having the time of their lives on a Mediterranean holiday?"

Somehow the bitterness only hardened his face in a way that made it not at all ugly, only more solid, an appealing hardness that firmed his boyish good looks into something stronger.