“Okay.” Eva sounded put-upon, but the last thing Serena saw before she turned off the light was her daughter smiling.
In the hallway, after he closed the bedroom door, Keith pulled Serena into a hug.
It was a long one, and Serena melted into it.
“Thank you,” he murmured at last, his mouth right at her ear.
“For what?”
“For giving me a family. A real one. I’ve spent my whole life wanting one.”
Serena’s eyes burned as she pulled him down into a kiss. “Well, you have one now. And it’s yours forever.” She paused and then decided to say one more thing. “And maybe pretty soon we can make our family bigger.”
Keith blinked. Went very still.
“If you want,” Serena added.
“Really?” he rasped.
She saw then that his response was one of unspeakable joy rather than fear or reluctance. “Yes,” she told him, stroking his cheek. “I’d love to have a baby with you.”
He made a rough groan and pulled her into another long hug.
They were both shaking for a minute, but when she’d recovered, Serena said, “It can be our new mission since my old mission was a total bust.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
“Yes, it was. I was supposed to find you the perfect girl by the end of the summer, and I gave up after just a few weeks because I couldn’t stand for any other girl to get you.”
“Your mission was to find me the love of my life, and you did that. And my mission was to convince you that the perfect girl for me was you.”
Serena took his hand and started back toward their guests. After all, the hosts couldn’t hide from their party forever. “Then I guess we both succeeded at our missions.”
“Exactly. So there’s no reason we shouldn’t try to succeed at the baby mission too.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I hope you enjoyed The Mission! The next book in the Bad Bridesmaids series is The Mismatch (about Taylor and Charles). You can find an excerpt from that book on the following pages. And in case you missed it, the first book in the series is The Mistake (about Amanda and Robert).
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Excerpt from The Mismatch
TAYLOR WASN’T A FAN of weddings, and she was the world’s worst bridesmaid. So she had no idea why her friends kept getting married and asking her to be one of their attendants.
Evidently all her school friends had decided their late twenties was the right time to get married. For the past year, she’d been stuck going to at least one wedding a month, and she’d been a bridesmaid far too many times.
And here she was again. Another Saturday evening. Another bridesmaid dress she’d never wear again. Another reception where she’d be expected to smile and have fun.
She wasn’t a good smiler. Everyone knew that. She hated being forced to act happy or social or silly. She loved Serena and had been friends with her since eighth grade, and she thought Keith was great and wished them both a lifetime of happiness.
But that didn’t mean she had to laugh or dance or act like someone other than her antisocial self.
At the moment, she’d accomplished all her necessary bridesmaid duties, so she was having a reprieve in the corner of the reception room, sipping champagne and grumbling over annoying social media posts on her phone. She was enjoying herself as much as was possible in this dress and these shoes when her friend Ariana Kensington came over and flounced down into the chair next to her.
Taylor gave her the side eye. “What?”
“Why are you over here by yourself?”
“I needed a break. Too much levity for my emotional wellbeing.”
Ariana giggled. She was pretty and bubbly and loved by everyone—pretty much the polar opposite of Taylor. It was a miracle the two were friends, but they were. “Serena is going to think you’re not having fun.”
“Serena knows perfectly well that this is me having fun. I’ve done my best pretending to be friendly. Now I get to be my real, hermit self for a little while.”
“You’re not a hermit. You like people a lot more than your pretend.”
“We’ll have to disagree on that assessment.”
“Someone who really disliked people as you say you do wouldn’t have as many friends as you do.”
“I don’t have that many friends. Just you and Serena and Amanda. Three isn’t a lot.”
“You have more friends than that, and you know it.”
Taylor made a grumbling noise and didn’t respond.
“Anyway,” Ariana continued, “You’ve had your break, so now it’s time to join the party again. Come and sit with me and Amanda and Robert. We’re not dancing or anything.”
“Maybe not, but you’re in the middle of the room. If I go sit there, people will be tempted to talk to me, and that’s what I’m trying to avoid.”
Ariana laughed again. “Okay then. Maybe you could help with Charles.”
Taylor glanced over to the far side of the room where she knew Charles was sitting. He was the only person—other than her—who was sitting by himself. He was a couple of years older than them—he’d recently turned thirty—and he was polite and serious and well-behaved and basically boring. “Why does Charles need help?”
“He’s being antisocial too. He needs someone to talk to.”
“Why don’t you go talk to him?”
“I did. He told me he was perfectly happy and didn’t need a pity companion.”
Taylor snorted in amusement. “See? He knows what he’s talking about, and he’s content as he is. He doesn’t need me to go over and babysit him.”
“But if you go over there, everyone will think you’re suitably occupied, and no one else will come over here and bug you.”
Taylor’s eyebrows lifted. That was a tantalizing offer. She didn’t mind Charles, as boring as he was. He never talked unless he had something to say, and so they could probably sit at the table together and do what they wanted on their own.
“See? It’s a good idea, isn’t it?”
“What’s gotten into you? Why this desire to pair me off with Charles?”
“I’m not trying to pair you off. I just want you to go talk to him.”
Taylor’s eyes narrowed suspiciously.
After a minute, Ariana relented. “Okay. Fine. Amanda dared me that I couldn’t get you two to talk to each other.”
“What? Why does she even care?”
“She just thought it was funny. That you both were on your own. So she said we should try to fix you two up, but she was really just joking. So then she dared me that I couldn’t convince you to go talk to him, and I’m not one to let a challenge drop. So here I am. Don’t let her win the bet. Please?”
Taylor rolled her eyes. She didn’t appreciate being the subject of conversation, much less a silly bet like that. But Ariana had been honest with her, and Amanda was far too sure of her own cleverness sometimes. No reason to indulge that sort of attitude.