“It doesn’t matter now,” Nash said. “Mom says the cards are in his favor. It’s his time.”
Next to Nash, his brother, Macon, let out a tortured groan. “You can’t believe Mom about that stuff. She doesn’t even know how to read tarot right.”
“I offered to sign her up for a class,” Bristol added. “She rolled her eyes and said the cards speak to her in a way that can’t be taught.”
“I believe her,” Nash said in one of the most succinct sentences he’d ever uttered.
“Nash, you’ve lost it,” Bristol said, shaking her head. “Do you remember the time she told me a yellow dog was carrying an important message for me and to be on the lookout for malevolent bluebirds?”
After that, everyone at the table shared their Aunt Celeste stories because before tarot, it had been crystals, and before that, it had been astrology, and the time before that, it had been a year of silent meditation that had lasted about two hours. Everyone was talking over one another, laughing and correcting each other’s versions of one of Aunt Celeste’s predictions. The din quieted, though, the second he locked eyes with Kinsey. Her full pink lips were curled into a small smile that he returned without even thinking about it. The fact that none of the muscles in his face cracked at the unusual arrangement should have shocked him, but he was too fascinated with the wow-they-are-a-lot-huh look on her face to have any reaction at all.
“Oh my God, we’re being such assholes. Kinsey doesn’t even know what’s going on.” Morgan turned to her. “Sorry. This is all about a bet our idiot brothers—and Dixon—made.”
“We’re not idiots,” Dixon and Nash said at the same time.
Griff kept his mouth shut—one, because it’s what he did, and two, because they were idiots.
“You are,” all the younger siblings said at the same time.
As she refilled Kinsey’s wineglass and her own, Morgan launched into an explanation. “When Grandma Betty passed away, she left one last present. All we know is that it is for one of the older cousins, but she didn’t say which one.”
“Of course, these three saw that as an invitation to make a bet about who would be the last man standing,” Bristol said, continuing the story as she held up her glass to Morgan for a refill. “Hello, toxic masculinity and immaturity.”
The women at the table ignored the guys’ protests.
“The last man standing?” Kinsey asked. “Do I want to know?”
“No, but I’ll tell you anyway,” Morgan said. “These three decided that the last one of them who isn’t in love by this Christmas gets the present.”
“What is it?” Kinsey asked.
“That’s the thing,” Fiona chimed in with a disbelieving shake of her head. “They don’t even know.”
“But here they are, filling out Bramble dating app bios and going on six dates with the first woman to answer their ads to prove to one another that they can’t fall in love,” Bristol said, tilting her wineglass in Dixon’s direction. “He went first.”
Fiona snuggled in closer to Dixon. “And was the first to lose, because he couldn’t resist the Hartigan family charm.”
“No, your family I could resist,” Dixon said with a grin. “You, however, were undeniable.”
Kinsey turned to Griff, her eyes wide with shock and the corners of her mouth turned up in a teasing smile. “And you agreed to do this?”
He shrugged and swirled his fork in the pasta until he had a bite-size portion wound around the tines and took a bite.
“Six dates with the first woman to respond. And you can’t scare her off by showing her your Legos,” Nash said.
Griff pointed his fork at his cousin. “They are collectibles.” And he had an entire room devoted to them with a special building table crafted just for him by a furniture builder in Vermont. The display shelves he’d put up himself, customizing them for the proper depth some of the bigger pieces needed. “Anyway, they relax me.”
Dixon leaned forward on the table, his forearms going on either side of the pasta bowl he’d practically inhaled. “Well, they’ll scare off any woman you show them to.”
“Only the ones who aren’t worth having,” Kinsey said, drawing the attention of everyone at the table. Her cheeks turned a soft pink, but she maintained a steady gaze as she addressed his family. “Hobbies are important and have been shown to benefit people’s stress levels and moods. If someone doesn’t get that, then you don’t want them, because mental health and being accepted for who you are is important.”
For once, his entire family was silent—even Nash.
For her part, Kinsey gave him a wink and then went back to eating her pasta.
Unable to keep his lips in their usual flat line, he sat back in his chair and grinned at the shocked faces of his family. They gave one another shit pretty much all the time—it was just what they did, and they didn’t mean anything by it. Hell, he gave his cousins just as much shit as they gave him. Becketts were competitive, stubborn, and never gave anyone else the last word in an argument—but Kinsey had shut them all up without even raising her voice.
What a woman.
Nash was the first to recover. “Excellent point,” he said. “I’ll keep that in mind when I’m planning his first date.”
“He’s planning your dates?” Kinsey asked, making it sound like as much of a monumental nightmare as it was.
“It’s more of a group effort,” Dixon said. “We each get to plan three dates, and he can’t wimp out or submarine any of them.”
Nash lifted his glass. “To the end of Griff Beckett’s life as a single man.”
Every one of the people sitting around the table—including Kinsey—lifted their wineglass. He picked up his beer bottle, not willing to ruin the toast just because Nash was wrong. There was no way he’d fall for whoever responded to his Bramble profile, because that woman was never going to be Kinsey.
Chapter Twelve
Kinsey
The Becketts were awesome. Meemaw would love them. Kinsey’s sisters would be all over Nash like he were chocolate and they were full-on PMSing. And Griff? Good Lord. That man was completely wrong for thinking she was a disaster, but that didn’t mean her pheromones weren’t reacting to him as if he was 100 percent right.
He’d caught her staring at him about a million times during dinner. One time, he’d even winked at her, one side of his full mouth going up in a completely unexpected teasing grin. Her totally-not-a-disaster response? A whole mouthful of water that went down the wrong pipe. Her gasping coughs had everyone at the table staring at her as Morgan whacked her on the back and told her to put her arms in the air. It had not been Kinsey’s most shining moment.