Owen sat forward. “Holy shit.” He looked at Zander. “We’re clearly paying you too much to be our cop.”
“Again, does Caroline strike you as the crawfish boil type?”
He staunchly refused to look at Caroline until Owen did.
Owen slid Caroline a look. She lifted a brow, doing a very good impression of a haughty heiress completely insulted by the idea of being fed crawfish and corn on the cob on a paper tablecloth.
Zander wanted to kiss her. More than usual. Which was saying something.
“Not in the least,” Owen agreed.
She really did play these roles well.
“Of course, she also doesn’t seem like your type,” Fletcher said. “You’re more the crawfish boil type than the Octavia’s type.”
What he really meant was that Zander was more the one-night type than the date type.
And he was right.
Zander shrugged. “You all know exactly how this works. The right girl walks in and nothing else matters.”
The other men at the table looked at one another and nodded.
“Well, damn, it’s about time,” Zeke said.
“Welcome to the club,” Josh said.
“Wait a second.” Max sat forward, looking entertained and curious. “You’re all just accepting the fact that Caroline walked in here, in a wedding dress, told Zander she was over her fiancé, and now he’s madly in love with her and it’s fine? He’s doing things totally out of character and you all just believe that it’s true love?”
The guys all looked at each other again. And nodded.
“Happens all the time around here,” Owen said.
“Doesn’t that sound a little crazy?” Max asked.
“We specialize in crazy,” Mitch told her with a grin. “Especially when it comes to love.”
“Seriously?” Max looked at each of them. “You’re all just big hopeless romantics?” She looked at Spencer last.
He held up both hands. “Not me. But yeah, the Autre Landrys are the stuff of legends.”
Max looked at Caroline. Zander stubbornly did not.
“Prove it,” Max said. “Tell me some of these legends.”
“Well, there’s Josh and Tori,” Owen said. “He met her one night in a bar at Mardi Gras, served her a couple drinks, then sent her back to Iowa with only a kiss. They agreed to meet up the next year if they were both still single and interested.”
Max grinned. “An Affair To Remember. Love that movie.”
Owen nodded. “He waited a year for her. Not a single other girl in the meantime. Now they’re married and have little Ella.”
“Wow.” Max nodded. “Okay, that’s pretty good.”
“Then there’s me and Maddie,” Owen said. “Our love story includes burning down a building and me in the hospital after her brother threw me through a window.”
“I thought you threw him through the window,” Mitch said.
“We kind of threw each other through it,” Owen admitted.
“And don’t forget how she almost shot you,” Zeke added.
“Right,” Owen said with a nod. “We’re very dramatic.”
Max’s eyes were wide. “I guess so.”
“But you took like twelve years to figure your shit out,” Mitch said. “Me and Paige fell in love in a weekend.”
“Maybe you fell in love in a weekend but you had to haul your ass back up to Iowa in January to convince her,” Owen said, shaking his head.
“Saving her entire town’s winter festival definitely helped.” Mitch nodded. “But it all started when our eyes met over the back end of an alpaca.”
Max laughed. “Love at first sight?”
“Pretty much.”
“That was me and Jill too,” Zeke said. “It only took me one night to sweep her off her feet.”
“And a bunch of goats,” Mitch said. “And I think it was you who were off your feet. Weren’t you on your ass in the ditch under your motorcycle?”
“Details,” Zeke said with a grin.
“Yeah, well, none of you grabbed an overnight flight to Vegas to go after your girl and then detoured through a wedding chapel so you could bring her home to Autre as your wife.” Fletcher sat back, looking very smug.
“You?” Max asked. “Really?”
“Yep. My best friend got dumped by her boyfriend, on stage, during his big concert—”
“On TV,” Zeke added. “I gotta admit, that was pretty fucking cool of you.”
“Wait, on stage on TV?” Max asked.
“You know who Jason Young is?” Zeke asked.
Max nodded. “Sure.”
“He was Jordan’s boyfriend.”
“What?” Max looked at Fletcher. “Wow, you stole a rockstar’s girlfriend?”
Fletcher rolled his eyes. “It’s country music, not rock. And he proposed to the wrong girl. On stage. I didn’t need to steal her. She was done.”
“Still…” Max grinned. “You flew out there and just married her right then?”
Fletcher nodded. “I flew out to be with her, but realized I had to tell her how I really felt about her and…that was it.”
It hadn’t been quite that simple for Fletcher and Jordan to just fall into wedded bliss, even as best friends since childhood, but they were definitely there now.
Fletcher marrying his best friend, Owen finally marrying the girl who got away, Zeke marrying the girl he—thankfully—knocked up with twins, Mitch convincing his beautiful commitment-phobe to take a chance on him and his whole crazy family, Josh building a family with the girl who’d stolen his heart just by walking into a New Orleans bar, and all of the other love stories—and there were many—that Zander lived amongst every day was why he did what he did.
“Well, dang, I thought a runaway bride with a lion cub might be a little crazy, but sounds like that all fits right in,” Max said.
“It’s only fair Zander has a good story,” Owen said. “He puts up with lots of crazy shit from all of us.”
Well, that was true.
Max shook her head. “You all are really something.” She looked at Spencer. “Except you. You seem boring.”
He nodded. “I’m very boring. Don’t be interested in me at all.”
“No problem.”
Zander watched Owen, Mitch, and Josh exchange knowing grins.
Yeah, Spencer had probably just sealed his fate.
He really should know better than to say stuff like that in Autre.
Zander looked at Caroline. She was watching him.
Speaking of sealed fates…he had a date. Actually two. They were going to New Orleans tomorrow night, but he had tonight with her. And he was going to take advantage.
14
“Hey, you hungry?”
Caroline was already smiling when she looked from the alpaca she was brushing to the hot cop in the truck idling along the road.
He’d pulled over to the shoulder by the alpaca pen and was leaning out the driver’s side window. This was his personal truck, not his official truck. That meant he was off the clock.