“Apple, chocolate icebox, and Judd here got the last coconut cream.”
“Apple is a classic for a reason.”
“Warm and a la mode?”
“Is there any other way to eat apple pie?” Dimly, Mitch was aware of the flirtatious grin Hannah shot his way, but he couldn’t summon the energy to reply in kind.
“You got it.”
As she walked toward the counter, he realized Judd was staring at him. “What?”
“You didn’t flirt with her.”
“So?” He didn’t feel like flirting. That wasn’t a crime.
Frowning, Judd shook his head.
“What are we really meeting about? Is this about the design for the nursery? Because I think Liam will kill you if you change it again. You, not Autumn, because we all like your wife.”
“He’s right,” Liam announced, squeezing into the booth beside Mitch. “Your ass I have no problem beating.”
“Not the nursery either,” Judd said. “It’s nearly finished, and she cried buckets over it.”
Mitch braced himself. “Good cry or bad cry?”
“Good cry. I think. The preggo hormones make it hard to tell sometimes. Right now, she and Mom are putting their heads together on how to create a girly Star Wars-themed room.”
“Now I might cry. That’s beautiful, man.” Liam mimed wiping a tear. “You married a helluva woman.”
“Yes, yes, I did.”
“Looking forward to joining your ranks.” Liam relaxed back against the booth, the picture of contentment. “Though I’m starting to think you had the right idea proposing and marrying the girl on the same day. It seems a helluva lot less complicated than planning a wedding.”
“I thought your mom and Riley were taking care of all of that,” Judd said.
“They are. But I’m expected to have opinions on shit.”
Hannah came back with Mitch’s pie and coffee and took Liam’s order, interrupting the wedding discussion and distracting them from the fact that Mitch had stopped contributing to the conversation.
What could he say? I wish I could follow you both over that cliff? I want what you have? I thought I had it, but it slipped through my fingers? None of that was what they expected of him. He was the flirt. The unrepentant lover of women. As all of his friends and cousins had fallen into their forevers, he’d looked on with an increasing sense of bemusement. He’d never be felled so easily.
And yet he had. Hard and fast and irrevocably.
“Afternoon gentlemen.” Mama Pearl Buckley, the much-beloved, opinionated heart of Dinner Belles, slid Liam’s milkshake onto the table. Her gaze skated over to Mitch’s, those dark eyes assessing. After a moment, she nodded to herself, as if confirming something, and Mitch realized she knew. Not the who or the how, but she knew at long last he’d toppled. She’d predicted it right here two years ago, hadn’t she?
One of these days, Mitch Campbell, you gonna find yourself one that ruins you for all others, and we all gonna enjoy the show.
Except they didn’t get the show because the curtain had already fallen. A week’s performance. No reprisals.
Because he’d been the dumbass who’d taken one look at Anna on that tiny pub stage in Edinburgh, singing “Dancing Queen” for all she was worth, and slid right over the edge. When she’d proposed a no strings, no last names affair, he’d agreed without question. She’d dazzled him, plain and simple. Neither of them had planned on more than one night. Neither of them had planned anything. And it had been the freest, most unapologetically himself he’d ever been. By the end of a week, he’d known to the marrow of his bones that he wanted more than just her last name. He wanted everything. But when he woke, intent on convincing her that they were so much more than a simple vacation fling, she’d been gone. His anonymous Anna had disappeared into the ether, as if she’d never been. Except for the indelible mark on his fractured heart.
Judd narrowed his eyes. “Dude, are you humming…ABBA?”
Aw hell, he’d been humming “Dancing Queen” under his breath.
“Is that what that is? I’ve had an ear worm for days.” It was the only lie that might allow him to save face.
Liam angled toward him. “Okay, let’s get down to it.”
“Yeah, let’s.” The sooner they finished with whatever this was, the sooner Mitch could get the hell out of here and go…try to find something that would distract him from his misery. Which was becoming increasingly hard to do given he was surrounded by enough new couples to people Noah’s freaking ark. Maybe he should think about getting a dog.
“This is an intervention,” Judd announced.
“You have not been yourself since you got back from that conference in Paris,” Liam added.
Mitch stared at them. “Seriously? This is about me?”
“We’re worried about you, man. You’re not flirting, not dating, and you skipped poker night.” Judd pronounced it like an indictment.
“I had work.” They didn’t need to know that the plans he was working up were for him and not a client.
“What’s going on with you?” Liam asked.
He wasn’t telling them about Anna. If he did, it would get back to his large and very nosy family, and there’d be no end to the questions. Not to mention he had no intention of explaining why he’d thought a no strings, no last names affair was a good idea. He could just see his mama shaking her head and tsking, “I raised you better.” Yeah, that was not a conversation he wanted to be having. Especially not as gossip moved faster than the speed of light in Wishful, and he was expected at a family dinner in a couple of hours.
But Anna was only part of his funk.
“Excuse me for being less than my usual charming self when I get home from a trip to find out my sister was kidnapped. And that everyone—everyone—kept it from me.” He still hadn’t gotten past that. He’d known somebody was harassing Miranda before he’d left. But she’d insisted it wasn’t a big deal, and she was romantically involved with the chief of police. Ethan had given his word nothing would happen to her. So he’d taken the trip. And while Mitch had been abroad, having that life-changing affair, his baby sister had been kidnapped and beaten. Finding out that happened, that he hadn’t been home to protect her…it messed with his head.
“The whole thing was over in four hours. There was nothing you could’ve done,” Judd assured him. Not for the first time. As he’d been in on the takedown, he was in a position to know. Not that it made a whit of difference to Mitch.
“And when I called home to say I was extending my trip? Nobody thought I should be read in about the fact that Miranda was in the hospital.” He didn’t have to manufacture the bitterness in his voice.
“Because the guy who put her there was already dead, and she wanted the chance to heal a bit,” Judd continued, as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world. “You know she hates it when you hover. The rest of your family was doing enough of that.”
Mitch stabbed up a bite of pie hard enough to send the slice halfway off its plate. “I should have been here.”
“What is it you think you could’ve done that Ethan didn’t already do?” Liam asked. “Do you blame him for what happened to her?”