Page 23

A month passed by in the blink of an eye.

Thirty days, give or take, of waking up to the scent of her shampoo on my pillow, her sleepy groans when the sun hit her face through the windows she still hadn’t let me cover, and the steady, surreal reality that the woman I’d been aching for all these years was now brushing her teeth in my bathroom and stealing my hoodies like it was her constitutional right.

We hadn’t even been trying to rush it. It just…

happened. Her lease ended. The new restaurant build got delayed.

She brought over a few things for a few nights .

Then more things. Then a stand mixer. Then she rearranged the spice rack.

And somehow, in that slow, steady accumulation of Ella-sized chaos, my house became our home.

It was different now. Fuller. Louder. Way more flour in the air than any architect’s kitchen should legally allow.

I found cinnamon sugar on blueprints, kitchen towels in the laundry room that weren’t mine, and Thorne had officially stopped pretending to be annoyed by her classical music while she cooked.

There were still growing pains. I learned not to mention her time management quirks unless I wanted a twenty-minute dissertation on punctuality. She learned not to touch my truck keys unless she wanted to hear the tragic saga of the first dent I ever got at sixteen.

But the rest?

The rest was easy.

She fit here. With me. Like she always had.

And now she was curled up on the couch, wearing my old university hoodie and nothing else, flipping through my updated house plans with a look I recognized all too well: mischievous architectural sabotage.

“No,” I said, walking in with a fresh mug of coffee.

She looked up, trying way too hard to look innocent. “No what? I didn’t say anything.”

“You didn’t have to. You’ve got that scheming architect destroyer look on your face again.”

“It’s a mudroom-slash-massage room, Patrick,” she said, like I was the unreasonable one. “You can’t tell me a foot rub station after a muddy hike isn’t a good investment.”

I stared. “You want me to design a spa corridor attached to the laundry room.”

“Exactly! For wellness. And feet.”

Thorne grunted in the back of my head, amused. She wants a foot room. Give her the whole damn spa.

“Fine,” I said, sighing dramatically. “But I’m naming it the Toes it wasn’t locked,” Carol called as she breezed in, wearing oversized sunglasses and yoga pants, with an energy that screamed I brought drama and sugar.

“Carol?” Ella peeked around the corner. “What are you?—”

“Donuts,” she announced, holding up a pink bakery box like a trophy. “Also, congratulations on being book-confirmed and engaged. I brought maple bacon and emotional damage.”

She breezed past my father, kissed him on the offered cheek, and dropped the donuts next to his already opened box. Ella froze.

“Seriously?” she said, glaring between the two boxes. “You guys realize I’m a chef, right? I can make donuts.”

Dad grinned. “Yeah, but yours have weird stuff like cardamom and sea salt. We wanted the trashy kind.”

Ella laughed and slapped him on the shoulder, "Alright, next time I'll make a batch of trashy donuts, deal?"

"Uh, can you make the ones with that almond paste filling?" Carol asked around a large mouthful of raspberry donut.

"You mean bear claws ?" Ella checked.

"Yeah, but the way you make them, big, huge," she stretched her hands out, reminding me of an angler fibbing about a caught fish, "with lots and lots of that almond filling! And lots and lots of icing."

Ella shook her head in mock disgust. "I have no idea where you put all those calories."

Carol grinned, "The only good perk about being a giant! You can eat to your heart's delight." She looked at dad, who had developed a small pouch after the chemo treatments that had saved his life. "Well, some of us can."

"Hey, don't mock the old man," Dad said, rubbing his slightly protruding stomach. "A near-death experience is a real appetite stimulator."

"I heard your appetite isn't the only thing that's been stimulated lately," Carol winked at him.

I was all ears. If Dad was looking for a new wife, it was news to me, but I couldn't fault him; it had been a decade since… Mom died.

"Why, what did you hear?" he narrowed his eyes at Carol.

"Hmm, me?" Carol dug out another donut and bit in, looking innocently at my father and grinning from ear to ear.

"Carol," Ella warned.

"What, you know too?" I asked, a little hurt. "And you didn't tell me?"

"It's nothing but rumors," he shook his head.

"I don't think it's a rumor that widow Dowell had to go get her hair cut after Minnie Lester pulled out enough strands to make a wig from," Carol grinned.

"What are you talking about?" I had an idea, but the notion of two older women getting into a catfight over my father was… a bit distressing.

"I heard Minnie had to get two stitches from a scratch on her face," Ella added.

"What did you do?" I turned to my dad.

"Oh, look, a squirrel." He pointed out the window.

"He's playing the field, is what he is," Carol snickered.

"If that's anybody's fault, it's yours for supplying an old man with your books." He pouted.

"You're reading her books?" I asked flabbergasted. "I don't even read her books."

"That's because you're a prude," Ella boxed me good-naturedly. Then she looked sternly at Dad. "No nonsense like that at our wedding, though, okay?"

He pretended to look insulted, and Carol sat down on the recliner's armrest and put her arm around him. "No worries, I'll keep an eye on the old lecher."

My father cleared his throat and leaned back in the recliner like he hadn’t just set off a small nuclear flirt-bomb. “Anyway. Ella’s locked down this idiot, which means I can stop pretending I wasn’t hoping you’d be the next daughter-in-law.”

Carol’s eyes widened. “What?”

“I mean, just imagine it,” dad doubled down, a bit too casual. “Two amazing women, both smarter than the boys they picked, running this family. Holidays would be great. And the grandkids would have excellent genes.”

"And who would I be getting knocked up by, you?" Carol's eyelashes fluttered at him.

My ears were ringing. "I'm not listening to this, I'm?—"

"As much as I'm flattered, Carol, I was thinking about Gabe."

For some reason, the way he dropped my brother's name detonated like a bomb between the women, who stared at him like he had said something more outrageous than Carol suggesting… nope, I still wasn't thinking about that.

“You’ll have to take that up with Gabe,” Carol said icily. “That man hates me.”

"Hate's a bit strong, don't you think?" I asserted, now that we were back on safer ground.

“I’m sure you could win him over,” Dad suggested.

Carol’s mouth pressed into a tight smile, but her eyes… they flickered, just briefly, making me wonder if maybe she wasn’t as unaffected as she pretended.

“You think so?” she asked, folding her arms.

“I’ve seen how he looks at you,” he said, biting into another donut. “It’s not hate. It’s fear. That’s different.”

“Your son once called me an Encyclopain, ” Carol snapped. “And said my voice makes his ears bleed.” She held up two fingers, adding more as she kept ranting. "He calls me marshmallow and Tinker Bell. He says I'm a giant pain in the ass."

Well, since she put it that way, maybe she was right. I had never given her and Gabe's relationship much thought. They were like cats and dogs, like fire and ice. Before I could say anything, Henry said, “That’s because you were right, and he hated it.”

I coughed loudly. “Dad, maybe we don’t?—”

Carol cut in. “You think setting me up with Gabe is a good idea?”

“I think,” my father said, licking powdered sugar off his thumb, “that it would be the greatest decision either of you ever made. You just would have to survive each other long enough to realize it.”

Ella, who had left to make more coffee, returned. Sensing the tension, she asked carefully. “What’s happening?”

“Your future father-in-law is matchmaking again,” I muttered.

“With your future brother-in-law,” Carol added flatly.

Ella blinked. “Oh my God. No one let Henry or Gabe talk to Carol after the cake tastings. Or near knives.”

Dad grinned and raised his donut. “To family.”