Page 6 of Now That It’s You (The Can’t Have Hearts Club #5)

M eg twisted a damp tissue in her hands and thought about prison interrogation and Chinese water torture. Anything, really, would be more pleasurable than this conversation with Matt and Kyle’s mother.

“So what do you have to say for yourself, young lady?”

Sylvia peered at her over the top of her glasses, a look that had not failed to disarm Meg since the first moment she met Sylvia after her fourth date with Matt.

Back then, Sylvia had called Meg “cute” for ordering a margarita with dinner, and Meg had promptly knocked the beverage into her own lap.

The fumble made her look incontinent as well as classless.

Things hadn’t changed much in ten years.

Meg forced herself to meet Sylvia’s gaze across the spotless Midland family living room. She ordered herself not to cry, not to slouch, not do any of the things her body desperately wanted to do.

Like flee.

Meg cleared her throat. “I’m aware of the debt,” she said. “Matt took the photographs for my cookbook a few months after we got engaged. He offered it as a favor at the time.”

“At the time, you were planning to actually marry my son instead of leaving him brokenhearted at the altar.”

“Right.” Meg big her lip, resisting the urge to fire back that the marriage might have happened if Matt hadn’t felt the need to play hide-the-salami with his acupuncturist. This wasn’t the time to start dragging skeletons out of the closet and throwing their bones around, especially not with Kyle sitting five feet away with his arms folded over his chest. He hadn’t said much of anything, and Meg wondered why he was here at all.

She didn’t dare let her gaze stray to his corner of the room as Sylvia continued her lecture.

“So it seems perfectly reasonable that my son—a sought-after commercial photographer—would bill you for those photos after you failed to uphold your end of the wedding plans,” Sylvia said. “Can you explain to me why you haven’t paid your debt?”

Meg swallowed and clenched the tissue tighter. “Because he decided to charge me ten thousand dollars. And between that and paying off all the debt from the wedding, I didn’t find that many nickels between the cushions on my sofa.”

The words came out snarkier than she meant them to, and from the corner of her eye, she saw Kyle shift in his chair. She desperately wanted to look over at him—for strength or reassurance or just the sight of those ash-flecked green eyes.

But she couldn’t get distracted right now. She couldn’t afford to let Sylvia see a chink in her armor. A trickle of sweat slid between her shoulder blades, and Meg wished she’d thought to smear her whole body with antiperspirant before setting foot in Matt’s childhood home again.

“I see.” Her former-future-mother-in-law looked back at the paperwork. “Well, you haven’t made very good progress paying off your debt.”

“I have, though. It’s completely paid off. The wedding planner was paid in full last July, and I made my final payment for the reception hall back in?—”

“Not for the wedding,” Sylvia interrupted. “For my son’s photographs. For his time, talent, and hard work on your little cookbook project. According to these records, you still owe more than three thousand dollars.”

Meg wiped her palms on the legs of her jeans. “With all due respect, I think you’re mistaken. I’m pretty sure it’s less than half that. Maybe fifteen hundred dollars? I can have my bank pull up the canceled checks if you want proof.”

“Please do. In the meantime, the fact remains that regardless of the amount, you still owe money to Matt’s estate.”

Meg gritted her teeth, biting back the urge to argue. It wasn’t worth it, not now, not when she’d already paid off most of the ten thousand dollars she probably shouldn’t have agreed to pay in the first place.

“I’m working on it,” she said. “If I get this new catering contract with?—”

“I don’t care how you get the money, Meg. We need this debt paid in full by the end of the month so we can settle up Matt’s affairs.”

Matt’s affairs are what started all this , Meg thought, but bit her tongue.

Speaking ill of the dead wouldn’t do anyone any good right now, and besides, it wasn’t fair to lay the blame at his feet.

If she hadn’t cut and run, maybe he wouldn’t have lashed out by billing her for photos he’d taken as a favor to help her achieve her dream of publishing that damn cookbook.

For all the good that did.

Meg cleared her throat. “I’m sorry,” she said, not entirely sure how she meant it. “I’m sorry for everything, Sylvia. For your loss and for the way I handled things two years ago, but most of all for?—”

“We’re done here,” Sylvia said, looking away as her eyes turned dark and glittery. “You can mail the check to our attorney. His name is on the card I gave you.”

Meg nodded and stood up, grateful her legs seemed capable of carrying her all the way across the room and to the door. Feeling eyes on her back, she turned to see Kyle watching her. His expression was unreadable, but he didn’t look away.

“Meg?”

She tore her gaze from Kyle’s and looked back at Sylvia. “Yes?”

“Thank you.” Her voice was tight and she kept her gaze fixed on a far corner of the room, but Meg could see the tears she’d been holding back had started to spill down her cheeks. “For making him happy during the early years.”

Meg swallowed hard, fighting the urge to read it as an insult. As an implication she’d failed to keep making him happy for all ten years of the union.

Is that why he cheated?

“You’re welcome,” Meg said softly, pushing the words up past the lump in her throat. “I was lucky to be with him for such a long time.”

She turned and walked out of the room, determined not to look back at Kyle.

Kyle stood on Meg’s doorstep the next evening with a clay pot of daisies in one hand and the unsettling feeling he was picking her up for a date instead of showing up to apologize for his mom or his silliness in the park or his gruffness at the hospital or?—

Hell. He had a lot to be sorry for.

Before he could figure out where to start, the door flew open and Meg stood there barefoot and wide-eyed. “Kyle! What are you doing here?” Her gaze shifted to the daisies. “You brought me flowers?”

He shrugged and shifted the pot from one hand to another. “People have been sending flowers nonstop for the last few days. My mom suggested I bring you some.”

“Daisies.” She reached out to touch one of the feathery white petals.

He pushed the pot toward her, and she seemed to hesitate before wrapping her hands around it.

She stared down at the sunny yellow centers like they were foreign and befuddling instead of something that grew in half the yards on her quiet suburban street on the outskirts of Portland.

She raised her gaze to his, and Kyle felt his guts do a somersault. “These were supposed to be our wedding flowers. Matt brought me daisies on our first date. He used to buy them for me every year for my birthday, sometimes in these wild colors like fuchsia or neon orange.”

Kyle swallowed down the lump in his throat and nodded. “Maybe Mom remembered that. It’s as close as she’ll get to an apology.”

Meg pulled the flowers to her chest and shook her head. “She doesn’t need to apologize. She lost her son, for heaven’s sake. She’s hurting.”

“She still could have handled things a little better.” He bit back the urge to say his parents needed the money.

They’d lost a fair chunk of change in a Ponzi scheme run by a pair of prominent Portland lawyers.

Suffice it to say, his folks weren’t as well-off as Meg might remember.

“Mom’s just really focused on getting Matt’s estate in order because it gives her something to do.

Something to help her feel useful. Otherwise, I’m not sure she’d even get out of bed right now. ”

He thought about the look on his mom’s face when he’d found her going through a box of old photos at Matt and Chloe’s place that morning.

“I just can’t believe he’ll never sit across from you at another Christmas dinner,” she’d said, holding up a faded snapshot of her two sons wearing hideous matching reindeer sweaters the year they were both in middle school.

Kyle had put his hand on his mother’s shoulder, wishing like hell there was something he could say to make her feel better.

To make Matt come bursting through the door again with his trademark grin and a story about a client who hired him to photograph a collection of famous sports legends’ cast-off jockstraps.

No one was better than Matt at cheering people up.

Now, Kyle looked at Meg and saw some of his mom’s sadness in her eyes. Her fingers clenched tight around the flower pot and a familiar bracket of lines carved the space between her eyebrows. “Your mother’s grieving,” she said softly. “Grief makes people do odd things.”

“Like running around a forest throwing marshmallows and pretending to be a medieval warrior?”

One corner of her mouth tugged up. It wasn’t quite a smile, but Kyle felt something shift warm and soft between them. “Something like that,” she murmured.

She let go of the flower pot with one hand and wiped her brow, leaving a smudge of flour on her forehead.

He wondered what she’d been baking, and felt a sudden ache to invite himself into her kitchen and pull out a bar stool the way he used to.

Back then he’d drop by sometimes on Wednesday nights, making some excuse to talk with Matt about football or art or trends in men’s tube socks.

Anything, really, for a chance to spend a few hours helping Meg roll dough or fold napkins as he sipped beer at their familiar granite island.

But this wasn’t the same house she’d shared with Matt. Everything had changed, and not just her address.

“I’m sorry, where are my manners?” Meg’s voice jarred him from his thoughts, and Kyle blinked as she stepped aside and gestured behind her. “Would you like to come in?”