Page 20

That was a low blow. “I was trying to impress her. Announcing that my middle name is Poncefort wasn’t going to help.” Or maybe she would have pretended to like that too. “I got it all wrong, didn’t I?”

“It’s not your fault she’s awful.”

Except it was his fault for being the kind of person no one genuinely wanted to get close to. Hard to blame that on anyone else. “It’s Adriana Asebedo all over again.”

“No.” Mugsy spoke too quickly, like she was trying to convince herself. “It’s nothing like that.”

“It’s a little like that.” In the not-really-caring-about-Charlie sense.

“I won’t let it get that bad.” Mugsy held up her hand like she was swearing an oath. “I’m going to help you handle the situation before it gets out of hand.”

Did “the situation” mean being hounded by reporters for months, or Charlie’s less-than-impressive reaction to the rabid tabloid attention? He didn’t have the heart to ask.

“Sorry about the tight squeeze,” Mugsy said, changing the subject with the subtlety of a rockslide.

Charlie would have shrugged, but there wasn’t enough space. “I’ve been sleeping in a hammock for six months. Well, until last week.” Memories tugged at him: fancy sheets, Jean’s skin, the floral scent of her perfume—

Fingers snapped inches from his nose. “Stay with me,” Mugsy hissed. “I was trying to say that I figured it would be easier to go incognito in coach. No one will be looking for you here.”

A flight attendant bent to address them. “Cookies?”

Charlie tugged the brim of his baseball cap lower. “No thank you. I’m too sad to eat.”

“I know exactly what you mean, hon.” The uniformed attendant patted his arm, and Charlie’s eyes pricked at her kindness. “It’s always hard when the vacation is over.”

Mugsy reached across Charlie, probably sensing he was about to start blubbering about lost love. “I’ll have his cookies.”

When they were alone again, Mugsy chewed with a thoughtful expression.

“Are they good?” he asked, wondering if he’d once again made the wrong choice.

“We’re going to figure this out,” she replied, before shoving the next cookie in her mouth. “Once we get past the centennial.”

Charlie felt a barely-there stirring of hope. “Are you sure you don’t want to take over instead, Mugsy? You’re so good at running things.”

“Wrong last name.” She brushed crumbs off her shirt. “Besides, I have my own thing going.”

“That’s true.” For almost as long as he’d known her, Mugsy’s free time had been spent foraging for native plants and brewing them into teas.

Her recipes were a blend of traditional knowledge picked up on visits to her maternal grandmother—Mugsy’s main connection to the Lakota side of her heritage—and her own experiments.

Some of the early results tasted like hot lawn shavings, but she’d improved a lot since then, to the point that she was serious about turning it into a business.

She’d done a few seasonal ales for Pike’s and had her own workroom in one of the outbuildings, but beer wasn’t Mugsy’s first love either.

Charlie tried to muster a smile. “At least one of us will get to do what they want. You should find love too. The real kind, that lasts. Not a brief doomed affair with someone too good to be true who leaves you more miserable than you were before.” He tried to swallow past the lump in his throat.

“What am I talking about? You’re too smart to get caught up in something like that. ”

Mugsy choked on a mouthful of cookie. Charlie passed her his water.

“Nobody’s perfect,” she croaked, wiping her chin with the back of her hand.

“She did have a lot of great qualities. You should have seen the painting she did—” He broke off when Mugsy flicked the brim of his hat.

“Not her. She’s the worst.”

Charlie let that go without arguing. Just as well he hadn’t gotten to the part about what she’d been painting. Or where. He wished it was still there, a tangible reminder of their time together, but the marks Jean had left were on the inside.

“Did you pack everything?” he asked.

“I think so. It was kind of a rush. We barely got out in time.”

“What about the cards?”

She looked at him blankly.

“Playing cards. In a blue box.”

“Does it matter? We have plenty of cards at home.”

It mattered to Jean. And that meant it mattered to him, even though he knew it shouldn’t.

Unless that part wasn’t true either, and there was no snack bar and no Wisconsin—well, obviously Wisconsin was real, but the rest could have been a fabrication.

Charlie didn’t know the Barretts personally, much less whether they had a son with a destructive streak, but maybe Jean didn’t either.

Everyone had heard of Barrett’s Best, the same way they knew about Pike’s Pale Ale.

She could have invented the whole story to make Charlie feel sorry for her, choosing the name Barrett at random. “Smithson” certainly sounded fake.

If her goal was to rouse his protective instincts, it had worked beautifully. Then again, Jean hadn’t needed to go to nearly that much trouble to get Charlie on her side. He wasn’t wired for deception, as evidenced by how bad he’d always been at lying—or knowing when someone was lying to him.

“It’s just a party, right?” He glanced at Mugsy, who had developed a sudden preoccupation with rearranging the items in the seat-back pocket.

“Basically.”

“I should be able to handle that.” He tried not to make it sound like a question. How long could a party last—three hours? Four? Charlie had to be strong enough to get through one evening.

It would be a cakewalk compared to the pain of losing Jean.