was, with the crazy hours he sometimes worked, she was accustomed to sleeping alone. Besides, his snoring on the mattress next to her didn’t always make her feel less lonely.
She forced a bright smile, not that anyone was looking at her. “Well, I have big news! You’ll never believe who’s getting married—Neely.”
That got their attention. Jason looked up, grunting in surprise. “Neely? I half expected you to say Vi followed a wild impulse and ran off with her pottery instructor or something.”
“Aunt Cornelia?” Trent’s mouth had fallen open. “Wow. Why?”
Men. “Because she’s in love.”
Her son ran a hand through his dark hair, considering. “I guess. It’s just weird to think about someone her age, you know, dating.”
“She’s younger than I am.”
“Sure, but not by much and you’re a mom. You’ve got grown kids. You don’t date!”
No, she didn’t. She went with her son to scout universities and planned meals, making jokes about how much her grocery bill would drop once she no longer had teenage boys in the house. Reverting to type now, she left the guys to their game and retreated to the kitchen, deciding a chef salad would work nicely for her and Trent’s dinner. It had been tough when Adam, her twenty-year-old, left for school, but having Trent at home had helped ease the ache. Once he was gone, her life would be so…
Quiet. She tried to put a relaxing spin on the word. Less stressful without a seventeen-year-old and his appalling musical taste. She wouldn’t have to wait up on Saturday nights, lying in bed and listening for him to come home from his dates. Oh, who did she think she was kidding? With her baby out on his own, she’d probably lie in bed worrying about him every night. Hoping he didn’t fall in with the wrong kids, wondering if he was keeping on top of his course work, praying he didn’t get some pretty young coed pregnant.
Jason had chuckled at those same concerns when Adam left for university. “You raised good kids,” her husband had assured her. “Now it’s time to let them go and become the men they’ll be.”
Raised good kids—past tense. She’d been a full-time mom and housewife for two decades. Her days were going to be strangely empty without PTA meetings, doctors’ appointments, football booster club. Not that she felt sorry for herself. She was proud of her nearly grown sons, and aware of her blessings. How many of her friends and neighbors had marveled over Savannah’s life?
You’re so together, Savannah, I could never be that organized!
You have such great boys.
How on earth do you find time to cook like this—and with such sinful desserts, how do you stay so trim?
She knew she was lucky.
It was just…since she didn’t turn forty-six until late April, Savannah and her sister were the same age one month out of every year. She and Neely were both forty-five. So, why did it seem like Neely’s life was about to hit a new beginning while Savannah’s, in so many ways, seemed to be coming to a close?
“So, how’d it go?” Because Robert was too kind to hold grudges, there was no lingering annoyance in his gray eyes, no resentment that Neely had argued against his coming to lunch. There was only affection and a hint of amusement.
“Great.” She leaned against his kitchen counter, where breakfast and lunch dishes were stacked. Must not have been room for them in the sink—not with last night’s dinner plates, abandoned in passionate haste, still piled beneath the faucet. “It went great.”
Other than Vi thinking she was a lesbian, her divorced brother becoming uncharacteristically withdrawn after he’d absorbed the wedding news and their mother’s insistence on calling Neely’s soon-to-be in-laws the Yankees.
With a sigh, she abandoned the pretense. “My family makes me crazy.”
Robert laughed. “Isn’t that what families are for, to offset all the needless sanity in our lives?”
Grinning back at him felt good. “Then my mother deserves some kind of award for going above and beyond. She’s known about the wedding less than twelve hours, and already she’s trying to take over. How many groomsmen were you thinking, because she’s suggesting distant cousins I swear I’ve never met to be bridesmaids.”
“Groomsmen? Well, there’s Stuart, of course. Maybe Bryan. Is it okay that I haven’t actually given this part much thought? I’ve only been engaged for a day.”
Engaged. Her heart fluttered at the newness of it, the wonder that she’d found someone who wanted to spend his life with her. “Of course it’s okay that we haven’t figured out the details yet. One step at a time. But it might have simplified my life, at least short term, if I’d waited until later to tell her.”
His arms fell to her waist, and he pulled her closer. “How much later?”
“Umm…June?”
He chuckled again, as he so often did. Robert had a perfect laugh, deep and warm—neither self-conscious titters, nor the loud, my-jokes-are-so-funny bray of a guy who pokes fun at others. Merely the comfortable reaction of a man who saw the humor in life. And helped her see it more clearly.
She’d always been reserved, figuring someone in the family should be. She wasn’t like outgoing Savannah who knew the perfect response to every social occasion, mouthy Vi who delighted in audaciousness, or Douglas, who, in the course of charming and joking his way through life, sometimes failed to respect the gravity of a situation. Except for one disastrous period of college rebellion she didn’t like to remember, Neely had clung to hard work and staying focused. As a result, she now held a good position working for Cameron Becker. Seriousness had served her well.
It just hadn’t gotten her laid very often, Vi would point out.
Neely’s relationships with men who matched her personality had been sensible, but boring. On the other hand, her two affairs with guys her polar opposite had ended badly, the first in college which had left her humiliated and heartbroken, the second just before she hit forty. She’d ended the latter relationship quickly, before she killed the man and had to retain Douglas to defend her.
But now she had Robert. It was one of life’s ironies that she’d found her perfect balance when she wasn’t even looking. Between all the time she’d devoted to work and the girls’ nights she’d spent helping Leah through her separation and eventual divorce, Neely had barely dated in four years before Robert kissed her on that beach.
She snuggled into his shoulder, the memory of sea air superimposed over the familiar smell of his aftershave. “If the end result is marrying you, I can handle anything my mother dishes out over the next three months.”
“I love you, too.”
“Just remember that later this week, okay?” Neely finally had escaped her parents’ house today with sworn oaths to bring Robert over in a few days and discuss wedding plans more then. The thought of the coming conversations made her head hurt. “You’re sure I can’t talk you into eloping?” Quick, simple, and no worries about assigning someone to keep cousin Phoebe away from the bar.
“Sorry.” He grinned that rakish smile that made his eyes crinkle at the corners. “Since
