getting some hot pads and taking the bread and pizza out of the oven. The pizza rolls were sitting in a ball on the counter, and he stacked the pan laden with the real pizza on top of the bowl and carried the tray of bread in his other hand, taking it all into the dining area.
He set the food down in front of Liss and Jack, and Sadie gleefully reached for a plate, hovering near the bowl of pizza rolls.
“Next time, I promise to bake something,” Sadie said. “Quiche. That might elevate this a little bit.” Although her expression said she didn’t really mind slumming it with their subpar pizzas.
“Sure, Sadie, you could do that,” Connor said.
The door opened again, and Kate burst through it, followed by Eli, who was still in his uniform. Everything a stranger might want to know about his two younger siblings was conveyed by the way they walked into his house. Kate was exuberant, her footsteps loud, her grin irrepressible. Eli’s steps were measured, cautious. And when he saw Sadie, the slow, subtle smile that spread across his features expressed a depth of happiness that made Connor’s bones hurt.
That had been him once. At least, that was how he remembered it.
When he’d walked into a room, there had been only one place his eyes had gone. Jessie. She had been his focal point, his North Star, from the time he was eighteen years old. And then suddenly, she was just gone.
And so was his star.
He cleared his throat and took another drink of beer. There was no point in following that train of thought. No point in thinking about her at all. Except it was hard on nights like this. On the one hand, he depended on these get-togethers. They were his one opportunity to smile. To laugh. But when everyone was together like this, it was impossible to ignore the fact that it wasn’t everyone. And it never would be again. Jessie had always sat next to him when they played poker. And sometimes she cheated, and he pretended he didn’t notice.
He hadn’t played a hand since without wishing she was there to look at his cards.
Still, it was better than drinking alone.
Liss sat next to him now. And he figured if he couldn’t be with his wife, he should be right near his best friend.
Eli winced and reached into his jacket pocket, producing a vibrating cell phone. He let out a long-suffering sigh. “I’ve got to take this. Campaign stuff.”
“It’s fine,” Sadie said, answering for all of them.
“I’ll turn it off for the game.”
“It’s fine,” Connor reiterated.
Eli waved a hand and walked back outside, the phone pressed to his ear. Sadie was smiling dreamily after him.
“He’s so sexy when he’s doing political stuff,” she said.
Connor and Kate groaned. Then Kate moved farther into the room, offering her greetings.
“Hey, Jack. Hey, Sadie, Liss,” she said, walking over to the table and taking a big piece of pizza off the pan, not bothering to use a plate. No greeting for him, but whatever. That was what younger sisters were for. “Did you sort out the rental situation?”
It took him a moment to realize that Kate had directed the question at Liss. “What rental situation?” he asked.
“Sorry. I didn’t realize you hadn’t told everyone,” Kate said, her expression sheepish.
Liss looked slightly embarrassed. “Oh, no, it’s not a big deal. Anyway, no, not yet. But I will.”
“Wait a second, what rental thing? Is something happening with your house, Liss?” Connor asked, feeling annoyed now, because his little sister knew something about his best friend that he didn’t.
Liss let out an exasperated breath. “I’m dealing, Connor. Put away your duct tape and superglue. You don’t need to fix this.”
He almost opened his mouth to say he hadn’t offered to fix a damn thing. Because it was true; he hadn’t. He hadn’t offered to fix a damn thing in years.
There was no one around to complain if he didn’t. So sinks stayed leaky, windows stayed drafty and...well, he got drunk while his friend was having a problem, and motherfucker, he didn’t like that at all.
“Well, maybe I want to fix it if I can,” he said.
“That’s nice of you, Connor, but I don’t think you can. Unfortunately, I’m uncovering a lot of damage Marshall did to my credit when he took off a couple of years ago. Some of it was obvious and came to my attention pretty quickly. Some of it has been less so. There were other credit cards, an additional car loan, plus what I already knew about. Basically, even with the credit bureaus correcting some of it, I can’t get a new rental easily. And now that my landlord is selling...”
“That’s not fair!” Kate said around a mouthful of pizza. “Most everybody here knows you, Liss. And a lot of us knew Marshall. So we kind of know he was an ass.”
“If you had always known that, Kate, you might have let me in on it,” Liss said, smiling ruefully.
“I think I did tell you that,” Connor said through clenched teeth. “Repeatedly.”
Liss tightened her lips into a bud, and Connor could tell she was holding back a deadly reply. He didn’t really care. She’d been warned. She didn’t listen. And while he didn’t hold it against her, he had pretty much told her so the minute she’d shacked up with that idiot who was, well, an idiot.
Of course, Connor’d had to acknowledge, just to himself, that he might’ve been being unfair, because no man seemed good enough for Liss. Kind of like how no man would ever seem good enough for Kate.
But in the end, his instincts had been right on. Marshall had been a loser. Marshall had run off with Liss’s money and the truck they had just bought. And now this.
“That’s beside the point,” Connor continued. “How long do you have to move out?”
“Legally, I have thirty days. But it’s a private sale, and everything is moving really quickly. I figure I’m going to be out on my rear one way or the other. I mean, if it’s that or going to live with my mother, then I will stay until the very last second, but...”
“You should stay here,” Kate said.
Liss’s eyes widened, and he felt his own mouth fall open. “Here? As in...here here?”
“Well, Sadie has the B and B.”
Sadie winced. “I’m booked solid through Christmas. People coming to visit family, combined with the off-season discount, created a deluge of reservations.”
“Your bed-and-breakfast is your livelihood, Sadie,” Liss said. “I’m not going to take advantage of that. No one would expect me to do accounting for free.”
“I wouldn’t do accounting for money,” Jack said.
“You probably couldn’t do accounting for money, either,” Liss returned.
“I’m
