Bound to Be His ( The Archer Family 2)

"I'm always charming. You just pick and choose when you want to be charmed."

She frowned, but only because she thought there might actually be something to that.

She grabbed a few more things from the shelf—blinking rings and glow sticks, necklaces with shot glasses, and a package of flashing buttons. "Okay, okay. Now leave me in peace. Find some stuff for Logan, why don't you?"

When the rest of the girls arrived the following week, they were going to be a glowing, flashing seizure risk, but Shay didn't care. Unlike her mother, Andy was only going to get married once.

She just knew it.

"None of this stuff seems very Logan to me," Matt said, poking a boob-shaped cake pan.

Shay grinned. "No, I guess it doesn't. Maybe just stick with the basics. A T-shirt and a shot glass. Maybe a silly hat."

"You think Logan is going to wear a silly hat?" Matt raised an eyebrow.

Shay pictured him, all square-jawed with his shaggy black hair poking out from under a whimsical purple top hat. Even in her imagination, she couldn't get Logan to smile. She guessed that was one of his failings. He wasn't the kind of guy who could laugh at himself. Not that she'd ever tell Andy, but Shay couldn't imagine spending all her time with someone so serious.

For instance, if she gave Matt a fez or something to wear, he'd... he'd...

She cleared her head. What did Matt have to do with anything?

"I think I might just stick with my pimp goblet," Matt said.

"Good choice." Shay nodded. "So... um, I guess we'd better get going, then."

They checked out quickly enough, and then they loaded up the car and headed back out onto the street.

For the first few minutes, the ride back was silent. Then, out of nowhere, Matt asked, "Exactly how many times has your mother gotten married?"

Shay let out a sigh. "This last one was number seven."

"Don't you have a ton of step-siblings, then?"

"Thankfully, no. She tends to go for men who are able to lavish all their attention on her. She has an obsession with being an obsession." Shay winced, remembering one particularly touchy break-up when husband number four had called her out on this need. Her mother had not taken that well. Not at all.

"Didn't you ever get close with any of the guys your mom married? I mean, that many divorces..." he trailed off. "I'm sorry. I guess that's a little too personal."

She supposed it was, but for some reason, it hadn’t caught her off guard. "No, no, it's okay, really. I was close with my father. He was husband number one, but he died when I was five. I liked the next couple of guys okay, but by the time I was a teenager, I'd learned not to get too attached. You learn quickly in a situation like that, you know." She shrugged. "This new one seems nice enough. It'll be sad when he's gone."

"You don't have any hope that it'll work out?"

She guffawed. "None. I mean, the odds of finding the one person on earth who will love you all the time and never get sick of you? It's crazy."

"But you don't think Andy is crazy." It wasn’t a question.

Shay paused. "No, I don't think Andy is crazy."

She couldn't lie; it was a thought that had plagued her ever since Andy's engagement. Because, even in all ten weddings she'd been part of, she'd always had some lurking sense of doom. A feeling that it would never work, that it simply never happened that way.

But it wasn't so with Andy. When she looked at Andy and Logan, all she felt was peace. Happiness, even.

"It's one in a million," she said, weighing each word, "but I think Andy really did find her soul mate... or, you know, whatever that cosmic stuff is. He just happened to be your best friend." Shay tacked the last part on playfully, and Matt smiled at her.

"I'm glad for the way it turned out. I couldn't really imagine them together at first, but now I can hardly picture them with anyone else. Love is funny that way. You know, you see these two people who seem like they'd never fit together. Who seem like they'd hate each other. Those are always the people who fall in love, you know?"

"I guess." Shay frowned. "Maybe."

She pulled into the driveway of the villa and then sidled from the car without another word.