The Wedding Date Disaster (Harbor City 4)

Rubbing her now rumbly stomach, Hadley sat down on one of the barstools at the island. “Is that Aunt Louise’s recipe?”

“You know it is.” Her mom tossed the flour sack tea towel over one shoulder and moved to the celery sticks by the sink.

“With the secret ingredient?” The one her great-aunt had lorded over everyone at every family gathering where food was involved since the dawn of time.

Stephanie nodded. “Yep.”

This was epic. They were finally in possession of the only family secret any of them had ever managed to keep for longer than a week. “If you share what it is, I’ll forget all about Matt being here.”

Stephanie snorted in amusement and handed the rinsed celery to Hadley. “Good luck with that.”

“Mom,” she said as she started to chop the ends off the celery. “What were you thinking? Why didn’t you kick him out?”

Stephanie didn’t look even the least little bit embarrassed. “Honestly, I tried to get him moving, but he came all the way out to personally deliver the mason jars your sister said had to be a part of the wedding decorations. It’s not like I invited him.”

“Mom, you know I’m not interested in Matt.”

“No one said you should be,” her mom said. “Although who would object to Matt is a mystery to me. He’s the kind of man who stays close to home, talks to his family on a regular basis, and isn’t embarrassed by where he came from.”

“I’m not embarrassed about where I’m from.” She wasn’t. It’s just that she wanted to live in a place where everyone didn’t know absolutely everything about her from the time she was born.

Stephanie looked up from the mixture of peanut butter and honey she was spooning into the celery sticks and raised an eyebrow. “Aren’t you?

How many times had they had this conversation? At least a million since she had left for college. It never changed. Her mom just kept repeating the same lines, praising the virtues of small-town life over and over again, never understanding that despite all the open space, being out here crowded her in. In Harbor City, she had the freedom granted by anonymity and the opportunity to try new things or meet new people. Out here, it was the same faces, the same scenery, the same old same old every day until you died. Arguing about it would never change that, so what was the point of fighting about it?

“Mom,” she said, the word coming out as an exhausted sigh. “I love you, so let’s just change the subject.”

“Fine. You know Matt’s been asking Gabe and the boys about you every time they stopped in to Feed and Steer.” Stephanie arranged the celery sticks on the plate. “I might have mentioned to him when you’d be coming home, and I guess he decided to shoot his shot. Sorry about that. You know Aunt Louise is waiting for an announcement from you two.”

Yeah, Hadley didn’t need three guesses to figure out what kind of announcement.

The buzzer on the oven went off before Hadley could deny it, but not before an image of Will in the bathroom last night flashed in her mind. Damn. It took all of half a heartbeat for her body to go from primed for a fight to primed for Will. Ugh. This was not how this was supposed to go. Last night didn’t change anything. The man was…well, he was the evil twin who was convinced she had gold digging on the brain. The man did not get a place in her spank bank, he did not get to be in consideration for another roll in the metaphorical hay, and he most definitely was not husband material, no matter what Aunt Louise wanted to be true.

“Wait a minute.” She gasped, realization making her jaw drop. “Did you promise to help her nudge Will and me along the matrimonial road? Is that how you got the secret ingredient?”

Her mom set the steaming hot casserole dish down on a trivet shaped like a steer and shrugged. “All’s fair in love and Frito pie.”

There were no lies in that argument—at least not when it came to the food. Hadley was sprinkling fresh corn chips on top of the melted cheese when Gabe strode in through the back door.

“You guys coming out with the food or are you going to keep quiet-fighting in here?” he asked from at least two arms’ reaches away. The man was no doubt not taking any chances.

“We’re not fighting,” Stephanie said, rolling her eyes at her husband.

“Yeah,” Hadley agreed. “It’s a discussion.”

“Uh-huh.” Gabe took a few steps closer, taking a deep inhale of the Frito pie. “Well, whatever you want to call it, we’re all starving. Can I at least take out the ants on a log? We need a distraction, because it looks like Derek isn’t going to make it tonight, either.”

Hadley’s heart ached for her sister. Adalyn was not a fan of being the center of attention, to the point that she’d skipped her own high school graduation so she didn’t have to do the whole walk-across-the-stage-in-front-of-everyone thing. That’s part of what made it so strange that she’d decided to put together such an elaborate wedding. It must have been Derek who’d insisted on the full shebang. Who would do that to Adalyn and then not be here to take some of the weight off her?

“What I would say if I could,” her mom said, tone as hard as the frozen prairie in January.

There were few insults from her mom that were stronger than her mom being willing to hold back on saying exactly what was on her mind at any given time. It was one of the few things they had in common. And if she was keeping her mouth shut about Derek, then things were pretty grim.

“How’s Adalyn doing?” Hadley asked Gabe.

He shrugged and let out a sigh that spoke of all the words he was keeping bottled up, too. “She’s holding up, but Aunt Louise is like a coyote with a rabbit when it comes to getting every little detail out of Buttermilk.”

God love Aunt Louise, but she had that whole blunt-Midwestern-bulldozer thing down pat.