Know Me Well (Wishful 3)

“Oh come on. Mr. McSweeney’s not part of the beer and pizza brigade like the rest of us. Why else would he be here?”

“He’s an old friend of my dad’s. He just wants to help.” But that excuse sounded weak even to her own ears.

God, it would be just like her to have wrapped him around her little finger. Sharilyn was good at doing that. Was Matthew bankrolling this apartment?

No. Riley had forced her mom to go through the finances and prove she could afford it before agreeing to help with the move. Sharilyn had a budget. This little place was within her means. And surely if there were something going on, they wouldn’t have chosen this tiny studio apartment. Matthew wasn’t married. He had a house of his own and plenty of room.

By her own admission, Sharilyn was turning over a new leaf. She was moving out on her own, not in with a guy. And she was so excited about this. The least Riley could do was have the same faith in her mother that Sharilyn had had in her all these years.

But as she watched her mom and Matthew laughing together, she couldn’t help but wonder.

~*~

“The kitchen is officially done,” Molly announced.

“I’m pretty sure it’s a rule that the kitchen isn’t done until it has food,” Autumn said.

Liam’s stomach chose that moment to let out a growl that rivaled a grizzly. “Case in point.”

Sharilyn collapsed onto the sofa. “The market is closed. Best I can do is PB and J and tap water.”

“You’ve got an in with the owner,” Matthew teased. “I bet he’d open after hours for you.”

From his position kneeling by the entertainment center, Liam watched Riley pointedly not react to the flirting as she began to break down the boxes they’d just emptied.

“I promised you all pizza. I’ll call it in as soon as I get these hauled to the trash.” Riley began to gather up the stack of boxes.

“Here, I’ll help you with that,” Liam said.

She angled her head in question but didn’t argue. Between the two of them, they hauled the flattened boxes to the dumpster around the corner of the building. Liam waited while she’d called in the order for pizza, thankful that the brutal heat of the day had finally broken and a breeze kicked up enough to ease the humidity. She hung up and started back toward the apartment, “They said twenty-five minutes.”

“Good, I’m starved. Hold up a sec.” Liam snagged her hand, towed her to a stop before she rounded to the stairs.

“What?”

“You okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be okay? I’m just tired. It’s been hella hot today.”

“I just thought you might be a little…sensitive,” he decided, “about Matthew flirting with your mom.”

Riley shrugged. “She’s a single, unattached woman in her own place. Whether I think she should be chasing after another relationship is neither here nor there. As long as he’s not bankrolling this apartment, and I know he’s not, then there’s no objection I can raise that would be valid.”

“That’s a real pretty speech. You keep saying it long enough, you might start to believe it.”

She huffed out a breath. “I’m being stupid. I want her to be happy. She deserves to be happy. I just worry. We’ve been down this path in one form or another many, many times before, and in the end, it always comes down to me having to save her from herself.”

Liam couldn’t blame her for being braced for that. That kind of pattern was hard to break. “You want my take?”

Riley shot him a suspicious look, clearly not sure if she’d like what he had to say. “I suspect you’re going to give it either way, so go ahead.”

“I think your mama regrets all those years she’s had to depend on you.” She’d told him so herself. “You’ve been doing the adulting in your family since you were a little thing. That wasn’t fair to you, and she knows it. She wants to make this work on her own.”

“And Matthew?”

“Your mama is a fun, flirty woman. There’s no crime in that. I don’t know if they’re more than friends or not, but he’s a good guy. Steady. Responsible. A fixture of the community. He’s not some fly-by-night cowboy type who’d use her and lose her. And I think he respects what she’s trying to do.”

Riley was silent for a few moments. “I think…I think it’s good for her to have someone to talk to about my dad, someone who knew him well. With Matthew, the fact that she still misses him every day isn’t going to be some secret she tries to hide. He was there. He knows. Whatever else happens with them, I think there’s probably some healing in that. I don’t know if she ever really dealt with those feelings before because she was, on some level, looking for a substitute all these years. So, I guess I’m glad she has his friendship, if nothing else.”