You Were Meant For Me (Wishful 10)
As soon as they were out of earshot, Tess muttered, “They have absolutely no right to poke at you about children.”
“No, but something like right will never stop the Casserole Patrol from butting in. They mean well,” Norah explained.
“But what if you didn’t want children?”
“Oh, we do. Eventually. But we’d rather have a while to…practice first.” Cam’s smile spread slow as honey as he stroked a thumb across the back of his wife’s hand.
“Yeah, yeah. Rub in your newlywed bliss, Cuz.” Mitch gave an exaggerated roll of his eyes.
Norah leaned in to bump his shoulder. “Buck up. You’ll find the right girl one of these days.”
I will not look at Tess. I will not look at Tess.
“Anyway, we’re having a cookout on Friday night. You have to come,” Cam told Tess. “Everybody wants to meet you.”
She paused, a spoonful of grits halfway to her mouth. “Everybody? I thought I already met everybody.”
“You met the family,” Norah explained. “This is all our friends.”
Tess’s expression was caught somewhere between a smile and a frown. “Why would they want to meet me?”
Mitch couldn’t stop himself from smiling. “Honey, you’re big news in town right now.”
She looked a little green at that.
“Don’t worry. I’ll take you and run interference as necessary,” he promised.
“I’d appreciate it. Can I borrow your kitchen?”
“Any time. Why?”
“Because I may not be Southern, but even I know you don’t show up to a cookout empty-handed.”
Friday night and all its attendant socializing came way too soon for Tess’s taste. But she
’d dutifully prepared her appetizer and climbed in Mitch’s truck for the drive, despite fantasies of bailing and making use of that gigantic soaker tub in his master bathroom.
“Cam and Norah’s place is out on Hope Springs.”
She glanced at Mitch over in the driver’s seat. “It’s really called Hope Springs?”
“Really is. The fountain on the green is fed from there. It’s the whole crux of Norah’s rural tourism campaign.”
“Wishful, where hope springs eternal. I saw the banners.” They fluttered on all the lamp posts on Main Street.
“A couple years back, GrandGoods was trying to buy up the land out here to put up one of their big box stores. That’s how Norah and Cam got together in the first place. She stuck around to fight it and ended up buying the whole parcel for sale right out from under them. Then she wound up donating a big chunk of the land to the city for a park that Cam designed.”
Wonder Woman, indeed. “That was incredibly generous of her.”
“I think she was as much in love with Wishful as she was with Cam. Anyway, they built a house right down by the water. It’s a helluva spot. If we’ve got time after we leave, I’ll swing you by the park so you can see it.”
Clutching the tray of appetizers she’d made, Tess wondered how long they had to stay to meet social obligation. She’d spent most of the day working with her father at his office, which was great, as she felt more on even keel with him when talking business. But it had meant no time alone with Mitch other than the brief stretch in his kitchen while she’d been making the bruschetta. She was hyperaware of the fact that her time here could be coming to an end. If her father didn’t go for the pitch she’d put together for this small business incubator, she’d be headed back to Denver to her normal job. But that was a worry for Sunday, when they had that family dinner. For tonight, she needed to get her head in the game and be properly social. Even if all she really wanted to do was be anti-social with the man sitting beside her.
As soon as they pulled up to the house, Tess recognized Mitch’s work. It wasn’t the same style as his own house, but there was something in the lines of the single-story plantation home that reminded her of him.
“You designed this.”
He glanced over, brows arched. “Yeah, I did.”