Chapter 60
“Why are you making me carry a folding table out to the lawn when you heard me swear less than ten minutes ago that I never wanted to carry another folding table anywhere for any reason, especially a reason that has direct ties to Georgie?”
For two days—two days—Nate had hunted down and hauled around folding tables.
Not just any folding tables. Specific folding tables.
The type of folding tables that would be worthy of Harry Connick Junior.
The type of folding tables that would blow Lottie’s folding tables from the Dominoes Dance out of the water.
The type of folding tables that looked like every other folding table Nate had ever come across but required spanning a two-hundred-mile radius to locate.
Didn’t Georgie understand a man had better things to do with his time—and his lips—than track down folding tables?
Now here it was Wednesday afternoon, and Nate was having to sit through some silly audition in ninety-plus-degree heat when he should be tucked away somewhere cool with McKenna sitting on his lap.
“Aw, c’mon. Don’t be grumpy. These auditions should be fun.” Every step McKenna took, another curl sprang out of her messy bun. He should be the one springing the curls out of her bun.
Okay, maybe the heat was getting to him. He didn’t even understand half his own thoughts anymore. All he knew was he needed more McKenna. And more sleep. But mostly more McKenna.
“Remember to lift with your legs, not with your back,” McKenna said, letting her end of the table drag across the grass as they made their way to the giant walnut tree in the center of the front yard.
“Maybe you should focus on lifting with anything at all.”
“Man, you really are in a bad mood today, aren’t you?”
“I am. Sorry.” Nate flipped the table onto its side once they made it into the shade of the tree.
“Sorry,” he said again, kicking out the legs of the table and flipping it upright.
“I just hate that I haven’t been able to spend any time with you this week.
I mean, I knew things were going to get over the top, but—” He motioned to the line of vehicles starting to pull into the driveway—“I clearly underestimated the level of Georgie-ness happening this week.”
“Once the auditions are over, we can hang out the rest of the day.”
He liked the sound of that. Except . . . Nate massaged the headache building between his eyebrows. “Hopefully this doesn’t turn into a migraine.”
“Go rest. I can handle the auditions.” McKenna’s hand rubbed his back. Hopefully she didn’t mind a little sweat. Or a lot of sweat. Because that was another thing. Georgie had been running him so ragged, he hadn’t even had time to clean up before she was barking the next set of orders at him.
If he weren’t doing this all for McKenna, he probably would’ve told Georgie where to stick her folding tables by now. But for McKenna . . .
Nate motioned to the chairs they’d brought out earlier and propped against the tree. “You kidding? And miss out on one of Bugle’s hidden talents? No way.” And no way was he missing out on a single minute with McKenna when he could help it.
She gave him a sweet smile as she unfolded one of the chairs. “I’m going to grab us some water bottles. Be back in a minute.”
While McKenna ran back inside the house, Nate took the opportunity to check in on his mom. He hadn’t heard any Aunt Susie updates in a while. “Hey,” he said as soon as his mom answered. “Everything going okay?”
“Nate! Glad to hear from you! Yes, yes. Susie says I’m really starting to annoy her, so I feel like we’re finally getting back to baseline here. I think being back in her own home and her own bed did the trick. How’s things back in Bugle? Are people going bonkers over Harry yet?”
“Oh, you know . . .” More vehicles swarmed the driveway. A man climbed out of a Jeep with a sock puppet on his hand. “Everything’s pretty much going how you would expect.”
“You don’t know how much it’s killing me not to be there. Speaking of dying, I can’t believe you haven’t said anything yet about the verrrry interesting pictures multiple friends sent me of you from the Dominoes Dance the other night. Is there, uh, something you’d like to tell me?”
“Hmm . . .” Nate watched as another man holding a ventriloquist’s dummy on his arm stopped to carry on a conversation with the sock puppet while a woman walked past them carrying a cardboard sign that read Harry, will you marry me?
“Can’t really think of anything. Other than Harry, everything’s pretty much status quo. ”
“You were dancing. Closely. With a woman.”
“Yep. Same old, same old. You know how it is around here.”
“I believe she goes by the name McKenna?”
“Weather’s been a little hotter than usual, I suppose.”
“Nathan Lambert!”
He smiled, probably the first time since Monday morning, and wiped a trail of sweat off his forehead. “Sounds to me like you already know plenty.”
“Not nearly enough. How long is she staying? Am I going to get the chance to meet her?”
He watched the woman in question jog down the steps, gripping a water bottle in each hand, and wished once again that it was just the two of them.
Alone. Without any complications. Without any distractions.
Without any people wearing gold-sequined leotards.
“I don’t know, Mom. But I hope so. I really like this one. ”
He took the water bottle from McKenna and gave her a wink. She did something twitchy back with her face. Was that supposed to be a wink? Okay. Good to know. The girl couldn’t wink. Based on his experience with Wendy, Nate didn’t exactly consider that a bad thing.
“You do realize,” his mom was saying, “that was probably the first time in your entire adult life where you’ve given me a straightforward answer about a woman.”
“Guess she’s bringing out a new side of me.”
Now if only McKenna could bring out some straightforward answers for how this was all going to play out for them after this Saturday.
Didn’t matter how many showers Nate took, he wasn’t going to stop sweating until Bobbi said yes, so McKenna could say yes to some sort of future between them.
He massaged his forehead. “Hey, Mom, I’m going to have to let you go. A church van full of elderly women waving kazoos out the window just pulled up.”
“I don’t even know how to respond to that.”
“Honestly, neither do I.”