27. Chapter 27
Chapter twenty-seven
Gina
My heart is racing. I don’t think I can take another close call like this. I don’t want to hide from Benji or avoid him, but I can’t stop myself when he’s around. It’s like my self-control exits the building.
Either way, it needs to stop because while Benji made his escape on the four-wheeler with my lunch, Diana is now standing in front of me with a concerned look. She saw us or saw enough of us leaping apart to give her an inkling that we weren’t just sitting here talking.
Her eyes narrow. “Let’s talk. Out on the deck.”
Resigned, I follow Diana outside. She sits at the closest picnic table, where we can keep an eye on reception, and without a word, I sit across from her.
A couple of days ago, she approached me about the fight over the wedding date, and while she apologized, she made me feel so bad about the work she’s done and the money she’s spent that I couldn’t bring myself to ask her to change the dates back.
So, this conversation she wants to have now? It’s not that one.
“This is the last time I’m going to ask you this,” Diana says, “but…are you certain about marrying my grandson?”
So she didn’t see me and Benji? Or she did, and she’s laying a trap? “I’m certain,” I say, though my voice sounds anything but.
“Gina.” Her tone turns firm, and my stomach twists.
“I love you like family. I’ve known you all your life.
I’m proud of you for everything you’ve done for Happy Lake.
Everything you’ve done for your mother and Milo.
Havenwood, too. You’re a good person, and Milo is lucky to have you.
But are you sure this is what you want?”
For a brief moment, I wonder if I should tell her the truth. I don’t want to marry Milo, and he doesn’t want to marry me. Maybe she’ll realize that if I’m willing to trust Milo as a business partner, she can trust him, too.
Or she’ll never forgive us. Happy Lake will go to someone else.
I’d still have Benji, and for the first time, it feels like that might be enough.
But Milo has no one to ease the sting that losing Happy Lake would cause. He might never recover. Maybe I don’t owe him this, but he’s my friend, and I can’t lose him again the way I did when he left after high school. I can’t watch him lose himself.
“Cold feet are natural,” Diana says when I fail to speak. “But yours are blocks of ice. If you don’t trust him—”
“I trust him.”
“Then what is it, Gina? Are you still mad about the date change?”
“No, I’m not mad,” I say, scrambling to find a reason why when I am, frankly, mad about this. I come up blank.
When I don’t say anything more, she continues.
“I had the coldest feet before my wedding. Kenneth and I had an active sex life before we married—don’t give me that look, it was the 60s, Gina—but I wasn’t prepared for what came next.
It seemed so serious, and I was scared of making a mistake, scared of my life changing. ”
I stare at my shoe, unsure what I’m supposed to say. If fear is natural and expected before getting married, I should be able to think of something I could plausibly be afraid of, aside from becoming a bigamist.
Instead, I think about Vegas. Maybe it was the liquid courage or the scant time between engagement and the ‘I do,’ but I looked happy, not scared, in the photos on Benji’s phone.
“You’re too young to know this, and I doubt your grandmother talked about it,” Diana says, “but I was a bit of a rebel.”
While my grandmother never said a bad word about her friend, I have heard around town that Diana had a wild streak.
Not that I really believed it. It felt more like Havenwood Lore that Diana Gustafson had once taken the old sheriff’s car for a joyride.
Her father had been the sheriff's friend, so nothing was made of the incident.
“Kenneth…” she takes a deep breath and lets it out. “He was there for me. He helped me through a rough time and many rough times after that. I’ve never been good at asking for help. You and I are alike that way. With Kenneth, I never had to ask. He was always there.”
I force a smile. I want to believe Milo will always be there, but do I really believe it?
She hesitates. “I don’t know if Milo can be that someone for you. I don’t know if he’s too wrapped up in his head to see when you need help or if he accepts at face value that you can do anything and everything without questioning whether you should have to.”
A few months ago, I would’ve defended him.
Now…I have to admit she might be right. I enable him to do less by simply doing more myself.
Milo isn’t lazy. He has his firewood service.
He makes furniture and sells it online in his spare time.
But I’d use his side hustles as an excuse to do more than my share at the lodge.
“I’m not afraid to ask him for help.”
“Not afraid. More…reluctant. But you’ll figure it out.” She pauses. “I know you’re worried about the wedding itself. He won’t leave you at the altar.”
“I’m not worried about that,” I tell her. There’s no chance Milo won’t be there, whatever his grandmother fears. “Only that things will go wrong, and our friends and family won’t have a good time.”
“We have an open bar. Everyone will have a good time.”
Any opportunity to tell her the truth vanishes as Diana gets to her feet.
“It will be nice to have you two finally married,” she says, a little wistful. “I won’t worry half as much.”
Yeah, there is no way we can tell her the truth now.
We go back inside, and Diana, who has secret wedding-related business with Cheryl tonight, heads home to change. At least she didn’t mention the prenup—I’ve been dreading its return.
Benji ducks in a few minutes later, sees we’re alone, and asks, “Did she see us?”
“I don’t think so.” He’s already closing the distance between us, so I hold up my hand. “We can’t. We’ve been lucky, but sooner or later, that luck is going to run out.”
He stops a respectable three feet away from me, but the way he’s looking at me, the slow grin sliding over his lips, the flirty way he holds my sandwich out but not so far out I can grab it has me taking a small step closer.
“Stop it,” I say, looking away from him to hide my smile. I shouldn’t be smiling. I should be breathing into a paper bag. There’s a real chance that I’ll legally marry Milo in four days. Flirting with Benji should be the last thing on my mind. And doing it publicly?
“I’m not doing anything,” he says, holding the sandwich over his head, his smile dazzling.
“You are.” I want to run my hands over the flat of his stomach and chest. I want to taste his lips and feel his breath on my skin. I want my damn sandwich, too.
“Just standing here,” he says, all innocent. “With your lunch. Which you can come and get.”
“By lunch, do you mean my sandwich or you?”
He wags his eyebrows and grins.
I glance around like I’m considering—wait, am I considering something here? I shouldn’t be, but god help me, I am.
A car pulls up outside the lodge, then a second.
I’m saved, even if I don’t want to be. I tuck an irritating curl behind my ear.
“Must be the Schumacher’s.” They’ve booked cabin eight, which sleeps twelve.
The only other group large enough to require two cars has already arrived for their weeklong stay.
“Schumacher? They wouldn’t…” Benji’s voice trails as he turns to look out the door. Something sparks in his eyes, but before I can figure out what it means, he’s pushing my sandwich into my hands and running out the door.
I leave the sandwich on the desk and step onto the deck in time to see a middle-aged woman with a blonde bob wrap Benji into an embrace.
People are pouring out of the cars, excited and loud.
Benji releases the woman at a tug on his shirt and swoops a kid into a hug.
A man is there, thumping him on the back while Benji laughs. They look enough alike to be—
Oh shit. Brothers.
I glance toward Diana’s cabin. Her SUV is still visible through the trees. Sweat beads along my hairline, on the back of my neck—everywhere sweat can possibly bead.
This is not how I want to meet Benji’s family. And not right now. God, I hope he hasn’t told them.
“Is this—?” the woman who’d first embraced Benji has him by the arm, beaming up at me.
Benji’s eyes meet mine. “Uh, yeah. That’s Gina.” Realizing how much trouble we’re in drains some of the color from his face, but he smiles, and there’s warmth in his voice when he quietly adds, “My wife.”
My heart is pounding. My smile is frozen to my face as I force myself to walk down the steps to meet Benji’s family as his wife, when everyone else in a fifty-mile radius knows I’m engaged to Milo and believes Benji’s my second cousin.
Benji squeezes my hand, and somehow I survive the introductions. But everyone appears perfectly happy to stand out here under the sun laughing about how they used Benji’s sister-in-law’s name to book, and he never caught on.
If Diana notices the commotion and comes over to investigate, we’re screwed.
Benji must be thinking the same, although he doesn’t look near as close to passing out from sheer terror as I am. “Everybody, back in the cars,” he says, clapping his hands. “I’ll bring you to the cabin. Natalie, go with Gina, and she’ll check you in.”
“We need some ice,” Angela, Benji’s mother, says, starting up the steps.
“I’ll bring you ice,” Benji promises, grabbing her arm.
“Nonsense. We’ll get some while we’re here.” She brushes him off and continues but pauses to admire the lodge's numerous potted plants and prolific garden ornaments. “This place is so cute.”
At the mention of everything else they suddenly need, the entire family follows Benji’s mother into the lodge, except for Benji’s older brother, Thomas, who stays outside to watch the kids play tag.
Before I follow them in, I glance toward Diana’s cabin. She hasn’t left yet.
Benji is behind the desk, handing the key and map to his sister-in-law, Natalie. I step next to him to peer at the computer screen.
Three nights. They’re here until check-out Monday morning.
That’s bad enough, but Benji leans over and whispers, “They could only get three nights here because the cabins are booked, so they found a vacation rental half an hour away so they can spend the rest of the week and the Fourth of July with us.”
They’ll be around the day I “marry” Milo. Or marry him, no air quotes, if we fail. My stomach feels like I’ve eaten a second helping of Mrs. Jenning’s potato salad.
In the chaos of Benji’s family arguing over who forgot to pack what, I slip into the office.
This is too big an emergency for a text. I call Milo, and he answers on the third ring.
“We have a problem,” I say, pinching the bridge of my nose.