“Well, I imagine she is very busy, what with going back to school,” Aunt Irene said.
Lifting the lid from the potatoes, Harper frowned as steam heated her cheeks, probably curling her hair. “Mrs. Montesano is going to college?”
“She’s taking courses at Seton Hill.” Sadie swiped her finger through the frosting bowl when her mom’s back was turned. “She wants to be a social worker.”
Good to know at least one Montesano considered education important. Rose’s middle son could learn a lesson from his mother.
Harper gripped the fork like Norman Bates in Psycho and stabbed the potatoes with more force than necessary. Not that she was letting grumpy, stubborn Eddie affect the rest of her evening or anything. She’d let all that go. Her frustration with him. Her curiosity as to how someone who seemed so quiet and stoic could also be so blatantly antagonistic.
Her shock over the sense that he just hadn’t seemed to like her all that much.
She peeled her fingers from the utensil and laid it on the counter, replaced the lid on the not-quite-done vegetable. How could he not like her? They didn’t even know each other, for God’s sake. Yes, she’d tutored him, but it wasn’t as if they’d had many—or any—deep, meaningful conversations. There was no basis, none at all, for him to form what had seemed to be a distinct aversion to her.
Which was crazy. She happened to be extremely likable. Some would even say to know her was to love her.
Okay, so only her parents had ever said that but that didn’t make it any less true.
“Just be yourself,” Irene advised Sadie as she moved the remaining frosting out of her daughter’s reach. “I’m sure whatever problem Rose has with you will solve itself in good time.”
“Please. I broke her son’s heart. She refuses to forgive me.”
“And he broke yours. But you found your way back to each other and mended those breaks. Forgave each other. It’s the way of love.”
“It’s not that way for everyone.” Harper couldn’t help but point this out. “Beau and I never fought.” And her husband certainly would never have done anything to break her heart.
Sadie raised her eyebrows. “Never?”
“We argued once in a while but nothing major.”
Everything between her and Beau had been so easy. So right. They’d fallen hard for each other at first sight, were engaged within a year of that initial meeting and married six months later. They’d rented an apartment, scrimped and saved for two years until they’d had enough for the down payment on their house. Harper had gotten pregnant a few months after moving in and, after eight and a half months, gave birth to a perfect daughter in under nine hours.
They’d done everything right. Everything.
And still he’d been taken away from her.
“No fights means no makeup sex,” Sadie said. “Or in-the-heat-of-a-fight sex, which is even better.”
Harper sent her a smug grin. “We didn’t need to fight to make sex exciting.”
Sadie snorted out a laugh.
Irene retrieved a huge glass bowl of salad from the stainless steel fridge. “Before we delve any further into the sex lives of my daughter and my favorite niece—”
“Your only niece,” Harper and Sadie said at the same time.
“I’d like to get back to what I was saying, which is that you needn’t worry about Rose staying angry with you. She’ll eventually forgive you for hurting her child.”
“I don’t see you holding a grudge against James,” Sadie muttered.
“That’s because I was on James’s side the whole time.”
And with that piece of insight, Aunt Irene swept out of the kitchen and into the dining room where Harper’s mother, Mary Ann, was in charge of setting the table. Her Uncle Will and dad, Kurt, were entertaining Cassidy in the family room.
“Now that’s just mean,” Sadie called after her mother.
Harper rubbed her cousin’s arm. “Don’t worry. Aunt Irene’s right. Mrs. Montesano will get over whatever’s bothering her. No one can stay mad at you for long.”
“She’s giving it her best effort.” Sadie slid Harper an unreadable look. “Though I’m very glad to hear you say that.”
“I don’t like the sound of that. What did you do now?”
“Why does everyone insist on asking me that?”
“Because we know you?”
Harper loved her cousin like crazy but that didn’t mean she was immune to Sadie’s flaws. She tended to leap into situations feetfirst without looking left or right, laugh off the consequences of her actions and follow every whim that floated through her head.
“You know I only ever have the best of intentions,” Sadie said, laying her hand on her heart.
Her earnest expression sent a chill of trepidation up Harper’s spine. “Uh-huh. Why do I get the feeling those best intentions—” she used air quotes to mark the words “—somehow involve me this time?”
“Because you’re incredibly bright and intuitive.”
“You’re making me nervous, so why don’t you tell me what it is you have up your sleeve so we can both move on with our lives.”
“Actually, that’s what this is all about.” Sadie inhaled deeply and when she spoke, her voice was quiet, compassionate. “You moving on. And I know just the man to help you.”
Harper’s scalp tingled even as a laugh of disbelief escaped her throat. “No. No, no, no. And if that doesn’t cover it, let me add a no way, no how, not going to happen.”
“But Charlie is a great guy. He’s handsome,” Sadie said, ticking good ol’ Charlie’s traits off on her fingers, “charming, successful, funny—”
“Wow. Hard to believe such a man exists in this day and age. Or that he’s still single.”
“It is a shock,” Sadie said as if Harper had been serious. “Because he’s so sweet and really smart and—”
“Loves puppies? Takes his mother and grandmother to church every Sunday? Trained to be an Olympic gymnast but gave it up to become a neurosurgeon? Single-handedly stopped a busload of orphans from driving off a bridge and into a river?”
“He’s not a superhero, Harper.” Shaking her long, puffy hair back from her face, Sadie raised her chin and sniffed. “It wouldn’t hurt you to give Charlie a chance. I told him all about you—”
“Oh, Sadie, you didn’t.”
“And he was intrigued. Extremely intrigued. He’s interested in meeting you. It doesn’t have to be a blind date or even anything major. We could go out—you and Charlie, me and James—have a nice, casual dinner. If you and Charlie hit it off, wonderful. If not, no harm done.”
Irritation burrowed under Harper’s skin, rooted itself at the base of her spine. She did her best to ignore it, to keep her expression relaxed. To remind herself that Sadie meant well and was only trying to help Harper, to do what she thought was best for her.
But if she didn’t knock it off, Harper might very well smash the cake into Sadie’s pretty, interfering face. Except that would be a waste of a really delicious-looking cake.
“Look, I’m sure Charlie is as fabulous as you say.” Though Sadie’s track record with men before