But those plans had gone out the proverbial window when Taylor walked into Brynn’s cozy basement apartment, burst into tears and announced that she had to break her engagement because she was in love with her fiancé’s brother. Somehow, Brynn doubted that her usual routine of “have a Band-Aid/hug/margarita” would cut it this time.
“Maybe you’re just lonely,” she said gently. “After all, Ian’s been in Tanzania for a long time now.”
“Eight months.” Taylor wiped her eyes. “But, Brynn, come on. Real love wouldn’t change in that amount of time, even without the Carter factor.”
Brynn hooked her little fingers together. This wasn’t the time to point out that Taylor had spent a good part of her life complaining about Carter North and his inability to grow up. In fact, just last year, Taylor had said that Carter made the cast of The Hangover look like models of maturity.
No. It was better to focus on the real relationship. Not the one that only existed in Taylor’s head.
“Listen, hon. You’re absolutely right that true love wouldn’t disappear in a few months’ absence, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t, oh, shift. Change. What you’re feeling is probably nothing more than...I don’t know. Confused hormones. You know. Ian is gone but his brother, who looks and sounds and probably smells like him, is still here. You’re just transferring what you feel for Ian onto Carter.”
Taylor let her head drop against the back of the sofa, looking cool and blonde and elegant even as she stared blankly at the ceiling.
“I wish I could believe that. But you want the truth? I think it was the other way around. I think... I mean, Carter was an idiot for most of his life, I know. But it’s like the seeds of what he is to me now were there all along. I think that what drew me to Ian were the things that I could see in Carter, but they weren’t really there yet, you know? Then he came back from law school and everything had settled into place, he was finally who he is supposed to be, but I was already going out with Ian. And then Ian left. And now I see Carter and I think, oh, dear Lord, this is what I was looking for all along....”
The tears began flowing once again. Brynn handed over another tissue.
“It’s such a mess, Brynn. I feel like I’m living this giant lie, but I can’t do anything about it until he comes home. Every night I pray that I’ll wake up in love with Ian, and every day I go to work and see Carter and boom, it hits me all over again.”
“Wait, Carter works at Northstar, too?”
A watery smile flitted across Taylor’s face. “When they say the dairy is a family business, they aren’t kidding. All the brothers work there. Their parents, too, and even their grandmother. The only one who doesn’t is Hank.”
“Who’s he?”
“The youngest. You know. His little girl was supposed to be my flower girl.”
“Oh, right. The one whose wife ran off someplace out west.” Brynn shook her head free of the extraneous Norths and focused on the only one that mattered at the moment. “Back to you. Does he have any idea how you feel?”
“What? God, no. That’s the last thing I need, for Carter to know that I— No. Nothing.”
“That’s all well and good, but I was talking about Ian.”
“Oh.” Taylor bit her lip. “I don’t think so. I still talk to him as much as ever, and email, and all that. He might have been suspicious when I stopped talking about the wedding, but I said something about waiting until he came home so we could plan it together. That seemed to help.”
Considering that Taylor had been planning her wedding since the moment she was able to say the words I do, her sudden refusal to discuss it should definitely have been a tip-off.
Brynn needed to think, which meant she needed to move. She pushed herself out of Old Faithful, the battered recliner that had accompanied her on every move she’d ever made, stretched and patted Taylor’s shoulder.
“I need a beer. How about you?”
“Do you have any white wine?”
“You’ve been my cousin my whole life and you have to ask me that?”
Taylor sighed and slumped against the sofa once again. “Fine. At least tell me it’s light beer.”
It was so easy to tell that Taylor hadn’t grown up in a house full of brothers.
“Of course it’s light.” Note to self: pour Taylor’s drink into a glass.
Alone in her bright yellow kitchen, Brynn opened the fridge, grabbed a couple of bottles and surveyed the shelves. Taylor was a lightweight, and she’d been crying a lot. She probably needed food. There was that pint of Cherry Garcia... But no. That had met the business end of Brynn’s spoon last week.
Another look, another sigh. She knew how to cook a hearty meal with four ingredients and twenty minutes, but she had never mastered the kind of fluffy food that Taylor preferred.
Nor was she loaded with experience to help her cousin. Unlike Taylor, Brynn had never been swimming in admirers. As a teen she’d been needed at home too much to date. Her family obligations had lightened up over the years but it still seemed there were more crises than relationships. And oddly enough, whenever she did dip her toes back into the social pool, there didn’t seem to be many guys who could keep up with her no-bullshit approach to life.
So no, she didn’t have a lot of personal knowledge of matters of the heart. But she had the desire to help and the ability to make a plan and carry it through. Those, she was sure, were the skills that would go furthest in helping Taylor. They had always worked so far.
Her mind made up, Brynn grabbed a block of cheddar, tossed it on a plate and added a sleeve of crackers. Then, her mother’s admonitions in her head, she removed the crackers from the paper, arranged them in a circle around the cheese and balanced a knife on the side.
Martha Stewart was undoubtedly quivering in her hand-tooled Italian leather boots.
She poured Taylor’s beer into a mug, shoved her own bottle in one pocket of her sweatpants and the opener in the other, grabbed everything with ease—thanks to a college career spent waiting tables—and sailed back to the sofa. The good news was that Taylor had stopped crying. The bad news was that she still looked as wan and lifeless as if she’d been plucked from the mondo snowbank that loomed outside Brynn’s window, pressing against the glass like it was contemplating a career in breaking and entering. Ah, the joys of winter in eastern Ontario.
Spring couldn’t come fast enough.
Brynn set the food and drinks on the old trunk that served as her coffee table, opened her beer and indulged in a long, steadying swallow. Then and only then did she trust herself to respond with the brisk compassion she knew was needed.
“Okay. This is a pickle, no doubt about it, but we can fix it.”
“I can’t think how.” Taylor eyed her beer. “Except maybe with mind-altering drugs.”
“You only wish. The answer is going to be harder, but trust me, it’ll be worth it. All we have to do is make you fall in love with Ian again.”
Taylor choked on her drink. Oops. Maybe that hadn’t been the best timing.
“Haven’t you heard anything I said? I don’t love Ian. I probably never did. I’m in love—”
“With Carter. Yes, I know. But, Tay, come on. Don’t you think it’s suspicious that you never started seeing Carter in this new and dazzling light until Ian was gone?”
Taylor’s