Julie laughed. “No,” she said with a shake of her head, “he’s a McKettrick.”
Paige took a sip from her wineglass—and nearly choked. She set the drink aside and promptly forgot all about it. “The difference being...?”
Julie and Libby exchanged knowing glances over the rims of their wineglasses.
“If you still care about Austin,” Julie said presently, after a visible gathering of internal forces, “there’s nothing wrong with that. You’re not in high school anymore, after all, and there’s no denying that the man is all McKettrick.”
Paige folded her arms. “Look,” she said, “I know you’re both madly in love with McKettrick men, and I’m happy for you—I really, truly am—but if you think I’m going to decide all is forgiven and fall into Austin’s bed as if nothing ever happened, you’re sadly mistaken.”
“She’s not going to fall into Austin’s bed,” Libby said to Julie very seriously.
“She’s not going to fall back into Austin’s bed,” Julie said.
Paige stepped between them and waved both arms. “Hello? I’m in the room,” she told her sisters. “I can hear everything you’re saying.”
Libby and Julie laughed. And they raised their wineglasses to each other.
“I give them seventy-two hours,” Libby said.
“Nonsense,” Julie replied matter-of-factly. “Paige will be twisting the sheets with Austin by tomorrow night at the latest.”
“You’re both crazy,” Paige said, flustered. “Just because neither of you can resist a McKettrick man, doesn’t mean I can’t!”
“She’s got it bad,” Libby told Julie.
“Worst case I’ve ever seen,” Julie decreed.
Paige simmered.
“About the bridesmaid’s dress,” Libby said, evidently determined to make bad matters worse. “I was thinking daffodil yellow, with ruffles, pearl buttons and lots of lace trim—”
“Lavender,” Julie countered cheerfully. “With a bustle.”
That did it. “Why not throw in a lamb and one of those hoops you roll with a stick?” Paige erupted. “And maybe I could skip down the aisle?”
The picture must have delighted Libby and Julie, because they both laughed uproariously.
Libby refilled her own wineglass, and Julie’s. Paige’s was still full.
Julie elbowed Paige aside to finish making the salad. She was, after all, the cook in the family.
“You’re really afraid of The Dress, aren’t you, Paige?” Libby asked, her eyes sparkling with happiness and well-being.
“I’m the Lone Bridesmaid,” Paige pointed out, calmer now but still discouraged. “I have nightmares about that dress.”
“To hear her tell it,” Julie told Libby, “neither of us has any taste at all.”
“Will you two stop talking as though I’m not even here?” Paige asked. “If you’d just agree to let me pick out my gown, since I’m the one who has to wear it—”
“What fun would that be?” Libby said to Julie. “We’re the brides, after all.”
Paige, as the youngest, flashed back to the old days, when the three of them were kids and her older sisters had tossed a ball back and forth between them, over her head, making sure it was always out of her reach. They called the game “Keep Away.”
The term seemed especially apt that night, though she couldn’t have explained the idea. If ever two people had had her back, no matter what the situation might be, her sisters were those two people.
As a kid, she’d tagged after them, wanting so badly to go wherever they went, do whatever they did, to be part of their circle.
Growing up, she’d loved wearing their clothes and mimicking their voices and copying their mannerisms. Now, they were marrying brothers. Was some unconscious part of her still trying to follow in Libby and Julie’s footsteps? The possibility was chilling to consider.
“That’s it,” Paige said decisively, though without rancor. “I’m dropping out of the wedding party. You both have plenty of friends, and I’m sure some of them are willing to make absolute fools of themselves at the ceremony by wearing some god-awful dress—lavender with a bustle, or yellow, with ruffles—”
“Maybe we shouldn’t have teased her,” Julie told Libby.
“Of course we should have teased her,” Libby said. “She’s our little sister.”
Julie looked speculative. “If you married Austin,” she ruminated, turning to Paige, “we could have a triple wedding, and you wouldn’t have to worry about hoops and lambs and bustles, because you’d be wearing a bridal gown.”
Paige flung both hands out from her sides. “Why didn’t I think of that?” she scoffed. “I’ll just marry Austin. To hell with my goals, my plans, my personal standards. To hell with everything!”
Julie reached out to touch Paige’s arm. “Honey,” she said softly, “we didn’t mean to upset you—”
Paige drew in a deep, sharp breath, let it out slowly. Shook her head. “It’s all right, I just—I just need some time alone, that’s all.”
Having said that, she left Garrett’s glam second-story apartment—one of three such spaces comprising that floor of the house and part of a third—and to their credit, neither Julie nor Libby called her back or tried to follow.
Downstairs, Paige crossed the main kitchen, retrieved her jacket and purse from the guest apartment and slipped out through the back door. It was dark, and stars glittered from horizon to horizon in great silvery splotches of faraway light.
On the other side of the courtyard wall, the kids were laughing, the dogs were barking, while the men talked in quiet voices.
Paige couldn’t make out their words, wouldn’t have tried. She needed quiet to collect her scattered thoughts, get some perspective. So she walked to her car—which she’d parked near the barn instead of in the garage as she usually did, flustered, at the time, because of Austin’s close proximity—got in and started the engine.
She drove down the long driveway, through the open iron gates, and out onto the highway, headed for town. She switched on the radio, choosing a classical spot on the dial instead of her favorite country station. Paige felt too raw to listen to country music at the moment, and she was woman enough to admit it, by God.
This last thought made her smile.
Drive, she told herself. Don’t think about him.
Between the soft piano concerto flowing out of the dashboard speakers and the semihypnotic effect of driving alone over a rural road, cosseted in purple twilight and under a canopy of stars, Paige was finally able to relax a little—and then a little more.
It was as though Austin McKettrick possessed his own magnetic field; the farther she got from him, the easier it was to breathe, to reason. To simply be.
Reaching the outskirts of town, Paige slowed down, drove automatically toward the house where she and Libby and Julie had grown up, with their dad. Libby had lived there, before and after Will Remington’s death from pancreatic cancer, with her dog, Hildie, and had run the Perk Up Coffee Shop to support herself.
Now, thanks largely to their mother, Marva, and her questionable driving skills, the shop was gone, along with the mom-and-pop grocery store that had once stood beside it, the lot totally empty.