LITMIR.BIZ

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her brother’s plate.

      “I was still eating that!”

      “Come finish it in the kitchen,” his younger sister said tartly. “I’ve been exiled from the discussion, I don’t see why you should get to stay.”

      As the three of them went into the adjoining room, Douglas explained that if he had stayed, Vi would’ve had a mole who could fill her in later. Neely barely made out Vi’s retort that, for a lawyer, Douglas was surprisingly unobservant, only noting “guy things” and skimping on pertinent details.

      Neely couldn’t decide if she was glad her siblings were gone, or if she felt more nervous facing her parents alone. Well, her mother, anyway, still formidable at sixty-seven. The Professor wasn’t the sort who made anyone nervous, unless his history students had feared failing grades back when he taught at the community college.

      “You children.” Heaving a sigh at her end of the table, Beth Mason shook her head. Her steel-colored curls, set for the last twenty years at Lana’s Beauty Shop, didn’t move so much as a strand. “Some people think parenting stops when the kids leave the house, but that’s just not so. Take Vidalia for instance—you know the nights I stay up worrying about that girl? And now you, who has been nearly as dependable as my Savannah, give us a heart attack with this news that you’re getting married out of the blue sky. You’re not…in the family way, are you?”

      “Pregnant?” Neely choked on a horrified laugh. “At my age?” She had the urge to make the sign of the cross herself.

      “I was over forty when I had Vidalia. Turned out to be a good thing, since she would have driven me prematurely gray if I’d had her young. But it’s nice to hear you aren’t getting married for that reason. I’m glad you’re in love. Still, you’d think that would be the sort of thing a girl told her family.”

      Neely squirmed in her chair. When Robert had kissed her on the beach during an administrative retreat in Key West, she hadn’t told anyone—not even her best friend, Leah. What if the incident had been the by-product of fruity green umbrella drinks and nothing more? But shortly after, he’d asked her to come cheer him on at a pool championship and invited her to one of the meet-and-greet cookouts he and several of his apartment neighbors frequently threw. As she and Robert magically passed that invisible barrier between becoming a couple and actual coupledom, she’d shared the news with Leah, but neglected to bring it up during the monthly Sunday dinners with her family. She’d told herself she was forty-five and hardly needed anyone’s permission to date, but that wasn’t it.

      Though her immediate family had finally stopped nagging her about having a man in her life, she knew the second they caught wind of one, the resulting matrimonial pressure would be intense. As would the pressure to have Robert over for dinner. Neely barely made it through these gatherings with her own sanity intact; she was reluctant to subject the man she loved to one.

      Of course, she loved her family, too. She just didn’t consider them confidantes. Vi was of a completely different generation, Douglas was normally wrapped up in his own life, and Savannah…well, Neely would just as soon keep her Savannah issues repressed. And Lord knew what Robert would make of her parents. He’d thought it was endearingly odd that the Masons had deliberately named all four of their children after Georgia cities, but that wasn’t even the tip of her family’s idiosyncrasies.

      Robert was one of the few people not related by blood who could get away with calling Neely by her given name, Cornelia. The way her mother was glaring at her now, she was about to get the full “Cornelia Annette” treatment.

      “I’m sorry, Mom. You know I’m…a private person. At first, I just wasn’t comfortable telling you all about him because I wasn’t sure where the relationship was going, if anywhere. Then, once a few months had passed, trying to figure out how to backpedal and tell you we were involved was awkward.”

      “So you waited until the engagement?” Beth arched an eyebrow. “At least we found out before the wedding invitation showed up in the mail. I suppose that’s something.”

      Neely bit back a groan—her mother’s sarcasm was partially deserved and entirely expected. It was why she’d asked Robert to let her tell them alone. After she’d accepted his proposal, they’d headed for his bedroom, and she’d floated on bliss and champagne until waking at three in the morning to the realization that she’d have to tell the Masons today. He’d wanted to come with her, but the second her family saw a man walk in, they would have known something was afoot. They would have ferreted out the engagement before she’d even got past the foyer, and everything afterward would have been pointed remarks and interrogation. It seemed an inhospitable way to repay him for such a lovely night.

      “How old did you say he was again?” Beth demanded.

      I didn’t. “Forty-seven.”

      Her mother sniffed. “Divorced, I suppose.”

      Neely bit the inside of her lip at her mom’s hypocrisy. To her mother, divorced still meant damaged goods and scandal; yet Beth thought her only son could do no wrong, was shocked that his wife had left him and just knew a more deserving woman lurked in his future.

      “Actually, Mom, Robert’s never been married. We have that in common.”

      “Pushing fifty and he’s never settled down?” Beth narrowed her sharp hazel eyes. “What’s wrong with him that no woman would have him? Or is he the kind who runs from commitment?”

      “Would you prefer he was divorced?”

      “Don’t you sass me. I don’t care how old you are, I’m still your mama and I won’t be sassed at my own table. I’m unhappy enough that this husband-to-be of yours didn’t do us the honor of coming to meet us.”

      “That’s my fault. I wanted to tell you alone and stopped him from coming. We argued about it this morning.” Quibbled, anyway.

      Beth looked somewhat mollified. “Well, we should meet him soon.”

      “As quickly as we can all fit it into our schedules,” Neely promised. “I’ll call you this week.”

      “You work with him—is he an accountant, too?”

      Which was nicer than the way Vi would have asked. So is he another soulless number-cruncher? Neely figured her baby sister had plenty of “soul” for the whole family…maybe not the budget or discipline to pay rent regularly, but definitely spunk and imagination. “Not exactly. He works in market analysis. We collaborate on reports for our boss, especially on prospective deals. Robert’s a visionary who puts together projections on the potential benefits of a deal, and I work the figures to make sure it’s affordable and evaluate realistic profit margins.” They were a good team.

      But Beth was interested in different details. “Where are his people from?”

      Oh, boy. “His parents live in Lawrenceville.”

      “So he grew up in Gwinnett?”

      “Went to high school there, when they relocated from Vermont. Decades ago.” Not that any number of years could help them now, she knew.

      “They’re Yankees?”

      That drew signs of life from Gerald Mason. “During the War Between the States, the Vermont 4th Infantry—”

      “Oh, for the love of…” Beth had never, in Neely’s memory, actually finished her oft-repeated phrase; the siblings used to make a game of speculating. For the love of God? Probably not, as that would fall under Beth’s definition of blasphemy. The love of Mike? Pete? Elvis? Six-armed alien sexbots? The latter being Vi’s contribution.

      “Gerald, our daughter has informed us that she’s taking a husband. Surely you’d like to contribute something to the conversation other than regiment trivia?”

      He offered Neely a soft, somehow unfocused smile. If he’d been sitting closer to her, he probably would have patted her on the arm. “Congratulations, sweet pea. Do you need us to pay for the wedding?

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