Page 63 of One Steamy Pucking Meet Cute

She sets the plate down in front of me and then leans over Walker, baby-talking and tickling him for a few moments before giving me a response. “Yes. Sort of. I have minions for the prep, and they can manage not burning the place down for little stretches of time. Honestly, it’s easier with Edgar on vacation. He’s a bad influence on some of the younger guys. I’m almost sorry he’ll be back tomorrow..”

“That makes two of us. These cookies look good.”

“Then eat them!” She says, picking a cookie up and shoving it toward my face.

I laugh, taking a huge bite and nearly dying. “So good. Oh my God.”

Mia beams. “I know they are. I’ve been messing with the recipe. Baking really is fun. We spent a lot of time on it in school, but I haven’t had as much time to work on it until recently. Did you know altitude has a big impact on recipes? Isn’t that crazy? Something about the oxygen and–”

I pretend to start snoring.

Mia wrinkles her nose at me but smiles. “So… the wedding is getting closer. How are you feeling?”

“Good!” Was my voice a little too high-pitched there?

Mia purses her lips. “You’ve been telling me to push back a whole lot of stuff. Stuff that can’t all wait until the last minute unless you guys are planning to tie the knot in a random church in Vegas or something. And I don’t want to pry… okay, that’s a lie. I’m going to pry. Is something wrong between you two? Because sometimes, it looks like you’re getting cold feet. Like you don’t want to make any plans too concrete because you don’t know if it will actually happen.”

“Nope,” I say, around cheeks full of cookies.

Mia crosses her arms. “You know… everybody will be annoyed with me for spilling the beans on this, but I’m tired of pretending.”

“Pretending what?” I ask. Why do I feel like dread is slowly slipping its cold fingers around my neck right now?

“Cade told me he overheard some guy telling you that you had to get married or you would lose the B&B. Months ago. He also told me that Jake stormed into the room and claimed he was marrying you mid-conversation. From how Cade tells it, you sounded as surprised by that as everybody else. Faker,” she adds with a satisfied smile.

All I can do is stare at her with my jaw hanging open. “Cade told you all that?”

Mia’s got her eyebrows up like a disapproving schoolteacher. “You say that like Cade is the one at fault. But I was thinking maybe the girl who is supposed to be my best friend in the entire world might be the one to be irritated with. You know, for not telling me something this huge.”

I let my head hang. “You’ve known? The whole time?”

“Yep.”

“You just let me keep thinking you didn’t? Why didn’t you say something?”

“It seemed like a fitting punishment. I could tell you were squirming. I know you suck at keeping secrets. But now I need to know if the wedding is actually happening. I’ve got some people I like involved in planning this thing, and I want to give them fair notice if you aren’t going to go through with the ceremony.”

I have a confusing ball of relief, shame, guilt, and giddiness at war inside me. Finding out that Mia already knows takes a huge weight off my shoulders. When I let myself stress about telling the truth to everybody, Mia was the one I was most afraid of. Paisley came next, along with some of the guys from the hockey team. But I hate that she has known and watched me continue to let the lie stretch on.

“I wanted to tell you,” I say slowly. “But we also thought it would be unfair to anybody who knew. We’d be asking them to lie. And the more people we told, the more likely it was to get out.”

“Yep. Already know your excuses. Andi told me.”

“You talked to Andi about this, too?” I gasp.

She laughs. “Well, duh. As soon as Cade told me, I told Andi. Then Andi told Paisley by accident because she thought I already had. But Paisley had already heard about it from Grams and Edgar. And they–”

I hold up a hand to stop her, eyes closed as I take all that in. “Wait. How many people know, exactly?”

“Um… Everybody?”

The word hits me like a freaking truck. “Everybody?”

“Pretty much, yeah? Nobody has the heart to tell you they know. We’re all just kind of enjoying the excuse to party. And who doesn’t like a wedding? Even if it’s fake.”

I put my face in my hands. “Oh my God. Does Jake know that everybody knows?”

“No… When we told the whole team, everybody agreed that he deserved to squirm, too. The guys said he was an asshole for not trusting them to keep a secret. Apparently, Jesse thought we should tell him, but I think that’s only because he was the one guy who got to know before everyone else.”

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