Page 41 of Home for Christmas in July

It must be my imagination, but I could swear they look disappointed.

“Still, I wish we could come with you. But we have a lot of mistletoe favors to make, and Clem says they’re going to take at least fifteen minutes each to print.” Sage frowns. “Are you going to wait for Uncle Nick to go to this club?”

“Of course. I told him I would.”

They exchange a look. “What?”

“Merry told us you two used to date.”

Heat creeps up my neck to my cheeks. “I didn’t realize Nick told his daughters.”

“He didn’t,” she informs me. “Aunt Carol did.”

“Oh. Well, yes, I guess you could say we dated. Briefly. A very long time ago. In college. We met when we were both doing internships in London.” Am I overexplaining? I feel as if I might be overexplaining, so I clamp my mouth shut.

“Right. Mom and Dad wanted him to get some real-world experience because he was supposed to come help them run the resort.”

Sage says, “I wish he had gone to work for them at Tranquility by the Sea. Then maybe it wouldn’t have ended up the way it did.”

I don’t know the details, but over the years, I’ve heard the broad strokes. Nick’s sister and her husband ended up in some financial trouble with both the IRS and a loan shark, and the three sisters have been digging out from under it.

I nod sympathetically. Then I point out, “Of course, if he’dhave done that, he never would have met your Aunt Carol. And you wouldn’t have your cousins.”And he wouldn’t be back in my life.

Thyme agrees, “True. And if our parents hadn’t mishandled the resort, I wouldn’t have met Victor, Sage wouldn’t have met Roman, and Rosemary wouldn’t be Mrs. Detective Dave. I can’t even imagine that alternate reality.”

“So you guyswerea couple,” Sage says, bringing us back to the topic at hand—a topic I have exactly zero desire to explore with Nick’s nieces.

“We had a summer romance, and then it was over. It was time- and location-limited.”

They both cock their heads, confused.

I try again. “Imagine a world without email, video chat, social media, and texting. No cell phones.” As they continue to look at me blankly, I explain, “I know it probably defies understanding, but in the last millennium things were different. When the summer ended, we were an ocean apart. And airmail isn’t the straightest path to a sustainable relationship.”

“So it … fizzled out?” Sage asks.

“Exactly. And, after it fizzled out, your uncle came back to the States for his senior year, but I stayed. I transferred to Oxford to finish up. Then, after I graduated I did a year-long traineeship. Then I moved to Italy to do a master’s program. Meanwhile, your Uncle Nick graduated and got a job at the inn in my old hometown, which he’d heard me talk about so fondly. And that’s how he met Carol.”

They digest this.

Then Thyme draws her eyebrows together. “So you didn’t know they were together, Aunt Carol didn’t know you andUncle Nick had been together, and he didn’t know you and Aunt Carol had been childhood besties? That’s wild.”

“Remember, it’s not as if we were all posting selfies and updates on Picagram and FacePlace back then. The most surprising thing, really, is that Carol tracked me down and asked me to be her maid of honor. My parents had retired to Arizona by then, so she had to do some digging to get an address for me in Ravenna.”

“She wrote youa letterto tell you she was getting married?”

“Yep. I still have it somewhere. She went on and on about this amazing guy but never said his name.” A slow smile spreads across my face at the memory. “So I didn’t knowwhoshe was marrying until I walked into their engagement party and saw your uncle.”

Thyme shakes her head in disbelief.

Sage asks, “Was itsoawkward?”

I answer honestly. “It was a surprise. But, it had been two, almost three, years since I’d seen Nick. And your aunt was my best friend on the planet. I was happy for her. I was happy for him, too.”

“And you were living the life in Italy.”

“Right.” I hope my tone doesn’t convey the utter lie of this statement.

“Still, it’s such a great story. Why did the three of you keep it a secret from Holly, Ivy, and Merry for so long?”

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