Page 36 of Alistair

“Well, no. I mean, is anything as good as chocolate lava cake? But the cake Penny picked out is delicious.”

“When you get married, you get a chocolate cake for your old dad, okay?”

Her heart thudded a little irregularly at the wordmarried. She and Alistair had only been dating a week! But she’d be lying if she hadn’t been thinking he was her forever-guy. That she could picture the two of them standing up in front of their family and friends and promising to love each other forever.

“Sounds good to me,” Alistair said.

“Oh, it’s way too soon for that kind of talk,” her mom said with a sniff.

“Hey, you promised to marry me after a month,” her dad said to her mom, then winked at Maggie. “I knew the moment I met her that she was going to be my wife.”

“It took a month to wear her down?” Maggie asked.

Her mom laughed. “It was love at first sight for me too. I just wanted to make him work for it a bit.”

Maggie looked at Alistair and found he was grinning. “I’ll work for it too, sweetheart,” he said, giving her a quick kiss. “You’re worth it.”

Okay, now her heart was really pounding. He made her feel amazing and warm all over.

“I think we can leave after the cake,” she said, when small plates with wedges of white-and-pink cake were set in front of them. “I’d like to go to my place.”

“Sure thing,” he said.

“First.”

“First what?” he asked.

“I’d like to go to my place first.” She leaned over and whispered in his ear, “To pack a bag for the weekend. If that’s okay? I keep running home every day to change. It seems kind of silly.”

His eyes darkened and she swore the smell of his cologne got a little stronger. An earthy, warm scent that she loved. “That would be perfect. I wanted to ask you if you’d like to do that, but I was afraid you might think it was too fast.”

She hummed. “I think we both keep thinking the other person thinks it will be too fast, but we haven’t actually asked each other.”

“Let’s ask each other when we’re out of here. It’s a pretty serious conversation to have in public.”

“I agree.”

They ate the cake, listening to her parents talk about their first date and subsequent engagement at the one-month mark. They’d waited a year to get married, but only because people kept telling them it was too fast. “Here we are, forty-five years later,” her dad said. “People often don’t know what they’re talking about.”

Maggie agreed one hundred percent.

When the cake was finished, they said goodbye to her parents and family, and wove through the tables and crowd to find her sister and husband.

“I was wondering when you were going to come apologize,” Penny said.

“Apologize for what?” Maggie asked.

“You said you weren’t going to do this,” Brian said.

Penny waved a dismissive hand. “You caused a scene. All anyone can talk about is how your new boyfriend put his hands on Seth. Are you trying to get Brian fired?”

“That’s not what happened,” Maggie said. “And why would Brian get fired? They work in different departments.”

“Seth’s and Brian’s bosses are friends, so yeah, Seth could get back at you by causing trouble for Brian. I think you should go apologize to Seth. After you apologize to me.”

“First of all,” Maggie said, seething, “he put his hands onme. Alistair stepped in to protect me. If you want to side with Seth over your own sister, then I think it’s good that we were planning to leave. Why do you keep doing this to me? Why do you insist on blaming me for someone else’s bad behavior?”

Penny burst into tears, and Maggie took a step back.

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