Page 36 of Take Me to the Wedding

Something was churning inside my brain, niggling at me like a toddler yanking on their mother’s coat, creeping up on me like a sneak attack.

Good-looking, kind, funny, smart. A golden quadrangle of traits, one of Oma’s favorite expressions.

Caleb had it. The golden quadrangle.

I could never find all four in one man. I usually settled for good-looking and smart. And if funny was thrown in, I was okay for a while.

“Thanks for all that,” Lilly said, patting me on the arm. “You must care about Caleb a lot to want to explain all that to me.”

“I feel terrible for what happened,” I said honestly. “I just wanted to correct the damage I caused.”

There. I’d said it. I’d done what I came here to do. I’d given Caleb his best shot. If he was angry, it would only be for me telling the truth. I felt like I’d done what I needed to do, like shaking sand from my feet.

Caleb. His stupidly handsome, smiling face was stuck in my brain like an earworm song you can’t stop singing all day.Baby Shark do do do do do do…

“Hey, you two.” Suddenly there he was, emerging from the forest path, striding toward us in his confident way with his lean, muscled legs, his tanned skin, and his bright white smile.

He hadn’t heard me, had he?

That seemed the least of my worries. At that moment, my head was spinning, my hands were clammy, and the rest of me was sweaty. Had I forgotten to drink water? Sometimes I did that at work.

But this felt different. I felt like a Mack truck had just hit me, knocked me off-kilter and sent me flying.

I was falling for the guy I was trying so hard to convince Lilly to love.

And that was very messed up.

* * *

Caleb

I took in the two women on the bench. They couldn’t have been more different. Lilly’s hair was sun-kissed, backlit by the warm afternoon sun, her eyes blue as the water in front of us. She’d somehow managed to find time to change outfits and was wearing a sundress with daisies on it and sandals. She looked like a perfect work of art.

My heart ached with nostalgia, because how many times had I seen her like that? Knees up, supporting a big sketchbook, head cocked a little to the side, hand poised above the paper, lips pressed together, every part of her in total concentration.

Sam, on the other hand, looked stricken on seeing me. Guilty maybe. After all, I’d just overheard her telling Lilly I was a great guy.

Sam with her dark silky hair bound into a ponytail and the fresh, honest smile. Who wore a plain gray T-shirt and jeans shorts and white tennies that were a little worn.

I wasn’t angry that she’d gone to bat for me. How could I be? I’d heard her list all my sterling qualities—and it didn’t seem like she was lying.

Before I could wonder why I was more interested in what Sam thought of me than Lilly, Lilly scooted over, so I sat down on one end of the bench. I’d brought a book with me, just in case I couldn’t find her, so I set it in my lap. For a moment, I took in the lake, shaded by willows, some lily pads floating on its mirrored surface. A peaceful place, but I was feeling the opposite of peaceful.

It wasn’t because the stakes were high with Lilly. Sam had set me up for success, and now I had only to take the ball and run with it and see what would happen.

The confusion was that Sam wasn’t at all who I’d initially thought she was. She was nice and funny and kind—and stunning in a very different way than Lilly. I was struggling to untwist my thoughts and actually say something when Sam stood up and walked around us, placing her hands on the bench behind us.

I glanced up to see her closing her eyes, concentrating deeply. My heart started pounding. She was about to do her Oma thing.On us.

My mouth went dry as I tried to pretend nothing was happening. “This place reminds me of that camp we went to once when we were kids,” I said, just to saysomething. “Remember?”

“Oh, I forgot about that place,” Lilly said. “What was it called again?”

As Sam rested her hand purposely on my shoulder. I felt my skin prickle beneath her touch. A frisson of electricity.

I reminded myself that I was a doctor. Science was everything. Experimental studies, statistics, results—those were the foundation of medicine. In ortho we had tests, signs, and maneuvers for diagnosis—the Abbot method, the Achilles bulge sign, the squeeze test, the Addis test, the shoulder abduction sign, the active glide test on the knee—not Oma’s ill-defined matchmaking hocus-pocus that Sam seemed to think could be inherited.

As if such a thing was even possible.

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