Page 49 of Win Some Love Some
I’d kept the truth about the Locke brothers as secret as I could. As secret as I’d kept the night of Nora’s birthday, as secret as I kept everything about myself.
“I heard you were half-brothers. Was that wrong?” He asked, so polite, like he wasn’t lobbing grenades at me.
“No,” I muttered. “But I thought it was a secret.”
But maybe I shouldn’t be surprised. Wyatt wasn’t trying to hide or anything and Liam had spent the whole summer here. Word on the street was Le Coeur had already agreed to sell Liam his grandmother’s old house because Liam had loved it so much.
Liam, who had recently discovered that he was the father of a little girl named Tess. His press conference had been short and to the point. He was a father now. He would share joint custody of his child. All of them together, including his girlfriend Kit, would be a family.
A family. Just like that.
It was practically a Calico Cove tradition.
“Oh, Nick. Things don’t stay secret just because you want them to,” he said. “Not in this town. The Locke brothers both seem to have found love for the Cove. My question is…do you want them here?”
The man sitting across from me had the power to make sure Wyatt didn’t have any property to buy.
I reached for my water to give myself a second to think about it, but I’d already emptied it.
Damn. What was the point of a water person if water glasses never got filled? She was still over there talking to Peter and drawing the angry gazes of every other server in the place.
The idea that I could stonewall Wyatt’s attempt to buy property in the Cove was tempting. It was bad enough I was going to be seeing Liam around town in his off season. But both of them?
It’s not like there was animosity there. I didn’thatethem. I just…didn’t know how I felt. Which Nora would say had something to do with me repressing my emotions. Nora said a lot of things.
“The Cove is a great place to live,” I said eventually. “I wouldn’t stop anyone from settling down here.”
Mal nodded. “Enough said.”
“Hi!” Nora said, coming back to the table to fill up our water glasses. She was all sparkly, oblivious to her angry co-workers. “Did you see Peter is here?”
“The tall guy who couldn’t keep his hands off you?”
Nora didn’t even bother to dignify that little dig with a response. “We hung out all the time when he spent his summers here.”
Not possible, I wanted to say. You were hanging out with me all the time.
“I’ll tell him you both said hello,” Nora said.
“If I want to say hello,” I told Nora. “I’ll say hello. Don’t really know the guy.”
She put her hands on her hips, her lips pursed. “Well, maybe that’s because you don’t make an effort to get to know anyone in the town you live and work in.”
“I know him,” I said, pointing to Mal.
“Yes, but most consider me rather reclusive,” Mal said. “Nora, please offer Peter my sincerest congratulations on his success.”
“He’s working on another book and staying in town for a few months. Can you believe it?” She put her hand on her hip. “So many authors in one tiny town.”
Antony wrote cookbooks and Stockard Bartlett famously had written her fantasy novels here. And now Peter. Considering the population of the town, three authors was a lot. Three authors and one mechanic. Hardly seemed right.
“Did you read his last book?” Nora asked, like she was settling in for a long chat. “I swear I didn’t figure out the killer until the last possible minute.”
“Can we order or do you need to hug other guests?” I asked her.
Nora getting distracted by chatting was very Normal Nora. Although I completely understood why all her coworkers were annoyed by her distraction, I was relieved to see her chatty again.
“Oh,” she waved her hand, knocking the little bud vase in the center of our table into the candle. She quickly set it right before the blooms caught fire. “Whoops. Can’t have that happen again. I already ordered for you.”
