Page 29 of The Fun Part
“Helpingmeout?”
“Yeah, your mom said you wanted my help.”
Her lips purse. “Hmm.” She backs out of the driveway. “I have a plan. Well, Iwillhave a plan.”
“You know some back roads?”
“Yes, but that’s not what I meant.” She bangs on the steering wheel. “It’s so obvious I can’t believe I fell for her faux surprise.”
“Faux surprise? You mean from your mom? When?”
“Who else? And the denial! Ugh. I should’ve known when she warned me off you the first time we met. Why say I should stay away from you unless she wanted me to do the opposite? She probably counted on my dry spell. Oh, that is so wrong. And then they sent us to Happy Endings to put the catering dishes away. She wanted us to hook up in that closet.”
“What!”
She shakes her head. “My aunts warned me that one day I’d be caught in her matchmaking web, but I wouldn’t know it until it was too late. So devious. So subtle. If I wanted her matchmaking, I would’ve joined the club!”
“I’m lost. What club?”
She glances at me before making a turn. “It’s a long story. Basically, Mom started the Happy Endings Book Club as a way to matchmake all of her friends, which would ultimately lead to a thriving wedding planning business.”
“Matchmaking for work?”
“Oh, it was subtle, persistent but subtle. From what I heard, only women showed up to the book club, and it became a solid friend group.”
“Cool.”
She presses her lips into a flat line. “That’s what they thought, but she was still working in the background. Joke’s on her because every single friend found the love of their life before she did. Dad was there the whole time right under her nose, but neither of them could see what they had until her mom married his dad.”
I cock my head at the implications. “Your parents are stepbrother and stepsister?”
“It’s not gross like that. They were already out of the house, around our age—oh, now it makes even more sense. I’m the age she was. You’re the age—”
“Me?”
She stops at a traffic light and looks at me, an unholy gleam in her eyes. “Here’s the plan. We’ll pretend to have a serious relationship to get Mom to admit she’s happy we’re together, which will expose her devious matchmaking.”
“I can’t lie to your mom.”
“Not lie exactly. We’ll go out together in public. She’ll just draw the wrong conclusion. Subtle, see? Like her matchmaking. And then I’ll catch her in the act, rat her out to Dad, and this will never be a problem again.”
“Weren’t you all about keeping things between us a secret?”
“That only applied for our one-night stand. Discretion in a small town, not wanting to deal with Mom’s I told you so.”
“More like six-night—”
“She way overstepped. Cal, she made me think I was being paranoid.”
I keep my mouth shut, even though she sounds a wee bit paranoid.
She continues, “Look, I love my weird mom, but she has a long history of matchmaking, foisted some completely unhinged candidates on me in the past, and even after making a solemn promise to my dad that she’d never do it again, she did. With you! So here we are. Are you in?”
Hmm, fake public dating doesn’t sound very fun. And won’t her parents be mad that we faked them out? I don’t need to make enemies in my new adopted town. I’ve got a law practice to keep afloat.
I attempt to reason with her. “Your mom warned you away from me because she thought I wasn’t good enough for you—”
She squeezes my arm. “You’re plenty good enough.”
