Page 58 of The Troublemaker

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THEVISITWASgoing well. It was. Dinner the night before had been so nice with Byron, and she wasn’t exactly sure why there had been a weird gnawing sensation inside her ever since.

She wanted to press her fists into her eyes and make it all go away. Except she shouldn’t want that. She should be happy. This was the problem. She couldn’t quite sort out where her happiness was supposed to be in all of this. Right now it all just felt like change. And it made her want to retreat to what was normal.

Because what if at the end of the week Byron still wanted her to move to Virginia?

His family was there, and her dad was gone. It made sense. That was the problem. She didn’t want to move, but she understood why he wanted her to.

That was why she had asked Lachlan to come over and have breakfast with her. Because it felt like it might be a normal thing. Eating at the café with him.

She drove in her mobile veterinary unit so she could leave straight from there to go to her appointments for the day, and he drove up in his rugged pickup. They ordered coffee, and each got the large traditional breakfast with eggs, bacon, hash browns and she got a biscuit, while he opted for a short stack of pancakes.

She poured ketchup all over everything but the bacon and biscuits.

“Little philistine,” he said.

“You’re not going to put ketchup on your potatoes?” she asked.

“Sure. But not on my eggs.”

“Ketchup is wonderful on eggs,” she said.

He snorted. But this felt good. It felt right. Normal. It did something to dispel the strangeness that had been there between her and Lachlan for the last little bit, and it eased that sense of the unknown that she was currently grappling with in ways she didn’t want to.

“So how are things?” he asked. “I’m surprised you’re not having breakfast with the fiancé.”

“I wanted to see you,” she said.

The corner of his mouth turned up, and he looked unreasonably satisfied. He took a bite of his non-ketchup eggs.

“Can’t say as I blame you.”

“Well. How are you? Have you gone out with Fia again?”

“I have not. Though I’m thinking I ought to. Soon. We didn’t really go out, though. She came to my house.”

“Yeah. I guess that’s different.”

“This is going out,” he said, gesturing between the two of them, and she didn’t know why he had said that.

“Well, on a technicality, then, I don’t suppose I’ve been out with Byron since he’s been here, either.”

“This is practically illicit, in that case,” he said.

She wrinkled her nose against that teasing. Because it was skimming against something raw inside her that she didn’t want to examine.Hewas clearly not raw.

“So are you in love with Fia?” she asked.

“Oh, hell no,” he said. “But I do think she might be a great candidate for marriage.”

“You say that like it’s...obvious that you wouldn’t be in love with her?”

“How can you be in love with somebody after one poker game?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t think you can be. But I think it’s funny that you’re so set on marrying her, when you aren’t in love with her. When you actually sound pretty dismissive about love. Why exactly do you want to get married, Lachlan?”

“I want the stability. I want something normal. I look at the things that it’s done in my brothers’ lives...”

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