The lying felt like crap, but all he could do was keep his relationship with Liz one hundred percent platonic in the future and focus on putting himself out there in the dating world a little more. Once his mind was on anybody but Liz, it would be a lot easier to face her brother.
They all shot the bull for a while, until Josh started checking his watch every few minutes and keeping an eye on the end of the driveway.
“We should get out of here,” Mitch said, “before guests start arriving and Josh puts us to work.”
“Yeah, we’ve got a long drive ahead of us,” Ryan agreed.
“You’re not staying here?” Drew knew the family rooms were still kept separate, so there was plenty of room.
“Not this time. We have a few things we wanted to get done around the house this weekend while Nick’s with his dad.”
The guys went into the kitchen, which was where most of the women were gathered. The dishes had been dried and put away, except for a plate on the counter covered in crumbs.
Katie smiled at them. “If you all hadn’t run away so fast so you didn’t have to help with the dishes, you would have known there were brownies. Now they’re gone. Sorry.”
“You don’t look sorry.” Josh slapped her on the ass.
Since it looked like the goodbyes were going to take a while, Drew took that opportunity to duck out of the kitchen for a bathroom break. He went through the living room, but as soon as he turned the corner to the hall, he almost ran smack into Liz.
He came to an abrupt halt, struck by how similar this moment was to the last time he and Liz had been in the lodge at the same time.
“Wow. Déjà vu, huh?” Liz said with a tight laugh, as though she’d been thinking the same thing.
“Yeah.” The last thing he wanted was for the awkwardness to rear its head again. “Except this time the fact you ladies ate all the brownies will give me the willpower to keep on walking.”
She narrowed her eyes and the corners of her mouth tilted up in a wicked little smile. “What if I tell you I didn’t have a brownie?”
He should have run, he thought. Maybe not literally, but when he saw her, he should have stepped around her and kept on walking. He wasn’t sure his willpower could withstand blatant flirtation from her, so he needed to nip it in the bud. “Not twenty minutes ago, I told your brother I was thinking about work when I was really thinking about you. Lying to him feels really shitty, so I don’t want to add to the list of things I’m hiding.”
“I was just playing, Drew.” The tightness replacing the flirtation in the set of her mouth made him wonder if he wasn’t the only one lying. “The last thing I want to do is cause any more trouble between you and Mitch.”
She tried to brush by him, but he stopped her by putting a hand on her arm. “You have no idea how much I wish things were different.”
Her eyes met his for a few seconds and he thought he saw a shimmer of regret there, but then she shrugged. “It is what it is. I’m your best friend’s sister and you’re a guy who wants a lot more commitment than I have to offer. So we’re going to be friends and stop beating ourselves up about something we can’t go back in time and change.”
She started walking again, but he said her name and she stopped. “Even if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t change what happened between us.”
“Yeah? Well, I not only had one brownie, but I had three.” She gave him a saucy wink and went to say goodbye to her family.
*
Liz was up bright and early on her first day at her new job. Or maybe not bright, since the sun wasn’t fully up yet, but definitely early. With her hair pulled up into a ponytail and her name badge pinned to one of the Trailside Diner T-shirts Paige had given her, she felt as ready as she’d ever be.
She wasn’t too worried about waiting tables. It was all she’d ever done, and at some restaurants a lot busier and more fast-paced than Whitford could offer. She’d memorized the menu, and the boss was her sister-in-law. But a new job was still a new job, and low-level anxiety hummed through her.
An hour later, she’d shadowed Paige as she opened the diner for business and served the first wave of early birds. Carl, the first-shift cook, didn’t say a lot, but Liz could see he put out an amazing-looking breakfast. And, since she wasn’t much for cooking herself, she already knew they tasted as good as they looked.
Once the initial rush petered out, Paige started giving her a more in-depth tour. “I haven’t decided if I want to invest in a computer system or not yet. Maybe next year. For now, it’s old school. Write down the order, stick the sheet up in the pass-through window and then, when they’re done eating, use the calculator to write down the total. Don’t forget the tax.”