“Glad to hear it. Always liked your mom. Never been able to figure out how a classy woman like that raised a smart-mouthed pain-in-the-ass like you.”
“Really?” Jill drawled. “This from someone whose parents are practically saints and yet somehow produced a complete grade-A—”
“And your flight?” he interrupted. “Flight was good?”
Jill stared at him. “Seriously. We’re doing this?”
“Doing what?”
Jill reached over and punched him in the shoulder. “I haven’t seen you in three months, and you want to talk about my flight?”
He lifted a shoulder. “What do you want to talk about?”
Oh, I don’t know. How about the fact that you never called. That I barely heard from you. Or hey, here’s an idea. How about we talk about the fact that I’m getting married.
And then there was that doughnut.
Sure, it was just a doughnut. A smashed, mutilated doughnut.
But it was her favorite kind. From a bakery not at all near Anth’s house, which meant that he’d gone out of his way to get it.
What was that about? And why did her stomach fill with happy butterflies every time she thought about it?
“So Maggie’s big, huh?” Jill asked, still clamoring for a topic that was safe but not completely generic. “I can’t believe we’re going to have a baby in the family.”
Vincent gave a rare smile. “Yeah. Nonna’s already knitted at least a dozen pairs of those little foot cover things.”
“Booties,” Jill said. “And Nonna knits?”
“Supposedly. Although Mom swears she saw Nonna snipping a Target tag off the last one, so who knows?”
Jill gave a happy sigh as she settled back into her seat. “I missed them.”
Missed you too.
“Since when have Anth and Maggie started hosting family dinners?” Jill asked.
“Since Luc moved out.”
Ava shook her head at that. “I still can’t wrap my head around that. Them not living together anymore?”
“That’s what ‘move out’ means.”
“I know,” she said somewhat glumly. “But it’s like the end of an era.”
“Or they just decided to be grown-ups,” Vincent muttered.
Although he’d never admit it, Jill was pretty sure that Vin had always been a bit jealous of the fact that his oldest and youngest brothers had roomed together.
Their grandma had an awesome rent-controlled home on the Upper West side. Too good of a deal for someone not to take advantage of, and since it wasn’t like Vincent was the “roommate type,” Anth and Luc lived together.
Still, despite his insistence that he’d go crazy living there, she sometimes got the feeling that he felt left out.
Especially after their other brother Marco moved to LA awhile back to follow his girlfriend, leaving Vin as the only New York Moretti brother not living on the Upper West Side.
Vincent pulled the car up in front of her apartment, and Jill gave a little happy sigh. Home.
Vin was already out of the car, pulling her bags out of the trunk. “Okay, so Luc’s moved in with Ava, Maggie’s moved in with Anth. What about you?”
He didn’t look up as he easily hoisted her bag to the ground. “What about me?”
She rolled her eyes. “How are you?”
Instead of answering, he reached into the trunk, grabbed her second bag. “What the hell’s in here, rocks?” he asked, hauling her biggest suitcase out of the trunk.
“Yes. Rocks. I just ran around Mom’s backyard this morning finding all the biggest, heaviest rocks I could find and then put them in my suitcase just for you.”
He wheeled them up the sidewalk to her front door and Jill followed after him, digging her keys out of her bag.
She brushed past him to unlock the door as she’d done a hundred times before, but tonight she was strangely aware of his closeness. Of his smell, and his warmth, and…
Oh shit. Shit!
Tom. She’d forgotten about him.
For one terrible, traitorous moment had she actually forgotten she was engaged?
She glanced at Vincent’s irritated profile and swallowed dryly.
Yes. Yes, she had forgotten. Vin had made her forget, and that was just all kinds of weird.
Jill shook her head. She needed to call Tom. They’d texted earlier, the whole “landed safely, love you!” thing, but she needed to talk to him.
Needed to hear his voice.
Needed to stop being so aware of Vin.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said, turning to face her partner.
He lifted his eyebrows. “You don’t want help getting your bags inside?”
She rolled her eyes. “They wheel. I can handle tugging them over the doorstep.”
His eyes narrowed slightly as though knowing something else was keeping her from inviting him in, but he said nothing.
They stood still for a long moment, looking at each other.
Jill was oddly relieved to see that he looked exactly as he had when he’d dropped her off at the airport three months ago.
Relieved that despite all the recent changes in her own life, this one thing would stay the same.