She considered her options. Ignore Hollis’s text? Delete it? Pretend she hadn’t received it?
Guilt nicked Mac’s conscience. It occurred to her that Hollis, a girl Mac had once regarded as shallow, had more courage than she did.
The house was quiet when Mac unlocked the door. Snap didn’t even twitch when Mac stepped over him to read the note that Coach had left on the coffee table, telling her his men’s group had gone out for pizza.
Her last and best excuse—cooking dinner for her dad—disappeared as quickly as the miniature cherry pies that filled Mrs. Sweet’s display case on Washington’s Birthday.
Fine. She would go over to Channing House at 7 p.m. and be home by 7:15.
Mac changed into jeans and a sweatshirt and grabbed her camera. When she reached the Channing property, she followed a ribbon of smoke to the fire pit.
Hollis and Connor sat shoulder to shoulder on stumps from a dead tree Ethan had cut down, feeding pinecones and tiny sticks to the crackling fire.
Had she made a mistake? Wrong time? Wrong place? Mac was just about to pull out her phone and read the message again when Hollis spotted her.
“There you are!”
“Hey, Mackenzie.” Connor waved her over. “Pull up a stump.”
“Mom left for Chicago a few hours ago.” Hollis rested her cheek against Connor’s shoulder. “There were a few last-minute things she wanted to do before the wedding.”
Mac was afraid to ask if Ethan had accompanied her.
“I got your text.” She held up her camera. “What’s left on the wedding checklist?”
“You thought . . .” Hollis chuckled. “Sorry. I guess I wasn’t very clear. I wasn’t talking about the wedding checklist. I was talking about ours. My fiancé is going to learn the art of roasting the perfect marshmallow tonight.”
Connor looped his arm around Hollis’s slim shoulders. “It’s number nine.”
The list. Mac had overheard Lilah complaining about Hollis and Connor spending more time “gallivanting around” than on the details of the wedding, but after Ethan’s stunning disclosure, the couple’s other list made sense too.
“But . . .” Mac didn’t know another way to say it. “What do you need me for?”
“You’ve been working so hard, we thought you might like a break,” Hollis said. “Have some fun. You can even take part in our marshmallow roasting competition.”
Connor looked at Hollis in mock dismay. “You didn’t say anything about a competition.”
“You’re marrying a Channing. It’s kind of a given.” A husky, masculine voice raised goose bumps on Mac’s arms.
Without turning around, she knew which wedding guest hadn’t left town.
“Now that we know who the champion marshmallow roaster is”—Hollis waved her marshmallow stick in the air and performed a little victory dance—“Connor and I are going for a walk.”
Over the campfire, Ethan saw Mac’s deer-in-the-headlights look as his sister dragged her fiancé to his feet.
“But—”
“You and Ethan can keep the fire going!”
Uh-huh. Ethan had suspected Hollis was up to something.
He’d mentioned earlier that he was going to drive into town and take a quick walk-through at the clinic, but Hollis had complained he would miss out on their last chance to have a campfire. She hadn’t told him that Mac would be there too.
Not that he was complaining. With all the prewedding commotion, it had been impossible to get Mac alone over the past few days.
“Number ten.” Connor slipped his arm around Hollis’s waist. “Kissing the woman I love under a full moon.”
Ethan looked up at the overcast sky. “You can’t see the moon tonight.”
“I’ll settle for one out of two.”
The look that passed between the couple could have roasted another marshmallow.
When they were out of sight, Ethan tossed another log on the fire, sending a shower of sparks into the air.
A warm breeze drifted across the lake, and Mac seemed pensive as she fanned out her fingers over the flames. “Connor . . . what kind of cancer was it?”
“Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.” The words unfurled with Ethan’s sigh. “His last round of chemo was two years ago.”
“You didn’t recognize Connor when he came into the ER?”
“I’m not exactly up on that kind of stuff . . . and the trailers for his movie were just starting to come out. Hollis knew who Connor was when I introduced them at the hospital fund-raiser, but no one else did. I’d invited Connor as a friend, not a celebrity guest.”
“Had the cancer returned?”
Ethan’s hesitation sent a prickle of fear skating down Mac’s spine. “No, it turned out to be a virus. But he’s been feeling tired lately so his oncologist at Mayo scheduled some tests last week.”
“That’s why you offered to help with the wedding plans.”
Ethan nodded. “Connor’s numbers look good . . . but there’s always a chance the cancer will come back. He tried to talk Hollis into waiting another year, until he was officially in remission, but she agreed to a compromise.”
“What was that?”