Second Chance Girl (Happily Inc. #2)

Maya flashed her a smile. “Thank you. You’ve been so great. I want to say I’m sorry Mathias roped you into helping, but I’m not. Every time we had a videoconference, you were so engaged while being totally calm. That helped a lot.”

Carol was surprised by the assessment, but also pleased. “I was happy to help. A lot of my friends are in the wedding business.” She made air quotes with one of her hands. “But I never get really involved in any of the weddings. This has been fun for me.”

“Me, too. To be honest, it’s hard to imagine how it’s all going to come together. Pallas has been fantastic, handling the details.” She sipped her tea. “This is the lull before the storm, as they say. Your fund-raising event is Thursday night, the rehearsal dinner is Friday and then the wedding is Saturday.”

“When does your family arrive?” Carol asked.

Maya shook her head. “I don’t really have any blood relatives. I have friends coming in from Fool’s Gold. Eddie and Gladys are my standin grandmothers. They’re going to be flower girls, which I totally love. Mayor Marsha is going to perform the ceremony. Elaine, Del’s mother, and I are close, so she’s going to be standing in for my mom as I get ready that morning. Other people I know are coming. It will be great.”

Carol thought that it said a lot about Maya that even though she’d lost her biological family, she’d created a family of the heart for herself.

“How do you get along with Ceallach?” she asked, curious about the man who had such an influence on his sons.

Maya’s expression turned cautious. “How much do you know about him?”

“As a person, not much. As someone who has met several of his sons, I can’t decide if I’m going to shake his hand or slap him upside the head.”

Maya relaxed. “Okay, so you know what to expect.”

“Not exactly but I plan to be braced and on guard.” Not for herself, she thought. But for Mathias.

“Ceallach is practically a legend,” Maya told her. “He’s brilliant and famous and difficult. Elaine worships him. I wouldn’t want their marriage, but it works for them and I guess that’s what matters. As for how he deals with his sons... Del and Aidan got ignored and the other three had too much attention. I guess it’s safe to say each of them are scarred, in their own way.”

Maya leaned toward Carol. “I can’t figure Ceallach out. It’s not just that he has to be the center of attention, it’s that he needs others to be suffering. I don’t know if that makes sense.”

“It does.”

“I’ve done some reading. Sometimes I wonder if there’s something wrong with his brain. I don’t believe that being that gifted means you have to be crazy or anything, it’s more about the way he treats people, especially his sons. He has no empathy, no sense of anyone but himself.” She shook her head. “Sorry, I am way out of my area of expertise here. I should simply tell you to smile and keep your distance.”

“That was my plan.” And to watch Mathias’s back.

*

SOPHIE TROTTED HAPPILY at Mathias’s side, stopping occasionally to sniff or mark her territory with a quick squat. When his mother had first dropped her off, he’d been convinced taking care of the dog was going to be a disaster. Instead, she’d grown on him and he had to admit, if only to himself, that he was going to miss her.

“You’re not half bad,” he told her.

Sophie looked up and wagged her tail, confirming what must be obvious.

“On the bright side, when you’re gone, I’ll get to eat my entire breakfast by myself.”

She gave a low woof, as if asking why he would want to do that, when sharing with her was so much more fun.

They continued down the road. Mathias told himself they had no destination, then thought it was dumb to lie to himself. It wasn’t as if he didn’t already know where he was headed. Because despite everything going on, or maybe because of it, there was only one place he wanted to be.

Five minutes later, he was on Carol’s front porch, ringing the doorbell. She answered a couple of seconds later.

She’d already changed from her work uniform into jeans and a T-shirt. Both were soft looking, kind of like her. She was barefoot. Unlike most of the women he knew, she didn’t paint her toenails. Funny how seeing them without any color made her appear more vulnerable somehow.

“Hi,” she said, stepping back to let him in. “How’s it going at your place?”

“It’s crowded.”

She laughed. “You only have Del and Maya to deal with. Okay, and the dress, but it’s pretty quiet. What are you going to do when the rest of the family arrives?”

“I have no idea.” Aidan and Shelby were getting a room in town, but his parents would be staying with him. A nightmare he would deal with when it happened.

She led him out to the back patio. “You two sit here. I’ll be right back.”

Mathias did as she requested, taking a seat at the table. After he unclipped Sophie’s leash, the beagle jumped onto the chaise and stretched out in the last rays of sunshine. Carol returned in a few minutes. She had two open beer bottles along with a bowl of chips and guacamole.

She set everything on the table before settling into the chair next to him, her foot tucked under her butt. She touched her bottle to his, then said, “What’s going on?”

“I’m good. How the countdown to the event?”

“I’m nervous,” she admitted. “There’s a lot on the line. Atsuko is confident, so I try to be, too. She’s handling everything—I just have to show up and talk about Millie.” She glanced at him. “You’re going to be there, aren’t you?”

“With bells on.”

She laughed. “Where, exactly, will those bells be?”

“You’re going to have to wait and see.”

He thought about the glass pieces in his studio. He’d completed the one of Millie but was still refining the Carol statue. If he got it right in time, he might bring it to the event...to continue the giraffe theme. It wouldn’t be for sale.

The late afternoon was warm, the breeze light. In Fool’s Gold fall would have arrived with cooler temperatures and brilliant colors.

“What are you thinking?” she asked.

“I miss the changing colors of the leaves. The desert is beautiful in its own way, but there’s something to be said for the mountains.”

“Regretting your move?” she asked, her tone light.

“No. Coming here was the right decision. This is home now.”

“How did you decide to leave in the first place?”

“Ronan needed to get away and I needed to go with him.”

“For him or for you?”

“Both.”

“What was it like before?” she asked. “When you were twins?”