“So are you hiding?” Lia asked, and Daff shrugged.
“Auntie Ivy had a go at me. I’m old, blah blah blah. Better catch a man before the last of my looks fade, and so on and so forth.” Lia snorted and daintily picked out one of the canapés for herself.
“Aunt Mattie was helpfully informing me that I shouldn’t sulk over Clayton forever. Got to get myself back on the market ASAP. Before my ovaries wither and I die a bitter, childless old maid. Or something to that effect.” She smiled, inviting Daff to share the joke, but her eyes were shadowed as ghosts—barely dead and buried—surfaced to haunt her.
“They’re harmless, silly old ladies who are stuck in the dark ages. Independent women are foreign concepts to them.”
“And yet none of them ever married,” Lia said and glumly contemplated the canapé in her hand before taking a delicate nibble.
“Maybe they want to save us from the same terrible fate?” Daff suggested with a grin before sobering. “Don’t let them get to you, Lia.”
“Maybe it’s not entirely progressive of me,” Lia confessed, keeping her eyes glued to the canapé, “but I want a husband and a family. I want everything I thought I would get with Clayton.”
“Years of verbal put-downs, a man who flirted with—and possibly fucked—everything in a skirt, who made our baby sister feel both sexually harassed and physically lacking?” Daff asked skeptically, the latter referring to Daisy’s condemning revelations about Clayton on the eve of Lia and Clayton’s doomed wedding. “Because that’s all you would have gotten from that ass.”
“I know.” Lia’s voice was a mix of exasperation and pain. “I know that, okay. And I meant I wanted the fantasy of the perfect marriage, with the perfect children and the perfect life.”
“Sounds perfectly boring.” Daff shrugged.
“To you, maybe. But it sounds like bliss to me.” Daff made a noncommittal sound, not sure how to respond to that. While Lia’s dream life was not one that particularly appealed to her, Daff envied Lia her certainty. Her sister knew what she wanted, and Daff still had no clue.
She managed an exclusive clothing boutique in the center of their small tourist town. Business was sluggish in winter and crazy busy over summer. Pretty much like all the other businesses in town. It was dead boring at the moment, with a few loyal patrons who popped in more for a chat than anything else. Daff was the only employee during winter, and the sheer boredom nearly drove her insane. The owner had a few other boutiques set up around the country and rarely visited Riversend, content to let Daff run the place as she saw fit as long as they were turning a profit, no matter how small.
It was a dead-end job with very few prospects and not the least bit challenging, but it was all Daff was currently qualified to do. She had fallen into the management thing, getting the promotion simply because she’d worked there longer than any other employee. A high school temp job had turned into her only work experience, and she was too damned scared to try anything else. She’d started there when she was sixteen, and before she knew it another sixteen years had passed and here she was. Same job, same life, same mistakes over and over again. It was literally all she knew, and she was terrified that it was all she would ever know.
Spencer tugged at his tie again—he swore to God the thing was getting tighter with every passing second. He knew a frown was settling on his face and that his heavy, dark brows, overly long hair, and day-old stubble probably made him look terrifying, but he was well past caring. He hated events like these, but his brother was getting hitched and he was determined to be a good sport and do the whole big brother thing. He was the only family Mason had, and while he knew he wasn’t ideal, he would damned well do his brother proud, even if it killed him.
His eyes searched for the younger man; Mason was laughing—a deep belly laugh—and hauling Daisy into his arms for a kiss.
Little Daisy McGregor. She made Mason ridiculously happy. It was the damnedest thing; his brother was hot for the most overlooked, underappreciated woman in town. Not only hot for her but head over heels in love with her. And Spencer had to admit, since getting to know her, he could understand why Mason felt the way he did.
Daisy was a sweetheart. Funny, smart, and cuter than anybody had ever given her credit for. Just showed how superficial people could be. Nobody had ever considered her remotely pretty, with her weight issues, frizzy hair, and huge glasses, until Mason had come along. Now every eye was drawn to her. There was something about her, and Mason had seen it and snatched her up before anyone else could even appreciate it.
Spencer scanned the rest of the room, his eyes unconsciously seeking the one person who intrigued and frustrated him in equal measures. Daffodil McGregor was chatting with her other sister, Lia. The two women were strikingly similar, nearly equal in height, the same dark-brown hair, clear gray eyes—a trait that they shared with Daisy—and willowy bodies. But while Lia looked soft and delicate, Daff had a harder edge to her. A nervous energy that made her seem impatient and restless. It hadn’t been there when she was younger. She had been a carefree, independent, irreverent girl, and Spencer had been drawn to her like a moth to a flame. He always felt hopelessly out of her league, of course, but that hadn’t stopped him from not-so-secretly pining for her in high school.
A fledgling flirt, she had managed to keep him hopeful with the occasional smile, greeting, or slow, seductive sweep of those long, dark lashes of hers. And she had always given him just enough attention to make him think he had a chance. Which often resulted in him making a complete fool of himself.
What a pathetic, lovesick idiot he had been, sending her all those heartfelt notes and flowers and truly awful poems. He winced at the recollection now. She had had him wrapped around her pretty, spiteful little finger.
He had grown out of it, of course, or so he’d thought, until last year when—fresh out of a failed relationship—he had tried and been shot down again. Only this time both Mason and Daisy had been casualties of his stupidity. Luckily his mistake had eventually yielded positive results for the other couple, but Daff had irrationally accused him of hurting her sister, when—as far as Spencer was concerned—she had been just as much to blame for the entire debacle.
Spencer dragged his eyes away from her and surveyed the rest of the room. A shitload of beautiful people wearing beautiful clothes and dripping in expensive jewelry. Spencer didn’t belong here—he should be at home eating pizza, drinking beers, and watching TV. Mason fit into this world; he knew how to talk to these people, but Spencer felt completely exposed, like an impostor pretending to be more than he was. He didn’t know what to say or do. Literally the only person he felt comfortable with in this room was his brother, and Mason was wholly preoccupied with Daisy. Spencer tried not to feel a sting of betrayal and hurt by that. Mason was getting married; this was how it was going to be from now on, how it was supposed to be. But rationalizing didn’t make him feel any less excluded from his brother’s changing life. It was just that after Mason had returned home following twelve years abroad, Spencer had believed they’d have more time together. Instead, Mason had spent a year traveling around the country and had been back in Riversend for just a short while before meeting Daisy, falling in love, and setting up house with her.
Spencer sighed and chugged down his drink.
“We’ve been watching you, young man.” The creaky old voice coming from right beside him startled him, and his head jerked down to stare at two of the four old ladies who had been glaring at everybody from the comfort of their sofa all evening. The one who had spoken looked likely to keel over any second; she was hunched over, holding onto a cane with a gnarled, shaking hand, and glaring up at him through Coke-bottle lenses. Spencer had heard about Daisy’s aunts from his brother and knew that nothing good could come from this confrontation. He peered over at the sofa, where the other two old women were avidly watching the exchange.
“Hello,” he ventured tentatively, but she merely sniffed—a disturbingly wet sound—before carrying on with what she’d been saying before.
“We’ve been watching you lurk in the shadows like a thug. Am I going to have to tell Millicent to count the good silver after you leave?” Insulted, Spencer glared at the horrid old woman and said nothing. “Strong, silent type, are you? That won’t get you anywhere in this family. You’ve got to speak up for yourself.”
“Maybe he’s a little . . .” The other woman spoke up for the first time. She did little loops at her temple with her index finger and crossed her eyes. This woman was even shorter and older than the one with the cane and sported a few impressive dark whiskers on her jaw. Even her wrinkles had wrinkles. She cackled, showing off her ill-fitting, startlingly white dentures. “Hit your head a few too many times, didn’t you, boy? Bless.”
Spencer frantically scanned the room, searching for an escape route, but the other two women had left the sofa to join their cohorts and Spencer was surrounded by gray-haired little old ladies. How the fuck had they managed to ambush him like this?