He knew better than to protest. Besides, Rachel’s cooking was supposed to be spectacular. She’d taught Angela, after all, and the girl was definitely no slouch in that department herself.
Rachel washed her hands, and then pulled an onion and a pepper from the ancient refrigerator. After setting down a scarred butcher-block cutting board, she set to work, chopping the vegetables with a brisk, easy efficiency that put the chefs on those cable cooking shows to shame. “I suppose you want to talk to me about Margot.”
“I — ” What the hell? He hadn’t said anything about why he wanted to see Rachel, only that he hoped she had time for a quick chat.
A corner of her mouth twitched as she attempted to repress a smile. “Angela called me to give me some warning.” The knife glinted in the light from the aged brass fixture overhead as she continued to chop away. “And I feel like I should be giving you some warning, too. Are you trying to make your life complicated?”
He hoped he hadn’t driven all the way down here just to get a lecture. “Look, I know you’re still not thrilled about the whole McAllister/Wilcox situation, but — ”
“That doesn’t have anything to do with it,” she said, interrupting him, but so gently that he couldn’t really take offense. “Well, actually, it does, but not because of my feelings on the matter.” Vegetables chopped, she went to a skillet already sitting on the stovetop and dropped a pat of butter into it.
“Then what is it?” he asked, hoping he didn’t sound too desperate and guessing that he probably did. “I know it’s not as if you expect your elders to take a vow of celibacy or something. The other two are married, right?”
“Yes,” Rachel replied slowly, not looking up as she stirred rice into the melted butter, and then added the chopped vegetables and some minced garlic she had sitting off to the side. “The thing is, they were both married before they were made elders.”
“So?”
She turned away from the stove and met his gaze directly. “I’m sure Margot would probably kill me for telling you this, but it’s not that it isn’t common knowledge — well, among my generation, anyway. She was engaged when she was called to be an elder, and her fiancé just didn’t want to deal with the implications of that. He broke it off a month before the wedding.”
The word escaped Lucas’ mouth before he could stop it. “Asshole.”
To his surprise, Rachel nodded. “More or less. Luckily, he was with the branch of the family over in Prescott, so it’s not as if she’s been tripping over him continually for the past ten years, but it still was rough on her. As far as I know, she hasn’t even tried to be with anyone since.”
Ten years…with no one? He had a hard time even comprehending that level of loneliness. “I still don’t see why her being made an elder would be such a big deal.”
“Well, you Wilcoxes don’t have elders the way we do. It’s sort of being a city council member, a marriage and family counselor, a real estate agent, and an attorney all rolled into one. You’re basically on call all the time to handle family business. It’s one thing if you’re already married and settled — Bryce was in his early fifties when he got the call, and Allegra around forty-seven, if I’m remembering correctly. Their marriages were stable, their kids already out of grade school or even in high school. It was an adjustment, but they could handle it. But thinking you’re going to have your wife all to yourself, only to discover that you’re going to have to share her with the whole clan?” Rachel shook her head, then picked up a can opener and began to open up some tomatoes. “Clay couldn’t handle it. So he backed out.”
“Clay, huh?”
Once again her mouth twitched at the disapproval in his tone. “Yes, Clay McAllister. Like I said, from over in Prescott. They met at Great-Aunt Ruby’s seventy-fifth birthday party, as the Prescott McAllisters generally keep to themselves, but they did show up for that occasion. Good-looking man.”
“Of course he was.”
Now smiling openly, she dumped the tomatoes into the skillet. “I don’t think you have too much to worry about on that front, Lucas. Anyway, you can see why Margot is gun-shy. She doesn’t think anyone would be willing to take on everything that comes with having an elder as a significant other. So she hasn’t even tried. And now you come along, and you think because Connor and Angela made things work, that magically every other Wilcox/McAllister pairing is going to work as well. But it’s not that easy.”