“But it’s my accent color,” Daisy pouted, and that’s when Daff knew they had to be pulling her leg. Daisy never pouted. Well, she had started recently with Mason, and the guy was a complete sucker when the lower lip came out. Did her every bidding. It was sad and embarrassing, really.
“Come on, girls,” their mother chastised as she absently stroked Daisy’s toy Pomeranian, Peaches. The little fluff ball always managed to wind up on their mother’s lap. “You know she looks sickly in yellow.”
“Mom,” Daff whined, hating to have her shortcomings pointed out.
“You do, you know it, and that’s why you refuse to wear it.”
“Well, okay, but you don’t have to rub it in.”
“We just wanted to see what would snap you out of your semi-fugue state.” Daisy smiled.
“And we want to know what’s up with you.”
“Just distracted,” she said dismissively.
“You had dinner with Spencer last night,” Daisy recalled gleefully. “Does this have anything to do with that?”
“Oh my goodness, she’s blushing,” Lia said, sounding completely shocked. Daff raised her hands to her hot cheeks.
“I’m not.”
“Oh, but you are,” their mother confirmed. “You always were my best blusher. Couldn’t tell a lie without going the color of a ripe tomato.”
“What’s going on between you and Spencer, Daff?” Lia asked.
“Nothing. He’s just a lot nicer than I ever gave him credit for.”
“That he is,” Millicent McGregor agreed. “A lovely young man. Very shy, though.”
“Shy?” Was he?
“Of course he is. He never has a word to say in company, always kind of tries to hide in a corner and blend in with the furniture. But so sweet. Even when he was a boy and everybody else thought he and Mason were troublemakers, he always had a friendly greeting, helped carry my groceries—and never accepted a tip, mind you, no matter how dire their situation was at home. He was a little gentleman in the making. But never had much to say for himself. Then or now.”
“Why didn’t the town help them when their mother died?” Daisy asked, her voice sharp and a little resentful. “Did you know the police picked them up after they’d spent all night in the hospital with their dying mother and detained them for a day, thinking they were the ones who wrecked Mr. Richards’s store?”
Daff’s heart seized in her chest at the thought of what an ordeal that must have been for both boys. How cruel.
“I had no idea the boys had been suspected of that.” Their mother sounded appalled. “I heard about the vandalism a couple of days after the fact. At that point they had no suspects. It must have been after they questioned and cleared the Carlisle boys.”
“So are you and Spencer finally hooking up, Daffy?” Lia asked.
“Don’t call me that,” Daff said irritably. “And what do you mean, finally?”
“Just that the guy’s been trying for years.”
“And years,” Daisy added with a nod.
“He has?” Their mother looked startled by the information.
“Yep, he’s had a crush on her since high school.”
“He used to send her poems,” Daisy added, and Lia giggled.
“Oh my gosh, I forgot about that,” Lia said. “‘Daffodil. Tell me you will . . .’”
“‘Be mine. Your smile is like gold and like diamonds your eyes do shine,’” Daisy continued. She grabbed Lia’s hand and they went in for the big finish together.
“‘I’ll love you forever and forget you never.’”
They collapsed against each other and screamed with laughter while Daff glared at them and their mother smiled in delight.
“Oh my, how sweet,” Millicent said once the cackles had died down. Daff was less than impressed with her sisters for bringing up the poetry. They’d teased her relentlessly about it at the time, and she couldn’t believe that they’d actually gotten their hands on one long enough to memorize it.
“Do you remember that, Daff? All those poems?” Lia asked.
“Of course I remember it,” she grumbled. “It wasn’t that long ago. And there’s nothing going on between Spencer and me, so can we please focus on the task at hand? We have under three months to plan this thing and the clock is ticking, ladies.”
That got them all refocused immediately, and Daff heaved a silent sigh of relief when they all started looking at color and fabric samples again.
“That’s the fourth easy shot you’ve missed tonight. What’s going on with you?” Mason asked as he lined up his own shot and sank yet another ball. At this point, Spencer might as well stand back and enjoy the show, because Mason wasn’t going to let him in with another chance. Spencer rarely lost at pool and he’d known—with his atrocious lack of form—that it would be only a matter of time before Mason figured out something was up.
He watched as his brother lined up yet another perfect shot and allowed his thoughts to drift back to Daff. He had a raging case of blue balls and had barely been able to focus at work today. Even an intense wank session in the shower just before coming out tonight hadn’t done much to take the edge off his horniness.
He thought back to the prim thank-you text she’d sent him earlier, accompanied by a selfie of her licking the hot sauce from the homemade burrito off her fingers. Like she didn’t know exactly the effect that picture would have on him.
He barely swallowed back a groan now.
“I’ve been instructed to ask you how many groomsmen you think you’ll have.”
“Instructed, is it? Daff running the show?”
“Only as much as I’ll let her.” He thought back to how he had kept her hovering on the brink of orgasm for nearly half an hour, then flushed—grateful for the low light in Ralphie’s pub that disguised both flush and instant hard-on—at the entirely inappropriate memory.
“And it’s a valid question. I need to know how many people to plan for.” He willed his dick to go down and was happy when he managed to wrangle some control over the unruly boner.
“What’s the rush? It’s three months away.”
“Apparently that’s nowhere near enough time to plan a wedding and all the flash and fuckery that goes along with it.”
“Hah? I’m beginning to get that.”
“So? Any idea?”
“Yeah. You’re my best man, with Chris and Sam as groomsmen.” Christién was one of Mason’s modeling friends—now a trained chef with a restaurant in the area—and Sam Brand was one of his army buddies, as well as his former business partner. Spencer hadn’t met either man yet, but he’d heard that Sam had saved his brother’s life—and vice versa—more than a few times.
“You can’t have just three guys at your stag party, Mase.”
“I have three more ex-army buddies flying in, and there’s also my future father-in-law.”
“You’re inviting Dr. McGregor? Man, what if I wanted to hire a stripper?”
“Fuck, Spence. No strippers . . . Daisy would kill me.”
“She would?”
“Okay, maybe not,” he confessed sheepishly. “She’s curious. She’d want to know what the strippers’ go-to moves were and then she’d—” He stopped talking abruptly and cleared his throat. “Anyway, no strippers.”
Fascinated by the way his brother refused to meet his eyes, Spencer grinned. Well, then, wasn’t Daisy McGregor the little dark horse? He was tempted to hire a stripper just to give his brother a fun night of role-playing, but he didn’t think Mason and Daisy needed any help in that department.
“Okay, so the good doctor will be joining us. Anyone else?”
“Daff and Lia aren’t seeing anybody right now, are they?”
“You’re about to become their brother-in-law, wouldn’t you be more qualified to answer that question? And why do you want to know, anyway?” He sounded cagey, even to himself.
“Well, they may want their boyfriends included, and it’ll pad the numbers.”
“You need more friends.”
“I have a shit ton of friends, just not in this country. If you had more friends, we could invite them.”
“Not my wedding.”
“What about old school friends? We may have a few of those in common.”
“We didn’t have school friends,” Spencer reminded.
“Who needs friends when I have you?” Mason quipped, but there was a note of sincerity in his voice and Spencer smiled.
“Ditto, bro. Okay, so seven guys? We can make that work.”
“It’ll be awesome, man.”
“I just hope Daisy’s lady friends don’t outnumber us when it comes time to merge the parties.”
“She doesn’t have too many friends, either. Her sisters, her mom, that chick Tilda, and a few others. It doesn’t matter if the numbers are uneven—it’s not a hookup party.”
“Yeah.”
Mason focused on his game and sank two more balls. He sized up the table while dusting the tip of his cue with some chalk.
“So Daisy tells me you and Daff had dinner last night.” Spencer, who’d been in the process of taking a sip of beer, nearly choked and quickly lowered the bottle, clearing his throat vigorously in the process.