“How did the signing go, Lily?” Karen asked.
Lily smiled. “It went great. I really enjoyed having Mia with me. It was nice not being alone.”
Ethan put his hand on Lily’s thigh and squeezed. “You know I would have come if I could, right?”
“I know. You were needed here. But it was fun having a girls’ trip.”
“Very fun,” Mia said. “That was my first time in California, too. It’s so different from here.”
When the food was ready, everyone filled their dishes and sat down to eat. Miles was tired. His entire body screamed for rest, but he knew he needed to push on. Everything would pass soon enough, and they would be back on their normal schedule.
“I know the rule is to keep work outside of family dinners, but this is needed,” James said. Everyone looked over at him. “With the pipes bursting, we are going to be short on rooms for the upcoming wedding. We’ll need to work on moving guests to nearby towns and comp them for the hassle.”
“There’s no chance the rooms will be fixed in time?” Jackson asked.
“Unfortunately, no. There were five damaged, which doesn’t seem like much, but the wedding had us at near full capacity,” Karen said.
Lily looked over at Ethan. “If Mia is okay with it, I could move in with Ethan temporarily and give up the house for some guests.”
“Oh, I like that idea,” Ethan said, resting his hand on top of hers. Lily smiled at him.
When Lily moved to Wintervale recently, she wasn’t ready to move in with Ethan full-time after getting out of a rough relationship. After Mia and Jackson got married over the summer, Mia moved in with him, so she offered to rent her house to Lily.
“Oh yeah, that’s fine with me,” Mia said.
“Thank you. Let’s keep that in our back pocket for now as a last resort,” James said.
“Jessa will be gone for a bit, so I could stay at someone else’s house and put some guests in ours too,” Noah said.
“I’d like to keep it so we aren’t renting our own places if we can avoid it. But we’ll keep it in mind,” James said.
Miles rubbed his face. Damn, he was tired. He couldn’t wait for the wedding to be over so the resort slowed down a bit.
“Daddy,” Emma said. “We could ask our new friends to stay with us.”
All eyes turned to them.
“What new friends?” Miles asked.
“Kelly and Ava. They like you,” Emma said.
Miles could feel his face heating. “I think they likeyou.”
“Who’s this now?” Jackson asked, resting his chin on his hand and smiling brightly with a shit-eating grin.
“Kelly and Ava. I brought them lunch today,” Emma said.
Karen’s eyebrows raised. “You did, huh?”
“Emma came by the kitchen when Jessa had to leave for her work thing. She was shadowing Savannah and then went rogue,” Miles said.
Everyone laughed.
“What does rogue mean?” Emma asked.
“It means you started serving food without asking,” Miles said.
Emma crossed her arms. “I was just trying to help.”
