“We should all go in out of the cold,” he said, his voice gruff.
The colonel shook his head. “I’m afraid we can’t stay long. We just came from physical therapy and Diane is pooped. But we had to come and welcome home our girl.”
For the first time, Kim must have realized Diane was still in the passenger seat. She froze for a moment, then made her way to the vehicle.
Diane opened the door before she reached it, holding both hands out to squeeze Kim’s, even the one in the cast.
“Oh, Diane,” Kim said, both her features and her voice anguished. “I am more sorry than I can ever say.”
“Hush.” The older woman looked uncharacteristically stern. “It was an accident. You weren’t to blame—the other driver was.”
“I should never have been behind the wheel. If I hadn’t been impaired, I might have been able to avoid the collision.”
“And if I hadn’t insisted we go Black Friday shopping, we wouldn’t have been on the road in the first place.”
“And if I hadn’t been looking at my phone, I might have done a better job as your backseat driver and warned you the other car wasn’t going to stop at the red light,” Audrey said, which made both of the older women laugh, defusing the charged emotion of the moment.
“I’m glad you’re home, my dear.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to come inside?” Ryan said. “I was going to order a pizza for dinner.”
“That sounds lovely but physical therapy exhausts me, I’m ashamed to say. Right now I just want to go home. We’ll see you all tomorrow for Christmas Eve, though. Your dad is planning to grill steaks. I won’t take no for an answer.”
“Yes. Definitely,” Kim said. “I’m looking forward to it.”
With hugs for Kim and Audrey and a stiff nod to Ryan, Doug climbed back into the SUV and they backed out of the driveway.
As Ryan fully expected, Kim was beyond thrilled with theinterior decor. “It looks perfect. I can’t believe you guys did all this.”
“It was really fun, especially with Holly and Lydia helping us. I think Uncle Ry was into it, even though he pretended not to be. He and Holly took forever outside hanging the lights, anyway.”
Kim gave him a surprised but speculative look. “Did you?”
“Yeah. They’ve spent a lot of time together, actually,” his busybody niece informed her mother. “Uncle Ryan, tell Mom about your big date with her on Saturday.”
He didn’t want to think about her, yet he couldn’t seem to help it. Their kiss seemed seared into his memory.
“We don’t need to get into it now.”
“What if we want to?” Kim said, giving him a teasing older-sister sort of look. “You went out with Holly?”
“He took her to a wedding she had to go to. Lydia was the flower girl. Uncle Ryan borrowed some fancy clothes from Dad and looked pretty good.”
Kim’s interest seemed to sharpen. “A wedding? Was it Kristine Moore’s wedding?”
While he would prefer to avoid talking to his sister about Holly, he suddenly realized he needed to let her in on the truth, in case anybody happened to ask her about his supposed relationship with her employer and friend.
“We pretended to be a thing so she wouldn’t have to feel awkward around Troy and his family, going to the wedding with only Lydia. We made a deal. I went with her as her plus-one to the wedding and in exchange, she helped me decorate this place for you and Audrey.”
She stared at him for a long moment then she began to laugh. “Oh my word. I can’t believe you did that. It’s priceless!”
He couldn’t tell his sister what a mess he had made ofeverything. Their fake dating had begun to feel entirely too real. He was only supposed to take her to a wedding, not fall for her.
“This is delicious,” Kim said, still grinning. “I can’t wait to ask Holly about it when I go back to work after Christmas.”
“You can ask her before that,” Audrey informed her mom. “She’s dropping dinner off for us on her way to that big party at the Shelter Inn tonight.”
Holly was coming here? This was the first he had heard about it.
