Page 42 of A Love Like Candle Light

"I'll tell Caleb." She grins and takes a bite herself. “Oh damn.” She closes her eyes, keeps chewing and lets out an obscene sigh. “He sure knows how to make a woman happy.”

"Look at us." Nic suddenly giggles. "Sitting here, drinking hot chocolate and eating cake. Like my grandma used to do with her friends."

Lauren’s eyes fly open. "Eighty-four at heart," she declares and takes a sip of her hot chocolate.

"And proud of it," Kieran adds and clinks his cup against mine.

"Anyway, you said this is your second hot chocolate of the year." Lauren shakes her head, as if to thwart off the spell her boyfriend’s cake cast on her and fixes me with a hard stare. "Who did you drink your first with?"

"What makes you think I didn't drink it alone?" I ask back and raise my eyebrows.

"Because hot chocolate is a company kind of drink." She takes another sip. "And judging by your cupboards, you are a tea kind of person when you're alone and it’s too late for coffee. Am I right or am I right?"

"Damn, you're good." I shake my head softly. " Erik came over last week when we had our power outage and we had a hot chocolate."

"Ooh." The three shoot each other suggestive looks.

"Alone with Erik during a power outage." Kieran leans closer and wiggles his eyebrows. “’Drinking hot chocolate’ – is that what the kids are calling banging these days?”

"It's not like that." I giggle, putting my hand on his cheek to push him away. "The ghost was going rampant and I was freaking out. So I called him and took him up on his offer to come over."

"You hear how she never even considered asking one of us?" Lauren pouts. Nic and Kieran nod in agreement.

"Please." I give them hard stares. "You all would have been as jump scared as I was. Which would have brought us to a vicious cycle of making each other’s fear worse. You should be glad I didn't call you."

Kieran narrows his eyes at me. "So Erik wasn't jump scared?"

"At least he pretended not to be," I mumble. Abby and Dick have decided this would be the perfect time to sneak close and keep any eye out for any falling crumbs.

"You know, he's a nice guy," Kieran declares and grabs the knife to cut himself another piece of cake. "Handsome, law-abiding, truly the perfect potential son in law."

I grimace. My mom wouldn’t think so.

"Sore spot? Sorry."

"No, no, it's not," I assure Kieran quickly and take a deep breath. "Maybe a little. My mom is kind of riding my ass about the divorce and it's just..." I wave my hand through the air. " You couldn't have known." I clear my throat and reach for the whipped cream. It’s way too much for the amount of cake left and I see potential for a perfect hot chocolate.

Once I’ve scooped some in there, Nic extends her hand wordlessly to do the same.

"Mine were riding my ass without a divorce," Lauren says, a line of whipped cream on her top lip.

"Mine knew about the affair my ex-fiancé and sister were having." Nic passes the whipped cream to Kieran.

"Mine kicked me out on the day I turned eighteen, and I haven't heard from them since." The three of us slowly turn our heads to Kieran. "Hey, don't make me the party pooper here." He flicks some cream Lauren's way.

"Don't blame us. This is the first time you've dropped some lore and talked about your parents." She flicks a cake crumb right back at him.

Abby and Dick notice the increased potential for whipped cream in reach and inch their way closer.

"You never asked," he points out. "Sorry I don't go out of my way to talk about them. They truly haven't been on my mind for half of my life at this point. Aside from therapy, I guess. Anyway-" He turns to me, "speaking of Nic's sister and her ex, you should totally help us set up the autumn fair."

"What?" I blink, confused. Now that's a change of topics if I ever heard one. "I mean, sure. I guess?"

"Don't let him confuse you." Nic shakes her head. "Long story short, my sister and ex tried to crash the autumn fair and weren’t successful.”

“Okay, now I follow.” I make a mental note to ask her for the long story long sometime though.

“It's the perfect chance to get to know everyone," Lauren adds, and cuts herself another piece of cake. "We can introduce you to everyone, and I promise we'll have a grand old time at the fair." She nudges Nic and giggles. "So much better than last year."