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Sean had joined their father at the bar.
Gabe and Monica shared a look—she was clearly surprised by her first inclusion behind the Cress family veil.
Lucas was eyeing the fruit tart he’d ignored earlier.
Nobody wanted to be there.
“Bienvenue, Coleman. Je vois que tu as eu le temps de ramasser les poubelles,”Nicolette said coldly in her native tongue.
Welcome back, Coleman. I see you had time to pick up the trash.He shook his head at her judgment.
“Kimber is not trash,” he said, reaching for the anger that sent him away from his family for months. “And neither was Jillian.”
Nicolette stiffened. “What do you mean?”
Cole rose to his full height. “I was at Jillian’s that night. In the bathroom. I heard everything. I know what you did,” he said, enjoying the widening of her eyes with each word he spoke.
Silence reigned.
“What’s going on?” Phillip Senior asked from behind him.
“Jillian?” Lucas asked. “Nice, Cole.Realnice.”
Cole ignored his brother’s praise as he came to stand in front of his mother and look down at her. “The last thing I needed was for you to interfere in my life,” he said. “It was a side of you I had never seen before, and Ineverwant to see again. You judged Monica. You judged Jillian. It’s time you sit down before a mirror and take a long hard look at yourself.”
Nicolette’s eyes filled with tears. “Cole,” she whispered.
He shook his head, his eyes ablaze and his jaw firm. “What you did was wrong and deplorable—”
“That’s enough, Cole,” his father said, moving to wrap his arm around his wife’s shoulders.
He ignored him. “We are your sons. We’re grown men. We can decide on our own without you pulling strings like Geppetto,” he continued.
“I only want what’s best for you.” Nicolette extended her arm to reach for his hand.
He pulled back from her touch. “Who says you know what’s best?” he asked. “You don’t even know what’s best for you.”
Nicolette’s forehead wrinkled in confusion.
Cole shook his head and shifted past her to open the front door to the restaurant. “Kimber is waiting for me,” he lied, leaving them all to ponder just what he’d meant.
Jillian looked at the two wedding photos she held. In both, she was so young.
And so naïve.
“Hey, you.”
She looked up at her father standing in the doorway in T-shirt and pajama bottoms. They both looked over at Ionie, still asleep in her bed. “I wanted to be near her since I leave in the morning,” Jillian admitted from where she sat on the rocking chair. She set the photos on her lap to reach over and lightly stroke her grandmother’s soft silver curls.
Harry walked into the room and came to stand at the other side of the bed. “Yeah, I check on her every night before we go to bed,” he admitted, talking low so as not to interrupt his mother’s sleep.
Jillian gave him a soft smile. Her father was an only child raised by a single mother. His love for Ionie was boundless. She knew it was hard for him to see some of her spark fade.
“How was your party?” he asked, coming around the bed to pick up the photos from her lap.
Confusing.
“It was fun,” she said instead.
