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“You have to help me.” I gripped Emma’s shoulders.
Her big eyes widened. “How?”
“Does Dad know you were engaged to your theater teacher?”
“What? Um, not exactly. I was planning to bring him to dinner…” She trailed off, her eyes narrowing. “What do you want?”
“Just a little mutual help. I’m assuming you don’t want Dad to know you were hooking up with your teacher.”
“We were going to get married! Age doesn’t have a thing to do with love. So what if he was 37?”
“Thirty-seven?” My voice lifted to a level that scared Lucky out of his current sneak attack around the back of the sofa. He jolted and high-tailed it out of the room, his black tail sticking straight up.
“What do you want?” she asked through her teeth.
“Just play along with whatever I do at dinner, okay?”
She cocked her head. “Are you scheming? You never scheme.”
“That should tell you how drastic this situation is. I just can’t deal with Mom matchmaking, and if I’m alone for the holiday, she will make my life hell.”
“Better that than asking if you’re prepared to run for mayor when Dad retires.”
“He won’t ever retire. He’s a vampire.” I sent up a quick fervent prayer that my words were true.
Family legacies were important, yeah, yeah. But when our ancestors founded a tiny town in upstate New York a million years ago, and your father and grandfather and great-grandfather had all been mayor…well, there was a reason I didn’t go home often. Crescent Cove was only a couple hours from my hometown of Clintondale, but I still felt a measure of security from the distance.
Until Em had shown up at my door, a harbinger of holiday horror. Her college was located between here and our hometown, so it wasn’t that far, but still. A little warning she was on the way might’ve been nice.
Too bad my family wasn’t into sharing such information ahead of time.
“Look, just follow my lead, okay?” I set aside the bucket of chicken and tugged my sister to her feet.
“What lead? You weren’t even planning on coming, were you?”
“I was in denial it was that time of year.” Which wasn’t exactly true since it was almost impossible to ignore the decorations hanging from every light pole on Main Street and the jolly fucking music playing in every store.
My sister stared at me as I dragged her to the front door. “Are you throwing me out?”
“No. I just have somewhere I need to be. Let’s hang out soon.” I gave her a long hug. “I’ll make it up to you.”
“I’m worried about you, Clint.”
“Why? You’re the one with a broken heart from your old lech of a teacher.”
She stuck her tongue out at me. “He’s only a year older than you are, so if Pierre is an old lech, then what does that make you?”
I didn’t really want to consider that. “Not a lech.”
“But still old?”
“Pfft. Just remember we have a deal. I keep your secrets, you back me up.”
“Are you going to tell me what that means?”
“Nothing yet.” I wondered if my unexpected delay had killed my chance with Kitty already. I wouldn’t have thought so with anyone else, but she was different than any woman I’d known and I barely knew a thing about her.
“I’ll let you know when there’s something to know,” I said finally.
