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“Can’t I convince you to come back here?” Uncle Kevin asked, his drink raised toward me. “We could be doing this all the time.”
I glanced to Nan on my left, but she only offered me a small smile.
“It’s tempting, but…”
“I have an office with your name on it,” Uncle Kevin said, and the offer was beyond tempting. But with the entire family’s eyes on me, I felt my skin heat.
“I’d rather earn it on my own than have it handed to me.”
Uncle Kevin nodded. We’d had that conversation before, when I had informed him I wanted to move branches two years ago. Sure, this was my family’s law firm, but I still wanted to prove to not only myself but everyone else that I was there on my merit and not my name.
“Plus, I like West Chester,” I added.
“Correction.” Kennedy stuck her finger in the air. “She likessomeonein West Chester.”
Aunt Bea put her elbows on the table, practically foaming at the mouth. Nan tipped her head, and I didn’t dare look her way again since she probably already knew.
“It’s, uh, Dean…Hargrove.”
Uncle Kevin slapped his hand on the table. “Dean Hargrove, the guy you’ve always complained about?”
Aunt Bea pointed at me with an olive from her martini. “The one you’re always fighting with?”
My grandmother clucked a sound next to me.
“Oh no, Nan, not again,” Connor groaned, sinking back against his chair and not so quietly saying to Shelby, “That’s always the sound she makes before she tells us about how she and our grandfather fell in love by fighting all the time.”
“Oh, shush.” Aunt Bea swatted at him across the table. “It’s a nice story.”
But I was with Connor on this one. She was doing this to rub it in my face about how she was right and how she knew all along. “Your Nan knows,” she said with a touch of her index finger to her temple. “Doesn’t she?”
“My Nan also needs to stop speaking in the third person,” I joked, and she pinched me before launching into her story.
We all patiently sat through the twenty-minute recitation of how she fell in love with her William.
“And now look at us all,” Uncle Kevin said when she finished. “The Novak clan has had our ups and downs, but we’re all here and thriving. Even if I can’t convince Taylor to move home.”
I shrugged, trying and failing to hide my smile.
“Stop it, Kevin,” Aunt Bea said. “Leave her alone. She’s in love.”
My mouth parted as my breath left me in unsteady waves, the revelation almost knocking me over. But then my grandmother held my hand underneath the table, anchoring me.
“It’s about time,” she said quietly. “It’s about time you found your soft spot to land.”
CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE
Dean
“Hey, I thought I’d hear from you today,” Taylor said once I answered my phone.
I rubbed at the back of my neck then stretched out along the couch in the living room. “Yeah, sorry.”
I could hear the exhaustion in my voice. Taylor caught it too.
“What’s wrong? Why do you sound like Eeyore?”
Holding my cell phone at my ear, I dropped my opposite forearm over my eyes, not particularly proud to relay the events of the day. “I overslept this morning.”
