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The conversations ground to a halt with a bark of Brady’s laughter being the final sound, making him wince at those around him.
“Well, I know y’all thought you did real good keeping the secret about Taylor and Liam having a baby from me and Bets, but if we were voting on who had the hardest secret to keep, I’d win hands down.”
Over a grandbaby?
“Linc Buchanan, you have totally lost your marbles.”
“Yeah, Daddy,” Ellie said with an eye roll. “Everyone knows a baby trumps everything.”
His shit-eating grin was in full glory. “You think so? We’re about to find out. You see, I arranged for some music tonight, as you know. But I told a little fib about who’d be performing. It’s not some piddly little band.”
Bets and a few others gasped.
“It’s actually one of the biggest bands in the world,” Linc added with a cocky wink.
Ellie and Taylor turned to each other and started jumping up and down, scream-crying in unison, “Oh my God! U2!”
Bets’ mouth dropped. Okay, she could feel a scream catching in her throat too.
Linc winced and held up a hand. “Calm on down. It’s not U2. Although Bono volunteered. They just didn’t seem right for this event.”
Bets gaped in shock as everyone’s faces fell.
Ellie’s lip started to wobble. “You turned Bono down? Dad…I thought you loved me.”
“Yeah, Dad,” Taylor added.
Taylor had started calling Linc some version of father after her wedding to Liam. It had touched her deeply when he’d walked her down the aisle, and she’d said she liked the idea of having a sister in Ellie and father in Linc, since her blood family sucked. Linc had loved it, and so had Ellie, who’d promptly grabbed Kathleen and introduced Taylor to sister number two. Linc sometimes called them the Froot Loops, the next gen of Lucky Charms, since they were always raising a ruckus in the village like Bets and her friends had. They had the honorary boas to prove it now that Taylor had gotten over her dance phobia.
“I’m sure you had a good reason for turning U2 down,” Bets said to turn the tide of the mutinous crowd. “I mean, I still love you.”
“Yeah, of course, we love you, Daddy, but WTF,” Ellie said emphatically as Taylor and Kathleen and a few others nodded.
Linc reached down for a gift bag and held it out to Bets. “For you.”
“Another gift?” She sounded petulant, so she shot him a smile. “Thank you.”
Her smile faded into confusion when she looked inside.
He leaned in so he could meet her eyes, which were dancing. “Recognize it?”
“I’m not the one who’s lost her marbles enough to turn down U2.” She drew out her precious Lucky Charms boa in Irish green. “You repurposing gifts or something? I’m totally confused.”
He slapped a hand to his forehead. “You are the smartest, most incredible woman ever— You don’t understand why I’ve just given you a boa?”
Pacing a moment, he turned around and pointed to something on the stage. Turning back to her, he sighed and took the boa from her, draping it around her shoulders before kissing her soundly on the mouth.
Music swelled on the loudspeaker, and she started dancing immediately. Sheknewthat music. Her brain scrambled.
“Oh my God!” She sucked in a breath. “Bon Jovi!”
Girl screams punctured her eardrum, but she didn’t care. She started screaming along with them, watching as a large SUV drove up to the stage on the grass and parked beside it. The doors opened, and she went faint as Jon exited, waving to the crowd before jogging up the stairs to the stage with the rest of the band.
“I need to sit down,” she said, reaching for a chair behind her, wondering how her other Lucky Charms must be feeling.
Linc pulled her upright. “No, you don’t. Go get ’em, sugar.”
The strength of his hands on her shoulders cleared her head. “What do you mean?”
