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I frowned. “How do you know?”
“I have my ways.”
How much did Helena tell her? Then again, it didn’t much matter. Laverne really did have her ways. She’d always managed to get us to spill our guts all the way back to the days when me and my brothers were getting in trouble in high school right up until now.
I went to the sink with the dirty dishes and turned on the water. “It doesn’t matter what I want. She’ll be leaving in a few days.”
She followed me over, taking a towel off the stack on a nearby cart. “Not if you make use of the week she’ll be here. The party isn’t until Friday.”
“Matchmaking? Really?”
She pushed her glasses on top of her head. “If you people would cooperate, I wouldn’t have to work so hard at it, dammit.”
“It was only one night.” I could feel the heat on my neck.
“Stop getting so embarrassed. How the heck do you think LeeLee came into this world?”
“Aw, Aunt Laverne. I don’t want to think about you and Uncle Fred making babies.”
“Beyond Lila, I had a whole life outside of this orchard before I settled down with Fred. I know what it’s like to have a fling. But if it was just a fling, you wouldn’t have gotten into a brawl with Kain, now would you?”
I scrubbed harder at the dish with the apple crisp remnants. She was right and my sore ribs were a stark reminder of how idiotic I’d been with Kain. But just seeing her touching him had activated some dark, long buried part of me.
The one that acted first and asked questions later.
But the possessive part was still messing me up. I didn’t have any right to her. But it didn’t stop me from flying fist first at a man I considered a friend.
Aunt Laverne quietly dried my finished dishes. “You never take anything for yourself, Beckett. Always worrying about the orchard, your brothers, heck, even your parents.” She rubbed my shoulder. “These are great big, strong shoulders, but it doesn’t mean you have to spend your life alone.”
I glanced at her. “There’s nothing here for her. And I can’t leave.”
“You’renot enough?”
“After one day? C’mon, that’s too much even for your romantic streak.”
“Gives you five days to make an impression, doesn’t it?” She set the clean dish on the counter. “Then you can see what’s what.”
I didn’t really have an answer for that one. The swift kick of something that felt like hope was sidelined by the yowl of women’s voices singing…Britney Spears?
Laverne shot me a look. I shut the water off and she tossed the towel at me as we both hustled out of the kitchen and into the hallway. I was drying my hands as we entered the lobby.
A half dozen women were sashaying through the lobby with pink boas and a tiara crowned one of the women wearing a veil.
Aunt Laverne laughed. “Guess one of the groups went to Lucky’s.”
“One of? How many weddings are booked in here?”
“Three at the moment.”
I looked down at her. “During the beginning of the week?”
“We offered a discount and a surprising amount of people were willing to book for a cheaper rate. Mostly younger people, as you can see.”
I shook my head as the pack of women shimmied across the lobby in some drunken formation that only they could explain. They were using the geometric pattern in the carpet to hop around in a bastardized choreography of one of Britney’s earliest hits.
“You got me crazy!” The delirious laugh was strangely familiar.
I spotted Kira corralling Cara and…Helena? “Okay, Britney. Dance this way.”
