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“How many times did you kiss Allison before some ‘ah-ha, I’m in love’ moment?” It was a classic duck and cover move on her part. If she didn’t know the answer, she changed the subject, putting the questioner on the offensive instead.
“Four times.”
She snorted before she realized he was serious.
“Four times,” she repeated. “That sounds like you. You are a hopeless romantic, Landon. What happened to make it the fourth the one?”
“You’ve already heard my Allison stories, Sunnie.” She, like Finn, had been his confidante the past seven or eight years. Typically, it was the three of them at the bar, talking about relationships, sports, future plans. She had been his friend every step of the way through the Allison years.
“Never in this context. I mean, I heard about the dates and the getting-lucky parts. And I was there when she left.” Her eyes softened.
Landon had been brokenhearted when Allison realized she would regret not taking her shot at Broadway if she settled down with him in Baltimore. He’d respected her honesty even though it had shattered him.
The night she’d thrown her stuff in the back of her car and taken off for the bright lights of the big city, Finn and Sunnie had shown up, armed with pizza and beer, and they’d cued up every John Cusack movie on Finn’s iTunes account. Sunnie’s brother had a serious man-crush on John Cusack for some reason.
“Our first date was a blind date, set up by one of the guys at the precinct. The second was a work function, summer picnic. She hung out with the other wives and girlfriends and taught three little girls how to play hopscotch after drawing the boxes out with sidewalk chalk for them.”
“And the third,” she continued for him, “was the two of you walking along the Inner Harbor for hours, just holding hands and talking, amazed by how much you had in common.” She said it in a dreamy, faraway voice, teasing him for what she perceived was a flaw. Only Sunnie would see romance as a shortcoming.
Of course, she wasn’t wrong about the third date, which just proved to him she’d been paying attention more than he realized to his relationship with Allison.
Rather than give her the point, he joked, “I swear to God you were dropped on your head as a baby. It’s the only thing that could explain you growing up with Aaron and Riley and thinking romance is cheesy.”
She laughed. “Probably. So what was this magical fourth date?”
“We met you and Finn and a bunch of other Collinses at the pub for karaoke.”
“Oh yeah. I remember that night.”
“She fit in, thought all of you were awesome. We left at closing time and we were walking toward my car. She kept going on and on about what a great family you were and…I kissed her. And I knew—thought—she was the woman I was going to spend the rest of my life with. She was fine with my job, good with kids, said she wanted to get married, rooted for all the same sports teams, watched all the same TV shows, and she loved all of you.”
“That sort of sounds like a checklist.”
It did, but he hadn’t thought of it that way until he’d said it all out loud. “I guess it does.”
“Wow. That might be the least romantic thing you’ve ever said.”
Landon nodded, feeling slightly off-balance. He’d spent months after Allison left feeling as if he was trying to rebound from a broken heart. Now it seemed as if that depression was based more on what he’d lost, not who he’d lost. “I think it is.”
“It’s that marriage problem of yours.”
“Problem?” he asked.
“You want a wife and kids like…yesterday.”
“I don’t think that’s a problem, Sunnie.”
“Hear me out,” she continued. “It was just you and your mom, pretty much your whole life. That had to be quiet and lonely. Then you’d come over to our house, where it was noise and chaos and insanity, and for some weird reason, you liked that. A lot.”
“I did…do. I don’t think it’s any secret I look up to your dad. I look at his life and I know it’s what I want. More than that, he’s the kind of man I want to be. He was always really good to me, Sunnie. I was starving for a guy to pay attention to me, to toss the ball around, even just to give me hell for failing my spelling test.”
“You’re a shit speller.”
He grinned, even though he couldn’t quite figure out what her point was. “What’s wrong with wanting to live a life like Aaron Young?”
“Not a damn thing,” she said quickly. “If you manage that, you’ll have a pretty freaking great life. I just…” She sighed. “I just hope you let it happen naturally. I’m pretty sure my dad didn’t have a perfect wife checklist, and I can promise you, if he did, Mom didn’t check one single box. She struggled—hell, she still struggles—with his job, she’s way more social than he is, constantly dragging him to places he doesn’t want to go, and while they both wanted kids, Mom wanted eight, but Dad put his foot down at three. Personally, I blame Darcy. She was a handful.”
Landon gave her a look that said he wasn’t going there because they both knew the truth. Darcy had been the perfect baby.
