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She hadn’t even let Katie grab her phone to tell Maggie what was happening first. Not that it would have made a huge amount of difference since Maggie didn’t arrive too long after they did, but Katie would still have preferred to warn her. However, when her mom was incontrol of a crowdmode, there was no getting away from her orders.
It had long irritated Katie—someone who often had to take control of situations at work and didn’t love being controlled in her personal life—but it was just who her mom was. Even if being controlled in her own home was a deeply unpleasant experience.
She watched as her mom moved infinitesimally closer to Maggie. The two were clearly getting along as they laughed and chatted. It was everything Katie had known it would be. Now, she was more aware of why she’d been so reluctant to let it happen, but she couldn’t help but be torn between the pang in her heart at seeing Maggie and her mom laugh together, and the twist in her gut that her mom might attempt to recruit Maggie on her quest to find Katie a partner.
Katie was moments away from telling Maggie how she felt about her, the last thing she needed was her mom further ruining that by failing to see that Maggie was what Katie wanted, and looking for Maggie’s assistance pitching the latest prospect she’d selected from amongst her friends’ children…
She was really going to have to have a conversation with her mom about boundaries. She knew she’d disappointed her family by working this week instead of going home, but couldn’t they have called before they showed up? What were they planning to do if she’d been at work?
The thought hadn’t occurred to Katie until that moment, but, now that it had, she couldn’t wrap her head around what a dozen people were going to do in a strange city with platters of food.
Show up at the hospital, probably.
She shuddered just imagining that, but she knew it would have happened. They knew where she worked and they weren’t great at taking no for an answer.
Katie sighed. Families were complicated.
“What’s got your goat?” Adam asked, nudging her as he showed up at Katie’s side. “Jealous Mom’s stolen your girlfriend?”
Katie side-eyed her brother. “Excuse me?”
He laughed, shaking his head at her. “Please. Mom might have missed the clues, but I haven’t. And that includes all of the ones before tonight.”
Katie turned reluctantly away from Maggie to stare at him. “What are you talking about?” She wondered if her tone might have been more impactful if she hadn’t started blushing at his accusations.
Adam smirked. “Nine times out of ten, if we manage to catch you outside of work, you’re with Maggie.”
“She’s my best friend.”
“Yeah, and Daveed is mine, but you don’t see me practically living in his pocket.”
“I live here, thank you very much.”
He laughed. “You only get evasive when you’re hiding things.” He nodded over to the couch where their mother was being pressed further into Maggie by the others squeezing onto the couch with them. “She might be too hung up on the idea that you’re going to marry someone back home, move back, and live the whole suburban life, but I know you better than that, Specks.”
Katie shook her head at the nickname—one neither of them remembered the origins of, but which had stuck around for years. “I’m not moving anywhere. I like it here.”
He hummed. “I can tell. Quite a cozy little night you had set up for two…”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, you mean before you lot burst in unannounced?”
In his favor, he looked chagrined. “Yeah, sorry about that. It sounded like a good idea when Mom pitched it to us all.”
“And you didn’t think to ask first?”
He winced. “You know what it’s like when she gets these ideas and whisks everyone away with the magic of it all. You missed your visit, we won’t see you for Christmas, we’ve never been out here to see you… I don’t know, it just sounded like a magical, Christmas thing to do.”
Katie sighed. “Yeah, I get it. And it’s not like I don’t appreciate the gesture, just—”
“Call next time?”
“Yeah.” She scoffed. “Or, you know, ask whether I’m working or have plans or whatever. Like, what would you have done if I’d been stuck at the hospital all night?”
He laughed, relaxing as he saw some of the fight drop out of her. “I’m more concerned about what we might have walked in on here if we’d been a little later.”
“Dinner,” she deadpanned, ignoring the way Adam wiggled his eyebrows at her. “You’d have interrupted the very nice dinner I was in the middle of making when you all burst in.”
“Right. Date night dinner.”
