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“After you were married.” He smiled at him.
“How long have you been planning this?” Math demanded.
“Since March. And if my future wife hasn’t told you yet, we’re having another baby,” said the man with the tiny baby already in his arms.
“And you weren’t telling?” Anderson asked, eyes wide.
Rafferty looked at the men in surprise. Mia had told him at least a month before that Mandy was going to have another baby. It seemed all the other women had assumed it was a secret. Mia, it seemed, was secreted out. Or maybe she was letting him in on the secrets.
“We wanted you guys to have your day first, but you pressured me to tell,” Hue said, though the pressure had been light at best.
Turning to Anderson, Math asked, “What about you? Are you secretly engaged also?”
Rafferty watched his brother-in-law with interest. The man was actually secretly married, but would he tell the men that? Would he let the cat out of the bag like Hue had? So Rafferty could finally be married to the woman he loved.
“Nope. She’s not ready.” Anderson laughed and dodged the question. Sinking Rafferty’s heart, again.
Math suddenly turned his attention to Rafferty. “How about you, Rafferty? Got a woman hidden in that big old house you bought?”
Stopping himself from asking the man what he had heard, hoping no one had heard something, he instead plastered on a fake smile. “You know the rumors in this town are out of control. If I had a woman in my house, the entire town would know about it instantly.”
“If anything was happening close to downtown, Mia would know and would’ve told everyone,” Anderson said, his eyes going to the dancers again.
“All you have to do is tell it from Mia, and everyone knows,” Math said about his cousin.
Rafferty wondered if these men knew how much Mia had known about their relationships and how she had kept them from the entire town. Or how she had manipulated information to make them look better than they really were. After all, it was Mia who had the rumors of Math and Tess’s baby out while they weren’t even in town. And Mandy and Hue’s baby’s paternity was never questioned because of Mia.
Anderson was about to say something, then stopped when he caught Rafferty’s eye. Anderson knew that Mia had and was keeping every secret Ruth held close. Even before they had become friends, Mia never told a soul that Ruth owned half the town.
The song on the dance floor changed to a slow one, and as one, the men got to their feet. It was time to dance with their women. Except Mia wouldn’t want to dance with him.
At that point, he got up and said to the men who were no longer paying attention to him, “Well, I’m going to go.”
Without looking at the dance floor to seek out his wife, he walked out of the reception hall. He was tired of being ignored in public by her.
Walking home slowly, he wondered if she would show up in his bed tonight. Would he be good enough for her when nobody was around?
He didn’t know and didn’t really want her to tonight. But he didn’t know how he would kick her out if she was there. All he wanted was her.
CHAPTER30
Mia pickeda sprig of baby’s breath from Tess’s hair and made sure that it was still perfect. It was. Looking at this week’s bride, she wanted to hug her friend but resisted because she would then have to straighten her dress back out. Tess had opted for an off-white dress that wasn’t nearly as tight as Natalie’s dress had been last week, but it was gorgeous just the same.
Also in the room was Mandy and Tess’s niece, Natasha, who were the bridesmaids this week. Mia was glad Mandy had chosen mid-June as her wedding date since it was getting old to have one every week.
Mia asked the same question she asked at every wedding she was the personal attendant at—which was all of them as of late. “Are you going out the window, Tess?”
Mandy laughed beside her, and Natasha looked at her niece in question.
“No, Mia. Thank you for asking,” Tess said with none of the nervousness of the previous brides. Maybe it was because she was older or because she had already had a reception with her family in Minnesota, but she was calm.
“Just checking. You never know.” Mia sat on the same table she always sat on.
It was at that point that something happened that had yet to happen at any of the previous wedding she had attended: the bride and her bridesmaid started to speak in a different language than they had ever spoken. Mia’s eyes were wide as she listened to the exchange. Her usual slow-talking friend was talking at a speed Mia was sure she couldn’t have kept up with if they had been speaking English.
Though Mia knew Tess’s native language was Russian, she had rarely heard her speak it, and never in actual sentences. But with her best friend there, she was able to converse with someone in it. It was amazing.
When they stopped, Mia asked, “What did you say?”
