My heart gives a tight little squeeze. “It is.” We’ve reached our respective vehicles, but it feels strange saying goodbye. Maybe it’s the intimacy of what we just shared. The knowledge that we also share daughters who aren’t even born.
When I look up at Luke, I see my conflicted emotions reflected in his eyes. “Are you okay with having two girls?”
“Okay?” He gapes like I’m crazy. “I’m over the fucking moon, are you kidding?”
“Really?”
“Absolutely.” The divot in his brow deepens. “Why would you even ask that?”
“I don’t know. My father really wanted a boy, and my mom?—”
“Let me stop you right there.” He leans back on my car, crossing his arms as he fixes his gaze on my face. “I don’t know your mom, and I’ve only met your dad a few times, but I think I feel confident saying they set the bar pretty low for parental behavior.”
I know I should argue, and who does Luke think he is critiquing my parents?
“Want to know a secret?” I ask softly.
“Absolutely.”
“I hoped it would be two girls.” I wait for a flicker of surprise in his eyes, but there’s not one. “I would have been happy with a boy and a girl or even two boys, but having twin daughters?”
“Exactly what you wanted, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Same.”
“Really?” That’s surprising. “You don’t want a boy to carry on your family name?”
Luke quirks one sandy brow. “You’d deign to have our kids be Lovelins and not Spencers?”
“It’s not just up to me, but yeah.” Biting my lip, I meet Luke’s eyes. “Or maybe we hyphenate. Spencer-Lovelin? We’d have to choose simple first names to balance the cumbersome surname, or maybe?—”
“Hazel? Luke? What are you doing here?”
Ice floods my veins at my cousin’s bright voice. Spinning around, I paste on a smile to greet Peter and Lucy. “Hey! What a surprise. How are you doing?”
“Good.” My cousin wraps me in one of her signature hugs. “I’ve been meaning to call you. At the town council meeting last night, they talked about choosing a new sister city.”
“Instead of Brostini?” My mother would have a conniption fit. “That was my mother’s pet project. She wanted that tie between her birthplace and where she had me.” It’s one of Mom’s only moments of maternal sentimentality. “They can’t just undo that whole Romanian partnership.”
“That’s what I told them. They backed off when Noah got up and made the case for keeping the connection.”
“Noah?” Why would my cousin—who left town after high school and only comes back a few times a year—be attending a town council meeting in Cherry Blossom Lake?
“You know how Noah is.” With a shrug, Lucy fills in the blanks. “He said he didn’t have anything better to do last night.”
“Than attend a town council meeting?” I’d honestly rather chew off my toenails. “I’m surprised he’s still in town. Hasn’t he been here more than a week?”
“Something like that.” My cousin shrugs again. “He’s just being Noah. Some weird, brotherly phantom who ghosts in and out of town when he feels like it. Guess he’s sticking around longer this time, since some overseas contract fell through.”
Even Luke looks bemused. “And Noah cares deeply about Cherry Blossom Lake’s sister city?”
Peter snorts and steps closer to his wife. “That’s what I asked.”
“My idiot brothers love to argue.” Lucy rolls her eyes. “Noah’s done work in Romania. He gets fired up about the most random things. You know how he is.”
“I suppose.” To be honest, I’ve never been close with the black sheep of the Spencer-King clan. But hey, I’m grateful he did me a favor, even if he didn’t mean to. “My mother’s been talking about funding some sort of children’s charity in Eastern Europe. Spencer Holdings would manage the project, but I honestly don’t have a clue where to start.”
