As if on cue, Siobhan heard the tinny electronic engine sound of Oliver’s favorite truck and knew she was out of time. A minute later, her son padded into the room, his truck clutched in his arms. His blue eyes were still sleepy and his dark hair was sticking up in several different directions, and Siobhan smiled because it was one of her favorite looks.
“Auntie Robin,” he said, lighting up when he saw her packing things into a duffel bag. “We go camping!”
And that’s what it was all about, Siobhan reminded herself. She was going to stand next to Steph while she married the love of her life, and Oliver was going to have the fun adventure of camping for a week in the great outdoors.
For that, she was willing to ignore her former brother-in-law.
* * *
“I’m not sure how you plan to ignore the maid of honor for a week when we’re hosting the wedding.”
Brian looked at his brother Rob and shrugged. “It’s not going to be that hard. She’ll be fussing around Steph, since that’s what the maid of honor does, and if she needs something campground related, she can ask you or Joey or Danny.”
“And that’s why you’ve been standing in front of that window with your arms crossed and a scowl on your face for the last half hour?”
He shrugged. “That’s different from any other day how?”
“Fair,” Rob admitted. “The being totally still for a half hour’s different, though. People driving by probably think you’re some kind of angry mannequin and are really confused about why we’d put you in our window.”
Brian didn’t really care what people thought. He had a lot on his mind and, regardless of what his facial expressions were doing, watching the birds circling over the river in the distance usually calmed his mind. Not so much today, though, because their family was descending upon them to kick off his cousin’s wedding week.
And so was Siobhan Rowe.
She hadn’t liked Brian before he married her sister. She hadn’t liked him while he was married to her sister. And shedefinitelyhadn’t liked him since the divorce.
It didn’t make sense to him. She’d made it clear from their first meeting that she didn’t want him with Kelly, so her sister dumping him and walking out the door with no warning should have made Siobhan happy. But by the time the divorce was finalized, he’d become convincedthat nothing short of him falling off the face of the earth would make her happy.
And they were going to spend an entire week together. Wasn’tthatfun?
“Dude, you’re literally growling right now.” Rob clapped his hand on his shoulder. “Either eat something or take a nap.”
“I ate. And I don’t have time for a nap. The family’s going to start arriving any minute.”
“Speaking of people arriving, Steph sent a group text asking us to babyproof Siobhan’s site as much as possible. You never told me she had a baby.”
Brian turned away from the window. That was news to him, probably because he’d been ignoring his phone for the last hour. “How old is the kid?”
“Almost two, she said.”
“Since Kelly and I were already divorced when she would have had him and Siobhan didn’t leave me on her Christmas newsletter list, how would I have known?”
The bell over the door rang, and Brian sighed. The combination campground office and store was also something of a social hangout thanks to the chairs and the abundant amount of snacks for sale, and every time that bell rang, he wanted to rip it down and run it over with his truck.
Seeing Hannah Shelby walk through the door cheered him up, though. Rob’s fiancée had come into their lives as a seasonal camper in the spring, intending to leave at the end of last month, but now she’d be a permanent fixture in their lives. Brian liked her and she not only made Rob happy, but she fit right in with the family.
She held the door so Stella could follow her in. Brian’s yellow Lab was the best dog he’d ever had in his life, and she loved everybody she met. Of course, she loved himbest, but she’d spent the morning roaming around the campground with Hannah, doing last-minute cleanup before the family arrived.
“Your mom sent me a text,” she informed them. “They’re about five minutes out.”
Brian sighed again. “Let the chaos commence.”
“I sent them the campground map yesterday,” Hannah said. “I marked which sites everybody’s in, but we’ll see how that goes.”
Rob chuckled. “What are the chances they pull into the campground in the order they need to arrive so they won’t jam each other up?”
Chaos was the right word for the next two hours. As the family arrived—most of them pulling campers and definitely not in any kind of order—Brian and Rob helped get everybody parked at their sites. As soon as Joey arrived with his wife and daughter, he jumped in to help.
Even though he owned a quarter of the campground and should have been around to help, their brother Danny wasn’t arriving until Saturday afternoon. Just because she was getting married in a campground didn’t mean Steph was skimping on the details, so he’d be picking up the white chairs, tables and the arch from the rental place on Saturday and driving them up. He’d miss out on some of the festivities, but nobody wanted to do four hours round-trip of driving the day before the wedding.
