“Don’t be sorry.” Her eyes twinkled. “You didn’t yell; you finally talked to me like a real person, not a fragile piece of crystal about to fall off the shelf.”
“Is that what this is about?”
“No,” she admitted. “It’s about you moving on. You don’t have to do it today or tomorrow, but I want you to think about what I wrote.”
Will didn’t need to think about it. There was nothing left for him to do. “Ihavemoved on, Mom.”
Moving on, however, didn’t include finding a “life partner” and “healing.” He was doing fine on his own.
Will folded the letter and jammed the paper into his jacket pocket. His mother was wrong, but this must have been a hard letter for her to compose. “I appreciate your concern. Everything you do reminds me how lucky I am to have a mother who loves her kids as much as you love us.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
As Will paced the length of his living room, Kelsey thumbed through the preference sheets Faith had filled out over the years. Four different sets for four different weddings to four different grooms. A deck of cards would be easier to make sense of and sort through.Perhaps with a little help…
Kelsey glanced up at Will. “It isn’t so bad.”
He tightened his mouth into a thin, grim line. “Easy for you to say.”
Will acted as if someone had stolen a closet full of Manolo Blahnik shoes. Not that Kelsey hadn’t felt the same way when she realized what the next fourteen days held for her, and she would need every bit of help Will offered. But first, she had to help him get through whatever had happened with his mother. Kelsey wasn’t sure what went on while she’d been with his father, but Will had been stoic and silent since they’d returned to his house.
It had to end.
She couldn’t afford any distractions with all the work they had to do, and she needed him to stop moping so she could finally get some help. “Your mom loves you.”
He stopped dead in his tracks. “She wants me to find a life partner, but what that really means is she wants me to get married again.”
He said the word “married” as if it were the name of a virus with a one hundred percent fatality rate. Kelsey knew the feeling. “She only wants you to be happy.”
“I’m happy.”
About as happy as a four-year-old asked to be the ring bearer at a wedding, endure the torturous ordeal of standing still, and wear a tuxedo during a nuptial mass. Kelsey smiled.
Will frowned. “This isn’t funny.”
“Oh, it’s very funny. If you could see your face.” Crocodile tears running down his cheeks and a pout on those kissable lips were the only things missing to complete the cherubic vision in her head. Will was all man, but if he ever had a son, Kelsey could picture what the boy would look like. Cute wouldn’t even begin to describe him. Her heart hitched. “You don’t look very happy right now.”
“Imagine how you would look if your mother wanted to marry you off A-S-A-P.”
“I’d be catatonic.” The thought horrified Kelsey, but her mother would never suggest marriage to her. Mom was too involved in her own life and marital status to care about Kelsey’s.
“Exactly.”
“But Starr’s not trying to marry you off. At least not until after Faith’s wedding.”
“Still not funny.”
“Come on,” Kelsey urged in her most conciliatory, soothing voice she used with frantic brides. “She’s only looking out for your best interests.”
He stared at her as if she’d grown horns and turned green. “My best interests?”
Kelsey nodded. “She wants to see her children—all of her children—settled.”
“Settled doesn’t have to mean married.”
“Maybe not to you. Or me. But it does to your mom. She doesn’t want you to be alone.”
“I’m not alone. I have Midas. I…” He frowned and shook his head. “Why am I even discussing this? I’m not getting married. I couldn’t marry again. My marriage was perfect.”
