Ivy: always :)
“Aunt Meredith already asked if I know anything about your contract.”
Sammie stared at the tall, muscular, blonde woman standing before her, whispering into Kieran’s ear. Kenna, she presumed. Kieran’s cousin. Sammie hadn’t seen her since they were children, not since some sort of falling out had happened between the McCullough brothers. Kieran frowned at her whispered words.
Kenna continued, leaning in closer. “A contract that you failed to bring up on our last call.” God, she was taller than Sammie, thicker too, with a frown for her cousin that pushed her lips into a pretty pout.
So the whole family was hot. Awesome.
“Let’s try not to talk about it tonight.” Kieran sighed, rubbing the short beard at his jaw. Kenna nodded, and then her attention turned fully toward Sammie.
“Uh,” Sammie started. She held out a hand. “Don’t know if you remember me. Sammie Mills.”
“I remember.” Kenna shook the proffered hand with a raised brow, and Sammie wanted to squirm under the scrutiny. Shevaguely remembered finding Kenna hard to read as a child. That much apparently hadn’t changed.
Kenna’s eyes flicked between Sammie and Kieran, the smallest of smiles flickering over her lips. “This a thing now?”
“No,” from Kieran.
“It’s not what it looks like,” from Sammie. Kenna flicked her bored stare between the two of them.
“Sure. Might want to figure that out if you’re wanting to distract your mother from more questions about that contract.”
Kenna turned toward the voices echoing down the hall from the dining room, leaving Sammie and Kieran to presumably figure their shit out in the thirty or so seconds they would have before being discovered by the rest of the family.
“Why do they all think we’re together?” Sammie hissed the question. It rankled, having people think she was in a relationship with the person she did, in fact, want to be in a relationship with.
Kieran was still staring down the hallway. “I don’t know what Kenna’s deal is.” He rolled his eyes, turning back to Sammie. “She’s kind of infuriating with her know-it-all tendencies. And my parents… they just like you. They’ll drop it eventually.”
That rankled as well. While she wasn’t over the moon happy with the constant investigation into her nonexistent love life, a part of her did preen every time someone thought her and Kieran were together. But Kieran’s words had just blown out the candle flame of pretending, and the warmth of his family’s assumptions faded away.
A family that wanted her. That saw her with their son, and liked her enough to assume she’d be sticking around for a while. Grant and Meredith knew her. They’d been there when Greta died. They’d come to Attie’s games whenever they were able, even before Kieran had switched to the same team. They’d taken Sammie out for a celebratory dinner when she’d been promotedto head brewer. They hadn’t blinked an eye when Atticus had introduced his boyfriend to them earlier that summer.
The bittersweet reality of her situation spread through Sammie like a poison. She had Kieran, but not in the way she wanted. Not in any way that could be permanent.
And the worst part? Sammie would take what she could get, regardless of the damage it did to her heart.
“Kieran, Sammie, you coming?” Meredith’s voice echoed out from the dining room, sending a jolt through Sammie. It was fine. It wouldbefine. Sammie had gone into her arrangement with Kieran knowing it wasn’t real, that it would never be real. And so far, they were having fun. Their bodies fit together, their desires aligned.
It would have to be enough.
“We’ll be right there,” Kieran called, eyes still holding Sammie steady, pinning her in place. He leaned in, ruffling her hair. “Come on, let’s go eat.”
Enoughwas going to be pretty hard to accept, Sammie thought, if he was going to pull cute shit like that all the time.
“Met that athletic trainer of yours,” Kenna said to Kieran as she lifted a piece of pizza that was absolutelysaggingwith cheese to her mouth. Kieran felt Sammie go rigid next to him, even though they weren’t touching.
“Ivy?” Sammie asked. Kenna nodded, dabbing at her lips with one of the cloth napkins Kieran’s mother had passed to all of them.
“Is she the one you got into a fight with at the conference last month?” The voice of Kellan, Kenna’s younger brother, pulled the attention of everyone at the table.
“A fight?” Meredith said, gasping softly.
“It wasn’t a fight.” Kenna looked bored, picking up a second slice of the homemade pizza.
“Couldn’t pay me to get in a fight with Ivy,” Kieran mumbled, earning a breathy chuckle from Sammie. He saw her relax slightly in the corner of his vision.
“So you’re the one—”Sammie cut herself off, cheeks going red as every set of eyes at the table turned toward her. “Never mind.”
