“Oh nah,” Mason said confidently. “I miss home, but I really like it here. This will make it easy to go home and see my mum, for a visit, but no. No plans to move back just yet.”
“Okay,” Maya replied, though she didn’t sound so sure.
“This is a good thing. And I thought you all loved a party. It’ll be slapdash to say the least, but I think we can pull together a pretty fun party to celebrate these legally binding nuptials.”
“We can and you’re right. This is good for you,” Liz said.
“Look, mates. I’m fully understanding that I am coming off this side of downright ecstastic, but can we all admit that things have been depressing as fuck around here lately, and me doing something stupid and impulsive with a woman I just met might be the thing we all need? Shake things up a bit.”
“I don’t think it’s stupid. If I had the money to help you pay off your dad, I would have given it to you years ago,” Liz replied.
“Yeah, same,” Ginny said.
“I mean, I think Xeni’s hot as fuck and my mom’s only had good things to say about her,” Maya added. “Real wedding for a fake marriage that leads to real money that’ll get you off the hook with your dad? Go for that.”
“Wow,” Ginny suddenly said.
“What?”
“I mean, wow. Really babe? Hot as fuck?”
“Oh, come on. When you saw her in the diner yesterday,yousaid you didn’t expect her to be that pretty.”
“But hot as fuck? Wow.”
“I’ll wow you.”
“You two, please. Not in front of the jam,” Mason interjected. He looked over at Silas, who hadn’t said a single thing. “You’ve been awfully quiet.”
“Just listening. I’ll talk to you after.”
“Okay.”
“Tell us what you need,” Liz said, getting them back on track like always.
“I need to figure out where to do this. And I’m gonna need some makeshift rings. I’m not finding anything to fit around these sausages in twenty-four hours.”
They bounced around ideas and in no time they’d figured out a pretty decent plan. Unless Xeni objected, they were getting married the following night there on McInroy’s Farm.
“I have to head back to the barn,” Silas announced once everything had been sorted. “Come talk to me for a sec.”
“Yeah.” Mason followed his cousin out into the lingering heat that didn’t seem to give a damn that it was already fall. Their red Irish Setter, Honeycrisp, was waiting at a nearby tree for Liz to finish her day.
“What’s on your mind?” he asked when they reached Silas’s red pick-up truck.
“I’m wondering what you’re going to tell your dad. He’s going to wonder where the money came from.”
“The way I see it, it’s none of his business. He made up his mind about me and he named his terms. If he wants to complain about how I paid back the money he insisted on giving me for things I didn’t want, then so be it.”
“We shouldn’t tell our parents about Xeni at all then.”
“I agree.”
Liz had literally been on the run from a dangerous former client when she came into their lives. She and Silas had created a whole web of lies to keep her safe. When Mason slipped and mentioned Silas’s new girlfriend to his mom and his aunt, shit had really hit the fan. It didn’t help that Silas’s dickhead twin, Scott, was also in love with Liz. In the end, it all worked out. His aunt and uncle finally knew the truth and they had welcomed Liz into the family with open arms. He was pretty certain Scott had gotten over his crush.
But his aunt and uncle weren’t like his parents. When Silas finally shared his suspicions that he had undiagnosed autism, they backed off their corporate dreams for him. He had the farm now and even though Scott had bailed on running it with him, Silas was happy and that was more than enough for his parents.
In Mason’s case, he was an ongoing source of disappointment. His mother would have questions, but Mason knew she’d understand in the end. The truth of this would just give his father more reason to berate him. He wasn’t telling them a thing.
