Carefully, oh-so-carefully, she extracted her hand from underneath his. Not in a way that made it an obvious retreat. No, just a hey-it’s-totally-normal-that-I-just-touched-you kind of evacuation.
“Your posse seems to be short a mom,” Gavin said, glancing around the room.
“April’s having a hard time right now. Kent decided to go full jerkwad and have an affair.” Molly pinched her lips together. Cheating asshole husbands caused a hard time. “She wasn’t able to make it.”
Gavin nodded, still scanning the room. “Where’d the boys go?”
“They were just here.” Molly checked back to where they’d been dancing not minutes earlier.
Bride. Groom. Kaiya and Dan.
No boys.
Crud. Nope. She didn’t like this. Her stomach sank.
They had the entire wilderness here to get into trouble at the lake house. Therefore, all the parents gave explicit instructions to stay within the confines of the tent—unless they asked either her or Gavin for permission to leave.
Rachel was off duty for the night, given it was her wedding and all.
“They probably went with Meemaw to find some sugar.” Gavin stood. Then he frowned.
Molly followed the direction of his gaze. Meemaw Evelyn hovered near the wedding cake alone, not dishing out sugar to the kids.
“I don’t think they went with her.” Molly gave another cursory look around the room before standing quickly and heading toward the nearest exit.
She had a hunch.
Call it mom intuition, but that hunch gave her a stomachache. Because the boys were all good kids, but they were still kids… Kids who didn’t always make the best choices, the ones that their grown-ups would prefer them to select.
Gavin was at her back as she emerged into the chill of the springtime evening mountain air. They only had a little more daylight before the sun totally set.
“I’ll check the house. You check the…” She scanned the vast acreage, her heart stumbling.
“Let’s both check the dock.” Gavin headed that direction, his jaw set.
She hurried after him. “What makes you think they’re at the dock?”
He turned, waiting for her to catch up, while the pulse in his jaw ticked more visibly. “It’s where I’d go if I were their age and wanted to terrify my parents.”
“Dock it is.” Molly scooted right alongside him. “They wouldn’t actually go swimming without an adult, right? I mean, we set the rules.” She sidestepped an oversized rock in the middle of the path. “No swimming alone. I was there when you said it.” Her toe caught on a pinecone. She kicked it away. “I even signed off on it.”
Gavin grunted, the stride of his gait seemingly longer with each step. Molly adjusted her pace to keep up with him.
“Loopholes.” Gavin said. “Kellan’s good with loopholes.”
On a scale of one to terrified, Molly leveled up to clearly concerned at this point in the search. The setting sun seemed to place an odd filter over the serenity of the forest—an ominous sort of filter that pushed her into seriously worried territory.
She did not appreciate the ambiance while searching out her kid and his counterparts.
Because Gavin wasn’t wrong. Kellan was his older son by a few minutes, and he was excellent with loopholes. If there ever was an attorney in the making, Kellan was it.
Ollie followed along wherever the other boys went and did whatever they wanted to do. Even though Molly had encouraged him—oh, how she’d encouraged him—to follow his own star, he trailed right along with his buddies.
No matter the extra-curricular activity he took part in, he had a load of fun. Content to do what they did. Never getting too worked up about any of it.
Unfortunately, that meant he went along with most anything, even those things that led her hustling after Gavin to the dock at sunset, holding up the hem of her dress so it didn’t get coated in pine needles.
They rounded the corner to the dock where they’d held the ceremony. The flowers and the white folding chairs were all removed, taken down by staff while the guests ate coq au vin. You’d never know a wedding had taken place there only hours before. The place looked now like a normal dock of planked wood leading to the water.
