I didn’t want to think I was my mother’s son, but well, I was my mother’s son.
“Aunt Lula is great,” I said. “She’s a little wacky, but her heart is always in the right place.”
“As opposed to my heart?”
I sighed. “Mama, no. I wasn’t comparing you.”
“Good, because you know it breaks my heart that you had to run all the way to Nebraska after that scum broke your heart. When are you going to comehome?”
This was an old refrain.
“This is my home now,” I said firmly. “I’ve got a career, friends, a life.”
Her eyes told me she was not happy even as her face stayed perfectly smooth. “I understand. You’re happier there. Thousands of miles from me.”
I sighed and smiled. “You know I miss our lunches.”
“You miss my gossip.”
I laughed. “You know I do. Spill the tea!”
“Well, Geneva and Marco got caught in bed by Marco’s wife, and then they had the audacity to show up to the hospital’s fundraising gala together!”
“What about Marco’s marriage?”
She threw up her hands. “Who knows? Geneva has been angling to get her hooks into him foryears.I guess she finally succeeded…”
Mom was happily diverted, and I was out of the hot seat for the moment. The topic would surface again. It always did. But I had no plans to leave Granville. As different as it was from everything I knew before I moved here, it had been exactly what I needed.
A fresh start. A chance to pretend Michael had never existed. That I had never been that jilted, humiliated groom.
A chance to be the best version of me.
I wasn’t beingfake.I was simply protecting myself. Bryson—and my mother—would just have to deal with it.
The Grand View Hotel was the tallest building downtown, built in the early twenties to accommodate travelers passing through on their way to Omaha. It originally contained the bank and drugstore, as well. Now, it mostly relied on formal events and its highly rated restaurant to keep it thriving.
Granville didn’t have alotof formal event spaces, so it stayed pretty booked up, too.
Nadia, the event coordinator, met me in the lobby. “Silas, the wedding business must be good. Didn’t we just do this?”
I chuckled. “It hasn’t been long, has it?”
Nadia was a beautiful woman with jet-black hair pulled back in a neat bun. She wore a gorgeous emerald dress. She told me once that she goes straight home and changes into pajamas after work. Constantly upholding the “upscale look” at the hotel must be exhausting.
I could relate, since my work also required a certain level of professional attire. The difference being that I’d grown up dressing this way, and I was a man, so I got to wear comfortable shoes.
The front entrance opened, and Caitlyn and Branson entered. Behind them, the photographer, Nico, entered, and behindhim?—
Shit.Bryson was here too.
My smile of greeting froze, and I forced myself not to drop it, gaze meeting his as Caitlyn hugged me hello.
“I hope you don’t mind that I brought our best man along,” she said. “But it looks like you have a plus one, too?”
I blanked on what she meant, then realized she was referring to Nico. He was a gorgeous Italian man with hair just starting to silver and piercing dark eyes. By all accounts, he was much more my type, but I was having difficulty looking away from Bryson.
I cleared my throat and gestured to Nico. “This is the wedding photographer I told you about. He’s going to walk you through some plans for photos and take some test shots so that on your wedding day they’ll be perfect.”
