Page 178 of The Wild Card

Robert comes through the door behind her, cooler in hand. He sets it down, shakes my hand. Firm grip, warm eyes. If he notices the hickey or my slightly wild expression, he has the grace not to mention it.

Robert Marshall: the patron saint of minding his own business.

“Is there coffee?” he asks.

“I can make a pot.”

We stand in the kitchen in comfortable silence while Linda tours the cabin like she’s filing a report for Architectural Digest and Emmie trails behind her trying to steer her away from the bedroom.

Turns out Robert told Linda about the proposal, and Linda Marshall is physically incapable of waiting more than twenty-four hours to see a ring on her daughter’s finger.

“And down here must be the—” Linda reaches for the bedroom door.

“Mom!” Emmie materializes between Linda and the door handle like a Secret Service agent intercepting a threat. “That’s, um—that room’s a mess right now. We haven’t made the bed yet.”

“Sweetheart, I’ve seen an unmade bed before.”

“Not this one.”

Linda studies her daughter. Eyes moving over the wrong-buttoned flannel. The flush that hasn’t fully faded. The slightly disheveled hair.

Then she looks at me across the room. At my neck.

Then back at the closed bedroom door.

The smile returns. Bigger this time.

“Robert,” she says, sweet as pecan pie. “Why don’t we set up brunch on the porch? It’s such a gorgeous morning. Let these two finish getting… settled.”

The pause before settled could fill a courtroom.

Robert picks up the cooler. “Porch sounds good.” He catches my eye on the way out and gives me a look that says, very clearly: I know. I don’t want to know. Let’s never discuss it.

I give him the smallest nod. An understanding forged in silence.

Linda pauses at the screen door. Turns back. And delivers the kill shot.

“Also, Emmie?”

“Please don’t.”

“Your flannel’s buttoned wrong, sweetheart.” A beat. “And that’s not a bug bite on your fiancé’s neck.”

She pushes through the screen door, casserole in hand, already calling to Robert about where to set up the chairs.

The door swings shut.

Emmie turns to me.

I look back at her.

And she just… loses it.

The laugh starts low—a wheeze, really—and then it cracks open into something full and helpless and so contagious I feel my mouth twitch against my will. She bends at the waist, one hand braced on the counter, the other pressed over her mouth, and her whole body shakes with it.

“She knew,” Emmie manages between gasps. “She took one look at us and she absolutely—”

“To be fair, your flannel was buttoned wrong. And there’s the hickey.”