The Husband Show. Kristine Rolofson

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СКАЧАТЬ he turned out to be Sam’s problem, then Sam could deal with him. If he was really Sam’s brother—and Aurora had had time in the car to ponder the resemblance between the two men, deciding they did share certain physical characteristics—then Lucia would no doubt explain the situation to Meg and Aurora the next time they met for coffee or lunch or a glass of wine.

      Planning this wedding had given Aurora what Lucia called “girlfriend time.” Now that she’d experienced it, Aurora intended to continue the practice. Between girlfriend time and quilting lessons, she was slowly filling the lonely hours with friendships instead of compulsively scrubbing woodwork in the bar.

      In the past four years since moving to Willing, she’d discovered it was easy to cry and scrub at the same time. Aurora thumbed her iPod and listened to Joshua Bell’s new release.

      Three young men flagged her down after she’d navigated the long road to the main house, a large white building that looked as if it were a ranch house on a movie set.

      Les, the youngest member of the town council and a sweet young man, stepped over to her car.

      “Hey, Aurora.”

      “Hey, Les.”

      “We’ll park it for you,” he said. “The yard’s still a little muddy, so Owen has asked everyone to walk on the gravel and go straight to the barn. Unless you’re going to the house...? You can go on the grass to the front, because it’s not so bad. Ms. Loralee and Shelly are in there with Meg.”

      “All right. Thank you.” She stepped out, ignored the appreciative looks from the young men and retrieved her bag and her purse, then trudged across the grassy yard to the front steps of the wide covered porch. She stepped out of her muddy boots and left them off to the side before opening the heavy door and walking inside.

      One of Lucia’s little boys greeted her. “Hi, Miss ’Rora. You look nice.”

      “Thank you, Matty.”

      “The baby won’t stop crying,” he said, peeling paper from a frosted cupcake. All dark hair and dark eyes and wearing a white button-down shirt and black pants, six-year-old Matty was adorably rumpled. Aurora suspected the shirt wouldn’t be clean for very much longer.

      Sure enough, a baby wailed from another room. “Uh-oh. Is that Laura?”

      “Yep.” He carefully licked the frosting violet from the top of the dessert. “Grandma says she needs a nap. My mom made a lot of these.”

      “How many have you eaten?” She suspected this wasn’t his first. She also suspected his mother didn’t know he’d been sampling the dessert.

      “Today?”

      She nodded.

      He frowned in concentration, trying to remember accurately. “Four.”

      “Wow.” Aurora had little experience with children and absolutely none with young boys. Lucia’s three children often seemed like strange, energetic creatures who made a lot of noise and couldn’t sit still.

      “I ate seven last night,” he confided. “Without frosting. For supper.”

      “Aurora!” The cupcake eater’s mother came rushing into the hall. “We were getting worried about you.”

      “I was delayed. Sorry. I had a—”

      “Matty! I thought I told you no more cupcakes.” She plucked the half-eaten cake from her son’s sticky fingers. “Go to the barn. Now. Tell Sam you’re all supposed to stay with him now.”

      “Okay.”

      “And stay in the barn this time,” she said.

      “Where’s Mama?” Mama Marie was Lucia’s mother-in-law and a devoted grandmother. Well known in town for her Italian cooking and generous nature, she was known to everyone as “Mama Marie” or simply “Mama.” Aurora was a little afraid of her. She often had the impression that Mama Marie looked at her and disapproved of what she saw.

      “She’s keeping Loralee from driving Meg insane.”

      “Is the mother of the bride giving the bride more advice?”

      “She keeps fussing over Meg’s hair, wants her to put on more mascara. You know the drill.”

      “Right.” Loralee was not known for subtlety. Flamboyant, softhearted and outspoken, she was best experienced in small doses. “What can I do, besides guard the dessert and distract Loralee?”

      “We’re going to get everyone out of the house and into their seats in the barn. I imagine the groom is getting edgy.”

      “The groom has been edgy for weeks.” Aurora wondered if Owen thought Meg would change her mind again, the way she had done when she was eighteen and refused to run away with him for the second time. According to Meg, the first elopement hadn’t gone according to plan.

      “And please tell Meg she looks beautiful. She’s stressing over her hair.”

      “I’ll bet she’s gorgeous,” Aurora said, following Lucia up the wide mahogany staircase to the second floor.

      “She is,” Lucia said. “Even if she doesn’t think so.”

      “Does Sam have a brother?”

      Lucia stopped at the top of the stairs. “Yes. Why?”

      “I think he’s in town.”

      “In town? This town?”

      “You weren’t expecting him?”

      “He and Sam have talked a couple of times, but Sam didn’t say anything about him coming here. They’ve wanted to reconnect, though. It’s been a long time since they’ve seen each other.” She seemed puzzled. “I thought we were going to fly to Nashville this summer, after the—”

      “I told him you were here,” Aurora said. “He wanted to know why everything in town was closed, so I explained about the wedding.”

      Her friend looked thoughtful. “I’ll tell Sam to call him right away. I made him turn his phone off this morning so we could get out here early. Otherwise it’s insane. The phone never stops ringing with business calls.”

      “Is he planning another trip to, um, the jungle?”

      “He’s always planning another business trip, another documentary,” Lucia said. “And then there’s the book project. But we have a wedding and a honeymoon in Belize first. At least that’s what Sam says now.”

      “I think he’s more than ready for the wedding,” Aurora said. “When is it going to be?”

      “Soon. But we’ll do something small,” she confided. “Something this summer, after school is out. By the way, I love your boots.”

      “Thank you.”

      “Vintage?”

      “No.”

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