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  “A simple wedding?” Jen asked, well aware of how Zach’s eyes were widening. “Oh no, Zach’s mother has already made it clear that we’ll have to have at least five hundred guests. She was saying, actually, that she didn’t know how she’d keep the list that small.”

  Gerry took a deep breath. “Big wedding ceremonies are a waste of money and prey upon the insecurities…”

  “And they require flowers, Gerry, lots of beautiful flowers,” Jen said. “You’ve given me an idea with this pretty bouquet, honey. I think we’ll have Asiatic lilies and roses. Do you think they’ll be available in February?”

  “I’m sure they can be flown in from somewhere,” Zach assured her. “Cost is no object, if that’s what you want, honey.” Jen was ridiculously glad that he had rejoined the discussion.

  Natalie hissed again.

  “Red and white is lovely, especially for Valentine’s Day,” Gran enthused.

  “And pink rose petals scattered down the aisle,” Cin added with glee.

  “Buckets and buckets of them,” Jen agreed.

  “Maybe we’ll need our own jumbo jet to come from Ecuador,” Zach said with a smile. Jen smiled back at him as controversy stormed over the table once again.

  * * *

  Zach had the definite feeling that the Sommerset clan liked to argue. Maybe it gave them something to talk about.

  In a way, he enjoyed the repartee over the dining table himself, except for the bit about his father. Even with the dissent, this was far better than the brooding silences fraught with meaning and embellished with small talk that had characterized his own family functions.

  He realized that he preferred having differences of opinion out in the open. They seemed less potent that way, than resentments left locked in the dark to breed. When no one talked about issues—as was the case in his family—the smallest things ended up casting long shadows.

  If nothing else, it kept him on his toes. He tried to ensure that he picked up every hint from Natalie to put himself in her bad books, although it wasn’t easy for him.

  He became aware that his efforts were undermined every time Jen cracked a smile. Her mother obviously was pleased by this and was prepared to put her own opinions aside for the sake of her daughter’s happiness. He tried harder, but Natalie proved more and more difficult to visibly displease as Jen looked more and more radiant.

  In a way, Zach had to respect that. He could understand Natalie’s desire to see Jen happy and smiling. It was noble. It was what parents were supposed to do.

  In another way, he wanted to deliver his side of the bargain. He kept trying. By the end of the meal, he’d shot a roll of film, eaten too much dinner, come to like Jen’s grandmother and to respect her older brother M.B., developed a new appreciation of cabbage rolls, and eaten tofu for the first time in his life.

  Yet he still couldn’t wrap his mind around the fact that the height of his maternal approval rating had been when he’d confessed to being arrested for marijuana possession.

  Too bad he couldn’t have introduced Natalie to his father. That would have made for some fireworks. The two would have disagreed on every single point of discussion. Interestingly, Zach knew that his father would have walked away from the discussion, as would have Gerry. Natalie, he suspected, would have tried to find some common ground.

  The whole family worked together to clean up Gran’s kitchen, the older lady looking a bit tired by the end of the meal. The brothers teased each other, snapping tea towels at each other like kids, as Cin started the washing and Ian loaded the dishwasher.

  Gerry informed them of the evils of labor-saving devices and the impending doom of higher energy prices, but they all ignored him. Natalie sat with her mother, drinking a brandy as she watched Zach. It was convivial in a way that was unfamiliar to Zach, but he was glad to pitch in.

  The Sommersets seemed to accept each other as they were, even if they made a lot of commentary about each other’s choices. No one seemed intent on changing anyone else, which was a radical concept for Zach. Zach’s father had always been hot to improve all of his children. Here there were lots of answers and they all got air time, but no one expected universal agreement—much less, adherence to an edict.

  Even as Zach dried plates, he felt as if they’d known him for years. Or at least as if they’d let him wash dishes for years. Pluto snapped a wet towel at him. Cin bossed him around. M.B. talked to him about photography. Jen shook her head at her siblings and showed him where things went. Her grandmother smiled approval at him.

  It was homey. And unfamiliar.

  And nice. Zach struggled against an attack of the warm-fuzzies. Usually, he was immune, and in his family, there was little chance of having to defend himself against them. Pluto went to get his guitar, Jen went to the washroom, Cin and Ian headed into the living room to argue, followed by Natalie and Gerry.

  Jen’s grandmother came to Zach, took the wet tea towel from his hands and hung it up. She reached up, to Zach’s astonishment, and kissed his cheek. “Thank you, dear. I shouldn’t have let you help, but I do appreciate it.”

  “It’s good to get the kitchen clean,” Zach said, surprised by how touched he was by her gratitude. “They’re just dishes.”

  “You like things clean, then?”

  Zach nodded. “Kitchens and baths. I focus on key areas of biological invasion.”

  She chuckled, then dropped her voice. “My granddaughter is a very special girl,” she said firmly, the glint in her eyes telling Zach that this wasn’t the sum of what she wanted to say.

  “She is,” he agreed and he wasn’t putting anything on.

  “You be good to her and we’ll have no quibbles, no matter what you’ve done in the past. Understand?”

  “I understand.”

  “Then you can call me Gran, too.”

  Zach grinned, relieved that the approval of Jen’s grandmother was his. “Fair enough.”

  Now he could ask Jen out for a date, and that wasn’t all bad.

  There sure was a lot of protectiveness going around. Zach didn’t have a chance to say anything more before Jen returned. She came to his side and put her hand through his elbow as if they touched all the time.

  Did she feel that little sizzle that he felt?

  Was she thinking about that kiss, the one they’d had in this very kitchen only a few hours before, their first kiss? He sure was.

  And he wanted another.

  “We should go,” she said brightly. “Don’t we still need to drop in at your brother’s place, honey?”

  Zach was sure he hadn’t told her about James and Maralys, much less Maralys’ plans for Thanksgiving. On the other hand, she knew he had brothers plural and only one sister. Jen was guessing but she was good at it, and she left him room to correct her, if necessary.

  Zach smiled, liking how smart she was. “Yes, Maralys wanted to meet you,” he agreed. “She’s going to love this dress. Although I should pick up Roxanne first.”

  “Roxanne?” Cin asked, her eyes wide. She was lurking in the doorway to the dining room, probably eavesdropping on everything.

  “His dog,” Jen supplied, as easily as if she’d known all along.

  “Oh. Dogs are nice.”

  “This one is very nice,” Jen said firmly, as if she knew anything about it, then led Zach to the door before anyone could ask any more questions. “Let’s go, honey.”

  She really had to stop using that endearment.

  And Zach had a couple of ideas of how to persuade her to his point of view.

  Chapter Eight

  It was time to dump Zach.

  The sooner, the better.

  As far as Jen was concerned, Cin’s scheme had come to its conclusion. Her mother had enough doubts about Zach that Jen could have considered the plan some kind of a success. The problem was that now there was supposed to be a wedding in February.

  Enough was enough. The sooner she and Zach had a fatal fight, the better.

  The sooner she a
nd Zach resolved to never see each other again, the better the chances that Jen wouldn’t do anything stupid.

  Like kiss him again.

  Or worse. She could start to like him, or like him more than she already did. It didn’t help that she had fun with him. It really didn’t help that he made her laugh. Was it her fault that he was funny? Was it wrong to be flattered by his attention?

  No, but it would be stupid to think that there was more to this than that. Jen knew that she wouldn’t be able to remember that for long. She was the kind of person who made emotional investments easily.

  Even if Zach was confident in a way that was half-forgotten to Jen, and she felt like she was standing in a sunbeam when she was close to him. He was optimistic and ready for anything, qualities that she could only envy.

  And trading quips with him was too much fun.

  No doubt about it: Zach had to go.

  Maybe her mother would give her a year of slack to mend her supposedly broken heart. It was the best Jen could hope for at this point, and it was good enough. She refused to think about owing Zach anything, never mind how well he kissed, never mind that she might be tempted to make more of what was between them if she spent too much time with him.

  Jen knew Zach’s type. To prove it to herself, as they walked down the sidewalk together in silence, she made a mental bet with herself about his car.

  Zach would have a new car. It would be flashy and expensive, since cost would be no object for a Trust Fund Boy (or Inheritance Boy, whichever way it fell out). The car would have leather seats and flashy gadgets and in a year, he’d be driving something completely different. This was the kind of man who needed to turn heads and look good.

  Jen decided Zach’s car would have to be a silver sports car, European, like something James Bond would drive. A convertible, even though that would be impractical in New England. That impracticality, in fact, would be part of his style.

  To Jen’s astonishment, Zach stopped beside a red Neon that had seen better days and pulled out his keys.

  “This is your car?” Jen asked, expecting him to say that it was a loaner because his sleek machine was in the shop.

  He glanced up in confusion. “Yes. Why?”

  “No reason.”

  Jen got into the car when he opened the passenger door for her. Zach’s Neon wasn’t brand new, although she noted with approval that it was clean and empty.

  He took care of it, as if he wanted it to last.

  “Sorry,” he said as he got in and noticed her quick glance into the back seat. “I didn’t get the back seat vacuumed out since Roxie was last riding along. Sometimes, it seems as if there isn’t much point in vacuuming—she’s always shedding ahead of me.”

  Jen glanced back again and saw the layer of long black and white hairs on the upholstery.

  “She sheds a lot?”

  “She’s in the Guinness Book of World Records. I think she sheds more than she weighs.” He started the car and eased out into traffic. Jen said nothing. “That was a joke.”

  “I know.”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing. I’m still surprised. I thought you’d have a fancy car.”

  He gave her an incredulous look. “So you’re going to dump me as a fake date because of my car? I don’t think even cellophane is that shallow, Jen.”

  Jen straightened, knowing that this was the perfect opening. “That’s not why, but I am going to dump you. Mission accomplished and all that.”

  “What about the wedding?”

  “Cancelled.”

  “The trip to Tiffany in New York to pick rings?”

  “Cancelled.”

  “Rats. I was looking forward to that.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. You just made that up to drive my mother crazy with the idea of ostentatious spending.”

  Zach smiled a little bit. “And it worked, right?”

  Jen watched him, not trusting that smile. “Well, yes. That was the point.”

  He cast her a bright glance. “You admit then that I kept to Cin’s plan and made it work?”

  Jen didn’t see any way around it. “Yes, but it’s over now…”

  Zach shook his head, effectively silencing her. “It’s only just started.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that you owe me. Like we agreed in your grandmother’s kitchen.” He shook his head when Jen would have argued. “I kept to the plan. I made your mother dislike me. Your grandmother, in fact, has approved of me, which was your original story. Now I get to name my terms and I get to ask you out, too.”

  “Wait a minute, this isn’t fair.” Jen wasn’t afraid of what he’d say. He was enjoying this too much for it to be anything truly awful. Maybe meeting his family was a terrible prospect, to his thinking.

  Mostly, she was curious. She argued because he expected her to.

  “Of course, it’s fair,” he replied. “You got what you wanted and now I get what I want.” He waggled his eyebrows at her, as if to remind her that he could have asked for a lot, and Jen fought a smile.

  “Okay, then take me to meet your family now and I’ll do the same thing.”

  Zach shook his head and Jen’s heart sank. “Nope. That won’t work, honey.”

  “Why not?”

  He cast her a smile. “You could never make them hate you.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You’re totally a straight arrow, Jen. They’ll be crazy for you. They’ll decide that you’re good for me. In fact, they’ll start inviting people to the wedding.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. They won’t believe that I’m capable of doing anything so responsible as organizing a guest list, and they’ll be worried that if you have too much to do yourself you might have second thoughts, so they’ll take over.” He sighed. “Somehow they’ll work out that it was my fault that you left college, even though we didn’t know each other yet. It will become clear that your impulses are superior to mine and so you should be encouraged to stick around and be a good influence on me.”

  “They don’t really give you that little credit, do they?”

  “Of course they do. I’m the official black sheep.” He shrugged as if indifferent but Jen wasn’t convinced. “I wonder sometimes what they’d talk about if I didn’t show up or fail to show up or generally make trouble at reasonable intervals.”

  “That’s nuts. We’ll just talk to them about it and get everything sorted out…”

  Zach laughed. “Oh, you really should meet my family. They’re so different from yours.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “No one talks about anything—well, not about anything important. Stuff is just resolved. Opinions are formed, then set in concrete. Sometimes they’re dictated from above, like Moses getting the Ten Commandments, already carved in stone. There is no expression of alternate viewpoints because there are no alternate viewpoints that count. There is only one right answer Chez Coxwell and so there’s nothing to talk about.”

  Jen watched the road, unable to imagine a family dynamic like that. “How do you all get along?”

  “Mostly, we don’t. We’re really good at avoiding each other.”

  Jen saw that Zach was trying to make light of the way his family worked, but she suspected it bothered him more than he would have liked her to believe. “So, you’re alone. It’s like you don’t have family at all.”

  “Be serious: I have Roxie.”

  Jen looked out the window, feeling a bit sorry for Zach, feeling a little bit more appreciative of her own family than she had in a while. They might be a lot of trouble, and they might be weird, but there was a bedrock of love underneath it all.

  Zach touched her arm with his fingertip, just a fleeting gesture that drew her back to the moment and made her keenly aware of his presence beside her. “How do you all get along? It seems that somebody has an opinion against everything.”

  “Well, they do. We used to joke that all pe
rspectives were represented—”

  “—and defended—”

  “—in my mother’s kitchen.”

  “So, doesn’t that mean that all of you are wrong, all of the time, according to someone’s point of view?”

  “Probably,” Jen admitted, then frowned as she tried to explain. “But it’s not malicious. It’s more a case of making information available.” Because they cared about each other and wanted to help. It seemed rude to add that, when Zach’s family didn’t sound as if they cared much about each other at all. Jen’s sucker heart twisted, even though she tried to stop it.

  “Not of changing people?”

  “No. My grandmother is never going to get rid of her dishwasher, for example, even though it’s wasteful of energy. We all know that. My mother argued with her when she decided she wanted one, and she did pick a smaller and more fuel-efficient model than the one she’d looked at initially.”

  “So, you compromise or not, and then when the decision is made, you move on to the next issue?”

  “Pretty much. It’s done then.”

  “So, why did Gerry comment on the dishwasher?”

  “He’s new.” Jen grimaced. “And hopefully he’s temporary. I’m not sure anything makes him happy and it’s hard to believe that he’ll make my mother happy in the long term.”

  Zach laughed. “Maybe your mother has her own version of Cin’s scheme.”

  Jen blinked. She hadn’t thought of that.

  “So, I’m thinking we should take this right to the wall,” Zach continued, his manner cheerful. “Let’s get the ring, book the church, ask the groomsmen and bridesmaids, order the flowers, buy the dress, then break it off right at the altar.” He cast her a mischievous glance. “Give everyone some major entertainment, and lots to talk about.”

  Jen felt the color drain from her face. “You wouldn’t!”

  “Sure, I would. It would live up to everyone’s expectations. My family would be convinced that you were too good for me, and that you were smart to dump me.” He grimaced. “They’d probably invite you to their parties afterward instead of me.”

  Jen was horrified. “They wouldn’t!”