Page 34 of The Wedding Engagement

“So,” she said, giving him a shrewd once-over. “Tell me your update.”

Every week she liked to hear what had been going on in his life, though often she’d already know thanks to her not-so-clandestine hobby of spying on all the neighbors from behind her net curtain. He knew for a fact that she had a pair of binoculars sitting on her living room window ledge, which she pretended she used for bird-watching. Nosy bugger.

“Well, I’m helping to organize my friends’ wedding now.” Sam had called and asked whether he’d mind getting a band booked. Apparently, he and Liv would be completing the task together, which was music to his ears (pun intended).

Agnes’s eyebrows knitted together. “I thought you were already doing that.”

He shook his head. “It was just the pre-wedding weekend away before. Now it’s actual wedding tasks.”

“Hmm. And what else?” She raised a gray eyebrow. “What about your lovely brunette friend? Seen her again this week?”

“Liv?” He shot her a chastising look. “Yeah, she came round on Saturday. But don’t pretend like you didn’t know that already, Mrs. ‘I’m a Bird Watcher, Honest.’ ”

She shrugged. “I happened to see her arrive while I was watching a great tit.” The corner of her mouth ticked up.

A standoff ensued during which both of them attempted to suppress puerile laughter at the double entendre behind the innocent bird’s name. There might have been sixty years between them, but their juvenile sense of humor was still aligned.

Arran gave in first with a snigger, while Agnes looked on, smiling behind her mug. “You like that lassie,” she told him in a matter-of-fact tone. “And I meanlikelike, as you youngsters call it.”

“Aye, well. Maybe I do. Doesn’t matter, though, because I can’t have her.”

“Why not?”

He shook his head, sipping his tea. “I don’t know if she likes melike that. Sometimes I’m sure she does, but it’s hard to tell for sure what she’s thinking.”

She rolled her eyes. “Just ask her, then, you numpty.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

He gave her an amused look. “Because it’s complicated, you nosy old bugger.”

Agnes lifted an eyebrow. “Less of theold, whippersnapper.”

He grinned. “Agnes, you’re eighty-eight. I hate to break it to you, but you’re old.”

“Pfft.”

They eyed each other, smiles on their faces.

“Anyway,” she said. “Just tell her how you feel. What’s the worst that can happen?”

“Er, I ruin our friendship and then it’s awkward forever because she’s my best friend’s sister, and she’s also about to become my son’s teacher.”

Agnes just shrugged, as if none of that were important. “When you get to my age, you realize that the crap you worried about when you were young was just nonsense all along.”

He shook his head. “Perhaps you can spy on her some more with those binoculars. See if you can decipher her feelings better than I can.”

She smiled. “I have no idea what you mean.”

Chapter

Nine

“Are you ready for this,Aggie?” Arran asked, rubbing his hands together with a glint in his eye.

“I’m not sure, to be honest,” Liv replied. “I’ve not been out on a weeknight since around 2015.”

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