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“It was late. He was tired and he had an important surgery early this morning.” One Patrick’s been anxious to have behind him so he can go on their honeymoon trip with a clear conscience. “Honestly, the conversation could wait. Itdidwait. The world hasn’t ended yet.”

She lifts one carefully sculpted brow. “More defense of his behavior and more patronizing of me and my concerns.”

Guilt slithers through Will’s gut. Has he dismissed her unfairly? Caitlinisgoing very far away, and while the two of them have been on precarious terms for years now, Kimberly will certainly be feeling the pangs any mother does when her offspring grows up and leaves the nest.

Jax drops off Kimberly’s order and she presses a twenty into his hand. “Keep the change, sweetheart,” she says with a smile that raises the hackles on the back of Will’s neck.

“He’s Jenny Burger’s boyfriend,” Will says warningly when Jax walks away.

“He’s not her husband.”

Will takes a deep breath. Jax is a big boy and can fend off any advances Kimberly makes. Probably. It’s just annoying to see his mother already turning to her usual way of dealing with emotions she doesn’t want to feel: beginning an inappropriate love affair with whatever handsome man catches her eye.

“Mom, I have to get to work before long. Can we please talk about Caitlin now?”

Kimberly’s eyes leave Jax’s tight ass and focus on Will again. “Why couldn’t she have gone to the University of South Dakota like you did? Vermillion is too far away to be of much use to me, but at least she could have come home quickly enough if there was an emergency.”

“Because she’s had her heart set on the fashion merchandising program at Colorado State for the last year and a half. That’s what she’s been working for, why she broke things off with Scott Tate and got so focused in school. She’s figured out what she wants, and she’s not going to let anything get in the way of having it. You should be proud of her. I am.”

“She never could have gone if you hadn’t paid for it,” Kimberly says somewhat accusingly.

“Like Nonna wouldn’t have paid if I hadn’t?” Caitlin isn’t his Nonna’s granddaughter by blood, but she loves her just the same.

“Because she’s your sister and Eleanora knows you adore Caitlin.”

For a lot of years, ‘adore’ might have been overstating it. Caitlin was a pill throughout her puberty and adolescence, but she’s coming out the other side now. In fact, sometimes Will can see the woman she’s going to be and that vision makes his heart sing.

“You’ve always been her favorite grandchild. She ignores all her others.”

Will sighs. Clearly he’s not going to win with his mother today. Not at anything. So he eats more of his donut and sips his coffee, grateful that his headache seems to be diminishing. Sometimes the anticipation of interacting with his mother is worse than the real thing. And sometimes it’s not.

Kimberly sips her coffee and then says primly, “I didn’t appreciate Patrick dismissing me so callously last night.”

“He’s Patrick, Mom.”

“He’s an intelligent man who can be charming when he wants to be—obviouslysince he’s managed to win you over heart and soul—but he never bothers extending that charm to me.”

Charming isn’t quite the right word for Patrickever, but Will doesn’t see the point of arguing it. People who like Patrick—and people Patrick likes back—are fine with him the way he is, the way healwaysis, because Patrick doesn’t change. It’s one of Will’s favorite things about him.

“We’ve had this conversation before and it never goes well.” Will smiles tensely. “Can we focus on Caitlin? You seemed to think her leaving constituted a national crisis last night.”

“Be a smart mouth if you want, but it is arealcrisis, Will. Especially with you and Patrick leaving soon for your ridiculously self-indulgent holiday.”

“You realize you’re talking about our honeymoon?”

“It’s not a honeymoon, baby,” she says with a frosty dollop of condescending scolding. “You’ve been married for well over two years.” She sips her coffee and rolls her eyes.

“Exactly. We’ve put it off long enough.”

Kimberly slips her fingers through her blond hair. “This honeymoon doesn’t help your sister get to her soccer games or piano lessons, and it doesn’t help Connor get from school out to the farm, and it doesn’t help me with—”

“Mom, I get it. You’re put out by me and Caitlin not being at your beck and call.” He reaches out to take her hand, squeezing her cool fingers gently. “But I believe in you. You can do this without us.”

She jerks her hand back. “Don’t be condescending to your mother.”

Will ignores that and goes on calmly, “Besides, Patrick and I will only be gone ten days. When we get back, we’ll host the kids for a week.”

He frowns. Why did he offer to do that? He isn’t doing anything wrong by taking a honeymoon with his husband, and yet his mother makes him feel like he hasn’t earned it, and, worse, needs to make up for it. Not that Patrick will mind Olivia and Connor staying at the house for a while, but he’ll definitely have something to say about how Will came to agree to the whole thing.