Page 128 of Whiskey Chase
“I think I can manage that,” she said, cheerfully unaware that she was ruining the biggest day of our life.
“Youarecoming back, right?”Hell, what if after all these years she’d gotten cold feet?I felt my stomach do a slow roll.
Her laugh was husky. “Why, your honor, you know you’re the one I want to spend my birthday night with. In fact, if I were you, I’d spend the afternoon hydrating and stretching.”
“Promise?” I said softly.
“I promise, Dev. I can’t wait to celebrate with you, and I’ll be thinking about you all afternoon. I love you.”
“I love you, too,” I said, mostly appeased.
“Just remember who said it first,” she sang before hanging up.
I swore quietly and stared down at the canoe of romance. “Well, shit.”
“Problem?” Jonah asked.
“Scarlett’s spending the afternoon with her friends.”
Jonah ran a hand through his dark hair. “Yeah, she rounded up the girls for a spa day and lunch and whatever.”
The girls were the women the Bodine men and I had fallen for. I wasn’t the only man to show up in Bootleg only to get blindsided by love. The last few years had been a whirlwind of lust, love, and a shit ton of weddings, some of which I’d presided over. I’d been hoping to add my own to the list. And it was looking like the universe—or worse, Scarlett Bodine herself—was conspiring against me.
“You were going to propose in a canoe?” Jonah asked.
I shrugged. “I thought a picnic lunch and some time at the hot springs would be… you know… romantic and nostalgic.”
Jonah nodded. “Yeah, totally.” His gaze landed on the picnic basket. “Shame for it to go to waste.”
I had half a pound of Scarlett’s favorite chicken salad, a six-pack of cold beer, and three or four hours to kill before my parents showed up to celebrate the engagement that wasn’t.
“You wanna go?” I asked Jonah.
He shrugged. “Got an extra pair of trunks?”
* * *
Scarlett was definitely avoiding me.Jonah and I worked up a sweat paddling over to the secret hot springs where we ate my engagement lunch and talked sports, women, and work. Jonah’s personal training business was the perfect complement to Bootleg’s day spas. Tourists could spend their morning sweating through a lakefront boot camp and then stuff their faces at any of the town’s dining establishments before having the kinks worked out at one of the half-dozen spas in town.
I had a few kinks of my own now. My shoulders were tight with worry that Scarlett was avoiding me or skipping town or getting arrested again. I was beyond ready to make our love “official.” And I thought she’d felt the same way. I couldn’t have misread the last four years.Could I?
The catering crew showed up as we were unloading the canoe. Jonah volunteered to direct them so I could shower. By the time I came out with wet hair and clean clothes—the ring safely tucked in my front pocket again—my parents were pulling up the drive, and the Bodines had descended upon our house.
Gibson and Jameson were stocking the fire pit with wood. Bowie was carrying my mother’s full-sized suitcase. The woman was staying for thirty-six hours and had packed as if she were going to Paris for a week. My father was poking his nose in all the covered dishes the caterers set up in the kitchen.
My gran and her girlfriend Estelle were pouring everyone who walked through the door little cups of strawberry moonshine.
I greeted them all and tried to hide my distraction.
There was still no Scarlett. Her responses to my texts had been vague. At least that’s the way my starting-to-panic mind read them.
“Your home is lovely,” my mother said, admiring the grand fireplace. “Maybe I could bring my DAR group here for a retreat in the fall?” she mused.
She wasn’t actually asking. She was planning.
“Dev, you got a minute to help go over the setup of the tables?” Gibson asked, sticking his head in the backdoor.
“Sure,” I nodded dumbly and followed him outside.
