Page 96 of Love at Teamsgiving
I clear my throat. “Actually, I’m Mrs. Cruz.”
Badaszek winks. “I know. I just wasn’t sure if they did.”
“What do you mean you’re Mrs. Cruz?” Mama asks.
Maybe she was a spy too. At this point, it wouldn’t surprise me if she was a member of Italy’s intel agency, Dad was a Russian spy and they fell into star-crossed love with Carlotta threatening to rat them out.
Biting my lip, I flash my rings. Mikey laces his pinky around mine.
His mother appears with her hands on her hips. “Do we have to shake down you two as well?”
“We can explain,” I say.
“First, I want to know what’s going on here,” Mikey says, pointing to the Linderbergs.
They both start talking at once.
“One at a time,” Carlotta says.
Nancy sneers. “Oh, that would be a first. He never lets me say what I need to say and?—”
The two of them start bickering and I quickly glean that they were using the commercial space, aka my shop, as a way to get revenge on each other because it used to be Nancy’s quilt store before Max started selling hockey merch.
It seems they went their separate ways and when I showed up, I got caught in the middle of their grudge match.
I sense Mikey’s gaze on me. Married or not, he still makes my heart flutter.
His eyes are wide with horror. He mouths,That could’ve been us.
I shake my head and say,Never.
He scrunches up his shoulders.
Turning to face him, I wrap my arms around his middle. “That never would’ve happened because I love you.”
He kisses me in response and everyone cheers, congratulating us on our marriage.
EPILOGUE 3
After unsuccessfully making a pie last night, but very successfully making out with my wife, I returned home to find Ma and the rest of the family wide awake, but she wasn’t up late preparing the Thanksgiving meal.
Well, she was peeling potatoes but was also explaining to my brothers and Pop that she’d heard that Junie’s landlord may have been the one trying to sabotage her efforts in the building.
I was ready to wring necks, but she said we had a mission at zero-four-hundred hours.
Still can’t figure out where she got her intel. Mrs. Gormely, the town gossip?
After our successful sting operation, when I ask Junie why she insists I leave the handling of the situation with the Linderbergs to her brother Asher, she mutters something that sounds an awful lot like Catagen, Ionic, Alopecia.
“We’ve got to get some espresso into my wife,” I call to no one in particular as my team, coach, and family return to their vehicles.
“See you at the Ice Palace,” Hayden hollers back.
I stop short. “We have practice today?”
Pierre checks my butt with his hockey stick. “It’s a very hockey Thanksgiving.”
“But you’re Canadian.”
