Page 19 of The Love Audit
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said with a sigh. “It’s your typical story. Boy meets girl in their calculus II class. Girl turns down boy’s invitation for multiple dates. Then, next semester, girl finds that boy has registered for all the same classes.” She shot David a look, and he shrugged with a grin. “Girl and boy start dating, fall in love, and get married after graduation.”
“She was the prettiest and smartest girl in the whole school. I had to lock that down. Right, Jackson?” David addressed a teenage boy wearing one earbud. “Do the kids still say ‘lock that down’?”
“Yup,” he responded unconvincingly, making Jasmine and me share a chuckle.
“So you were in the same year?” Jasmine raised a curious eyebrow.
“Yes, but that was because I graduated from high school when I was fifteen and got a full scholarship to MIT. We started dating in our third year.”
“See?” David smiled at his wife. “Smartest girl in the school.”
“So how did you end up here,” Jasmine pressed, “in Miller’s Cove?”
“Well, when we were dating, David used to tell me stories about growing up here. It sounded like a fantasy until he brought me home for the first time. We took a long time finishing our educations and traveling the world. David had an excellent careerat NASA, and I worked at IBM. We had a great life, but when we finally decided to expand our family, we knew we wanted to do it here. It was never a question.” She gave David a smile that melted my heart, and I could tell it affected Jasmine, too.
“It’s so beautiful, untouched, and idyllic. I just worry about it staying that way for our grandchildren.” David leaned over and kissed her temple.
“My great-grandfather had a very specific vision for Miller’s Cove, and for generations, we’ve fought to keep it from the outside world.”
“You know that’s right,” Jeannie, Bubba’s wife, remarked with a shake of her head.
“Anytime anybody gets something good for themselves, somebody always tries to come around and steal it, and ends up ruining it,” David’s Aunt Minnie seethed. “People don’t like it when they swoop in with their big bags of money and you don’t bow down to them. Greedy suckers can’t take no for an answer.” She shook her head.
Jasmine caught my eye, and my expression must have mirrored hers. Guilt.
“All right, Minnie,” Eleanor chimed in, misreading our expressions. “That’s enough. This dinner is not about that. It’s about celebrating tradition, family, new friends, and love.” She raised her glass.
“Hear, hear,” the table chorused, and we clinked glasses before moving on to the main course.
The table was mostly silent, which was a testament to how delicious the food was.
Jasmine reached for a platter of ribs, and I put my hand out to stop her.
“What?” She drew her hand back and glared at me.
“Don’t eat those,” I whispered, and she gave me another quizzical look. “They’re made with malt, and this food is too good to cut dinner short to take you to the hospital.” I raised an eyebrow at her and bit into a chicken leg for emphasis.
“You remembered that I’m allergic to malt?” Her expression morphed into a curious smile edged with disbelief. It wasn’t the big smile she’d had in the kitchen, but it was close enough to make me want to keep it on her face.
“Of course. You’re my wife, remember?” I waggled my eyebrows at her again. Her eyes narrowed, and the lower half of her face erupted in a grin she tried to suppress—and I couldn’t ignore the warm feeling in my chest. I didn’t want to. It felt too good. I haven’t felt this good in a long time.
“Something about this pie tastes familiar.” Jasmine spoke through a mouthful during dessert. “I can’t identify the fruit, but I know I’ve had it before.” She made the cutest expression of furrowing her brow while she chewed slowly.
“Well, if you’ve had my wife’s cookies, then you’d recognize them.”
“Yes!” Jasmine exclaimed. “These were in the cookies I had that made me want to visit.”
I gave her a quizzical look.
“My parents’ chef—”
“Oh, she’s fancy!” Minnie interjected, presumably fueled by one too many cocktails, eliciting laughs from the younger dinner guests.
“—gets a large batch of those every year from her sister who visits here,” she continued, gracefully ignoring the interruption. “She let me taste them, and I ended up eating a whole bag. Now I remember that they had these really good dried berries in them. It’s what made me want to come here.”
My mind whirred. Jasmine had come by her Miller’s Cove idea honestly, making me regret the way I’d spoken to her in her office and the way I’d treated her since, but not completely.
“What are they?” she continued excitedly. “They’re not raisins. They’re not blueberries. They’re something I’ve never had before.”
