The Gingerbread Bakery (Dream Harbor, #5)(21)

‘Sorry, bro. At least I didn’t call your mother.’

Hayden blanched at that threat and relented on his mission to reclaim the ID, shoving his friends toward the counter.

Mac shook his head with a laugh. Some days he still couldn’t believe that he wasn’t the one begging for his fake ID back. At least he and his friends would go a few towns over to drink. This kid needed to learn some life lessons on how not to get caught. But that was probably not something he should say out loud.

He’d spent so long putting off becoming a real adult that, when he first came back to town to run his dad’s pub, he felt like he was faking it. It took him a year after he bought it to stop calling it his dad’s.

But he’d wanted to make it his own. He’d worked for years to ensure that he was the Sullivan people thought of now when they came in. He’d added trivia nights and karaoke. He’d updated the menu. He’d put a lot of love into that place. Had Annie noticed any of it?

While he’d been out on the road, he’d realized the places he liked best, the ones that were the most fun to work at, were places that had regulars. The pubs, restaurants, and cafés that had repeat customers, that created a sense of gathering, of community, those had been his favorites.

And now he got to do that here in his hometown.

Annie had asked him if he hated it, running the pub. He didn’t hate it all. He loved it. He wished she could see that, that she could see he belonged here as much as she did.

‘Friends of yours?’ Annie asked, sliding up next to him and taking her drink.

‘Ha. No. But I do have a lead.’

‘A lead?’ Annie’s face lit up and Mac wished he could make her look that happy by doing something other than simply asking the barista where an old lady had gone off to.

‘Yep. Crystal says Dot was in earlier and was meeting Estelle to head to the inn.’

‘Oh my gosh, perfect! Let’s go.’

They were making their way to the door when they were intercepted by the book club. Because of course they were.

‘Mac!’ Jacob called, waving at him from his seat. ‘Did you read the book this week?’

Annie froze in her mission to beeline for the door. She turned to stare at him. ‘Macaulay,’ she said, her smile growing. ‘Are you a member of the book club?’

Was he a member of the book club if he’d only come to one meeting? He still felt like he’d been tricked into it. Jacob had left a book behind at the pub once and it happened to be a slow night, so Mac had read it. It wasn’t Mac’s fault that it was so good. He needed to talk about it with someone. So, he may have gone to one meeting months ago. The book club hadn’t given up on him since.

‘Not really,’ he said to Annie, even as Jacob was waving wildly for him to come over to the table, yelling about the latest book they were reading.

‘I really think you’ll like this one,’ Jacob was saying, even as Mac was trying to inch his way to the door. ‘It's a second-chance romance. Very angsty. I think it's really your type of story.’

‘Yeah, maybe I’ll get it from you another time,’ Mac said, trying desperately to get out of the situation. ‘I’m right in the middle of my yearly reread of War and Peace.’ Jacob shook his head at that, not buying a word of it.

‘Come over here, you two!’ Nancy called in her no?nonsense teacher voice and Mac felt compelled to obey. ‘We have wedding questions.’

Annie shuffled over to the book-club table, looking like she’d rather be headed to a root canal.

‘What are you all doing here on a Saturday?’ she asked, clearly trying to avoid the wedding questions.

‘This was an impromptu meet-up,’ Kaori said. ‘Not an official meeting.’

‘Have you seen the barn?’ Isabel asked. ‘Is it going to be ready in time?’

‘Of course. It looks great. Kira has everything under control.’ Annie nodded confidently but the book club still looked skeptical. The Christmas Tree Farm had been open all month selling trees, but Kira had kept the barn a top-secret project, barricading off the back fifty acres to keep out nosy townsfolk. And the townsfolk hated to be kept out of anything. Kira had caught plenty of people ‘accidentally’ wandering around the barn claiming to be looking for the perfect Christmas tree.

Nancy had been escorted off the property several times.

‘And how’s Logan?’ Linda asked, stealing the last piece of muffin from Nancy's plate. ‘We haven’t seen him in days.’ She said it as though there was some conspiracy to hide the groom. In fact, Logan avoided town as much as possible, so it wasn’t that big of a surprise that no one had seen him.

‘Logan is great! He is very excited to marry the love of his life and everything is fine.’ Annie assured them. The book club did not look appeased. It was like they sensed something else was wrong. Mac found himself biting down on his tongue to avoid blurting out that Nana was missing and they had no idea where she was or when she would be back or how Logan would react when he found out. Apparently, some of Annie’s anxiety about the situation had seeped into him.

‘We should really get going,’ he said, his hand finding its way to the small of Annie's back again. Jacob’s gaze tracked its journey and he smirked at Mac, a perfectly groomed eyebrow raised in question. Mac dropped his hand. They needed to get out of here before the book club knew about more than just the missing-Nana problem.