The Gingerbread Bakery (Dream Harbor, #5)(32)

‘I do think that’s romantic. To have his first look of you in the dress as you walk down the aisle,’ Kira said, blowing on her fingernails.

‘Logan is going to cry so much,’ Annie said.

Iris looked at her in surprise. ‘You think so?’

‘That guy is all gooey inside. He’s for sure going to cry.’

‘Did Noah cry?’ Iris turned back to Hazel.

‘There were tears,’ she confirmed, and everyone sighed again. What was it about making grown men cry that was so damn satisfying?

‘Okay, so we’re all agreed. I can sleep with Logan tonight, but he can’t see me in the dress.’

‘That’s right,’ Kira said. ‘That feels like a good compromise.’

‘We clearly don’t believe in following tradition anyway,’ Iris said, gesturing to her belly and smiling at Hazel and Kira.

Hazel laughed, raising her glass of champagne in cheers, but Annie knocked on the wood table beside her. She didn’t need anyone jinxing the wedding or anything else for that matter, babies and relationships included. She still hadn’t found Estelle or finished the secret wedding dessert. She didn’t have time for any more bad luck. As soon as her nails were dry, she was going back out there, this time by herself. She didn't need a certain someone distracting her from more important things, like her friends’ happiness.





‘Aren’t you not supposed to see the bride the night before the wedding?’ Bennett asked, stepping up to take his turn at the dart board. They were at the pub doing what the groom had requested for his last night of bachelorhood: eating burgers, drinking beer and playing darts.

Logan scoffed. ‘I’ll be damned if I’m not going to sleep with my fiancée tonight.’

Noah patted him on the back. ‘That's right. Who needs those old traditions, anyway? You two have been shacking up together for a year so that ship has basically sailed.’

‘Says the man who barely left his hotel room long enough to get married before hauling Hazel back to it.’

‘Hey, there was no hauling. She came willingly,’ he said with a smirk.

Mac laughed, taking another pull from his beer. He was glad he’d come out. He needed a distraction. Annie’s words had been tormenting him all day. I faked a lot of things. And then she’d gone off to get her nails done, like it was nothing.

Not to mention he’d failed to find Estelle and he didn’t really know what they were going to do about it. A little detail he had no intention of telling the groom.

Despite all that, he was happy to be out with the boys. He’d lost touch with most of his friends from high school and, much to his surprise, it had been Logan who reached out first when he’d moved back. It was nice to have solid friends again now that he was settled in one place, even though he knew it pissed Annie off having to see him all the time. Or maybe especially because it pissed Annie off. For a while, he'd deluded himself into thinking that simply being around her would be enough to soften her feelings toward him, get her to see that he was different than the boy who had left her, but Annie was stubborn as hell.

Could he have pushed the matter? Probably. Over the years, there were plenty of times he could have forced the issue and demanded that they get all their bullshit out in the open. But then he would have had to face the fact that she really did hate him and that she would never forgive him. So, he hadn’t pushed it, at least not until today. She’d made it so that they couldn’t ignore their history anymore: because she’d altered it.

I faked a lot of things.

‘Mac?’

‘What?’ He shook his head trying to rid himself of thoughts of Annie and her soft hand on his mouth in that dark closet and everything she’d said afterward.

‘You’re up,’ Bennett told him.

‘Right.’ Mac got out of the booth and took the darts from Noah. They were in the back corner of the pub, away from the crowded main dining room where a group of teachers were having their end-of-year party and were engaged in a rather contentious round of secret Santa, along with the volunteer fire-department’s annual celebration and awards ceremony. It was nuts in here. He made a mental note to give Amber a raise in the new year.

He tossed his first dart and missed the board completely.

Noah and Logan both turned to stare at him. ‘Dude, what was that?’

Mac shook his head. ‘A shit throw.’ He tossed the next dart, which barely made it onto the board, hitting the outer ring.

‘Everything okay?’ Logan asked, a look of actual concern drawing his dark brows together.

‘Everything’s fine.’ Mac chucked the last dart, and it bounced off the wall.

‘Holy shit,’ Noah breathed. ‘I’ve never seen you play this bad before.’

Mac tried to shrug it off. ‘It happens.’

‘Not to you,’ Noah insisted, and unfortunately, he was right. If there was one thing Mac had gotten good at while spending years of his life in his father’s pub and so many others, it was darts. And he’d spent far too many nights kicking Noah’s ass at the game to try to claim that he wasn't any good.

‘Forget it,’ Mac said, heading back to the table. Bennett had just returned with another round of beers and Archer had joined them.