Celebration's Family

He was sure she was just trying to lighten the mood, but it wasn’t something he wanted to joke about.

“And you need me to fight off the hordes of women that will turn out to bid on you?”

He crossed his arms. “I wouldn’t put it that way.”

She pressed a finger to her chin and narrowed her eyes as if she were thinking. “Maybe I shouldn’t bid on you. Maybe I should be quiet and watch as the bidding war ensues.”

“There won’t be a bidding war,” Liam said. “And you already offered to bid on me. No reneging on the deal.”

“You realize that me bidding on you won’t preempt a bidding war. That’s all on you, and if it happens, there isn’t a thing I can do to stop it. We’ll all just sit back and watch Dr. Thayer bring sexy back.”

He laughed, unsure whether the burning sensation he felt was the blood rushing to or draining from his face. He reached up and ran his hand over his chin as if he could rub away the evidence of his embarrassment.

“Maybe this is a bad idea,” he said.

She reached out and touched his arm again. “I’m just teasing, Liam. I know you’ve been through a lot, but I was hoping this might be a chance for you to have some fun. We have a deal, and I fully intend to uphold my end of the bargain.”

She opened her mouth as if she were going to say something, but closed it and sat back in her chair.

“What?” he asked, wondering why he was encouraging her.

She put both of her palms flat on the table. “Okay, I’m just going to say it. You’re a young man. You have a lot of life ahead of you. I didn’t know Joy very well. We only met once in passing, but the little I did know of her was that she was a sweet, kind woman. I can’t imagine that she would want you to put yourself on a shelf for the rest of your life.”

The truth hung between them as acrid as the smell of something burning. Kate was right, as much as he hated to admit it. Joy probably would’ve wanted him to move on, to meet someone wonderful, who would love the girls like Joy did and for him to fall in love again.

There were two things wrong with that. First, he and Joy had never had the chance to discuss whether or not she wanted him to remarry should anything happen to her—or vice versa for that matter. He hadn’t expected his thirty-five-year-old wife to run out to the store for vanilla ice cream and never come back. Second, nobody would ever love their girls the way Joy did. And unfortunately he’d had firsthand experience with that, compliments of Kimela Herring.

He cleared his throat. “I’m working on that. Sort of. I’m going to grief counseling, but I can’t say it’s helping. In fact I don’t know how long I’ll continue. But after Joy died, I had a bad experience. One of her friends started coming around. At first she seemed to have good intentions, but then she started moving a little too fast, pushing a little too hard. She did a lot of damage because she didn’t always tell the truth, and she lied because she didn’t have the girls’ best interests at heart.