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“Give him to me. He’s probably hungry.” She reached her arms out and I complied. With the air of someone who had done this approximately one million times, Suzie whipped up her blouse, pulled down her nursing camisole, and Andy latched on to lunch. “He eats pretty much constantly.” She looked up. “I don’t think I ever thanked you for staying with Michael and the kids. My brain must have melted in childbirth.”
“You don’t have to thank me. I was happy to do it.”Especially since there was that kiss. The one I really should tell my best friend about, along with the subsequent sex. With an appropriate lack of details, for the sake of our friendship. “And it wasn’t too hard. Michael is really good with them.”
“He’s a good guy. I know you haven’t had much time with him, but trust me. I’m not just saying that because I’m his sister. He’s more than a good guy, really, he’s thebestguy. And I wouldn’t be weird about it at all, I promise. Like I said, Michael didn’t kick up a fuss when Sam and I got together, so it’s only fair.”
I opened my mouth to tell her it had already happened so she could chill out now. But the eager, hopeful look in Suzie’s eyes made me bite my tongue hard.
Suzie and Sam weren’t a hookup. They gotmarried.Their fourth kid was chomping on Suzie’s boob this very moment. It didn’t get more serious than that. And from what Suzie had told me, it had been serious between them since day one.
Another thing occurred to me. Why had she pushed so hard for me to wait to have a baby? And that little dig about falling in love witha friend’s brother. For heaven’s sake. Suzie was about as subtle as a tap-dancing alligator.
“Suzie, you know I don’t have long relationships and you know Michael is leaving in a couple months. How—”
“Seven weeks.”
I blinked. “What?”
“Michael is here in Hart’s Ridge for a couple months. He’s already been here for three weeks. That means he’s leaving for the White Mountains in seven weeks. It’s math, Nora.”
As if I needed another reason to hate math. “Oh.” That was hard to wrap my brain around, Michael being gone in seven weeks. Weeks were so much shorter than months. “So Michael is leaving in seven weeks. If something were to happen between us, it would end right there. You’re saying you’d be okay with that?”
Suzie paused a moment too long, her eyes widening a fraction too far. “Sure,” she said innocently.
Yeah, right. I believed that like I believed there would be flowers on Hart Mountain in January.
I had to tell her. Suzie was my best friend, and Michael was her brother. There was no way around it, I had to tell her. Just…not yet. I needed to think about it. Figure out the best way to smash her hopes without hurting our friendship.
When Andy was done eating, I took him back from Suzie so the technician could get to work on her manicure.
“Thank you,” she said.
“You already said that.”
“I’m saying it again. Thank you. This was exactly what I needed.”
I smiled and rubbed my cheek against Andy’s soft head. “Girl time with my best friend and snuggle time with Andy? Not a hardship. We’ll have to think of a way to thank Sam and Michael, though.”
“Sam…I thanked him this morning, and do you know what he said?” She lowered her voice to an imitation of Sam’s deep, rumbly tone and said, “You pushed out four babies. This makes us even.”
“What?” I whisper-shrieked, so as not to startle Andy.
The technician looked up. “You tell him he can push the next one out of his own teeny tiny hole, andthenyou’re even.”
Suzie laughed. “He was joking. I think. Anyway, that ended with a pillow fight, which I won, and then Dimitri watched Andy so we could take a shower, and…Don’t worry about thanking Sam. It’s taken care of.”
I grinned because I knew what that meant. Sam better know exactly how lucky he was, because I doubted many women out there were giving blow jobs less than a month after giving birth to their fourth child.
“So that leaves Michael,” Suzie said pointedly.
Which I just as pointedly ignored.
We were greeted upon our return with chaos.
Upon closer inspection, we determined that it was not chaos and was, in fact, a football game.
Sam ran slo-mo through the front yard, carrying Carly in his arms. Becca was attached to his left leg. Dimitri was, for some unknown reason, running circles around them.
“I’m open!” Michael yelled. “Toss the ball!”
