reason to keep going this month. I can’t wait until all the girls are here on Thursday with their kids. It’s going to be wonderful.”
“It’s going to be loud and noisy and crazy.” Alana almost cried when she thought about almost telling him about the whole ruse. Lately, the line between what was real and what was part of the deception had blurred more and more. “You do realize that Retta has a toddler. Claire and Emily both have sons that aren’t even crawling yet. And they’re bringing Claire’s coworker, Dixie, with them, too. She’s got a little girl who’s probably up and crawling. Bridget has promised that she’ll come over in the evenings so we can all be together. Nikki and Rose are pregnant. It’s going to be kids and women with pregnancy hormones.”
“This house was built for a big family, and it never got to have one, so I’m going to love having the kids and the ladies here for a few days,” he said. “Hell, I’d be happy if they all moved in permanently. I can’t imagine anything better than having every bedroom in the place filled. I don’t want you to worry about cooking while they’re here, so I hired Trudy to come in on Thursday and Friday. Plus she’ll be here to help out with whatever needs done until all this is over. It’s almost here, Alana. My biggest dream is going to come true. Everything is going as planned and nothing is going to go wrong.”
Alana giggled, and told him about the idea of putting Trudy on Rachel patrol for the wedding.
Matt narrowed his eyes and said, “That woman had better not ruin your wedding, and I agree, Trudy would be a good choice for that job. I’ll talk to her about it, too. I never did like Rachel. She was mean to you when y’all were little girls.”
There was something different in her father’s voice when he spoke about Trudy, and Alana asked, “Daddy, why didn’t you ever remarry?”
“Truth is I thought about asking Trudy out five years after your mother passed away. It had been a couple of years since her husband had left her with Bobby Ray to raise all by herself, and she’s a nice-lookin’ Christian woman. But I felt like I was cheating on your mother to even think such a thing, so I didn’t. Besides, by then, you were fifteen, and we were settled into our own routine. I couldn’t make myself bring a woman and a ten-year-old boy into our home,” he answered.
Alana battled the tears welling up behind her eyes, but she lost the fight, and she grabbed a tissue. “You gave up any hope of companionship and a second chance at love for me?”
“And it was worth every bit of it,” he said. “That chicken better be here in five more minutes or I’m by damn going to complain that they’re doin’ false advertising. They said they’d be here in half an hour.”
He had changed the subject to keep from crying with her, and she knew it. She wiped her eyes and said, “We’ll give them an extra five, since we live a ways out of town, but if”—she stopped in the middle of the sentence and leaned to the left so she could hear better—“I hear a car coming and there’s a truck right behind it.”
“The truck will be Lucas. I told him to come eat with us tonight. We need to know how this new brother of Paxton’s is working out after his first day on the job,” Matt said. “Be nice if he could stay on, but if he’s as worthless as panties on a hooker, then we’ll send him packing.”
“Daddy!” Alana exclaimed.
“He said he’s got experience. If that’s the truth and he’s a hard worker, let him prove it, or get on down the road,” Matt said. “Don’t matter whose relative he is. I never liked that mother of his. Pax’s daddy was as blind as a bat in broad daylight when it came to that woman and couldn’t see her faults. And then she left them boys when they needed a mama. If Landon turns out to be like her, then Pax is better off not havin’ him around.”
Lucas came in the kitchen door before Alana could reply to her father’s rant. “I got the chicken and paid the kid. Y’all come on in here and we’ll eat.”
“Bring it in here,” Matt called out. “Alana, darlin’, grab us some drinks,