me was fresh as ever, and it wasn’t one I was keen to repeat. Especially not now. Especially not with Lila. So I’d keep on lying to myself with the unlikely hope that one day, I’d believe it when I promised her I knew where we stood despite the knowledge that the line had blown away with the wind.
* * *
LILA
I probably should have made my excuses and gone.
The first time the thought struck me, I’d just walked into the greenhouse to find a gorgeous, expensively dressed woman with her hand on his arm. I’d felt the obligation to leave once more when Mrs. Bennet finagled me into dinner, particularly upon noting the terrified look on Kash’s face. Even now, as I sat at a rowdy table surrounded by Bennets, I felt as if I should leave, as if I didn’t belong. It didn’t help that I stood out like a match in the toothpicks, too formal and stiff for the likes of the Bennets.
Really, I should have gone. But I was enjoying myself too much to go through with it.
That was, assuming that Mrs. Bennet would have let me get away, which I somehow doubted. I wouldn’t put a running tackle past her if she thought it would keep a prospect for one of her children in the room.
“So where are you staying now?” Mrs. Bennet asked before sliding a fork loaded with casserole into her mouth.
It was the umpteenth prying question she’d asked, but I didn’t mind. I didn’t mind so much, it worried me.
“With Ivy,” I answered without hesitation. “I’ve been looking for a place of my own but haven’t found the right one yet.”
“The perfect place, the perfect space,” she mused. “Of course, I’ve been known to say that there’s no such thing as perfect. Just like there’s sometimes no right or wrong answer—only the answer you choose. Yes or no. Door number one or door number two.”
I chuckled. “As a hardened perfectionist, that’s a difficult thing to convince myself of, though I don’t disagree.”
“I heard a little about your ex-boyfriend.”
I stiffened, as did Kash next to me.
“Pass the peas, please, Mom?” he asked, clearly intending to divert her.
The attempt failed. She passed the peas, picking up right where she’d left off.
“You’ll have to understand something very important about the Bennets—there are no secrets here. Chances are, if you think you’ve got one, at least half the rest of them already know.”
A quiet chuckle from the Bennets.
“Forgive me for saying so, but I must say that I think it’s terrible what happened. I’m just so glad that you found Kassius. I hope you know he would never be anything but true.”
At that, I smiled at Kash, and he smiled back, though it was apologetic.
“No, I don’t believe he would.”
“You make him sound like a saint,” Luke said, shoveling a bite of his own into his mouth.
Mom’s nose snapped into the air. “Well, he was the only one who stayed here at Longbourne.” At the rise of dissent that broke out among her children, she added, “I want you all to follow your dreams, I do, but I missed you all terribly, and I’m not sorry for saying so.”
The dissent fizzled into jokes and loving words, and I listened, taking a sip of my wine and enjoying the comforting hum of their family, which was its own living thing.
“Lila, I’ve been dying to know,” Mrs. Bennet started, cutting through the chatter, “what cut diamond do you prefer?”
My wine somehow ended up in my airway, and I coughed to shake it loose as the Bennets almost simultaneously exclaimed some version of her moniker, Kash the loudest.
“You’ve been wondering?” Kash asked flatly.
“Yes, I have.”
“Mother, I would ask you if you have no shame,” he said with stern force, “but I already know the answer.”
She shrugged innocently, picking up her wine glass. “What? It’s a perfectly normal question for one woman to ask another.”
“It most certainly is not,” Laney said, pinning her with a warning look.
“Lila is a wedding planner. I’d wager she knows the various cuts better than you, Elaine.”
This was true, but my napkin was still pressed to my lips as the coughing wound down. Kash’s hand patted my back gently, and a brief and befuddling vision of him patting a baby’s back just like that flashed in my mind.
Mr. Bennet spoke without looking up from his plate as he loaded his spoon. “We got that shipment of prairie clover in.”
Immediately, Mrs. Bennet pounced, the conversation fueled and