at first glance I could see that while comfortable, all the white and wood farmhouse furnishings were of the highest quality. Everything had been done in bright whites, sage greens, and warm cream, the kind of colors that made you feel like you were wrapped in a blanket on a freshly cut lawn in the middle of summer.
“It’s lovely,” I said honestly. “Very homelike.”
“It’s yours and Olivia’s for as long as you need,” Skylar said.
I turned from peeking into the bathroom. “What? Oh, that’s really not necessary. We are only here the weekend before I get settled in my own house.”
“You bought a house in Boston already?” Jane asked.
I shook my head. “Um, no, I bought it a long time ago. I used to have a property manager deal with it and rent it out sometimes, but not for years now.”
“Oh.” Jane traded looks with Skylar. The two of them seemed to share some kind of telepathic communication, because Skylar closed the door behind her and walked to the kitchen to pull out a bottle of wine from the refrigerator.
“Shouldn’t we…get back to the children?” I asked, even as Jane was taking a seat at the counter.
“They’ll be fine,” she said, pushing the other barstool toward me with the sole of her foot. “Sit. It’s five o’clock somewhere.”
Skylar poured all three of us glasses of a lovely, fresh pinot grigio, and we sat companionably sipping before Jane darted another look to Skylar.
Skylar opened her mouth to say something, but before she could, there was a knock on the door. We all turned to find Brandon entering the cottage, looking a far cry from the frustrated lion he’d resembled early. Right now, he looked downright contrite peering under the bill of his Red Sox cap.
“Hey, Red,” he said before nodding. “I—can I have a minute?”
Skylar straightened behind the counter. “Um…”
“Actually, I can just say it here. I’m sorry about the spa crap, baby. I didn’t mean to make a big thing. Do you forgive me?”
Immediately, Skylar softened and moved quickly across the room to wrap her arms around her husband’s torso. “I’m sorry too for overreacting. I know you were just trying to do something nice for us, but honestly, Jane and I just wanted some time with Nina to ourselves without any strangers around. Forgiven?”
Brandon smiled, and the light he shined toward his wife seemed to brighten the entire small cottage.
“Forgiven,” he repeated. “Especially later.”
He slipped his arm around her waist, then lifted her up to his eye level. They exchange a short but somehow still passionate kiss, then smiled at each other, lost for a moment in their small bubble.
I took a long sip of wine. That was it? I honestly wasn’t sure I’d ever seen a couple approach each other with that kind of blatant affection and straight humility after an argument. But it was clear that there was a lot more love than anything else in the Sterlings’ marriage. These were two people, however strong-minded, who had somehow managed to make it work.
“Let me guess, Nina,” Brandon said once he was finished making up with Skylar. “Matthew’s digging you out of a nasty legal mess too?”
Jane and Skylar both chuckled with him at some inside joke.
I frowned. “Did I miss something?”
“You’ll find Zola is something of a white knight around here, Nina,” Jane said.
I cocked my head. “Because of how he helped you and Eric? Is that how you all became friends?”
“Ohhhh, no,” Jane said. “He’s been saving this group’s ass for much longer than that, starting with these two.”
“What do you mean?” I wondered.
“Oh!” Brandon turned to me. “Then you don’t know.”
I frowned. “I don’t know what?”
Skylar smiled grimly. “Trust me, we have tried to give him so much more than Fenway tickets for what he did. Ironic, really, considering he thinks he’s such a schmuck.” She shook her head. “Couldn’t be more wrong.”
“Well, he did hit on you and Jane at various points, Red,” Brandon put in.
“Oh my God,” Jane said. “Are you and Eric ever going to get over that?”
“Probably not,” Brandon conceded with another grin.
Skylar elbowed him in the gut. “Please, he’s one of your best friends now. And as I’ve said about a million times in the last six years, it was like kissing my brother.”
She proceeded to tell me an incredible story about her father’s gambling addiction and Matthew’s hand in keeping her and her family safe from a small mafia ring in Brooklyn that had, at one point, actually kidnapped