The Forever Girl (Wildstone, #6)(6)

Hard to, when his twisted ankle was actually her fault. She’d seen a Cosmo post online titled “The Top Ten Ways to Spruce Up Your Sex Life.” Feeling ambitious, she’d gone with number one: “Seduce Your Man in the Shower.” What could she say? The illustrations had looked intriguing.

Turned out attempting intriguing things in the shower was dangerous.

Feeling guilty, she ran up the stairs and got his laptop, stopping to straighten out the mess he’d left on the desk. When she got back downstairs, he was standing at the front door with his golf bag slung over his shoulder.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Just got a call from Mom. Her golf date bailed and she needs me to do the back nine with her.”

“But your ankle.”

“We’ve got a cart.” He handed her the pugs.

Juggling the soft sausage loaves while trying to avoid the inevitable face kisses—a big no-thank-you, since they had a fondness for licking each other’s butts—she stared at Dillon. “You said that you’d be here to meet my family and have dinner with us.”

“Babe.” His face softened. “I’m your family. Me and my mom, and your parents.”

“You know that’s only technically true,” she protested. She and Heather and Walker and Maze might not be blood, but they were something even deeper. A self-made family, and yeah, okay, maybe it was a very dysfunctional one, but it felt more real than anything else in her life.

“Come on,” Dillon said, putting his hands on her hips and giving her a frustrated smile. “When’s the last time you heard from Maze or Heather”—he set a finger against her lips when she tried to speak—“where you didn’t contact them first. I mean, have they offered to help you with the wedding? They’re in it—you insisted on them over your local friends—so . . . where have they been?”

She could admit that he had a point. They hadn’t been together since their fight in front of Michael’s grave. Heather had vanished, just gone dark for a whole year before suddenly responding to Caitlin’s texts again as if nothing had happened. But she still hadn’t been back to Wildstone and wouldn’t give Caitlin much information other than that she was okay and “working on things.” Whatever that meant.

Caitlin hadn’t seen Maze either, and not for a lack of trying. But they’d texted and had a few strained calls. And to give Maze credit, she always responded when Caitlin reached out, even with her busy life that was now in Santa Barbara, two hours south of Wildstone.

But Caitlin had, however, seen Walker. Sparingly, but he’d been gone on the job nearly nonstop the past three years. She missed him.

She missed all of them and wanted them back together. And as the self-appointed bossy older sister of the fam, she was determined—and, okay, also slightly desperate—to make it happen. And yeah, maybe, maybe, she’d rushed her wedding along, knowing it was the one thing that could bring her siblings of the heart back together. She couldn’t help herself. For whatever reason, the four of them had synced and melded into a core family that long-ago year, but they were losing each other, and that scared her. She’d already lost Michael; hell if she’d lose the others too. She needed this so badly she couldn’t even explain it to Dillon. But the truth was the last time she’d felt vibrantly alive had been when they’d all been in her life, and she was just desperate enough to play with fate to make it happen. “Please stay, Dillon.”

He studied her face and sighed, his eyes lit with affection as he cupped her jaw. “I promised Mom, but I’ll get back asap. Take care of my babies?”

It was the best she was going to get, so she nodded. He brushed a nice, warm kiss across her lips, and then he was gone.

Caitlin blew out a breath and eyed his “babies.” They stared up at her with those googly eyes and she had to laugh. She’d grown up with big dogs, so she didn’t quite get the appeal of the little ones. They yipped. They had a Napoleon complex. Last week at the dog park, they’d terrorized a big dog into peeing on them.

But Dillon loved them. When the two of them had first started getting serious, they’d talked about their future. As an investment banker, he had a solid job and made a great living. He was fun and sexy. But she hadn’t fallen in love until she’d seen his “Life” list on his Notes app: wife, kids, big house, and a big pension.

And the past year had been . . . really good. They traveled, they laughed, and she’d felt so lucky. But lately there’d been missed dates. Fewer and fewer late-night talks beneath the stars. Less time spent together. She’d decided it was wedding stress, on both their parts.

Because if Dillon was pulling away, she could admit that she’d let him.

She’d kept all this bottled up because . . . well, that’s what she did, always. There were lots of corked bottles of emotion deep inside her. But this, with Dillon . . . for the first time in her life she didn’t know what to do. She couldn’t tell her parents, because they’d asked her—begged her—more than once to please think about dating Dillon longer before saying yes to a ring.

She hadn’t.

Her friends Charlene and Wendy were each very happily married and sickeningly in love, and Wendy was a coworker of Dillon’s. They loved him for her, said he was the best thing to ever happen to her. So maybe she just didn’t do sickeningly in love?