Leah bit her lip, guilt washing through her again. “I may have done something kinda stupid last night, and I may be in need of some advice.”
Maggie nodded sagely, and filled their glasses, more champagne than juice. “We know all about stupid,” she said, softening it with a wink. “Ava, baby, get the casserole out of the oven.”
They sat down around the table with drinks and plates full of breakfast casserole, sliced melon, and fresh cranberry muffins.
Ava speared a piece of cantaloupe and gestured toward Leah with it. “Is this about Carter?”
Maggie paused, glass hovering in front of her mouth. Her eyes had gone glassy with that Southern Mother thirst for Gossip. Leah would have laughed at another time, if this wasn’t her own personal gossip about to be laid on the table. “Carter? I’m guessing I missed a few steps.”
“It’s nothing,” Leah rushed to say. “Or, well, I thought it was nothing. At first.” She gave Maggie a bare-bones rundown. From her run-ins with Carter at Dartmoor, including the awkward moment in Maggie’s office, to his nightly post-football visits to the coffeeshop, until they had a routine down, and a regular table, and things had just started to feel comfortable.
“You left out the dinner,” Ava pointed out.
“Dinner?” Maggie asked.
“They both came to dinner at my house,” Ava said, “and there werefireworks.” Her eyebrows waggled on the last word.
“They weren’t fireworks,” Leah protested.
“You stared at each other for a full minute at the dinner table.”
Leah gave her areally?look.
Ava chuckled. “There weresparks, don’t deny it.” She sobered. “But you don’t exactly have that new-relationship happy glow this morning.”
“That’s because there is no relationship. And probably won’t be – especially after last night.”
“What happened?”
She sighed, took a sip of mimosa for courage, and relayed last night’s disastrous conversation with Carter, as well as she could remember it. “He literally got up and ran away, after. He left a Carter-shaped smoke cloud behind like he was a dangLoony Tunescharacter.”
Maggie and Ava traded a look.
“Rejection hurts, hon,” Maggie said. “He wasn’t gonna stick around and wait to see what you said next.”
Leah’s stomach clenched, and she pushed her plate away; took up her glass and drained it in one long gulp. “Mom said I ought to apologize.”
“No,” Maggie and Ava said at once.
Maggie laid a hand down on the table, near but not touching, her expression serious. “You’re never obligated to go out with someone if you don’t want to. No, if you wanted to turn him down, and you did, then that’s that. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“She’s right,” Ava agreed. “But –didyou want to turn him down?”
“Yes. Maybe. I don’t know.” She glanced longingly toward the counter, and the champagne there – but knew she was being stupid. She set her glass down and hitched up higher in her chair. “That’s why I came: I don’t know what I want. Last night, when he asked – it was so unexpected. There had been looks, yeah. And I was…feeling things.” She felt her face heat. “But I never thought he’d ask me out. Notlike that. Not like ‘let’s go on a date.’ With him paying and everything.”
“Why not?” Maggie asked, lips twitching. “Carter’s a gentleman – when he’s not railing everything in sight.”
“Mom!” Ava hissed.
“She knows.” Maggie gestured to Leah. “She knows all about the railing. She was there for the broken nose incident.”
Leah’s breakfast turned over in her stomach, and she couldn’t keep from making a face.
“Oh, shit, honey, sorry. Look,” Maggie said, turning back to her. “Neither of you were expecting to run into each other and feel this way. I can guarantee he was just as caught-off-guard as you.”
“He’s not even my type,” Leah protested.
Maggie arched a brow. “Hot’s not your type?”
