Page 39 of The Grump I Married
I stared down at the perfectly cut triangles. “Has Agnes been teaching you the fine art of the cheese and onion sandwich?”
“Wait until I show you my skills with a sausage butty tomorrow,” she said, giving me a wink.
I picked up a crustless triangle, arching my eyebrow in Lena’s direction.
She shrugged. “Agnes said you used to like your crusts cut off when you were a boy.”
I huffed and rolled my eyes, but I couldn’t deny that her care seeped between my ribs, warming something deep inside me.
“Awww,” Locke said, throwing his arm over my shoulders. “Look at you two.”
Lena smirked. “I take it these are the camp friends you’re always going on about?”
I nodded, introducing them.
Locke shook her hand first. “So, you’re the wife?”
“I’m the wife,” Lena agreed.
“Well, none of us envy you,” Alistair joked. “Weston’s a tough case.”
“I think I’ve got it handled,” Lena said. “I’ve become somewhat of an expert over the years.”
I knew it was all in jest, but I couldn’t help thinking how right it felt to watch her interact so naturally with my best friends from childhood. It felt good to have the three people I was closest to gathered together. A little circle of all the people I lo?—
All the people I trusted most. Because that was what mattered. Love was messy and brutal. Love was Alistair getting his heart and his reputation crushed by Jessica. Love was Narissa, using her so-called broken heart as an excuse to drag me through the mud. Love was my own parents, and their nasty, bitter divorce when I was twelve. Love was something I wanted no part of.
But trust…trust was real and precious. And these were the people I trusted most. That was all that mattered.
11
LENA
“You ready for this?” I asked as we walked up to the meeting hall in Braeburn. It sat in the middle of the high street, with a squat stone base and peeling white paint on the doors.
“Ready to talk about haggis-eating competitions?” Weston smirked, and my eyes were drawn to the curl of his smile. “There’s literally nothing I’d like to do more.”
“I think you should enter the competition. You know, really get involved.”
“If you’d like my PR to be that I’ve poisoned half the town, then sure.”
I grinned, pulling the door open. Just inside, posters and flyers for local events were plastered across bulletin boards.
“Don’t even think about handing out those photos of me,” Weston whispered in my ear. For a beat, my thoughts skittered back to that dream, and I had to bat them away before a hot blush could creep across my face.
“I wouldn’t dare, my liege.” I shot him a wicked smirk, patting the file under my arm. “I’m going to have them blown up and posted around the festival instead.”
Weston playfully tried to pinch my hip as he growled, “Lena.”
“I’m kidding—mostly,” I said, fighting off the shiver that elicited. “I was actually going to ask if we could submit some of the photos—of your choosing—to the paper. For PR reasons, yes. But mostly I thought it might be a nice way to honor Pete and Ellen, and to keep them involved, especially now that they’re both gone.”
“Aye. That’s actually a lovely thought,” he said, looking down at me, those green eyes shining despite the dim meeting hall lights.
“Good.”
“There’s the happy couple!”
I whirled around as Jo snagged us both, dragging us into the room to make introductions to some of the committee members.
