Love the One You're With (2)

by Lauren Layne

  But this? This was almost clichéd in its adorableness. There were shutters and a handmade mailbox, and a fat cat lounged in the middle of the driveway, moving only when Jake honked rudely.

  Even the Malone front yard was delightful. The lawn was perfectly groomed, the cheeky “Beware of Tiny Dog” sign was proudly placed, and the flower beds were overgrown and gorgeous.

  In other words, the Malone house was big, and a little messy, and wonderful.

  Even more wonderful was Jake when he saw his family home. He’d refused to tell any of his family members when his flight arrived, to save them the hassle of coming to the airport to pick him up, so instead he and Grace had rented a car.

  He claimed this was also to give them a quick-getaway option, but she knew better.

  He loved his family. Loved this home.

  It had been clear the second he’d pulled into the driveway and she’d seen all the tension leave his shoulders. Seen the “city Jake” disappear from his face. Suddenly she could see the boy he must have been, running around the city, interviewing the neighbors, critiquing the lemonade stands and writing it up in the school paper …

  “They’ll eat you alive, you know,” he said in response to her gushing as he wheeled their suitcases to the front door. “I thought I told you to lose the high heels. Between the kids, the dog, and my sisters, the shoes will never make it out of the house.”

  “I thought you said your youngest sister was twenty-seven,” she said.

  “Exactly.” He turned back to her, his expression unusually anxious. “So, um … Overall, my family’s great—a little overwhelming, but great.”

  She smiled patiently and waited for whatever was coming next. Everyone had some kind of warning when it came to the parents. With hers it was not to mention politics. With Greg’s, it was don’t criticize the Pope. With Riley’s, you had to eat everything on your plate or else.

  “My parents pretty much think I walk on water,” he said hesitantly.

  As far as family warnings went, this one was tame, and she patted his arm. “That’s a good thing, Jake.”

  He snatched at her arm before she could go for the doorbell. “No, they, like, really think I’m the best thing since humans discovered cheese.”

  Her eyes went wide at that. “Wow.”

  “Yeah. So if you could just, you know … I don’t see them very often.”

  Grace melted a little at the little-boy look on his face, and on a whim, she went on her toes to kiss his cheek. “Don’t worry. I won’t let them think you’re anything other than the rock star you are.”

  Something strange flashed across his face then, but she didn’t have the chance to analyze it because then the door opened, and it was like a tidal wave of noise.

  Grace vaguely registered being dragged into the house by a female version of Jake before she was hugged by everyone. Everyone.

  Her own parents hugged her when they saw her, of course. They might be proper, but they were loving. But the Malones hugged. They squeezed her, ruffled her hair, and did that hold-her-by-the-shoulders-and-inspect-her-up-and-down thing before hugging her all over again.

  Grace tried to keep track of the names that came at her. Dimly she counted the four sisters, the dad, some yippy dog named Hula, and then came the real hug.

  Mama Malone.

  From the way Jake had described his mother, Grace had been expecting a short, loving pit bull of a woman, but Nancy Malone was tall and lean with gorgeous salt-and-pepper hair in a stylish bob. Her brown eyes were so like Jake’s that Grace stared for a moment before she was pulled into the longest hug yet.

  When Jake’s mother pulled back from the hug, Grace could have sworn her eyes were watery.

  Uh-oh.

  “It’s so nice of you to let me tag along with Jake, Mrs. Malone.”

  “ ‘Mrs. Malone,’ she says,” Jake’s mom gushed. “He found one with manners! I was so worried he was going to bring one of those snotty stick figures you see all over that show … what’s the one where they make their own clothes and have attitude?”

  “Project Runway,” one of the sisters volunteered.

  “Right, I thought you were going to be like one of the girls from Project Runway.”

  One of the sisters covered her mouth in horror. “Surely, you didn’t think that Jake was going to make a mistake with his choice in women?”

  Nancy waved this away. “No, of course not.”

  “Of course not,” the sister said with a little wink at Grace. “No mistakes for our Jakey.” Grace smiled. “Most of us New Yorkers are actually pretty normal. We just live in really tiny spaces in a really big city.”

  “With great shoes,” another sister said.

  “Well, there is that.”

  Jake’s mother was still staring at her with a fond expression, and Grace 2.0 started muttering warnings in the back of Grace’s mind.

  “You just call me Nancy, okay, dear?”

  “Okay,” Grace said, letting herself be pulled into another hug.

  “Now I’m sure Jake’s told you all about them, but these here are my girl babies. Jill, she’s the oldest—the only one to give me grandbabies. Then there’s Jennifer and Jessica, the twins, and the ginger over there is baby Jamie. My husband still wants to know where the red hair came from. I’ll never tell.”

  “Our longtime accountant has red hair. I’m just saying,” Bob Malone said with a wink at Grace.

  Nancy sniffed. “Please. As if I’d sleep with an accountant.” She hooked her arm into Grace’s. “My maternal aunt had red hair. I’ll never tell Bobby, though. Keeps him on his toes.”

  “All J’s,” Grace said. Somehow she’d missed that when Jake had been talking about his family.

  “Yeah. I was going through a phase,” Nancy said with a wave of her hand. “Come on, let’s get you fed.”

  Nancy led Grace into the kitchen, and Grace saw right away that this was the heart of the household. Although the rest of the house seemed old, this had clearly been recently renovated to be the more modern open style, with a huge island and all modern appliances.

  There was food everywhere.

  “Now, Grace, I’m not sure what you kids drink in the city. I wanted to make some fancy cocktail, but Jakey told me not to bother.”

  “She wanted to make Manhattans,” one of the twins said with an eye roll. “Because I’m sure everybody in Manhattan actually drinks them.”

  Grace obediently sat on the chair that Jake’s mother pointed commandingly at. “Can’t say I really care for them,” Grace said. “But my friend Riley swears by them, so I guess it’s all a matter of taste.”

  “Well, never say we didn’t give you options, city girl.” This from the other twin. “Here we have beer, some of my mother’s favorite pinot grigio, or some sangria that Jill likes to call her ‘special mommy juice.’ ”

  “That sounds revolting,” Jake said, coming into the kitchen.

  His eyes found Grace’s, and he lifted his eyebrows as though to say, Surviving?

  She smiled back. Yes.

  “Wine would be great,” Grace said, helping herself to some of the veggies and dip in front of her. “Where are Jackson and Matt?”

  “I sent them off with their father to fetch the balloons for the party tomorrow,” Jill said, pouring herself a glass of sangria. Of all the sisters, Jill looked the most like Jake. Same dark hair, great jaw, and expressive eyes. The twins had their dad’s blue eyes, and then poor redheaded Jamie didn’t look like any of them.

  “We’ll talk about the monsters later,” Jessica—Jennifer?—said. “Can we please talk about the elephant in the room?”

  “What, you mean the fact that our brother finally brought a woman home?”

  “He’s never done that before?” Grace asked, taking a sip of wine and carefully avoiding looking at Jake, who was deep in conversation with his dad about something-something quarterback.

  She’d been wondering about her role in all of this ever since he invited
her along—wondering if he always took his current fling home with him, or if she was different.

  Grace 2.0 cleared her throat. Don’t read into this.

  The Malone females exchanged a look, but it was Jill who finally answered. “Let’s just say the only thing we know about Jake’s love life is what we read in the gossip columns.”

  “I would never read those!” Jake’s mom said, sounding scandalized.

  “And by never, she means she cuts out every single thing she reads about her baby boy and keeps the clippings in a box in the hall closet,” Jennifer said.

  “But I don’t believe everything I read,” Nancy said.

  Jill nodded solemnly. “Of course not. Jake is still a virgin, right, Mom?”

  Grace wisely took that moment to take a sip of wine. A big one.

  “Hey, Dad, didn’t you want to show Jake your new power drill or something? Or some hammer, or lawn mower, or …?” Jessica prodded.

  It didn’t take an expert to see that this was a blatant manipulation of the male species, but apparently Bob wasn’t as evolved as his son in terms of catching on to women’s ploys. Instead of demanding to know why he was being gotten rid of, he merely started rambling to Jake about “horsepower you have to see to believe” and was out the door.

  Jake, however, had his lady radar on, because he gave his sisters a warning look and a muttered “Be nice” before kissing his mom’s head on the way out the door with his dad.

  Grace’s palms became a little bit sweaty at the too-innocent expressions on the female Malones’ faces. Had the welcome-to-the-family routine been an act? Was she about to get grilled?

  She couldn’t even answer her own questions about what she was doing here. How was she supposed to answer to his family?

  “So, Grace,” Jamie said the second the door was closed. “Jake’s always made us swear never to read his stuff. Says there’s nothing we could possibly need to know about shaving or his sex life, or how to wow her with a frittata the next morning.”

  “I hope he credited his mother with that one,” Nancy mumbled.

  “He’s right,” Jessica said. “We don’t need to know any of that.”

  Her twin nudged a tray of pigs in a blanket toward Grace, who dutifully plucked one off the plate.

  “Let me guess,” she said with a wary glance around the kitchen. “You read everything anyway.”

  “Every last article, guest post, and interview,” Jill said with glee. There wasn’t an ounce of guilt on her face, or any of her sisters’ faces. Even Nancy looked completely unperturbed by their blatant dismissal of Jake’s request.

  Yup. This was family, all right.

  To their credit, none of them pried. They all sat there patiently with kind you-can-confide-in-us expressions.

  There was no escape, and Grace knew it. “So … I’m guessing you’ve seen the website?”

  Five heads nodded eagerly. “We couldn’t believe it when he said he was bringing a woman home. We really couldn’t believe when we heard the woman’s name. We talk about you all the time.”

  “I’ve been rooting for you,” Jennifer said quietly.

  “For which we’ve nearly disowned her,” Jessica said with a glare. “Siding against her only brother …”

  “Who’s being a complete tool half the time. That stunt with their first date … I mean, it was clear she was into him, and he totally strung her along and then stabbed her in the back.”

  Grace gave a rueful smile. “It wasn’t quite like that.” Although it had felt like that. Just a little. “I’ve done plenty of manipulating of my own,” she went on. “We both knew the rules of the game when we agreed to do this, even if we weren’t exactly expecting it to become an online phenomenon …”

  “So are we going to be featured?” Jamie asked excitedly. “This is some sort of meet-the-family test, isn’t it?”

  “No!” Nancy said, sounding scandalized. “My boy wouldn’t fly a woman to visit his mother for a game. He likes this girl. I could tell the second I laid eyes on her.”

  “Mom, that only tells us that you like her.”

  “Well, okay, I like her. But I also saw the way that Jakey looked at her. And he likes her too.”

  Jill topped off Grace’s wine. Smart woman, Grace thought. “Is it true? Does he like you?”

  Grace might not have sisters, but she knew a trap when she heard one. “I’m pretty sure that’s a question for him.”

  “But you’re a relationship expert. I’ve been reading Stiletto forever, and I can’t tell you how many crappy relationships you’ve helped me through. You helped me figure out why one guy wouldn’t call, you helped me figure out that another was being distant because he didn’t like that I bought him clothes. And your article ‘Ten Ways to Tell if He’s Cheating’ pretty much saved my life.”

  “Dylan met eight of your warning signs,” Jennifer whispered.

  Grace immediately fixed a smile on her face to ignore the stab of embarrassment, although she was glad she’d been able to help Jessica see the light. She just wished she could have seen the light before, well … red panties in her bed.

  “Soooooo,” Jamie said, leaning forward. “Do you like him?”

  “I …” Crap. “Um.”

  Nancy laughed delightedly and slapped her hand on the counter. “I knew it. You do like him.”

  “Well, duh, Mom. She came to Green Bay, Wisconsin, for him.”

  “Which you told me might have been for the story,” Nancy said with a scowl at her oldest daughter.

  All five of them turned to stare at Grace, silently demanding that she answer the question once and for all.

  She took a deep breath.

  “Yes, I like Jake too. And that darn website has nothing to do with why I’m here.”

  But despite her pronouncement of affection for their golden boy, none of them was looking at her. All eyes were locked on a spot over her shoulder.

  She knew he’d be there even before turning around.

  And from the stunned look on his face, he’d heard every single word.

  Grace 2.0 began making submarine siren noises in the back of her head.

  * * *

  Jake never mentioned what he’d overheard, and Grace told herself she was relieved. Instead, they’d merely gotten sucked into the vortex that was a Malone family get-together.

  Dinner was a noisy, messy affair. Jackson and Matt were adorable, if a bit rambunctious on the eve of their joint birthday party, and Nancy Malone’s chili—topped with Wisconsin cheese, naturally—had been the spicy, casual kind of meal that Grace’s own parents would never have even considered had it not been for some sort of chili cook-off fund-raiser, the Fourth of July, or any other time it was “acceptable” to have a meal one ate entirely with a spoon.

  Grace loved it. She loved the way the Malones squabbled and drank one too many beers in the name of celebrating. Loved the way they loved Jake. They teased him mercilessly and badgered him constantly for not visiting more often, and once the cat was out of the bag that they were in fact aware of his and Grace’s little website scheme, they’d given him crap about that too.

  Of course, Grace had had her fair share of explaining to do. Nobody messed with “Jakey” and got away with it. But they’d done so with the good-natured badgering of someone who was already part of the family.

  It scared the crap out of her. Mostly because it felt so natural.

  Still, as welcoming as Nancy Malone was, she was old-fashioned about some things. Namely, bedrooms.

  When the night finally wound down, the kids were in bed, and the dishes were put away, Nancy pulled Jake down for a kiss on the cheek.

  “You’ll be in the guest room, Grace. And Jake’s in his old room, of course. Your room is the best room in the house as long as you don’t mind my sewing machine and Bob’s treadmill, which he touches about once a decade.”

  “More than you touch that sewing machine,” Bob grumbled back from his spot on the couch. His wife ignored him. Th
ey were adorable.

  Separate bedrooms, then. That was cool.

  That was better.

  Grace 2.0 could stop worrying that she’d drag Jake down the aisle just because she liked his family, and Grace 1.0 wouldn’t even be remotely tempted to sleep with Jake just because she liked him.

  Win-win.

  Jake had other ideas. “Hey, Mom, I was going to take Grace for a drive. Show her the neighborhood and stuff.”

  “Now?” Nancy looked scandalized.

  “It’s just after nine, Mom. And it’s not even a school night.”

  She gave a sheepish smile. “I forget that you’re from the city that never sleeps.”

  “Yup,” Jake said as he helped himself to another piece of apple pie. “And we all call it that too.”

  “He always was the sarcastic one in the family,” Nancy said in a loud whisper. “You watch that about him. Come on, Bob, we’re going to bed.”

  “Oh, are we?” Jake’s dad didn’t move.

  Nancy marched over to the TV and turned it off decisively. “The kids need alone time. We talked about this.”

  Grace pressed her lips together in amusement.

  Grumbling, Bob pushed himself up from the couch, giving Grace a peck on the cheek before he clapped his son on the shoulder. “Night, Jake. As proud as we are of your hotshot life, it’s always good to have you home.”

  Grace watched curiously as the same odd expression went across Jake’s face that she’d seen on the porch earlier that afternoon.

  Bob trailed after Nancy, and neither Jake nor Grace moved until the creaking of the stairs stopped, followed by the click of a bedroom door.

  “Finally,” Jake muttered as he and Grace wandered into the kitchen.

  “They’re great,” Grace said, leaning on the counter and watching him polish off the pie.

  “Uh-huh. If by great you mean prying, interfering, and being all-around pains in the ass. I specifically asked them not to read my stuff.”

  “If Jamie was a big-shot journalist writing about her personal life, would you read her stuff?”