by Parker, Ali
“So, you want to go and find George?” I asked Winnie, and she took off through the house.
Raina took my hand and smiled at me, a little nervously. “I’m not sure what I want,” she joked.
I tugged her along. “Come on. I know that he’s been looking forward to this since I told him.”
She nodded. “Then lead on,” she told me, gesturing for me to go ahead and lead the way.
I did as I was told, and we started making our way through the enormous house to find the man who had brought us here. I was looking forward to seeing George, and as soon as I heard Winnie’s shriek of excitement, I knew that she had found him.
“I think we have acquired our target,” I told her, and I squeezed Raina’s hand.
“Go ahead and lead the way,” she told me. “I think I need you as my human shield to stop me from chickening out on this.”
I led her into the room, and George got up from the chair he had been sitting in and spread his arms wide to greet us.
“So good to see you!” he told me, and he turned his attention to Raina and smiled widely. “And this must be the famous Raina. I’ve heard so much about you from Winnie.”
“Only good things, I hope,” Raina joked as she shook his hand.
“Only that you found them the perfect dog and kept him well when he was silly enough to eat a sock,” he replied. “So that makes you pretty good in my book.”
“Well, if there’s one thing I know, it’s animals,” she said. “Plenty of downsides to working as a vet, but that isn’t one of them.”
“Oh, downsides?” George replied. “Like what?”
“Like I can’t think of a grosser job sometimes.” She laughed. “It’s not exactly high glamor.”
“Okay, I served in the army, so I don’t think you can gross me out,” he replied.
She cocked an eyebrow. “That seems like a challenge.”
He held up his hands. “Hey, I’m sure we’ve both got some stories to tell,” he shot back. “Though I bet mine are more disgusting.”
And with that, the two of them had launched into a playful banter about who’d had it worse in their line of work. They were bantering off one another like they had known each other for years, and I settled into a seat next to them and watched them talk.
Before I knew it, I was almost crying with laughter, listening to the two of them try to outdo each other with who had the grosser stories. They could really match each other’s offerings, and it was beyond funny to listen to them try to beat each other. Winnie was looking between the two of them delightedly, clearly as pleased as I was that they were getting along as well as they were.
Anita interrupted a little while later with the cake and the lemonade, and we all tucked in happily. George took one bite of the cake and nodded appreciatively.
“All of that, and she can cook as well,” he remarked. “You better hang on to this one, buddy.”
“Well, Winnie wants to learn the recipe,” she remarked. “So you won’t have to worry about keeping me around.”
“I’m sure we could find some other uses for you as well,” George replied.
Raina smiled, clearly pleased at his acceptance of her. She fitted in to all of this so simply and so easily. I just hoped that I would be able to do the same when it came to meeting her family.
It was just her twin, right? I was sure I would be able to handle him. Even if she had made mention of the fact that he had been excited when he’d found out who I was. I hoped he wasn’t going to be one of those guys who was just caught up in trying to impress me. But then, I supposed, if he had come from the same stock as Raina, I doubted that he was going to struggle too much with any of that. He was probably as cool as she was. I would be the one bending over backward to impress him, I was sure.
I helped Anita clear away the cake and the lemonade when we were done, and I listened as Winnie and Raina and George chatted away together like they had known each other for years. This had gone better than I had ever expected it would. Raina was so good with George, and George was clearly impressed with her.
By the time that we were due to leave, I knew that it wasn’t going to be long until George would demand the three of us come around again. He got to his feet to see us to the door. It was the first time he’d stood up since we had arrived. If it hadn’t been for how easily he had been bantering with Raina this entire time, I would have thought that he was getting a little frail and weak. It was easy to forget that he was getting on in years because he still seemed so full of life to me.
“It was wonderful to meet you, George,” Raina told him.
He gave her a kiss on the cheek and a quick hug. “Wonderful to meet you too. You’re always welcome in my house, all right? You need anything for that shelter of yours, you just let me know.”
“I will,” she replied, and Winnie grabbed her hand and led her out to the car.
But before I could follow them, George put his hand on my shoulder to stop me in my tracks.
“What’s up?” I asked, worried that there was something he had noticed about her that was about to render her totally hideous to me going forward.
He gave me a long, hard look. “You make sure you don’t mess things up with her, all right? She’s good stock. And I can see that Winnie’s just crazy about her. You’re not going to have an easy time finding someone else like that again.”
“I’ve got no intention of messing things up,” I promised him. “It’s going well. I don’t want it to end yet.”
“As well you shouldn’t,” he agreed. “She’s a gem. And Winnie’s clearly crazy about her.”
“Yeah, we both are,” I admitted.
He smiled at me. “It’s good to see you so happy, son,” he remarked, and he squeezed my shoulder. “You deserve it.”
“Thanks, George,” I replied, and with that, he lifted his hand from my shoulder and gestured for me to go out and join the women. I did as I was told, and the three of us piled back into the car together and took off back home.
“I think that went well?” Raina remarked in the car, the uptick at the end of her sentence clearly turning it into a question that she was hoping we would answer for her.
I reached over and squeezed her hand. “It went more than well,” I promised her. “It was fantastic. Wasn’t it, Winnie?”
“It was perfect!” Winnie agreed happily.
Raina leaned over to give me a quick kiss on the cheek, as though expressing her relief that all of this had gone as well as it had. I couldn’t help but grin. I drove her all the way back to her place, and I walked her to the door and kissed her before I said goodbye.
“I’ll see you soon?” she murmured, brushing her nose against mine.
I nodded. “Really soon,” I promised, and as much as it pained me to draw myself away from her, I turned to head back to the car where Winnie was waiting for me.
She had put on the radio in my absence and was bopping to some pop song in the back seat.
“Well, that went pretty good!” I remarked to her.
She nodded. “It really did!” she replied, and all of that had clearly made her as happy as it had me. There had been a lot of pressure on today, to pull it off and make it right, but it had gone better than I had ever expected that it would.
“Shall we get out of here? Get back to Tink?”
She clapped her hands together. “Let’s go!” she exclaimed.
And I pulled away at once and started the drive back home.
Chapter 37
Raina
I sat there, waiting for my brother to arrive, and tried to convince myself that I was making the right choice. This was going to be fine, wasn’t it? This was going to be fine.
My meeting with George had gone so well that I knew there was nothing keeping me back from actually introducing him to Reed. I had to just check on a time with my brother, and then we could get going.
I knew that he was going to freak out when I told him about my plan, and I was hoping I c
ould at least will him into being well behaved enough not to make a total embarrassment of the family name when we met up for the first time.
He joined me at the table, flopping into the seat with a sigh like he had been struggling to stay on his feet all day long, even though the day had just started.
“Busy week?” I asked him.
He nodded. “Yup.”
“Well, it’s about to get busier,” I warned him. “You think you could clear out Friday evening?”
“And what might that be for?” he asked.
I sighed, took a deep breath, and then told him the truth. “It’s because I want you to meet Harry,” I explained.
His jaw dropped, and he smiled broadly, already primed to launch into everything he was going to humiliate me with as soon as he got the chance.
But I raised my hand to stop him in his tracks. “And look, I know you probably want to start off by making sure that you make a fool of me or yourself, but I’d rather you didn’t, okay? Just be a decent human being. And don’t act out because of who he is. I met his family recently, and they were sweet and lovely and welcoming, and I don’t want to have to regret introducing him to mine, you know?”
“Right,” he agreed, but I could see from the grin on his face that he likely had some other ideas. “I would love to. Just me?”
“Just you for now,” I told him. “If that’s all right. I don’t want to overwhelm him with too many people at once.”
“Hey, you say that like Lizzie’s too much to handle,” he joked with a smile, even though he knew as well as anyone that his fiancée was more than most people could take.
I smiled back. “I’m really looking forward to you meeting him,” I confessed. “I mean, nervous too, of course. But I think you’re really going to like him.”
“Of course, I will,” Reed agreed. “Question is, if he really likes me, right?”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m worried about,” I teased. “Maybe he’ll hate you so much that he won’t even be able to look at me without seeing you, and he’ll have to dump me.”
“Hmm, that sounds like a challenge,” he replied.
I reached over and pinched his arm like I used to do when we were kids. “Don’t you dare mess this up for me,” I warned him.
He shook his head and held up his hands. “I promise I won’t,” he swore.
And with that, the deal was sealed, for better or for worse. I just had to hope that Reed wasn’t going to make me regret the decision to involve him in all of this.
I texted Harry on the way to work to let him know that I wanted to speak to him when I got a chance, and I carried about the rest of the day without thinking much about the family meeting that I had planned for Friday night.
Rita and I were so busy, running around trying to keep on top of everything, that I couldn’t have even if I had wanted to. It was chaos in here, just the way I liked it. So much so that when Hannah stuck her head through from reception to tell me that I had visitors, it took me a minute to figure out who they might have been.
“Visitors, plural?” I asked as I cleaned my hands and dried them off.
Hannah nodded, and I could see her practically dancing from foot to foot as she waited for me to put the pieces together. I headed out, and sure enough, there were Harry and George, waiting for me right there in the clinic.
“Oh my God, what are you guys doing here?” I exclaimed with a huge smile on my face. They had been the last people I had expected to see walk in here, but I was so happy to see them both.
“You said you need to see me,” Harry explained. “And I was with George, going over some stuff for the shelter, and well, it seemed silly not to come down here and see if you wanted to come out for some lunch?”
“I would love that,” I replied. “Just give me a second to let my partner know that I’m heading out, all right?”
“Sure thing,” Harry agreed, and he and George leaned on the counter and conferred together for a few moments while I went to talk to Rita.
“He’s here!” she exclaimed happily as soon as she heard the news, and she headed out of the back room to see him for herself. She had a huge smile on her face as she went over to greet him, and I knew that she was going to be just fine with them. Reed, I had to worry about, but Rita always knew how to hold her own.
“It’s so good to meet you,” she said, holding out her hand to Harry. She looked a little starstruck. Was it really that much of a shock that I was dating someone after all this time? I felt like I should have taken her surprise as something of an insult, but I was just happy that she seemed pleased to meet him.
“You too,” Harry replied. “And this is George, my grandfather.”
“I didn’t realize that we were going to be meeting such a gorgeous young woman today,” George remarked. “Otherwise, I might have put a little more effort in with my outfit.”
Rita laughed, and I could see her flush a little pink around the edges. She had expressed to me that she was feeling less than confident about her body since she’d had the baby, and she probably enjoyed a little of the flirtation, though she would never have come out and admitted it.
“Well, you don’t have to worry,” she assured him. “I won’t be joining you for lunch. I have to watch the clinic. Raina, you think you could make it back in an hour or so? To help with the intake of those new puppies?”
“Sure thing,” I agreed.
Harry took my hand and kissed me on the cheek. “So you’re officially off the clock?”
“Officially,” I agreed, and I nodded toward the door. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”
We headed out of the office, and I held his hand, and we walked down the street together and chatted about what they had been working on. I noticed a few people doing double-takes at us, and I wondered if people recognized him.
I wondered if people were trying to work out what he was doing with someone like me, all tucked up in my scrubs and looking more than a little rattled. But he didn’t seem to care. In fact, he seemed proud to be seen with me, and that made me happy. It didn’t matter what I looked like. As long as I was next to him, he was happy.
We headed to a café nearby, and I ordered a strong coffee and a bowl of soup and sat down with them. George had been telling me about their upcoming visit to the shelter and how impressed he was about the way that they ran things down there.
I nodded along proudly, pleased that he could see it for what it was. I would never have imagined that a family like this could be so open and accepting of everything that was being thrown at them right now, but I supposed that I had been too quick to judge before. People could surprise you.
“So, what’s going on?” Harry asked once we had finished up. “Nothing bad, I hope?”
“Nothing like that,” I promised. “I was just hoping that you might be free to meet my brother this Friday?”
I held my breath for a moment. Maybe he would think that I was diving in too fast too soon. Even though we had already gone pretty far, I was still worried that there was some line that I was going to hit that was going to reveal me as the hopeless over-attached wannabe-girlfriend that I was.
“As long as I can bring Winnie along, I don’t see any problem with that,” Harry replied with a nod. “I think it would be good to meet him. After all, I already forced you to meet this guy, didn’t I?”
“Hey!” George protested playfully. “Careful who you talk like that to. I’ll put a word in Winnie’s ear to make life very difficult if you’re not careful.”
“Oh, like she’d listen to you,” Harry shot back, and George chuckled. They had such a warm, comfortable chemistry together. It made me happy to hear them bouncing off one another so easily and with such familiarity.
“So you think you could manage it?” I asked. “I know it’s pretty soon, but...”
“I would love to,” he replied. “That’s all I want. You’ve been telling me about him for long enough. Seems only fair that I actually get to meet him in per
son one of these days, right?”
“Seems only fair,” I echoed. “Though, fair warning, he knows who you are, and there’s every chance that he’s going to be a little too interested in the family money.”
“He’s a lawyer, isn’t he? That’s what they’re all interested in,” Harry replied teasingly.
I shook my head. “He’s different, but that doesn’t mean he’s not going to be a little curious as soon as he gets the chance to actually meet you. He’s been trying to twist my arm about it ever since he found out who you were, and I’m sick and tired of trying to deflect him. Just don’t pay too much attention to what he says, all right? He’s going to be all overexcited. You can’t trust everything that comes out of his mouth.”
“I promise I’ll take him with a grain of salt,” he said. “I’ll be the perfect boyfriend. Don’t you worry.”
I almost spluttered out a sip of my coffee as he came out with that. I couldn’t believe what I had just heard. Boyfriend? Had he really just called himself my boyfriend?
We hadn’t ever had that conversation about what we were to one another, not really, and it came as more than a little shock to know that he had already started thinking about us in that way.
But honestly, so had I. I might not have said it out loud, too nervous about the thought of scaring him off by saying the wrong thing, but it was true. He was my boyfriend. We had met each other’s families, we were doing the whole relationship thing, and there was nothing wrong with calling it what it was.
Still, I couldn’t help but beam when I heard him refer to himself in those terms. Because it meant that everything was working just the way it was meant to. Everything was going how I had hoped.
He took my hand under the table, and the two of us exchanged a slightly soppy smile. I knew he was thinking the same thing as me.
And as long as we were on the same wavelength, everything was going to be just fine.
Chapter 38
Harry
