His Surprise Son. Allie Pleiter

long-ago part of him. “My stepsister Violet’s thrilled to be your first bride.”

      Rather than offer a response, Wanda gave him a look that roughly translated to “I can just imagine” and hit the cash register key with a declarative finger. “Fries or chips?”

      “Chips. And coffee. And everything to go, if you can.”

      “Of course.” Wanda shouted, “To go, Wayne!” back to the cook, who barked “Okay” in return.

      “Wayne and I, we’re no big fans of ‘to go,’ but that’s the way you young people all seem to eat these days. Next thing you know, Her Honor will be asking us to put in a drive-through window.” She nodded toward a rack of chip bags on the wall behind her. “Regular or barbecue?”

      “Barbecue, thanks.” He probably shouldn’t inquire, and he suspected her answer, but Josh couldn’t stop himself from asking, “So do you think Mayor Matrim’s idea will work? Matrimony Valley?”

      “Well,” she said after looking him up and down, “you’re here.”

      I am indeed, Josh thought as he paid for his meal and accepted the white paper bag and foam coffee cup she handed him. What are the odds of that?

      “I’m not knocking a single mother trying to make her way in the world, bless her heart,” Wanda went on. “I just think we didn’t have to turn ourselves inside out like this to survive. Matrim’s Valley has been here for three generations and survived its share of hard times without changing the name of everything in sight.”

      Josh had taken two steps toward the door before he fully absorbed what she’d said: single mother.

      Jean was a mother? She had said “family obligations,” hadn’t she?

      It shouldn’t have surprised him—Jean had always been the type to want marriage and a family. She’d worked in a bridal shop all through college. She’d given an eager “yes” to his proposal. They’d planned on a family, eventually, once the business stopped eating his every waking moment. Things never got that far. And now she was a mother.

      But a single mother. A barrage of questions rose up in his mind as he crossed the street back toward the inn. For a guy who made his living on the internet, he’d been way out of touch with college friends. Did she marry? Whom? When? And what had happened to end it?

      It should have been him she married. Of course, he had no right to say that now, but there had been a time when he felt that way. They’d been madly in love back in college. His senior year, he’d been king of the world, watching everything in his life line up to launch him toward the stars with Jean beside him. Nothing was beyond his reach. His final semester was a blur of parties and congratulations and that one spectacular night spent with Jean reveling in his golden future.

      Things went too far after that night—and they both knew it—but they would have been making a new life together in San Jose, so it hadn’t felt like a mistake. In truth, he’d thought that night marked the end of her second thoughts about joining him in California. He was so full of himself back then that he’d simply assumed he’d won her over.

      She came to California, but she never really settled in. His relentless pace bothered her in ways it never had in school. She couldn’t seem to make friends, claiming Silicon Valley’s posturing grated on her down-home sensibilities. She grew so moody and distant that by the time news came of her father’s illness, they’d both used it as an excuse for her to disappear back east “just until things got better.”

      They never did.

      There were emails and phone calls, but the lapses grew longer as the flat-out scramble of a software start-up consumed his attention. He had always meant to call her but somehow never did. A part of him knew he’d have to face the wrong of that someday, he just didn’t count on it being here and now.

      He’d gradually shut down his connection to her, telling himself Jean was never really the kind of woman to take to West Coast life. It wasn’t that he couldn’t find her—he was a brilliant man with a fortune in technology at his disposal—he just never managed to follow through. He’d let her slip from his life, telling himself he didn’t regret it.

      Only he did regret it. And it felt like life was getting ready to show him how much.

       Chapter Two

      Josh paced his room while he waited for his chief of operations, Matt Palmer, to respond to his text. He’d asked, “Can you video chat right now?”

      His eyes wandered over to the Welcome to Matrimony Valley brochure lying on the nightstand. Smart but simple, it had a folksy appeal that people looking for this sort of place would probably love. Right down to the cheery welcome from “Mayor Matrim.”

      A ding from his laptop announced Matt on the line, and Josh clicked open the video chat function to see Matt’s face. “How’s the brother-of-the-bride gig going?”

      “Fine.”

      “Color scheme going according to plan and all that stuff?”

      Josh tried not to groan. “I don’t know. I think so. Violet’s getting what she wanted, and that’s what matters. She’s the boss, I’m just the bankroll.”

      Matt made a face. “Aw. Will you do that for me?”

      As Josh’s second-in-command at SymphoCync, Matt probably put in as many hours at the office as Josh. “I’ll take that one-in-a-million shot, sure. I really called you to help me untangle a...complication out here.”

      Matt sat back in his chair. “What’s up?”

      “Jean lives here. As a matter of fact, she doesn’t just live here, she’s the mayor here. She’s Vi’s wedding planner. She’s remade her hometown into this whole Matrimony Valley thing, and Violet’s her first bride.”

      “Jean—wait, Jean your ex? Your ex-fiancée is mayor of Matrimony Valley? Whoa. Good thing this has no chance of getting awkward or anything.”

      Josh gave Matt a look. “I knew I could count on you to be helpful.”

      Matt shook his head. “Didn’t she live in some place named after her family or whatever?”

      “She did. If it had stayed Matrim’s Valley, I might have seen this coming. As it was, it was all I could do to not trip over my own feet as we walked down Aisle Avenue in Matrimony Valley”

      Matt kept laughing. “Aisle Avenue. Matrimony Valley. Seriously?” Matt wiped his hands down his face and attempted—rather unsuccessfully—to be serious. “So how’s Violet taking this new wrinkle?”

      Josh picked at the tassel fringe of one of the pillows in the mound around him. “She doesn’t know. Jean and I...well, I think we hid our initial shock pretty well, and we’re sort of pretending it’s not there. She made like she didn’t know me, and I did the same.”

      Matt gave Josh a dubious look. The man was a master of them. “You know that’s not gonna work, don’t you?”

      “Of course I know that. But I don’t want to mess this up for Violet, either. She’ll get all weird about it, and believe me, she’s high-strung enough already with the wedding. I’ve just got to get Jean alone to hash out how we’re going to handle it.”

      Josh saw Matt pivot to another corner of his desk and begin typing. “Matt, would you mind finishing with me before you look up Jean Matrim online?”

      Matt paused. “Hey, I’m just looking up where you are in case I need to airlift you out of there.” After a second, he said, “Aw, look, there she is standing by the Welcome to Matrimony Valley sign.” Josh heard more tapping and yelled at himself for not paying closer attention to Violet’s plans before now. “She always was pretty,” Matt commented. “Looks