The Happiness Pact. Liz Flaherty

blushing the whole time, but that she’d get a sitter. She didn’t think they were at all ready for the idea of Mom dating. She shook her head then, and Tucker thought for a minute she was going to tear up, but then she admitted, “I’m not sure Mom’s ready for it, either. But I like you. I’d like to go if it’s a chance you’re willing to take.”

      Tucker thought it was.

      She left at nine, anxious about the children she’d left with someone they didn’t know well. Tucker refused her offer of a ride. He hadn’t walked in a few days, and the weather was unseasonably mild. “Come on,” said his brother. “I’ll go with you as far as Gianna’s. Arlie has someone on the verge of delivery, so she’s not leaving her post.”

      They walked around the lake, and Tucker felt a familiar rush of gratitude to be so close to his Irish-twin brother again. Born ten months apart of different mothers, they’d been reared mostly together. But Jack had left Lake Miniagua the autumn after the prom-night accident, guilt driving him away from both Arlie and his younger brother. Their father, who’d been driving drunk and caused the collision, had been angry at Jack at the time. In Jack’s grieving seventeen-year-old mind, he should have been able to prevent the accident and keep everyone safe. Not until their grandmother’s death had he returned and made his peace with both himself and the people he loved.

      When he moved back to the lake, Tucker did, too.

      “You’re a great dad,” Tucker said as they walked toward Arlie’s mother’s house. “Where’d you learn that?”

      Jack laughed. “From Charlie. Same place you learned to be a great uncle.”

      They walked on in silence. Finally, Jack said, “What’s on your mind, Tuck? Why the sudden urge to jump onto the marriage and family wagon?”

      Tucker grinned at him. “At the risk of sounding like the stereotypical younger brother, I want what you have. What you and Arlie have. I don’t think I’m going to feel about anyone the way you do about each other—unfortunately I’m wired more like our father than my mother. The feelings just don’t go that deep. But I can like somebody a lot, and she can like me and we can both love kids. There are worse reasons to be married than just wanting a family.”

      “There are.” Jack’s marriage to Tracy, Charlie’s mother, had been based on friendship alone—in college, he’d wanted to help the lab partner who’d been impregnated by an abusive boyfriend. The fact that Charlie wasn’t Jack’s biological son had never had any bearing on anything. “Tracy and I are still close. We probably always will be.” He slowed enough to capture Tucker’s gaze. “But we couldn’t be married. Friendship wasn’t enough to base a marriage on.”

      “I know. If it was, I’d marry Libby.” As soon as the words were out, Tucker regretted them. They sounded disrespectful, as if she would be a fallback choice. Libby Worth might not be particularly beautiful, based on society’s magazine-cover criteria, and her only claim to a degree was a diploma from Miniagua High School, but she was no one’s last resort.

      His brother hooted laughter that rang out across the still lake. “Like she’d have you.”

      Tucker walked to Seven Pillars from Gianna’s, suddenly anxious to talk to Libby about Meredith. He hadn’t seen his best buddy since her new stove was delivered, when she’d called him to come and see what she’d done with her gambling spoils. She’d pulled a small cherry pie out of the new oven while he was there, gotten out two forks and poured two cups of coffee. They’d eaten every bit of the pie and emptied the coffeepot, laughing the whole time.

      Maybe she’d be up for a cup of Mollie’s hot chocolate at the Grill, although the lights on in the tearoom kitchen usually meant Libby was still baking for the next day. He tapped on the back door and pushed it open. “Lib? You still working?”

      She looked up from the island Caleb Hershberger had built from scrap wood when he’d helped remodel the big Victorian that housed the tearoom. She smiled a welcome that went a long way toward warming Tucker’s cold feet. “Come on in. Help Nate test the new pie recipe.”

      Another survivor of the accident and the owner of Feathermoor, the golf course near the lake, Nate Benteen was also a lifelong friend. He was sitting on a stool at the far end of the island with a cup and a plate in front of him. He looked comfortable there. Very comfortable.

      But what was he doing here? He was supposed to be in North Carolina designing links-style golf courses. Even as he was shaking hands, Tucker asked the question.

      “The owners of the new course are coming up for a few days in April. They want to get a look at Feathermoor now that it’s been here a few years and matured, so to speak,” Nate explained. “They’re going to stay at Hoosier Hills—not the campground, but the cabins. I was looking for a place to have long business dinners with them without going into Sawyer or Kokomo, so I came to beg Libby to feed us.”

      Libby handed Tucker a cup of coffee and waved him to a seat. “Did you meet Meredith? Did you like her? More to the point, could she stand you?”

      “Yes and yes, and she said she’d go out with me, so maybe. She was fun to talk to.”

      “Good. Are you taking her to the Valentine’s party at the clubhouse?”

      “On a first real date? No. Although if the first date works out well, the party would be a great second or third one. Are you going?”

      “I’m going with Nate. We figure our last date was when he was a senior and I was a junior, so maybe we should try again.” She beamed, but there was something a little off in the expression. What was it?

      Oh.

      That had been the night of the accident, when everyone’s lives had changed. Nate, who’d had a golf scholarship and plans to play professionally, had ended up with pins in his hips. He’d settled for designing golf courses for a living instead, starting with Feathermoor. Back then, it had still been his parents’ farm that had abutted the Worth place. Nate didn’t like the term settled, though, and he was one of that happiest people Tucker knew.

      Tucker had lost most of the hearing in his left ear that night, Holly had lost a foot, Sam Phillipy an eye, Arlie her singing voice. People had died. Libby had suffered a head injury that left her in a coma. She never talked about it, even to him, but he knew she still got headaches.

      But they’d come back, except for the ones who’d been lost. And except for Cass Gentry, who’d left the lake and never been heard from again. Jack and Arlie had come full circle and were going to be married in May. Maybe Nate and Libby would, too.

      Tucker couldn’t come up with a single, solitary reason he hoped that wouldn’t happen.

      But he hoped it anyway.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      NATE CALLED LIBBY after church on the day after the Valentine’s Day party and asked her if she’d like to play golf that afternoon. Since the alternative was waxing the tearoom floors, Libby agreed. How hard could it be to hit a little ball around?

      It was, she learned quickly, kind of hard, but by the time they parked the cart in the garage beside Feathermoor’s clubhouse, she thought she liked golf. She’d like it even better, Nate promised, when it was more than forty degrees and they weren’t the only people on the golf course. He mentioned that lessons would be a good idea come spring and that it was perfectly all right to swear when she lost her ball in the weeds—everyone did that.

      She liked Nate, too. He was tall and handsome and fun to be with, but so was the golden retriever rescue Jesse had brought by with the suggestion she and Elijah might like some company. Libby hadn’t been sure about the addition to the family, but Elijah had given in right away, so now Pretty Boy slept on a rug in Libby’s room and made the occasional appearance in the tearoom.

      Nate, on the other hand, was a good conversationalist and didn’t shed in the house. Elijah