Well Matched (Well Met #3)(20)

“Yeah. The dinner. About that . . .” I’d never seen anyone look shifty while they drank a can of soda, but Mitch pulled it off.

“What? Is it canceled?” A spark of hope ignited in my chest. There was nothing in the world I liked better than canceled plans.

“No,” he said. “No, it’s not. It’s . . . uh, the opposite, actually.”

“The opposite?” I tried to figure out what the opposite of canceled was. Even more dinner? Extreme dinner?

“Yeah. The family group chat went a little crazy this week. My cousin Lulu shared this guacamole recipe she found, and my aunt Cecilia said it was garbage because it had mayo in it . . .”

“Mayonnaise?” I almost choked on my soda. “In guacamole?” I couldn’t hide my shudder, and Mitch’s lips quirked in response.

“Exactly. So that sparked off a huge argument over what the ‘real’ recipe for guacamole should be. It got ugly. Lots of harsh words were exchanged.”

I shook my head. “I’m not following. What does this have to do with the anniversary dinner?”

“Well, by the end of the night they decided not to do the dinner.”

That spark of hope grew to a flame, warming me from the inside out. No dinner. No pretending to be a girlfriend. But . . . “The dinner was canceled because of a fight over guacamole?”

“Oh. No.” He took the last swallow from his can of soda and put it down on the counter. “Now they want to do a guacamole-tasting contest, since no one can agree how it should be made. So that’s happening on Friday night, and we’re all gathering at my grandparents’ place down in Virginia.”

“Friday night?” I did some quick thinking. “Okay . . . I can probably get the day off, if we need to go down for the day . . .”

“For the weekend.”

My brain stalled out. “What?” So much for that flame of hope. Doused in an instant.

“The weekend,” Mitch repeated. His voice was elaborately casual, but his eyes were wary as they met mine. “They . . . uh . . . it’s a long weekend thing now. Instead of a dinner.”

“What?” My stalled-out brain stuttered, tried to come back to life, but failed.

“Yeah. That whole group chat I was talking about . . . it started with the guacamole, and then everyone was all ‘oh, it’s been so long since we’ve all been together, we should do more than a dinner’ . . . ” He shook his head in disgust. “I mean, most of us were together at Christmas, but whatever. And then someone mentioned it to Grandma . . .”

“Oh, no.” Understanding washed over me. He’d already told me about his guilt trip of a grandmother. If she got it into her head that a family weekend getaway was necessary, then there’d be no getting out of it.

“Oh, yes.” He leaned a hip against my kitchen counter and crossed his arms. “Family dinner is now family three-day weekend.”

“Jesus.” I pressed a hand to my chest, over my heart that had started thudding with something that felt like panic. I shouldn’t have been panicking about this. I wasn’t being asked to give a speech. I was being asked to hang out for a weekend. The worst part about it was possibly eating some mayonnaise-tainted guacamole. But this was still a lot.

“Yeah. Dinner with my folks is one thing, but a long weekend out of town is something else. You didn’t sign on for that.”

“No, I didn’t.” I barely heard myself say the words, though. I was thinking too hard. How bad could it be? Mitch was fun to be around. He made me laugh, and these couple of times he’d come over to help with the house, we’d worked well together. Besides, he’d offered to help me with these floors out of the blue, the least I could do in exchange was . . .

Wait a minute. I narrowed my eyes. “That’s why you’re over here, isn’t it?”

“Hmm?” He raised his eyebrows, the picture of innocence.

“That’s why you offered to help me with the carpets.” I pointed an accusatory finger at him. “You’re buttering me up. Softening the blow, so I’ll go along with the weekend trip.”

“Well . . .” He drew the word out, and his shrug was as helpless as his smile. “I figured it couldn’t hurt, right?”

A laugh escaped my body from around my pounding heart. My panic was starting to subside under the force of Mitch’s smile. I took a breath. “Lucky for you, I have a killer recipe for guacamole.”

His smile widened, like the sun coming out after a week of rain. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. And it doesn’t have mayonnaise in it, because that sounds like an abomination.”

He uncrossed his arms, and I watched the line of tension ease from his shoulders. I hadn’t realized how tense he’d been during this conversation until he relaxed. “You really don’t mind? Going along with me for the whole weekend? I was sure you’d back out.”

“Well, not now that you’re helping me get the carpets done.” I brushed my hands off on my jeans and took the borrowed mat knife out of my pocket. “But I’m gonna need help with the rest of the painting around here. My bedroom, Caitlin’s bedroom . . .” That was a lot of bedroom talk with him, but I was willing to chance it to get things checked off my list.

Mitch chuckled. “Looks like I’ll be spending a lot of my free time over here, then.”