A Wedding on Lilac Lane by Hope Ramsay (best book clubs .txt) 📕

of light. He was altogether too handsome. Too male. And too focused on her right at the moment. She wanted to run, but she couldn’t make her legs move.

She hadn’t expected Dylan to help unpack her grandmother. And really, now that she thought about it, having Jim here was a bit of a surprise too. Her extended family had always consisted of three women, and that had seemed compact enough to manage. But now her family numbered five people, one of whom she’d seriously injured with a breakfast tray.

Were they judging her for her mistake? Probably. Anxiety made her feel hot and sweaty. She wanted Jim and Dylan (mostly Dylan) to disappear so things could go back to the way they’d always been.

Mom looked up from the bureau. “Oh, there you are,” she said. Was that a judging tone, or was Ella letting her angst run away with her emotions?

“Hey,” Ella managed to say in a neutral tone. She didn’t want to make eye contact with anyone in that room. Unfortunately, the room was so jam-packed that the only safe place to look was down at her feet.

This wasn’t going to work. She needed to escape her own embarrassment, so she turned to her grandmother and said, “Maybe I can help somewhere else. You seem to have the bedroom covered.”

“Hmm, you know, maybe you could get started on the bookshelves in the living room.”

“Great,” Ella said, turning around and running like a fox, hoping the hounds didn’t give chase.

The living room had a gas fireplace and built-in shelves on either side that were perfect for Granny’s voluminous collection of mysteries. Ella got busy opening boxes of books and arranging them by author. She’d made it through half a box when Mom came into the room.

“I need to talk to you,” she said in that judgmental voice that Ella had grown to hate as a child. Every time she had failed to perform flawlessly at an audition, Mom always began the conversation with these words.

She didn’t respond to them now but kept putting books on the shelf.

“Honey. Look at me.”

She shelved the P. D. James mystery in her hand next to a collection of Dashiell Hammett stories, then turned toward her mother. Mom wasn’t frowning, which was a good sign.

But it didn’t matter because she’d seen the size of the bandage on Dylan’s head, and that was sufficient to make her feel inadequate and guilty even without Mom’s frown-of-death to contend with.

Mom leaned in and spoke in a near whisper. “Honey, I know you and Dylan got off on the wrong foot. But I hope you didn’t throw that tray at him on purpose. I mean, my goodness, he had to have several stitches, and Jim says he’s got a mild concussion.”

Ella’s remorse morphed into defensiveness. She stepped back, turned, and picked up another handful of books. They served as a nice barrier between herself and her mother, and they gave her something to do while she tried to process what Mom had just said.

Mom thought she’d hurt Dylan on purpose?

Damn. The anger hit her so hard that she felt dizzy for a moment, right before she let loose in a voice loud enough for even the nearly deaf residents of Bayview Vistas to hear.

“Of course I didn’t hit him on purpose!”

Mom made hushing motions with her hands, which only fanned the flames of Ella’s sudden need to defend herself. And what better way than to deflect the blame. “Honey, I didn’t say you—”

“You know, Mom. I’m not the troublemaker. Dylan is. Do you know that he told me right to my face that he wants to break you and Jim up?”

“Isabella Louise,” Mom said, using that tone—the one Ella hated most of all. “You know better than to say something ugly like that. Why would you say such a thing?”

“Because it’s true.” Her voice hardened. “And if he told you I hit him on purpose, that’s just a lie.”

“I didn’t say that he said—”

“You know, y’all, your voices are kind of loud,” Jim said, strolling into the living room and standing with his hands on his hips. Until this moment, Ella could have sworn that Jim never lost his temper. But he looked pissed off right now.

“Honestly, Ella, why do you always have to make trouble?” Mom said, then turned and stalked toward the bedroom door. As she passed Jim, she said in a loud whisper, “Maybe you can talk sense into her.”

Great. She’d always wanted a real family with a mom and a dad and a sibling or two. But maybe she should have had her head examined. She met Jim’s stare. The man had incredibly bright blue eyes, but for once they didn’t twinkle like Santa’s.

“Your mother is under a lot of stress,” he said.

“She’s not the only one.”

His jaw flexed. Was he grinding his teeth? Because of her? Boy, he needed to open his eyes and see the truth.

Jim took a step forward. “Ella, just calm down, okay? You know your mother loves you, and we can—”

“No. I won’t calm down,” Ella interrupted as her self-restraint collapsed under the weight of her anger. “I’m trying hard to make Mom happy, okay? But your son doesn’t seem at all concerned about her happiness. And I’m trying to get my life together at the same time. Has anyone ever thought about that? No. I’m weary to death of having to tiptoe around angry, demanding people. When do I get to be angry and demanding and difficult?”

She slammed the books in her hand onto the shelf, turned, and stomped past the delivery guys, who were now manhandling a ginormous washing machine. She strode into the hallway and kept going all the way down the stairs and out onto the street.

*  *  *

Dylan stood in the doorway to Nancy Jacobs’s bedroom, his head throbbing, as Ella finally stopped apologizing and just let fly with the truth. Why on earth hadn’t she told her mother or Dad about his plans for breaking them up