Rich shrugs. “I wonder how happy you can really be together if you keep breaking up.” He hits his next shot, and the yellow solid rolls into the side pocket. “Maybe it’s a sign.”
Liam and I exchange a glance. Rich is trying so hard to bait me, but I’m not biting.
“Quit making trouble, Rich,” Liam says. “They’re obviously happy, and Teagan doesn’t need you playing guard dog.” Rich scowls at him, but Liam only laughs. “Dude, let it go. Sometimes your obsession with her is creepy as hell.”
At least someone else sees it. Hell, I was starting to think everyone connected to Teagan’s life back home was blind.
“Fuck you. I’m not obsessed. I’m concerned. I watched her grieve for my best fucking friend, okay?”
Liam ducks his head at that, shamed. “I’m sorry about that. But this isn’t the same.”
Rich hands his stick to Travis. “I’m tired of this game. I’m heading out.”
Liam watches him go without a word and only turns to me when the game room doors swing closed behind Rich. “I’m sorry about him.” He shakes his head. “I don’t like him, but he’s done a lot for Saanvi’s parents. They think of him as family. He means a lot to them, but if it had been up to me, he’d never have gotten an invitation.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “I can handle a little pouting.”
Liam grins. “I like you, Carter. I’m glad Teagan has you by her side. She deserves a good guy.”
The continued buzzing in my pocket suggests that Myla has more to say. Maybe sometime in the last six months, I stopped being the good guy I always thought I was.
Teagan warned me that her parents don’t do anything halfway. If the welcome dinner is any indication, I can see what she means. It’s extravagant. The party bus picked us up at the mansion and brought us to the Luckette Winery, where we were served a six-course meal with accompanying wines and surrounded by the happy chatter of a family reunited.
We finished the meal twenty minutes ago, but everyone’s lingering to talk and finish off the remaining wine.
“Thank you for changing your schedule at the last minute so you could come.” Saanvi sighs. “Even my own cousin wouldn’t take today and tomorrow off work to be here, and she’s a bridesmaid.”
I grimace, uninterested in stepping in that kind of drama. “I’m sorry to hear that.”
She waves a hand. “Whatever. She’s a journalist chasing the next hot story. I should have assumed something would come up, but regardless, it means a lot to my family to have you here for the whole thing—Teagan included, whether she admits it or not.”
“I’m glad she invited me.” And, hell, I mean it. Across the room, Teagan is grinning at one of Liam’s groomsmen as he tells her a story. I can’t hear the whole thing, but I think he must be a medical professional too, because I keep hearing hospital jargon. She looks beautiful tonight in a red dress that straps behind her neck and clings to her curves all the way down to her knees. And then there are the shoes . . . I’m not sure I’ve ever met a woman who looks as good in heels as Teagan. I’ve certainly never cared before her—maybe because they’re as much a part of her personality as the way she takes no shit from my brothers and loves my nieces and nephews as if they were her own. Tonight’s heels are red and wrap around her ankles with ribbons. If shoes could talk, these would scream SEX.
“Has anyone ever told you that you look at her like a teenage boy with a crush?” Saanvi asks.
Reluctantly, I tear my gaze off Teagan to look at her sister. “No, but I’m not surprised. That’s pretty much how she makes me feel.”
Saanvi beams. “I love that! And to think she was planning to hide you from us.” She lowers her voice. “Not that I can blame her. My parents are all over the ‘What are your intentions?’ talks. Dad asked Liam that when we’d been on three dates. I’m lucky Liam didn’t run screaming.”
I laugh. “I bet he already knew.”
Saanvi bites her bottom lip. “I like to think so.” She waves a hand. “Enough about us. Tell me how you two got together.”
I swallow hard and let my gaze drift back to the woman in question. “She’s been part of my life for most of her time in Jackson Harbor. She knows my brother Ethan from the hospital and is friends with my sister and my sisters-in-law, so she’s always around, but she was reluctant to get involved with me.”
“Because of your job?”
I nod. “I didn’t know that was the reason at first.” Four years, and she never breathed a word about my profession being an issue for her. Has she told Shay or Nic about Heath, or is he a secret she’s kept from everyone?