Just like old times. It used to be sisters. They were all sisters. They’d known each other since high school, and every year they would spend a weekend away, just the three of them. Then after she divorced their brother, they took off for a few years. Especially when Regan was in Hawaii and Arianna had moved to New York. But eventually, one thing had lead to another, and they’d had three more weekends. Even Matt had thought it was good for them to get away together.

She felt it coming and she knew she had to ask. “What about Kathy?”

“What about her?”

“Well don’t you think we should include her? Or you should take her, is what I guess I really mean,” which it was.

“I had never given it any thought,” Arianna said, her words drawn out. “Wow, that makes me a bad sister-in-law, doesn’t it?”

“Well, no…”

“Yes, it does. Dear God! Here we are helping her plan this wedding and making sure her dress is right, she has the right accessories, and dancers for her bachelorette party, and I don’t even think to include her in sisters’ weekends.”

“It always takes getting used to,” Madeline added, trying to move the subject along, sadness swelling in her chest at the thought of the years she’d lost with her dear friends.

“No, it doesn’t. I never had to get used to you,” she said and then laughed. “I mean, you were always around.”

They’d all grown up together, in a sense. That busy time in life when Arianna was seventeen and Madeline, Carlos, and Regan were fifteen, they’d all been a unit. She was their sister and the love of Carlos’s life. They had all been used to each other, and even ending her marriage to their brother hadn’t stopped their relationship.

“Well, I won’t feel put out when you all jaunt off to Mexico for a vacation.”

“Oh, Maddie, shut up!” She erupted in laughter on the end of the phone. “You know you’ve always been one of my best friends, and Regan’s too for that matter. Just because Carlos was too stupid to hold on to you doesn’t mean I have to let you go.”

Madeline smiled one of those smiles that make your cheeks hurt. “Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.”

“Anyway, you need me to stay with the kids?”

“Yeah. Carlos and Kathy will be on their honeymoon. It just worked out that way.”

“Sure it did,” she said, not quite under her breath. “I’d love to stay. Can I just stay out at your house?”

“Yes, that would be perfect.”

She had her tickets, her hotel room, and a babysitter. All she needed to do now was try and get her son a job. She shook her head as she dialed Regan’s number. Who would have thought the time would come she’d be helping her son move into his adult life and pay for dates with girls?

“I will definitely talk to Zach about it,” Regan said once Madeline told her about Eduardo’s plan. “Have him call him tomorrow about two thirty. That’s when he’s the least busy.”

“I guess you would know best. You were his favorite assistant,” Madeline teased.

“Yes, but I got fired.”

“But in the end I do think you got the best job of all.”

“You couldn’t be more right. So… are you coming to the wedding?”

Madeline let out a sigh. “That’s another reason I’m calling. I need to borrow a swimsuit.”

“You’re coming to the wedding in a swimsuit?”

“No, no, no.” She laughed again. God, she loved Carlos’s sisters. “I’m not going to the wedding. I’m going to Mexico. Arianna is going to watch the kids while I’m away.”

“Why? He’s looking forward to having you there.”

“And I’m flattered, but Regan, between you and me, I can’t watch him do this. It’s already breaking my heart.”

“I knew that,” she said softly. “What timing, eh?”

“Yeah, what timing.” She took another deep breath. “So I’m a coward with a boss who gave me extra vacation time, even after having been on leave. I’m taking it. So what do you say? Do you have something sexy I could wear to show off my nipple-less breasts?”

She was glad she’d called her sisters-in-law. She felt better than she’d felt in months.

Now, all she needed to do was get out of town before Carlos said I do, and she’d spend the next week sipping margaritas on a beach and not have to think about the wedding at all.

Chapter Ten

Madeline’s phone rang at ten o’clock at night. She reached across the bed to the end table to pick it up. When she looked at the caller ID and saw Carlos’s number, a surge of panic raced through her, but it quickly diminished when she realized why he must be calling. She’d expected him to call earlier in the day. Regan and Arianna were usually much quicker about spreading gossip.

“You’re not coming to my wedding?” Carlos demanded without even responding to her hello.

Madeline pushed her shoulders back, ready to stand her ground. “No, Carlos. I’m not.”

“Why?”

Did he really need an answer to that question? Hadn’t she been fool enough to tell him she loved him when they wheeled her into surgery? She sighed. There was her proof that he either hadn’t heard it… or had heard it but accepted it as a friendly gesture.

“My boss gave me vacation time. After all I’ve been through, I just think this would be a nice reward for myself.”

“And you couldn’t have gone a week later?”

Madeline gripped the phone tighter. “If you’re upset because I asked your sister to stay with the kids…”

“No. That is not why I’m upset.” He let out a breath. “Maddie, it’s important to me to have you at the wedding.”

“Carlos, did it ever occur to you I don’t want to watch you move on?” She tensed. She hadn’t wanted to say that to him, but now it was out.

“You’d rather I be miserable the rest of my life.”

She slouched down on the bed, her back resting on the backboard, causing her scars to stretch and become as uncomfortable as the stirring in her stomach from Carlos’s disappointment. “Now, I didn’t say that.”

“It was okay for you to go get married six months after our marriage ended? It was okay for you to marry my best friend? But now, five years later, I can’t marry a perfectly wonderful woman, who adores you by the way, and be happy?”