Spells & Stitches by Barbara Bretton Page A

happy if I survive this MacKenzie brunch.”
    “We’re loud, pushy, and opinionated, but we mean well.”
    “If you’re trying to calm me down, it’s not working.”
    “Seriously,” Kim said. “We all know you’re the only reason Luke’s here today.”
    Dangerous territory. I wasn’t about to risk stepping on a familial land mine. “I’m glad we came,” I said carefully.
    She grinned and a look passed between us. I sensed I might have made a friend. Then again, I couldn’t be sure. I was the outsider here, in ways she couldn’t imagine. Still, we were setting up the boundaries, writing the guidebook on the fly. My loyalties belonged first and foremost to Luke and to our baby, but it was good to know I might have an ally in the family.
    Not that I was thinking in terms of alliances, but, like I told you before, I watch a lot of television and from what I’d observed, families were as much about conflict as they were about coming together. And big families even more so.
    Luke and I were never going to fit into the fabric of the MacKenzie tapestry the way his brothers and sisters and their families did. Sooner or later we were going to disappoint Bunny and Jack and that was when we’d need someone in-house to plead our case and I was pretty sure Kim would be the one.
    Actually I had expected the baby of the family, Meghan, to be our advocate. I knew she was Luke’s favorite, but she’d phoned Bunny and claimed they were delayed by the snow but would try to make it.
    And we all know what that means.
    “Probably that boyfriend of hers,” Bunny said with a sharp look of disapproval. “I wish she would meet a nice young man and settle down. Is that too much to ask?”
    “Leave her alone, Ma,” Luke said. “Keep pushing and she’ll end up living with a rock star in Vegas.”
    “Maybe you know somebody she could go out with,” Bunny said to me. “Some handsome, unattached boy in your charming little village.”
    I choked on a bite of waffle and had to wash it down with a gulp of juice. The thought of Luke’s sister hooking up with any of Sugar Maple’s unattached males made me break out in hives. Our secrets would be on the Internet before we knew what hit us.
    “So where is this little village of yours?” big brother Ronnie asked as we settled down at the huge table.
    “You know where it is,” Luke jumped in. “You’ve been on my ass about it since I took the job.”
    “I’m making conversation,” Ronnie said with a wink in my direction. “I’ve been told I’m very good at it.”
    Clearly Luke wasn’t in the mood for fraternal banter. “Let her eat first,” he all but growled. “We’ve been on the road since eight this morning.”
    “You can talk with your mouth full,” Ronnie said to me with a wicked grin very much like Luke’s. “I don’t mind.”
    “Northern Vermont,” I said, forking a piece of ham and a wedge of golden waffle dripping with syrup. “A really tiny village called Sugar Maple.”
    “You should see the town,” Bunny enthused. “It’s a quintessential New England hamlet.”
    “Quintessential! Listen to her.” Luke’s sister-in-law Tiffany elbowed the man next to her. I assumed he was her husband Kevin. “Breaking out the multisyllables for Luke’s—” She stopped dead, clearly uncertain what to call me.
    “Lover,” Jen said, raising her mimosa in a toast. “I think that’s pretty evident.”
    An uncomfortable silence fell across the table. I felt heat moving its way up my throat and spreading across my cheeks. I looked over at Luke and noted that one of those little muscles in the side of his jaw had begun to twitch. Yes, we were lovers, but there was something else in that statement that neither of us liked.
    “I prefer partner,” Kim said, reaching for her glass of orange juice sans champagne.
    “I don’t go for that partner stuff,” patriarch Jack said with a disapproving glance our way. “You have a husband. You have a wife. That’s the