Dinner at the Stevenson house wasn’t nearly as bad as Jack had thought it was going to be. He’d deliberately taken his earring out, worn Dockers instead of jeans, and best of all, arrived with Amanda just minutes before it was supposed to start. Thank God for bad California traffic, even when traffic wasn’t to blame. Nobody questioned their late arrival once explanations—albeit false ones—were made.
Mrs. Stevenson sat him between Amanda’s father and her sister-in-law Ellie, a soft-spoken young woman with rosy cheeks and a tendency to blink too much when she was listening. She was pregnant, too, nearly eight months. It was a gift horse Jack wasn’t going to ignore, because if there was anything he knew could distract women from weddings or relationships, it was talking about babies.
The on
