Free Moonlight Cove by Sherryl Woods Page A

Will said. “Not that it would be cheating, if you aren’t actually dating.” He frowned. “Do you know how muddy and ridiculous all of this is, if not for you, then for the rest of us?”
    “You’re not my problem,” Mack said testily.
    “Okay, here’s how I see it. I know it would be easy enough to look at your past, at all the ways your family was messed up, and figure out exactly why you don’t believe in love and commitment, but the truth is, you’re better at both than you give yourself credit for. I’m not just talking about Susie, either. You’re one of the best friends I have. I think Jake would say the same thing. We count on you. You’ve never once let either of us down.”
    Mack looked embarrassed by the praise. “Come on. You guys would do the same for me.”
    “Of course, because we both care about you. You’ve got what it takes to be in a relationship for the long haul, Mack. I hope you wake up and accept that before it’s too late. Don’t lose Susie because you’re scared.”
    Mack scowled at his choice of words. “I’m not scared,” he insisted.
    “Then you’re crazy,” Will said. “When it comes down to it, we’re all a little scared of love and making a lifelong commitment. It’s a big deal.”
    Mack leveled a knowing look right back at him. “Is that why you haven’t pushed harder to win Jess?”
    Will wasn’t used to having the tables turned on him, certainly not by Mack, who tended to avoid talk about emotional issues. In fact, this whole conversation had been a rarity.
    “Maybe,” Will admitted, since Mack had opened the door. “Or maybe I’ve been terrified that if I pushed hard and still lost her, I’d never get over it.”
    “Then I should tell you what my grandmama once told me before she took off to dance in Vegas or wherever the hell she went,” Mack said. “Nothing beats a try but a failure. That advice was what kept me on a playing field when I was a kid and everyone said I was too small to play football. I figured if I kept trying, I might fail, but if I gave up, I’d fail for sure.”
    Will laughed. “Words to live by,” he confirmed. “We should both take them to heart.”
    But he wondered if either one of them was quite ready to try wholeheartedly for the women they wanted in their lives…and risk losing them forever.
     
    Sunday dinners at home had always been an O’Brien family obligation, but they were changing. For one thing, Gram had given up the reins. Oh, Nell O’Brien still contributed the main dish more often than not, but she’d been training the rest of them to cook their favorite side dishes and desserts. Each week her grandchildren were assigned to bring a new dish, made according to Gram’s carefully handwritten recipes.
    This week Jess was supposed to be bringing homemade Irish soda bread. She wondered if Gram would figure out that she’d enlisted Gail’s help in making it.Jess, like her mother, was hopeless in the kitchen. Before she’d left them all, Megan had kept them from starving, but no one could claim that her meals were anything more than barely edible.
    Jess walked into the kitchen on Sunday, found Gram at the stove and kissed her cheek before setting two perfectly baked loaves of bread on the counter. Her grandmother eyed them suspiciously.
    “You baked those yourself?” she asked.
    “What’s wrong with them?” Jess asked, bristling. They’d looked perfect to her.
    “Usually the first time someone bakes bread, it doesn’t turn out so well,” Gram said, gazing directly into Jess’s eyes.
    She waited, and Jess flinched. “Okay, you caught me. Gail baked the bread.”
    Gram shook her head. “I thought as much. How do you expect to master my recipes if you don’t do it yourself?”
    “I’m counting on everyone else in the family to master them,” Jess told her, grinning as Abby came in and deposited a bowl of rice pudding on the table. She peered under the lid of the plastic bowl. “Looks