Holly turned off the music. “That’s looking much better. Mark, remember to relax. And Sean, nice wink at the end. You caused the women in the corner to swoon.”

Sean gave the rest of us a smug smirk.

“Great job, Sean.” I slapped him on the back. “You made a group of make-believe women faint. I bet Bridget would be proud.” Bridget was his wife.

What was going on? Next week was the fundraiser and we were rehearsing. Those women Holly had referred to? They didn’t exist. We were just pretending the room was filled with a group of overly excited women.

“I’m picking up the costumes tomorrow so we can start dress rehearsals on Friday,” I told my teammates. The granddaughter of one of Granny’s friends from the senior center had offered to sew them. Granny had already hinted that the woman was single. Not for my benefit, but for the benefit of my single teammates.

There was a good chance I failed to mention it to them. Like me, they weren’t the settling down type.

The guys began packing up. I checked my phone and discovered a text from Emma: Your grandmother knows I’m not your girlfriend. I’m sorry. But you’re off the hook to find me a new store location.

Shit.

How the hell did Granny figure out the truth? I thought we had been very convincing and our kisses looked real. They had sure as hell felt real.

As it was, I hadn’t kissed Emma since Sunday night, when I dropped her off at her place. I missed her kisses. I missed the way it felt to be inside her and to hold her in my arms.

While the temptation to go see her and discover what had happened was strong, I needed to check on Granny first.

A short while later, I knocked on Granny’s apartment door. The entire way over, I’d gone through several scenarios in my head as to what had happened. None of them were good.

The deadbolt clicked and the door opened.

I’d never seen my grandmother pissed before, so the look of utter disappointment leveled at me just about kneed me in the nuts. Even when I had been a pain-in-the-ass teen, she had never looked at me that way.

Definitely not good.

Forget being up a creek without a paddle. I was going over a deadly waterfall backward without said paddle.

She stepped away from the doorway to let me in.

Maybe I should’ve come bearing gifts. Was it too late for me to draw a picture for her refrigerator—like I had done when I was a kid?

“Emma made cookies before she left,” Granny said. “You might as well come and have some with us.”

“Us?” Like I needed to ask.

As I suspected, Abigail and Hazel were sitting at the kitchen table, a plate of chocolate chip cookies in the middle. Each woman had a glass of milk in front of her and a scowl on her face directed at me.

Inwardly, I sighed. Thank God they loved Emma’s cookies—or else I was at risk of being stoned by them.

Abigail gestured at the seat opposite them. I sat, a bad feeling churning in the pit of my gut. Even though I wasn’t hungry, I grabbed a cookie. The three women weren’t the only ones who loved Emma’s baking.

Granny didn’t sit next to me. She pulled her chair from under the table and moved it to join her friends, like a senior-citizen-style firing squad. Once seated, she took a cookie from the plate and bit into it.

Her scowl softened. “Mmm. These are so good,” she said around the mouthful.

Hazel elbowed her, and the scowl returned in all its I’m-still-pissed-at-you glory.

“So I understand you felt you had to lie to me about Emma being your girlfriend.” Granny’s tone was cold enough to freeze the milk in the glasses.

Busted.

“How did you find out?”

“Emma was over earlier and told me.”

Anger should’ve coursed through me at Emma ratting on us, but instead, I squirmed in my seat. It didn’t matter that I was a six-foot-three, one-hundred-and-ninety-pound hockey player, these three knew how to make me feel five years old again. A five-year-old who was at risk of not getting ice cream for dessert. “I’m sorry I lied. I just wanted you to be happy and for you to stop trying to set me up with any more women.”

Granny slowly shook her head and I had to fight off the urge to sink lower in my chair. “So instead of making me happy, you broke Emma’s heart?”

I shook my head in denial. “She and I are friends—nothing more.” Friends who’d had sex—which Granny didn’t need to know about.

Abigail removed a cookie from the pile, nodded at me, and with her gaze burning into me, she broke the cookie in half.

Message received.

I really couldn’t figure out why they were acting like this. Yes, I had lied, but weren’t they getting a little carried away with their pissed off attitude? I had done it for Granny’s benefit and not my own.

All right—it had been for my benefit, too.

“Look, I’m really sorry I pretended that Emma and I were dating. But it’s not like I hurt anyone.”

All three rolled their eyes like disbelieving teenage girls. “Only a man would think that,” Hazel said.

“A man without any balls.” That came from Abigail. I guess I should’ve been happy that Granny hadn’t been the one to say it.

Granny nodded in agreement with her friends. “But you did hurt someone. And I’m not referring to me, Travis. You hurt Emma in a way you can’t even begin to imagine.” She pushed a small velvet box across the table to me.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Open it.”

I did. Inside was a necklace I’d never seen before, with a bunch of red gemstones.

“Your grandfather gave it to me for our thirtieth anniversary. Those are rubies and diamonds.”

“It’s nice, but what does it have to do with Emma?”

“Because I tried to give it to her. I’ve seen how you two are together, and I didn’t want to risk not being around later to give it to her.”

Somehow I managed not to roll my eyes. “You’re turning eighty next week. You’re not dying.”

She grunted a you’re-missing-the-point noise.

“Why would you give her something so valuable anyway?” I asked. “Just because we were dating doesn’t mean we were getting married.”

This time all three women grunted. Clearly they all thought I was an idiot. Maybe I was—an idiot for having no idea where this was all going.

“As you can see, she didn’t take it. She said she couldn’t because you two weren’t really dating. You were just faking it for my benefit.”

“And you have a problem with her not taking it?” I asked, frowning. Wasn’t that a good thing she hadn’t accepted the necklace, considering there wasn’t really a “her and me”?

An odd sensation stirred in my chest at that thought. I shoved it away.

“No, it was her reaction when I gave her the gift that’s the problem. It was like I had given her the world. Then she started crying because it was one of the few gifts anyone had ever given her, and she couldn’t take it because your relationship was a lie.”

The odd sensation in my chest? It turned into a ten-ton weight—and dropped to my stomach.

It had never crossed my mind that she had been so deprived as a kid. She should have grown up feeling loved, but that had never been her reality. It was no wonder she was so eager for love. Eager for anything that said it was out there for her one day.

“Do you still believe no one was hurt with your lie?” Granny asked.

“I never meant to hurt her.”

Granny gave me the first smile I’d seen from her since I arrived at the apartment. But it still wasn’t at full capacity. “I know. But the truth is there’s a woman out there”—she pointed toward the living room window—“who cares a lot about you, possibly even loves your sorry backside—”

“I believe in this situation,” Hazel said, “ ‘your sorry ass’ works even better.”

One side of Granny’s mouth jerked up. “Right. Who possibly even loves your sorry ass, and you’ve made it quite clear to her that you aren’t interested in falling in love.”

All right—it was now official. Granny was senile. “Emma doesn’t love me. We’re just friends.”

“You keep telling yourself that if you think it’ll make you feel better,” Abigail said. “But it won’t change anything. That girl loves you and you threw away the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”

Clearly Abigail and Granny had picked up a two-for-one special on going crazy if they really believed that.

“I’m telling you, she doesn’t love me.” Because if she loved me, she wouldn’t have ended things with me. That wasn’t her M.O. She was the one people usually abandoned. She wasn’t the one who walked away.

Or maybe Granny is right—and Emma left you because she does love you and is afraid you’ll abandon her like everyone else, the logical side of my brain suggested.

I turned my back on it…because it was wrong.