Happily Ever His (Singletree #1)

the under-thirty set. Most of the friends I’d had in school had moved north to DC or Baltimore, and most of those who’d stayed here had two or three kids by now.
“Don’t talk like that, Gran. You’re only ninety.”
“Not yet, I’m not!” She reminded me. “Not until Saturday.”
“True. Well, I guess you can give Juliet your thoughts about her recent roles in person. She’s on her way, according to the Internet.” Most people learned of family travel plans via email or text. My sister mentioned offhandedly that she would “try to make a flight” a week or so ago, sent a one-line email saying she was working on it yesterday, and then starred in a tabloid video at LAX, confirming she was flying tonight.
“I miss that girl,” Gran said, in one of her fleeting sentimental moments.
“It will be nice to have her here for the party,” I agreed. But my mind was turning around other questions. Like, if that video was her on her way here, did that mean Ryan McDonnell was coming too? Or did they bump into each other at the airport? Juliet was barely rid of her losery husband. It was hard to believe she’d have moved on already.
“Did anyone else call to RSVP?” I asked Gran. “And did the caterer call?”
“Maybe.” She lifted a shoulder and I stifled my irritation. Gran had a bad habit of pretending to be deaf when the phone rang. It wasn’t that she couldn’t hear it ring, or that she didn’t know how to answer it. She just preferred not to, especially if she was gaming. She also made a stink about the fact we still had a house phone, telling me repeatedly how archaic it made us seem. She did everything on her smartphone and prided herself on how technologically ahead she was of the rest of the old folks she knew.
Gran was her own woman, that was sure. She wasn’t like any other almost-ninety granny I knew, though I didn’t know many.
I frowned at her, her veiny thin hand resting on the enormous ball of her gaming mouse. Everything in front of her glowed in neon green or blue, except the screen, where her warrior elf was standing, shifting her cartoon weight and waiting for Gran to come back to the game. “How long have you been online today, Gran?”
My grandmother turned back toward me with a guilty expression before swinging her head back to the enormous screen before her. “Not very long.”
I waited. She always confessed if I stayed quiet.
“What time did you go to work this morning?” She asked, already sounding guilty.
“Nine o’clock.” I’d gone off to teach my morning stand up paddleboard yoga class on the bay, and had been out most of the day since then.
“So …” Gran drew out the word as if she was doing math in her head, figuring out how long she’d been playing World of Warcraft. “So, only since then.”
“Gran!” I stood up, trying to remember that as ridiculous as she could be, Gran was a grownup and I didn’t need to lecture her about being irresponsible or lazy. “Did you remember to eat?” It was almost bedtime already.
Another shrug.
“Oh my God, log off right now.”
“I’ve got a guild raid in ten minutes. I’ll log off after.”
“Gran, the last raid took three hours.”
“Now you understand why I’m online for so long.” She said this as if I’d just answered my own question and should now be fine with the fact that she’d been playing Warcraft for twelve hours today.
“You remember what the doctor said last week. If it’s getting in the way of you eating, you have to stop.”
She didn’t reply.
“Gran.”
Still no answer.
I didn’t like to threaten her, but there had to be a limit to how much online gaming was healthy for an almost-ninety year old woman. Right? “I’ll get the Internet shut off.”
“Tess.” She turned in her chair and gave me a frank look, her blue eyes watery and pale but clear and lucid as ever. “It’s my house.”
“That’s low.”
“If you make some dinner, I promise to log off and eat with you. Especially if you bring me a Manhattan first.”
I sighed. So what if my grandmother had a teensy gaming addiction? And an affinity for rye whiskey? She was old. She’d earned it.
And it didn’t seem so bad, really. If I wasn’t going to be the marrying type, wasn’t going to raise a family, maybe I should look more closely at getting into gaming. I tried not to hear the little voice in my head that reminded me that Gran had gotten married and had her family long before she became a whiskey-drinking online-gaming old woman.
I went to the kitchen to find something quick for a late dinner and to make Gran’s drink, staring out the window over the water of the Potomac sparkling in the moonlight as I ran water into the pot for pasta.
I was definitely not expecting the doorbell to ring at this hour, and it pulled me from my late-night dinner prep ruminations.
“Gran did you order something?” I called back to the office as I dried my hands and went to the front door. Gran didn’t answer but a raucous bout of flapping and nasal-pitched bawking came from the parlor as Chessy went scrambling for the door.
“Chessy, back,” I told her, earning me a beady-eyed glare from the fat hen, who nevertheless took a claw-footed step away from the door.
I peered out the side pane of the door onto the porch, surprised to see two extremely large men in black shirts standing outside.
“Gran,” I called, taking a few steps back to where she was undoubtedly immersed in her raid by now. “Gran, did you order football players?”
“Can’t hear you,” she called, indicating clearly that she could hear me fine. “Gun’s in the hall table drawer,” she added.
I hated it when she got that thing out, but part of me thought it wasn’t the worst idea. We were two women living alone on an