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His reaction hadn’t been what I expected. I’d thought he’d tell me how great being married was and how I should do it. I guess I was hoping he’d help me see the upside, because on my own? I was struggling. It wasn’t that he wasn’t making sense—that was the problem, he made it all very clear. I didn’t have the urge to marry Emma. And if marriage was what she wanted, maybe I should let her find it with someone else.
    “Seriously, dude. If you have to think about it, it’s not right,” Jake said.
    Ash greeted us and helped herself to a glass of wine. I watched her as she peered into the fridge. She looked good tonight. Well, she always looked good, but she’d looked better, or different, the last few times I’d seen her. She joined us, sitting between Jake and me on the bar stools, watching Haven doing something with pastry and egg. It seemed kinda unappetizing, but I wasn’t about to tell her that.
    “Are you sure you don’t need a hand with anything?” Ash asked, grimacing while she knew Haven wasn’t watching. I snorted, and Haven looked up.
    “I’m sure. I’ll be out of your hair in a minute and you can do your thing,” Haven said. “How’s Richard?”
    “I met him,” I interjected.
    Haven stopped what she was doing, her eyes on mine. “You did?” Her gaze darted between Ash and me. “When? How come?” Haven hadn’t met Richard yet, so she was bound to be wondering why I had.
    “I went to see Ash for lunch this week and we bumped into him,” I explained.
    “You guys had lunch?” Haven asked. I’d expected her to focus on Richard rather than the fact that Ash and I’d had lunch. A look passed between Haven and Ash I couldn’t decipher. Was Haven pissed I got to meet him first? It wasn’t really her style.
    “So, what was he like?” she finally asked.
    “He didn’t have two heads.” I decided not to mention that as soon as he appeared, Ash had been out of her chair faster than a bat out of hell. I hadn’t quite worked out what had happened there. Haven rolled her eyes at me. “Well, what do you want me to say?”
    “Did you like him?” Haven asked me.
    “I met him for five seconds. He could be Gandhi; he could be Charles Manson. But he seemed like a decent guy and Ash has good taste in everything so . . .”
    “Is he the one?” Jake asked. “I’m a convert to the theory of there being such a thing as the one .”
    “Obviously,” Ash replied.
    “Obviously he’s the one?” I asked as my gut twisted. Had Ash found her future husband? It hadn’t occurred to me that that’s what she’d been looking for. If that was the case, I wanted to know more about him. Was he good enough for her? Did he deserve her?
    Could he make her laugh the way I did?
    She smiled. “I meant obviously Jake believes in all that. See the pair of them.” She lifted her chin toward Haven and Jake, who were throwing each other little glances.
    “And you don’t believe in all that?” I was suddenly fascinated by what her response would be.
    I willed her to look at me, but she stared into her glass. “Yeah, I believe in it.”
     
    Ashleigh
    The boys had gone to watch sports, and I knew I was about to face an interrogation from Haven. “So you two had lunch?”
    I tried to brush it off. It really was no big deal. “Yeah, Luke called and asked me at the last minute. We used to do it all the time. It’s not like I crossed some morally reprehensible line for lunching with your brother.”
    Haven cocked her head. “I haven’t said a word. Do you think you might be a tad defensive? I just thought you were making room in your life for Richard, that’s all. I want you to be happy.”
    “I saw Richard last night. There is plenty of room for him.”
    Haven tapped the side of the pan with her wooden spoon. “And how’s the sex? Has it improved?”
    “I don’t remember saying it needed improving on.” I threw a glance over my shoulder to check the boys weren’t listening.
    Haven raised