Nathan Fawcett said, "I'm worried I'm not doing enough, that I'll give Justin Shields an opening. I hear your mother is very fond of him."
He never used to mind these things, but thinking about it now just made him angrier and angrier.
Anne Sutton looked at him. "The past is the past. Justin Shields is my mother's friend's son, so of course she dotes on him. If you hadn't come along and stirred things up, my mother would've forced me to marry him. We might have even had kids by now."
"Stirred things up?" Nathan Fawcett frowned, taking issue with her choice of words.
Anne Sutton laughed. "My mistake. I meant... your *help*! You know how terrible my relationship with the Shields family is."
'Mrs. Shields running over to accuse me of stealing Stella Shields's fiancé, my own mother getting angry with me...'
Anne Sutton's impression of the Shields family was already in the gutter.
Just then, Anne Sutton's phone, which was sitting on the table, chimed.
