Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 45785 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 229(@200wpm)___ 183(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 45785 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 229(@200wpm)___ 183(@250wpm)___ 153(@300wpm)
Since I was having zero luck in the love department, I was just gonna have to surround myself with old friends and their new spouses.
It was great. Just great.
“Is my little partner in crime here yet?” Ortega asked. “Blake promised she was gonna whoop my ass.”
I grinned. “Not yet, but Piper texted about an hour ago. They’ll be here soon.”
I had a bone to pick with Piper. My sister worked so much, she’d hired a professional babysitter for my niece. Like, what the fuck was I? Chopped liver? I’d told her a million times; I could drive down and watch Blake. I didn’t care about traffic. Plus, they didn’t live smack-dab in the middle of San Diego. The worst of rush hour was easily avoided.
Bad enough I couldn’t see Blake when she was with her dumbass stepdad. His week with her cut my time with her in half.
About half an hour later, the house had filled up nicely. Dante had arrived shortly before the Tenleys, and approximately thirty seconds after I’d met Shay for the second time in my life, he’d shoved Reese into the pool with a little help from Gray.
That was the upside to having buddies who’d robbed the cradle for partners some twenty years younger than themselves; reunions were never dull. Gray, Crew, Toby, and Shay were getting along fine.
Reese pushed himself up from the pool.
Crew was struggling to contain his laughter. His uncle and the Tenley brothers went way back, so this memory would live on.
I grinned to myself as I prepped the grill. Reese was watching the youngsters with suspicion in his eyes while he threw off his wet clothes. River and Darius had naturally ended up on Reese’s side of the pool.
“Can you stop looking at me like that?” Shay laughed. “I told you I’d get back at you for stealing my travel pillow!”
Reese kept staring as he dropped his wallet and—oh, ouch—a possibly dead phone on one of the pool loungers.
“You might wanna put that in a bag of rice,” Gray offered.
“Don’t let that get to you,” Crew told Shay. “iPhones are waterproof.”
“Boy, you’re on my list too,” Reese barked out.
Crew merely widened his arms in a “come get it.”
Poor Reese. Not even River could hide his mirth.
Carbon copies, those two. Thank fuck Reese had a distinguishable tattoo on his neck.
It was gonna be a good weekend. Sun shinin’, country music playin’, friends laughin’.
“You look happier, querido.” Marisa came up next to me with one of the platters of sausage.
I smiled at her. “It’s good to have everyone here.”
The twinkle in her eyes was less good. That usually meant trouble. She set the platter on the side table, then put her hand on my arm.
“Just let me know when you want me to set you up with my brother.”
There it was.
“Hon, I’m swearing off both men and women for a long, long time.” I poked at the briquettes and bent down to blow a little on them, wanting the fire to spread.
At some point, after five or six spectacularly failed relationships, you had to ask yourself if the problem was you. I had an ex-wife, an ex-fiancé, an ex-girlfriend who’d stolen from me to support her secret drug addiction, an ex-boyfriend who’d cheated on me, one what-if who’d turned out to be the biggest ass of them all, and—
“Uncle Ellie!”
Finally.
I spun around and grinned automatically. There she was, peeking out from behind Dante and Tariq. Eight going on eighteen. Christ, I wasn’t ready for her to be out of diapers, much less out of second grade.
“Get over here, darling. You wanna tell me why you’re late?”
Blake laughed, and we met in the middle of the patio, where I swooped her up in my arms. “Blame Daddy!”
Oh, I had no issues doing that. That applied to everything. War, famine, pandemics, Blake arriving late—all Joel’s fault.
“Well, you’re all mine now.” I smooched her cheek and got a tight hug from her. She packed some strength for being so small. That was all the women in our family. Ma, aunts, Piper… We called them shortcakes, ’cause it got ’em all riled up. “Where’s your mama?”
“I’m right here, big brother,” Piper answered herself as she came out too.
Perfect. I made quick work of introducing her to the few she hadn’t met before, and I lost Blake in the process. She was gonna change into her bathing suit, she said. Fine. I’d get more hugs from her later.
Piper looked like she was about to head off with Marisa since they were somewhat close, but she asked to have a word with me first.
“Yeah, sure.” I handed the grill master task over to Ortega and followed Piper back into the house.
All fifteen of us were here now, and I was getting hungry. “We’ll go to the kitchen.” We might as well bring out the rest of the food.