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He smirks. “Going to drag her back to your old room for a nooner?”
I scowl at him. “You want me to tell Skye you said that?”
Gabe barks out a laugh. “You’d rat me out?” He shakes his head and motions toward the kitchen. “Actually, go ahead and tell her, and do it in front of Nana. I’m sure your mother wouldloveto know what you two are always up to when you disappear back there to ‘find something’ or whatever excuses you make.”
Waving him off, I wander into the dining room and slide up behind Nora, where she leans over the table, adjusting the runner down the middle of it. I brush my lips to her ear, inhaling her scent that always seems to calm me, even when I’m at my worst.
Murder may not be on the menu for most families on Christmas, but forthisone, inthiscircumstance, it’s the icing on the fruit cake.
“Luca took care of Jude’s father.”
She stiffens for a moment, then sags back against me, a weight lifting off her shoulders that I’m confident she wasn’t even aware she’s been carrying since Luca called us last night. “You’re sure?”
I nod against her and press my lips to her cheek. “Gabe just told me. He’ssafe, angel. And now that he’s with Luca and Byron, he always will be.”
The Hawkes protect their own—blood or not.
At any cost.
CHAPTER3
GABE
Skye bends over the open oven, messing with something in a pan inside of it, her beautiful ass swaying slightly in the air. It is way too tempting not to take advantage of her precarious position.
I sneak into the kitchen and smack one cheek hard enough to make her yelp and almost tumble forward into the oven. If I hadn’t wrapped my arm around her waist and held her steady, she might have been face-first in the pan of baked clams.
She scowls back at me. “You dick.”
Storm’s laugh from the other side of the counter fills the space, quickly followed by Antonia tsking.
The matriarch of the Hawke family shakes her head, fighting a smile despite her reproachful look. “Will you two cut it out?”
I press a kiss to the back of Skye’s neck as she rights herself, then walk over and wrap my arm around Antonia, squeezing her against me. “You want one, too, Nana?”
She elbows me playfully in the ribs. “I’m too old for you.”
I kiss her on the cheek. “You? Never.”
The woman who brought me into this family, who always accepted me as one of her own, from day one, rolls her eyes. “What are you doing in here, anyway?”
“I just came to harass Skye.” I lift my empty bottle. “And to get another beer.”
Skye closes the oven with her hip and tosses a pair of tongs onto the counter, then leans back against it, crossing her arms over her chest. That same look she’s always given me—even back when she was a child and I was just Savage’s best friend—overtakes her face. Her lips twist into a frown.
I raise my brows innocently. “What did I do?”
She taps her toe. “You know what you did?”
“What?”
One of her hands flies out toward the oven. “You almost knocked me into the damn stove.”
I walk over and press her back against the counter, dropping a kiss to her lips. “Almostbeing the key word here. I saved you.”
She barks out a laugh and shoves at my chest. “Saved me. Yeah. Yeah. Right.”
“Your life would be so boring without me, woman.”
