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“I am,” I reply with a nod.
“Wow, you do great work. This entire setup looks like it came out of a magazine.”
“Thanks. I didn’t do it alone. I have a talented staff.”
“She’s being modest,” Chase informs Sidney. “She’s fucking brilliant.”
Sidney grins and winks at me. “You have an admirer. And he’s a hot one.”
“Don’t make me kill Chase,” Sidney’s husband, Keaton, says from the other side of her. His voice is totally mellow, his face bland, but his eyes are sharp. “I like him.”
“No one’s hotter than you, babe,” Sidney replies with a laugh. “I’m so glad that Erin didn’t have us all sitting in bunches. You know, in family groups? I like meeting new people, and this ranch is absolutely to die for.”
“It was smart of her to have us mingle,” Joy agrees from across the table. “I suspect that some of us might have been a little…intimidated to approach some of you otherwise.”
“Don’t be,” Keaton insists. “We’re all just a bunch of normal people. Some of them are idiots.”
“Our families have that in common,” Chase says with a laugh, and the two men high-five over the table.
“I heard that,” Brady calls out from the next table over. “I know you’re not calling me an idiot.”
“Or me,” a man I recognize as Vaughn freaking Barrymore, the hottest actor of our generation, says with a laugh.
“I am talking about him,” Keaton says with a whisper. “He married my sister, so I can give him a hard time.”
Before we can continue the conversation, there’s a commotion on the stage, and we all quiet down, turning to see what’s happening.
“That’s our cue,” Sidney mutters to her husband, who reaches out and rubs her cheek with the back of his finger.
“Hello,” Meg, Erin’s mom, says into the microphone with a little smile. “First of all, be kind, okay? I don’t sing in public much anymore these days. Is anyone going to come up here with me, or what?”
To my shock, I watch as Leo motherfucking Nash stands at a table across the room, and with a cocky grin on his crazy handsome face, he struts up to meet her. Other members of the family join them, including Sidney and Keaton.
“They make up an entire band,” I whisper to Chase, who just nods, his gaze pinned to what’s happening before us, but he reaches for my hand and holds on tightly.
“For those who aren’t part of the crazy Montgomery clan,” Leo says into the mic, “I’ll give you a little backstory. Meg and I grew up together as foster siblings, and way back when the Earth was cooling, we were in a band together. Then we went our separate ways for a while, and, well, blah blah blah…”
“He got famous,” Meg says into the mic. “I became a nurse. We both married into the Montgomery family.”
“What are the odds, right?” Leo asks, making us chuckle. “We still like to jam together, and I’d say that music is a big part of our entire, big, loud family. We do monthly dinners as a family, and we usually jam at those.”
“So, why break tradition, right?” Sidney asks, speaking for the first time.
“If it’s okay with you,” Leo continues after smiling at Sidney, “we’d like to play a few songs. Meg’s going to join us on the first one, but then she’s going to be a party pooper and ditch us.”
“Trust me, you’ll thank me,” Meg says with a grin.
“Let me introduce the band,” Leo says, turning to look at the others. “We have Sidney Sterling on vocals and guitar.”
“Holy shit,” I whisper, making Chase smile.
“Keaton Williams on the keys,” Meg adds, over the applause.
“Hudson Williams on the sticks,” Leo says, and Hudson does a quick drum solo.
“Then we have Brax Adler on the guitar and vocals,” Sidney puts in, pointing to the man across the stage.
“I think I’ve died and gone to heaven.” This comes from Ryan, who’s sitting behind me. “Is this even real right now?”
