My pa and dad were all over him, inundating him with compliments and offers of various refreshments. Dad praised the last two movies Lothair had made—which he must have watched just because Lothair was coming—and my pa proceeded to gush over Paris Olivier and what he called the “gorgeous romance” with his bodyguard husband. If he only knew about all the kink.
The only people in the room behaving sensibly were my brothers-in-law, who observed the scene, probably remembering their own eventful introductions to the Harbinger family. They gave Lothair sympathetic looks.
During the two-hour lunch, Lothair barely got three words in. My brothers began talking about stunt work, and Lothair just sat there with a soft, if somewhat bewildered, smile on his face.
“There’s no way they did that without CGI,” Hale said, waving a glazed rib around. “I’m telling you, even if a shifter could hold up that amount of weight, he wouldn’t be able to do it in front of a bunch of humans.”
“It wasn’t CGI,” Joe protested. “They gutted the truck, taking out the engine and everything. Then he lifted it.”
“You can see the thing land on the concrete and shatter. How would they do that? I’ll tell you how.” Hale pointed the rib at Joe. “CGI!”
Lothair watched them like a tennis match.
“Boys, please,” Pa tried in a soothing tone, but Hale and Joe were on a roll.
“Then ask the man.” Joe gestured to Lothair. “He’s sitting right here. Ask him!”
Hale turned to us. “CGI, right?”
Lothair opened his mouth and closed it, blinking rapidly. “Um. Which movie are we talking about?”
My brothers leaned in close, crowding him.
“Furious and Deadly,” Joe said.
“Two,” Hale added. “The scene where you throw the truck from the garage roof onto the street.”
“Oh. That was a while ago. But I remember throwing something from a garage roof.”
Joe fist-bumped the air. “Told ya!”
“I think I threw like a metal pole with wheels on the ends. They added the rest of the truck in post-production.”
Hale waggled his eyebrows at Joe. “C-G-I,” he singsonged in a way that would have led to a wrestling match a few years back.
Being older and wiser, Joe simply flashed him a finger.
“Joseph! Hale! That’s enough,” my pa snapped. “We have a guest!”
“There are children at the table,” my dad added.
My brothers looked contrite, glancing at their toddlers in highchairs on both sides of the long dining table.
Hale turned to his husband, Louis, who was looking at him with a mix of patience and annoyance.
“I was right,” Hale hissed under his breath.
Louis smiled sweetly. “Enjoy it. Doesn’t happen often.”
Hale gasped with mock outrage, and Joe laughed.
“See, Lothair, you lucked out with the most reasonable brother,” my pops said, pointing at me.
That prompted a series of stories about how very unreasonable I’d been during various stages of my life. Listening to my family dish the dirt on me would have been irritating as hell, but Lothair finally relaxed. He laughed with them, hugging me around my shoulders, and I decided that the revival of childhood humiliations was worth it.
Lothair never used the code words we’d agreed on. We stayed until four, and it was me who said it was time to go.
When we drove back to Lothair’s place, my mate looked content and relaxed as he navigated the sprawling suburbs.
