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Lindsey might have all the small toys covered, but he’d spotted this thing online when he’d been looking up her name on Google—gotta love targeted advertising—and had decided to buy it. All those other items had been samples. This was a present only for her. To be used only with him. He could hardly wait.
For a second, he wondered if it might be Lindsey at the door, that she’d found some excuse to stop by. She’d never been to his place, since it was right in the middle of town with absolutely zero privacy. But maybe she’d dreamed up a reason.
Ever hopeful, he pulled the door open but was shocked to see four people standing on his doorstep.
“Surprise!” they all said.
“Oh, my God, Nick? Iz?” He turned to the other couple. “Mark and Noelle? What the hell are you all doing here?”
His cousin Nick’s bombshell wife, Izzie, pushed past him into the living room. “Are you going to invite us in?”
“You’re in,” he said with a laugh, pressing a quick kiss onto her cheek. His spirits were rising by the second. He grabbed Mark and hugged him hard. “How are you doing, man?”
“Surviving.”
Nick clapped him on the back. “I’m okay, too, if it matters.”
“Last time I checked, you were running a strip club and surrounded by women who are almost as beautiful as your wife. I know what kind of people surround Mark in his job, and they aren’t beautiful women.” And he had the scars to prove it.
“Yeah, I’m familiar with the scum he has to deal with, too,” said Noelle, Mark’s wife, offering her husband a pointed stare. She was just as pretty as Izzie, in a softer, quieter way. Also a brunette, Noelle looked every inch a thirty-ish wife and mother.
Izzie and Nick didn’t have kids yet, and he wasn’t sure they ever would. They were definitely the edgiest couple of the family, with her stripping background and his hard-ass, ex-Marine demeanor. But anyone could look at them and see they were still totally crazy in love. They didn’t need kids to complete their family; they just needed each other.
Speaking of which, Mike peered out into the hall, then glanced back toward Mark, who was every inch a proud papa. “Where are the rugrats?”
“Mama’s got them,” Mark explained. “It’s a big third-generation sleepover at the grandparents’ tonight.”
“Is everyone there?” he asked, wondering how on earth they’d all fit into his Aunt Rosa and Uncle Anthony’s house.
“Most of ’em. Joe and Meg dropped the girls off, and Tony and Gloria’s two youngest are there, as well.”
All that was left were Lottie’s daughter and Luke’s twins and the whole gang would be represented. There were other cousins, children of his dad’s youngest two brothers, who had college-age kids. They hadn’t even started marrying and settling down. But he had no doubt they would—it was the Santori way. By the time all the branches on the family tree reproduced, they could probably populate a small town.
“Get this,” Mark said. “Tony’s oldest isn’t there ’cause he’s on a date. Can you frigging believe that? Kid’s not even thirteen years old and already has girlfriends.”
It sounded like little Anthony was a chip off the old block.
Nick elbowed his twin, who was a little shorter and a little broader. They were fraternal, not identical, though they’d never be mistaken for anything but brothers. “I seem to recall you doing a little girlfriend juggling yourself in middle school.”
Izzie smirked. “Pot, have you met Kettle here?”
They all laughed, and Mike thought about the family gathering going on back in Chicago. He wondered if he and his brothers might be doing the same thing with their own kids in another five years or so. And not for the first time, he experienced a twist of loneliness in his gut and wondered if he’d made a huge mistake by moving here, so far away from everyone he knew and cared about.
Except Lindsey.
Yeah. She was here. And frankly, considering he had fallen crazy in love with her, she was enough.
“I don’t have a lot of room in this place, but feel free to sit wherever there’s a spot,” he said, gesturing toward the couch. He went into the kitchen and grabbed the two chairs that fronted his small butcher-block table, and carried them in, as well. “Do you want coffee? Anything?”
“I’d kill for a Diet Coke,” said Izzie.
“Sorry, I don’t have any. I could run down to the general store and get some.”
Noelle’s eyes rounded. “General store? Good grief, Mike, you said this was a small town, but I didn’t realize you’d moved to Walton’s Mountain.”
