Page 8 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

“I’m so glad I didn’t have to tie you up and throw you in the car,” she says, squeezing my arm.

“The summer isn’t over yet.”

She laughs and pushes through the lounge doors.

My heart does something it has absolutely no business doing.

There are two men in the lounge.

The first one is leaning against the bar across the room, broad-shouldered, the kind of build that belongs in a room with higher ceilings. He’d been talking to a woman in a flight uniform when we walked in but now he’s looking past her, looking at us, looking at me with blue eyes that register somewhere in my chest before I’ve had time to process anything else about him. The uniformed woman has not looked away from him but his attention has very clearly moved on and I feel it like a physical thing, warm and unsettling.

The second one is by the windows. Tall, leaner, something easy and dangerous in the way he’s standing, like he’s been comfortable his entire life and sees no reason to change that now. He had his phone in his hand when we walked in and now he doesn’t, which means he put it away, which means something made him put it away.

I don’t know either of these men.

My stomach flips anyway. For both of them. At the same time. Which is a new and unwelcome development.

Holy fuck.

Not fair, cloud being. So completely not fair. This is what happens when you drink wine without the cracker, I guess. One bad life decision and suddenly the universe is stress-testing you with two separate stomach flips in the same room on the same Tuesday morning. I’d like to file a formal complaint but I’m not sure who handles those.

Sophia releases my arm.

She crosses the lounge like she owns it, which is a genetic trait apparently, and walks straight into the arms of the man at the bar. “Uncle Ash!”

He wraps her up immediately, big arms, the effortless warmth of someone who’s been hugging this particular person since she was small enough to be lifted off the ground. He says something into the top of her hat that makes her laugh.

Uncle.

I stay where I am, approximately four feet inside the lounge doors, because no one has told me to move yet and I’m doing that thing I do where I wait to understand the social geometry of a room before I insert myself into it. Also my feet have stopped working.

The man by the window is walking toward Sophia now. She turns from the first man and hugs the second one with the same easy familiarity, both arms, genuine. “Uncle Maddox, you came!”

“Of course I came.” His voice carries across the lounge and I feel it at the base of my spine, which is deeply unhelpful information.

Two uncles.

Ah…he’s Uncle Mad Max. I get it. Mad Max equal Maddox. Clever…I think? Sophia has two uncles at this private aviation terminal and she is just now mentioning them. This is fine. This is completely fine. I’m standing here in a lounge having my stomach turned inside out by two separate men and they’re her uncles and that is absolutely fine.

Sophia turns and finds me still standing by the door like a potted plant someone forgot to water and waves me over with the enthusiasm of someone introducing her favorite people to each other. “Harper, come here!”

I cross the lounge.

Up close, the man she called Uncle Ash is even more unreasonably attractive, which is genuinely rude. Broad through the shoulders with blue eyes that are warm and direct and slightly amused, dark blond hair going silver at the temples, forearms dusted with ink below rolled sleeves. He looks at me the way people look at someone they’re actually curious about, not sizing up, just present.

Behind him, the woman in the flight uniform has rearranged her expression into something professionally pleasant that does not reach her eyes. She is trying. I respect the effort. I barely register it.

“Harper, this is my Uncle Ash. Asher Beckett.” Sophia gestures between us. “Asher, this is my best friend Harper Brooks. She’s going to help me with the boutique pitch.”

Asher extends his hand. “Harper. Good to meet you.”

His voice does what it did from across the room except now there’s no distance to buffer it and my ovaries, which have apparently been waiting for an opportunity to stage a coup, register a formal and emphatic complaint about the entire situation. I shake his hand and produce what I believe constitutes a normal human response.

The flight attendant clears her throat softly. “Shall we continue our discussion, Mr. Beckett?”

Asher blinks. Turns. Looks at her like he’s remembering she exists. “Huh? What? Oh—uh, no. I’m good. Thank you.”

He turns back to me.