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“Mom, stop grilling Ryder.”
“Afraid he can’t take it?” a slightly balding man asked as he came into the room, two kids on his heels.
“Jeff!” McKenzie threw her arms around the man who picked her up and spun her around.
When he put her down, McKenzie was laughing.
“Good to see you, cuz. ’Bout time you came to your senses and came home.”
“Just for the weekend. No way am I staying long enough for you to be a pain in my butt the way you were most of my life.”
“Nothing you didn’t deserve,” he assured her. “Nashville has babies with bad hearts, too, you know?”
“I know.” Her voice was low and held a sad tone when she answered, but then she stooped down to the little girl literally hanging onto her cousin’s leg. “Speaking of babies, you sure have grown since I saw you last,” she told the child who just stared at her with big eyes. “How old are you now? Twenty?”
Grinning a bit shyly, the girl shook her head and held up three fingers.
“Three?” McKenzie looked impressed. “That’s getting big way too fast, if you ask me.”
The little boy who was a spitting image of his father only with a thick shock of blond hair stepped forward and held up a handful of fingers. “I’m four.”
“Closest thing I’ve got to grandchildren,” Roberta complained in a half whisper meant to be heard by all. “I don’t think this girl here is ever going to give me a grandchild of my own. Although,” her mother’s gaze ran up and down Ryder, “I may be closer than I’d thought to some beautiful grandbabies.”
Her face going pink, McKenzie shook her head. “I’ve no rush to procreate. Besides, I’m sure that brother of mine is giving his best efforts to produce a grandchild.”
“If you ask me, he should forget marriage and keep playing the field as long as he can,” Jeff interjected, giving Ryder a nudge on the shoulder. “Right, buddy?”
Ryder was one hundred percent sure he’d been led down a rabbit hole where there were no safe answers. The women eyeing him warned he’d best not agree, and his man card was in serious jeopardy with McKenzie’s cousin if he didn’t at least make a manly grunt.
McKenzie rescued him by noticing what he was holding. “Hey! I thought you said you didn’t like coffee.”
Everyone in the room glanced at his still-full cup.
“I don’t,” he admitted. “But I’ve never had Tennessee coffee, so who knows?”
* * *
McKenzie’s mother’s house was apparently the wedding meeting place headquarters. Ryder was introduced to family members of various ages.
“He’s a hunk,” Julianna, her cousin Jeff’s wife, told McKenzie in a whisper not meant to be overheard, but that Ryder had. “No wonder you preferred him over the computer guy.”
“There was nothing wrong with Paul,” McKenzie defended, obviously not wanting her family to think poorly of the man she’d spent two years in a relationship with.
“Then why isn’t he here with you?”
“Things just...” She glanced toward Ryder, saw he was watching her with interest, then blushing, looked back toward her friend. “We just didn’t work out.”
“And now you’re dating a hottie coworker and brought him to Tennessee to meet your family?”
“That sums it up,” McKenzie agreed with a smile Ryder could tell was fake. “I’m dating my hottie coworker and brought him home to meet all of you. Whatever was I thinking?”
Julianna laughed, then shot another glance toward Ryder who pretended as if he had no clue what they were discussing.
“Well, if you ask me,” she said, waggling her brows, “this one’s a keeper.”
&n
bsp; “Maybe.” McKenzie sent another apologetic look toward Ryder. “It’s too early in our relationship to be having this conversation as we’ve just begun to date, right, Ryder?”
