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“Since when do I leave my sisters alone when it comes to men?” Owen asked.
“There’s nothing to see here,” Cindy said.
“Nothing at all?”
“A few things, but nothing to be concerned about.”
“You may as well tell him the rest, Cin,” Sarah said, “because you know he’ll go digging if you don’t.”
“Stop the screaming,” Laura said to her children. “Let’s watch Encanto for the nine hundredth time.”
While Laura put the movie on for the kids, Cindy finished Owen’s haircut, finding a happy medium between his wishes on the length and Laura’s. As she moved to inspect him from the front, she found him looking up at her.
“What’s the story with this guy?”
“Do you promise to keep an open mind?”
“When is my mind ever not open?”
Cindy groaned. “Do I need to remind you of all the times you judged guys we dated before you even got to know them?”
“And was I ever wrong?”
“No, but… I don’t want you to do what you do with Jace. I really like him.”
“What is it you don’t want me to know?”
“It’s not that I don’t want you to know. It’s that I don’t want you to overreact.”
“To what?”
Cindy looked into the eyes of the brother who’d been her childhood hero for taking the brunt of their father’s rage to protect the rest of them. “He’s a recovering addict who did time for armed robbery.”
Owen’s expression went flat, but his eyes conveyed the emotional response he had to hearing that.
“Before you leap to judgment,” Sarah said to her son, “I want you to remember that Charlie was an ex-con when we met him. The story isn’t always what it seems. If we had judged him only on his record at the time and hadn’t taken the time to learn more about him, we would’ve missed out on one of the finest men any of us has ever known.”
Sarah’s words of wisdom took some of the tension out of Owen’s posture. “I know, and I promise to keep an open mind.”
“Thank you.”
“Tell me more about him.”
Cindy conveyed the highlights—or lowlights, such as they were—of Jace’s story to Owen and Laura. “He’s worked hard to turn his life around, and I like who he is now. He devotes time every day to maintaining his sobriety and is concerned about his sons.” She hoped that whatever Seamus had wanted to meet with him about wasn’t going to be a setback for Jace.
“He sounds like a very interesting person,” Laura said. “And he’s hot.”
“Like fire,” Cindy said with a grin for her sister-in-law.
“Easy, Mrs. Lawry,” Owen said.
“What? Am I so married I can’t appreciate a hot-as-fire man?”
Owen scowled at her. “Yes, you’re that married.”
“I’m really sorry Jace lost his brother that way,” Laura said, deliberately changing the subject.
“It was extremely traumatizing for him, and then to be ripped away from his wife and kids… He’s deeply regretful of the mistakes he made and the price his family paid for them.”
“That counts for something,” Owen said.
“It counts for a lot,” Cindy said.
“Why don’t you bring Jace to dinner some night soon?” Sarah suggested. “That’d be a good way for us to get to know him. We’ll have the whole family.”
“Because that wouldn’t be at all overwhelming for him,” Cindy said.
“We come with the package,” Owen said. “May as well get him used to us from the beginning.”
Cindy wasn’t sure that was a good idea. “I’ll ask him and see what he says.”
