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“You just want to have both hands free for cake later, Nathan,” Arden teased.
“Obviously,” Nate replied.
Harry gently took the sleeping bundle from his brother, easing the infant down against his chest. Leo made tiny, grunty squeaks as he nestled in, and Harry pressed the tip of his nose to the perfect little curlicues of dark hair on his nephew’s head. A trace of Rowan’s unmistakable scent lingered there from whenshe’d held him. It mingled with the fresh sweetness all babies naturally had, and for a moment, Harry’s scalding frustration was tempered by a painful longing so acute, he felt like his heart had crowded his lungs out of his chest. He could barely breathe.
To Nate, Harry quietly said, “You’re a lucky man, big brother.”
“I know it.” Nate watched Maren as she dabbed chocolate milk from Grey’s shirt. “To think she refused to date me for months before she finally agreed.”
Maren looked up with a wry smile. “Pff. It took you months to work up the courage.”
Nate wagged a finger. “You find a good woman, you don’t let her go.”
Maren rolled her eyes and laughed, and a dismissive snort came from Mal’s direction. Duncan muttered something about “horseshit,” and Patrick laid an arm across the back of Mercy’s chair.
In his peripheral vision, Rowan went still.
Harry swallowed hard. “Sometimes, they don’t give you a choice.”
Rowan’s fork clattered to her plate. Bull’s-eye.
Harry didn’t have Nate’s fatherly grace with the baby. When he impatiently reached for his wine, his watch snagged the edge of his dinner plate, knocking it into his glass. It toppled and spread like arterial spray across the white tablecloth.
In seconds, Nate was up from his chair, lifting the baby away from him.
“Fuck.” Harry tossed his napkin on the stain.
“Language,” Rowan murmured around the rim of her wineglass.
Harry glared.
Duncan hooted a laugh. “Nice.”
Harry rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. Christ, it had to be eighty degrees in there.
Ma stood and tossed her own napkin over the stain as she headed to the kitchen. “We’ll clean it up later. It’s time for cake.”
After everyone sang “Happy Birthday,” Malcolm and Harry both declined a piece. Duncan asked Rowan, “Chocolate or vanilla, Red?”
“Chocolate, please,” she said.
“Cucumber?” Duncan said with a strangely expectant look on his face.
What the hell?
Rowan laughed and gave Duncan a gentle smile. “No, I’m good.”
Rather than handing the cake directly to Rowan, Duncan reached around Mal and shoved it in Harry’s face. “Pass this over, will you?”
Harry sighed. He could either take the cake or let Duncan dump it on the table in front of him. Mal leaned back with a bored look of annoyance at Duncan’s big arm in his face. Impatiently, Harry snagged the cake from him and dropped it on the table in front of Rowan with a negligent bend of his wrist.
“That’s the fastest I’ve ever seen you commit to something,” Harry said to her.
A muscle ticked along the edge of her jaw. The glimmer of spirit in her eyes matched the sly curve of her lips. Harry shifted in his seat, immediately aware that somehow, the dynamic had changed, and not likely in his favor.
Rowan plunged her fork into the cake. “Duncan asked me a question I was prepared to answer.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
