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“Good show!” Steve whooped and without breaking Adam’s gaze I snatched a cloth napkin from the table, weighted with a napkin ring, and blindly chucked it at my brother’s head. For all the PDA he’d subjected me to with his wife, he was going to get some back.
“Just you wait.” I turned my head to stare down my brother. “Clank that glass again and I’ll show you things that’ll put hair on your head.”
Adam shifted beneath me and heat rushed to my face. I wasn’t small, and I was probably crushing the guy beneath the dense load of muscle and bone that tipped my scale to almost twice what I knew Barbie-tiny Kennedy weighed.
“Sorry,” I whispered softly, which was an apology for crushing him, but not for kissing him.
“No complaints here.” He grinned up at me, sinking his fingers deeper into my hips to keep me from getting up.
“Come on, everyone.” Kennedy clapped her hands together loudly, indicating the room filled with people should help themselves to the buffet she’d set up along the back wall. “Help yourselves. Most of the seating is outside, in the backyard, but it was easier to set up in here.”
Mysteriously, a small table had appeared in the entryway that had already been piled high with gift bags, envelopes, a few mysterious boxes and stacks and stacks of diapers. I knew I had KennedyandSteve to thank for that. The two of them had spread the word quickly, even before the home study had been completed, that I was adopting and in just a few days they’d pulled together more gifts from friends far and wide to help Daniela.
All of Steve’s work buddies had shown up with their wives and kids, and mutual friends of his and Adam’s were there, as well their families.
Mr. and Mrs. Beckman were there, along with Grams, who’d been sworn to secrecy, which I was sure meant my parents already knew. Couldn’t wait to play Guess the Guilt Trip with my mom the next time she called, which would likely be tomorrow.
It wouldn’t matter that the reason had been good, or honorable, or anything at all. It would still be used against me, with astonishing precision.
Everyone knew Adam and everyone loved him. He pulled me close as people sidled up to talk to him, needlessly introducing me to each with a huge grin on his face, as “This is my beautiful wife, Madelyn.” It made my heart swell every time, with something that felt simultaneously like grief and hope, because I wanted it to be real–and if this was as real as it could ever be, I wasn’t ready to lose it.
Grams took every chance she could to grab a handful of Adam’s ass that afternoon, every damn time he had to walk past her, and finally I hollered, “Hey, old lady! Hands off my man!” and when the yard erupted into laughter, I knew people had been watching her grab at him, waiting for me to explode.
It was no secret in Steve and Kennedy’s friend circle that Grams was a total lech, and finally someone was calling her out on it.
Innocent as a newborn baby, Grams held her hands up, eyes wide, and I held up two fingers to my eyes, swiveling them to point at her,I’m watching you, and she giggled like I was no threat whatsoever.
“I like it when you call me that.” Adam’s voice was low in my ear when he sidled up behind me to cut the small cake sitting on a table under the deck awning.
I liked flirty Adam. He was warm and handsy, but maybe that had something to do with the fact he’d also had five or six beers over the course of the day, which was a lot for him, and I couldn’t decide whether he was celebrating or drinking to forget.
The sun was sinking low in the sky when I heard a startled sound from Kennedy and I looked over to see a tall, gorgeous blonde crossing the yard in the direction of Hailey, her eyes fixed on Adam. I’d never seen her before in my life. She wasn’t one of Kennedy’s friends, and Kennedy wouldn’t have allowed a woman who looked like that to be one of Steve’s friends, and when I felt every muscle in Adam’s body tense, I had my answer.
The blonde barely hugged Hailey before turning toward us with a bright, expectant smile on her face.Oh, hell. I was going to have to throat punch a bitch.
“Adam!” Her voice wasn’t the shrill Valley-Girl-laced-Barbie I’d expected. It was low and husky: pure, disgusting sex. “I’m sorry I’m so late.”
She moved toward us with her eyes focused on him like I didn’t even exist, and as she stepped into our space and leaned in to kiss his cheek, Adam smoothly moved us back a step.
“Jess. Kind of weird for you to show up here.” He sounded upset, and Adam never sounded upset. I looked up at him, trying to interpret what he was feeling.
“This is my beautiful wife, Madelyn.” He smiled when he said it and I would never, ever tire of being introduced that way, even if it was just for show, but especially if it pissed off the gorgeous woman looking at my man with freaking hearts in her eyes.
“Madelyn.” There was a smile on her face, but she said my name like it tasted bad, and when she leaned in to give me a disingenuous hug I wondered if she was going to bite me.
“Wait…” She stepped back and fixed him with a look that would have melted stone. “Madelyn?” There was disdain in her voice and I waited for her eyes to flick back to me for the once-over I hadn’t yet gotten, because she’d been so busy eye fucking my man on her way across the yard.
“Sure is.” Adam’s grin was wicked, like he enjoyed the fact the information was frying her synapses. “TheMadelyn, in the flesh and all mine.”
He sure was a sweet talker when he was talking about me to other people. Too bad he didn’t mean a word of it, because if I pushed him on that “all mine” part later, I knew I wouldn’t like his answer.
“I thought she was in the Air Force.” Jess’s face wrinkled up, and I realized she was determined to talk around me, so as not to include me in the conversation at all.
“Pararescue,” I interjected smoothly, watching Malibu Barbie’s face.
“I don’t even know what that is.” She huffed out a laugh.
“It means she could strap your dead weight to her ankles and land a parachute jump without breaking a single bone.” He grinned. “She can run and swim and bench like a beast, and she’ll dive out of a helicopter to save a drowning man, in frigid water, in the dead of night.”
