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Cole parks, opens my door, and walks me up the front steps. He knocks but then wraps his arm around my waist, squeezing my hip. I look at him quickly, but his face is completely blank—as if he didn’t just do that, as if he doesn’t know it makes me want him, as if we’re not walking into a foreign world I can’t imagine. He told Paisley it grounded him. Well, I think he’s grounding me right now too because though my heart is racing, I do manage to take a breath.
An older man opens the door, holding it wide for us to enter. He’s probably in his sixties, with salt and pepper hair, a friendly smile, and wrinkles that let me know he’s spent a fair portion of his life in the sun.
“Hey, Ira. How’re you?” Cole asks the man.
They shake hands like old friends, but Cole didn’t mention anyone named Ira, so I’m not sure who this man is to him until Cole gestures to me. “Janey, this is Ira. Technically, he’s the house manager. Mostly, he kept Mom from calling the police on the daily by helping me sneak in and out safely. Ira, this is Janey. She’s the main reason I get into trouble these days.” He laughs heartily, and Ira does too, their camaraderie obvious.
“I don’t get you into trouble,” I start to argue, then concede, “Well, there was that time . . .”
Cole lifts a wry brow my way, and I shut up because he’s actually not wrong.
“Nice to meet you, Ira,” I tell the smiling man who’s looking from Cole to me with glee in his dark eyes.
“You too, Janey.” To Cole, he says, “Everyone’s in the living room. Need me to unlock the side door just in case?”
Cole huffs a laugh. “Not necessary anymore. But thanks.”
Hand in hand, we walk through the marble-tiled foyer and into a living room. I’m holding my breath, expecting Cole’s arrival to be some grand entrance. But I’m actually struck by how familiar this feels because we enter the room, and no one reacts in the slightest—until Cole clears his throat.
“Cole! You came,” a woman says in surprise. She rushes him, looking delighted as she reaches her arms out to hug him. I’m guessing she’s Cole’s mother because he hugs her back easily. “And you brought . . . a friend?” she adds a beat later. She obviously didn’t expect me, but she didn’t expect Cole either, even though he described this as a mandatory family dinner.
“This is Janey. Janey, this is my mom, Miranda.”
I hold out a hand, but Miranda apparently hugs everyone because she wraps her arms around my shoulders too, patting me on the back gently. “It’s so nice to meet you, Janey,” she gushes with a bright smile. She reminds me of a television mom from the ’80s—perfectly coiffed blonde hair, smart slacks and summer-weight sweater, designer flats, and a welcoming aura.
“You too,” I reply as she releases me.
Next, of course, I meet Kayla. It’s obvious who she is because she’s nearly identical to Cole, like they’re the same person in different fonts—one male, one female. Her hair is long, down her back in loose, beachy waves, her blue eyes are dancing with excitement, and her dress is definitely not casual. She looks like she came straight from the boardroom to dinner in a slim, gray shift dress and patent black stilettos.
“I’m Kayla, and believe it or not, I’ve heard so much about you,” she informs me, though the sly look she’s throwing at Cole says differently. I’m guessing their definitions of ‘so much’ are probably a bit different. “Guess you took my advice and called her?” she boasts.
Cole answers cryptically, “You couldn’t be more wrong if you tried.”
The stalking situation doesn’t seem like polite conversation, nor something Cole would want to share, given his evasive verbal maneuvers, so I jump in with a bright smile and offer, “We reconnected. That’s all that matters.”
Kayla nods, mostly satisfied. “I’ll take it.”
Cole points around the room, introducing me to everyone else. “Cameron and his daughter, Gracie. Carter and Luna. Chance and Samantha. And my dad, Charles.” I wave to everyone, maybe a little more enthusiastically to Samantha after Cole’s story about what she said at her first family dinner. I hope mine’s not quite so dramatic, but also, I’d like to be her friend.
“Hi, everyone. Nice to meet you,” I say as I look around the room.
Though Miranda is blonde and blue-eyed too, Cole’s brothers seem to be carbon copies of their father, with something in their curious and calculating gazes that echoes Charles’s perfectly. Gracie is cute from what I can tell, but I can only see the top of her head because she’s deeply involved in a video game on an iPad, making sound effects as she destroys something onscreen with what I can guess is some type of blaster. There’s Luna and Samantha, side-by-side like besties. The gang’s all here, except for . . . Kyle. But Cole said that as much as he usually dips out early, Kyle goes for the late arrival, usually showing up for dessert and a little hellraising.
