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I press my lips together, darkly pleased at the protectiveness rolling off him.
“How much longer do I have with you, Liv?”he asks.
He doesn’t just mean this afternoon.“I’ve got an interview in Minneapolis after the first of the year, but it’s mostly a formality.The person doing the hiring’s a former boss.”The thought isn’t as gratifying as it might’ve been a few weeks ago, so I bring up something considerably more fun.“But I hear we get to hang out on Saturday at the staff party.”
“Damn straight.You haven’t lived ’til you’ve partied with the crew from Verd—” His head whips toward the front of the house where a loud engine suddenly cuts off.“What the fuck?”
He stalks to the window and pushes the curtain back to reveal a minivan in his driveway.
“Okay, so a couple of things you need to know about me…” he says nervously.
“Oh god, are you married?”I say it mostly as a joke, but when the minivan side door slides open and children come tumbling out like a pack of puppies, I’m suddenly not joking anymore.“Oh god, are you married with a million kids?”
He plunges his fingers into his hair and speaks quickly.
“My mom had me and Wy when she was a teenager.She got married twelve years later and had five more kids.”
“So those are…” I gesture at the hoard of small people racing toward his front door.
“My siblings,” he says grimly.Then he throws open the door and his whole demeanor changes.It lightens and brightens and generally radiates love and joy and every good thing I’ve ever seen in him.“My siblings!”
The house explodes with kiddie energy as they scream and throw themselves onto Jonesy, who collapses backward onto the floor and lets them climb all over him.The boys trying to wrestle with him look to be around eight and ten, and the little girl clinging to his ankle must be closer to five.
“Whoa.Are you Hollis’ girlfriend?”
I blink away from the gorgeous guy rolling around on the floor with kids he clearly adores to find two teenage-ish girls studying me.One glowers, and the other grins.
“Um,” I say articulately.
“Holly never lets us meet his girlfriends!”The smiling blond one darts forward and hugs me so hard I let out a little wheeze.
“I’m not his?—”
The second one’s somber as she regards me from a distance, her dark hair falling over one eye.
“So, um.I’m Liv,” I tell them with the scant air left in my lungs as the blond girl tries to compress my ribs.
“Becks,” she says cheerfully.The other girl narrows the one eye I can see.
“Drea.”Her voice drips with suspicion, and I wonder what the hell kind of women Jonesy’s brought around before this.
The bellowing of the younger kids and their allegedly adult brother grows in intensity until a voice cracks through the chaos.
“Behave like children, please, and not wild animals.”
Everybody freezes, and without a single introduction needed, I know I’m looking at Jonesy’s mother.
“Hi, Mom.”Jonesy climbs to his feet, hefting one boy under each arm as he does, and leans forward to kiss her cheek.She’s tall and thin with hair and eyes the same rich brown as Jonesy’s and Wyatt’s and the frowning Drea.She wears worry lines on her forehead, next to her eyes, around her mouth, but she’s as radiant as aMadonna and Childpainting from the Renaissance when she looks at her brood.
“Kids, you’ve gotta give Hollis room to breathe.”
Jonesy’s eyes flick over to me as he sets the boys back on the ground.“Not that I’m not thrilled to see you guys, but?—”
“You didn’t answer your phone!”one of the boys shouts.“We wanted to stop by with presents!”
Their mom’s eyes cut to me now too, and she does a double-take that would be comical if I weren’t so overwhelmed with all the new information flying at me.
She walks over and extends her hand, her eyes flickering from my face to my dress to my bare left-hand ring finger.
