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“Can I try a sip of your wine?” he asked.
I tilted my head. “Where’s your cocoa?”
“Gone.”
Ryan leaned forward to size him up. “Hey, I already gave you two sips of my wine.”
“It’s good,” Brayden insisted, all grins, as if he knew he was busted.
“Our baby brother, the lush,” I said, giving him an affectionate shove in the chest. “Not on my watch.”
“Y’all are mean,” he said with an exaggerated drawl. His attention diverted to someone on the other side of us. “Mom, can I go hang out with Joey and Matt? They’re right over there.”
As Cynthia and our dad negotiated Brayden’s limits and privileges for the evening, I peered up at the windows of my apartment. They were dark, promising peace. Though the din of the crowd would be audible, it would be muffled. Background noise. Which, come to think of it, would leave me way too alone with my thoughts.
I sighed, resigned, and took another sip of wine. “Y’all are mean,” I muttered without conviction to Ryan as I leaned my head on his upper arm, turning my attention back to the gazebo…and promptly popped it back up straight so I could see.
Was that Knox? In the gazebo? Talking to the mayor?
“What…” I said it to myself, but Ryan was tuned in. I could feel his gaze locked on me. I kept my own eyes glued to the gazebo, waiting for a better look at the man talking to the mayor. He was tall, wearing a black winter hat that showed a hint of dark hair. Then Mayor Constantine shifted and…
That was Knox.
My heart thundered at the first glimpse of him in three and a half days. “What’s he doing?”
Mayor Constantine picked up the microphone and tapped on it, the sound echoing through the crowded square as gradually people noticed him and shushed those around them.
“Good evening,” he said. “Happy Thanksgiving!”
The crowd returned the greeting. It became quieter but nowhere close to silent as he spoke. “Before we get started, I’m going to hand over the mic to one of our own. He says he’d like to clear some things up.”
As I tried to puzzle out what was going on, Ryan stood up next to me. Knox took the microphone.
“Hello, everyone.” Knox was so intimately familiar that my heart ached.
The crowd broke out into a collective chatter as people wondered out loud what was going on.
When he said, “My name is Knox Breckenridge,” everyone went silent, their attention locked on him.
“I’m relatively new here, but you might’ve seen my name mentioned a few hundred times if you follow the Tattler.” He paused as laughter filtered through the crowd.
“I’ll only take a couple of minutes of your time, I promise. Since I’ve become a regular subject on the town app, I’m hoping to clarify some things,” Knox continued. “I came to Dragonfly Lake a few months ago for a vacation, fell in love with this small town, bought a house, and never left.”
I didn’t blink, waiting to see where he was going.
“That’s the short version,” he continued, then let out an endearing nervous laugh. “I left out a few minor details…”
There was more laughter from the masses, the warm, inclusive, laughing-with-him type.
“For example, you might have heard I crashed into the beloved, reputable Henry family. Yep, I’m that guy. I appeared out of nowhere, looking to connect with the father I never knew and the half-brothers and -sisters I’d only just found out about. Way to make an entrance to my new hometown, huh?”
More laughter rang out, and I found myself enthralled by everything he said, smiling even though my heart was still cracked wide open.
“Lucky for me, the Henrys are some incredible, open-minded people, and they welcomed me with open arms. Well”—he looked to the side of the gazebo, brows raised, smile crawling across his face, and I spotted Cash, Seth, Holden, and Ava, who was holding a bundled-up Juniper in her arms—“it took a blood test and some heated discussions, butthenthey welcomed me with open arms.”
The three Henry brothers grinned and nodded as if to say, “Damn straight.”
“In hindsight, maybe that wasn’t the best way to introduce myself to you all,” Knox said, indicating the crowd as a whole. He shrugged. “That was small potatoes though, because then, before a single full day could pass, I found myself in the plot of a different movie. Ever heard of an old one calledThree Men and a Baby? That was suddenly my life, except there was only one man and a baby, and that man was me.” He turned and looked over at Juniper, the smile on his face so full of adoration and love that I could see it from my spot fifty feet away.
