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“What? We’re not doing dinner?”
When she didn’t speak, he lightly tickled her ribcage. “Spit it out, Joe.”
She took a deep breath. “Word got out that Cruz was here, and your teammates who know him… I tried to head them off, but they weren’t to be denied, so we have between fifteen and twenty people coming here for a cookout in two hours.”
Mike threw back his head and laughed. “If you think there’ll be fifteen to twenty visitors, you’re delusional,” he chortled.
“Why?” Joelle screwed up her mouth.
“Because once the rest of the team finds out what’s up, they’re all going to descend,” Mike informed her, then smiled ruefully. “I guess that means I not only need to clean up, I should go order at least four dozen pizzas.”
Joe propped herself up on an elbow and smirked down at him. “Nope. No need. Everlee said she’s giving everyone food assignments. And…she also invited your parents, so it looks like I’ll finally be meeting them.”
With everything that had been going on, Joe hadn’t had a chance, yet, to make their acquaintance. She’d spoken on the phone to each of them, briefly, and they seemed to approve of her, but she was still nervous about an in-person encounter.
“There’s nothing to worry about.” Mike leveraged himself off the bed, and stripped the pillow of its case, using the thing to clean off the rest of his stomach. “Huh.” He glanced down at the pillow. “You’re right. I’m going to need a new one.
He must have sensed her continued trepidation at meeting his family. “Listen, Joe. They’re going to love you.”
“I hope so,” Joe mumbled. “I’m not exactly the type of girl somebody introduces to their folks.”
Mike growled, and dropping the case on the floor, slid back onto the bed, wrapping her in his arms again. “What does that mean?”
“It means I haven’t exactly been somebody who lets people get close.”
“Maybe in the past, but that’s all over now,” he assured her. “My friends are your friends, and my family is your family.”
Joe let that one go. Time would tell whether or not she got everyone’s endorsement. But…
“You know you’re going to have to meet my uncles, too, right?” she teased.
“Yup. The ‘old codgers’,” Mike returned. “I guess I can take a weekend off sometime in the near future and make that happen.”
Joe instantly felt contrite, thinking about how out of the loop she’d left her only two family members. Not only had she kept them from the troubles she’d been facing at the agency—which she’d long ago decided to suck-up on her own—but she’d never told them about being on assignment in Maine for the last few months. And they were totally unaware that she’d met the man with whom she hoped to spend the rest of her life.
Joe made a spontaneous leap. “Would you mind if I called them right now and introduced you?” she asked.
Mike looked down at their naked, entwined bodies.
“Shit, Joe. I can’t… I won’t… Uh, let me put some pants on first.”
Laughter bubbled up in Joelle’s throat. “Seriously? This isn’t going to be a video call, Mike.”
“Still,” he grumbled. “I can’t talk to them while my dick is hanging out.”
“Fair,” Joe grinned, giving the appendage in question a final, loving pat before she leaped up off the bed. “I’ll cover up, too.” She prowled her bare body across the room, grabbed Mike’s terry robe from the back of the bathroom door, and slipped it on. “There. I’m covered.”
Mike simply reached to the floor beside the bed, coming up with the pair of sweat pants he’d discarded earlier in his haste to get into their sexual acrobatics.
He raised his fine posterior and slipped them on without ever leaving the mattress. “There,” he said.
Joe practically skipped back to the bed, where she sat down cross-legged in front of him before retrieving her phone from the bedside table. Smiling, she hit her Uncle Shim’s number. He was the one more likely to have his phone on him.
She put her device on speaker
Two rings was all it took.
“Hey, Little Joe,” her uncle greeted, and she watched amusement break out over Mike’s face.