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When Greyson stood, I released the breath I’d unwittingly been holding, only gasping in enough air to answer his questions. “The best distraction you could think of was interview questions?”
He licked his swollen lips before shaking his head gently. “No, but the other one wasn’t particularly conducive to watching what I was fishing out of your foot. Would’ve been a hard mission to accomplish with my head between your thighs.”
Fucking troublemaker. “Thanks again.”
A solitary brow arched. “Again?”
“First, my head. Now, my foot. What the hell was in there, by the way?”
He huffed a chuckle. “Shell. Broke into little fragments—I’m sorry I couldn’t get ‘em all at once.” He tossed the pieces into the sink with a little sandy clink and then rewashed his hands before stepping back between my legs. “Can we pick up where we left off?”
“I have a feeling I’d prefer you didn’t and said you did.”
Mouth popping open, I whirled toward that familiar teasing tone, and tears flooded my eyes for an entirely new reason.
Max, in all his glorious, dark-haired, impeccably styledMax-ness, stood on the threshold. My momentary annoyance at being interrupted vanished as quickly as it appeared. Flying across the space, I hurled my arms around his neck, breathing a sigh of relief as he lifted me off my aching foot. Grey cleared his throat, and as I peeled away, I was embarrassed those tears had escaped down my cheeks.
Palming at them, I said, “Grey, this is our Max. Maxi, this is my?—”
“Handsome, empire-crushinghusband,” Max finished with a devilish smile, his brown eyes glinting as he rotated my body to his side.
My watery laugh betrayed exactly how stressful these last weeks had been. Whether or not I let myself acknowledge that.
Greyson stepped forward, his expression softening as he extended a hand. But it was his next words that threw me off my axis. “Welcome to the Hart family, Max.”
After that,the evening passed by in a blur of martinis and more fancy food. Only this time, Grey was Velcroed to my side as we led Max around until we found Paxton hanging out on an enormous outdoor sectional with a handful of his new teammates, all shootin’ the shit.
His words, not mine.
To my simultaneous disappointment and relief, I did not end up sleeping with my husband.
Instead, I passed out on his shoulder when the house had emptied of all but our four collective siblings. Evidently, Leighton accepted Arthur’s offer to drive her home around midnight, which left Grey, Pax, Ollie, and Max getting to know each other. At some point, I woke up, rubbed at my eyes, knocked back Grey’s glass of water, and curled up like a cat on his lap.
The man slept like that. Sitting up. On his back patio, with the roar of the ocean as our lullaby. Or at least, he claimed he slept, though the dark circles under his eyes had me questioning that.
When I demanded to know why he didn’t wake me, he simply supplied, “You looked peaceful.”
Those were the words in my brain as Jax turned our SUV into the business district. Hell, those were the words in my brain as I made myself a latte in the break room. I’d just poured a pretty little foam flower—a byproduct of your big brother giving you a job in his coffee shop—when the telltale chatter of women spilling the tea broke through my hypnosis.
I turned to find Rory and Hollyn rounding the corner. Up until the whole engagement fiasco, I would have said these two had been as close to friends as I’d made in the city. Nothing substantial—mostly weekday coffees or lunches. But their silence these last few weeks spoke volumes.
Apprehension made my feet feel uneasy, so I smiled at them. Hollyn, with her wild auburn waves, caught my eyes and grinned back. “Well, if it isn’t Mrs. Hart herself.”
“Morning, ladies. How you been?”
“Not as good as you, by the sounds of it,” Rory responded, tucking her mousy brown bob behind her ears.
Before I could formulate a coherent response, Hollyn gave me a roguish smile as she put her lunch in the fridge and said, “I gotta say. You had me fooled. I thought you hated Greyson.”
“Hate and love are very dear companions,” Rory pointed out, smiling playfully my way, “Aren’t they, Alice?”
I thought about how quickly those years of sworn hatred vanished beneath the caress of his skilled fingers. His reassuring words while I hid from the daylight.
“Doesn’t she know it,” Max drawled as he came in behind them. He was tagging along today to fill Greyson’s open three o’clock, acting as a consultant for our cybersecurity. It felt a little like bring a friend to school day to my nostalgic little heart. Grinning, he said, “But damn, if you two don’t make one hell of a couple.”
Hollyn’s navy eyes roved over Max, and I couldn’t help but chuckle.In her dreams.Even if he swung that way, I wouldn’t let him within a mile of her. Max and I avoided fair-weather friends like the plague. Either you were all in or out with us, and I liked it that way. Quality over quantity was perfectly fine with me.
“I mean, you’re both so generous; it just makes sense,” Rory pointed out helpfully, shrugging her shoulder like that would be a given.