Page 7

“Don’t worry, I’ll remind her when the time comes,” Kendall replied with a wink.

If I recalled correctly, Mason and Finley were all set to move into Kendall’s house in the coming weeks, once her sister moved out.

I was just about to ask them how ready they were for the big move when Finley, having successfully yanked the frisbee from the dog’s mouth, flung it right over the tall, wooden fence.

Directly into Graham’s backyard.

“Oops,” she said, covering her mouth with both hands. We all turned as Leia jumped up, her paws scraping the wooden slats of the tall privacy fence. She gave a few determined barks as though that would make the frisbee reappear.

“Is Graham home?” Sarah asked, looking at Owen.

“He said he’d be grading papers tonight, so I think so,” I said. All at once, every head in that backyard turned toward me like I’d just said the most nonsensical thing they could imagine.

“Grading what now?” Xander asked, his hand resting on my knee.

So I wasn’t the only person who had been unaware of Graham’s other job. Before I could explain, Finley and the dog were distracted by a figure appearing at the gate. “Daddy, there’s a man over there,” the girl said, running over to hide behind Mason’s chair.

I sat up a little straighter as Owen unlatched the gate to allow Graham into the backyard.

He wore the same clothes as that morning, but he had unbuttoned his pale blue shirt at the top and untucked it at the bottom.

A faint shadow of stubble traced his jawline, all peppered with little gray hairs.

He held up the frisbee with his thumb and pointer finger.

“Someone looking for this?” he asked as the dog cautiously approached him.

“Hey, thanks. She’s a little wary of new people,” Owen explained, so Graham tossed the disc into the grassy area beyond the patio. Leia trotted over to pick it up, but she still kept a close eye on Graham.

“Jillian just told us you were grading papers,” Meghan said. “What the hell’s that all about? Where do you teach?”

Graham glanced from me to her, smoothing out the front of shirt with his palms as he said, “White River College. It’s in Bedford.”

“That explains… so much,” Xander muttered.

“How did we not know you’re a professor?” Meghan continued, her mouth gaping open in disgust. Clutching her empty margarita glass to her chest, she slurred, “You’re just out here living a glamorous double life like Hannah fucking Montana?”

“Please, I’m not that lucky. Between my whiny students and you assholes, I’m truly getting the worst of both worlds,” Graham deadpanned, sticking his hands in his pockets.

Having been raised by the Disney Channel, I giggled so hard at the Hannah Montana reference I choked on my drink. As raspberry-flavored fizz entered my nose, I felt Xander’s hand clamp down on my knee. “Are you good?”

I merely nodded, catching the slightest upturn in the corners of Graham’s mouth as he started to turn away.

“Wait, stay and have a beer with us,” Owen insisted, plucking a bottle from the cooler on the ground. He extended it toward Graham, who shook his head.

“Thanks, but I don’t want to intrude. Nobody wants their boss hanging around on a Friday night. It’ll ruin the vibe.”

“I’m not asking them. It’s my house,” Owen said with a chuckle, shifting the bottle closer to Graham’s chest in quiet defiance.

“You have to stay so we can all tease you about this professor thing,” Meghan insisted.

I scooted backward on the floral-print cushion, tucking one hand beneath my thigh. “Yeah, who wants to grade papers on a Friday?” Graham met my eyes from across the patio, and my head began to spin. “Stay for a while.”

“Well.” Graham let out a sigh, accepting the bottle. “You guys are already paying more attention to me than either of my children, so I’ll stay for a few minutes.”

His forearm muscles flexed as he twisted the cap off the bottle. I watched as he made his way toward the rest of us, sitting in the chair adjacent to our section of the couch.

I licked my lips. “What are your kids doing tonight, boss?”

“Caleb’s inside gaming with his friends, and Olivia is—well, I don’t want to know.” He paused to look at his watch. “I’m just imagining she’s volunteering in a soup kitchen.”

Everyone laughed. Graham’s presence in the backyard certainly altered the vibe, but in a good way.

For the next few minutes, we listened to him lament over how grown up his kids were and how little they wanted to do with him.

“I finally have the perfect tree for the treehouse my son always wanted,” he said, eyeing the oak tree in his backyard.

“But unless I can set up an Xbox in there, I don’t think he’ll want that anymore. ”

“I’m sure you could rig something up,” I offered, only partially joking. If he really wanted to win over his son, it was worth a shot, wasn’t it?

Graham glanced up at my face before dropping his eyes to my magenta toenails poking out from my wedge sandals. Clearing his throat, he said, “I wouldn’t know the first thing about building a treehouse, anyway.”

“Xander, why don’t you help him with that?” Abigail chimed in, grinning from the other end of the sectional. She sipped her margarita before adding, “You said you had lumber left over from the job you did for your mom.”

My lips parted as I turned to Xander, furrowing my brows in confusion. What was she talking about? Lumber? Job? Was Xander living a double life, too? “What’d you do for your mom?”

Xander just shook his head, staring down at the beer he held between his knees.

“He’s too humble to talk about it, but he just finished a screened-in porch for his mom,” Abigail continued. “I see her sitting out there every time I visit my parents down the road.”

“You did that?” I asked, making Xander look at me. “I didn’t know you were so skilled.”

“I just picked up on some stuff from my granddad. I’m not very good.”

“Liar,” Sarah called out from her seat, tucking one leg under her butt. She looked at me. “I commissioned him to build a reading nook for the school library a few months ago, and it’s perfect.”

“The kids are obsessed with crawling in and out of it,” Abigail said. She was the librarian at Grissom Elementary, and if I had to guess, she was the biggest reason he accepted the job Sarah hired him to do. “Xander, have you really not told your girlfriend about your woodworking skills?”

While Abigail shook her head in disappointment, heat prickled across my skin and my heart quickened.

Shouldn’t I know this detail about my boyfriend?

Why hadn’t he shared this with me? Feeling everyone’s eyes on me, I forced out my best fake chuckle—the one I’d mastered from years of interviewing boring people—and gave Xander a playful shove.

“You mean I could’ve had you building and repairing things for me this whole time? You jerk.”

With a lopsided smirk, he said, “See? This is why I didn’t tell you.” And with that, he craned his neck to peer around me at Graham. “And I’m not building a treehouse, either.”

Before long, the topic of conversation shifted to Owen’s upcoming book tour. I participated in the conversation like normal, but on the inside, I was screaming for a multitude of reasons.

One, because that ibuprofen wasn’t touching my pain.

Two, because the jealousy surging through my veins was making me not like myself very much.

And three, because the sight of Graham’s chest hair poking out from that slutty, partially-unbuttoned shirt of his almost distracted me from the first two things.

Almost.