by Jen Doyle
The second the words were out she snapped her mouth shut. Nate was the only man she’d ever even had a conversation with about that. And Nate was probably the only man in the entire universe who, standing here in her father’s restaurant with three of her brothers within arm’s reach, would respond with, “From what I can tell, they’re not even bringing their A-game,” accompanied by a kiss-my-ass grin.
After a second’s hesitation, Seamus and Tommy both laughed. Sean, on the other hand, just looked at Nate.
Turning to Claudia, Claire said, “Wait, so are they staying with us tonight or not?”
“I don’t think they’ve decided yet, mija,” she answered gently, giving Dorie an out.
“Nate can stay in my room,” Liam offered, shrugging as if it was no big deal.
To his credit, Nate didn’t miss a beat. “Thanks, buddy. That’s really nice of you. I might take you up on that.”
Um, no. “Or,” Dorie started to say, “maybe we could—”
“How about my room?” Claire asked. With a smug look at her younger brother, she added, “It’s bigger.”
Not only did Liam not jump at the bait—he was actually shaking his head adamantly.
“What?” Claire asked.
“You know...” he answered, even though she clearly didn’t. And now everyone was looking at him, which, to Liam was one of the worst things that could happen. So Dorie wasn’t entirely surprised when he blurted out the thing that he so clearly hadn’t wanted to say in the first place. “The pictures.”
Dorie closed her eyes, as the other shoe dropped heavily—right down onto her head—when Claire said, “What pic—” She cut herself off. Her eyes went as big as Liam’s as she looked at Nate. “Oh. Right.”
Because it wasn’t just one picture on the back of the door of Dorie’s childhood room—it was a whole collage of them. “The Shrine,” as Soph referred to it. Dorie opened her eyes to see everyone staring at her, Nate included. Yet for reasons unbeknownst to her, he didn’t seem horrified. Bemused was more the word she’d use.
Sean was another story. “What pictures?” he snapped, glaring at Dorie as he folded his arms in front of his chest. “Please tell me you don’t have naked pictures of Nate Hawkins in the bedroom where my thirteen-year-old daughter has been sleeping for the last two months.”
“Oh, right,” Dorie snapped right back. “So it’s my fault you didn’t do a proper inspection of my bedroom before you allowed Claire in?” She put her hand on Claire’s arm and whispered, “Which I don’t mind at all, sweetie. You know that, right?”
Used to not-so-occasional sibling flare-ups, Claire just smiled and nodded.
“And no one’s naked,” Sophie added, holding up her right hand. “I swear. At least not when I saw them last.” She cocked her head a little as she looked Nate up and down. “I suppose there could have been some recent additions.”
Good lord. Dorie wished she was close enough to Soph to smack her on the shoulder. “There are no naked pictures,” she hissed.
“Well, there is that one where he doesn’t have his shirt on,” Liam noted ever-so-helpfully, his expression thoughtful.
“Oh, Christ,” Seamus murmured, laughing. “This just keeps getting better and better.”
Trying to help out but failing miserably, Claire ignored Seamus’s comment and added, “But it’s from when he was, like, my age, so it’s not that big of a deal.”
“Not that big of a deal,” Sean repeated. “He was at least sixteen, which is most definitely not your age.”
Sophie—eyes twinkling devilishly—put in her own two cents. “I think the real question is does Nate have any naked pictures of Luce?”
This. Was. Not. Happening.
“Sadly, no,” Nate answered as easily as could be, as if half of Dorie’s family had not just spent the past several minutes discussing her pictures of him from seventeen years ago. As if they weren’t talking about naked pictures right now.
Dorie stifled the squeal that threatened to escape.
“Do you have any pictures of Auntie Luce?” Liam asked. “I mean, she is your girlfriend, right?”
With a grin, Nate answered, “You need to ask her, because she gets really mad when I talk about it. But, yeah. I have pictures.” He took out his phone and held it up. “Want to see them?”
“Yes!” Liam and Claire shouted as they surged forward.
“Hell,” Sophie muttered. “Me, too.”
The three of them gathered around Nate as he thumbed through. “That’s her in her apartment. She makes the best cupcakes in the world, but you probably already know that.”
Nate had pictures of her? As in, plural? From when?
“She has flour on her nose,” Liam said.
“Yep,” Nate said. “That’s one of my favorites.”
That would have embarrassed Dorie if she hadn’t been stunned speechless by the turn this had taken.
Nate kept going. “And this is her painting with our friends...”
“Is that...?” Tommy, who was now watching over Sophie’s shoulder, looked up at Dorie. “You’re fucking kidding me.”
Without looking up, Nate nodded. “Wash and Deke.”
“I recognize them,” Claire said. Which of course she would, given the shrine. “You all played basketball together when you were kids.”
“Yeah, we did,” Nate said softly as he thumbed through a few more pictures and then stopped, surprised. With a quiet, “Huh,” he looked down at his phone. “Fitz must have taken this.”
“Wow,” Claire murmured, her eyes going round. “Auntie Luce looks so pretty in that picture.”
“Yeah,” Nate answered gruffly. “She does.” He looked up at Dorie right then and suddenly all of the easy lightness was gone. Instead he seemed intense and determined. Fierce.
His focus was off enough that he didn’t seem to realize that Claire had bent in to look more closely. “And happy.” With far too much awareness for a thirteen-year-old, she looked up at Dorie. “You both look really happy.”
For as much as Dorie wanted to see exactly what picture Claire was talking about, she couldn’t move. She was rooted in place, her eyes stinging.
“Um...Claire, Liam,” Claudia said, stepping in front of Dorie. “Mr. Hawkins—”
“Nate,” he corrected.
“Nate. Right.” Claudia took Claire by the shoulders and turned her to the door. “Time for us to go, mija. You’ll have plenty of time tomorrow to visit more.”
“But is he—”
“He’ll be sleeping on the couch,” Sean snapped, still clearly out of sorts. “And Auntie Luce will not be.”
Her eyes going to the ground, Dorie grumbled, “That’s Daddy’s line.”
When Seamus and Tommy started laughing again, Sean glared at them. Then he gave Nate and Sophie a curt nod goodbye and followed Claudia out.
* * *
Fuck, he had screwed up big. Nate had brought her to Boston to show her what he could give her. What he’d gotten instead was a glimpse of a future he was doing everything he could to secure, completely unsuccessfully.
He’d watched Dorie with her niece and nephews throughout the evening—teasing them, hugging them, her love for them entirely uncontained—and been nearly overcome by how much he wanted that. How much he wanted that with her. Any doubts he may have had were pretty much shot to hell at the sight of utter contentment on her face when the three-year-old reached his arms out to her and refused to let go until she’d agreed to carry him to the car.
He turned his back to the door and chalked his cue stick. Seamus also turned back to the table right then, bending over to take his turn after Tommy failed miserably at what should have been an easy shot. “Thanks, Soph,” he said, turning to the redhead. “Always can count on Tommy to scratch when you’re
around.”
Sophie was not at all what Nate had expected in terms of Dorie’s best friend. The woman was raunchier than hell—Nate had been close enough to hear what she’d whispered in Tommy’s ear and it went about four steps past the typical locker-room conversation. At Seamus’s comment, she stuck her hand in Tommy’s back pocket, pulled him up against her and looked into Tommy’s eyes. “You can scratch my itch anytime you want, baby.”
“They’ve been that way since they were fifteen,” Seamus muttered as he took his shot. “It freaks Sean the hell out, as you can imagine.”
“Claire’s how old?” Nate asked, watching the seven ball slip into the pocket. “Thirteen?”
Straightening up, Seamus nodded. “It was bad enough watching Luce grow up...”
Luce. Right.
“Watching Claire?” Seamus was saying as he shook his head. “Kind of makes you think.” He tried to sink the two ball in the side pocket. Missed.
Nate laughed as he studied the table. He was pretty sure he could get the eleven ball in the corner if he banked it right. “I have three sisters,” he replied. “I’ve spent my whole life thinking.”
“Thinking about what?” Dorie asked, having reappeared right then. She picked up the cue stick that had been Sean’s, clearly ready to take her brother’s place.
“Sisters,” he said, watching her studying the balls rather than meet his eye. He’d just leaned down to take his shot when she moved directly into his vision, bending over enough that the sweater slipped aside to reveal a beautiful expanse of creamy skin. He almost laughed.
Was she trying to get him killed? Sure he’d used his time wisely while she’d spent the night avoiding him from the other side of the bar. Although he might not have won over her brothers entirely, they’d at least stopped full-out threatening him. He considered that a big step. But playing the cleavage card while Tommy and Seamus were right here...?
Careful to keep his eyes on the table, Nate lined up the cue ball and the eleven. “You do realize that half the games I play involve thirty thousand people threatening to kill me.” He pulled the cue stick back carefully, then, with a smile thrown in her direction, knocked the eleven in. Straightening up, he grabbed the chalk again. “If you’re trying to distract me, it’s not going to work.”
She came around to where he was standing—came to stand directly in front of him and looked up at him from under those lashes of hers. Her hand went to his chest. Began to trail downward. “That’s not what you said on the plane.”
Nate had barely managed to grab Dorie’s wrist when Tommy snapped, “No,” as he practically spun Sophie into a topspin in order to get right up in Dorie’s face. “None of...” he waved his hand from Dorie to Nate and back again. “This. Not in my place.”
“‘This’?” Dorie mimicked. “Are we back in medieval times, my lord?” She yanked her hand away from Nate, elbowed Tommy out of the way and then, without even taking two seconds to line up the shot, knocked in the ten and fourteen balls. “Should I clear off the table for you and Sophie and then just go back to my corner, sir?” There went the thirteen, then the twelve.
Nate raised his eyebrows. Seamus, laughing, shook his head. At which point Dorie turned on him. “And you...” The nine went in, then the five. “A different woman every time I turn around. You’re worse than him.”
“Me?” Nate said belatedly. Uh, hold on... “I haven’t...”
The rest of the balls went in. She didn’t hesitate, didn’t miss one. The one, four, two, and then the eight. Then she shoved the cue stick at Tommy. “So if I want this?” Just like Tommy had, she waved her hand toward Nate and then to herself again. “Even if it makes no sense in the world that he seems to want it, too?” She took hold of Nate’s waistband and yanked him toward her so hard that he almost lost his balance. But the pool table was there, and although his hip slamming against it was the only way for them to remain upright, he honestly didn’t give a damn. She was beyond hot when she was pissed.
She clamped her hands around the back of his neck and drew his head down, obviously still making her point to Tommy. “Then I’m going to do whatever the hell I want to.” She raked her hands through Nate’s hair, pulling him down the rest of the way as her lips touched his. It took everything he had not to throw her down on the pool table she’d just so handily cleared. Especially when, breathing raggedly, she pressed herself up against him, making no effort to hide her sigh as she felt him hard against her.
She hitched herself up on the edge of the pool table and curled into him. “I’m sorry,” she said, dragging her hand down to his waistband. “But my brothers are going to kill you in the morning.”
So, yes, that apparently was her intention after all. Which was fine with Nate. If she didn’t want to play nice, there was no reason he had to.
Resting his hands on her hips, Nate shifted just enough to show that he’d registered every move Tommy had made since the moment Dorie had put her hands on him. Looking into Dorie’s eyes, he had to admit, he was also maybe searching for signs that she was drunk. Still, he smiled. “I can handle your brothers.”
He felt the step forward that Tommy made. Fixed his gaze on Tommy while slightly turning his head. If Tommy was seriously going to make a thing of this, then Nate was ready to respond in kind. He had no idea what Dorie was up to and no interest whatsoever in a bar fight with Dorie’s brothers but he’d do whatever was necessary.
Sophie was having none of it. She grabbed Tommy by the shoulder. “For Christ’s sake, Tom. Quit being a Neanderthal. A juvenile idiot Neanderthal.”
Seemed kind of redundant to Nate, but no need to fan the flames.
Stepping between Tommy and Nate, Sophie reached around to touch Dorie’s knee. “Good for you, hon. It’s about freaking time.” Then, like Claudia had done with Claire—except for the force involved—she spun Tommy around and pointed him toward the door. “You want to get all riled up, you work it out with me.”
With one last glare at Nate, Tommy put his arm around Sophie’s shoulders. “Hurt her and I’ll kill you. Don’t think I won’t.”
Well, at least it wasn’t anything about Nate’s balls. He hid his smile and nodded. “Understood.”
The second they left, Seamus shook his head as he hung up his cue stick. “What the hell, Luce?”
“Just tired of the double standard, Shay.” Dorie jumped off the table and out of Nate’s arms, pouting. “Tired of watching him and Soph go off together while I’m stuck here cleaning up the place.” Although the weariness in her voice made clear how true that statement was, the kick she gave the pool table was hard enough for Seamus to wince and glance down to check for damage. “Tired of watching all of you pair off, leaving me to fly solo.”
That last part sounded sad enough that Seamus’s head came up sharply. When he looked over and realized Nate was well aware of the undercurrents, he stuck his hands in his pockets and looked down. “Yeah. We’ve never made it easy for you, have we?”
Folding her arms across her chest, Dorie ducked her head down, trying—and failing—to not let on that she was crying.
“Well, fuck,” Seamus said, looking up again after a minute. “I guess you really did need to move all the way out to Kansas, didn’t you?”
Dorie’s head snapped up. “Iowa.”
“Iowa,” Seamus repeated with a grin that made clear he knew exactly where she’d moved. “Right.” Now it was his turn to fold his arms in front of him. “Fine. Go have some fun with pretty boy, here.” With a nod in Nate’s direction, he reached out for Dorie and pulled her into a hug that seemed to affect him as much as it did Dorie, although he gave Nate a don’t-you-dare-ever-tell-her-as-much glare. “And don’t pick fights with Tommy, okay? He’s still bigger than you.”
“I can kick better,” she mumbled.
Seamus’s response to that was a noogie.
Not bothering to respond, Seamus turned to Nate. He reached out to shake hands and then pulled Nate toward him. Just close enough to be heard when he quietly said, “I don’t care how blue your balls are. If you think that stunt she just pulled gives you license to...”
Nate pulled back. “Are you seriously giving me the ‘no means no’ talk?”
With a pat on the back and friendly-as-can-be grin, Seamus turned to Dorie, who obviously had been straining to hear whatever it was Seamus was saying to Nate, and gave her a big hug. “Love you, Luce.” Then he walked away.
Now it was Dorie’s turn to put her hands in her pockets. She looked down at the floor. “Sorry, I’m not... I don’t...” She wiped her eye with her sleeve. “I didn’t mean to throw you under the bus.”
Leaning back against the pool table, Nate just looked at her. “You sure about that?”
If it wasn’t for her tearstained face, he might have made a bigger deal about it. He didn’t get off on being used—well, not in the overall scheme of things—even if it was just to make a point, and their nonconversation on the plane had left him unsettled. But he could see how badly she’d needed that. How she was flailing about and grabbing at the only thing steady enough to hold, even if a part of that meant deliberately trying to push him away.
But if she finally came around to where he was? “You can try to throw me all you want, Dorie. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Don’t go making any promises you can’t keep.” She sniffled. “You haven’t actually seen the shrine yet. It’ll have you running in no time.”
Yep, she was going all in. And he wasn’t about to let her.
“Hmm,” he said, taking her into his arms. “When I think shrine, I think worship. Like on your knees and all that. Last thing I want to do is run.”
He felt her huff against his chest, part laugh, part cry. But then she gave a halfhearted shrug as she pulled away. He kissed the top of her head, and then walked her out the door and took her home.
