Page 54 of Blue Moon Mistress

“There haven’t been. It’s a tradition in my family to keep the Mathis last name. My dad changed his name, as did my grandfather and so on.”

“Cool.” Thomas takes a drink of soda and looks pensive.

“What do you think?” I ask as I move another piece around the board and into my safe zone. “Would you change your last name?”

“In a heartbeat.”

“Johnny Mathis has a nice ring to it.”

Thomas shoves him. “I’m the one who asked the question, I get the last name.”

“You two are forgetting,” Chase says, leaned back, with his leg wrapped under mine. “You have to ask her first, and she has to say yes.”

“We happen to be good at long-term planning.” Johnny’s gaze slides to me. “No one in this house is going to risk getting a ‘no’ because we were impatient.”

“A week is definitely not enough time for you to decide to askthatquestion.” Joshua says as if reminding them all how short a time it’s actually been. And maybe I need that reminder too.

Because it doesn’t feel like it’s been a week since I first knocked on their door. And that should be scarier than it is.

The oven timer goes off and Thomas hops up, placing me back on the chair. He grabs an oven mitt and pulls out a big dish of cheese dip. That seems to be laced with peppers.

There’s a stack of tupperware items on the counter beside it and he starts dumping them in. He pauses on the last one and then sets it aside before grabbing a whole bag of tortilla chips and dumping them on top.

“I present to you! Upside down nachos.”

“And I win.” Johnny says pulling all of our attention to the four blue pieces in his home circle. “Which means Thomas gets to choose the next game.”

“But not Hearts.” Chase says quickly.

“Get it set up.” He looks at the plate of nachos. “Since Thomas forgot that we need to at least pretend to be civilized, I’ll get the plates.”

I slip off of Thomas’ lap and follow Joshua.

“Did you let Johnny win on purpose?”

“I don’t know what you mean.” Sliding a glance to me, he smiles. “Johnny won fair and square.”

“Sure he did. And you just didn’t notice all of the times you could have kicked him back to the start.”

He pulls a serving spoon—well, just a big spoon—from a drawer. “The important part is thathedidn’t notice.”

“You didn’t want me on your lap?”

“Oh, you’ll get there, eventually.”

“Hey,” Chase calls from where he still sits at the table. “Are you two conspiring?”

“Always.” Joshua doesn’t look at him when he says it.

Hand on my hip, Joshua meets my eyes, tipping my chin up. “Stay over tonight?”

I could pretend to vacillate. But I’ve never been in the habit of torturing men I like. Pressing up onto my toes, I brush a kiss against his lips and say, “I packed a bag.”

His smile is so wide, it looks like it hurts.

“No monopolizing our guest,” Johnny says and with his mouth twisted, Joshua takes the plates to the table.

While they poke fun at each other, I peek inside the ignored tupperware.

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