Page 8 of Breaking News

“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 theworstof 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.”

---