Page 101 of Captivating Mr. Second Chance

Inside, Laney was in the middle of a group of women hugging in the center of the open kitchen as three men stood in a semicircle. Chris, the famous actor, although semi-retired now, was the first to speak. “We thought maybe she left you at home.”

“Nah. She can’t get rid of me that easy.” Ethan he shook each of their hands. Although they’d spoken a few times over video chat, and he’d become friends with them, this was still the first time he was meeting them in person.

“How’s it going?” Chris asked, slapping Ethan’s back before tucking his chin-length hair behind his ears.

“Good. When did you guys get in?”

“We came in yesterday. Bronte had to make sure everything was right,” he explained with a smile, tipping his head toward his wife, who was currently holding a baby.

Ethan pointed to them. “And I suppose that’s…”

“Hazel.” Jason inclined his head toward his few-weeks-old daughter.

“How was the flight with the kids?” Ethan asked, taking off his coat to hang on the back of one of the chairs that sat at the marble island. For as much as the outside looked like a rustic cabin in the middle of nowhere, the inside was completely up-to-date, with no expense spared. Especially when Bronte pressed a button on a panel and a window shade lowered before the chandelier lights brightened.

“It was all right. Hazel pretty much slept the whole time, and we gave Willow fruit snacks and an iPad. It was Gem who struggled,” Jason said, wincing as he watched his wife fix her top. “She couldn’t get comfortable.”

Before Ethan could ask what was wrong, Gem let out a shriek then stomped out the French doors to a deck. A spotlight turned on out there, and with her back to the group, Ethan couldn’t tell what she was doing, but the loud sigh she let out sounded like relief as she bent slightly at her waist, her elbows stuck out to the sides.

Sam craned her head to see better. “What’s she doing?”

Laney quirked an eye at Jason, and he held his hands out in front of him. “She’s overproducing milk.”

“Shooting it out like a squirt gun,” Laney suggested, finger guns in front of her own breasts, and Ethan slapped his palm over his mouth.

“Oh Christ,” Mike, Sam’s boyfriend, said, dragging a big hand down the side of his face as he sat down. “I don’t think I want to know.”

Jason chuckled, rubbing Mike’s shoulders. “Too much for you, buddy?”

“No. I don’t want to know about your wife’s…”

“Udders,” Gem said, coming back into the kitchen, her hand shoved down her top, readjusting herself. “You don’t want to hear about how I have so much milk stored up in my udders, it hurts to do anything? Well, too bad, Mikey, because that’s all I’ll be talking about for the next five days. So, get used to it.”

The group laughed, chalking the outburst up to Gem being Gem, before Laney handed the champagne to Ethan. “Open, please?”

Sam put Willow, Gem and Jason’s three-year-old, down on the floor to grab some glasses. She lined them up on the counter as Bronte handed Hazel off to Gem and took out platters of food from the refrigerator. The four women moved around one another like they’d been doing this dance for years, which, Ethan supposed, they had been.

Once he had the cork popped out of the bottle, Laney took it back and poured it into the eight glasses before handing them out. Jason put Willow on his lap as he sat at the kitchen table next to Mike, and Gem held Hazel against her shoulder, her glass aloft. “To Bronte for putting this all together.”

Bronte looped her arm around Chris’s waist. “To spending New Year’s together.”

Sam sat in Mike’s lap, smiling at him then at the group. “To all of us growing one year older and one year wiser.”

“Speak for yourself,” Mike mumbled against Sam’s shoulder, which earned a few laughs.

Then Laney cleared her throat, her arm up high. “To life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Now, enough with the cheers and drink up before the bubbles run dry.”

She tossed back her champagne like it was a cheap shot of tequila instead of the expensive bottle of Bollinger she’d insisted they get, but Ethan did as she commanded and drank it all up, then thrust his glass out for more. With a smile, she filled it back up and leaned into his side so he could kiss her temple.

“Now,” Bronte said, moving toward the counter, where she grabbed a printed sheet. She flicked her wrist, straightening it from how it had been folded in half. “I made a small list of—”

“Small?” Sam laughed, snatching it from her.

“No.” Gem shook her head. “No lists.”

“Or agendas,” Laney added, and when Mike, Jason, and Chris all gave in to the laughs they’d been holding back, Ethan shrugged.

“Can I see?”

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