Page 85 of Binding Their Hearts

He shoved aside Peggy’s voice; Kevin’s didn’t ring with snide aggravation, just genuine curiosity. “Becky should be running that place, Kev. You don’t want the job, and neither do I.”

“No, I for sure do not.” Kevin dropped his head against the cushion and stared at the ceiling. “Can’t count the number of times I’ve had that talk with Dad.”

Becky was a bright kid who deserved a shot. Alice had given him the rundown on his niece’s ideas for the farm, and that had helped jumpstart his own supportive uncle relationship with her. He’d babysat her when they were kids; he could damn straight look out for her now.

“If Dad agrees to put her in charge, I’ll keep sending money for the farm. If he doesn’t agree, then she can use the money for whatever she wants to do instead.” He’d get her out from under Peggy’s thumb one way or the other. “School, an apartment, whatever.”

“You’re sure you want to do that? It’s not small change.”

“It’s money I wasn’t missing before”—weatherstripping squeaked from the hall, and a blast of cold air had Kev turning to look, too—“so I’m not gonna start now. Hey, Alice. Good day?”

Peering around the wall into the living room, she yanked her red knit hat off and gave a slim smile and a raised brow. “Hey, sweetheart. Didn’t know we had company.” She hung her coat and strode straight over to him, past the edge of the couch. “Kevin.”

“Alice. Nice to see you under better circumstances.”

“Ain’t that the truth.” She pulled Jay into a hug and kissed his cheek, whispering, “You okay, stud?”

He nodded, brushing their faces together, inhaling the whiff of honey and lemon still clinging to her hair. No ropes under her shirt today; they would’ve been hard to miss with his hands flat against her back.

“Congratulations on the marriage.” Kevin got the words out smoother this time. Probably something to that practice makes perfect saying. “I wish you many happy years together.”

“Thanks, we plan on it.” Alice came close to frosty as the night air, but then she rubbed her hand across his jaw, and her voice warmed. “Jay is irresistibly loveable, so that gives us a big head start.”

The doorbell serenaded the house.

“Shit, right.” Alice clicked her tongue. “Jay, are we getting furniture delivered today? There’s a van out front.”

“Not me.” He waved toward the kitchen; Henry was wiping his hands on a towel. “You want me to—”

“Nope, I got it.” She pecked his lips with a tiny tease of a kiss and trotted back. “Henry, it’s some guys with a furniture delivery. Do you know—”

“I do indeed.” Henry took the hall instead of cutting through the rooms. Smart, since they’d stacked zero boxes in the hall. “I’ll handle that. Please mind the soup for me, Alice. Just keep it below a boil.”

Alice gave the A-OK and guarded the stove like a pack of kids watching brownies in the oven. Another blast of cold came from the front door, and Henry’s voice mingled with a couple of other low tones.

Jay propped himself against the fireplace bricks. “Can you get the paperwork going? If you don’t have a finlaw guy, I can ask Henry who he used to put together our stuff.” That would have to do. Asking for legal contacts from his old finance job gang ranked somewhere below patching a flat on a busy street in a downpour.

“Yeah, I can start the process.” Kevin rattled off details, confirming Jay’s goals and restrictions for the gift, and jotted notes in his phone.

Beyond him, two burly guys wrestled a thick wood coffee table up the stairs behind Henry, with another guy following. Nice thing about bike messengering—Jay almost never had to deliver things that weighed a ton.

“I should get going—rush hour traffic should’ve thinned by now.” Kevin tucked his phone into his breast pocket and heaved himself up from the gray behemoth. The familiar couch lived in the parlor for now, but Henry said they might shift it down to the home theater space eventually. “Promised Char I’d be home for the bedtime routine. They’re too old to tuck in, but they get an hour of video game time with Dad, and she gets an hour of not-Mom time. Probably the best marriage tip I’ve got—you want harmony in the house, believe her when she says she needs something, and figure out a way to give it to her.”

“I think I can do that.” Fucking excel at it, more like. But he wouldn’t be showing off his service harness to Kevin. Accepting the two spouses thing was enough for his brother; the advanced knowledge could stay between Jay and Nat. “And thanks, Kev. For all of this. Tracking down what happened, getting the truth out of Peggy, setting up the stuff for Becky—I appreciate it.”

Cultivating gratitude actually did make his chest warm and his muscles loose. He’d have to tell Danny next week, no bullshit.

“Thanks for trusting me to get it done, little brother.” Kev raised his arms slowly, and Jay stepped into them, taking the hug on offer. “I’ll talk to Char—we should treat you newlyweds to dinner or something.”

His brother’s wife would just love that. Although if Kev had explained to her about the money stuff, she might be less inclined to dislike him. “Sounds great.”

Kevin clapped Jay’s back with a solid thump, the universal end-of-hug signal. They separated, and Kev headed toward the coat hooks. “Suppose it won’t be until after we see you at Thanksgiving, and the boys have games every weekend”—Kev gave a problem-for-another-day wave—“but we’ll figure something out.”

“I won’t be at Thanksgiving.” They’d have their own little family gathering at the house, him and Henry and Alice and Master Will and Emma. The menu was all set and everything. And not one person on the list—not even himself—would look down on him. So that would be a new thing to be thankful for. “But if we get together in December, maybe I can hand off my Christmas gifts for the kids to you, and you can ferry them up to the farm.”

Kevin’s shoulders lurched as he hitched his coat over them. Wide-eyed, he stared at Jay. “You’re not doing the holidays at all?”

“I am.” He pressed sock feet against the entry tile, steadying himself with Danny’s trick, claiming his place in the world. “Just not there.”

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