September 2025 #2
Without question, of them all, Wick was built like a linebacker.
A lot of carved, heavy muscle defined his frame.
Harper was leaner, rangy, with long roping muscle.
He, Kola, and Jake were built more like soccer players.
Finn had broad shoulders and a wide chest, and long legs.
He looked more like the swimmer than anything else.
It made sense with Wick’s physique and power that he thought he’d win a game of hockey against his boyfriend and his friends, guys who weren’t built like he was.
“Wait, did Jake play?” I asked.
“Of course Jake played,” Wick snapped. “Sorry.”
“It’s fine, but tell me, did he stand in one spot and just pass Harper the puck when he whooshed by?”
“Ohmygod, yes.” Wick sounded horrified.
“Yeah. That was how he did it in middle school. I remember his coach screaming.”
“Coach Cannoli,” Harper chimed in.
“It was Coach Connelly,” I corrected him.
He snorted out a laugh.
Kola was still laughing and I couldn’t hide my smile.
“He was—you’re really fast,” Wick told his boyfriend.
Harper waggled his eyebrows at him.
“That’s why you don’t mind when I take you to Blackhawks games when I get tickets from my boss.”
“Could be,” Harper teased him.
“Fine,” Wick groaned like he was dying. “I didn’t think you could play.”
I could not stop smiling.
“Stop laughing,” Finn ordered Kola, jogging to the table to pretend to choke the man he loved to death.
“Aww come on, I’m sorry,” Kola giggled, grabbing Finn before he could get away, scooting back from the table and pulling Finn down into his lap.
Finn sat, of course he did, but he was pouting. The crossed arms and scowl were adorable. Kola wrapped his arms around his waist and held tight.
“Your faces were the best,” Harper teased Wick.
“I hate you,” Wick responded.
“You were cute when you tried to catch him,” Kola whispered to Finn.
“That’s it, I’m going home!” Finn announced dramatically before he got up and strode toward the door.
He got as far as the kitchen, where I was putting some of the finished chicken cutlets on the plate.
“That smells amazing.”
“My fried rice is pretty good too.”
He inhaled deeply. “Okay, I’ll stay, but only for you, Mr. Harcourt, not your son. And I’m staying in here.”
“Thank you, Finn,” I said, smiling at him.
“Come back,” Kola crooned, gesturing for him.
Finn only glared.
Wick walked back over to the table and sat down beside Harper. “I’m sorry I was a jerk earlier. But you completely schooled me, so that should make you happy.”
“Yeah, it does,” Harper goaded him.
He crossed his arms on the table and then put his face down into them.
Seconds later, Harper leaned down and kissed Wick’s temple. “I’m still going to marry you, and now we can play your cousins who are coming to visit at Christmas and mop the ice with them.”
Wick’s head popped up, and he turned to Harper. “Ohmygod, we can.”
“And you hate those guys.”
“Yes, I do.”
Harper smirked at him.
“You hate your family?” Sam asked him.
Wick turned to my husband. “Some of my family, yessir. Don’t you hate some of your cousins? Doesn’t everyone?”
After a moment, Sam nodded.
“Yeah, see?”
“Stay in there,” Finn demanded as Kola got up and moved quickly around the table, his eyes narrowing, stalking his boyfriend. “I’m not kidding.”
“There is hot oil in here,” I told them both. “Knock it off.”
Finn looked at me, glanced at Kola, and then bolted for the back door. Kola was right behind him with Dobby in hot pursuit.
It was a very enjoyable dinner.
Sam and I drove to Lake Geneva, which was this beautiful little town that he’d been to many times but I had only visited once before.
There were a million things to do, and just walking the streets was fun.
We stayed at the Bordeaux House, in the Falconer’s suite, which Sam had booked, sight unseen.
“This is fantastic,” I said as we used an actual key we were given—I couldn’t remember the last time I had been given a metal one— that was attached to a tassel, and unlocked the room.
It looked as though we had stepped through a portal in time.
I had never seen so much brocade and velvet.
There was classic striped gold-and-white wallpaper, window treatments, an enormous armoire, a bed with a serious kingly canopy, and a huge chandelier over the bed.
There were mirrors on the walls of the bathroom, everything was gilded, and we were walking on thick maroon carpet.
“What the hell?” Sam sounded a bit horrified.
He jolted at the large ceramic Great Dane in the bathroom, was not a fan of the glaring portraits on the walls, didn’t understand why there was another chandelier in the bathroom, and wasn’t sure why there was so much heavy draping of fabric off every surface.
“What the hell?” Sam repeated, walking around the rather small area. “This is a suite?”
I had to FaceTime Hannah to let her know we arrived safely.
“Is that velvet behind you?” she asked me.
“Yes.”
“Is it maroon?”
“It is.”
“Dad, why did you book the two of you into a Victorian brothel?”
He growled at her.
“I thought you got a suite.”
“I did,” he snapped, leaving me sitting on a wingback chair across from the bed by a window, to walk through the tiny space again.
“Are there mirrors on the walls in the bathroom?” she asked me.
“Yes. How did you know? I didn’t walk in there with my phone.”
“I can see it on the website,” she told me. “And you’re supposed to have a balcony there if it’s an actual suite, and the toilet and the shower are separated by a wall.”
I chuckled.
“It’s too bad you didn’t get the Fishmonger’s Wife suite. That one is all done in black, and there’s a widow’s walk that’s attached.”
“Stop.”
“Oh no, I’m wrong. They had to cut off access to the walk because some people fell off. They think there might be a ghost up there.”
“Ghosts throw people off things? Since when?”
“Did she say ghost?” Sam asked from the balcony he was out on.
I was dying. So was my daughter.
When we went downstairs to go find a place to have lunch, we were presented with the itinerary for our stay, and that evening our meal included a murder mystery.
“No,” Sam told me.
I was cackling as I pointed out that the following day, we were supposed to walk the Geneva Lake Shore Path, which was only eight to ten hours long.
“No,” Sam was adamant.
Saturday night was a special event at the Black Point Estate and Gardens that apparently, Aaron had paid for and signed us up for as a surprise. It was a black-tie Gatsby-style party, and the tickets were very much in demand.
“No,” Sam whined, and it was adorable.
We sat down on a bench overlooking the lake, and his sigh was long.
“Why did you do this?” I asked him.
“I wanted to do something nice for you for my birthday.”
“That makes no sense,” I told him. “It’s your day, not mine. You should have gone and done the bourbon trail in Kentucky with all your buddies.”
He let his head fall back on his shoulders. “I don’t want to go and do something with my friends. Remember the horrible fishing trip on Lake Shelbyville where everyone whined about their ex-wives?”
“Wasn’t there a lack of showering as well?”
He ignored me. “And then last year we went to Mexico and I got shot with a spear gun?”
I choked on a laugh that I could not hold in.
“My birthdays away from you are not great.”
I leaned against him.
“I just wanted a nice, quiet, romantic birthday.”
“We should have stayed home and watched movies and gotten drunk and fooled around.”
“See? That sounds great.”
“Then?”
“My kids would show up.”
“You love your kids.”
“I do, you know I do, but sometimes I would also like to just do stuff alone with you now and then.”
“Or with your friends. All-grown-up time.”
“Yeah, I like that too,” he said with a sigh.
“So maybe we call Aja now and tell her to invite everyone over on Saturday, all your favorite people, for an impromptu birthday party. What do you say?”
“But what about all this?”
“All this can be cancelled,” I soothed him.
“It was a lot of money.”
“We drove, so there’s that, and the cost of the room we will live with if the nice people at the historic house say we have to.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Let’s see what you can do first.”
“Not me, you,” he insisted. “You're better with people.”
Fifteen minutes later, Sam stood there as I began talking to the manager.
“What?” he asked, sounding frantic but not in a bad way. That sounds strange, I know, but more as though he was happy to hear what I was telling him and at the same time a bit overwhelmed. “You’re telling me you don’t want to stay?”
“Yes,” I said as a woman charged up to the counter.
I mean, we were alone one moment, and the next she was there, staring at us. She came so fast, in fact, that Sam put a protective arm around me, because, from the expression on his face, she freaked him out just a bit.
“Do you want to cancel your reservation?”
“We do,” I said, smiling at her.
“My daughter is getting married this weekend,” she explained. “Everyone else was good, got their room, but me, her father and I got divorced and I moved from Green Bay to New York. It’s been great, and so has opening an art gallery, but I got busy and––”
“Forgot to make a reservation?”
“Yes,” she gasped.
“You did everything else for your daughter,” I surmised. “Got all the perfect things she wanted, and were here, hoping things would work out.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “My ex and his new wife were told they got the last room.”
“Not true,” Sam chimed in, and we all looked at the manager.
“Does the room need to be cleaned?” he asked me.
“No, sir,” I answered, and turned to the woman. “I swear, we just rolled luggage in there and then went to find a place to have lunch.”
She grabbed my hand like a lifeline. “You’re saving my life.”