Chapter 43
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
WILLA
When we pulled up to Holly’s that night, laughter spilled through the open windows, and my heart warmed at the sound. I used to brace myself for these evenings with Lincoln’s family.
Not because of them, but because of me. Because I didn’t know how to exist in this place without feeling like an impostor.
But tonight, with my fingers twined with Lincoln’s as we walked toward the back door, my shoulders were loose, my pulse steady. And for once, I wasn’t calculating an exit.
“I’m giving us five minutes before someone brings up sex or swears in front of Emma,” I murmured as Lincoln turned the doorknob.
“Five? That’s generous.”
I laughed. “You’re probably right.”
He gripped the doorknob and sent me that slow smile that did unspeakable things to my insides. “Ready to face the wolves?”
“They’re your wolves,” I said, though my voice came out soft. Affectionate.
He brought our hands to his mouth and kissed the back of mine. “Ours.”
That single syllable made my entire body hum with a want so visceral it would scare me if I examined it too closely. Thankfully, that usual Steele-brand of chaos erupted as soon as we walked through the door, not allowing me to linger on that thought.
“If you don’t want me to burn things, stop leaving me unattended!” Chloe said from the stove, waving an oven mitt through the air to dissipate some of the smoke.
“I learned that one the hard way,” Xander called from the living room, and Chloe laughed, loud and carefree.
“How many times do I have to tell you, Chief?” she asked. “The shed was an accident.”
“Just like you made bananas Foster and accidentally flambéed a placemat?” Laurel asked dryly, not even glancing up from her phone.
Chloe gasped. “You little traitor! That was supposed to be between us.”
“No…I said it would be between us if you paid me twenty bucks. You didn’t.” Laurel shrugged. “The details were fair game.”
“Um, hello?” Lincoln said, our joined hands raised between us. “Your favorite son is home, and everyone is stealing my thunder.”
Holly glanced at us from the stove, a bright smile on her face. “And the saint of a woman who puts up with him.” Her gaze landed on me, and her whole face softened. “There’s my sweet girl.”
At her words and that look she sent my way, my insides went warm and gooey in a way that had nothing to do with the berry cobbler I was carrying.
“Why the hell don’t I get a welcome like that?” Lincoln asked, grabbing the dish from my hand and setting it on the counter.
“Because you didn’t bring dessert,” Holly shot back without missing a beat.
“I distracted Willa while she was making it this afternoon.” He winked at me, a slow, sinful grin spreading across his mouth. “That should count for something.”
I flushed instantly, my face heating at the memory of his lips on my neck and my chest against the island as he bent me over it, doing things to me no cobbler should have to witness.
Sutton made a choked noise. Chloe just smirked. Laurel gagged.
“Oh no,” I muttered, already bracing for their inevitable ribbing.
“I’m not sure I want to eat that cobbler,” Sutton said, all faux innocence. “My eyes are still trying to recover from what I witnessed in public, so I’m not sure I want to have anything to do with what goes on in private.”
“Seriously,” Chloe said. “You two had an awful lot of fun in the office.”
“In the office?” Laurel asked. “You’re animals.”
Chloe grinned. “It hasn’t been the same since the Spicy Book Showdown.”
“Why wasn’t I invited to have fun in the office?” Emma asked with the kind of innocence only a five-year-old could muster.
“That was the night you stayed with Mimi,” Holly cut in, only amplifying my mortification. “Remember? When we made our special crowns?”
“Oh yeah!” She beamed at Holly before turning her gaze on us. “But next time you have fun in the office, I wanna come.”
“I promise you don’t, little bean,” Declan muttered, handing her a purple marker and offering his tattooed arm up for coloring practice.
While Lincoln just kept grinning like the smug jackass he was, I tried to sink into the floor. Unfortunately, it remained very much solid and not at all cooperative.
Dinner unfolded with the usual beautiful absurdity that came with being part of this family.
Laurel muttered about having to deal with “the fucking chickens” at the farm, which cost her a dollar in the swear jar from a delighted Emma.
Declan, Xander, and Lincoln kept devolving into a heated argument about the best kind of bourbon for an old-fashioned, while the perpetual grump Atlas silently demolished an entire plate of ribs and contributed to the conversation solely in grunts.
And somehow, through all of it, my husband kept touching me.
A hand on my thigh. Fingers combing through my hair. His palm resting on the back of my neck, thumb brushing up and down my nape like he couldn’t help himself.
It was instinctual now, this thing between us. I wasn’t sure when it had happened…what had been the tipping point. But there was no denying it anymore—our connection was bone-deep and impossible to ignore.
As dinner was served, the conversation never slowed.
Laurel fueled Lincoln’s hunger for gossip with a rundown of the latest high school drama.
Atlas very reluctantly passed a jar of my strawberry basil jam down the table after only taking five spoonfuls for himself, and Emma was dumbstruck when Chloe told her I’d made it from scratch.
“Did you really, Aunt Willa?” she asked, eyes wide as she devoured a roll spread with jam.
“She did,” Lincoln confirmed before I could say a word—the easy aunt that had fallen from her little lips still managing to knock the wind out of me anytime she said it. “I helped pick the strawberries.”
I huffed out a laugh and shook my head. “You picked, like, five, and then disappeared to flirt with Pearl.”
“Have you seen Pearl? She’s a smokeshow.”
“She’s seventy-two,” I said dryly.
“Like I’ve told my idiot brothers, even grandmas deserve the Lincoln flirtation treatment once in a while.”
Before the conversation could devolve any further, Holly cut in, “You didn’t give us part of your stock for selling, did you? You have enough jars for the market next weekend?”
I nodded. “Yeah, Lincoln’s been helping with production, so I’ve been able to can more than usual.”
“And the demand is still through the fucking roof,” he said, leaning back in his chair with a proud grin on his face.
“That’s a dollar, Uncle Linc!” Emma yelled, her delighted cackle making everyone laugh.
Holly’s smile was soft and warm, her eyes filled with nothing but love and pride. “Sounds like you two are really making this work.”
We…were. Which shocked the hell out of me. From day one, I’d thought this would be a disaster. Something I had to endure. And now, I never wanted it to end.
“Speaking of that demand…” Atlas said, raising a brow at Lincoln, who just gave one firm shake of his head.
I wasn’t sure what that was all about. Wasn’t sure I cared. Not when this feeling of warmth and belonging had settled so deep in my bones.
This family was pure chaos. A full-blown circus with a swear jar as the main sponsor.
And I loved every single second of it. Loved every single one of them.
I couldn’t deny it any longer—I wasn’t pretending anymore. Wasn’t faking a smile or bracing for the next slip or worrying about how I’d explain myself when the truth finally came to light.
Because this was the truth.
Me, here with Lincoln in the moment—his warm hand on my knee, his pinkie brushing mine every time he reached for his fork. With the people who’d stopped seeing me as a guest and started seeing me as theirs.
This was everything I’d never let myself want. And somehow, I had it.
My phone buzzed on the table, breaking me out of my thoughts, and I glanced down to see a text lighting up the screen.
Bernice:
You’ll want to get home. We have company.
My entire body stilled. Well, everything but my heart. That surged in my chest, racing like it knew something I didn’t. The only people in Starlight Cove who would drive all the way out to the farm on a Sunday evening were all seated at this table.
Everyone except one person.
Lincoln leaned in, bumping his shoulder with mine. “Everything okay?”
I turned the screen toward him. “It’s Bernice. She says there’s company.”
His brow lifted as he darted his gaze between my eyes, seeming to read my mind from my expression alone. “Harper?”
Hope bloomed quick and sharp inside me, and my stomach swooped. “You think they could’ve made a decision this fast?”
A smile swept over his mouth, slow like molasses, until his dimples were deep grooves in his cheeks. He gave me a look so smug I wanted to kiss it off him. “I don’t know, wife. We nailed that interview pretty hard.”
The unspoken and that wasn’t the only thing that was nailed hard was clear in his tone. I must’ve been punch-drunk on anticipatory hope, because I didn’t even try to hold in my snort.
“Time for charades!” Emma yelled, bouncing on her toes.
“Sorry, little bean.” Lincoln stood and held out his hand to me. “Aunt Willa and I have to get home. Someone’s there to see us.”
There was a chorus of goodbyes, a muttered demand from Declan that Lincoln swing by the bar later to pick up something he’d been working on, and then we were out the door, my heart in my throat and hope a wild thing raging inside me that I didn’t even try to tamp down.
I was still smiling when we pulled to a stop in front of the farmhouse. I hadn’t been able to stop smiling—not since the second Lincoln had voiced the thought I couldn’t bring myself to say aloud.
This moment might be it—the culmination of all our hard work. The grant, come to fruition.
I tried not to think about what that would mean for Lincoln and me. Tried not to read into the ticking clock that had only ever been counting down. If I could pin my hopes on this grant, I could do the same for us too.
Except when I glanced to the front porch, expecting to see a blonde bombshell waiting, my stomach bottomed out at the sight that actually greeted me. It wasn’t Harper.
It was my brother.
In between a chatting Bernice and Pearl, Beau sat in one of the porch chairs, tea in hand, nodding at whatever the older ladies were talking his ear off about. But his gaze was locked on me through the windshield, unwavering.
I stopped breathing, my nerves caught somewhere between fight, flight, and fawn, not sure what the best path of action was.
Lincoln sensed the change in the air immediately and reached out, cupping a hand on my thigh. “Hellcat? What’s up?”
I swallowed thickly, never moving my eyes from my brother’s. “It’s not Harper.”
He followed my gaze, his attention shifting out the windshield before he muttered a soft, “Fuck.”
Yeah. Fuck. As in fuck me. Fuck us. We were completely, totally fucked.
Because if we thought having Harper in our business was bad for the grant approval? That had nothing on my twin brother being in town. The one person who knew both Lincoln and me, inside and out.
Lincoln stepped out of the truck and walked around to open my door. After helping me out, he intertwined our fingers and squeezed tight. “We’ve got this.”
But the set of his jaw and the tension in his shoulders said he wasn’t as confident as he wanted me to believe.
We walked toward the porch like we were headed to our doom. Beau’s smile was pleasant enough. His eyes, though? They were knives, sharp and dangerous.
Bernice gave us a quick once-over before glancing at my brother. “Told you they’d be back before dark.”
Pearl grinned as she elbowed Beau. “And didn’t I say they’d be glowing?”
Beau hummed, his gaze assessing as he clocked our joined hands. “Must be that newlywed bliss,” he said dryly.
Lincoln didn’t miss a beat, tugging me closer to him. “Your sister has that effect on me.”
“So,” Beau said, voice mild like he wasn’t about to go in for the kill. “How’s married life? Seems like it’s a little…rushed.”
I forced a smile, but in my mind, I was strangling my brother for playing this game in front of others. “Been a whirlwind.”
“Seems like it.” Beau turned his attention to Lincoln and raised a brow. “You’re a busy man too, aren’t you?”
Lincoln offered the easy smile he was known for—all charismatic charm and dimples for days. “Your sister makes sure of that.”
Bernice snorted and fanned herself. Pearl cackled. I nearly passed out.
“Why don’t you all come in and stay for dessert?” Pearl asked. “I made strawberry rhubarb pie with some of your berries I picked up at the market.”
“That sounds amazing, Pearl. But we were hoping to catch up with Beau before it gets too late. Maybe we can swing by tomorrow instead,” Lincoln—my savior in cocky armor—said.
I could’ve kissed him right then and there because I did not want to continue this thinly veiled sibling smackdown with an audience. Especially when that audience consisted of Mabel’s gossip squad.
“Sounds great. Can’t wait to catch up.” Beau set his teacup on the side table and stood slowly, every inch of him outwardly calm. But I could see the storm brewing under the surface.
A storm Lincoln and I were about to face head on.