Chapter 22 #2
Maude shooed us toward the door. “Go on, then. I’ll clear this mess before it hardens into concrete.”
Outside, the air was bright and a little too sharp, the sunlight bouncing off the sand and salt-streaked windows.
The porch looked worse with four pairs of trained eyes on it—rail listing visibly, paint flaking in tired curls, that treacherous middle step giving a disgruntled creak when Ethan tested it with one careful boot.
“Yeah, that’s a lawsuit waiting to happen,” Lucas said.
“Or a broken hip,” Maude called from inside.
“Or a broken Hazel,” Gideon muttered under his breath.
My stomach did a small, traitorous flip at the way he said my name.
In what felt like seconds, they had a plan.
Ethan disappeared under the porch with a flashlight, came back out pronouncing the underlying beams “salvageable with reinforcement.” Elias started rattling off measurements and load-bearing calculations that made my HR-brain go pleasantly fuzzy.
Lucas was already halfway to the shed with Gideon, emerging moments later armed with tools I didn’t even know we owned: a circular saw that had probably belonged to my grandmother’s second husband, extra boards, a box of screws that looked older than I was.
They moved like they’d been doing this together for years. No wasted words, no jockeying for position. Elias marking cuts, Lucas sawing, Ethan lifting and holding while Gideon anchored.
“Let me help,” I said at one point, hovering uselessly with my notebook.
“You are helping,” Gideon said, not looking up from the screw he was driving in.
“How?”
“You’re right there,” he said simply. “And you’re not leaving.”
That landed somewhere deep.
“Here.” Lucas tossed me a pencil. “You can be official scribe. Write ‘porch: handled.’”
By the time the sun shifted from late-morning bright to something gentler, the porch looked …
different. Still old, still weathered, but the kind of old you trusted.
The railing stood straight and solid under Ethan’s test weight.
The middle step no longer squished when I bounced on it; it thudded, reassuring and stubborn.
“You did that in, like, an hour,” I said, a little awed.
“Forty-seven minutes,” Elias corrected. “But who’s counting?”
“I am,” I said. “I’ve had ‘call contractors for porch estimate’ on my list.”
“You still can,” Gideon said, stepping close enough that his shoulder brushed mine. “But now you can tell them to find something else to overcharge you for.”
I laughed, the sound bubbling out easier than I expected.
Maude appeared in the doorway with a pitcher of sweet tea and a tray of glasses. “Lord, have mercy,” she said, surveying their work. “I should’ve ordered up a batch of you boys years ago.”
“Back then, we were still idiots,” Lucas said, taking a glass. “You got the improved models.”
“Debatable,” Gideon muttered.
They drank, leaning against the freshly-straightened railing, sweat darkening their T-shirts, that crackling male energy buzzing just under the surface. I leaned beside Gideon and tried to pretend I wasn’t cataloging the way his forearms looked when he tipped his glass back.
“So,” I said, because if I didn’t talk I was going to start staring. “Elias. You mentioned to Gideon that you were coming. You didn’t say you were bringing half a football team.”
“That’s because the roster keeps expanding,” Elias said dryly. “Vivi says it’s like living inside a very violent family reunion.”
“Vivi?” I asked.
“Vivienne. My wife.” The word came out with an ease that made something inside me ache in a way I didn’t have language for yet. “We got married earlier this year. Here in Charleston.”
Maude’s brows shot up. “Oh?”
“Big joint ceremony,” Lucas cut in. “Silas’s wife, Portia, planned the whole thing. She’s a wedding planner, but that doesn’t begin to cover it. ‘Top tier’ is underselling her. I’m pretty sure most of Hollywood is still trying to book her after the Vogue spread.”
“Portia doesn’t do half measures,” Elias agreed. “By the time she was done, the city was calling it ‘the Dane takeover.’ Seven grooms, seven brides.”
“Seven,” I repeated, brain doing quick, horrified math. “All at once?”
“Not exactly,” Ethan said. “But close enough to count. I’m engaged, not married yet. Natalie insisted on waiting until after she got settled in her new job.”
“Natalie,” I echoed. “Your—”
“Fiancée,” he clarified, the corner of his mouth softening. “She’s the mayor of Charleston.”
Of course, she is.
“Mayor,” Maude repeated, delighted. “Well, now.”
Lucas bumped her shoulder with his. “Wait until you meet Lexi Montgomery,” he said cheerfully.
“The Lexi Montgomery? Actress?”
My brain pulled up the mental file automatically: Lexi Montgomery in a green gown on a red carpet, Lexi Montgomery in the gritty true-crime series that had gotten me through a particularly bad Chicago winter, Lexi Montgomery in a rom-com I’d hate-watched twice and secretly loved.
I blinked at him. “You’re engaged to Lexi Montgomery?”
“Sure am.” Pride warmed his grin into something brighter. “She’s smarter than anyone gives her credit for and meaner than she looks when someone messes with her people. You’d like her.”
“Jacob’s engaged, too,” Ethan added. “To Camille. Marine biologist. She’s from France originally, works out by the harbor now. She could talk to you for hours about marine mammals and tides and you’d actually care.”
“And Caleb?” Gideon asked, though I could see the answer forming behind his eyes.
“Caleb,” Elias said, “is engaged to Meghan. She’s a chef. Owns a couple restaurants around town. If you think Maude feeds people well, wait until you taste what Meghan does with butter.”
“I like her already,” Maude said.
“She’s going to open a spot out on Folly soon,” Ethan said. “Her main restaurant is on the battery, called Promenade.”
They all looked so … settled when they talked about these women. Grounded. Like the idea of being tied to one person, one place, wasn’t a liability, but a strength.
Ethan’s mouth curved. “Point is,” he said, eyes on me, “us Dane men thought we were the un-domesticable ones. Now, look at us.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“The right women showed up,” he said simply.
My throat went hot. I glanced up at Gideon and found him already looking at me, something open and raw and terrifyingly tender in his eyes.
“Don’t start,” he warned his brothers without looking away from me. “We’re not ready for Portia just yet. Give us a little time.”
“Relax,” Lucas said. “We’re just saying she’s very good at what she does. And she loves a challenge.”
“What challenge?” Gideon asked.
“Turning feral, ex-military men into grooms,” Lucas said.
I shouldn’t have enjoyed the mental flash of Gideon in a suit as much as I did. I definitely shouldn’t have followed it with an image of myself in something white that didn’t look like an office blazer.
Nope. Not yet.
“Easy, boys,” Maude said, patting my shoulder. “Let the girl recover from one life-altering revelation at a time.”
“Thank you,” I said fervently.
Gideon dipped his head until our foreheads almost touched, his voice meant only for me. “Ignore them,” he murmured. “They like to hear themselves talk.”
“I don’t know,” I whispered back. “I’m kind of enjoying the mental image of you being forced to pick out a cake flavor.”
His eyes darkened. “Careful, babe. You start talking about cake, I start thinking about frosting and your skin and we’re going to have a different problem.”
Heat shot straight through me, and I blushed.
I laughed then, really laughed, the sound cracking something open in my chest that had been braced too long. For a handful of minutes, I could almost forget the man with my old last name and the wrong eyes and the way he’d said Haze.
Almost.
The crash came quick afterward. One second I was propped against the railing, teasing Gideon about frosting. The next, my limbs felt like wet sandbags and the edges of the world went fuzzier, like someone had dialed the saturation down.
Gideon caught it before I could pretend otherwise. “You’re done,” he said quietly. “You’re running on fumes.”
“I’m fine,” I lied.
He gave me a look that said he’d seen fine bleeding out on concrete and I was not it.
“You don’t have to be,” Ethan said gently. “Shock wears off in waves. Second one’s always worse.”
Maude stepped forward, tea towel still in one hand. “Go lie down, Hazel. Let these boys plan whatever nonsense they’re about to plan without you worrying your way through it. I’ll wake you if anything needs your attention.”
“I don’t want to be rude,” I protested weakly.
Lucas slung an arm around Ethan’s shoulders and gestured grandly. “Go. We’ll try not to knock any walls down.”
“On purpose,” Ethan added.
Elias’s gaze softened for the first time since I’d met him. “We’ll be here when you wake up,” he said. “Promise.”
Gideon slid his hand into mine. “Come on.”
I let him lead me back through the front door, the newly solid step thudding reassuringly under our feet. Inside, the air felt cooler, the house settling around us with that peculiar awareness it had when it approved of something.
On the stairs, halfway up, I looked back through the front window. The three men were still out there—Ethan and Lucas already arguing good-naturedly about something, Elias on his phone, probably digging through whatever government database he had charmed into letting him play.
“Your family is insane,” I said.
Gideon huffed. “You haven’t even met most of them.”
My fingers tightened around his. “I like them,” I admitted.
He looked at me then, really looked, and whatever he saw seemed to ease something in his shoulders. “I’m glad,” he said quietly. “Because they’re not going anywhere. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Good,” I said, surprising myself with how much I meant it. “Neither am I.”