Chapter Eight #2
He wasn’t surprised when his grandfather and dad joined him, as well as his uncles Kevin and Joe. Eating with your plate on your lap wasn’t ideal, but the older you got, the less appealing picnic table benches became.
They made small talk while they ate, mostly about the ATV trails and a trip some of them had planned for the upcoming snowmobile season. It gave Brian’s mind the freedom to keep returning to that moment when Siobhan had almost, though not quite, been in his arms.
He couldn’t make sense of his attraction to her, though he’d reached a place where there was no point in denying it to himself.
She was beautiful, of course. That didn’t hurt.
But it wasn’t as if he’d felt a need to touch every beautiful woman he’d ever crossed paths with.
There was something about Siobhan that made him toss and turn at night—much to Stella’s annoyance—and think about her all day.
Avoiding making eye contact with her wasn’t that hard when he put conscious effort into it, although making sure he went about it in a natural way so his family’s radar didn’t get pinged was harder. They were a perceptive bunch, and it wouldn’t take much to attract their attention.
After they ate, Brian would have preferred to keep himself busy, but he and his brothers had worked hard leading up to this week to ensure they’d be able to relax and spend time with the family, so there wasn’t a lot for him to do.
Taking the tractor up to bring down another load of split firewood from the pit took him a few minutes.
Then he volunteered to grab the box of marshmallows, chocolate, crackers, sticks and wet wipes from the store when his mother said the words he’d loved as a kid, but didn’t like quite as much now.
“Time for s’mores.”
Being one of the adults responsible for campfire safety and making sure sweets weren’t left all over to attract furry woodland creatures took some of the fun out of it.
“Who’s having s’mores?” he asked as he dumped the supplies on the picnic table closest to the campfire.
“S’mores!” Oliver yelled, clapping his hands. “Mommy, s’mores!”
“Somebody sure loves his s’mores,” Mike said with an affectionate chuckle.
“He’s actually never had one,” Siobhan said, and then she laughed when half the family actually gasped. “They really frown on open campfires in my neighborhood.”
“Smart people,” Brian muttered.
“Ignore him,” Hannah said, grabbing the marshmallow sticks and handing them out. She handed Nora one after glancing at Ellie for approval, but Siobhan took Oliver’s. “Campers and campfires have become his personal monster under the bed over the last couple of months.”
“Okay, how do you not know what happens if you throw gas—”
“Stop.” Hannah held up her hand, cutting him off. “It’s s’mores time. Ooey-gooey marshmallow and chocolate, Brian.”
His younger brother had been smart to talk this woman into moving all the way across the country to marry him, Brian thought. “I do like ooey-gooey marshmallow and chocolate.”
“You sound so funny saying that,” she said, and then she laughed. Others joined in, but he didn’t mind because Siobhan was one of them, and he liked the sound of her laugh so much, he’d chant the words if they kept it going.
And that thought reminded him he needed to keep himself busy so he didn’t pay too much attention to Siobhan and Oliver. Which he did by keeping the mess on the picnic table in check, though he did manage to make a s’more of his own.
And he made sure he was looking when Oliver took his first bite. Siobhan was helping him hold it, and when he got his first mouthful of ooey-gooey marshmallow and chocolate, his blue eyes widened. Then he grinned, his little mouth coated in melted sugar and graham cracker crumbs.
Then Siobhan started turning her head and he looked away before their gazes could lock and they could silently share the moment.
He didn’t feel strong enough right then to feel that connection with her—celebrating an adorable moment for the child they might be sharing for the rest of their lives.
And the connection between them that had nothing to do with Oliver.
He wasn’t sure which knocked him for a bigger loop.
Most of them only had one or two s’mores, but the younger crowd went hard and they burned through a lot of marshmallows and chocolate before Kevin’s son, Gage, and Sean’s son, Johnny—the last two standing at what Brian thought might be five each—called it quits.
After assigning the teenagers to clean up the debris, and laughing when they groaned and held their stomachs, he went around the circle, offering wet wipes.
When he got to Siobhan and Oliver, it was clear she’d need some help with the child squirming on her lap.
Despite his resolve not to get involved, he pulled out a wipe and knelt in front of her.
“This won’t help much, but maybe you can get him back to the camper without him sticking to you or the grass or anything he comes in contact with. ”
She chuckled. “I’m not sure how much he even got into his mouth.”
“But he enjoyed it, and that’s the point.” He swiped at the boy’s sticky cheeks, but it was a lost cause.
“You need to be a little more assertive with that wipe or you’re just going to smear the top layer of marshmallow around all night.”
“Maybe we should switch places,” he said, pushing himself to his feet.
He took Oliver so she could stand, not minding the sticky hands gripping his T-shirt. Once Siobhan moved, he sat down and settled the boy on his lap.
Siobhan knelt in front of them, resting her hand on Brian’s knee as she lowered herself to the grass.
That single touch broke through what remained of his resolve and he allowed himself to enjoy the warmth and pressure of her touch for the regrettably short time he could.
Why did it have to be her? Even though his divorce had left him bitter and disillusioned, he’d known he’d meet a woman someday who’d snap him out of it. He was surrounded by too much love and too many happy marriages not to believe that, despite a pretty staggering setback, he’d have that, too.
But of all the women to stir that desire in him again, why did it have to be Siobhan?
After a few minutes, she heaved a defeated sigh. “Isn’t one of the benefits of having a dog supposed to be the fact that they lick a kid’s face clean?”
He chuckled. “Absolutely, but not when chocolate is involved.”
“Right. Well, that’s the worst of it,” she said, once again using Brian’s knee to push herself to her feet. He tried to ignore the renewed awareness as he set Oliver on his feet. “The rest is going to need hot soapy water.”
“Beep beep,” Oliver murmured, and Siobhan ran her hand over his hair.
“It’s his favorite book,” she explained. “He’s ready to curl up and read, which is his way of admitting he’s actually tired. I think we’ll head inside early tonight.”
“I think a lot of people will,” Emma said, glancing sideways at Sean, whose chin kept dropping until he’d jerk himself awake.
“Just wait until after the volleyball game tomorrow,” Steph said, looking a lot more chipper than the rest of them.
Leo gruffly cleared his throat. “Excuse me, after the what now?”
She sighed and rolled her eyes. “After The Annual Kowalski Volleyball Death Match Tournament of Doom.”
Siobhan’s eyes widened. “Okay, that sounds even less fun than Water Ball of Doom.”
“If we wait until Saturday, Danny can play,” Brian pointed out.
Steph shook her head. “Tomorrow’s going to be cooler and overcast and Saturday is going to be wicked hot and humid. If we wait for Danny, the whole death match part might be literal and not just some ridiculous name you guys picked when you were too young to be allowed to name things.”
“We’ll cheer you on from well outside the sidelines,” Siobhan said, shaking her head.
“My first year playing, a bunch of us ended up on each other’s shoulders, like playing chicken in the pool, trying to be taller,” Keri said, her mouth curved in a nostalgic smile. “And Leo grabbed my butt.”
“It was an accident,” her father-in-law said. “And I was trying to keep your butt from hitting the ground. You were falling, so you should have thanked me.”
“For grabbing my butt?”
“Beep beep,” Oliver said again, and they all laughed.
“On that note,” Siobhan said, straightening and taking Oliver’s hand in hers. “Say good-night, Oliver.”
They all said good-night, and then Brian watched them walking hand in hand toward their camper. The little guy was so tired he stumbled on some rocks in the dirt road and Brian was going to get up and offer to carry him, but Siobhan easily swung him onto her hip and kept going.
He relaxed back into his chair, though he didn’t look away until she’d opened the camper door and set Oliver inside. Then he turned his focus to adjusting the straw in his tumbler lid so he wouldn’t have to look around and see if his family was watching him as he watched Siobhan and Oliver.
If this is what it felt like for reality television stars to have camera crews in their faces twenty-four-seven, they weren’t getting paid enough.
“Oh, no,” Steph said, and the urgency in her voice caught Brian’s attention.
He and his brothers had worked with their aunt Terry to make sure every single possible wedding emergency had been thought of and taken care of before the family arrived.
“Tell me somebody brought the volleyball. I don’t even know who keeps it. Where does the volleyball live?”
Mary laughed. “I have the ball. It lives in the closet in my RV, which means if you all decide to forget to invite your old grandparents one year, no volleyball.”
Brian chuckled as everybody rushed to assure her that would never happen.
She knew that, of course, but she probably liked hearing it.
And he was also glad she kept the volleyball because locating it had never occurred to him.
It wasn’t an actual volleyball, but a slightly larger and softer ball because they played volleyball with the same intensity they did everything else and the real version really hurt when you took it to the face.
Kind of like an unexpected and unwelcome attraction to your ex-wife’s sister and the adoptive mother of the son you didn’t know you had, he thought with a self-derisive snort.
“Do you disagree, Brian?” Keri asked, jerking his attention back to the conversation going on around him and the fact he’d missed a chunk of it. He had no idea what he was or was not agreeing with.
“I was thinking about something else,” he said, but then he realized he didn’t want them wondering what else might be on his mind. “I was supposed to place an order this morning, and I forgot and I was just giving myself hell.”
Keri nodded and everybody moved on with the conversation, except for Rob, who’d watched him place the order. He shot his younger brother a look that basically meant he better keep his mouth shut or else, which earned him a challenging raised eyebrow and a questioning head tilt.
After another few seconds of glaring that risked attracting the attention of their parents, Brian picked up the long metal stick they used for poking at the fire. He moved the burning logs around, settling them in a way that would help them burn down more quickly.
It had been quite a day and all he wanted now was for everybody to go back to their campers and cabins so he could go to bed and stare at the ceiling half the night, wondering what the hell was happening to his life.