Chapter 3 #2
“That sounds like a yes.” I got Liam to help scrape Rían off me and ease him into the chair across from Sloane. “Liam, would you like a snack too? You’ve been working hard today. I doubt you had a chance to stop and eat. You could use the energy to power through the next few hours too.”
“It’s not steak—” he sighed as he sat between Sloane and Rían, “—but I guess it’ll have to do.”
“Me. Me. Me.” Sloane waved her arms over her head. “Don’t forget me.”
“What are you?” Liam glowered at her. “Five?”
“Ahem.” Goldie pinned him with her unrelenting stare. “You promised.”
A grumble masquerading as an apology slipped out in Sloane’s general direction.
Having settled the situation to her satisfaction, Goldie left with Fayne to change clothes.
While Sloane gloated over him getting his wrist slapped, I made three plates and served them, eager to seize the opportunity to ask Rían about dragonsbane before Goldie returned.
As the sugar hit Rían’s tongue, he perked up, correcting his slouch.
He grinned at me with chipmunk cheeks that were so adorable my fingers itched to pinch them.
Just like that, my motivation to add to his workload evaporated.
As much as I wanted to ask about Becca, about the dragonsbane, I held my questions.
He had a full evening of Q&A ahead of him, and I ought to let him rest until then.
Liam, however, I would pester later. As maguri, he ought to have the latest news.
Part of me wondered if I would gain a similar level of access to clan intel after Rían and I became official.
A happy zing raced through me until my nerves slammed on the brakes.
Just because Rían didn’t view me as a threat didn’t mean others in leadership roles would be as quick to welcome me into their inner circle.
Especially while Carmichael still posed a threat, and I remained bound to him.
“Do you feel up to greeting the guests with us?” Rían peered at me over his glass. “Usually, Fayne acts as hostess, but it’s a good opportunity for you to meet some of the clan you haven’t yet.”
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” Liam interjected, nibbling on a cookie stolen off Sloane’s plate. “You can switch out with Fayne and supervise the kids on the play—er—obstacle course.”
The massive playground had struck me as overkill for a single child the first time I saw it, even if Goldie was bound to have a surplus of friends as the magnus’s sister.
Whether they were genuine or not…that was harder to tell.
I didn’t envy her learning the same hard lessons as me, but I was grateful the sharpest edges of that education would be blunted by the support of her family and overall decency of the clan.
Sure, a parent might get overeager to pair up their son or daughter with Goldie to worm their way closer to Rían.
Not even the Walsh clan was immune to ambition.
It was human, and shifter, nature. With Rían mated, that avenue for advancement was off the table.
Sucking up via fostering friendships in Goldie’s peer group was about the only option left.
The obstacle course had been built with that in mind.
But also, I thought, with the hope some of those friendships might gain weight and turn real.
I had viewed the move to Brentwood as a great sacrifice for the Walsh clan, and it had been, but there was also reason to consider it embodied a fresh start for those who chose to come too. Including Goldie.
“I can handle it.” I tossed Liam another cookie in thanks for having my back. “I would like to introduce myself to more people, and I wouldn’t mind putting names to faces with the kids either.”
“Look at you with your parental instincts.” Sloane shoved her chair back as she rose and leaned over to squish my cheeks. “You want to handpick friends for Goldie, don’t you?”
Garbled noises clogged the back of my throat, but I couldn’t figure out how to arrange them into words.
“I recognize the look.” She stretched my face until I feared it would pop like a rubber band when she let go.
“Mom wore it every time we hit a school event. She scoped out new kids and reevaluated who I had been hanging out with. I swear she wrote a pros and cons list on the back of the flyers they handed out, but Dad claimed that was my imagination.”
“Most kids don’t share their parents’ tastes.” Liam studied her. “Did you like anyone they chose?”
“Back home, the school was small, and my class was even tinier. I didn’t have a whole lot of options.”
She told me once the small Alaskan town had around sixty-five students. Total. Across all grades.
“That sounds like a no.”
“They chose better for me than I did for myself.”
“Definitely a no.”
“The move helped put it all into perspective.” She ignored his running commentary.
“I understood why Mom was overprotective after I got into a couple of bad scrapes with people I should have known better than to hang with in the first place.” She snorted.
“Part of it was culture shock, and I couldn’t get enough of this whole new world I was living in.
The rest was probably plain ol’ vanilla rebellion for being ripped from everyone and everything I had ever known and dumped into this place where the rules I had lived by got turned on their heads. ” She sighed. “Plus, no polar bears.”
Mouth pursing, Liam squinted his eyes. “Do you need a second copy of Bad Touches are Bad?”
“Message received.” I raised my hands in surrender. “I’ll leave Goldie to find her own friends.”
But that didn’t mean I couldn’t foster an environment where genuine connection was more likely.
“I don’t trust that look,” Sloane said dryly, “but I respect where it’s coming from.”
“You’ve got to work on your poker face if you’re going to meddle in people’s lives.
” Liam patted me on the back. “Gran can give you lessons, if you want to get serious about it. She taught all of us. Rían isn’t as good as he ought to be.
He’s too genuine, poor sap, but Goldie is a pro. She’ll surpass even me one day.”
Not sure that was the wisest course of action, given she had yet to hit her rebellious teenage years, but I wasn’t in a position to question their training methods.
“We should go.” Rían pushed off the table, which creaked under his palms. “I don’t want to keep anyone waiting.” He held out a hand for me. “Last chance to get while the getting’s good.”
“What did I tell you about trying to get rid of me?” I pinched his side. “You’re stuck with me, Legs.”
“That can’t be my nickname.” He slid his arm around my waist. “I would never live it down.”
“And what a long way down it is.” Sloane snickered. “Come on, Lizard Lips.” She gripped the back of Liam’s shirt. “We need to get into position too.”
“Lizard Lips?” Rían frowned down at me. “Maybe Legs isn’t so bad.”
Allowing him to guide me, we entered the living room in time to greet the first guests of the night.
A sleepy boy around the age of two dozed on his father’s shoulder while his mother looked on with love so bright it hurt to watch them together.
That boy didn’t know how good he had it, and I didn’t envy him that.
There was a whole world out there waiting for the chance to kick his legs out from under him.
It did make me glad that, even if he stumbled, he had parents there to help him get back on his feet.
“This must be Ana,” the woman gushed, fingers clasped under her chin. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”
And on it went for the next hour. Shaking hands, kissing babies, and smiling until my cheeks hurt. Names got exchanged, most of which I forgot on the spot, and congratulations were passed out to us like candy.
Aside from three or four attendees, whose faces I took pains to memorize, no one mentioned that I was a Sartori and therefore the root of the problem. The rest embraced Rían’s happiness, embraced me, and gave me confidence I could report back to Goldie that I had been silly to be nervous.
About the time I ran out of small talk, Sloane came to my rescue.
“Sit in the front row.” She indicated a chair with a single rose placed on the seat. “The hard part is over.”
“Thank God,” I gusted out, happy to plop down and rest my aching feet. Between Jess overheating, the poisoning, and all the baking, it had been a long day, and it wasn’t over yet. Just because no one raised a red flag on their way in didn’t mean one of them wasn’t the next Mindy. “Stay with me?”
“The food starts circulating after this.” She sat beside me but kept her spine straight and head on a swivel, scanning the gathering for signs of danger. “Where else would I be?”
A hush swept through the yard when Rían stepped to the front with a sample pamphlet in hand.
Not gonna lie. The way he commanded respect without instilling fear impressed me.
Trust was almost a scent in the air I could detect.
These people had the most to lose if worse came to worst. That there was no more than the anxiety you would expect from a parent/teacher conference left me awestruck.
Granted, most of the clan hadn’t heard about Becca.
Except for those who had responded to my signal and the staff at the emergency clinic, her situation had been kept under wraps until this gathering.
Better for Rían to address worries in person than issue a clan-wide text alert that set his cellphone ringing off the hook.
“You’re drooling.” Sloane passed me a napkin that smelled suspiciously like cookies. “Shut your mouth.”
“He really is something.” I hadn’t meant to say it, not while he was talking, so I was glad it slipped out on a whisper. Rían caught my eye, his gaze softening on me, and I mouthed, “Sorry.”
But the grin tugging on his lips convinced me he wasn’t mad about it.
The overwhelming urge to drop my face into my hands and hide itched in my palms, but I forced myself to remain calm.
Even if a few knowing smiles on my periphery left my cheeks sizzling from the slip-up and desperate for the speech to end so I had an excuse to flee to the kitchen and collect myself before facing the clan again.
As soon as Rían wrapped up his talking points and the applause died down, he opened the floor for questions.
That was my cue to slip away and arm the enforcers on duty with trays of refreshments.
“Those aren’t cookies,” Sloane whined from behind me. “I was promised cookies.”
Never mind she had already eaten a dozen tonight between what I gave her and what she had stolen.
“The cookies are for the kids. The real food is for the adults.” I jerked my chin toward a plate I made for her earlier.
“Mini cheese quiches—no icky onions or spinach per Goldie’s orders.
Pigs in blankets made with only the finest of mini sausages.
Sweet and sour meatballs with plastic sword skewers—a must for any party involving a dragon skull flag.
” Like the one flying above the fort. “There are also cheese-cracker-crusted chicken nuggets, bang bang shrimp, and deviled eggs.”
“Why won’t you marry me?” She inhaled her shrimp in a single gulp. “I’ll buy you a diamond the size of a grape. Just maybe don’t have it appraised. Like ever. Plastic isn’t worth as much as it used to be, and it should be the thought that counts anyway. Who can put a price on true love?”
“Rían would pick you out of his teeth if you ever proposed to her.” Liam stole an egg from her fingers.
“If you want to get married that bad, pick another sucker then move in next door to her and Rían. Then you two can duke it out to be their favorite couple and get invited to game nights, dinners, and holidays.”
“What if I buy the house and become their favorite singleton?”
“Couples always want other couples to do couple things with.” He darted his hand toward her napkin then yelped when she bit him, thinking he was moving in on her quiches. “You’d probably have to pay someone to put up with you, so I’d save that ring money to entice a sucker to propose.”
“Or.” She lifted a finger. “Just hear me out.” Liam, rightly, looked wary. “You and I are already their favorite people. Why don’t we skip the ring, forget the wedding, and move in together beside them? We can be roomies. Friends with benefits, if you will. Except the benefits are Ana’s cooking.”
“But then I would have to live with you.”
“What can I say? Someone always gets the better deal, and this time it’s you.”
“Ummm.”
“You don’t have to give me an answer now. Take some time to think—”
“No.”
“—about it.” She moved on to the pigs in blankets. “It’s a big decision, and you don’t want to—”
“Yeah.” Liam shook his head. “Still no.”
While Sloane attempted to convince him she was roommate material, I escaped before she could drag me in as a reference. She was a menace in bed, and she was also kind of a menace out of bed. The best thing I could do was avoid answering any questions pertaining to living with her.
Life with Sloane, as much as I had grown to love her, was not for the weak.
The remaining tray held the meatballs, so I carried those into the yard to make my rounds.
Finger food had been the right way to go in this setting, but a buffet-style spread would have made more sense.
Unless the point was to mingle and socialize, in which case, I would call it a rousing success.
To be sure, I sensed an unseen hand in this event.
Fayne’s. It would be just like her to slide me into the hostess seat, thus forcing me outside my comfort zone.
But maybe that was what family, real family, did for you. Gave you a nudge in the right direction.
As long as the nudge didn’t turn into a shove, I could deal with that.