The rest of the evening passed without any further tension. Kevin enjoyed getting to know Andrew and his family. While the kids played in the yard, Lydia, who was obviously close to Chelsea, told a couple of funny stories about Chelsea that Kevin had never heard before,

“So, she really knocked someone into the cake at a wedding?” Kevin asked, incredulous.

Lydia couldn’t stop laughing long enough to reply.

“Have you seen her on the dance floor?” Andrew asked. “Everyone is in danger!”

“That is so not true!” Chelsea protested. “I was pushed. That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.”

“And the bride and groom,” Lydia said between gasps of laughter, “they had to cut the cake from the floor.”

Kevin laughed at the picture of chaos she painted.

“If you laugh at this story,” Chelsea said with a menacing scowl, “I’m never having sex with you again.”

Andrew put his hands over his ears. “Stop it right now. My baby sister does not have sex.”

Kevin rolled his eyes. “You sound like my nephews. Their younger sister has two kids, and they still think she’s as pure as the driven snow.”

“Sisters don’t have sex,” Andrew said. “That’s my final word on the matter.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Kevin said. “I only have brothers.”

“You’re a lucky man. Sisters are a burden we brothers have to bear.”

“Shut up, Andrew,” Chelsea said, giving him a shove that had him laughing.

The kids wandered over to join them, and Josie curled up in Chelsea’s lap while Travis stood next to her chair. She put one arm around the little girl and made her giggle with kisses to her neck while putting her other arm around her nephew to bring him closer to her. Watching her with the kids tonight had been a revelation to Kevin. She was so natural and comfortable with them, and he’d been given a glimpse of what kind of mother she would be.

“I hate to say it, but we need to get the kids back to the hotel,” Lydia said. “This has been fun. Thank you for the hospitality, Kevin.”

“It was my pleasure. I hope to see you again before you leave.”

“Dinner tomorrow night?” Andrew asked. “On us?”

Kevin glanced at Chelsea, who said, “We’d love to.”

“Excellent.”

Andrew and Lydia helped them carry plates and condiments in from the deck and gathered their kids. “Thanks again for an enjoyable evening,” Andrew said, extending his hand to Kevin.

“It was nice to finally meet you.”

“Likewise.”

Kevin stood in the doorway while Chelsea walked them out, giving her a minute to say her goodbyes. She rejoined him to wave as they drove off in her car. He put his arm around her. “That was fun.”

“It really was, but I feel like I interrupted something between you and Andrew in the kitchen.”

“Just two guys getting to know each other.”

She raised a brow. “That’s all it was?”

Kevin followed her to the kitchen, where they worked together to clean up. “He was a little concerned about our age difference.”

“I almost died when he mistook Riley for you. I felt bad about that.”

“I have to wonder why you never mentioned to him that I’m quite a bit older than you.”

She shrugged. “Because it doesn’t matter to me.”

“That’s nice to hear, but I think your brother would prefer to see you with a young guy like Riley rather than an old goat like me.”

Chelsea slipped her arms around him from behind. “You’re my old goat.”

Kevin laughed and made a goat noise.

“Should I be concerned that you do that so well?”

He turned to her, put his arms around her and kissed her. “Hello.”

“Hi there.”

“I’ve been wanting to kiss you for hours.”

“Me, too, but I’m mad at you for laughing at the cake story.”

“I couldn’t help it. That was hilarious.”

“Not at the time, it wasn’t.”

“Maybe not for you, but for everyone else at the wedding, it was pretty damned funny.”

“Luckily, the bride was drunk by the time she had to cut the cake and didn’t realize her cake was on the floor.”

Kevin smiled at her, enchanted as always when she was nearby. “I was thinking earlier…”

“About?”

“Our living situation.”

“What about it?”

“This place is kinda crowded with three of us, and yours is too small for three of us.” He shrugged. “I was thinking we ought to get a bigger place. Together.”

“Wait,” she said, shaking her head. “Three of us?”

“You, me and the baby we might have together.” Kevin wasn’t sure exactly when he’d come around to the idea of having a baby with her, but now that he had, the thought of their child excited rather than scared him.

“Kevin… What’re you saying?”

“I’m saying I love you, I love us, and if we’re lucky enough to have a child together, I’ll love our baby, too.”

“You mean it?”

“I’d never say it if I didn’t.”

She rested her forehead against his chest and took a deep shuddering breath.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She nodded. “I thought I’d ruined everything.”

“You haven’t ruined anything. You told me what you wanted, and you should always do that.”

Raising her head, she looked up at him, her eyes shiny with unshed tears. “And you’re sure this is what you want?”

“I want you. And I want you to be happy.”

“I want that for you, too. If you’re only doing this for me—”

He placed a finger over her lips. “I’m doing this for us. Up until I met you, my boys were the best part of my life, and they still are. Don’t get me wrong. But this, with you… I’ve never been as happy as I am with you, Chels. I just want you and this for the rest of my life. I might not have planned to fall madly in love with a woman who wants children, but that’s what happened. So now I roll with it.”

She wiped away a flood of tears. “Sorry to be so dramatic, but I’ve gone from thinking I’d ruined us to hearing you want to move in together and have a baby.”

Smiling, he drew her into his embrace. “I don’t mean to give you whiplash, babe.”

She hugged him as tightly as he hugged her.

He kissed the top of her head. “Come on. Let’s go to bed.”

“We need to finish the dishes.”

“They can wait until the morning.”

Riley’s head wasn’t in the card game, which was why he’d already lost a hundred bucks to Mac, who was on fire. They were at Mac’s house while the girls gathered at Janey’s to celebrate her homecoming with baby Vivienne and Daisy’s upcoming wedding.

“What’s with you tonight?” Finn asked when they were on a beer break. “You’re not usually so easily taken for a ride at the poker table.”

“Tired. Long day at work.”

“Where’d you disappear to all day? I thought you were just doing a patch at the Hoppers’ and then coming back.”

“The Hopper house is more complicated than we thought.”

“Have you seen Jordan?”

Riley shook his head. “Just her sister, Nikki. Did you know Jordan’s a twin?”

“Hadn’t heard that,” Finn said, studying him more intently now. “What’s the sister like?”

“She’s nice. Got a lot on her plate with what’s going on with Jordan and a leaking roof.”

“Huh,” Finn said, taking a drink of his beer.

“What does that mean?”

“Nothing. Just wondering how you know so much about what the sister has on her plate. That’s all.”

Riley had walked right into Finn’s trap. “Because she told me?”

Finn’s eyes glittered with mischief. “I thought you were on the roof. Was she up there with you?”

Riley wanted to punch him, but before he could make a fist, a shout went out across the room that had him turning to see what was going on.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Blaine Taylor roared, his face turning a scary shade of red. “Guys are massaging them?”

“That’s what we heard,” Adam said. “But we can’t go over there.”

“The hell we can’t!” Blaine said. He still wore his uniform and had his weapon holstered at his hip. “No guy is massaging my wife except for me.”

“If we go over there,” Grant said, “they’re going to mock us for the rest of our lives, and frankly, we’d deserve it.”

“If you don’t care about some strange guy having his hands all over your wife, then stay here,” Blaine said, “but I’m going.”

“I’m going with him,” Mac said.

“Has it occurred to you that this is another setup?” Grant asked his brother.

“Why would she do the same thing she’s already done to us?” Mac asked. “We’d see right through that.”

“You’re about to go running over there on the outside chance that guys are massaging them,” Adam said.

Mac thought about that for a second. “Maddie told me she’d booked massages with the guys from the spa. I told her she’d better not have, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t do it anyway.”

“If you girls are done sharing your feelings,” Blaine said, teeth gritted, “I’m going to get my wife.” He stormed out the door that led to Mac’s deck and clomped down the stairs.

Mac chased after him. “Blaine! Wait for me.”

Sighing, Adam said, “We’d better go with them to make sure they don’t do anything stupid.”

“It’s probably already too late for that,” Grant said as the two of them gave chase.

“I don’t know about you,” Riley said to Finn, “but I want to see this.”

“Me, too,” Luke said as Shane and Evan nodded in agreement.

“They never learn,” Shane said.

“That’s what makes them so entertaining,” Luke said, shaking his head as he laughed.

They piled into Luke’s truck for the short drive to Joe and Janey’s and arrived right behind Blaine and Mac, who were in Blaine’s truck. Blaine was in such a rush that he left the driver’s side door open in his haste to get to Tiffany.

What might it be like, Riley wondered, to be so crazy about a woman that you did stupid things in the name of love, such as barging into a girls-only gathering like a battering ram on steroids? Riley wouldn’t know because he’d never had those feelings for a woman. Sure, he knew they existed, saw regular examples of it every day among his cousins and their friends, but he hadn’t experienced it.

Sometimes he wondered if there was something wrong with him that had made him miss out on something even his own brother had experienced with Missy, not that he’d want that kind of relationship for himself. That was one chick who was way more trouble than she was worth, at least as far as he was concerned.

Following his cousins into Janey’s house, he stood back to watch the show unfold, and what a show it turned out to be.

“What the hell is going on here?” Blaine bellowed, startling the women and waking the baby sleeping in Janey’s arms.

Vivienne let out a lusty cry that had all the women scowling at Blaine.

Tiffany got up from her spot on the floor and went to her husband, placing a hand on his chest and pushing him backward out of the room where the women were gathered in a circle that also included Maddie, Stephanie, Daisy, Mallory, Victoria, Grace, Sydney Harris, Jenny Martinez, Hope Martinez, Erin Barton and Lizzie James.

From what Riley could see, there was no sign of men, except for Joe, who came downstairs and took the baby from Janey.

“What’s the deal, boys?” Joe asked as he patted the baby’s back and succeeded in soothing her.

Grant began to laugh, and he couldn’t seem to stop. He bent at the waist and howled while Mac and Blaine scowled at him.

“What I think the deal is, Joe,” Adam said, “is that our friends Mac and Blaine were led to believe there would be male massage therapists here tending to their wives, and apparently, that was a problem for our intrepid friends.”

Joe laughed as he patted Vivienne’s back, calming her instantly. “You guys never learn, do you?”

“Maddie told me there would be men giving massages,” Mac said, scowling at his wife.

“I don’t recall saying that,” she said, giving her husband a sly smile. “I said I’d asked them to give us massages. I never said they’d accepted. Turns out they were booked tonight. Such a bummer.”

Blaine scowled at Mac. “Seriously?”

“She said it! I swear to God!”

“She was pranking us,” Blaine said, fuming. “And you fell for it. Again!”

“So did you!”

Maddie began to laugh, taking the other women with her. “You are so easy,” she said, gasping for air and wiping tears from her eyes. “So, so easy.”

Mac glared at her. “Make no mistake about it, this is a declaration of war, my love.”

Maddie dismissed his comment with a wave of her hand. “You don’t scare me.” The words were no sooner out of her mouth when she grimaced. Placing her hand over her pregnant belly, she took a deep breath.

“What?” Mac asked her.

“That felt like a contraction.”

“Very funny,” he said. “You’ve already had your way with me and won this round. Enjoy your success while it lasts.”

She looked up at him, and the fear he saw in her eyes stopped his heart. “I’m not joking, Mac.”

“No! Not yet. You promised me no baby until after Thomas starts school and we can go to the mainland!”

The words came out like one long chant that put Riley on edge as he watched the scene play out before him.

Maddie was about to reply when her face twisted once again in a grimace. “Ugh,” she said, moaning. “That was definitely a contraction.”

Victoria jumped into action. “Let’s get you to the clinic so we can see what’s going on. Daisy, will you please call David and have him meet us there?”

“Why do you need him?” Mac asked. “What do you think is wrong?”

“Nothing is wrong,” Victoria assured him. “But if she’s going to deliver this baby, I want him there.”

“She is not going to deliver this baby,” Mac said, “because it’s not due for two more weeks, and she’s having this baby on the goddamned mainland!”

Adam stepped forward, took Mac by the arm and pulled him back. “You need to take a breath, man. If you have a heart attack, you won’t be any good to Maddie when she needs you—and she needs you right now.”

“This isn’t supposed to happen here,” Mac muttered, his eyes fixed on Maddie, who was being helped up by Victoria and Stephanie.

“I know, but it is happening, and you need to get it together,” Adam said, giving Mac a shake to snap him out of his stupor.

He crossed the room to Maddie, lifted her into his arms and carried her from the house with a new look of determination in his eyes.

“Holy shit,” Finn whispered.

Riley couldn’t have said it better himself. There was a lot to be said for being single—and staying that way.