Save me, Uncle Grazer!” Bruce hurdled himself at me, barely giving me enough warning to catch the little flying dynamo.

His younger brother, Josh, came running around the corner shooting Nerf darts from a bright yellow and orange machine-gun-style toy. I winced dramatically before I turned and tossed Bruce over my shoulder as I took off running across the yard.

Bruce was laughing when I set him down behind the hedge where our hidden rash of ammo from earlier was stored. I stood and held both hands up with palms out.

“Time Out, kids! Uncle Grazer is too old for this shi—stuff. I’m bowing out, you guys go ahead finish the war without me.”

I ignored the groans from the various kids hidden around the yard as I made my way to the deck where the adults were all sitting around visiting and waiting for the meat to come off the grill.

“About time you decided to come join the grown folks,” Cecil said as he passed me a cold beer.

“Yeah, I forgot how much I’d missed these kids of yours. Even yours, Tom—if that can be believed.” I smirked playfully at Tom and his husband, Colin. “Seriously though, I must be going through some sort of midlife crisis because I’m a lot more kid friendly that I used to be. Shocking, I know. Trust me, no one is more surprised by this than I am.”

Ian flashed me a grin from where he stood skillfully flipping burgers over the hot coals. “Don’t fucking lie, Grazer. You’ve never grown up, that’s why you have so much fun playing with all of our kids. The Pied-fucking-Piper, that’s what you are.”

I shrugged and tossed my buddy a shit-eating grin. He wasn’t wrong, I’d always been great with kids—as long as I got to give them back when I was done riling them up.

“So Grazer, can you talk about your secret job you’ve been on these past couple of years now? Or is the NDA still in effect?” Cecil settled down next to me, smiling at me through his wire-rimmed glasses with friendly eyes. “What were you even doing? Another private investigation job? Or was it security detail this time? I can never keep track of exactly what it is you do.”

Flashing him a smile, I tipped back my beer for a quick drink before answering. “Well, my business card says that I do personal security and discrete investigations since I do both, so you pretty much nailed it in one? But, yeah. I can talk about it now.”

I looked around the table. “Are you guys familiar with Newt Silvers?”

“Are you kidding me? He’s only the lead singer for one of the hottest punk bands around. We may live in Hollydale but that doesn’t mean we live under a rock,” Tom scoffed.

“Yeah, even I’ve heard of the lead singer from Junk Male,” Cecil chuckled. “What about him?”

“Okay, well, he’s had a stalker for the past several years. He wasn’t too concerned about it, until his daughter was born. Then the attacks grew more personal, and he was worried for his daughter. She was a year old when he hired me to head her security detail. The FBI finally found his stalker, and the dude’s finally behind bars where he belongs. And now, I am either unemployed or facing early retirement. I haven’t decided either way, to be honest. But I’m not taking any jobs for a bit, so don’t even try to throw work at me, Ian.”

“Oh, shit. So you’ve known this girl for the past two years, and then you had to say goodbye? No wonder you been playing with all of our kids! You went and got yourself attached to a tiny human,” Tom spoke with a strangely triumphant look in his eye.

I shrugged a shoulder. “Yeah, I’m gonna miss that girl. I’ve known her since she was in diapers, and now she’s starting preschool Monday. I helped her learn to walk, and within the next six months will probably forget my name. Oh, well. Hazards of the job, I suppose.”

Cecil gave me a long measuring look. “You know, if you’d quit dating grandpas and maybe find someone who isn’t old enough for a prostate exam, maybe you’d have a kid or two of your own. Something to think about, maybe.”

I threw back my head and laughed at that, because he wasn’t wrong. I turned my attention to Ian as a thought flitted through my head.

“Speaking of older daddy and grandpa types—how is your dad doing? Is he still with that boyfriend of his? Now that I’m free and toying with the idea of settling down somewhere, I think I could almost handle those Floridian early-bird dinners to get my hands on your Pops.”

Ian threw an empty water bottle at me and flashed me a playful glare, not dignifying my question with a response. Before I could goad him further, Tom spoke up again.

“I don’t know if I’d be rushing off anywhere just yet, Grazer. Maybe you have ties here locally that you don’t even know about. You should give Hollydale a try. You could, I don’t know… Maybe find a younger guy and try being the daddy instead of dating one?”

“Wait… Are you saying I look old enough to be a daddy type? Dude… That’s just cold.”

Tom shrugged. “What can I say? Tom is nothing if he’s not honest. But, you never know. You might try being a daddy type—or maybe become an actual daddy? I’m just saying, you never know. If it was me, though? I’d stick around town for awhile and maybe reconnect with some old acquaintances.”

Before I could ask what the hell that meant, or unpack the meaningful look he was leveling at me, the kids started screaming with excitement and pointing at an adorable bunny that was darting through the flower bed.

“Oh, hell. Bugs-fucking-bunny over there better not be eating up my flower beds,” Ian grumbled.

“Stop bitching, 90210,” Cecil giggled. “Bunnies don’t eat flowers. Do they?”

“Besides, look at that fluffy little brown and white floppy-eared sweetie,” Tom said. “Naw, I’m not worried about your flowers. I’d be more worried about those kids getting a hold of him and squishing him.”

I’m not sure what made me do it, but I hopped up and ran over to keep the kids from hurting the bunny. Right as I got close to the flower bed, the fucking thing raced away. Once the bunny was gone, the kids lost interest and went back to their war games.

I started to turn around, when something caught the corner of my eye. I walked closer to see a huge egg, about the size of a duck’s, sitting in the flower bed right where the bunny had just been.

I bent down to pick it up, turning it over in my hand with awe. It appeared as if it had been hollowed out and hand painted with a beautiful oil painting of a stork flying through a starlit sky with a tied-off pink bundle hanging from its beak, and a gray-eyed baby peeking out from the bundle.

I picked the egg up carefully, and dusted it off, before carrying it back over to the patio.

“Did you guys lose something? I’m pretty sure bunnies don’t shit out eggs, especially not fancy ones that are this fucking big.”

Cecil and Ian both looked at it with blank expressions as they shook their heads, before Cecil finally shrugged.

“Who knows? Easter is next month. And there was a bunny… Maybe it was the Easter Bunny?” He waggled his eyebrows teasingly.

Everyone groaned at Cecil’s joke, as I sat down to pass around the egg. Nobody wanted to take it, so I examined it closer. When I held the egg up to look at it, something rattled inside. I pulled my Swiss Army knife out of my pocket, and used one of the smaller screwdriver tips to pry the object out of the egg.

It was a tightly wound scroll of fancy, linen paper. When I opened it, I found a message that been hand-written in calligraphy.

“Find it in your heart to forgive… An open heart is never lonely.”

“Wow, that’s deep.” Ian grinned.

“Here, you guys take it. This is your house, and I found it your flower bed. Wherever it came from, it’s beautifully done.”

Cecil just shook his head. “Haven’t you ever heard of the finders keepers rule? Besides… For some odd reason, I feel like that was meant for you to find. Don’t ask me why, that’s just what my gut is telling me.”

As the conversation wound down, I finally got the balls to ask the question that had been weighing on my mind since I’d arrived earlier in the day.

“So, whatever happened to that nice manny you guys had around for so long? Luke, right? Is today his day off, or do you not need him now that the boys are older?”

Ian got a pinched look on his face that I couldn’t quite decipher. “No, unfortunately he had to quit. He left us because he felt like he couldn’t stay with us now that he’s busy with Sam in his life. We tried to get him to stay, but he insisted on being alone with Sam and making a home for them.”

“Not that Sam ever gives him much of a chance for a personal life anyway,” Cecil added with a light laugh.

Fuck. I was seriously bummed to hear that Luke was taken now, but more than that—it concerned me that this Sam guy could possibly be an abuser if he was keeping Luke from having a personal life.

I didn’t pursue it with the guys, but I made a silent vow to myself that I’d be looking into it this week. For Luke’s sake, I mean.

It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I spent way too many nights in the past couple of years wondering if I’d been too fast to blow him off after our last night together.

Oh, well. It was far too late to cry over spilled milk. Besides—I really wasn’t quite ready to be the daddy in a May December combo. I had at least another five to ten years before I needed to worry about that shit. Okay, maybe five. But… that time was definitely not today.

As I took another pull from my beer, I couldn’t help but notice that Tom was still watching me. I had no clue what his deal was, and no desire to figure it out right now. Instead, I turned the egg over in my hand and examined it some more.