“Thanks, Alex,” Cade said when he shut the door to her car at Mason’s house a few hours later. He’d taken a Zofran just in case, but honestly he felt pretty good. Fifteen minutes didn’t normally get him that sick, but after yesterday, he wasn’t taking a chance.
Alex pulled out of Mason’s driveway and Cade walked up to the front door, went to just walk in, but remembered his brother didn’t live alone anymore, then rang the doorbell.
“Hey,” Mason said. “Come on in.”
“I’m just grabbing my car.”
“No rush. Jessica is in the kitchen throwing some lunch together. Do you want something? Where’s Alex?”
“She dropped me off and went home. She had a few things to do today. I’ll just get out of your way.”
“Cade,” Jessica said from the doorway, her hand on her lower back. “Come in here and sit down so we can apologize.”
He grinned. He loved it when she ordered them around. More so when it was Mason, but he had a soft spot for her since she was the first one to really give him crap the first time he met her. He thought Jessica had a great personality, but realized maybe he’d overstepped his bounds a few times lately.
“What do you have to apologize for?” he asked, pulling out a chair. There was a bunch of leftover food spread out from the night before. He thought it’d look gross to him after being so sick but surprisingly he was still starving.
“We all had a bunch to drink last night and thought it was funny to send you home with Alex. After you guys left I realized that even though it was a short drive, you might not have fared so well?” Mason asked.
“Nope,” he said quickly, reaching for a plate and filling it with a little bit of everything laid out on the table.
“Sorry about that,” Jessica said. “It was probably my fault for twisting Alex’s arm to have her follow me to the house. Everyone was talking about picking the boys up and she was kind of left in the dark.”
“I probably had it coming. Sorry if I’ve overstepped myself with the big mama jokes lately.”
Jessica snorted. “You have, but I’ve come to expect no different from you.”
She was grinning so Cade didn’t feel too bad about it. “How are you feeling? Truly? I know Mason has mentioned you’ve been sick a few times, and well, we know I can sympathize.”
“It’s not too bad as long as I actually get sick. Once I throw up I feel fine. It’s when I just feel nauseous for hours on end. That is the worst. Thankfully it’s not often.”
“Trust me, I know how you feel.”
He dug into his lunch and was just hoping they’d change the subject, but they didn’t. Mason wasn’t normally this talkative. “How was Alex with it all? I’m assuming she didn’t leave you alone since she brought you here?”
“She was good. Took better care of me than Mom ever did.”
“Really?” Mason said, looking over at Jessica then back to him.
“What is so surprising about that?” Cade asked around a mouth full of potato salad.
“Nothing. Just that you never wanted any woman you dated to really know about that little weakness of yours. She knows and was good with it.”
“Your point?” Cade asked. He was trying not to be snotty, but it was hard. He hated talking about this and was still annoyed to this day he had to deal with it so often.
“What’s going on with you two?” Mason asked.
“I’d think it’s pretty obvious since she brought me home and took care of me last night.”
“I’m guessing she did more than take care of you,” Jessica said, winking. “All of us were talking about having fun last night with the boys. Unfortunately, you didn’t get so lucky, did you?”
Yep, there she was busting his ass like he loved so much. “Lucky enough in more ways than one.”
Alex showed a side of herself last night that led him to believe she was more invested than she wanted to say. The question was why she was so afraid.
Mason laughed. “So things are good, then?”
“Good enough,” he said fast.
“Which means there is more going on?” Mason asked.
“Just let it go,” he said.
“She defended you last night,” Jessica said.
“I heard.”
“You don’t get it,” Jessica argued. “Alex really stood up for you. Not just a few token words about how you always made people laugh when they needed it but sang your praises enough that your mother was all but bouncing on her toes over it.”
“What does that mean?” Cade asked. “The comment about Mom?”
Jessica and Mason just eyed each other some more and he was starting to think he was being left out of the loop of something.
“Nothing,” Jessica said. “She likes Alex a lot. We all do. I’m just glad you’re with someone that fits in with us so well. It’s almost like she was a perfect match that just fell out of the sky.”
Mason and Jessica laughed, but he just shook his head. “Tell her that. She just wants to be friends.”
“That’s not the impression I got last night,” Jessica said.
“It’s the words out of her mouth for the most part. Her actions might speak something else, but she isn’t letting me in on much.”
***
Monday morning, Alex was ready to get started early and just pulled into the parking lot when a big truck stopped next to her. She looked in the cab and saw it was Mason. Geez, every time she turned around one of the Fierce family members was stopping over.
“Hey, Mason. What are you doing here?”
“I knew you started early. Cade said so. I was wondering if I could talk to you about an idea I had before you got busy.”
“Sure,” she said. “Follow me in the building.” She waited while he shut his truck off and started walking with her. “What did you have in mind? Don’t you have to run it by everyone or something like that?”
“No. Not for the shop. Not like you think. I mean Cade takes care of some things, but when it comes to the shop or online items, Ella does the ordering for me. Well, Jessica is actually slowly taking over some of that. She isn’t doing tours as much and I’ve got her doing more paperwork at the moment. Less for me and Ella to deal with.”
“That’s nice that she can help out,” Alex said, unlocking the door.
“She’s going to start brewing with me after the babies are born. Or so she thinks, but I’m sure she’ll have her hands full.”
“She’s not going to stay home with the babies?” Alex asked, flipping lights to the shop now.
“She will, but she isn’t someone to stay home and do nothing. My mom will be watching the kids on and off while Jessica comes in with me and does some work when she wants. The rest she’ll probably just do from home. We’ll figure it out as it goes. Whatever works for her, will work for me.”
“That’s nice. I like your family dynamics. How you all seem to work together.”
“We’re good that way,” he said, smirking at her. “So I wanted to do some glass coasters like the glass on the shadow boxes. I thought they’d be a good item to sell. The other thing is, I was wondering if you could etch into stone, like marble. Or a heavy stone like that?”
“I could try. I haven’t yet but I think it’d be something unique to your brand if we could find some dark red stone.”
“That was my thought exactly. I can have Ella look into products. Or Jessica.”
“I can do it. I’ll know what works best for the machine this way. Give me a week or so to put some thought into it and get an idea of what might work and then I’ll look for vendors and we’ll go from there.”
“Sounds great.” He stood there for a minute, almost like he was hesitating and finally said, “So you made it through Cade’s little episode on Saturday night.”
She laughed. “It was far from little. Once on the side of the road, then in his bathroom a few more times that night. Poor guy. I didn’t realize someone could get so sick like that from a car ride.”
“It was nasty when we were kids going places, but he’s been fine for the most part now.”
“He told me about his magic little pill, but since he was drinking he couldn’t take it.”
“Yeah,” Mason said, grinning. “The thing is, we probably should have let him stay the night instead of putting him in that position.”
“No way,” Alex said, laughing. “Jessica had some serious plans for you two on Saturday and I had to help a girl out. Cade was coming home with me regardless.”
Mason actually blushed and it was kind of cute. “Thanks for that. Anyway, Cade’s a good guy. Sometimes he’s probably the best of us, but we don’t say that often.”
She angled her head. “I don’t think he feels any of you think that.”
“Probably not. Comes from years of always busting on each other. But at the root of it, we’ve always got each other’s back.”
“That’s nice,” she said. “He’s a great guy.”
“Yeah,” Mason said, “he is.”