After work on Friday, Tiffani hurried home from the office to get ready for the cookout. Adam was supposed to pick her up at six, which gave her less than an hour to get ready. He’d told her that the meal usually started at six-thirty, but his mother and the boys tended to do all the work for Friday nights.

She changed into jeans and a pink gingham button-up shirt, adding a cowboy hat and her pink cowboy boots. She was just taking a moment to look at herself in the mirror and make sure she looked all right when a knock came at the door.

She scooped the kitten up in her arms, afraid he’d try to get out, before hurrying over to open the door. “Hi, Adam.”

He looked her up and down. “You look beautiful.”

“Is this outfit all right? I don’t want to stick out like a sore thumb.”

“You’ll find that everyone is dressed pretty much like you are. Of course, no one else will wear it quite like you do!” Adam took her hand and pulled her toward him. “Do you have any idea how much I want to kiss you?”

She shook her head, blushing a bit. “No, but you know how much I want you to kiss me.”

He sighed. “Maybe you should be an empath too. It would help you understand my struggles.”

She nodded. “We should just go, shouldn’t we? Do I need my purse?”

“Nope. You just need you.” He took the kitten from her and set him on the floor, taking her hand and pulling her out of her small house. “We’re going to do a lot better if we’re surrounded by people.”

She closed the door and then stopped, looking at him. “But you have a hard time being around a lot of people.”

He shrugged. “I do. I managed to make it through both college and medical school with people surrounding me, though. I’m just happier and less stressed with fewer people.”

“Do you usually go to this?” she asked, curious about the activity.

“I try to go every week, but it’s hard for me. It’s perfect for a first date, though, so I think we should do it.”

She frowned. “I don’t want to make you uncomfortable just because I need to be around people.”

“I need to be around people, too. If we’re not around a lot of people, we’ll have a hard time keeping our hands off each other.”

She blushed at his wording, but she knew he was right. His shoulders alone had her drooling, but when she added in his eyes, she really had problems. “Let’s go then.”

He led her to his truck. “It’s done up at the main house, so it’ll be easier to take my truck. You’re going to be eaten up by mosquitos on the way back otherwise.”

She got into the passenger seat of his truck, looking around her. “The ranch is huge. How big is it?”

“Approximately twenty-thousand acres, give or take a few.” He knew the number sounded huge to some, but the King Ranch in South Texas was seven-hundred-fifty-thousand acres. His family’s spread was downright miniscule in comparison.

“That’s so big! How do you run it?”

He grinned. “We have two bunkhouses that each house fifty men. They do the majority of the work. We have the boys split into five work crews, and they’re expected to pull their weight. We don’t have them here for the free labor, but it helps them to learn work ethic and how to be productive members of society.”

“That makes a lot of sense to me. Do you have to pay them for the work they do?”

“We choose to pay them. I’m not sure if we have to, but providing them pocket money helps them to learn to manage money as well. We do a lot of outings, and let the boys get used to having their own money. It’s a good learning experience for them.”

She nodded. “Why only boys? Were there no girls in the original orphanage?”

“There weren’t! So we kept it as a boys’ ranch. With my family always having seven sons, we also think it’s smart to not have girls running around everywhere. The way it’s set up, the boys are perfectly comfortable running around shirtless.”

“Makes a whole lot of sense.” She really couldn’t imagine what it would be like on the ranch if there were girls running around.

He pulled off to the side of the main ranch house, and as she opened the door of the vehicle, she could smell the brisket cooking. “That smells so good!”

“My mom makes the best brisket in the whole state.” He took her hand as they walked toward the people. “Have you met a lot of the boys yet?”

She shook her head. “Just Nick.”

“What do you think of Nick?” he asked, his eyes automatically scanning the crowd for the boy.

“I’m not sure. He seemed to almost be disappointed to choose the calico cat because he wanted to thwart me. He just struck me as very unhappy.”

“He is. Most of the boys go through that when they first arrive. They think they are here because they aren’t wanted anywhere else. They don’t understand that for most families, this is a last-ditch effort to turn their kids into productive members of society.”

“That’s really sad. I feel bad for him.”

Adam sighed. “I do too. Sad thing is he really needs to be here. We can help him if he’ll let us.” He spotted the boy standing with his housemates along with Caleb and Benjamin and immediately headed in that direction. “Hey, Nick! How’s it going?”

“I want to go home.” Nick wouldn’t even meet Adam’s eyes as he said it. Adam knew Nick would never go home. Very few boys did once they made it to the ranch. Going home put them back into the same situation they’d been in, with all of the negative things that could happen. No, Nick needed to stay there.

“That’s not possible right now. How’s the kitten?” Adam deliberately changed the subject to positive things, trying to distract the boy from his desires.

“He’s great. I’m calling him Crush.”

“I love that name,” Tiffani told him. “I named my new kitten Bob. He’s a bobcat now.”

“That’s really bad. Old people humor always makes me wonder.” Nick wandered off, but he had a slight smile on his face. He was obviously starting to enjoy himself.

Adam frowned after him. “He’s thinking about killing himself.”

“What? No way!” Tiffani was shocked. The belligerent boy she’d met didn’t seem even a little bit suicidal to her.

“He’s doing his best to mask it. Before he came to us, he spent two weeks in a hospital detoxing. He’s so used to masking his emotions that he’s having a hard time dealing with them all now.”

“Is there anything we can do to help him?”

“I’m going to talk to Caleb and Benjamin. We’ll put him on a suicide watch. At least for the next month or so. No matter how happy he seems, he’ll need to be around someone at all times.” He looked down at her for a moment. “Come with me, and I’ll introduce you to two more of my brothers.”

They made their way through the crowd to two tall men on the other side of the huge fire pit the brisket was roasting on. “Benjamin, Caleb, you both need to meet Tiffani. She’s our new fundraising coordinator.”

“Oh, the fundster. Ephraim mentioned you!” One of the brothers held his hand out to shake hers. “I’m Caleb.”

“It’s nice to meet you.” Tiffani felt a little shy meeting his entire family this way, but she had to get over that.

The man who must be Benjamin smiled down at her. “So you’re going to be the ball and chain, are you?”

Tiffani felt like a deer in the headlights of an oncoming semi. “I wouldn’t say that. We only just met.”

“But Dad said…” Benjamin frowned at Adam. “She’s the one, right?”

Adam shrugged. “Maybe we could talk about this later.”

Caleb laughed. “Yeah, like when she’s not standing right there. Sorry, Tiffani. Our family believes in all these silly gifts of ours.”

Adam looked upset. “I need to call a suicide watch on Nick. I’m getting worried about him.”

Caleb nodded. “I’m feeling the same stuff. We’ve been watching him and will continue.”

“Good thanks. Now I get to go try and explain things to my girl, because she’s standing next to me quietly freaking out. Thanks, guys. You make life so much more interesting.”

“Sorry, man.” Benjamin said the words, but he looked more amused than sorry. He obviously thought throwing his brother under the bus was fun.

Adam took Tiffani’s hand and led her away from everyone to one of the picnic tables that was not yet occupied. “I guess I need to explain.”

Tiffani sat down on the bench and looked at him, waiting for a moment. “That would be really nice. I need to know what on earth your brothers were trying not to say.”

He sighed. “I told you that Dad has flashes of the future. He told me that you were the one I needed to hire and get to know. He thinks we’re destined to marry.”

She gaped at him for a moment. “Destined to marry? Do you believe in that hogwash?”

“As a matter of fact, I do believe it. I believe it with everything inside me. So I made sure that I got as close to you as I could as fast as I could. There’s nothing against you, but I do believe we’ll marry someday.”

“Would you have approached me if your father hadn’t put that bug in your ear?” She wasn’t sure if she should even believe in his interest now. What if he was only doing it because his father thought he should.

“Yes, I would have. I saw you and felt an instant connection.” He sat beside her, taking her hand in his. “I really do believe that my attraction for you is something that would have been there regardless. I’ve never felt this strongly for anyone in my entire life.”

“I can’t just date you and marry you because your father has decreed it’s going to happen.”

“Then date me because you have feelings for me, and know that I’m doing the same. Nothing that I feel has anything to do with what my dad said. It really doesn’t.”

“That’s hard to believe. If it’s true, why didn’t you tell me what he said to begin with? Then we wouldn’t be having this conversation!”

Adam fought for the words to explain. “First off, I didn’t know if you’d even believe in destined marriages, and then when you acted like you were starting to believe in my family’s powers, I didn’t want you to feel forced to date me because of something he’d said. I wanted you to like me for me, not because there was a destiny between us.”

She frowned. “I guess that makes sense. I just feel like I’ve been kept in the dark, and that’s very frustrating.”

“I know, and I’m sorry.” He leaned forward and pressed his lips to her cheek. “I’ll try not to keep anything from you again.”

“Try not to?”

“I’m a psychiatrist. I can tell you about the boys, because you work here too. If someone comes to me with another kind of issue, I can’t just run around blabbing about it. I have to keep things confidential.”

Tiffani thought about what he’d said for a moment before nodding. “I can understand that. But if there are any more prophecies concerning me, then I want to know about them immediately.”

Adam nodded. “Absolutely. I wouldn’t dream of keeping anything else from you.”

“I’m glad.” She leaned into him for a moment, thinking about being destined to marry him. If it was true, she would spend forever with him. How strange to think she might be sitting next to the man she would spend her life with.

“Are you angry with me?”

She shrugged. “Not if you’re never going to do it again. I never thought to tell you when we started a relationship that if there were any prophecies about us, I needed to know all about them immediately.”

“It’s just not something you say when you start dating someone, is it?” He grinned, thrilled to have that out of the way. “Do you want to just go ahead and marry me now?”

She laughed. “That’s not a proposal. I will not just marry you because your dad has decreed it.”

“It was worth a try, wasn’t it?”

“No, not at all.”

Adam grinned. “I’m one of those guys…give me an inch and I’ll take a mile!”

“I see that now.”

They were interrupted by a loud whistle from his father. “Gather round for prayer, and then we’ll eat!”

After a prayer by the family’s patriarch, they all got into a line and served their own food. The excitement around them was palpable. “The boys really like this tradition, don’t they?”

Adam nodded. “They love it! This has been going on since before I was born. My grandmother did it when she was alive. She’d make a huge meal for all the boys every Friday night. When my mom took over, she was thrilled to be able to carry on the tradition.”

“That’s really cool!” She looked over at Lillian, who was wearing an apron and serving potato salad with a serving spoon. Beside her was Peter, who was cutting off pieces of brisket for everyone.

The spread of food was absolutely amazing. There were fresh baked buns to make the brisket into a sandwich. There were baked beans and a salad. The whole meal looked delicious.

When it was her turn, Tiffani filled her plate. “Thank you for cooking, Lillian. The food smells absolutely delicious.”

“It’s my job. When you’re blessed with a big, wonderful family as I’ve been, you do what you need to do for the people around you.”

When they were seated a few minutes later, one of his brothers and Brittany both joined them. Brittany looked at the other man. “Are you still following me around? You’ve been doing this since first grade.”

“I seem to remember you following me around in kindergarten. Trying to catch the boys and kiss them.”

“That was just a phase I went through for a month or two.”

“A month or two? You mean nine months. That’s long enough to have a baby, little missy!”

“Gideon, you’re more than a little crazy.”

“Oh! You’re Gideon!” Tiffani was thrilled to finally meet the seventh son. “It’s so good to meet you. I’m Tiffani.”

“You’re the girl who’s destined to marry Adam!”

“Does everyone but me know this?” Tiffani shook her head with disgust.

Brittany grinned. “No one came right out and told me, but I knew. I’ve watched you two together.”

Adam reached over and squeezed Tiffani’s hand. “We are pretty obvious.”

“I don’t know about that!” Tiffani protested.

Brittany shrugged. “I think you are. But I like to watch people for signs of relationships. I’m a romantic at heart.”

Gideon grinned at Brittany. “You want romance? I’ll show you romance!”

“You are crazy. You have no interest in me other than flirting. Go away, Gideon. Maybe one of your sane brothers will ask me out.”

Gideon attacked his food, but Adam could feel the hurt washing off him. He gave his youngest brother a commiserating smile. “If anyone looks for me tomorrow, I’m driving to San Antonio with Tiffani. Her mother wants to meet me.”

“Oh wow! Meeting the mama already? Does Tiffani know what that means?” Gideon asked.

Tiffani wrinkled her nose. “I met his mama on Tuesday, before anything even started between us, so it can’t mean that much.”

“It does.” Gideon winked at Tiffani. “Big brother is awfully interested in you.”

After the meal, they all sang a few campfire songs, then made s’mores. Tiffani sat close beside Adam the whole while. Why did she feel so out of place without him beside her, but so comfortable with him there? It was strange just how much she cared about him after such a short time. Maybe his dad was right and they really were destined to marry. She had no way of knowing.

“Is your dad ever wrong about this destiny thing?” she asked, leaning close to him after she’d finished her s’more.

“He never has been. I suppose it’s possible that he could be someday in the future, but for now, no he hasn’t been.” He shrugged. “He knew he was supposed to marry Mom the second they met. He’d had a vision about her.”

“Well, that’s silly. Is nothing left to chance in your family?”

“A lot is left to chance in my family. But we do believe that you’re not complete without your mate. The one you’re meant to have, not just any random person. So when Dad has a vision that someone should marry, they actually focus on that person to see if they’re right. And they always are.”

“Doesn’t that take some of the fun out of life?”

“I don’t think so. I have a lot of fun, anyway.” Adam didn’t want her to think her life would be devoid of fun if she married him.