It’s rude to interrupt my anxiety with your positive thoughts.
By the time Mark finally dragged his sorry ass home from work several days later, it was six in the morning and he was dead on his feet after a disastrous, tragic pileup on Highway 5 that had left fifteen dead. He walked in the front door of the huge Capriotti family home and went straight to the kitchen.
He needed food, sleep, and some mind-numbing sex. Since only the first had any chance of actually happening, he opened the fridge and hit the mother lode.
The one bonus about coming back here to live so his girls would have family around during his crazy work schedule was that his mom and sisters loved to cook. And since they also seemed to think that the way to show love was through food, even more so since his dad had died a few years back after a shockingly short battle with cancer, there was always, always more food in the fridge than an army could consume.
He started pulling out containers, shifting mental gears from work to the state of affairs of his life. Being back here had never been part of his plan. He’d been career military, thriving on the danger and adrenaline. He’d been away from home for long stretches of time, but he knew that it’d been exactly that that kept his family intact.
His absence.
But that’d actually been just an illusion, one that had come crumbling down around him.
So here he was. Back in Wildstone. There wasn’t a lot of action going on around here—unless you counted the occasional bar fight at the Whiskey River Bar and Grill, or the even more occasional ghost sighting at the B&B up the road.
The ghost actually made sense. Wildstone had been through several reincarnations in the past century and a half. In the 1890s, there’d been clapboard sidewalks and local silver mines, which had brought in a row of saloons and whorehouses. By the mid-1900s, the town had attempted to legitimize itself and had done away with most of the whorehouses, though the saloons had stubbornly remained. Then the county had discovered winemaking and ranching, and the hills had become dotted with ranches and wineries, including his family’s.
When the economy had taken a dive, the town had played up its infamous past, marketing the place as a Wild West ghost town, using the historical downtown buildings to draw in tourists. The stunning rolling hills and hidden beaches helped some, but being three and a half hours south of San Francisco and four hours north of Los Angeles put a damper on the place hitting it big.
In other words, Wildstone was still a sleepy town, emphasis on sleepy. And if he was very lucky and played his cards right and kissed all the right asses as deputy sheriff, maybe, maybe, he could become sheriff of Wildstone. Someday.
Be still, his beating heart. He shook his head at the disparity of being sheriff compared to what he’d hoped for and kept digging in the fridge. Maybe nothing about the way his life had turned out was what he’d planned, not even close, but his girls needed him here. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, stay his course and let them be parentless. Which meant he’d deal with it. This was his life now. Being Dad.
Alyssa came into the kitchen, a diaper bag slung over one shoulder, Elsa’s baby carrier balancing her on the other side, and her two boys, Chase and Tanner, bringing up the rear. The boys flashed Mark a fast grin and ran off to play. Alyssa set the baby on the kitchen table and turned to him. “There’s an interesting rumor about you and Lanie.”
Quiet but not shy, pretty in a girl-next-door sort of way, smart, and talented Lanie. “Is there?”
“That you’re . . . interested.”
He kept his mouth shut.
“So is it true?” Alyssa asked.
Growing up in this family, he’d long ago learned to curb his emotional responses. Denials or admissions, it didn’t matter, his family would think what they wanted. So he didn’t even blink, just paused in his food mission to bend over Elsa and give her a kiss on the top of her soft, downy head.
The baby spit out her pacifier and gave him a drool-filled smile that caused one of his own—smiles, that is. Not drool. And then he went back to pulling out leftovers from whoever had cooked dinner last night. It could’ve been any of them—they all cooked like five-star chefs. It was a point of Capriotti pride.
But though Mark could cook too, he much preferred to eat.
Gracie, hearing the fridge, came running, expression hopeful.
“You deaf?” Alyssa asked when Mark grabbed a fork from a drawer and began to eat standing up, leaning against the counter.
“Nope,” he said, flipping a bite to Gracie, who caught it in midair with an easy snap of her jaws. The overgrown puppy couldn’t turn a corner without running into a wall, but if food was involved, she had the grace and skill of an Olympic athlete.
“The vet said she’s getting fat,” Alyssa said.
“She’s just right,” Mark said.
Gracie gave him a look of pure adoration.
Alyssa looked on in disgust as Mark continued to inhale the cold food. “Dude, there’s a microwave just behind you.”
He shrugged. He was way too hungry to wait two minutes for the food to get heated.
Alyssa sighed, grabbed another plate, loaded it up, stuffed it into the microwave, and when it dinged, she took his plate, exchanging it for the hot one.
“Thanks,” he said.
“Ulterior motive,” she said and grabbed a fork and proceeded to share the goods.
“You okay?” he asked when the hunger had slowed down some and no longer threatened to eat him whole.
“I’m great,” she said. “Now you.”
“I’m fine.”
She slid him a look. “You know Mom taught us to think before we act, so know that when I slap the shit out of you for lying to me that I thoroughly thought about it first.” Setting down her fork, she drew in a deep breath. “Now I’m going to ask you again. Are you okay?”
He closed his eyes against the worry and concern in hers. “Working on it.”
She sighed and set her head on his shoulder. “What can I do?”
“Nothing. You’re already doing it.”
“If I could kill Brittney, I would.”
“Lyssa—”
“I would,” she said fiercely. “For what she did to you. To your adorable babies.”
“Stop,” he said gently. “We’re okay.”
“You’re not. You won’t get serious again.”
“And that’s not a bad thing,” he said. “It’s about the girls now. Not me.”
“So you’re going to abstain from love until what, they turn eighteen?”
At the yes she saw on his face, she made a soft sound of distress and her eyes filled.
“Lyssa,” he said again, pained.
“Ignore me,” she whispered. “It’s mostly baby hormones. I’m driving Owen insane.”
“Just Owen?”
She made a half-hearted attempt to slug him, but since he’d been the one to teach her how to hit, it still hurt. “Owen’s never going to stop loving you,” he said. The guy had loved her since they’d met in second grade, although every time Alyssa had a baby, her emotions went haywire for months afterward, driving them all a little insane.
Suddenly came the sound of either elephants storming the house or his own two heathens up and looking for him. They tore into the kitchen, hair rioting around their heads, eyes still sleepy, wearing matching-footed Supergirl PJs.
His babies loved superheroes.
They had their mother’s unruly curls in a softer version of the dark brown of his own hair. For the most part they also had their mother’s temperament, which meant that their every thought and emotion showed all over their faces. “Hey,” he said, his smile fading because as they leapt at him, climbing into his arms, he could see worry and fear and tears in their eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“You’re home!” Samantha said, voice muffled against his shoulder. “You’re finally home. We waited all night for you.”
He craned his neck and met his sister’s gaze. She was just as confused as he. “What do you mean?” he asked. “You didn’t sleep?”
Samantha shook her head, all her dark hair flying around her head like an explosion in a mattress warehouse. “We kept sneaking out of bed to check your room,” she said. “Grandma almost caught us twice.”
Sierra tapped her sister on the arm. Samantha met her gaze and they did that thing they did, the silent communication that only they could understand, before Sam turned back to Mark. “Sierra even fake-snored. She’s better at it than me.”
Sierra, her face once again buried in Mark’s other shoulder, nodded and he tightened his grip on the only anchors in his always-spinning-too-fast world. From the corner of his eye he saw Alyssa pick up Elsa and leave the kitchen to give them privacy.
“Why didn’t you call me?” he asked.
“Because you were mad at us for staying up past our bedtime the other night. And this was very past our bedtime,” Sam said. “And maybe you were busy catching bad guys.”
The dead organ in his chest rolled over and exposed its underbelly. “Listen to me, okay? If you’re worried, you call me. If you need me, you call me. I don’t care if I’m working, if I’m sleeping, or if you think I’m angry at you—if you need me, I’m there for you, do you understand?”
Samantha lifted her head and stared at him, her eyes just a little too old for her age. “Because that’s your job as our daddy?”
“Because I love you,” he said firmly.
AT MARK’S LOW, fiercely uttered words, Lanie stopped short in the doorway to the Capriottis’ personal kitchen. She’d come to meet Cora by request. She hadn’t expected to see Mark leaning back against the counter, looking hollow and exhausted to the bone, a daughter in each arm, eyes closed, his jaw pressed to the top of one of their little bedheads, explaining to them how much he loved them.
It was an intimate moment, private and . . . the most moving thing she’d ever seen.
“Daddy?” Samantha whispered. “Are you sorry you’re not still The Force?”
Mark cupped her head and made her look at him. “What?”
“You had to leave Star Wars and come home to take care of us. You had to give up the fight.”
Mark looked confused at first, and then he laughed softly and pressed his forehead to Samantha’s. “Sweetness, Star Wars is a story. It’s made-up. When you overheard whatever you overheard—which we’ll circle back to in a minute and go over the eavesdropping rules for six-year-olds—it wasn’t about Star Wars.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No. I was in the Air Force, which is one of the branches of our government’s military. It means I was in the fight to keep America safe and whole. On this planet.”
Sierra giggled and Mark was still smiling until Sam said, “But you gave up the Air Force for us. And it was a big, important job, Grandma said so. You had big, important things to do.”
“Yes,” he said. “But not as important as you two.” He paused as if considering his words carefully. “I wanted to come home. I want you both to know that.”
“You mean when Mommy left?” Sam asked. “And when Sierra stopped talking?”
“Yes,” he said, his voice a little strained now. “When Mommy left you both in Arizona. The minute I found out, I came home to get you.” He cupped Sierra’s head, still pressed tightly to the crook of his neck. “I gave up that job for a better one—taking care of you two. You’re the most important things in my life.”
At that, Sierra lifted her head and stared into Mark’s eyes and he stared back, like he was willing her to believe.
Lanie was literally glued to the hallway. She couldn’t move. She knew she had absolutely no business standing there, but her feet had disconnected from her brain’s control. And so had her heart, because it was thumping hard and fast. Her eyes were burning too. She’d let him think she’d misjudged him and that was as bad as actually doing it. It also made her feel uncomfortably like her mom, who was very quick to judge and even quicker to cut someone out of her life.
“More important than the vines?” Samantha was asking her dad. “Because Great-Grandpa says nothing is more important than the vines.”
“Baby, you’re way more important than the vines.”
“More important than Grandma?”
“Yes,” Mark said. “But don’t tell her.”
“More important than—”
“Anything,” Mark broke in to say. “Anything, Samantha. You and Sierra are my life. You get me?”
The twins nodded and he kissed each of their foreheads and set them down. “We good?” he asked.
“We good,” Samantha said and fist-bumped him.
Sierra did the same. Mark caught Sierra’s hand and reeled her in once more, rubbing his nose to hers in an Eskimo kiss that made her giggle. “You know, don’t you, sweetness, that you can talk to me. Right?”
Sierra bobbed her head.
“Okay, then.” He let her go and she went running off after Samantha. He waited until she’d vanished out the side door before turning and landing his gaze right on Lanie.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“For eavesdropping again?”
Feeling like a jerk, she shook her head. “No, although I’m sorry about that too.” She paused. “I’ve been rude, I think.”
“You think, or you know?”
His tone said he was teasing, but she still blew out a sigh. “I know.” She was too nervous for this. Cora had asked her to meet for breakfast to go over some of the preliminary sample designs she’d come up with before presenting them to the rest of the family. The pressure of creating effective graphic design and branding for the wide variety of products the winery provided was starting to keep Lanie awake at night. She needed both eye-catching and inspirational designs to encourage customers to bring the product home. She hoped she’d done that. She wasn’t sure.
In either case, Cora had dangled the carrot of a homemade breakfast.
Since Lanie’s usual choice of breakfast was a Pop-Tart and maybe an apple, she’d been suitably lured, hoping for bacon, feeling more excited about the prospect of that than anything in recent memory. “I really am sorry,” she said softly.
Mark stared at her for a long beat and then, though she had no idea why—maybe it was because she knew she looked so miserable at her mistake—he shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
“It does, I—”
“Forget it,” he said and began rifling through some open food containers on the counter.
“Why is there enough tension in here to give me a headache?” Cora asked, coming in behind Lanie.
Lanie jumped and opened her mouth to explain, before realizing her boss was talking to her son.
Mark snorted and grabbed a box of Frosted Flakes cereal before striding out of the room without calling Lanie out for being the rude one.
Cora watched him go, pensive. “Sometimes I forget he’s still adjusting to civilian life.” She turned to face Lanie. “I’m not going to apologize for him because he’s been through hell and back. Several times. I know his heart is in the right place so instead, I’m going to ask you for understanding and compassion to see past his alpha asshole-ness.”
“You don’t have to ask me for anything of the sort,” Lanie said. “It wasn’t what you think.”
Cora wasn’t ready to let it go. “He did three tours of duty. He’s only thirty-two, but can you imagine the things he’s seen and done?” She took a deep, shuddery breath and her eyes went suspiciously shiny. “It’s awful what we as a country ask of our men and women who serve. But we do ask, and they answer. Mark was good at what he did, very good. He’d just been promoted when his wife of four years took off.” Her lips tightened. “Just up and vanished on her babies. That was nearly a year ago now. He took the deputy sheriff position because he is who he is, but it’s not the same as what he was doing, and it’s certainly not what he wanted.”
Lanie’s heart hurt for them. After all, she knew a little bit about being betrayed. “That’s awful.”
“Turned out, Brittney thought being a mom was too hard. She’s living in some ashram in Australia finding herself these days, letting the universe fill her cup.” She shook her head. “He won’t thank me for telling you any of this, but I wanted you to understand.”
“I do.”
Cora gave her a small smile. “I know what we look like, from the outside looking in. Busybodies, noisy, stubborn, the entire lot of us. But we’re more too.”
Lanie nodded. “I know.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.”
Cora smiled. “Is your family big and intruding too?”
“Actually, no.”
“So they’re not crazy.”
“Well, I didn’t say that,” Lanie said. Her amusement faded. “It’s just my parents, and we’re . . . estranged.” Except it wasn’t anything as concrete as that, really. Her parents were . . . remote, too focused on themselves and their careers and always had been. A child hadn’t changed that—in fact, according to her mom, it’d only made things worse. Not a surprise, given the circumstances. “So, big and intruding and nosy or whatever you want to call yourselves,” she said, “at least you’re all connected by blood and stay close and that’s . . . amazing to me.” She paused. “And maybe also baffling. And a little scary to boot.”
Cora’s smile reached her eyes and warmed them as she took Lanie’s hand. “There’s one more thing you should know.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s not blood that connects us. Which means you’re a part of us now.” And then, leaving Lanie speechless, she proceeded to make the most wonderful crepes she’d ever had in less than fifteen minutes—and bacon!—after which they worked at the kitchen table for hours, poring over what Lanie had so far.
Work and family. Family and work. It was all the same here, and that was just beginning to sink in.