“They most definitely will not, but you’ve been warned. All legal recourse is null and void.”
He nodded. “I’m good with that.” When I kissed him this time, it wasn’t quick. I knew my sisters were inside gossiping about us, but I didn’t care.
The truth was I wanted him to meet all my siblings so they could tell me I was right in pushing right through all the friendship barriers and starting a real relationship with him, even if it did begin right on the heels of my breakup.
I wanted to tell the whole world how I felt about Owen Miller. Even if I still hadn’t figured out how to tell him.
I ushered him in, and my sisters were on him like concert groupies. They practically hoisted him over their heads and carried him through the house.
You’d think they’d never met a male before from the way they were chatting him up about his hotels and his favorite kind of bread.
When I caught his eye to make sure he didn’t feel assaulted, he flashed me an ok sign and kept on talking with them, asking about Becca’s job, Sarah’s interest in welding, Cherry’s love of fashion, and Annie’s legal cases.
I couldn’t remember the last time one of us asked Annie about her legal cases. Bad sisters. Tatum hung out on the outskirts of the conversation like she often did, and Owen even managed to draw her in.
Soon the pizza came, and the feeding frenzy that my sisters had focused on Owen was shifted to the food, so I finally had a chance to get near him. Finn was a little formal and always insisted we eat in the kitchen, but since he wasn’t around, we moved to the living room, which had a back deck with a view of the hills.
Owen and I shared an oversized stuffed chair, and we shared a single plate of pizza. I caught Becca’s approving eye and she winked.
Once my sisters had stuffed their faces with pizza, they piled on Owen again with questions.
“So Isla says you have one sister,” Cherry was working the cork from a bottle of wine unsuccessfully but wouldn’t let anyone help her.
“Yup, just one.” Without asking, Owen reached over and held his hand out for the bottle. She passed it to him without argument and he pulled the cork free.
“Thanks. I’ll bet this motley crew makes you glad you don’t have more.”
He smiled and shook his head. “You guys are great.”
Cherry started asking more questions about his sister, where she lived, what she did for a living. Sometimes she had a crappy radar for when to stop talking and this was one of those times. I could see Owen getting more and more uncomfortable with her questions, which was odd since he’d never done that with me, no matter what I’d asked him.
Then again, except for the first night we went out, we didn’t talk about his sister.
“Hey Cher, come help me pick out another bottle from downstairs, will you? I don’t know how to pick reds.”
“Sure thing.” She followed me out of the kitchen, and I hoped no one else would feel the need to interrogate Owen about his family. I knew he wouldn’t want to talk about his parents.
When we got downstairs, I smacked her shoulder. “Do you have to run an inquisition for gosh sakes? You were making him uncomfortable.”
“I was? Yikes. Sorry.”
“Just stop doing it.”
“Does he not, like, get along with his family?”
“They get along fine but not everyone wants to answer a million questions. Some people just want to eat dinner.”
“Well, he shouldn’t have come here, then.”
She searched around the bottles, grabbed one that I wasn’t even sure was red, and jogged back up the stairs. I didn’t care which wine she picked as long as she left Owen alone.
Then again, more wine was never the answer to reining in my sisters. I sped upstairs to run interference.
Chapter 24
Owen
“Sorry about my family. I should have warned you they’re nosy and intrusive,” Isla said when we got in my car.
“I have to tell you something,” I blurted out. It felt wrong to let her keep thinking my sister and I had a great relationship, even if she wouldn’t be able to relate. And based on the close relationship I’d just witnessed with her family, our siblings were polished red apples to sickly pale oranges.
She looked up. “Uh oh, that sounds like a confession. Did you eat the bread before it cooled? I knew it.”
“Well, yes, if I’m confessing things, then you ought to know that I’ve never—and I say this with full confidence—never waited for your bread to cool. I eat it on the way home while it’s still hot.” I looked at her to gauge her reaction.
I wasn’t sure if her bread instructions were really a polite guideline or whether she expected mere hungry mortals like me to obey them.
She smiled. “I had a feeling. Don’t sweat it.”
“You should take it as a compliment. It’s that good. And I lack willpower, apparently.”
She nodded, satisfied that the bread thing was my only confession. I needed to plow ahead and tell her the rest.
Other than the first night we hung out together, I’d never mentioned my family to her again. My sister lived far away and my sad little story about being left behind was far in the past, so there was no reason to revisit it. Except that it wasn’t in the past.
“I have another confession besides the bread.” I watched the easy smile fade from her face.
“Okay . . .” she said warily.
“It’s about my sister.”
Her expression clouded with concern, her body stiffened, and her eyes shot to mine. I loved that she was as invested in my family as she was in hers, even without knowing anything about Jen. “What about her? Is she okay?”
“She’s fine. It’s just that when I first told you about her, I probably gave you the impression we were close. Or at least cordial.”
She looked confused. “Yeah. You’re not?”
I told her about Jen, about how she’d left for college in Washington state, and how I’d moved an hour west of our hometown to San Francisco, fully expecting her to join me. “We were the only family we had. I got a two-bedroom house with a yard because she’d adopted a cat during her senior year. But instead of moving back to California, she moved to Vermont with her boyfriend. They’re married—eloped. She never came back, never visited—just left it all behind.”
“She left you behind,” Isla said, nodding. “I’m sorry. After all you did for her, that must’ve hurt.”
“It was gradual. At first, we talked a lot and she’d promise to come out. Then she’d come up with excuses and a year would go by. Then two. Finally, I stopped inviting her. Then I stopped returning her calls, figuring if she couldn’t come out one time to see me, that said a lot. My little sister’s married to a guy I’ve never even met.”
Isla moved over the stick shift, which took some flexibility, and made her way to me until she was sitting sideways in my lap. Then she wrapped her arms around me.
The gesture was so much more than an attempt to use her body to distract me from thinking too much. She was giving me all of herself, her beautiful figure that melded perfectly with mine, her big, wide-open heart, and her acceptance of whatever weird, dark detail I flung at her about my past.
Her finger traced the side of my cheek. “I’m so sorry. I mean, I’m sure she had her reasons—maybe it was too painful to come back to the place where your parents basically abandoned you, but still . . . she was really lucky you were there for her and that’s not a very nice way of saying so.”
“Thanks for that.” It was the most basic response but I was out of practice.
“Do you think…” She bit her lip and I knew she was worried about offending me with whatever she wanted to say.
“What? Tell me.” I brushed back a tendril of hair that had fallen in her eyes and cupped her cheek.
She leaned into my palm. “Just that…do you think maybe you sort of left her behind too, once she didn’t do what you expected? I’m not excusing what she did, just
asking.”
I shrugged. I didn’t know anymore. “It feels like a long time ago. That’s why it’s easier sometimes to pretend it’s not important.”
Her hazel eyes looked green tonight as they focused serenely on mine. Our faces were inches apart, but it didn’t feel like a kissing moment, even though staring into her eyes made me feel even closer than when I was inside her.
Her voice was quiet when she spoke. “It is important. You should tell me these things. I want to know them. I want to know everything.”
Because she had no reason to lie, I believed her. She wanted to know everything I wanted to tell her, and that forced the last bit of wall I’d built around my heart to cave.
I love her.
I wanted to say it, but something held me back.
Maybe it was the growing concern that she didn’t feel the same way—would never feel the same way.
“I guess maybe I didn’t expect you to stick around once you got to know me better.” I sounded as insecure as I felt when I revealed things about my family, but it was the truth and I wanted her to have it.
Her face cracked into a huge smile. “Why? That’s exactly when I started to really like you—once I saw that you had quirks and depth.”
Her smile made me smile. “Really? With all my many talents and abilities, that’s what you like about me?”
She brought out the best side of me, the part that felt free to share everything I’d buried. I should tell her.
I love her.
She had my heart and there was no point in denying it.
She nodded. “Just so you know . . . I’m not running. I’m not going anywhere. You’ve got me as a friend whether you like it or not.”
The word was a glass shard in my gut. Friend. Friendship. Friends with benefits. I was starting to get tired of all the ways she could come up with to resist having actual feelings for me. And here I was sharing things that only Rafael knew, and he’d known me for eight years.
I was still recovering from the fucking word and she was oblivious. “Of course, you do everything in a way that makes you seem like you have it all together all the time. It’s inspiring.” I wanted to hear her words as a compliment, but I couldn’t get past what I was starting to see as an immovable line in her mind.
“I’m . . . not the man you think I am. I don’t have it all together.”
Because I’m losing my heart over you.
She laughed, kindness in her eyes. “I don’t want to offend you, but you’re exactly the man I think you are.”
“I feel like I should be a little bit offended by that.”
She leaned in and whispered in my ear. “No one has it together, even the people who seem like they do. Take it from one who is an utter and complete mess and I still manage to get by every day.”
With her voice and her breath near my ear, she unleashed a torrent of electricity that went straight to my dick. The woman was destroying me bit by bit with her lips and her brain and her beautiful body and I didn’t want to resist.
“You’re the most gorgeous, talented mess I’ve ever seen.” I lowered my lips to her throat and savored the gardenia and honey smell of her skin and its velvet softness against my lips.
I kissed my way down to her collarbone and back up again. Her hair tickled the side of my face and I brushed it to the side so I had full access to her beautiful neck.
It felt like we were a couple of teenagers in my dad’s borrowed car. Although in my teen years, it was my own shitty used Corolla with the door that didn’t lock and AM radio only. But it didn’t matter. I’d have made out with Isla all night long in that car.
Things got hot and heavy fast as they did every damn time I was near her. For the first instance since I’d bought it, I hated my small car.
Isla seemed to realize its limitations at the same time, not to mention that we were still parked in front of her brother’s house. She backed away with a satisfied hum and settled herself back in the passenger seat. “To be continued?” she asked.
“My house or yours?
“Whichever one’s closest.” She smiled.
“Maybe mine. By a block.”
“I’ll make the saved time worth your while.” She whispered it in my ear, and I nearly aborted plan and carried her back into her brother’s house—surely they had a back room we could use . . .
But no, I could be patient. Sort of.
I started the drive down the hill toward the freeway that would take us over the Bay Bridge. Isla was quiet for a while, holding my hand in her lap except for the times I had to use it for shifting gears.
I was solely focused on getting us back to my house by the most expeditious route possible when she turned in her seat to face me more squarely. I couldn’t look, but I felt the heat of her eyes on me.
“So you don’t talk at all, you and your sister?” she asked.
“Not in five years. Although now . . .” Yeah, there was that other part I hadn’t told her. Well, might as well rip off the Band-Aid. “She’s suddenly reached out. I don’t know . . . maybe she wants to repair things.”
“Oh. Well, that’s good, maybe. Is that what you want? Can you do that?” There was no judgement in her question and I didn’t know the answer to it. I shrugged.
“I don’t know.” It was the truth and I knew she wouldn’t judge me for it. “Oh, and she had a baby. I’m an uncle.”
“Seriously? That’s exciting! Congratulations, Uncle O.”
“Thanks.”
She was silent for a moment. We both stared straight ahead through the windshield.
Do I want to see my sister?
“The truth is I miss her. I do want to see her. I just . . . it’s hard. I guess I can be man enough to deal with hard things.”
From the corner of my eye, I could see Isla tilt her head, considering. “You want my advice?”
“Yes. Always.”
She nodded. “I think you should. Start fresh. Babies have a way of demanding that. Maybe that’s why she reached out to you now.”
“Maybe.” There was traffic. We slowed to a stop and I looked at her.
“She’s your family. Don’t hold a grudge. It’s like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” She quirked her mouth into a half smile.
“Very wise.”
“Isn’t it? I saw it on a T-shirt.”
I could not have loved her more, even if she still thought of me as a friend. So I battled Bay Area traffic and took her back to my apartment so I could demonstrate the depth of my affection. To her credit—or maybe mine—she didn’t utter the friend word for the rest of the night.
Chapter 25
Owen
Flour covered every inch of the long wooden table where we were working.
Isla kept referring to it as a bench, even though all the benches I knew about allowed for a person to rest and she had me working my ass off.
We’d been at the bakery for two hours already and our dough had just finished its first rise, which made me surprisingly happy. I couldn’t believe that mixing in a little bit of starter with the flour, water, and salt was all it took to make bread dough that had doubled in size all on its own.
“I’m still amazed this worked.” I pointed at the baskets in front of us, where fluffy air-filled dough had just come out of the proofing drawer. An hour earlier the dough looked thick, beige, and unappetizing—and nothing like any future bread I’d want to eat. Now it looked like bread fairies had visited and sprinkled it with magical rising powers. “It even smells like bread.”
I stuck my nose close to the beautiful smooth dough in the basket and inhaled. When I looked up at Isla her lips were pressed together like she was trying to stifle a laugh.
“What?” I asked.
“You’re cute.”
“I’m cute?” That was enough to make me ignore the dough entirely in favor of stepping behind her, dipping my nose toward her neck, and inhaling the much preferred rosemary mint of her shampoo. “You’re cu
te.”
I kissed the line of her jaw and ran my nose along her neck until I got to her ear. When I exhaled a breath against the tender skin there, I felt her melt against me.
The flour that coated my forearms and hands didn’t stop me from pulling her close. She turned within my arms so she was facing me and put her hands at the nape of my neck.
“You are very cute. And you’ve been hanging out here for over a year, so I’m pretty sure you know how fermentation works to make dough rise, so I think it’s sweet that you’re indulging me in my lessons as though you’re a newbie.”
“Oh, bread lassie, don’t you know I’ve been hanging out here and only paying attention to you? I don’t know shit about fermentation, but if you’d like to teach me, I promise to be an attentive student.” I had utmost respect for what she’d built as a baker, but I assumed we were both on the same page—this time in the kitchen was a big flirtation leading someplace good.
Her eyes lit up and I sensed I was in for some hot making out amid the bread ovens.
Um, no.
Isla was unstoppable, talking a mile a minute and gesturing wildly. “I love teaching people about this. It’s been a while since I’ve had an apprentice or anyone who didn’t know anything about how sourdough gets made so I want to make sure I teach you everything about feeding the starters, weighing everything in metric, grinding the salt—I’ll leave nothing out.”
I started to say that she didn’t need to go crazy. I wasn’t looking for a job at a bakery so I didn’t need an encyclopedia of bread knowledge, just a few bons mots that would prevent me from starving if it ever came down to me, some wheat, and a bread oven.
But she was off and running and her enthusiasm was so fucking adorable I didn’t have the heart to tell her to slow down.
“Let’s look at these starters.” She took all the jars down from where they were sleeping under burlap cloth. “They’re all a little bit different because each grain of wheat is a little bit different so even if I add the same amount of flour and the same amount of water, no two starters are exactly the same. Plus—and this is the best part—as long as I feed them, they’ll live forever. These starters could outlive us. In fact, these are the progeny of my original bread starters from when I opened my first bread shop seven years ago.”
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