by Angel Smits
He smiled and set his coffee cup down. Slowly, he moved over to her and took her hands in his. He made sure she met his gaze. “They love you. With or without your cookies.” He pulled her into his arms. “Just like I do.”
She leaned into him, lifting her face for his kiss. He was happy to oblige. While she still wasn’t a coffee drinker, it tasted good on him.
“Uh, guys?” Ryan came back into the kitchen and slid to a halt. “Really? Again?” He’d gotten into the habit of complaining about all the PDA—public displays of affection—a term he’d learned his first year in high school. He enjoyed the blush on Addie’s cheeks almost as much as Marcus did.
Marcus sighed, resting his forehead on hers. “He will move out someday, right?”
She laughed. “Don’t rush it. I just got him back.”
Marcus sighed an exaggerated sigh. “I guess he can stay.”
“Think positive,” she whispered. “He’ll have a girlfriend someday. Paybacks.” She pulled open the oven door. “Did you need something, Ryan?” More cookies hit the cooling rack.
“I think another wedding present is being delivered.” They’d been getting presents, primarily from Marcus’s scattered family, all week.
“Put it in the living room.” Marcus retrieved his coffee.
“I...uh... I don’t think it’ll fit.” Ryan stood in the hallway, staring toward the front door.
Now that they weren’t talking, and Marcus wasn’t distracting her, she heard noises and voices. Several voices. “What the...”
“Do I smell cookies?” DJ’s voice was the first one she heard, and an instant later, he came through the doorway.
Addie stared. He was carrying the dining room chair he’d strapped on the back of his motorcycle after Mom’s funeral all those months ago.
Without another word, without asking, he walked over to the big table and set it down where it used to sit when Mom lived here. Tammie came in an instant later, with little Rachel Ann and Tyler beside her.
Mandy was right behind her. She was holding Lucas, and Lane carried her chair. Tara had her chair, too. Morgan and his daughter, Brooke, were with her.
How the heck had Jason gotten his chair here? He and Lauren had to have driven from California. Finally, Emily came in slowly. She’d managed to stay so trim—except for the rounded bump that would soon be Wyatt’s son. She smiled as he followed her into the room, with the big captain’s chair. He set it at the head of the table.
Exactly where Dad had always sat. He guided Emily into it, and she breathed a sigh of relief.
“What’s going on?” Frowning, Addie reached out and caressed each of the chairs. They looked right here, together again.
Wyatt grinned, walking over to Marcus and extending his hand. “Welcome to the family.”
Marcus nodded and accepted the handshake. At his nod, Ryan, who’d somehow snuck out of the room, returned, carrying the final chair that Addie had thought was still back at her house. Instead, it was here, and Ryan put it in the final empty place.
“What are you all doing?” she asked again, and no one answered her this time, either.
Instead, Tara went to the cabinet beside the fridge and pulled out the cookie plate that had always been there, and that she knew was back there again. “We came for cookies.” She nudged Addie aside with a laugh, and scooped hot cookies onto the plate.
Handing it to Mandy, she pulled down glasses, not even having to ask where they were, either. “Milk and cookies, right, kids?”
Everyone’s cheers drowned out any answer she might have gotten. She stared at the table.
All the kids were anxiously waiting for their snack. Brooke was in Tara’s chair. Tyler was leaning against the chair where Rachel Anne’s carrier was perched. Emily sat in Wyatt’s chair. Lucas stood on Mandy’s chair, and the look on his face said he was thinking about climbing up on top if they didn’t hurry.
Lastly, Ryan took his seat—in her chair—grinning like a boy who’d kept a secret—a good secret—from his mother.
Wyatt put his hand on her shoulder. “We want you to know that we’re thrilled you’re having the wedding here. Mom got her wish, you know.” He whispered the last.
At his words, she couldn’t speak, feeling Mom’s presence there with them. With a smile, she cleared her throat and lifted the cookie plate. “Who’s ready for cookies?” She moved over to the table. “Tyler, you can sit in Jason’s seat. We aren’t saving it for anyone.”
The boy grinned and shook his head. He and Ryan shared a glance. They’d become fast friends, and she liked the closeness that was growing between the cousins.
Addie saw a movement, and she turned just as Lauren slipped into the seat. Her cheeks were a bright red, and she had eyes only for Jason. All the adults stared. The kids all cracked up.
“You?” Addie pointed at Lauren, then made the sign for pregnant. They’d all gotten plenty of practice in sign language the past few months with Emily’s pregnancy and wanting to include Lauren in the discussions.
Lauren’s response was to sign back, “Yes. A baby.” Her smile didn’t need any translation.
The big kitchen table, with its mismatched chairs, overflowed with kids, cookies and milk. Laughter and conversation filled the room as Addie leaned against the counter beside Marcus. She tilted her head to rest on his shoulder.
“Happy?” he asked, softly.
She nodded, overwhelmed by the joy she felt. If the wedding were right this minute, she couldn’t be happier. She turned to look at him. “You know you’re stuck with us?” Was he ready for this big boisterous family of hers?
“Stop thinking, Addie,” he whispered against her ear. “I love you. I will always love you. There’s nothing you can say or do now that will scare me away.”
She stared at him long and hard. “Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
* * * * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from A Defender’s Heart by Tara Taylor Quinn.
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A Defender’s Heart
by Tara Taylor Quinn
CHAPTER ONE
THE PARTY WAS in full swing. Vehicles, mostly expensive ones, lined both sides of the street. Slowing his SUV out front, Cedar could see the shadows of people milling around behind the sheer drapes that covered the massive windows. Men, women...indeterminate ages.
He could almost hear the laughter and the conversation. Figured most of it would be sincere.
Heather wouldn�
�t surround herself with fakes.
In black jeans and a new button-down, black-and-white striped shirt, he started to feel underdressed. Thought about taking off.
Judging by the quiet surrounding him outside, there were no other late arrivals. His entrance could cause a stir.
She’d invited him to her engagement party.
As someone who paid attention to people—although, admittedly, he’d used what he got to his own advantage—he was curious why his ex-lover and, he privately suspected, the one woman he’d ever loved, had issued that invitation. Curious enough to maneuver into a spot between two sparkling-clean SUVs and pocket his keys.
He’d have stayed anyway, curious or not. His goal was atonement.
It didn’t come easy.
* * *
“YOU LOOK BEAUTIFUL...”
In a figure-hugging, short black dress and matching wedge heels, with her blond hair in a sophisticated updo, Heather smiled as yet another of her parents’ friends spoke to her as she passed by on her way to somewhere else. She’d occasionally worn the dress clubbing in LA, but had little reason to put it on now that she was back in Santa Raquel full-time. She exchanged a few more pleasantries, acknowledging that, yes, her independent polygraph business of five years was thriving, and moved on.
She was looking for Charles. She’d seen him a total of five minutes max since they’d arrived at her parents’ beachfront home, just down the road from Charles’s house—and ten minutes from her own beachside bungalow.
Fifteen years her senior, her fiancé was handsome. Fit. A dentist who was actually popular with his patients. He had a way of putting people at ease. She’d known him since he’d moved into her parents’ neighborhood after his divorce ten years before; she’d been home visiting while on break from college. And she’d started dating him the previous summer, when they hooked up at a neighborhood Fourth of July bash she’d attended with her folks.
Because she’d been too lame to have plans of her own.
Or a date.
She thought she saw his thick, slightly graying hair on the other side of the living room and moved in that direction, hoping she could make it to him without being waylaid again. The party had been her mother’s idea. And the guest list pretty much comprised the people invited by her parents and by Charles.
Heather’s friends had mostly faded into lives of their own when she’d started dating Charles—and before that, too, after the “big breakup.” She’d been part of a couple for almost six years, and while mutual friends had stuck by her—and him—she’d been the one to pull away from the group.
She’d been the one to break things off with him.
Thinking she’d go through the kitchen and enter the living room from the other side, Heather slipped away from the party and walked into a much smaller gathering—the two guests she’d invited, Lianna, her closest friend from elementary school on, and Raine, her college roommate. They stopped talking the second she came in.
“What’s going on?” she asked, wondering if there was a problem with the food. Not that they were in charge of it. Her mother’d had the party catered. But they were in the kitchen and...
“I’ve been looking for you two,” she added, glancing from green eyes to blue, red hair to blond. “You’re supposed to keep me sane here!” She was only half joking. She couldn’t wait to marry Charles—sometime after the year engagement she’d insisted upon—but this gathering was not her favorite part of the festivities.
If it hadn’t been for Charles’s need to introduce her to his large circle of acquaintances, she never would’ve agreed to have the engagement party, no matter how much her mother nagged her about social etiquette and doing the right thing.
Lianna and Raine exchanged a glance, Raine cocking an eyebrow at Heather’s closest childhood friend. Almost as though conceding best-friend status or something.
“What’s going on?” she asked again. The two had met a few times, but didn’t know each other well enough to be involved in some big heart-to-heart. If this was about which of them was going to be maid of honor...
Her mother had been after her to make a choice—strongly preferring Lianna, of course, since the redhead had been part of their family since grade school. But Raine had seen her through the best, and then the worst, times of her life. The ones that had defined the woman she was, and would be.
Still, she couldn’t imagine getting married without Lianna, her rock, by her side. And Raine was her safety net...
It was all too much. She’d decide later. Right now, she had to get to Charles.
“We’re worried about you,” Lianna blurted when Raine gave her a far-too-obvious silent nudge.
Heather chuckled. “About me? Are you kidding? I’m finally at a place in my life where there’s no need to worry.” She looked from one to the other, knowing that what she said was true. “Seriously.” And then, when they both looked unconvinced, she added, “A year ago, yes.” She’d come close to the brink of despair, close to not caring if she lived or died, when she packed up and moved out of the home she’d shared with Cedar. “But I’m fine now. Great, even. Or I will be as soon as this party is over.”
“This engagement is so sudden...”
“Charles and I have been dating for more than six months. I moved in with Cedar three weeks after I met him.” The math was important to her. She wasn’t jumping into love ever again. Hadn’t figured herself for someone who’d ever have done so.
She’d allowed herself that mistake, with the promise that she’d learn everything she had to learn from it, so she wouldn’t have to repeat the lesson.
“And I insisted on a yearlong engagement,” she reminded them. And herself. Charles wanted to get to the justice of the peace as soon as possible and start a family together.
Understanding that he wanted to be young enough to play ball with his kids, to coach Little League and soccer teams or move stage sets for dance competitions, she’d shortened the engagement from two years to one, but because of the oh-so-painful past, a result of the three-week courtship, she was holding firm on that year.
“He’s fifteen years older than you.” Raine acted as if she was making some big announcement. Heather slowed down for a second and stared at her two best friends.
“Surely the two of you aren’t having a problem with our age difference? My God, Raine, your stepfather is closer to your age than your mom’s, and you love him to death. Because, for the first time in your life, she’s happy. Truly happy.”
In colorful leggings that hugged gorgeous legs and a black formfitting shirt that defined hips that were just about perfect, Raine withstood Heather’s intent look without fidgeting. Or answering.
“And you...” She turned to Lianna. “Dexter’s only five years younger than Charles.”
“We fit each other,” Lianna came back without a second’s hesitation. She took a step closer. In black dress pants and a cream-colored silk blouse, she could command any room she entered. “Charles fits your parents, sweetie. Look at him in there. He’s having the time of his life.”
“And you’re in here.” Raine came closer, too. “Trudging through a party you didn’t want and counting the seconds until it’s over. Is that really how you want to spend the rest of your life? Counting the seconds away?”
So she’d been watching the clock. But she’d been counting minutes, not seconds. And only because she’d never been a big partier. She liked to spend time with people in small groups—not coming at her all at once.
“Charles is good with large groups of people,” she explained. “It’s a strength he has that counters my weakness in that area. He covers for me there, and I cover for him in other areas, where my strengths counteract his weaknesses.”
“He has weaknesses?” Lianna’s droll tone wasn’t lost on her.
“Come on, you guys.” Heather looked from one to the othe
r, pleading unabashedly. “You just need to spend more time with him. Get to know him like I do.”
Well, not quite in that way, but...
“Seriously,” Lianna said. “What strength of yours counteracts a weakness of his?”
“He sucks at anything to do with aesthetics. I have a talent for creating beautiful spaces.”
“Your greatest talent is your ability to read people.” Raine’s tone, softer than Lianna’s, was no less compelling. “Does he even know that?”
“He knows what I do for a living.”
“Strangers know what you do for a living, sweetie,” Raine said. “Every time you appear in court, everyone there knows you’re a polygraphist. One trip to your office would tell someone that you administer lie detector tests, are a certified criminologist and also have a degree in psychology. I’m talking about your gifts, not your training. You deserve to be with someone who respects your ability to see inside people and relies on it. Someone who needs you in particular for what you have to offer. Someone who values your specialness.”
Like Cedar had? She felt the familiar sensation of lead falling in her stomach, and she quickly diverted her thoughts before she sank down with it. She’d gotten over all of that.
Was beyond it.
Had moved on.
Her friends were staring at her. Raine had once told her she believed Heather was empathic. Heather’s take was that other people could see what she saw if they just slowed their own thoughts and feelings enough to hear and see those around them.
Which was why she’d failed so miserably where Cedar was concerned. She’d been unable to get beyond her own feelings for him when he was around. She could now. And was ready to prove it.
“Being used isn’t my idea of happiness,” she said, as if any of them needed a reminder.
She’d had her doubts about Cedar, had seen what he was becoming, but she’d let passion cloud her judgment.
“So why did you invite him here tonight?”
No one had said the name aloud. They hadn’t needed to. It was as if the renowned defense attorney was standing there, in the room with them...