“Call me Claire. I’m too young for that ma’am stuff.”
Everly glances over from where she stands on tiptoes removing a serving tray from a cabinet. The posture accentuates her long, exquisitely curved figure. We share quiet grins, hers sparkly and soul-warming.
She steps beneath an archway that looks to lead into a study and calls out. “Can you come get the drinks, Oak? We’re ready to eat!”
Oakley saunters into the fray. The aura of put-upon youngest sibling accompanies her into the room. She takes one of the red, goblet-style glasses already lined up by the refrigerator and presses it to the dispenser in the stainless appliance’s door. She throws me a thin and baffling smile. “Hi, Knox.”
“Good to see you again, Oakley.”
One eyebrow swoops up. “We’ll see.”
Alrighty then.
“Oakley!” Everly spins to me, her face pulled into an apology. “Ignore my sister. She has moods.”
Oakley’s smile for Everly is laced with little-sister snot as she sets the iced glass aside and reaches for another. “You look like you came from church, Knox.”
“I did. Nice service. Great Christmas music.”
“Hmm.”
She sounds as skeptical as I am every morning Mike insists he isn’t hungover from the night before.
Everly shakes her head. “Seriously, Knox. This is why we keep her locked up sometimes.”
Oakley stomps her foot. “Shut it, Everly.”
Claire lays her Santa oven mitts onto the counter and assesses the perfectly browned roast. “You’ll have to excuse my daughters, Knox. The truth is, sometimes I have to send both of them to their rooms without dinner.”
The scratchy-under-the-collar feeling subsides when everyone laughs.
Claire offers me the electric knife. “Would you do the honors?”
If she knew how to aTI fit the stereotype of men inept in the kitchen, she wouldn’t ask.
Snickers and giggles bounce about the kitchen a couple minutes later as I wince at the once beautiful, now slaughtered roast centered on the butcher block island.
Yep,butcheris the perfect word.
Claire pats my arm. “It’s alright. You’ll get the hang of it.”
The dinnertime dynamic in a household of women is the polar opposite of the testosterone heavy home I grew up in. Lots of impeccable manners here. Ah, poor Mom. Stuck with a pair of young sons, she fought powerful headwinds just to keep me and Rand civilized at the dinner table. Simpler times, those days, when mine and my brother’s biggest conflict was obnoxious code talking.
If putting a ring on your brother’s ex isn’t the most literal and worst bro-code violation, what is?
“Is your meal alright, Knox?”
I press the cloth napkin to my mouth and allow the question to penetrate the haze engulfing my brain. “Oh, yes, ma’am—Claire. Everything is amazing.” I show my pearly whites in hopes of making up for letting the sullenness show. “Christmas dinner is going to have some competition this year.”
The compliment, only a mild exaggeration, puts a smile on her face. She’s a beautiful woman. Her face is a collection of attractive features organized into a near-replica of what Everly’s plus twenty-some years will be.
“Will you go home for Christmas?”
I use my knife to cut off a bite of roast, though the meat is tender enough a blade isn’t necessary. “It’s not looking good. We’re running behind schedule. The company is offering big bonuses if we make the deadline—which will probably mean shutting down for Christmas Day but nothing more. Looks like most of my guys are taking LHS up on the offer.”
“Your guys?” Oakley pins eagle eyes on me like I’m a field mouse on the open prairie, and her talons are out.
I lay my knife on the plate’s rim. “My crew, yes.”
