“Get a room!” Finn’s voice rang out from across the space.
Bear didn’t look away from her. “Mind your business, old man!”
“I’m just saying, there are children present?—”
“Finn.” Charlie’s tone brooked no argument. “Leave them alone and come hold this garland before I strangle you with it.”
Joy pressed her face into Bear’s chest, laughing. This was her family. The chaos and the teasing and the love that showed up sideways, wrapped in insults and holiday decorations.
And soon, there would be one more.
The thought didn’t terrify her quite as much as it had five minutes ago.
“I should go check on my tart,” she said, pulling back reluctantly. “Make sure no one’s tried to sneak an early taste.”
Bear raised an eyebrow. “You think someone would dare?”
“I think Uncle Dorian and Uncle Boy Riley both would absolutely dare, and I want to catch them in the act.”
She slipped out of his arms and made her way toward the dessert table, weaving through clusters of conversation and narrowly avoiding a collision with two kids playing some elaborate game that seemed to involve a lot of running and very little logic.
The long table against the far wall was half-arranged, desserts clustered in groups waiting to be organized. Joy spotted her tart immediately—the caramelized pecans gleaming under the overhead lights, the bourbon drizzle catching the glow like liquid amber.
But it wasn’t Dorian or Boy Riley hovering near the table.
Lincoln stood at one end, his dark brows drawn together in concentration. He was studying the arrangement of desserts like it was a complex equation—which, knowing Lincoln, it probably was in his mind. Everything was data to him. Everything had an optimal configuration.
What surprised Joy was that he wasn’t alone.
Marie stood beside him—Jess and Ethan's three-year-old, a tiny thing in a green velvet dress with a crown of blonde curls. She had her head bent close to her Uncle Lincoln's as they examined something on the table, her small face arranged in an expression of intense concentration that looked almost comically adult on someone who still needed a step stool to see over the counter.
They were deep in discussion. Serious. Conspiratorial, almost.
Joy slowed her approach, watching them.
Lincoln picked up a pie and moved it three inches to the left with surgical precision. Marie shook her head, pointed somewhere else. He moved it back, then shifted a plate of brownies instead. Marie said something else, and Lincoln actually paused—which was unusual for him. He usually had his answers ready before other people finished their questions.
But he was listening to her. Really listening, his head still tilted, his fingers tapping against his thigh in that self-soothing rhythm Joy had noticed since they were kids.
Marie reached past him to adjust a cake stand, and their shoulders brushed. Neither of them moved away.
Joy’s eyebrows rose.
Whatever those two were doing, it had clearly started with Charlie’s directive to organize the dessert table. But watching them now—the way they moved around each other, the quiet intensity of their focus—Joy suspected it had become something else entirely.
Lincoln said something, and Marie giggled adorably. Lincoln looked briefly startled by the sound, then something in his expression shifted. Softened.
Joy pressed her lips together to hide her smile.
Those two were either about to create the most perfectly organized dessert table in Linear Tactical history, or they were about to stumble into something far more complicated.
Possibly both.
Probably both.
She changed course, deciding her tart could wait. Let them have their moment, their quiet conspiracy of sugar and strategy. She remembered what it felt like to be on the edge of something—terrified and thrilled, not quite ready to name it.
Joy made her way back to Bear, who raised an eyebrow at her return.
