“Mommy?” Nicki called nervously from the back, but Katie was already fumbling with her seat belt, motor skills evaporated in the wake of her outrage.
“I’m going to—”
“No.” Morgan reached out and laid a hand on his sister’s arm. He could move again, breathe again. The frost that had congealed in his chest had melted just as fast. “Don’t bother.”
His sister glared at him. “I’m not going to let our mother think she can get away with ‘surprising’ you with your ex at a family event!”
“So don’t.” He smiled at her. “Let’s not go.”
“Not … go?”
“Let’s go back to your place, make hot cocoa, and have Christmas just for ourselves. Or better yet, let’s get a hotel room somewhere in town so they can’t find us and do Christmas there. Or …” He was on the verge of offering to charter a jet for them and take them all back to Parrish Island for the rest of the holiday, but that might be too much, too soon.
Soon enough, though, he hoped that would be in the cards. “We don’t have to see them. Not any of them,” Morgan said,and it was a truth that set him free. “Let’s go do something fun instead.”
“Like ice skating?” Nicki asked.
“Exactly!”
Katie exhaled heavily, then started to laugh. “Fuck it. All right, let’s do it. Let’s go live it up in the city for a few days. I want us to call Ty back tonight, though,” she added as she pulled the sleek SUV back onto the snowy road. “So I can thank him for making you happy like I’ve never seen you before.”
“We can call him together.” Morgan knew Ty would answer, just like he knew he’d be happy to host his sister and Nicki. Because, against all the odds, he loved Morgan.
And Morgan loved him right back.
Epilogue
“Easy, pup,” a man murmured, soothing the sea lion that was beginning to stir at his feet. “Trisha, you’re up.”
“Uncle Morgan, what—”
“Shh,” Morgan whispered from the boat where they were watching. “We have to be quiet if we want to be here for the tagging.”
Nicki nodded, and he wrapped an arm around her shoulders as they watched the team of wildlife researchers insert subcutaneous tags into the thick layer of blubber at the back of the sea lions’ necks. The animals were big enough that they had to be anaesthetized for the process, but they shook the effects off fast. Fast enough that these three big boys were already starting to rouse, in fact.
Once they were tagged, the researchers hopped into their own boat and pushed off the beach, joining them a dozen yards back.“Well, that was fun!” Trisha Reed said as she pulled alongside them. “I think it went well, don’t you?”
“Are they okay?” Nicki demanded.
“They’re going to wake up very soon and be perfectly fine,” she assured her. “But now we’ll be able to track their progress up and down the coast and get a better idea of where their territory is these days.”
“Because of Uncle Morgan’s trackers,” Nicki said proudly.
“A lot of people worked hard to make these,” he told her. They were the latest evolution in biotracking tech, with a vastly improved lifespan, thanks to repurposing his NovaChem research on how to make components last longer while handling the rigors of being inside a person … or animal, in this case. He’d partnered with this new enterprise two years ago, and these sea lions were part of their testing. The researchers liked it because they got to use them for free and because it gave them access to Parrish Island for the first time.
And Ty liked it because now he’d have a far more specific idea of where the colony was, all the better to help him avoid them.
Morgan and Nicki said their goodbyes, then he began piloting them back around to the lighthouse dock. The team would head straight back into town—no one other than his family and Ty stayed on the island. Nicki chattered excitedly about what they’d seen and how she definitely wanted to be a marine biologist now even though just last week she’d been convinced she would become a professional skydiver because it “looks so cool.”
Morgan listened, humming confirmation from time to time but mostly keeping his attention on the water. He’d been handling the boat successfully for four years now, but the memory of their crash stuck with him. It had been bad enough when he’d been with Ty; he wasn’t about to take any risks with his niece in the boat.
They docked ten minutes later, and Nicki was out of the boat before he had a chance to offer to help, running up the path to where her mom was sunbathing on the porch. Morgan smiled at the sight of her. This was the second time Katie and Nicki had come to visit Parrish Island, and they were only one week into their two-week stay. Morgan was thrilled to have them, and so was Ty, for that matter—he and Katie got alone with an ease that he hadn’t expected—but sharing the lighthouse for two whole weeks was going to be harder than he’d thought, given that he and Ty were bunking in the living room so the girls could have the bedroom.
Luckily, they were going to be staying in town tonight as a change of pace. Morgan loved them, but he was glad to get a little alone-time too. The lack of privacy was …
“Your cheeks are red.”
Morgan turned away from where he was tying up the boat with a grin. “Are they?”
