A blur of fur streaked past her legs. Roy, tail whacking everything in reach. A second dog followed, gold to his black. The pair of them bounded around us, wriggling with joy at seeing literally anyone. Roy barked once, then immediately shoved his entire head under Rios’s hand for pets. The shepherd mix came for me.
I crouched to greet her. “Hi, sweetheart.”
“That’s Keeley,” Bree said. “She loves everyone.”
The dogs apparently had fewer reservations about me than the humans. Fair enough.
“She’s adorable.”
“And the love of Roy’s life,” Willa added from just inside.
Sawyer appeared behind her, looping his arms around her waist. “Pretty sure that’s still you, Wren.”
“Come on in, y’all,” she invited.
With nowhere else to retreat, I trailed them all to the kitchen.
It buzzed with activity—pots simmering, cutting boards covered in vegetables, multiple conversations happening at once. Ford stood at the stove, stirring something fragrant and spicy, while a guy I didn’t recognize chopped cilantro with knife skills that suggested he’d had a lot of practice. Gabi perched on a counter stool, sorting tortillas into neat stacks. The moment she spotted me, she moved to the fridge and began filling a glass with water.
She thrust it in my direction. “Drink. And sit. You look wrung out.”
“I—” My brain stalled, trying to reconcile this no-nonsense doctor with the dreamy romantic who’d been one of Gwen’s besties. “Thank you.”
I took the glass more because refusing Gabi Carrera seemed like an act of hubris. As I settled at the long butcher-block island, she added a plate of sliced mango and some tortilla chips.
I blinked at the spread before glancing at Rios. “Is this a family trait?”
“What?”
“Ordering people to sit and eat.”
“Damn right. It’s a time-honored Carrera tradition to solve everything with food.” Rios brushed past me to grab a beer from the open fridge. His arm grazed my shoulder—barely there, the most incidental contact imaginable—and yet a spark zipped straight down my spine.
I stared determinedly at the mango.
Bree dropped onto the stool opposite mine. “Okay. Tell us what the hell happened. The island gossip train is going wild, saying y’all walked in on a dead guy.”
The guy I didn’t know snickered. “Slow your roll, Bree, and give the woman a chance to actually do some of that eatin’ before jumpin’ to the punchline.” His rolling drawl was all bayou as he turned his attention to me. “I’m Daniel LaRue, by the way. Gabi’s other half.”
“Um, hi. Madden Reilly.” Though I guessed he already knew that. I wondered what Gabi might have said to him about me before they’d shown up for this confab. “And I don’t mind getting into it, if that’s how y’all want to do things.”
I wasn’t exactly clear on what we were here to do, but Rios obviously wanted to loop these people in. His people.
At least it would give me something to do other than sit here on my ass while the rest of them moved around the kitchen with the well-honed chaos of a family. My own family hadn’t been anything like this, and I felt extra out of place not knowing my role here beyond that of outsider.
Rios’s hand brushed my forearm as he plucked a slice of mango from the plate, and something fluttered again behind my ribs. “I got the timeline. You got the details?”
“Sure.”
As the rest of them continued prepping food, we ran through it—from Willie’s wee-hours text to finding him in the bathroom, unresponsive and showing lividity that told us he’d been gone too long for intervention. By the time we’d finished, the rest of the ingredients had gone into a pot on the stove, which smelled like spicy heaven.
Gabi winced. “Damn.”
Ford muttered a curse under his breath. Sawyer shook his head.
“Overdose.” My voice came out just a little ragged. “That’s going to be the line.”
Rios slouched against the counter, snatching another slice of mango. “It fits. At least on paper.”
