Laurie, the youngest cousin, sent an eyebrow-waggling emoji.Oooh, Ollie's laying into her, IKYKWIM.
Ollie barked, "She's mymate!" into the disappearing voice chat, and watched it flicker as each individual in the chat listened to it.
Roughly twelve seconds later, there was a thundering knock on his hotel door.
LEMME AT 'IM!
Ollie, taking another deep, calming breath, rose and went to the door. For a moment he considered looking through the peephole so he'd know what he was getting himself into, but the truth was, he absolutely one hundred percent already knew. He exhaled, unlocked the door, and stepped back as he opened it.
Three very large, very similar men stood on the threshold, all with virtually identical expressions of wide-eyed glee. The largest and oldest of them, Bill, sported a pompadour that added a solid three inches to his already considerable height. The second oldest, Jon, was physically almost indistinguishable from the youngest, Laurie, who had been afflicted with that namebecause their mother had been readingLittle Womenwhen she was pregnant with him.
The younger Torbens were both big, good-looking guys who wore their hair long because they did renaissance fair reenactment…stuff. Ollie wasn't clear on the details, but he didn't have to be, because right now Laurie was hissing, "Yourmate?" with a barely contained grin. As if his question had released them, all three men attempted to crowd through the door frame at the same time.
The frame in question was barely big enough to accommodateoneof them at a time. They looked, Ollie thought, like a cartoon, all trying to squeeze through together. He wouldn't have been surprised if their eyes started bugging or their ribs got narrowed to let them Squish through like they really were animated. Instead Bill put his hand between Laurie's shoulders and shoved.
Laurie popped free like a cork and hit the floor on his belly while the other two brothers more or less walked over him. Ollie stepped back again, suddenly glad he was an only child. "Come on in," he said dryly.
Bill, who had somehow taken the lead, did so, but stopped a few steps beyond the short hallway that led to the hotel room's door. He folded his arms over his chest, which had the effect of making him look twice as large as before. "Yourmate?"
Ollie raised his eyebrows at Jon, the second youngest of the brothers. "Did you want to say it too?"
"I'll get there," Jon promised. "I'm biding my time. Waiting for the right moment. Aiming for the full effect."
Ollie muttered something impolite under his breath and Laurie, crawling off the floor, cackled. "Seriously though, yourmate? What, Steve finds his mate and now it's everybody's turn?"
"Steve found his mate almost two years ago," Ollie pointed out. "It's not like it's raining mates around here."
Jon raised his hands, waggled them in the air, and let them fall like rain, singing, "'Hallelujah,'" under his breath.
"No, seriously though," Laurie went on. "That's two in Virtue in two years. I'm moving here."
"Mom would kill you," Bill said.
Laurie ignored him. "Does your mate have a sister?"
"No!"
"Mom would be delighted," Jon said to Bill. "Maybe not about the moving to Virtue part, but the mate? Potential grandkids? She'd bethrilled."
"Somebody has to stay and run the brewery," Bill growled. Both of his brothers looked a little cowed, and hairs stood up on even Ollie's arms. Bill Torben was a big man, and a bigbigbear. Even Ollie's fight-happy koala didn't really want to take him on, although Ollie suspected that under all the responsibility, his oldest cousin was really something of a marshmallow.
He had to be. Nobody who was not at least partially a marshmallow would wear his hair in a pompadour like that. But Ollie had also noticed that Bill had gotten more surly in the family chats over the past couple of years, even though he'd mutter that nothing was wrong if asked directly. Ollie kind of wanted to corner him and see if everything was really okay, but also had that weird, long-distance-cousin thing that meant he wasn't entirely sure being nosy would be welcome.
Or forgivable, more like. Given how grouchy Bill got in the family chat, it clearly wouldn't bewelcome. "I haven't told her yet," he announced rather loudly, over the muttering argument the brothers were having about the brewery. "So keep your mouths shut, all right?"
He also found himself sitting on the edge of his bed with a wave of rue. "Also, how am I going to tell her I'm akoala? It's not exactly the big sexy grizzly that you bastards are."
"She won't mind," Bill said with unexpected confidence. "She'll think it's cool. Or cute. Either way, it'll work for you."
"There are worse things than being cute," Laurie said with a toss of his hair. "Trust me on that one."
"Yeah, but you're also a grizzly bear!"
Laurie lifted a lazy hand and swiped with it. "Rawr."
Another sudden bang sounded on the door. Ollie nearly jumped out of his skin, then rose to answer.
Steve, the last of the Torben brothers, was breathless and grinning on the doorstep. "Yourmate?"
