As soon as Maddox withdrew, she hurried back into the kitchen to splash water on her face and remove the evidence of her cry fest. It was mortifying enough to have been caught out by Maddox. No way she wanted the others to see her cry too.
Satisfied she had regained her composure, she dished up the food, arranging it artfully on the serving platters that matched the platesshe’d inherited from her mother. It wasn’t an expensive set of dinnerware for certain, but there was so much love in every single memory associated with it.
Hearing the scrape of chairs being drawn out from underneath the table, she carried the platter of fish in first, only to nearly run into Maddox, Justice and Zander. Maddox took the platter from her and then motioned for her to sit.
“We’ll get the rest,” Justice offered. “You’ve been on your feet all afternoon. The least we can do is bring the food in for you.”
She smiled, nearly tearing up again, and settled in the chair Maddox pulled out for her. Seconds later, Justice and Zander returned carrying the last of the dishes filled with food, and then they all sat around the table with her.
Her smile lit up the entire room as she watched them squabble and fight over portions and who got the most, but they were also careful to pile Hayley’s plate full, just giving her a stern look when she laughingly protested, saying she couldn’t possibly eat that much.
“This is so damn good,” Zander groaned in ecstasy.
“You got that right,” Justice said around a mouthful of food. “And shit, did you see the dessert she has in there? That must have been what she’s been torturing us with all day.”
“This was my father’s favorite meal,” she said softly. “Thank y’all for making it special for me.”
Maddox reached over to cover her hand with his, squeezing gently. “Thank you for including us, sweetheart. Your father was a very lucky man to have a daughter like you.”
She smiled. “I was the lucky one to have grown up with so much love.”
She looked at each of the men, questions burning her tongue. They all seemed private, maybe not to the extent Silas was, but still very reserved, and yet they’d embraced her quickly enough.
“What about you all?” she asked quietly. “Do you all have familyhere in the city or is this even where you all are from? Thane told me he was from Mississippi but never said what brought him here.”
Shuttered looks folded across their faces and her pulse leapt in dismay. What a complete idiot she was for ruining what had been an otherwise perfect evening by prying into things that were none of her business.
“Most of us don’t have family,” Maddox said in a low voice. “Except each other. These are my brothers. Not by blood but by choice. Choice is better, if you ask me. You know the old saying that you can choose your friends but not your family? That pretty much applies to us except in our cases, we did choose our family, or rather to make our own family.”
“None of us had very stellar childhoods,” Zander said with a shrug of indifference. But she could see the shadows in his eyes and knew that they all still carried demons. Her heart ached for them. For what they’d never had.
“We don’t talk about it much,” Justice explained. “We’ve made our peace with the past and left it where it belongs. In the past.”
“Whatever it was, however bad it was, it made you who you are today,” Hayley said gently. “And who you are today is pretty damn special.”
The three men stared at her with peculiar expressions on their faces. As if they’d never considered it that way. Did they, like Silas, not consider themselves good men? And what defined good? The absence of bad? No, good people had bad in them. But it didn’t make them solely bad. Nothing would ever convince her that Silas or any of his brothers, as they deemed themselves, weren’t the very best kind of men.
“You all are the very best kind of men,” she said, vocalizing her thoughts. Then she smiled, bittersweet. “My father would have liked you all very much. You don’t even know me, I’m no one at all of any importance, and yet you’ve all put everything on hold to help put me back together after that horrible night. I was so afraid, but then Silas was there and I haven’t been alone since. I haven’t even thought of that night since. Because of you all.”
All three were shaking their heads. Bewildered by their disagreement, she furrowed her brow, forgetting what she had been going to say next.
“You don’t think you’re good men?” she demanded. “You’re wrong. All of you. And I won’t hear you say you aren’t, or so help me I’ll kick all your asses.”
She was staring at them fiercely, a mutinous expression darkening her features. Then when they burst out laughing, her mouth dropped open in absolute confusion. What was she missing here?
Obviously taking pity on her, Justice winked in her direction.
“We weren’t saying we weren’t good men, although that point is definitely debatable. We were shaking our heads over your asinine assertion that you’re no one and not important.”
Maddox and Zander scowled in her direction even as they nodded in agreement.
“You’re important to Silas, so that makes you important to us. Or at least that was the way it was in the beginning,” Maddox said, a smile warming his eyes. “Now we think you’re pretty damn important to us all for our own reasons, none of which have a damn thing to do with Silas.”
She flushed and ducked her head, glowing inwardly at their statements. She bit her lip, stifling the urge to dispute her importance to Silas. Well, maybe she was important as a neighbor or human being, but not where it really counted to her. As a woman.
“I don’t think Silas quite shares y’all’s opinion of me,” she said in a near whisper, smiling so it didn’t look like she was pouting over her statement.
The men just stared at her with the most bizarre expressions on their faces. Then Maddox burst out laughing and kept laughing until she was ready to kick him under the table.
