Tap, tap, tap.
Nina checked the time on her phone. ‘I’m surprised he’s not here already,’ she replied. ‘He must have hit traffic.’ Turning to Poppy, she asked, ‘Are you hungry, Poppy? Or did you want to wait up for dinner with Markus?’
Tap, tap, tap.
‘I’m kinda hungry,’ Poppy, at five, replied honestly. ‘But I want to see Uncle Markus too.’
‘Hmm, let’s see if we can find you a snack.’ Nina pushed back from the table.
Tap, tap, tap.
Sierra very calmly put the invite that she was penning down and folded her hands on the table. ‘Mav,’ she said gently, ‘if you don’t stop tapping the goddamn table, I am going to break your fingers. One at a time.Slowly.’
Mav frowned at her. ‘What crawled up your butt and died?’ he demanded, making Poppy giggle.
‘You’re irritating me!’
‘What am I even doing?’
Sierra comically mimed staring off into space and tapping her fingers obnoxiously on the table.
‘Oh, forgive me for sitting quietly in my own home!’
‘It’s the way you’re doing it, Mav! With that stupid, forlorn look on your face!’
‘I got shot! I’m allowed to be restless!’
‘Do you have to do it in front of us?’
Mav leaned back in his chair.
‘Don’t you do it,’ Sierra warned.
Thirty-five years as a younger sibling should have taught her that the warning would only fuel him further. But when Mav emphatically tapped his fingers on the table, she clenched both hands into fists, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply. It didn’t work. ‘I will rip your stitches out with my teeth.’
Mav leaned forward, eyes glinting. ‘Bring it.’
Sierra momentarily imagined letting her fist fly. Mav was much stronger. Even wounded, he could easily defend himself against her.
‘Do they do this often?’
At the quietly asked question, Sierra turned in her chair to see Benji and Markus standing behind her. Benji, still dressed in his work clothes, was smiling and trying not to. But Markus, fresh from LA in skinny khaki pants, a white linen shirt, and fedora looked a little alarmed by the hostile environment he’d walked into.
‘Uncle Markus!’ Poppy shouted. She hopped out of her chair and, with a running start, flung herself into Markus’s legs.
‘Not anymore,’ Benji replied as Markus bent down to give Poppy a huge hug. ‘But when we were kids …’ He finished the sentence with a low whistle.
Markus stood and took Poppy’s offered hand in his. He wagged one finger between Sierra and Maverick. ‘As an only child, I find this fascinating. I kinda wish we’d come in five minutes later. Would you really have ripped his stitches out – with your teeth?’
‘Anything goes in a sibling fight,’ Sierra replied pertly. But because she was genuinely at the end of her tether, she turned desperate eyes on Benji. ‘Please, for the love of God, can you do something with him? He’s driving me crazy.’
‘I promised Nina I would help,’ Mav began to argue.
‘You’renothelping, Mav!At all!Is he, Nina?’
All eyes turned to Nina, who had been silent throughout the exchange. She stood at the kitchen island, tears streaming down her face.
Mav was up in a shot. ‘Nina?’
