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“We’ve been waiting twenty minutes!” someone calls from beside the grill.
“You have food in front of you, Ethan!”
“Sides, Mama. Those are sides.”
“Then eat a carrot and be quiet.”
Laughter erupts around the table, and I bite the inside of my cheek as Lily pulls me closer. The smell of grilled meat drifts across the yard, mingling with the warm summer air, while someone at the table reaches across another person to steal something from a platter.
“That,” Jude murmurs beside me, “is Ethan.”
“I figured.”
Because of course it is.
Damiano always described Ethan as a Labrador trapped inside a very large man, and now that I see him, I finally understand why. He’s huge, broad through the shoulders, with an easy smile that seems permanently attached to his face. The kind of man who looks like he could carry someone out of a burning building without breaking a sweat, which, considering he’s Lander’s fire captain, I guess he probably has.
Summer is sitting beside him and smiles when she sees me.
“Hey, espresso girl.”
I laugh. “Hey.”
“You two already met?” Ethan looks between us.
“Some of us leave the ranch occasionally,” Summer tells him.
“I leave the ranch.”
“The fire station doesn’t count.”
“Neither does Midnight Rodeo,” another man adds.
Ethan points at him. “Nobody asked you.”
I don’t need an introduction for that one either.
Dex.
I’ve seen him several times, and he still looks slightly terrifying even sitting at a family dinner with a beer in his hand. Then Lexy leans around him and waves at me, and the contrast between the two of them almost makes me laugh. She’s tiny beside him, all soft blonde hair and bright blue eyes, like someone put a pixie next to a guard dog and somehow the pixie won.
“Hi, Nora.”
“Hey, Lexy.”
“Thank God you came,” Dex mutters. “Can we eat now?”
“Dexter.”
“Didn’t swear, Mama.”
“Yet,” Lily says.
A little girl comes running toward us before anyone else can speak, dark hair bouncing around her shoulders and light blue eyes full of life.
“Uncle Jude!”
And the man beside me changes.
