“I believe that there is called showing off.” Ella sighed, but the affection was clear in her voice. “You’re here and Adrian wants to look tough.”

“And Brody wants to school him for being a show-off and in doing so, is also showing off,” Elise added.

“Oh, those two have that relationship anyway.” Erin moved back to the table to sit.

Which Gillian had noticed.

Alexander sat in Ella’s lap, clapping in between shoving handfuls of Goldfish crackers into his mouth. Erin grinned at her son across the table.

“Yo!” he called out gaily, handing out a cracker to his mother.

She took the cracker. “Thanks, monkey. How’s your birthday so far?”

He nodded. “Yes.” He grinned before snuggling back into Ella, who kissed the top of his head.

“Yes? I’m not sure it answers the question,” Erin teased.

“Yes! Yes!”

“At least your favorites don’t include no all the time. I’ll take the grin and fistful of crackers as you perch on Auntie Ella’s lap to be a thumbs up.”

“Yes.” He had her devilish grin and it made Gillian laugh.

“Frankly, Blue,” Erin called out to Miles, “you’re the smart one for resisting. Certainly the only one not walking with a limp later.” She winked and Miles blushed.

Miles was, as everyone else seemed to be, totally caught by Erin Brown’s personal magic. The woman barreled into Gillian and Miles’s life like she’d always been there. She loved Miles in her fierce, beautiful way and Miles loved her right back.

They all had gone out of their way to open their world to Miles and Gillian both. Browns and Copelands, all their noise and color, all their affection and the downright protective way they were with each other had taken up space in her life, and she was richer for it without a doubt.

“I was thinking next year we should do track racing or something everyone can do.” Erin watched them all. “This was fun for the first twenty years.”

Everyone laughed.

“I’m not complaining. I mean, look at them.” Gillian tipped her chin toward a field full of fine-looking American stock. Big and braw. Masculine. Sweat and muscles, hair all over the place. “Still, they’d be far less use if they got too banged up.”

Erin nodded. “Yeah, that’s a very good point.”

“I think we need to eat now. It’s time for birthday cake, turkey and pie!” Elise called out from her place on the sidelines. She looked back toward Gillian and winked. “You can’t let them go much longer or everyone will be limping later. Dumbasses.”

“Hey!” Adrian jogged over, pausing to reach out and tousle Miles’s hair. “No one even needed an ice pack this year. I think that’s a record.”

Of course that was the moment Brody took to barrel into Adrian, sending Adrian into the grass, which he’d probably have to pick from his teeth. If Brody broke Adrian, he couldn’t continue to provide those excellent sexual services of his. Plus, well, she hated to see him get hurt.

“Oy!” Gillian stomped over, yanked Brody up by his collar. “That’s enough of that, you two. Someone is going to really get hurt.”

“Damn, you’re very stern.” Adrian blinked up at Gillian, smiling and totally unrepentant as his brother jabbed him one last time in the ribs before getting up.

“Yes. Well. It seems to me, Mister Brown, that you need some stern talking-to from time to time to keep you from trouble.”

He sprang up and hugged her, swooping down to kiss her firmly on the mouth. Not so long that she’d have been embarrassed. Oh no, the man was fiendish in the way he simply knew exactly how far to push. Miles knew they were dating and stuff, as he’d put it a few days prior when she’d asked him what he thought of it. He’d grinned in that Brown way, as she’d come to think of it, and had said he liked it and that was that.

“You’d be my keeper then?” He grinned.

She cleared her throat. “Rogue.”

They caught up with Miles and all headed over to Adrian’s house where the turkeys had been roasting all day.

“I like how she looks in your kitchen.” Cope looked over to where Gillian chopped vegetables at his sink, laughing with Erin.

“Yeah.”

“Figured as much. Ella and I were talking about you two yesterday. Ella says you look at Gillian like you want to eat her up with a spoon. She’s right.”

Adrian snorted.

“Last year you and I had a conversation. I was falling in big love with Ella. Shit was blowing up with my father and brother. Erin’s pregnancy was difficult and you didn’t want to go on tour at all.”

Adrian nodded, remembering the day his friend had come to the house with the security details for Adrian’s upcoming tour.

“You were trying not to drown in it. The business, fame, all that shit,” Cope clarified. “Anyway, you were like, I am so over this bullshit and I want to be around for my family, et cetera, blah blah blah.”

“Clearly what I said touched you deeply.” He rolled his eyes at his friend.

“It did, because I was blooming into something else. Into a man in love with a woman who changed everything. And right now, you have Miles and that’s f**king awesome. You’re coming into your own as a dad, trying to figure stuff out and not f**k him up so much Gillian notices and gives you a frown. Though, I must tell you, I did notice a distinct zing when she gets all prim and proper and your eyes glaze over.”