“So she was wild?” He waggled his brows and everyone laughed.

Delia snorted. “We were nineteen years old. Hell, Tuesday was eighteen, as was Jenny. We were all wild in one way or another. By the time we graduated, we’d all grown up.”

He’d known her then, in that wild time before she’d gone off to college. She’d been a flame, burning fast and bright. He’d responded to that. To all that silky blond hair and her big blue eyes. She’d been game for everything he’d wanted and had had plenty of her own ideas.

But this Natalie? Behind closed doors, she was still game for everything he wanted and had plenty of her own ideas. Her control was a way she made sense of the world filled with chaos. Her wildness in private was her guilty pleasure, only without the guilt.

* * *

THEY WATCHED ALIEN and Aliens, and he learned a new side of her. She was good at her job. He’d seen her with the patrons at the library, and she was always warm and welcoming. Had seen her with his family and with Tuesday. He knew she was a funny, generous personality, but with these women, she was utterly unguarded. Comfortable.

It made him appreciate how easy she was around him now.

They teased one another. Mocked. Poked and bickered. These women were family in every way but biological. She’d been right to say as much to her grandmother, though he doubted that point would make sense to the woman.

They all took turns poking at him, trying to figure out if he was good enough for Natalie. Natalie let most of it happen, only stepping in if they got too nosy. And they ignored her, anyway.

Finally, Zoe threw her hands up. “Okay, fine. Did you want to be a musician from day one?”

“I wanted to be a rancher, actually.” He snorted a laugh. “I wanted to do what my dad did. What his dad did. But when we’d stay out of trouble, my parents bribed us with musical instruments. Ezra, that’s my oldest brother, he was first, and then we all wanted to be like him. Then my parents bribed us for time in the barn to learn how to play. In the early days, it was a way to get girls. A way to rock and roll and get drunk and be away from the house.”

“I’m going to guess you always had it, though.” Natalie looked so good eating that ice cream, he wanted to lick her, too.

“It?”

“People who take it past success in media to become celebrities. Stars. You have charisma, Paddy. It rolls off you in waves and makes the ladies and probably a lot of the dudes, too, weak in the knees. You look at the camera in your music videos, and you know when to wink or give that sexy smile. You know how to work what you have, and yet you never come off calculated. The it factor.”

He liked that she said it, maybe even wanted to blush. He couldn’t deny being aware of it. Couldn’t deny that he’d used it even when he was young, to get attention and keep it on their band. There were lots of great, talented people in the world. People who were better than Sweet Hollow Ranch who’d never get that attention because they didn’t have that it she talked about.

The band loved to support up-and-comers, and they did it as often as they could. It was a key factor in who they chose to open for them when they went on tour, too. They liked using their power for something positive.

“My parents let us start doing small gigs when Ezra and I were done with high school. But we had to keep within an hour of Hood River. My mom and dad went with us most of the time, trying to keep us out of trouble.” He laughed. “My mom is not someone to be messed with. Even early on, she protected us from getting screwed over. Anyway, I was twenty when we were all done with school and we were at a gig. A sort of battle-of-the-bands thing. There were execs from labels there. Ezra pushed me up front and said, ‘the chicks dig that wink you do. Drop some panties so we can win this.’”

Natalie burst out laughing.

“Anyway, I can’t say I’m blind to the charisma thing. Or that I don’t know how to use it. It’s another way to sell my band and that’s part of it. But it’s fun. Being a musician feeds a part of me that needs creation to be happy. I could sit around all the time noodling on my guitar writing songs and be ridiculously satisfied. But the rock-star part is why I get to travel all over the world. It’s why I got to meet and eventually became friends with my musical influences. I can make sure my parents have a comfortable life and support all the charities my mom is involved with and start a musical charity of my own with some of my friends. It gets me great tables in restaurants, excellent seats at the theater. Flying is a hell of a lot nicer in first class, I can’t lie. It sucks to be stalked by people with cameras, who want to know all sorts of stuff that’s not their business, like when my brother got divorced and when my other brother got married last year. My friend had to move away from his place in West Seattle out to Bainbridge Island into a house with a gate and high security to protect his family from crazy fans and the paps.” He lifted a hand, palm up. “It’s not all perfect, but that’s how it works these days, so you gotta work as hard as you can to wall that off.”

And in the matter of a long Friday after Thanksgiving, he won his way into a provisional membership into 1022.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

DECEMBER SETTLED IN as Paddy spent more time getting this album on track with his brothers. He spent long hours daily writing, rewriting, working on arrangements and production.

And when he wasn’t doing that, he was with Natalie. She had a busy life, too. She had her job and her friends, and she did volunteer work, a lot of it with his mom and Mary.