One Hot Summer (7 page)

Micah had been around Isaac and Ivy since they were born via a surrogate, and with his experience with them and with his three siblings' kids he felt totally qualified to handle both toddlers at once. Especially when one was conveniently contained in a high chair, even if she was screaming loud enough for all the angels in heaven to hear.

“Like I said, you're always generous with the compliments.” But even as Xavier grouched, he relinquished the seat, wolfing down another bite of muffin as he shuffled to the kitchen and opened a beer.

Ivy's eyes were squeezed so tightly closed as she wailed that there was no way she'd even registered ol' Uncle Micah's presence.

“Are they still teething? Is that the reason for all this drama?” Micah asked. He had vivid memories of the torture his firstborn niece, Savannah, inflicted on her parents when she was teething. That was one of the few aspects of parenthood he wasn't looking forward to.

Xavier splashed water on his face in the kitchen sink. “Let me tell you about teething. It's a downward spiral into hell. The pain wakes them up in the middle of the night, and then the next day they're even crankier because now they're sleep deprived and in pain from the teething, and so then they won't nap because they're too tired to nap, and then they won't eat because their mouths ache. So then they're hungry, tired, and in pain. The perfect storm. And then it starts all over again the next night.”

“Sounds miserable.” Micah tucked Isaac into place against his chest with his left arm, bouncing his leg to keep the little guy moving as he stroked Ivy's cheek, trying to get her attention. Failing to distract Ivy from her misery, he scooped up a baby spoonful of white mush. “What is this stuff?”

“Mushed bananas and rice cereal.”

Nasty.
“Hey, baby girl. It's Uncle Micah.”

She stopped screaming long enough to level at him the most pathetic, dejected expression he'd ever seen.

“How about some of this banana mush your daddy fixed you?”

After a bit of lip trembling, she burst out crying again. Micah figured,
What the hell,
and shoved the spoon into her open mouth. He used her upper teeth to scrape the mush off the spoon, figuring even if she spit most of it out maybe some of it would sneak into her gullet.

In the kitchen, Xavier removed the wrapper from the second muffin. “Alex texted me this afternoon,” he called over Ivy's cries. “He said you two got into it.”

How annoying that Alex would burden Xavier even more by venting to him about their disagreements at the resort when Xavier was already at his wit's end with their kids. “We get into it most weekends.”
Because he refused to comply with the fire code for every goddamn wedding he planned and he always had.
“Nothing to go bothering you about.” Isaac made a play for the spoon, but Micah evaded his outstretched hand. “Isaac eat yet?”

“Not yet.”

Micah set Isaac up in the matching high chair next to his sister as Xavier approached, eyeing Micah skeptically. “You mean, that's not why you're here tonight? To complain to me about Alex?”

Micah fed Isaac a banana mush bite. Unlike his sister, he ate eagerly. “Hadn't crossed my mind. In the voice mail you left me, I could hear both kids crying in the background and you sounded stressed. And I'm overrun with baked goods from my secret pastry pipeline these days, so I figured I'd stop by and drop off some sustenance.”

Xavier poked him in the shoulder. “Don't you dare do that swooping-in-to-save-me bullshit. I hate it when you do that.”

“I know you do. With good reason.” Xavier got his knickers in a twist whenever he decided the hero complex he'd diagnosed Micah with was kicking in. Apparently, Micah had a way of overstepping, but he was working on it. And, honestly, it was a hard habit to break, after everything Micah and Xavier had been through together.

Micah couldn't shake the instinct to protect his friend. He'd spent the better part of his childhood fending off bullies from bothering Xavier, his next-door neighbor at the time, about being gay or being black in a town that tolerated neither. And then, when they were eleven, when the Knolls Canyon Fire struck, Micah had been the one to pull Xavier into Micah's mom's minivan as the two families fled together.

Or maybe that protective instinct had taken permanent hold of Micah after the fire, when Xavier's family decided to start over in a new town, at a new school, where Micah was powerless to be Xavier's protector against school bullies anymore. Or perhaps it had taken root after Xavier enlisted as a volunteer firefighter under Micah's command, counting on Micah's judgment as chief to help keep him safe. After a lifetime of looking out for Xavier, Micah was still having trouble shaking the feeling of being responsible for his well-being.

“I'm not swooping in to save you and I'm not here to complain about Alex. Just dropping off muffins and saying hello to my two favorite toddlers. Stop being so suspicious.”

“Sorry. I'm just tired.”

Micah jammed another spoonful of mush through Ivy's parted lips. Thankfully, her wails had subsided into halfhearted whimpers. “No apology necessary. I'd be cranky if these hooligans had kept me up all night, too.”

Xavier sprinkled Cheerios onto the trays of both high chairs, then dropped into a chair at the table. “I guess I should just be grateful that you and Alex haven't strangled each other, but maybe you could take it a step further and stop getting to the point where you both wish you could strangle each other?”

“Not likely.” He scraped the last of the mush from the bowl and fed it to Isaac, since Ivy was already macking on the dry cereal. “Someday, you'll be too old to eat this nasty slime your daddies have you chowing on. And then your Uncle Micah can take you for out for burgers, and pie, and teach you how to fish.”

“I already called dibs on teaching them to fish.”

Micah leaned in to kiss Ivy's forehead, the only clean and dry skin on her face. “I don't care what your daddy says. You, your brother, and I have a fishing date in two years,” he whispered into her ear.

Ivy pushed her mushy, slimy index finger into Micah's nose and kicked her legs out with gusto, which Micah interpreted as the little gal's way of sealing the deal.

Together, Micah and Xavier cleaned the kids up and pulled them from the high chairs and into their arms. Micah was tempted to make one more offer to watch the kids while Xavier showered, but he couldn't decide if that would be interpreted as swooping in for the rescue or not and so decided against it.

He rubbed Ivy's belly and cuddled her close. “Okay, Rowe family. I've got to hit the road. I have a stop to make before I turn in for the night.” An unwanted bolt of energy zipped through him at the thought of the person he'd be encountering on that stop. Remedy Lane. Maybe they'd even get into a sparring match again as they had that afternoon.

“I know that tone of yours,” Xavier said. “You're going to check up on tonight's wedding at the resort.”

He was really that obvious? “Look, I know what you're thinking. But reminding the Briscoes and their employees that they're not above the law is a full-time job, especially with the string of new event planners that have come and gone over the past year. It's like they've never even heard of the fire code.”

“Be nice to Alex, would you? For me. I don't need a cranky man walking through that door after the day I've had.”

All Micah could do was sigh. “Understood. Just know that he's not making it easy on me. Him or the latest wedding planner he hired. She's a helluva lot easier on the eyes than Alex—no offense—but she's almost as obnoxious and law flaunting as he is.”

Obnoxious, law flaunting—and Micah couldn't get her out of his head. Anticipation of their next run-in, their next battle, sent another surge of electricity through his body. He was tempted to say her name aloud, to feel it on his tongue. He sucked his cheeks in, fighting a smile.

Maybe Xavier sensed Micah's shift in mood, because he watched Micah with interest as he said, “Alex likes her a lot. He says she's bright and ambitious. He thinks this one will stick, unlike the last two.”

Stick? Unlikely.
And there was no use in pretending otherwise, no matter how alluring she was. “I wouldn't be too sure, the way she treats me and the folks of Dulcet like a bunch of clueless backwoods rednecks.”

“You are a backwoods redneck.”

“And proud of it. All I'm sayin' is that there's no way an upper-crust executive from California like her will be happy here long term. However charmed she may be by small-town life in Dulcet, she'll still be out of here the first chance she gets. Mark my word.”

Xavier's interested gaze turned reticent. “You know who she is, right?”

“Yup. Remedy Lane. Displaced California princess and already a major pain in my ass. Why?”

A flash of headlights flickered against the dining room wall, followed by the rumble of a car parking in the driveway.

With Isaac hitched on his hip, Xavier brushed past Micah, his eyes toggling between the car and his phone. “What's Alex doing home so early? Doesn't look like I missed any texts from him. Hopefully everything's all right.” He spun to face Micah, his finger already wagging. “Play nice.”

“Don't I always?”

Xavier rolled his eyes as he tried to tame his hair in a mirror near the door. “Before you say something snarky or goading, think, ‘Xavier was home alone all day with two teething toddlers.' Think, ‘I'll take mercy on Xavier, because he hasn't gotten a solid eight hours of uninterrupted sleep in the past nineteen months.'”

“Since the twins were born? Really?”
Geez.
Add that to the list of things he wasn't looking forward to with parenthood.

Xavier had the door open for Alex before he mounted the porch stairs. “Everything okay at work?”

After a kiss to Xavier, Alex took Isaac in his arms and handed Xavier his briefcase. “Yep. All is well. I let Remedy take the reins today, so I figured I'd get out of her way.”

“I like this whole
getting home before midnight
perk of having a competent wedding planner working for you,” Xavier said, helping him out of his sports coat so he didn't have to set Isaac down.

Alex adjusted Isaac in his arms, then directed a phony smile at Micah. “I see there's no escaping you.”

Behind him, Xavier shot Micah a warning glare and mouthed either
teething
or
sleeping,
Micah wasn't sure which. Not that it mattered, determined as he was to abide by Xavier's plea that he play nice.

In the spirit of that agreement, Micah blurted out the first nice, neutral topic that popped into his head. “I was just making plans with Isaac and Ivy to take them fishing in a couple years.”

Alex stepped right up to Micah and gave Ivy a succession of quick kisses on the cheek until she giggled. “I think Xavier already has dibs on that.”

Ivy reached out, straining for Alex to hold her, too. “So I heard. Here, Ivy wants her papa.”

Alex set Isaac down and held on while the little guy got his balance. As Isaac toddled toward some toys in the corner, Micah handed Ivy over.

“You didn't stop back by the resort to make sure we moved the stage and got rid of those extra tables,” Alex said to Micah, every word dripping with poison. “Are you feeling under the weather or something, to miss a chance at harassing me?”

What was it with Alex that he wouldn't stop needling Micah? It was getting damned old trying to be the bigger person all the time. “I knew you were good for it. But, despite that, I'm on my way to the resort right now to check up on the wedding anyway, because I don't want your latest ingénue doubting my follow-through.”

“Is that really necessary?”

Yes. Yes it was. But Micah bit back his retort.

Xavier flitted between them, looking stressed. “Enough, you two. Please.”

All this playing nice was torture. Absolute torture. Time to skedaddle before his big mouth got the better of him. “Okay, everyone, Uncle Micah's out of here, for real this time. Sorry to intrude on your night, Alex.”

He didn't bother offering his hand to Alex to shake, having learned years ago that kind of gesture was too overt an acknowledgement of any kind of mutual respect between them.

“Bye. Thanks for the help tonight. And the muffins. See you tomorrow at the range,” Xavier said.

A note of defeat had entered back into Xavier's tone. That and the way he'd bent over backward trying to keep peace between Micah and Alex put Micah in a fighting mood again. It was really friggin' tough, ignoring his instinct to try to fix Xavier's unhappiness. Not that Xavier would dare admit to being unhappy with his life or his marriage, not when he'd grown up believing that neither of his dreams of having a husband or children would come true, given Texas's fraught history with gay rights.

But anyone could see how Alex's demanding job kept their family in a perpetual state of stress. He put his career first, working long hours including evenings and weekends for Ty Briscoe, who was, by all accounts, a demanding, workaholic boss. For the life of their relationship, Xavier had spent a lot of time alone, and, now that they had kids, he was parenting alone, which was particularly hard for Micah to watch. There was nothing more he could do for his friend tonight, though.

Micah was at his truck, digging his keys out of his pocket, when the squeak of the front door caught his attention. Alex, with Ivy still in his arms.

Alex closed the front door behind him and walked to the porch rail. “Hey, just a sec. About something you said in there.”

Micah drew a patience-mustering inhalation. “What's that?”

Swallowing hard, Alex shifted Ivy higher in his arms. “It's not an intrusion to me. You, being here.”