She’d tried to like Keira, but it wasn’t an easy task. Ares wife seemed to wear her sunglasses so she wouldn’t have to waste time actually looking anyone in the eye, and her mouth didn’t seem to be made for smiling. Not even for Zeus super cute antics.
Of course, just as Nathalie was thinking uncharitable thoughts about her, Keira made her presence
known. Or maybe it was because she hadn’t been getting the attention she felt she deserved.
Holding up her glass, she waggled it in the air and called out, “Ares, darling, I need another
margarita.” She continued texting with one hand.
“I’ll get it,” Zion said.
Just as he did at work, if there was something someone needed, her brother jumped to do it. Keira was the only one who hadn’t said a word to him, so maybe he felt he needed to prove himself to her.
Keira pulled her sunglasses down to look at Nathalie over the rims. It was quite possibly the first time the woman had made eye contact with her. “Can he do it?”
Nathalie tightened her lips for just a second. Be polite. “Yes, he’s perfectly capable of pouring you a
margarita out of a pitcher.”
“All right then.” Keira pushed her sunglasses to the bridge of her nose and handed the glass to Zion.
“Not too much ice,” she said with a false note of sweetness in her tone.
But Nathalie doubted there was an ounce of sweetness in her. Yet there had to be a story as to why
Ares Lowells was even with this woman.
“I put the pitcher of margaritas in the fridge,” Ares told Zion. It wasn’t the first time Keira had
demanded a refresher.
“Thanks, Ares,” Zion said in his overloud outdoor voice.
Nathalie felt Darius eyes on her and glanced up to see him smiling at her. The rest of the guys had
gone quiet. Even Zeus had dropped down on his butt in the water. Almost as if Keira’s voice were a
sponge that sucked all the fun out of the air.
Thankfully, conversation resumed as Zion skipped to the back. Argus pushed up from his seat and
kicked off his deck shoes. He hunkered down at the edge of the kiddie pool and asked Zeus, “How
about a swim?”
“Yay!” Zeus crowed.
Each of the Baddricks had been taking turns throughout the day teaching Zeus to swim. He could
tread water for at least a minute, and he didn’t panic if his head went under. Nathalie remembered
teaching Zion to swim when he was a little boy, and she smiled as Darius lifted Zeus out of the small pool and secured his water wings.
No question about it, he would make an awesome dad. And if she’d been able to pay attention to
anything but Darius, his laughter, his smile, then maybe she might have noticed Zion returning at a
run with Keira’s cocktail in his hand. She looked over at him just as his foot caught on a flagstone,
and the tall glass lurched, splashing the contents all over Keira.
“Look what you did!” Keira’s glare skewered Zion. “This swimsuit is one of a kind couture!”
“I’m sorry,” Zion whispered, clutching the plastic margarita glass to his chest, getting his shirt all
wet. He backed away, out of the line of fire.
Keira turned on Nathalie. “Sorry isn’t good enough.”
“It was an accident,” Nathalie said. She wouldn’t humiliate Zion by apologizing for a simple
accident.
Though later, when they were alone, she’d remind him about running with anything in his hand.
“I’ll be happy to pay for it if it’s ruined.” Even if it was likely worth more than she made in a
month.
“You said he could handle it,” Keira snapped.
“Keira, enough!” Ares stepped in between them. “It was an accident. Zion didn’t mean any harm.
So back off. Now.”
Keira turned her glare on her husband. Her nostrils flared, and her lips turned ugly with tension. “If
my own husband could have bothered to get me a drink, then none of this would have happened.”
Ares stepped forward, his feet right along the edge of a flagstone as if it were a battle line drawn
between them. Kelsey jumped in before either combatant crossed it.
“It’ll wash out, Keira,” she said, in a mediator’s tone. A psychologist, Paige was pleasant and chatty
in a let’s-fill-any-awkward-silences kind of way. “I’ve got that book that tells how to get out just
about any stain. Although I don’t think margarita mix even stains.”
“Fine,” Keira snapped. “You can wash it for me.”
“Keira.” Kelsey said her sister’s name softly, but firmly. “I think it’s time for us to thank Darius for
a great barbecue and head home.”
Nathalie itched to take her down a peg—a hundred pegs would be even better—and she was glad to
see Kelsey stand up to her sister.
Anger lines stretched past the frames of Keira’s sunglasses. She tossed her cell phone into the bag
beside her chair. “Good idea. I can’t wait to clean up and forget about this whole day.” Keira threw
on the see-through flowered cover-up that matched her swimsuit and slipped her feet into high-
heeled sandals.
Nathalie glanced over her shoulder, realizing that Darius had climbed out of the pool and was now
standing close enough to Zion to put his hand on his shoulder. Argus stood beside Darius, holding
Zeus in his arms. Hector and Perseus flanked Ares. Battle positions.
Ares didn’t look at all happy about leaving, with a muscle in his jaw jumping as he stared at his
wife. But he was clearly too much of a gentleman to send her home without him. Besides,
continuing the fight in front of everyone would put a damper on the whole group, and Ares would
care about that, too, Nathalie was sure.
“All right,” Ares said, his voice clipped and tight. “I’ll take you home, Keira. Kelsey, are you sure
you don’t want to stay?”
“I can drive you home later,” Hector offered.
But she simply shook her head. For some crazy reason, Nathalie had the sense that Kelsey didn’t
want to leave Ares alone with his own wife. “Thanks for having me, Darius. It was great to meet
you, Nathalie and Zion.”
On his way out, Ares stopped beside Nathalie and said, “I’m sorry about what happened.”
But, honestly, at this point she was the one feeling sorry for him, going home with that woman.
How on earth he could ever have wanted to marry her was honestly beyond Nathalie.
Then again, she knew people’s stories weren’t exactly linear, were they? Look at hers and Zion’s,
for example. Who could have predicted this would be their life?
Again, she found herself wishing she knew more of Darius story. But though he was always sweet
and kind—and so sexy that she could hardly catch her breath around him—he wasn’t exactly an
open book. She figured he must have his reasons, foremost among them the fact that they were just
two people enjoying each other’s company for a little while.
“None of that was your fault, Zion,” Darius said to her brother, breaking her out of her musings.
“That’s just Keira. Ignore her. We’ve all learned to do that over the years.”
“Keira’s temper tantrums always make me hungry,” Hector said with a hard and fast shake of his
head, as if he were literally trying to shake Ares wife out of his system. “Why don’t you start the
grill, Darius? How do you like your meat done, Zion?”
“Rare,” Zion called out.
Perseus grinned at Zion. “Jump in the pool and wash that margarita off your shirt. Last one in’s a
rotten egg,” he shouted and landed with a cannonball in the pool, with Hector right behind him.
Zeus squirmed in Argus arms. “Me too! Me too!”
She could have kissed every last one of them. And Ares, too, not just for his simple apology, but
also for the way he’d stepped in to end Keira’s harangue before it got even worse.
As Perseus joined the others in the pool for a game of Marco Polo, Darius held out his hand to her
and together they headed over to take care of getting food on for everyone. The barbecue was an
entire counter with two grills, one with a curved top, the other a simple metal grill. A pot of water
for corn on the cob bubbled on the range. The fridge held steaks, hot dogs, hamburgers, potato
salad, green salad, and all the fixings, which was way more food than they could possibly eat, even
if Ares, his wife, and Kelsey had stayed.
“What do you want? Steak, hamburger, or—” He grinned and waggled his eyebrows up and down
in an exaggerated fashion. “—hot dog?”
She laughed, glad the sensation washed away a lot of her anger and frustration over what had just
happened. As if he could read her mind, he turned serious again.
“I apologize for that, Nathalie. I should have warned you about Keira and made sure not to put Zion
in that position.”
“He isn’t your responsibility. I should have been watching. And I was the one who said it was
okay.”
He shushed her with a kiss. “Stop. Ares wife’s attitude isn’t your fault.”
Finally stopping to take a breath, she realized he was right. Just as he was right about so many
things when it came to her brother. She hadn’t had anyone to bounce things off in so long. Even
though she knew this thing with Darius wasn’t going to last forever, did that mean she couldn’t
appreciate him while he was here? “Is she always like that?”
Darius began turning knobs on the grill. “In the beginning of their marriage? Maybe not. At this
point, it’s pretty hard to remember how things used to be. All I know is that in the past year or so,
she’s been worse than ever. Honestly, I don’t know how he can live with her. Whatever happens
between them, though, we’ve got his back.”
She’d seen that—the way the men had surrounded Ares, making it clear that they were there if he
needed them.
“We’ve all known each other a long time,” he told her. “Perseus and Ares were ten. Hector, Argus,
and I a year older. Some bullies were picking on Perseus.” He shrugged. “Something had to be
done.”
Nathalie glanced at the huge muscles in Perseus arms as he chased down Argus in the big pool.
“Perseus needed help?”
Darius grinned. “He was a scrawny kid.”
She had a hard time picturing it. “So you rescued him.”
An expression she couldn’t quite read flashed across his face, but he wasn’t smiling anymore as he
said, “Ares ran for the principal.”
“Smart boy.”
“That’s why he’s the money man.” But his face darkened even further. “We all eventually ended up
living with Hector parents. Sally and George raised us.”
“All of you?” Wonder laced her voice.
“It wasn’t a great neighborhood. Things happened.”
His answer was so understated, his features so expressionless, that she felt a little hitch in her chest.
She wanted to ask what things, but at the same time, she didn’t want to make a mistake by pushing
too hard. Not when Darius had just revealed more to her about his past than he had at any time in all
the weeks she’d known him
.“So we stuck together.” He blew out a hard breath, and then the cocky grin was back. She’d never
been happier to see it. “The Baddricks.”
They weren’t brothers, not by blood the way she and Zion were. Yet she knew they would do
anything for each other.
Meeting them shed new light on Zion. He’d once said his word was his bond, that he always kept
his promises. Seeing him with his closest friends showed her that it was no boast or throwaway
phrase. He’d clearly been through hard times with these men, and he was there for them no matter
what. Just the way he’d been there for Zion time and time again.
And though she kept trying to tell herself that this thing between them was just a casual thrill ride,
she couldn’t help but hope that he’d be there for her, too.
“So,” Sally mused on the phone, “I hear things are progressing nicely with you and your new lady.”
She’d waited a couple of days after the Memorial Day barbecue to call him, but Darius had guessed
it was coming after every one of the other Baddricks had already weighed in on the subject of
Nathalie.
Ares had called Darius first to apologize again for his wife’s snapping at Nathalie and Zion. He’d
made an excuse about a migraine that Darius wasn’t buying, but he’d forced himself to let it go.
Ares ended the call by telling Darius not to screw things up with Nathalie. Perseus was next on the
horn to say that Zeus kept talking about the pretty lady who had played with him in the pool. The
boy had been terribly sad to learn she couldn’t be their new nanny because she already had an
important job. Then Argus claimed he still couldn’t get over Darius finally dating a woman with
looks and brains. And finally Hector had called to say, “You look happy, Darius. I like her.” Which
said it all.
In his high-rise office, Darius swiveled his chair to face the San Francisco Bay glittering in the sun.
“Who called you this time?”
Sally laughed. That’s what he loved best about her: her laughter. She’d never yelled at any of them.
Even when he’d been a complete shit, Sally would give him a long look and ask, “Do you really
think that was the right thing to do?” As if she’d known that he hadn’t been thinking, he’d just been doing, reacting, acting out in the wrong way. Somehow Sally always managed to forgive him
anyway.
“They all told me,” she said.
“They’re a bunch of freaking busybodies,” he grumbled, though it amused him that men in their
mid-thirties would rush to their mom with gossipy tidbits.
“How else am I going to be updated? You don’t tell me anything unless I drag it out of you.”
This was true. He’d talked to Sally several times since Nathalie and Zion had first come to his
garage and work had begun on the Maserati, and yet he’d managed to avoid answering nearly all of
her questions after that first call.
“You’ve never introduced your brothers to a woman before,” Sally observed. “They say she’s
lovely.”
“She is,” he said softly.
“And they all really like her brother, too.”
“Zion’s a great kid.”
“We’d love to meet them both. I hope someday you’ll bring them to the house.”
The Baddricks had planned to buy the Beischel property out in one of the exclusive Chicago suburbs, but Sally and George had wanted an average home in an average neighborhood, nothing
ostentatious. All they required was something large enough to house all their grandchildren and
pseudo-grandchildren. Unfortunately, to date, the Baddricks had done a piss-poor job of filling up
those extra rooms, and Hector’s younger sister Hera wasn’t even close to starting a family.
But Darius could easily imagine Nathalie and Zion and a white Christmas in Chicago. Sally would adore them both. She’d fill up the fridge and freezer with baked goods because Zion was “a growing boy.” And they would both love Sally, too.
“They’re good for you, honey, I can tell.” But was he good enough for them?
That’s what plagued him. Even in something as simple as that scene by the pool with Keira. He should have been standing guard over Nathalie’s brother to make sure no harm came to him, just as he’d promised her. But he’d failed. Badly enough that he couldn’t stop going over the situation in his head—and also couldn’t keep from asking Sally, “Did you hear about Keira’s explosion at the barbecue?”
Sally sighed. She’d obviously been apprised of every nasty detail. “That poor girl. Keira lost her way after that first miscarriage."