Page 18 of After You Returned

I motion to my computer. “Can you fix it? I don’t have time for this shit today.”

“You don’t have time for this shit?” Zane asks. “What else are you going to do? It’s not as if you can surf anytime soon.”

“Thanks for the reminder, asshole,” I mutter.

“I’m not the one who decided to play hero.”

“I like Miles the hero,” Kai says. “If you can’t surf, you’ll be around more often.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m around all the time as it is. We see each other every day at work and most weekends at Mom’s house or some related Raider brothers event.”

Zane raises his eyebrow. “Every day at work?”

I glare at him. “Don’t you start with me, Mr. Marketing Manager. Until Adele came into your life, you were gone even more than me. And when you were gone, you were gone to some far-flung place where no one could reach you.”

“But now I’m a family man.”

Rub it in, why don’t you? He has the woman he’s been drooling over for years, whereas I had the woman I want and lost her.

Jaxon peeks into my office. “You ready?”

My brow wrinkles. “Ready for what?”

“Dude.” Zane shakes his head. “You really have been gone from the office too much if you don’t know what’s happening today.”

“What’s happening today?”

“I am not using a wheelchair!” Henry shouts from the reception area.

Kai chuckles. “I don’t know why Harper bothers to push her father to use a wheelchair. He hates it. I better go check on father and daughter before they kill each other.”

Jaxon glances at his watch. “We should all go. The ceremony shouldbegin in one minute.”

“What ceremony?”

He leaves my office without answering. Kai and Zane follow him. I can’t exactly get any work done without the use of my computer and trail after them.

Instead of going in the direction of the reception area, we turn left toward the distillery. But before we enter the distillery, Jaxon stops at a door to the storage area. The door is open. Weird. The door is never open. Eli loses his mind if one of us forgets to lock up the storage.

I have no idea what he thinks is going to happen to the supplies in a locked distillery on an island where the crime rate is nearly non-existent. Assuming you don’t include streaking or accidentally causing fires as crimes.

“Uncle Kai!” Pearl – Rhett and Dakota’s oldest child – yells before barreling into my baby brother. He picks her up and whirls her around.

I peek inside the room and notice it’s now decorated as a nursery and all of my nieces – apparently the Raider brothers are incapable of creating boys – are here.

“What the hell is going on?”

“Uncle Miles said a bad word.” Pearl holds her hand out. “Dollar for the swear jar.”

I pretend to slap a dollar in her hand.

“No faking. You owe me!”

“Send me an invoice,” I say before asking Kai, “Why is the distillery suddenly full of Raider children?”

“This is the nursery.”

“The nursery? Since when do we have a nursery at the distillery?”