Page 174 of Knot in the Wedding Cards

Sawyer's grin goes wide and wicked.

"I'll take that as a yes."

"That was the plumbing," I say. "This house is old."

"Sure it was."

He's already moving, already pulling the refrigerator open and surveying its contents with the confidence of a man who has never once been intimidated by a kitchen.

He straightens with a carton of eggs in one hand and reaches with the other for the apron hanging on its hook — a truly hideous thing, mustard yellow, printed with dancing lemons, left behind by whoever rented this place last.

He loops it over his head and ties it at the small of his back, over bare skin and low sweats, and turns to me with a flourish.

"Well. Guess we're having ourselves a pancake morning."

I take one look at a grown Alpha, shirtless, in a lemon-print apron, and I lose the fight to keep a straight face.

"You look," I inform him, "like a calendar nobody asked for."

"Miss July," he agrees, entirely unbothered, and cracks the first egg one-handed into a bowl. "Get over here and make yourself useful. You measure. I've got trust issues with anybody who eyeballs baking soda."

So I make myself useful.

I find the flour and the good vanilla. I measure while he whisks.

We fall into the easy back-and-forth of two people who both know their way around a task. He tells me the trick his grandmother swore by —a splash of the buttermilk held back and folded in last, for fluff— and I tell him that's an unhinged amount of confidence for a man whose first pancake is going to be a sacrifice to the pan gods regardless.

The griddle heats. Butter hisses and goes gold. The whole kitchen fills up with the warm, sweet smell of batter. Under it runs the magnolia-and-sugar of Sawyer working happy.

I catch myself smiling at a mixing bowl like an idiot.

"Ye of little faith," Sawyer says, ladling the first round of batter into neat gold circles. "You wounded me earlier. A sacrifice pancake. I don't believe in the sacrifice pancake, Blooming Apricot. I believe in a properly seasoned pan and a little preparation. Same principles I bring to a four-hundred-guest reception, and I've never once lost a wedding to the pan gods."

"You lost a cake to a seagull in April."

"That was an act of God. We do not speak of it. Do you even know what to do with a day off? Genuine question. I've watched you work clean through two of them already."

"I know precisely what to do with a day off. I catch up on the things I don't have time for on the days that aren't off."

"That's just work wearing a disguise."

"It's a very convincing disguise," I admit, and he laughs, low and warm, the sound folding into the smell of butter and sugar.

"You're doing the thing," Sawyer says, not looking up from the griddle.

"What thing?"

"The thing where you're happy, and it's making you suspicious." He flips a pancake with a neat flick of the wrist. It lands perfectly. He looks insufferably pleased. "You don't have to interrogate it, you know. Sometimes a good morning is just a good morning."

Before I can decide whether to argue, heavy footsteps announce the next arrival.

Beckett shuffles in like a bear coming out of hibernation, hair standing straight up on one side, a pair of gray sweatpants riding dangerously low, scratching idly at the dark hair on his chest. He's got sheet creases pressed into his cheek. He yawns so wide his jaw cracks.

"Whatever that is," he rumbles, voice gone to gravel, "I want some. All of it. My whole body hurts. I feel like I got hit by a truck and then the truck backed up to check its work."

"You sound," Sawyer says pleasantly, "like an old man."

Beckett points a thick finger at him without any real heat behind it.