Page 52 of Dreams and Reptiles

My aunt giggled and high-fived my mom.

Derek about swallowed his tongue.

And Kendall gave me a look that told me he’d just registered how much trouble he’d gotten himself into with our family.

“Mom!” Derek protested.

“Oh, pipe down. You think your mom didn’t paint the town when she was a girl? And don’t think I haven’t noticed those two men from the fire department looking as if they want to eat you alive. They haven’t stopped staring at you all night. Are you going to let them go hungry?”

All of us fell apart laughing except for Derek. If he hadn’t swallowed his tongue previously, he did then.

I patted him on the back. “Breathe, cousin. I think your secret’s out.”

Mom and Auntie Judy headed back to the kitchen to pour themselves more wine, and Roger and Arnie approached cautiously.

“Are you okay?” Roger asked him.

“I don’t know. I think I just discovered that the proclivity for having three-ways is genetic.”

And that’s when the night entered the R-rated portion of the programming.

We’d advertised the party as lasting from six to nine p.m., so the majority of the folks left at that point, including Mom and Auntie Judy, who wandered back to their cottage with another bottle of wine. Roger and Kendall offered to walk them back, but they refused. Instead, we watched them from the front porch until they got to their door and disappeared inside.

A few of the couples from town who’d joined us seemed to be a little unsure about the same-gender dance partners, but they were respectful. If they would have stayed any longer, they would have gotten an eyeful.

I used my phone to turn the music back on, and the five of us, plus Ezra and Olly, and Finn and Jim, got right back to dancing.

“You looked like you were having fun,” I said to Kendall.

“Yeah, we used to go dancing a lot when I was in the Navy. Lots of sailor bars in Florida. Lots of two-step and swing dancing. My wife liked to go sometimes, if we could get a sitter.”

“Do you still keep in contact with her?” I wasn’t sure why I was asking about his ex-wife, but I wanted to know everything about him, past, present, and future. She was a damn lucky woman, although I could understand that with kids, it would’ve been hard to have him gone all the time.

“Occasionally. She’s been with a guy for a long time, but I think I turned her off the idea of marriage. Funny story, he was a firefighter in my department at one point. I was smart enough to not remind her that she hated a firefighter’s schedule. I wanted to keep the peace.”

“And your daughter lives with her?”

“Some of the time. Shay lives in an apartment with some other kids near her university. She’ll be here in a few days. You ready for that?”

I grinned. “To gang up on you? Absolutely.”

He slapped a hand to his forehead. “I walked right into that.”

“You did. I’d understand, though, if you weren’t ready to tell her about us?”

He raised an eyebrow and then bent to take my mouth with a thorough kissing, which was apparently his answer to my query. His kisses had me ready to climb him once more. When he stopped for air, it was all I could do to hold my head up. My whole body had gone liquid.

“Does that answer your question?”

“That you’re the best kisser ever? Yes. But are you sure?”

“I told you, she’ll have opinions, but my life is my life, and you’re in my life. I loved hearing you tell Finn about us.”

“You heard that? I thought you were too busy seducing my mom.”

He let his head fall back as he laughed. “No way. I meant it. She’d be too much for me.”

“And I’m not?” I was only sort of joking. The last thing I wanted to do was give him more grief.