Page 90 of Devoured By the Forbidden Mountain Man

There was no competition between them. Hunter seemed perfectly content to let Case fill a room and then add one dry sentence when it would land best.

“She laughed harder than I did.”

“That was professionally inappropriate.”

Hunter’s hand settled over the back of Case’s chair while Case continued describing the injustice.

I understood the attraction.

At some point Annette asked how the Lantern House was treating me, and I told her about Thanksgiving week at the restaurant, including the reservation schedule I had rebuilt after discovering three different people were maintaining separate versions.

“You like being back in it,” she said.

“I do. I missed the work more than I realized when I was trying to convince myself losing the old job was just another logistical problem.”

Rex’s hand rested against my knee beneath the table.

I continued without looking at him. “The new place fits better anyway. The owner lets me do the job he hired me to do, Case is there, and nobody has used the phrase operational vision at me even once.”

Case lifted his glass from the other end of the table. “We’re putting that in your contract.”

Everyone laughed, and the conversation shifted naturally toward the Lantern House Christmas schedule until I threatened to ban holiday-work discussions from Thanksgiving.

The meal stretched because nobody was in a hurry.

I noticed halfway through that I hadn’t gotten up once.

When the gravy ran low, Rex passed it before I reached for it. Piper carried the bread basket down the table. Earl refilled water glasses when he stood for his own. Annette found the serving spoon someone had abandoned beside her plate and sent it back toward me without commentary.

No one needed me to keep dinner running.

So I stayed in my chair, ate the food while it was hot, and listened to my brother argue with Piper about whether his hand injury had actually required twelve stitches or only eleven.

“It was twelve,” she said.

“One barely counted.”

Piper’s expression told me this wasn’t the first time she’d heard him minimize an injury.

Piper turned to me. “He said that while blood was dripping off his elbow.”

Gavin looked betrayed. “We agreed not to exaggerate.”

I was already laughing before Piper answered.

“I’m a nurse. I’m documenting.”

I laughed hard enough that Rex’s hand tightened warmly around my knee.

By the time the plates were mostly empty, the room had gone pleasantly loose around the edges. Earl leaned back in his chair with coffee. Annette and Piper were deep in a conversation about schools and hospital schedules. Hunter had relaxed enough to tease Case without waiting to see whether anyone else found him funny.

Gavin caught my eye across the table. For a moment neither of us spoke. There was still unfinished work between us; seven years hadn’t become painless because the legal case was resolved, and one Thanksgiving dinner couldn’t restore everything we had missed. It didn’t need to.

My brother was sitting across from me complaining because Piper had exposed his medical stubbornness to strangers, and for today, that was enough.

Rex’s thumb moved once along the side of my knee.

I looked at him and found his attention already on me.