“Boyfriend?” the boy asked in disgust, his attention coming back to High and it was not difficult to see the kid found him lacking.

“Alan, honey, do me a big favor and shut the door on that cold,” Dottie called. “And, no, I told you. That’s your uncle Logan,” she said to her kids. Then she kept talking. “So okay, how about we take this into the house where there’s coffee?” She looked at her sister, who was pulling herself up from the floor. “Alan insisted we come, not call, to check in on you. Sorry we’re interrupting but whatever. We’re here now and I’m two cups down since it took us twice as long as it normally does to get here on those blasted roads.”

“I—” Millie started, but her attention came back to High when he had to shift back, something he did only slightly, to let in her brother-in-law.

When the man was in, High shut the door while the little girl asked her aunt, “Did you bring us presents from France?”

“Did I bring you presents from France,” Millie replied. Not a question, a scoffing astonishment. “I can barely go to the drugstore and not get you presents.”

“Yay!” the girl screeched.

All this went on while High and Dot’s husband faced off in the hall.

Dot had caved when he’d confronted her. As she would. She’d been there. She knew.

This guy, High had his work cut out for him.

Their face-off continued until the little boy announced, “You’re not Auntie Millie’s boyfriend. I am.”

High looked down at the kid whose face was now twisted with dislike and outrage and, fuck him, but he couldn’t beat back the smile.

“You’re not my boyfriend, sweetheart,” Millie said. “You’re my nephew.”

The boy looked to his aunt and snapped, “Same thing.”

If High didn’t know they were already close, what happened next would prove it.

“We’re making waffles,” Millie announced, adeptly dealing with the kid’s attitude by offering food. “Who wants waffles?”

The kid’s stomach was obviously more important than his claim on his aunt because he forgot about his issue with High and yelled, “Me!”

The girl started jumping around, also yelling, “Me too! I love waffles.”

“You guys had oatmeal at home,” Dottie said, herding her kids into the house.

“That wore off like ages ago,” the boy replied, pulling away from his mother and dashing into the living room, following his aunt, so intent on doing it that his arms were pumping in an effort to give him more speed.

They disappeared.

With that distraction gone, High turned back to Alan and was again confronted with a wall of attitude, the adult kind he didn’t like all that much.

It didn’t sit well with him because this guy didn’t get it and was making judgments that weren’t his to make.

But that didn’t matter.

It was High who was going to have to make the effort.

“It means a lot you give a shit,” he said low. “And as you can see, she’s doin’ good. And so you know, I get it may take time and I’ll put in the time but in the end, you’ll know I got this.”

“You fuckin’ better,” Alan replied, and High had to remind himself it was good Millie had people who cared in her life, as that was all the guy gave him before he prowled away.

He looked to his feet, sighed, then looked up again when he heard little Freddie shout, “Bacon! Yee ha!”

And High steeled himself against what he knew would be all good at the same time it was pure torture as he walked out of the foyer toward the living room, hearing Millie ask, “Okay, who’s going to help man the waffle iron and who’s gonna help fry the bacon?”

She got two, “Waffle irons!”

When he hit the living room, he felt slightly better seeing Dottie’s eyes come to him with a soft look of understanding and a definite communication that it was all going to be okay.

He felt a fuckuva lot better when Millie’s eyes came to him and she gave him a smile that said she was happy her house was filled with people she loved.

Then it was High who ended up frying the bacon.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Gonna Be My Throat

Millie

“ALAN WILL COME around,” I whispered against Logan’s neck.

We were in my bed, Logan in his clothes, me in my pj’s, Logan on his back, me on top of him.

My sister and her family had left five minutes ago. The snowplow had gone down our street thirty minutes before that but it didn’t matter. Alan told us it was going to get near sixty degrees that day, so Denver was going to thaw.

When they’d left, I’d wanted to do the dishes.

Logan had firmly led me right where I was.

“I know, Millie,” he whispered back.

I lifted my head to look up at him. “How did Dot know about us?”

Conversation had not been heavy during our surprise visit with my family. We made waffles. We ate them. We talked about France. I gave out presents. The kids took most of the attention but that didn’t mean Dot didn’t go out of her way to communicate to her children and her husband that Logan was welcome and accepted. This meant she went out of her way to communicate the same to Logan.

Alan, on the other hand, resolutely refused to heed this communication and spent a lot of his time scowling at Logan and being very loving and familiar to me. He did this last bit by centering anything he said around things Logan couldn’t know or hadn’t been a part of, leaving him out.