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Chapter Fourteen
Taking in a deep breath, I felt my whole ribcage expand wider than I ever knew it could before I blew it out in a slow controlled manner. Billie’s arms were around James’s neck and his hand rested on her lower back in return. The hug was quick, and most would say innocent, but no matter how reassuring they both had been, I wasn’t readily willing to trust him … not yet … maybe not ever.
“Thanks for inviting me, Sawyer,” James said, a look of hope in his eyes that I couldn’t quite manage to respond to. I almost kicked myself for leaving their names with security to send everyone up. It had meant I hadn’t been given those last couple of minutes to compose myself, had I known he was on his way up.
“No problem, we’re just waiting for Hammer and the others to get here. We’re going dry tonight, if that’s okay, for Hammer, I mean. Weddings, Thanksgiving, his birthday and New Year celebrations are his nemesis. James had been around when Hammer was a struggling addict and had seen his recovery from a distance.
“Coffee’s fine,” he stated, as he stood casually dressed in his five thousand dollar tailor-made suit and glanced around him.
“Take a seat,” Billie prompted. He followed her lead and sat nervously on the edge of the couch. I thought how eager he was, being the first of our guests to arrive. Billie sat beside him for a moment and behaved perfectly naturally toward him, which gave me a tight knot in my chest. It was only when she went down the hallway to see Colby for a moment that I realized I was supposed to make the drink, and had no idea how he drank it.
“Black?” I asked, lifting the pot from the machine and pouring the black liquid into a mug.
“Creamer too, if you have some.” This surprised me because it was how I drank mine, something we had in common, while the rest of the family drank theirs black.
“Are you my uncle?” Colby asked excitedly, his head poking around his bedroom door from the farthest room in the apartment. He practically skipped down the hallway and into the sitting room.
“Whoa, who’s this big guy?” James asked, immediately making Colby’s chest swell.
“I’m going to be your nephew,” Colby stated proudly. He was totally transfixed by the whole relative thing.
“You are? That must mean you’re…” he pretended to think, and Colby was immediately captivated by him. “Colby, am I right?”
“Yes!” he exclaimed. “You know me already?”
“I know of you because a few little people I’ve been spending some time with have talked about you nonstop.”
“Milly, Bella, and Brock?” he asked, catching on immediately. He was a smart little kid.
“Hey, are you a mind reader?” James teased, and I saw Colby loved all the attention. Same old James in this sense, he always did have a way of winning people over in the first few minutes that they met him.
“Did you know, your brother is going to be my stepdad?” he asked, like he was telling James something he may not understand.
“So I hear, and you want to know what I think? I think he’s going to be an awesome dad.” A knock on the door distracted me from reading too much into his comment. Strolling over to the door, I opened it and saw Tricia soaked to the skin but still smiling.
“I’ve been around every wine bar in town looking for my shining knight in Armani, but he failed to show up. I guess his stalker thought it was too wet to hang around him today.” I grinned warmly at her and shook my head.
“You’re a freak,” I teased. “Let’s get you inside. I thought you’d blown us off in favor of a church coffee evening or something.” Tricia shrieked with laughter when I referenced an excuse she’d used for leaving Billie and I alone the first night I met her. My girl had obviously taken Colby back to bed and when she heard Tricia laughing, she came rushing down the hallway to meet her.
Tricia broke the hug and stepped back, her hungry eyes falling on my brother. I knew immediately when she glanced toward Billie with big round eyes, she was interested. I briefly wondered if Billie told her about all the issues we’d had between us and decided this thought was wasted. Tricia and Billie had the kind of relationship that most of us aspired to have with the one special friend who always had our back.
“Tricia,” she offered, immediately making a beeline for James without waiting to be introduced.
James stood, smoothed his jacket down, and shook the hand she held toward him. “James Wild, Sawyer’s brother,” he replied in a smooth tone, like there was any doubting who he was. We looked and sounded practically the same.
“I know,” Tricia said in her understated way, and sat on the couch next to him before he retook his seat. When James sat down, she was almost in his lap and I couldn’t help the small chuckle that escaped my throat. My brother turned his head sideways and looked at her, and even I saw his stare was a little too long.
“You look freakily like your brother,” Tricia blurted out, still staring at him and James’s curious eyes shifted from hers to mine.
“You think?” he asked. I knew he was looking at my beard when he smoothed his bare chin, before he looked back at her.
“Yeah, but Sawyer’s the slightly dark and dangerous version of the two, you’re more like the James Bond one.”
“You’re James Bond?” Colby asked, excitedly from his bedroom door again.
“Colby Drummond, get your butt back into bed, it’s not going to be fun in the morning when you won’t get up for school,” Billie admonished, in her best authoritative hot mom tone.
“Only one more question, Mom, I promise, is Uncle James, James Bond?” he asked in a whiny voice.
