Page 19 of Enticing Her Love

“Big families are a Steele thing, too. I have two sisters and three brothers.”

“Look at that. Something else we have in common. Do they drive you nuts with group texts?”

“Yes! Is that a big-family thing?”

“I guess. It’s pretty funny sometimes.”

“Ours, too. Where do you fall in the lineup?”

“I’m number four. Victory is the oldest. Her real name is Victoria, and then come Seth, Clay, me, and my youngest brother, Noah. What about you?”

“I’m number three. Jock and Archer are twins. They’re the oldest, and Jock’s real name is Jack. Then there’s me, and then Levi and Leni, who are also twins, and my sister Jules, the group-texting queen, is the youngest.”

“There are two sets of twins? Your parents must have been run ragged.”

“I honestly don’t know how they survived Jock and Archer. They were always doing crazy stuff, like making flight suits and jumping off roofs. And they pranked everyone. They still do.”

“They sound awesome.”

“They have their moments.” She adored her siblings, but her family had experienced more than their fair share of heartache, and it had been tough. “Are your brothers and sister survivalists and into exploring, too?”

“Some more than others. Vic loves her creature comforts.” He leaned against Sutton’s side. “But she could hack it out here with me as long as she had her dream fairy, which she’s had since she was a kid to keep bad dreams away, and a Snugpak and butt wipes.”

“Sounds like my kind of person.”

“You’d like her. She’s a trip, and she’s tough. When she was in her twenties, she fell in love with her boss, who was in his early forties, and she married him.”

“That’s a big age gap. My brothers would have been all over that.”

“We were, but there’s no telling Victory what to do. If you tell her to go right, she’ll go left just to prove she can.”

“Sounds like Archer. Do you like her husband?”

“I did. He was great. He treated her like gold, and she adored him. Unfortunately, he passed away several years ago from a heart attack.”

Her chest constricted with memories of her own family’s tragedy. “That’s horrible. She must have been devastated.”

“We all were. Harvey was a big part of our family. Vic was so crushed, she tried to push us all away the first few months after he died, but we didn’t let her. I didn’t let her. I was a pain in her ass, showing up on her doorstep and refusing to leave. I don’t know if I did the right thing or not, but it felt right at the time.”

Sutton swallowed against the guilt she usually kept tamped down but was clawing its way up to the surface. “Trust me, you did the right thing. Whatever happened would’ve been worse if you’d let her shut you all out.”

“You sound like you have experience with that kind of thing.”

“Unfortunately, I do. Jock lost his fiancée and their baby in a horrible car accident, and his fiancée was Archer’s best friend. We had all grown up together on the island.” Sutton didn’t know why she was opening up to Flynn. Maybe it was because they had this in common and she knew the heartache that went along with it and the fortitude it took to move past it. Or maybe it was because there in the darkness, it felt like they were the last two people on earth, and talking about something so personal, something she hadn’t shared with others, was making her feel even closer to him, and she liked that. He stirred so many emotions in her, and she liked that, too, even though she knew she shouldn’t.

Whatever the reason, the words kept coming, and she didn’t want to stop them. “Archer blamed Jock, and Jock felt so guilty, he let him. He wasn’t even driving when it happened. It was awful. Jock shut us all out and rarely came back to the island for more than a decade. It tore my family up. Things are better now, but it was tough for a long time, and so much happened during those years. Jock became a caregiver for an older gentleman whose name was also Harvey. He’s the one who gave Jack the nickname Jock. I moved to Port Hudson, Leni went away to school and moved to New York, Levi got a girl pregnant and she didn’t want the baby, so he and his daughter, Joey, moved off the island and he was raising her by himself. Jules opened her shop. We all started our adult lives. It’s strange to have that happen when your family is in such a discombobulated state.”

Flynn put his hand on hers, his compassionate gaze wrapping around her like an embrace. “I’m sorry your family went through that. Grief can really mess people up.”

She had the urge to rest her head on his shoulder and take comfort in the closeness. It had been so long since she’d wanted that, but he was still her boss, so she struggled against it, sliding her hand out from beneath his and swatting a bug flying near her face. “It sure can.”

“How old were you when that happened?”

“Nineteen. I was in college. I feel guilty about that because I wasn’t home to help my sisters through it. I wish I had done for Jock what you did for Victory. Maybe it would’ve saved all of us years of heartache.”

“Or maybe it would’ve caused a rift between you two. It did for me and Vic. Talk about tension. There was a lot of it between us for a long time.”

“That stinks. What happened? Did you back off?”