Page 84 of Enticing Her Love

“Aw. That’s such a sweet picture.”

“I was on the third day of a fever. My mom said I wouldn’t leave my father’s arms.”

She gazed up at him over her shoulder. “It had to be hard for them to see their wild boy so sick.”

“Either that or they were enjoying the downtime.”

“They were not.”

He hugged her. “Yeah, probably not.”

They continued looking through the pictures, and Flynn told her stories about many of them. When they came to one taken at an archaeological dig site, she took a minute to study Flynn’s young face. He and his siblings were lined up like ducks in a row, sitting on their knees, peering into an excavated area where three men, including his grandfather, were working.

Sutton gazed up at him again. “Why didn’t you follow in your grandfather’s footsteps?”

“Several reasons, but mainly because his goal was to explain the past and figure out how we got here, and mine was to understand the present and to try to make the future better, whether it was helping protect tribal lands or bringing to light threats to species of animals or issues affecting earth or people. My grandfather calls the stories we tell stories of the heart.” He brushed a kiss to her forehead. “You and I aren’t so different, Steele.”

She was learning that on many levels.

They looked at pictures of Flynn and his siblings riding bikes, climbing trees, and hiding in forts made out of branches, and of their family sleeping in tents, sitting around bonfires, and with dozens of people from other cultures, dressed in varying garb, at enormous tables piled high with food.

“Are these people you lived near?”

“Yeah, mostly.”

“I haven’t seen any pictures of holidays. Do you celebrate them?”

“Sort of, but not in the way people here are used to, with tons of presents and lights and cutting down trees.”

“What does your family do?”

“Since we traveled among different cultures, my parents adopted celebrations of family and friends as a way of being more inclusive. In many of the places we lived, the communities were small, and they didn’t have much, so celebrations revolved around spending time together, preparing and eating meals as a group, sitting by bonfires telling stories, singing, and playing music. My dad plays the guitar, and he taught us all to play, but Seth and Victory are the only ones who do it well.”

“So that’s where the bonfire tradition came from.”

“It is. We grew up with homegrown fun, taking part in whatever traditions and cultural activities were going on at the time.”

“That sounds wonderful. Did you exchange gifts?”

“Sort of. My siblings and I made gifts for each other, and every year my parents made us each a map of wherever we were, and they’d give us a list of hints, sending us on a treasure hunt that would lead to our gifts from them. Each map is different and contains clues to find the gifts, but we have to work together to figure them out because they all tie into each other. When we were kids, it would take us days to find them, and I think we fought half the time, but it was fun.”

“What kind of gifts did you get?”

“They were never what we expected. My parents have a knack for remembering things we mentioned that they couldn’t make happen at the time. Like when Noah was four, and all he wanted was to sleep by himself under the stars. The treasure hunt led us to directions for building a treehouse, and we all built it with my parents, just so Noah could have his night under the stars. Of course, my dad stood guard at the bottom of the tree that night, but Noah didn’t know it. And when Clay was six or seven, he was obsessed with going to a pro-football game. We were living overseas, and it was more than a year later when the treasure hunt led us to tickets to a football game for Clay. I swear they never forget a damn thing.”

“Except your birthday,” Sutton said carefully.

Flynn held her tighter. “That seriously wasn’t a big deal until I heard my mother crying over it.”

“Maybe it meant so much to her because your family is all about family, and she didn’t want you to feel like you weren’t important.”

“I’m sure that’s exactly what it was. That year, the treasure hunt led us to an invitation for an extra birthday celebration for me.”

“I was wondering if there was more to the birthday story. I love that they did that. Did you guys ever mind that the gifts were for one of you more than all of you?”

“Not that I remember, but the gifts were for all of us. We all went to the football game, because we were supporting Clay, and they all got cake and ice cream at my extra birthday party. The fun was the treasure hunt, really, and we didn’t have much growing up. We lived minimally because of the extensive travel, so we didn’t have big expectations. I think with kids, it’s more about how things are presented over time. My parents acted like what we did was normal, and it was for us, so we didn’t begrudge each other. We were happy for each other. Or at least I was for them.”

“I love that. When did they stop making treasure hunts?”