Page 128 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

“I want to ask Killian for his blessing.”

My jaw drops. Not dramatically, not performed, just genuinely falls open for a second because even though I knew how Lorenzo feels about Sophia, the sentence lands with all the weight it carries.

“Enzo,” I say, and I’m already out of my chair and hugging him before I’ve fully processed standing up. He laughs, a little startled, and hugs me back.

“Ssh,” he says, patting my shoulder. “You know how she is. I can’t keep a secret from her for long, but I just need a few days.”

“She doesn’t suspect anything?”

“She’s Sophia. She suspects everything and then dismisses it because she thinks she already knows the answer.” He pulls back and looks at me with a slight grimace of a smile. “I was thinking, you know, since you’re Killian’s, uh, baby mama, now. That maybe having you there would make him less likely to make it a whole thing.”

I look at Enzo, who is a genuinely lovely person and who clearly does not know Killian as well as he thinks he does, and I smile with all the warmth I have available.

“Absolutely,” I tell him. “Just say when and where.”

He exhales with relief and I nod encouragingly and I do not tell him that Killian is going to make it a whole thing regardless of whether I’m standing right next to him, because that’s between Lorenzo and whatever’s coming for him, and also some things you just have to let a person discover for themselves.

From out front, I hear Sophia explaining the difference between strappy and lace in a tone that suggests she has opinions about this that go beyond the customer’s question, and Enzo straightens up and says, “I should probably go help,” with the look of a man who has decided to walk into something knowing exactly what it is.

I sit back down with my salad and smile at nothing in particular.

My best friend is going to be so surprised.

48

MADDOX

I’ve been to a lot of dinners. I’ve thrown some of them. This one Asher cooked in our best friend’s kitchen while Killian prepared to give a formal sit-down to a man he actually likes because his daughter is involved and that’s just how Killian operates, and Harper spent the afternoon in the kitchen with Asher having opinions about salt that Asher ignored with the specific patience he only has for her. I set the table and watched all three of them through the kitchen doorway and thought, yeah, this is it. This is what it’s supposed to feel like.

Four nights ago Harper came home talking before she was through the door, already mid-sentence, the way she gets when something’s lit her up from the inside, and by the time she got to Enzo wanting Killian’s blessing and a vineyard elopement, Killian’s face had done the full cycle and landed somewhere that meant he’d already decided something and was just waiting for the room to finish being loud. I took myself to the kitchen doorway, kept my face completely still, and promised myself I was going to enjoy every second of tonight.

Killian comes out of his room in his jacket.

His dinner jacket. In his own suite. For a meal Asher cooked from scratch because Enzo Gonzalez is going to be sitting across from him.

“You’re wearing the jacket,” I say.

“I always wear the jacket at dinner.”

“You absolutely do not wear the jacket at dinner in your own suite, Kil, come on.”

He straightens his cuff. “Enzo is joining us.”

From the kitchen, without looking up, Harper says “Killian, take the jacket off” in the voice she uses when she’s already decided how something’s going to go, and Killian takes the jacket off, and I turn back to the table because my face is about to do something I can’t walk back.

“I swear you’d better not act this way when this little one starts dating!” Harper calls out.

“Shit, sweetheart,” I laugh, “you’ll be lucky if I don’t answer the door with a damn shotgun when they start dating.”

“What? Maddox, what if it’s a boy?”

“Doesn’t matter. Man, woman, short, tall, when our kid asks to go on their first date they’ll have the security of Fort Knox and John Wick on their asses.”

She must say something to Asher because he says, “I’m with them on this, mon coeur.”

She grumbles something and I hear Asher laughing.

God, do we love this woman or what?