Page 80 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

I freeze.

I do a very fast and specific calculation about the current composition of my social circle and what it means in terms of fifth wheels and who would need to attend to address that problem, and I look at Sophia.

She’s smiling at me. Fully. The smile of a woman who knows exactly what she just said.

“Um,” I say. “Why would that fix the fifth wheel problem?”

“Fine,” Sophia says, with great and deliberate casualness, “I figured Uncle Asher would be overseeing Vine, as usual, and since you two are seeing one another, it’d give you a nice cushion having him there.”

I choke on a breath.

Sophia’s face does the thing where she’s trying very hard not to laugh and failing and then giving up on not failing entirely, and she puts both arms around me from the side and squeezes while laughing in my ear. “I really hope you’re swallowing better than that, bestie,” she says.

“Sophia, I’m sor⁠—”

“Don’t be sorry.” She squeezes again. “You’re a beautiful, amazing woman and like I said before, you’re all adults.” She pulls back and cups my face with a smirk on her lips. “But we are not ever, ever, sharing straws ever again.”

I can’t help it. I laugh and she joins in, hugging me again. I hug her back while across the great hall Raphael has spun Odette once and she’s come back to him with pink cheeks and the smile of a woman who has stopped trying to be professional about it.

I love my job.

28

MADDOX

Best decision I’ve made since the four of us agreed to whatever this is, was booking an early return from Milan.

I’m going to keep saying that.

The shower’s running cold by the time I get out because I stood under the hot water for twenty minutes just letting the week decompress and lost track of time, which I don’t usually do. I towel off and pull clothes on and check my phone while I’m still doing up buttons.

Men’s thread first. Just us three.

Asher texted while I was in the air. Short version: Sophia engineered dinner at Vine for Harper and her matchmaking project while he was running the service. He’d managed a quick hello and a flimsy professional excuse to get Harper alone in his office for about eight minutes before he and Killian had to leave for an investor dinner off the estate. Harper told him she was fine staying in.

Asher: She said she was fine but she wasn’t fine.

Asher: Also I’m fairly certain Sophia knows.

I’d read that last part somewhere over the Swiss Alps and thought about it for the rest of the descent.

Here’s the thing about Sophia knowing about Asher: if she’s clocked it with him then she’s clocked it with me too, because my goddaughter grew up watching the three of us operate as a unit for twenty-five years and she’s sharp as hell about all of us. If she knows about Asher and me then she knows about Killian. Which means Harper’s been sitting with that knowledge at the dinner table tonight without any of us there, and Asher said she wasn’t fine, and Killian and Asher are forty minutes away at a dinner they couldn’t cancel.

I pull up the estate security app.

I designed the garden maze eleven years ago on a bet with Killian. I told him I could build something on the grounds that would genuinely stump him and he wouldn’t solve it in under an hour. I won. He took two hours and fourteen minutes and came out the south entrance looking like a man who’d reconsidered several things about himself.

I know every inch of it. Every false trail, every dead-end that isn’t actually a dead-end, every door hidden behind the vine panels that look like solid hedge from both sides. It’s mine. I built it and I’ve walked it more times than I can count at various hours and in various conditions.

Right now it’s showing me something better than its own architecture.

The east garden path camera catches the dinner group leaving Vine’s terrace: Lorenzo and Sophia first, then Raph and Odette, who are walking close enough that Harper’s matchmaking mission has clearly paid off. Harper’s behind them in a pale yellow wrap dress, the kind that ties at the waist and moves when she does, her hair loose down her back.

She’s heading for the gardens.

I finish buttoning my shirt and grab my jacket.

By the time I reach the garden path the group’s split up. Lorenzo and Sophia have gone toward the south wing and I’m not reading into that. Raph and Odette are somewhere in the west section and I can see on the app that they’ve stopped moving and I’m very glad I can’t hear them.