Page 42 of Restored By You

My heart does a nervous dip.

Rhett doesn’t knock, he just pushes open the front door. The noise hits us full force alongside a banner strung across the archway of the foyer in looping hand-painted letters: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RHETT!

I stop dead on the threshold. “Rhett,” I whisper-hiss, squeezing his hand.

“Surprise,” he says with a grin, toeing off his boots.

“It’s your birthday? Like, today?” I round on him, mouth open, keeping my voice to a furious whisper. He spent the whole day working on my house and didn’t say a word—I made him get up at seven in the morning, on a Sunday, on his birthday! I’m a monster. “How could you not tell me? I didn’t get you anything. I don’t even have a card, Rhett, I look like the girlfriend who forgot her—” I stop, my eyes widening. The word out before I can catch it. Heat floods my face.

To my horror, Rhett catches it, too. Something pleased moves across his face, and he leans in close, his mouth at my ear. “Girlfriend, huh?”

My mouth opens and closes like a fish out of water. “T-That’s not—”

“Too late. Heard it.” He straightens, grinning like a man who just won and takes my coat off my shoulders before I can argue. “And I don’t want a thing. You’re here. That’s the whole gift, darlin’.”

Before I can find a single word to throw back at him, a voice cuts across the foyer, “Is that the birthday boy?”

She comes through the archway wiping her hands on a dish towel—a woman in her sixties, silver threading through blonde hair pinned up, a fall-themed apron over her sweater, and a face that is unmistakably a mother’s. She takes one look at her son, then at me beside him, and her whole face opens.

“And who is this?” She tosses the towel over her shoulder. “You didn’t mention your guest was a lady friend, dear.”

“Ma.” There’s a warning underneath something bashful I’ve never heard from him. “This is Shea. And her brother, Tyler. Shea, this is my mom, Julie.”

“Stepbrother,” Tyler corrects on reflex, then mumbles, “Uh, hi.”

His mother drags me into a hug without warning. And the scent of sugar and butter flood my senses. “It’s so good to meet you, sweetheart. He’s been a stone about you, I swear.” She pulls back, hands on my shoulders, beaming. “And, gosh, just look at you. Gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. Come in, come in, you’re letting the heat out. Tyler, honey, the kids are in the living room and there’s soda in the fridge, help yourself to whatever you like. Dinner will be ready shortly.”

Tyler shoots me a wary look and I give him the tiniest nod. He drifts toward the noise and then the house just…takes us in. I don’t get introduced so much as absorbed. Callie materializes in the kitchen with a shriek, “Shea! You didn’t tell me you were coming.”

Beau nods at me from beside her, a man of few words. Cassidy waves from the island where she’s arranging a cheese board with a toddler on her hip. Another little one, a girl, toddles past while being chased by a broad, laughing man who I can only assume is another one of Rhett’s brothers.

Levi stands off to the side with a beer and a grin in my direction. “There she is.”

A young blonde woman I haven’t met, but looks very much like Rhett’s mother, approaches me. “You are wayyy too pretty to be with my brother,” she says, and Levi barks with laughter. “Hi, I’m Lily.”

She extends her manicured hand and I shake it lightly. “Uh, thank you?”

Rhett huffs. “Fuck off, Lil.”

His sister rolls her eyes. “Just stating facts, bro.” A shaggy-haired little boy suddenly vaults over the back of a couch yelling something about being Spiderman and Lily spins on her heel. “Parker! You are not Spiderman, for the last time!”

It’s loud. So loud. Family and kids and dogs. A fat wiener dog gently steals food from the toddlers as they waddle about. Conversations stack on top of each other as a timer goes off in the kitchen.

It’s pure chaos.

And I love every second of it.

Suddenly my hand is being swallowed by an older man introduced to me as Clayton, Rhett’s father, tall and broad like all his sons. “Hope you like steak, young lady,” he booms, his voice carrying throughout the house. “I heard y’all got a lot of salad eaters in California.”

Julie swats her husband as he reaches over toward the array of desserts she has sprawled on the counter. “Lucky for you, my love. I made salad, too.”

Clayton grumbles something about having a side of grass with his cow and I find my face hurting from the smile splitting my face in two.

“Grill is ready, Ma,” another tall, broad, but bearded man walks in from the back of the kitchen and I recognize him from the bar. Butch, I think. His gaze narrows the moment he sees me. “Didn’t know we were letting tourists in now.”

“Butch,” his mother hisses. “Watch your tone.”

“Only the pretty ones,” Levi smirks, now sitting on the counter with his feet dangling.