Grayson shook his head and agreed, “No, she’s not.”
“Then what the hell has gone on the past two weeks?”
He understood her brother’s anger, their frustration. If Lori had been his sister, he would have felt exactly the same way. “I can’t tell you what your sister is thinking or feeling. I can only tell you what I feel.” For years he hadn’t spoken of feelings, even when he was married and life had still been rolling forward normally. It wasn’t until Lori came and kept poking him with her sharp stick of a tongue that the floodgates had burst open. “I love her.” Clearly, her brothers were stunned by what he’d just told them. “I want what’s best for her, just like you do.”
Just then, Lori’s twin came over to save him. Grayson had always pictured himself with women like Sophie—quiet, sweet, soft. Much like his wife had been, in fact. Whereas Lori laughed too loudly, talked too much, moved too fast...and yet, he couldn’t imagine himself with anyone but her.
“You look like you could use a beer.” Sophie took his arm and gently led him away from her brothers. “Ignore them. They’re just upset that Lori didn’t confide in them, and they’ve always thought it was their duty to play mean-and-scary with our boyfriends.” She reached into the ice chest and handed him a bottle. “But you should know that if you hurt one hair on my sister’s head, they won’t get a chance to take you down—because I’ll have already done it myself.”
Despite how elegantly pretty and soft Sophie looked, Grayson had no doubt at all that she would tear him to shreds if he messed with her sister. “She’s lucky to have you.”
He was surprised when she sighed. “I don’t know if she’ll agree with that, especially once she finds out that Jake and I made a couple of calls to Chicago and pulled in some favors to deal with her ex before she could do it herself.”
“What are you two whispering about over here?” Lori asked, suddenly appearing beside them without making even the slightest sound.
Her twin jumped. “How many times have I told you,” Sophie said, her hand over her heart, “don’t do that!”
Just then, Mary called out, “Lunch is ready,” and everyone went to take a seat. But the second everyone’s plates were filled, Lori’s brothers started in again. Only, this time, Lori was their target.
“Where have you been for two weeks, Lori?” Ryan asked her, point blank. On the pitcher’s mound, he was as easygoing—and lethal—as they came. Now he was just lethal. “What the hell happened to make you pull out of your show in Chicago like that and not tell any of us?”
Grayson’s first instinct was to protect her. He put his arm around her waist and pulled both her and her chair as close to him as they could get. Instead of answering her brother’s question, she turned to Grayson and pressed a soft kiss to his mouth.
“It’s okay,” she reassured him, before finally turning to her brother. “All of you warned me for almost two years about what a scumbag Victor was. Now’s your chance to say I told you so.”
“None of us wants to say that, Lor,” the brother with the radio turned down low on his belt said. Just a little bigger than the others, he had to be the firefighter. “What we want to do is kill him.”
Grayson agreed wholeheartedly with her brother, but Lori shook her head. “Victor wasn’t worth my time, and he definitely isn’t worth any of yours.” Grayson caught the look that passed between Sophie and her husband. He owed them big time for avenging Lori. “And, honestly, it wasn’t even what he did that was the last straw,” she admitted. “It was realizing I didn’t want to dance anymore, because all the fun had been squeezed out of it. So I walked out—not just on the show, but on all of it.”
“You? Not dance?” Judging by the baby girl happily rattling her soft toy on his lap, Grayson guessed this came from Chase, the photographer. “That’s crazy, Naughty.”
“Don’t worry,” she told him, before turning back to Grayson with a smile. “I’m not quitting after all, because Grayson helped me realize that I do love it—while I’ve spent the last couple of weeks on his farm being a farmhand.”
He hated the way she was being put on the spot, but when she looked at him like that, with such trust and love, how could he do anything but forget that they weren’t the only two people in the world, and smile back?
“You have been working as a farmhand?”
Grayson didn’t like the note of disbelief in her brother Zach’s voice, even if it was exactly the same reaction he’d had when she showed up that first day in her rental car. “My CSA customers love her, and so do the chickens and the pigs.”
Lori looked adorably smug. “They really do, don’t they?”
“Yes, they really do,” he said with a quick kiss to the tip of her nose. He knew her family was watching them closely, but he didn’t care what anyone else thought. Either they’d like him or they wouldn’t. But her family wouldn’t be the reason he and Lori didn’t work out.
No, the two of them had plenty of other reasons already stacked up against them.
Leaning into his chest, she contentedly laid her head against his shoulder as she told them, “The country community is really cool and it’s so incredibly beautiful out there. You should see the stars and the moon at night.”
He stroked his hand over her hair and upper arm as she spoke and as the conversation slowly turned from Lori’s last two weeks to baby milestones and budding vines and movie sets and concert tours, Grayson was surprised to realize that he was enjoying being part of the large group, even if it was only temporary. The women, for the most part, were far more welcoming as they asked him questions about his farm, while her brothers continued to treat him as though he was on probation.
He couldn’t blame them for that. Not when he completely agreed that their sister was precious beyond measure.
And that she deserved nothing but the very best.
* * *
Lori was trying not to be frustrated with her brothers. It was just that they were being so unreasonable! Especially her oldest brother, Marcus, who hadn’t yet said a word to Grayson. If anyone should have something in common, it was the two of them, since they both earned their livelihoods from working with the land, and she and Nicola both had very public careers as a singer and a dancer.