Chapter Twenty-Two

Chelle

It wasn’t like Chelle hadn’t left her bed all week—she definitely had—it’s just that she kept finding her way back there again and again and again. She blamed Nash’s double dimpler. How was she supposed to think of anything but a naked him when he had that unfair advantage?

She couldn’t.

She didn’t.

She had no regrets.

So it was no surprise that she was curled up in bed with Nash when the outside world came knocking—literally—on her front door, in the form of his brother Macon and sister Bristol. While not exact copies of Nash, there was definitely a familial similarity with all three sharing killer dimples, the Beckett blue eyes, and enough height to make normal humans wonder what the world looked like from that perspective—even Bristol was six feet tall at a minimum. Of course, their looks weren’t all they had in common.

“Are you all named after cities?” Chelle asked after everyone had pet the dogs, attempted to greet the cat who ignored them, and was holding mugs of fresh-brewed coffee.

“The place of our conception,” Macon said, shrugging at Nash and Bristol, who both groaned. “Hey, if we have to be grossed out at the thought, I’m fine with sharing it.”

“Maybe you are, but I don’t mind keeping some of the mystery alive,” Bristol said, rolling her eyes at her brother. “Or at least keeping the ugh-factor at bay.”

Completely unruffled, Macon took another sip of his coffee as he shot an assessing look at Chelle and Nash. She sat on the chair where she’d looked at his sprained ankle the day they’d first met, while he sat on the arm of the chair, one huge hand cupping the oversize mug and the other touching her hair. For half a second, she fought that oh-shit-they-know embarrassment, the one that had always come with any hint of attraction that her dad would shame her for if he found out, and then she pressed back against the negative reaction. Instead of flinching, she allowed herself to relax against Nash’s hip. It was a move that didn’t go unnoticed.

Macon might have the look of a rich guy who had life handed to him on a silver platter—which come on, he was a Beckett, there was no way he hadn’t—but there was more going on behind his baby blues than a lot of folks probably gave him credit for.

“Well,” Bristol said, jabbing an elbow into Macon’s ribs to really drive home the stop-staring-asshole message her glare was sending, “we’ve left you alone long enough. We’re here to kidnap you and bring you and the animals to Mom’s for brunch.”

The mental image of her pugs having their usual bananas reaction to meeting new people and adding in the bonus—at least from the dogs’ perspectives—of a new place to sniff around and ferret out every crumb and thing that they definitely shouldn’t be chewing on was enough to make Chelle press her hand to her heart.

“I don’t know that they’re well behaved enough for that.” But she did know. They most certainly were not.

Instead of nodding in agreement, though, all of the Becketts started laughing.

Chelle looked around from Nash to Bristol to Macon and then back to Nash. “What?”

“Mom has a demon chihuahua mix named Dudley who doesn’t even pretend to be well behaved,” Macon said. “Groucho, Mary, and Sir Hiss will be more than good enough to come.”

Chelle was still trying to process that last bit, but her mouth rushed ahead of her brain. “You want me to bring the cat, too?”

“He’s family, isn’t he?” Bristol asked.

She’d always thought so, but other people looked at her like she’d grown a third head when she said her pets were as close to kids as she ever wanted. Okay, so she hadn’t had that conversation with the Becketts, but it wasn’t like she was going to be around them long enough to have to go through the conversation that had been the final nail in the coffin of her relationship with her dad. When she’d told him she didn’t want kids, he promptly informed her that God had created women to be childbearing helpmates. She’d rolled her eyes so hard she was surprised she hadn’t ended up with a permanent view of her brain.

“She’s only a few blocks from here, and you know you want to give this another try,” Nash said as he held up Sir Hiss’s harness.

He wasn’t wrong. Sir Hiss needed to practice his cat-walking skills.

Still…

She glanced from Bristol to Macon. “Only if you’re sure.”

“Mom will be thrilled,” Nash said. “What do you think? Wanna go?”

And there it was. He was asking, not assuming what was right or pressing her with a mansplaining diatribe about why going to his mom’s was the best option. It was such an abrupt change from their first day together that she didn’t have words for it.

Maybe she could have resisted him even though every instinct in her body was telling her she could trust him, but add to that two additional pairs of double dimplers from his siblings who were nodding in agreement and she was a goner. It wasn’t fair.

“Okay,” Chelle said, still not quite believing this was about to happen. “Let’s do this.”

Nash took the dogs while she held onto Sir Hiss, and she only had to shoot Nash a warning glance once when he started to tell her the proper way to put a cat in a harness for him to back away from the dire pit mansplaining quicksand.

The weather had warmed up from their date night, but there was still a chill in the air as they walked to his mom’s five-story townhouse right across the street from the eastern edge of St. George’s Park. Bristol and Macon kept up a running commentary about everything from the gyro stand at the corner (killer food after a long day), the flock of geese that roamed the park (mean as their cousin Dixon when he lost at anything), and how to spot a tourist from ten stories up (the slow walking). Meanwhile, Nash held both dog leashes in his left hand so he could hold hers in his right, tucking them into his coat pocket to ward off the chill, while he just indulgently watched his brother and sister interact as if he was their proud dad instead of their older brother.

The difference in how their families interacted was stark. His obviously loved and supported one another. Meanwhile, she had an appointment with a judge coming up to prove that this temporary marriage fulfilled the draconian requirements of her dad’s will and save the family foundation from Uncle Buckley. It was enough to make her whole body tense up with a mix of fury and nerves as her lungs tightened.

Nash shot her a questioning glance, but she forced a reassuring smile and breathed out the tension. She didn’t want to ruin the easy companionship of the moment, and quite frankly, it wasn’t like talking about her problems was going to do anything to change them. She just had to trust the judge would buy into her marriage that was starting to feel a little less temporary every time she looked at Nash.

By the time they got to the house where they’d grown up, Chelle’s cheeks hurt from smiling so much at the by-play between Bristol and Macon. When they stopped, though, she had to do a double take at the Beckett townhouse. The stairs leading up to the front door spanned the width of the pale-yellow building ending at a grand landing with brown stones laid out to look like a parquet floor decorated with humongous pots of joyously red poinsettias.

They were halfway up and doing their best to keep the dogs from devouring the poisonous plants when the front door opened and a man who looked like a combo assistant/bodyguard walked out. Tall, with short, platinum-blond hair and the kind of leathery perma-tan skin that spoke of decades in the sun—probably with baby oil, if she was guessing his age right—he watched them with amusement.

“Dudley will be thrilled,” the man said as he squatted down and gave Mary Puppins and Groucho Barks the kind of level-ten scratches behind the ear that guaranteed they’d adore him for life.

“How’s she doing?” Nash asked as they walked inside.

“Madame Celeste? She’s had three readings this morning and has been anxiously awaiting brunch,” he said, collecting the Becketts’ coats. “She’s cooking now.”

“What?” all of the Becketts said at once, then rushed through the large, circular foyer and down the stairs, Groucho and Mary happily yapping and running along with them, Sir Hiss tucked into Nash’s arms.

Chelle turned to the man obviously waiting for her coat, too.

“Chelle Finch,” she said as she took it off.

The man lifted a perfectly sculpted eyebrow. “Chelle Finch-Beckett if I’m not mistaken.”

“For the time being.” Which was exactly why she shouldn’t be feeling all warm and gooey on the inside right now or thinking about how nice Finch-Beckett sounded together.

“Well, Mrs. Chelle Finch-Beckett for the time being, I’m Bennie.” He took her coat and hung it in the closet by the front door. “Just Bennie. Now”—he tilted his head toward the hall where the Becketts had disappeared—“let’s go find out what disaster they found in the kitchen.”

The kitchen was gorgeous, all commercial quality stainless steel, high-end countertops, and enough La Cruset cookware on every available surface to be the background for a streaming show about the cooking lives of the rich and famous. It smelled like heaven. In the middle of it all was Celeste Beckett talking a mile a minute as she moved from one dish to the next, mixing here, folding there, and adding spices everywhere. As she moved from one pot or skillet to another, Nash hovered behind her, handing her an oven mitt the moment before she grabbed a casserole dish straight out of the oven, obviously so distracted by trying to talk and hug her children at the same time she cooked that she’d nearly burned her hand off.

“Chelle!” Celeste called out the second she set the baking dish down on a purple trivet and spotted her. “I’m so glad we can have our first meal as a family. And you brought the babies!”

There really weren’t enough exclamation points for how Celeste talked. It fit with the rest of her with her miles of bangles on her arms, purple-tipped dove-gray hair, and seventies Stevie Nicks witchy aesthetic. She wasn’t like anyone else. She was absolutely 100 percent exactly who she was. It was both overwhelming and welcoming—kind of like the massive annual Bath & Body Works candle sale.

Returning Celeste’s hug, Chelle looked over the older woman’s shoulder and spotted Nash. His shoulders were tense. The double dimpler was nowhere in sight. He looked like he might crack a tooth, his jaw was clenched so tight. Macon and Bristol were near the huge island topped with a butcher’s block counter, their body language rigid, but they sat back as Nash put out the metaphorical fires their mom set. It was obvious they loved Celeste—really, who would put in that level of work if they didn’t—but it had taken its toll on all of them.

It broke her heart a little.

“Oh my goodness,” Celeste said. “I’m so glad you came and brought all your fur babies. Now, let’s go enjoy brunch.”

Despite her realization, she did. Without having to watch out for their mom, Nash and his siblings fell back into their humorous give and take as they told Chelle embarrassing things he’d done as a kid, while Celeste talked about how he’d been such a serious boy growing up that it was good to see him smiling now. Then she looked at her eldest, and it was plain as day that for whatever else was true, Celeste Beckett loved her kids.

Families were so fucking complicated.

Luckily brunch, it turned out, was not. Once Nash had a chance to relax and enjoy the delicious food his mom had made, Chelle felt her own shoulders start to inch down. By the time they were back outside, ready to go home, pugs and feline leashed up beside them, she almost would have sworn that she’d imagined the whole thing.

“Hey, Beckett!” a man called out from the sidewalk.

They both turned, just in time to see a flash go off right in their faces. A freaked-out Sir Hiss responded by climbing Nash like a tree while the pugs lunged toward the photographer. Heart going a thousand miles an hour, she tightened her grip on the leashes and blinked away the giant white spots in her vision. Before Chelle even had a chance to process what was happening, Nash was guiding her and the animals into the park and putting as many people between them and the photographer as possible.

“Who was that?” she asked once their pace slowed down enough for a question. “Do you have your own paparazzi?”

His hand firm on her lower back, he led her around a particularly slow gaggle of tourists taking up almost the entire width of the main path through the park. “You really don’t read the gossip pages, do you?”

She shook her head.

“Come on.” He let out a tired sigh. “Let’s hurry up and get home, and I’ll tell you everything.”