As they stepped outside, they argued the merits of being older versus being a woman and therefore naturally smarter.
“Careful,” Lizzy teased. “Better not say anything you wouldn’t want repeated to your wives.”
“Shit. Still got us by the balls.” Andrew shook his head and joined Patrick, already down in the yard throwing with the boys.
More sisters-in-law and kids filtered through the kitchen and to the backyard, tossing out greetings and pleasant smiles. He’d thought to play football, not jump into a family gathering.
“So what’s up with your girl?” Matt asked, eyes on the kids.
“She’s not my girl.” A uneasy feeling spread through the tension in his face to his stomach. She was something, though he didn’t know what that was, or even what it could be. Hannah wasn’t the kind of girl to be just anything to a man. She wasn’t casual. Only an idiot would want her casually.
Matt smiled, looking smug. “Just keep telling yourself that. You know what they say about denial.”
Stephen raised his bottle to his lips, took a long drink, and admitted he didn’t know what the hell he was doing.
“Dad!”
“Coming, bud. So what happened after we left you at the barn? You stay or go?”
“I stayed.”
Matt’s smile grew. “Figured you might.”
“Dad!” Jack shouted again before Stephen could tell his brother to fuck off.
Matt tapped the neck of his bottle against his own. “Ready to get your ass kicked?”
“In your dreams.”
“Hey, Jack, you better be on Uncle Stevie’s team. He doesn’t really know how to play.”
“Dick,” he muttered at Matt’s back.
Matt laughed. “Hey, Mom, you want to know what Steve just called me?”
“Don’t call your brother that, it’s not his name. And no, I don’t.” She settled herself in a chair under a shade tree. “And both of you watch your mouth. There are little ones out here.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
As if to prove their mother’s point, Gracie came flying down the stairs, over the grass, and wrapped herself around Matt’s legs. “Daddy! I rode Hazel again and I’m going to be the best horse rider ever! Hannah said so. Right, Hannah?”
Stephen’s eyes jerked up to the shadowed doorway leading onto the deck.
Abby appeared and waved down at Matt. “Hey, babe. Look who I talked into joining us.”
Hannah followed and moved to the rail next to Abby. Her gaze met his with a tentative smile, and the bottom dropped out of his stomach. If not seeing her caused a knot in his gut, seeing her brought a damn entanglement. And right this second, he couldn’t remember why he’d been so confused.
Chapter 18
Hannah watched the McKinney men divide themselves into teams and huddle up while a battle of nerves and excitement played out inside her. It was obvious from the way Stephen had looked at her that he was as surprised as she was.
“I had no idea he’d be here,” Abby said, joining her on the grass. “By the look on your face I can’t tell if it’s good or bad.”
Neither could she. She’d told Abby he came over for dinner last week. She’d left off the make-out session on the couch and the part when she’d put an awkward stop to it. “I’m not sure. He makes me…”
Abby smiled. “Hot? Tingly?”
“Confused.”
“Yes. That too.” Abby sighed. “Relationships are complicated.”
Maybe more so with her than most. No doubt a man like Stephen wanted more than kisses at the door and she still hadn’t been completely honest with him. But the heat in his eyes when they’d met hers minutes ago…Did she imagine that? The way he’d kissed her goodbye on her porch looking like he didn’t want to leave…
She’d just recently decided she wanted to try, and even that had been in a far-off, abstract kind of way. Watching Stephen bent over in a huddle, wearing jeans and a T-shirt that molded to his upper body, she thought there was nothing abstract about Stephen. He was big and hard and very…real. His worn jeans hugged his thighs and butt, his boots were off. Even his feet were sexy.
Her body went hot and tight at the memory of his kiss. The feel of his lips moving over hers and the taste of his mouth. She’d never dated. Never had a boyfriend. Had just barely begun to have an interest in boys when her life had all but stopped.
Lizzy joined them and handed her a glass of lemonade. “Please tell me we’re not the only family with grown men who run around in the backyard like boys.”
“No.” Hannah smiled, grateful for the distraction. “Everything’s a competition to men. Who can burp the loudest. Who can fit the most cookies into their mouth.”
Lizzy nodded in agreement. “So true. That’s right, you have brothers.”
“Yes. Four.”
“Oh, girl. We could swap childhood nightmares. Getting zipped up in sleeping bags, feet stuck into a spinning ceiling fan.”
It hadn’t exactly been that kind of childhood, but she smiled anyway. Conversation dropped off as the game got under way.
The men talked trash. The women cheered and laughed while they chased toddlers. Stephen’s mom sat nearby with a referee’s whistle and she wasn’t afraid to blow it. She scolded them for being too rough, using their full names like they were little boys instead of full-grown men. Hannah would have loved to see her own mother scold her bossy brothers. And, as Abby had explained, no matter what, the game would end in a tie. She smiled at the rightness of that. Of a mother’s sense of love and fairness.