Rix felt Jamie, Judge, and Dru’s attention on him.
Alex gave them the rest.
“Therefore, Chad showed at breakfast this morning, probably to invoke the Bro Clause to keep him quiet. The problem was, Blake was already there to have a tantrum about Elsa’s report. Dad has Chad’s number. He forced him to confess. And now, we’re in limbo. Will they, or won’t they?”
“There’s a will they?” Jamie asked.
Alex nodded.
Jamie turned startled eyes to Rix.
Rix shrugged.
“Jesus,” Jamie muttered.
“Okay, Judge!” Dru suddenly exclaimed. “I’ve made this garlic bread, like, a gazillion, trillion times! You can back off!”
“I can also help brush olive oil,” Judge returned, grinning unrelentingly at her, knowing he was bugging her, also not budging.
“I’m making enough for six, not six hundred,” Dru shot back.
“You have sauce to look after.”
“The sauce doesn’t need my attention. It’s simmering.”
“You haven’t started the pasta.”
“Because we’re not ready for pasta,” Dru retorted. She then turned to her father. “Dad, that reminds me. Can you get out the antipasto platters?”
“Sure thing, sweetheart,” Jamie murmured calmly, and headed to the fridge.
“Give me something to do,” Judge urged.
“There’s nothing to do. Just go sit and drink your—”
“Dru,” Chloe said softly.
Dru looked to Chloe.
Then she looked to Judge.
“Do you want cheese on top of the garlic bread?” she asked.
“Is that what you want?” Judge asked in return.
“Maybe, half and half?” Dru suggested.
“Sure,” Judge agreed.
“You can grate cheese, then,” Dru allowed.
“Cool,” Judge muttered, bent to kiss her head, then headed to where their father had vacated, the fridge.
Rix didn’t need an interpretation of this story.
Dru was not Jamie’s blood daughter, but she grew up that way.
Judge was Jamie’s blood son, but he’d been kept from his father, something that harmed them both.
Now, they finally had the chance to be a family.
Dru had always had the good stuff.
Judge had had none of it.
And Chloe was seeing to Judge getting it.
Including giving him opportunities to be the big brother to his little sister.
Wisely, Jamie didn’t get involved.
But Chloe never kept her nose out of shit.
Dru had her way of doing things in the kitchen.
More importantly, though, Dru adored Judge.
And…
The end.
Chloe picked up the thread.
“Have you talked to your sister?” she asked Alex.
“I called, she didn’t pick up, but I left a message that if she wanted to talk, I was there. I texted the same,” Alex answered. “She hasn’t contacted me.”
“Why did your mother carry on with the brunch?” Chloe asked.
“I honestly have no idea,” Alex told her.
Rix felt Judge’s gaze, he met it and gave another shrug.
Chloe took a sip of her wine and noted, “It’d be a shame that Marchesa gown is wasted. You look lovely in it.”
“Coco!” Dru cried. “You can’t think Blake should go through with it.”
“Of course not,” Chloe replied. “It’d still be a shame. No matter how Blake is, she has excellent taste in bridesmaid gowns.”
Dru laughed, and Alex’s dimple came out.
From there, they segued into Chloe and Judge’s engagement. Thoughts on their wedding. Chloe opening another boutique, this one in Prescott. How well Genny’s new series was being received, and that she was now in Boston, filming her latest movie. After which there would be Duncan and Genny’s wedding.
Then came updates on Sully, Chloe’s soon-to-be stepbrother, who was at a new job in Texas. And Gage, Chloe’s other soon-to-be stepbrother, who was finally getting serious about his degree. Meaning he’d fallen on a major for his coursework. He’d decided it was natural resources with an emphasis on ecology and management and restoration of rangelands.
So Sul was an environmental engineer.
Gage was getting into ecology.
And there was proof those apples didn’t fall far from the tree.
They finished their group discussion with everyone getting in on the act of sharing what they thought should be done with Hale Wheeler’s half a billion dollars.
The conversation was free flowing, easy, constant and animated. There was laughter. Dru’s spaghetti was awesome. Rix tried both, but he liked the garlic bread with the cheese better. And they were all stuffed, even if Dru warned them not to be because she’d made a homemade spumoni ice cream terrine.
So they were giving it time for the food to settle and had moved into a large room that ran the front to the back of the house. It had paneled walls of glossy wood and lots of leather seating.
The women were curled into the corner of a sectional in front of the fire.
The men were across the room in a cluster of chairs where the paneled walls gave way to an angle of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.
And Judge got into it.
“You caught the man fucking someone else?” he asked low.
Rix jerked up his chin.
“The mother has no soul. The sister is a nightmare. You’re right,” Rix said to Jamie. “Ned is waking up to shit.”
Judge glanced between his father and friend, not having been in on this, but not interrupting.