"Don't think we didn't see you sneak out last night," Heather murmured to Bill, but fondly. "Jon seems to think you were on a date with Ms. Booker, though, so I suppose I can forgive you."
"I've missed you too, Mom." Bill scooped her into a hug that made her squeak, although she otherwise patiently waited for her feet to be put back on the ground. To the assembly at large, he said, "Look, I know I got the musical booking wrong for the weekend, but honestly, we're scaring up a decent audience on our own. We didn't actually need the entire Torben clan to show up and fill out the ranks."
"She brought cinnamon rolls, my man," Luke said with intense sincerity. Bill had always thought he was the best-looking of the cousins, with wheat-blonde hair and a startling ocean blue gaze that defied all the other brown-eyed members of the family. "I'll show up anywhere there's cinnamon rolls."
"I'm impressed she brought so many you haven't eaten them all," Bill admitted, and flashed a smile toward Gwen. "Thanks."
"My pleasure." Her own ice-blue eyes were warm with smugness. "I figured fifty would be enough for up to twenty Torbens. They'rebigcinnamon rolls."
"You must've bought the bakery out of them," Bill's father said. He had a cup of coffee and the remains of one of the pastries in front of him, although his wife kept reaching across the table to steal bits of it.
"I left them with half a sheet and a great deal of confusion," Gwen confirmed. "They couldn't decide if they were thrilled to have moved them all in one sale or dismayed that they only had fifteen left for the rest of the day. You told me you played football, Bill, but you didn't tell me your entire family did. Was there anybody on your high school team whowasn'ta Torben?"
"Danny Derwitz," his cousin Ashley said immediately. "He was the only guy on the team I could even conceivably date in high school. Everybody else was related to me."
Somebody threw a balled-up paper napkin at her. "That's not true!"
"No, but it's a good story." Ashley tossed a mane of tawny blonde hair over her shoulders as she grinned at Gwen. "Fortunately I was more interested in dating the cheerleaders. But yeah, no, there are a ton of us, but we're all spaced out just enough that there were usually a couple Torbens on both the varsity and JV teams. It's going to start all over again next year, too, because our cousin Rachel's oldest kid is hitting high school in the fall."
"It won't start all over again unless more of you have some children," Heather said with a sniff as she went back to the table. A whole hail of paper napkin balls rained down on her, and she batted them away. "Honestly, after all of you grew up with so many cousins, I'd think you would have started having kids years ago!"
"Maybe," Luke said dryly, "having so many cousins is why wehaven't."
Jon, down at the far end of the table, made a show out of looking significantly between Bill and Gwen, although to Bill's relief, no one else noticed. He knew what Jon meant, though. The truth was shifters often didn't have kids until they'd found their mates, because the hope of finding that one true love was always right there. So it was fate, not a clan-wide determination to deprive their parents of grandchildren, that kept most of them from having kids so far. And there was always the question of whether their partners would even want children, although Bill's mother liked kids so much he wasn't sure she could quite wrap her head around the idea that some people didn't.
His mother sniffed again, more pretend injury than actual pressure, and stole another bite of his dad's cinnamon roll. He looked amused, and Bill was suddenly certain he'd taken the one he had in front of him expressly so his wifecouldsteal bites of it. That was true romance, he thought with a smile, although watching Gwen stuff half a cinnamon roll into her mouth, he wasn't certain it was the kind of true romanceshewanted.
She wants 'shower pix,'his bear said.Iwant cinnamon rolls!
If I eat too many cinnamon rolls, she won't want shower pix anymore,Bill warned, and his bear looked at him skeptically.
Trust me. Your mate will always want shower pix.It sounded absolutely confident, even if it obviously had no idea what 'shower pix' were, and so Bill, grinning, sat down to have some cinnamon rolls.
CHAPTER 15
Gwen had not expected Bill to actually send her a shower pic. She could only thank her lucky stars that she'd gotten up to get coffee when that picture came in so thathis mother,who wassitting right next to her,hadn't seen it.
After that, she counted her lucky stars that he'd sent it at all, because dear lord, that man was built. Not flawlessly chiseled like a film star, but big, strong, heavy muscle that looked like it came from hauling beer kegs around, not gym weights. His hair, dark brown when wet, had been slicked back and still dripping water down his incredibly wide shoulders, which looked a hundred times wider in the from-above selfie angle, and those deep brown eyes of his were alight with mischief. He'd been biting his lower lip, though, not a lot, just enough to suggest he was a little unsure of himself.
How anybody with that thick chest, huge arms, and delicious, lickable belly sliding into a low-wrapped towel could be unsure of himself, Gwen didn't know, but it made her like Bill Torben that much more, and she was already nursing a ridiculously powerful crush on the guy. Her heart actually skipped a beat when he came into the pub, and although it was no lie that his family were all good-looking people, she honestly couldhave been in the room alone with him, for all she cared about anybody else. His whole presence was warm and charming and reassuring, and she wanted to grab him, some cinnamon rolls, and go into the back office for some delicious downtime with him.
Downbeing the operative term. God damn. That towel had needed to be a little bit lower to satisfy Gwen's curiosity, or—ideally—just not on him at all. She was busy licking the frosting out of her cinnamon roll and staring at Bill when someone said something to her, emphatically enough that she thought they'd maybe spoken to her already. With a jolt, she put the cinnamon roll down and blinked at the—cousin, thank God it was a cousin and not his mother—on her left side. "Sorry, what?"
The cousin—this one was Ashley; the women were easier to keep track of, mostly because there were only three of them present—was grinning at her. Like, really, really grinning. She leaned in to say, "He's a really good guy. Super serious. I think you'd be good for him."
Ashley had obviously seen Gwen licking the cinnamon roll and staring at Bill. She wanted to be mortified, but instead laughed and screwed her face up in a squinch. "That obvious, huh?"
"The whole tongue thing there was kind of a giveaway," Ashley said, wide-eyed with innocence. "Although he's gonna be real lucky if you're always that good with it."
Gwen clapped her hands over her face, laughing. "Gimme a cherry stem and I'll show you."
Ashley burst out laughing and knocked her shoulder against Gwen's. "Showhim, girl, not me! Tell you what, you let me know what you need done around here for setup and I'll see if I can get all these huge lunks to do something useful while you make time with my cousin." As Gwen's eyebrows rose, Ashley spread her hands. "You're only here for the weekend, right? Gotta make haywhile the sun shines. And no, I don't usually play wingman, but Bill really is a super good guy and he could use some time with a woman who watches him like he's a snack."
"A great big delicious snack," Gwen breathed, and Ashley smacked her hands together.
"See? That's what I'm talking about! Oh, shut up," she said to one of her cousins who was trying to overhear. "I'm getting Gwen to tell me what needs to be done to make this off-beat gig tonight a sell-out tour, and you're going to help me do it. All of you are," she said, raising her voice firmly to the whole gathered family. "Luke, you and Jimmy can tend bar tonight, because you know they're going to need more help. Ruth and I will be backstage runners and help the musicians with whatever they need. And the rest of you, I'll give you something to do when I've got a list."
"Not me," the sole uncle—who might have been Ashley's father, Gwen thought—announced. "I'm gonna sit around with the rest of the old folks and enjoy the show."
