“I’m going to gut you like a fish,” Sierra said to Duke.
“I’ll help you,” McKenzie said.
Duke held up his hands. “I was just looking out for my friend the way she did for me when you came along, MK. That’s all it was.”
Everyone looked to Morgan to confirm it. Part of him wanted to make Duke squirm some more, but more than that, he wanted Sierra’s friends to like him. “I told him he has nothing to worry about.”
“Which made me feel better,” Duke said.
McKenzie took him by the hand. “Let me get you out of here before she makes good on the gutting she promised you.” MK patted the six-pack that’d come from hours at the gym. “I like your gut just the way it is.”
“Have a nice evening, and MYOB, Duke,” Sierra said.
“What fun would that be?” Duke asked as McKenzie dragged him away.
“You two are cute,” Morgan said.
“He’s the brother I’ve never had, but tell me the truth… Was that all he said to you?”
“That was it. Just a guy looking out for his friend.”
“He never had a family of his own. We’re it, so he can be a bit protective. That’s never bothered me before.”
“I hope it doesn’t now either. I got where he was coming from. He was mostly concerned about me starting something with you and checking out of here.”
“Funny, I have the same concern.”
Morgan took a sip from the beer the waitress had delivered. “It’s weird… If you’d have told me before Billy went missing that I’d ever want to call this place home again, I would’ve laughed my ass off. But now…”
“What?” she asked, sounding a bit breathless.
“Now everything looks different to me, especially since yesterday.”
“It’s been one day, Morgan.”
“And yet… Everything looks different.”
He hoped he wasn’t getting ahead of himself with her, but with a decision to be made—and soon—he needed to know he wasn’t the only one falling fast and furious into whatever this was that was happening with her.
Chapter 25
“Thanks for coming out to see us tonight, everyone,” Evan McCarthy said from the stage, where he was seated on a stool next to his best friend, Owen Lawry, his favorite person to perform with. “It’s always nice to play for the home crowd on Gansett Island.”
That was met with a huge cheer from their friends and family.
“You know, a lot has changed for me since ‘My Amazing Grace’ became a number one hit?—”
He was interrupted by more applause and cheers.
“Aw, thanks, but I was going to say… Some things never change, especially my love for Gansett Island and everyone who lives here. This is for you guys, with all my love.”
He and Owen strummed the opening chords for “Home,” originally performed by Phillip Phillips on American Idol.
As the crowd sang along to the familiar tune, Evan grinned at Owen, who was perfectly in sync with him, as always.
In the audience, he spotted his wife, Grace with Stephanie, Laura, Sydney, Katie and Julia, while Grant, Luke, Shane and Deacon were huddled next to them. At the next table, his cousin Riley and his wife, Nikki, were seated with Riley’s brother, Finn, his wife, Chloe, as well as the Gansett Fire Chief Mason Johns, his fiancée, Jordan Stokes, Cooper James and his fiancée, Gigi Gibson, who were home on Gansett for the holidays.
In January, the season of the Jordan and Gigi reality show that they’d shot on Gansett would begin to air and would make Mason and Cooper stars along with their partners.
