“He’s not a kid, he’s your age,” Lanie said.

“I know. And I’ve had a crush on him since he first showed up here at age fifteen, beaten half to death and on his own.” She lifted a shoulder. “You know my mom, she collects lost souls. So she took him in and he’s been family ever since. Just about broke her heart when he went into the army two years ago, but he said he had to find his own way. He’s on leave for another month-ish.”

“So you no longer have a crush on him?”

“Oh, I do,” Mia said. “But Mom long ago told me that if I ever slept with him, she’d take away my phone.”

Lanie laughed. “So you really do get your cousins.”

“Yep.”

Lanie shook her head. “But I’m pretty sure no one tells you what to do.”

“There’s that . . .” Mia looked at the door where Holden had vanished and sighed. “But he’s done being wild and I’m just getting going. I don’t want to be reined in.”

Cora poked her head in. “Scrubbing barrels?” she asked.

Mia sighed. “Those little tattletales. I suppose you want me to go easier on them.”

“On the contrary,” Cora said. “Holden caught them smoking weed in the storage shed yesterday so I vote for doubling whatever workload you’ve got for them. My favorite punishment is making them work in the barn with their hands tied together so they learn teamwork.” Then she winked at them both and left.

Lanie went to bed early, tired but . . . feeling pretty good. She was actually starting to enjoy herself here. Yeah, the winery was like a small town, complete with the gossip mill, and lunch continued to be a daily telenovela, but at least she was no longer the New Girl. River had fallen into that role. Oddly enough, Lanie was pretty sure River was avoiding her at all costs, but that didn’t bother Lanie any. The girl was young, apparently very alone, and the Capriottis had gathered her to their collective bosom.

Not a surprise, given who Cora was. “She’s a baby having a baby,” she’d told Lanie quietly that first day. “She was living out of her car and I think she’s running away from something. Or someone.”

Say what you wanted about the Capriottis, but they were a protective, loyal bunch and they rallied around their own.

Unlike Lanie, River took to the attention, easily embracing the family. Lanie had to admire the spirit, but she was still happy at the farthest corner of the farthest table. She’d gone back to eating her bagged lunches. She’d had to, for the sake of her clothes. Nobody liked it and they teased her about it, but . . . they let her be.

And that was the thing she was just starting to understand. As busybody and in everyone’s business as they were, they understood individuality.

As often as he could manage, Mark showed up, blowing in like a wild force of nature, looking badass in his uniform as he accepted a huge plate of food from one of his sisters or his mom, shoved his lunch in his mouth, loved up on his girls, and blew back out again.

Which was a relief. For whatever reason, he just wasn’t as easy to ignore as the rest of the Capriottis, especially as he was cool and distant now, not giving her that flirty smile as he had at first.

She deserved that. She’d earned that. And it was exactly how she wanted things. At least she believed it during the days, but the long, lonely nights . . . they told her something else entirely.

Which she steadfastly ignored.

One afternoon at the end of her third week, she was deep in computer mode, working on the different specs required for the variety of media she was creating, from billboards to boxes to sell sheets to stationery, when she realized her neck was burning like maybe she was being watched. Lifting her head, she found four eyes on her.

Sam and Sierra were leaning against the far corner of her desk. “You two need to wear bells,” she said.

Samantha smiled. “Grandma says that too!”

Sierra nodded and Lanie felt her own smile curve her mouth. Sierra had gone from never making eye contact to actually smiling at her. She still hadn’t spoken, but then again, there probably was no real need when Samantha spoke at one hundred miles per hour for all of them. “You two aren’t my Secret Santa, are you?” she asked. She nudged her chin toward a mug of coffee that had appeared on her desk when she’d gone on break. And it hadn’t been the first time either. She owed someone a most heartfelt thank-you. “Someone keeps leaving me a new coffee with three sugars in it, just the way I like it.”

“We’re not allowed to touch the coffeemaker,” Sam said. “Not since the time we put peanut butter and chocolate chips in it to try and make a peanut butter hot chocolate. It sorta exploded.”

“Okay,” Lanie said. “Good to know.”

“That’s what I told Grandma, but she still got mad. We’ve got a question.”

“I don’t know how to make peanut butter hot chocolate,” Lanie said.

“No,” Sam said. “We want to know where babies come from.”

Lanie choked on the coffee her Secret Santa had left her, spilling it down the front of herself.

Sierra patted her sweetly on the back and silently offered her a napkin.

Samantha just waited patiently for her answer.

“You know,” Lanie finally said, swiping her chin. “Maybe this is a question for your dad.”

“Oh, we’re going to ask him too, but Tommy at school just told us a gross story about how his dog pooped out her puppies and that it was really, really icky. Do you think that human babies get pooped out too?”

God help her. “Uh . . .”

Luckily she didn’t have to figure out an end to that sentence because Mark himself appeared in the doorway. He took one look at his girls crawling all over her desk and looked pained. “What have I told you about leaving Miss Lanie alone?”

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy!” Samantha shouted in glee. “Miss Lanie was just about to tell us where human babies come from!”

Mark’s brows arched so high they vanished into his hairline and he too took a stance leaning against her desk, all long and leanly muscled, armed to the teeth, his expression mockingly expectant. “Was she now?”

Lanie narrowed her eyes, but all he did was smirk, the ass.

“’Cuz, Daddy! Tommy said his dog pooped out her babies! But we’re not borned like that, right? Where did we come from?”

Mark’s expression softened as he picked her up and swung her around to hang off his back piggy-back style. Then he reached his arms out for Sierra, who took a flying leap for him. “You both came straight from heaven,” he said.

This invoked peals of giggles, and then Sam had one more question. “Daddy, will I have kids from heaven too?”

“Someday,” he said. Then he paused. “Just promise me you’ll ignore boys who text you after eleven o’clock at night.”

“Well, duh,” she said. “I’m sleeping then.”

Mark smiled and he turned to the door to leave, but paused, looking back at Lanie.

“Sorry for the intrusion,” he said.

“They’re never an intrusion,” she said and was shocked to realize she meant it.

He registered her words with a single nod of his head. Then he walked out with the girls, one upside down and one right side up, both beaming from ear to ear and absolutely not tugging at her cold, hard heart.