“So you write stories for TV.” He nodded his big, shaggy head approvingly. “You have brains.”

“A few.” She smiled up at Zack when he offered her a glass of wine.

“Rachel says more than a few.” He sent his wife a wink as she sat with her hands folded over her enormous belly. “She’s been watching your show.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“I admit I was curious.” Rachel wanted to shift to get comfortable, but she knew it was useless. “After we met, I taped it a couple of times. Then, when I gave in to Zack’s hounding me about taking maternity leave, I realized how easy it is to get hooked. I’m not sure I’ve got all the characters straight yet, but it’s amazingly entertaining. Nick’s caught it with me.” She glanced at her brother-in-law.

To his credit, Nick didn’t blush, but he did squirm. “I was just keeping you company.” He might have come a long way from trying to prove his manhood with gangs like the Cobras, but even at nearly twenty-one, he wasn’t quite secure enough to admit he’d gotten caught up in the “Secret Sins” of Millbrook. He shrugged, shook back his shaggy blond hair, then caught the quick grins of his family. “It wasn’t like I was really watching.” His green eyes glinted with humor. “Except for the babes.”

“That’s what they all say.” Bess smiled back, enjoying him. Too bad he wasn’t an actor, she thought. Those brooding good looks—tough, with just a hint of vulnerability beneath—would shine on-screen. “So, who’s your type, Nick? LuAnne, our sensitive ingenue with the big, weepy eyes, who suffers in silence, or the scheming Brooke, who uses her sexuality to destroy any man who crosses her?”

Considering, he ran his tongue around his teeth. “Actually, I go for Jade. I’ve got this thing for older women.”

Zack caught him in a headlock.

“Hey.” Nick laughed, not bothering to try to free himself. “We’re having a conversation here. I’m trying to make time with Alex’s lady.”

“Kill him in the other room, will you?” Alex said easily. “We have to eat in here.”

“I watch your show many times,” Nadia said as she popped in from the kitchen. Alex’s mother’s handsome face was flushed pink from oven heat. “I like it.”

“Well, that Vicki’s not hard to watch.” Zack stood behind his wife now, rubbing her shoulders.

“Men always go for the cheap floozies,” Rachel put in. “How about you, Alex? Caught any ‘Secret Sins’?”

“No.” Not that he’d admit. “McNee keeps me up on what’s happening in Millbrook.”

“It must be hard.” Sydney, looking pale but blissfully relaxed in her corner of the couch, sipped her ginger ale. “The pace.”

“It’s murder.” Bess grinned. “I love it.”

“So, how is it you meet Alexi?” Yuri asked.

“He arrested me.”

There was a moment of silence, while Alex aimed a killing look at Bess. Then a burst of laughter that sent the dog careening around the room again.

“Did I miss a joke?” Mikhail demanded as he swung through the door with Griff.