“And a great kid,” she said automatically as she tugged open the screen door. A jagged tear in the mesh was getting bigger by the day, but she ignored it as she always did. She had bigger worries, but she wasn’t about to tell her older brother that she was concerned as all get-out about her son, that it was hard as hell to raise a boy alone, that sometimes it scared her to death. Nope, she’d somehow deal with Josh and whatever challenge he came with. He was worth it.

The interior of the kitchen was sweltering—nearly ninety degrees according to her indoor-outdoor thermometer. Though the window over the sink was ajar, no summer breeze slipped through to dissipate the smells of maple syrup and bacon that hung in the air from the breakfast she’d made hours before. Whining, Blue lifted his nose toward the sink where the frying pan was soaking in greasy water.

“Trust me, boy, you don’t want it,” Katie advised.

Swinging his gaze around what he called “a thousand square feet of chaos,” Jarrod asked, “Where’s Josh?”

“At soccer practice. Earlier he was at Tiffany’s. He and Stephen have kind of bonded, I guess you’d say.”

“Better than you and Tiffany?”

“Actually, Tiff and I are getting along just great,” Katie said. “She wants me to rent out this place and take over hers.” She explained quickly about Tiffany’s offer earlier in the day. “So Tiffany and I don’t have a problem.”

“Real sisters, eh?”

“Half-sisters.”

“Close enough.” He winked at her and she grinned. “Like you are to me.”

“Right.”

“So John’s getting his wish.”

“Not completely, but this ragtag family is finally coming together a little, I think. Tiffany has agreed to be in Bliss’s wedding and I never would have thought that was possible.” There was still some envy on Tiffany’s part because Bliss was John Cawthorne’s only legitimate daughter, but things were working out.

Katie snagged a peanut from a bowl on the table and plopped it into her mouth. “I would never have thought that Tiffany would agree to be in Bliss’s wedding.”

“See? Finding a man didn’t hurt Tiffany’s disposition, did it?”

“Oh, get over yourself. So now men help women’s personalities? Come on, Jarrod, that kind of thinking went out with hula hoops.”

“I’m just pointing out a simple fact.”

“I’m not getting married, okay?” Biting her tongue before she said anything she might really regret, Katie took up her scratchy sponge and scrubbed the frying pan so fiercely, she wondered if she’d scrape the Teflon right off the metal. Though she relied on her brothers from time to time, they—especially Jarrod in his current older-brother mood—could be worse than irritating. “My marital status is, as they say, none of your business.”

He had the audacity to laugh. “But your car is.”