He took the stairs down to the lobby, too restless to wait for the elevator, and dug his ticket out of his wallet for the valet. There was no one else waiting, so the car was brought around in a matter of minutes. He slipped the valet a generous tip for the speed, then tucked himself behind the wheel of the classic Stingray convertible.

He drove with the top down, the wind blowing through his hair. The scene and the sex had left him physically sated, but he kept thinking about Rebecca’s whispered words. She hadn’t been around long—less than a year—but she’d seen what he’d been hiding for almost two years, and called him on it. Even through his discomfort, he had to admire both her intuition and her guts.

But he didn’t want to think about his feelings for Olivia, so he put them aside and let the quiet drive soothe him. He loved this car—the pickup was for practicality, but the Stingray was pure pleasure. With summer in full swing, he tried to get it out of the garage as much as possible.

When he’d bought his house, the first project he’d undertaken had been to build the garage. His mother had lobbied hard for the kitchen to be first, and his sisters had added their weight to the argument, but he’d held his ground. The garage meant he had parking space for both the truck and the Corvette, with a security system to keep both vehicles secure.

His mother had railed at him, then insisted he add the same system to the house. Which had always been his plan, but he’d argued with her anyway, just for the joy of watching her lose her temper. Mercedes Hollis considered herself a level-headed, practical woman, but she was the only one who thought so. His sisters took after their mother, and nothing amused him more than when he had all four Hollis women shouting at him. If he could get his mother so worked up she forgot her English and reverted to shouting at him in her native Portuguese, his day was made.

His father would pat his wife on the shoulder and urge her to calm down, which only increased both the vehemence and volume of the rant, and Cade and his dad would grin at each other over her head.

Which reminded him, it had been a while since he’d made it to Sunday dinner. He’d been out of town the last two weekends, and he figured if he missed another week, his mother would threaten to take his name off the family Christmas letter. He pulled through the alley behind his house, hitting the remote for the garage as he pulled up, and made a mental note to call her in the morning.

Maybe if he groveled sufficiently, and went to the butcher for the pig feet, she’d make feijoada.