“I know. But it’d still be awkward.” She pressed a finger over Ísa’s lips when her sister parted them to speak. “And this is all hypothetical, remember? Please don’t mention a word to anyone else. Danny would die laughing.”

Ísa frowned, the cream of her skin gilded by sunshine. “Honey, are you sure? Danny’s not that good an actor. And the way he was looking at you in those photos…”

Tightening her abs to contain the dratted butterflies, she focused her attention on the children. “The weekend wasn’t real. It was all pretend.”

A cocoon that was now broken.

18

BROTHERHOOD

Danny’d been surprised his brothers had left him alone at dinner the previous day. He should’ve known something was up. Because here they were, all three of them, at the door to his apartment at eight in the morning on a freaking Sunday. His building had a secure door, but he’d given his family their own entry code when he moved in a year earlier. They’d never before used it, always calling up to be buzzed in.

“This is an intervention,” Jake said, poker-face in place.

Danny groaned. “I wanted to sleep in.”

“Then why can I smell coffee?” Sailor pushed past him with a ruffle of his hair, an annoying big-brother thing that nonetheless made Danny feel like he was home. “Hope you didn’t make it tar like you usually do.”

Jake followed Sailor inside but didn’t attempt the hair thing. The two of them were too close in age for Jake to get away with it. Instead, he just fake-punched Danny on the shoulder.

Then there was Gabriel.

The eldest of them all and the one to whom they all turned whenever life kicked them in the balls. As big and muscled now as he’d been during his playing days, Gabe was dressed in jeans and a faded gray sweatshirt from the local rugby club where he coached a young team. Power pulsed off him.

“Come here, little bro,” he said and hauled Danny into a hug that felt as good now as it had when he’d been a scrawny kid in awe of his big brother. “You really want alone time?” he asked after releasing him from the hug. “If you do, say the word and I’ll take us all home.”

“No. It’s good to see you.” Even if being around them would make it very hard for him not to blurt out all the stuff inside his head. And that stuff had to stay inside his head. “Charlie and the baby?”

“They were cuddling when I left.” He smiled the smile of a man deeply content with his life. “Also, Charlotte says I’ve been hovering. She all but pushed me out the door, said they needed some girl time.”

Danny grinned, well aware of Gabriel’s overprotective tendencies. “French toast?”

“Now you’re talking.”