She was developing some good street smarts, and Dean gave her a surreptitious wink. He just hoped Nita wasn’t too familiar with Harry Potter.

He waited for Nita to resume her interrogation, but she didn’t. “Shoulders,” she said, and Riley immediately sat straighter in her chair. Nita shifted her eyes between April and Dean. “You two look alike.”

“You think so?” April helped herself to another spear of roasted asparagus.

“You’re related, aren’t you?”

Dean felt himself tense, but his little sister had appointed herself the guardian of family secrets. “Mrs. Garrison’s been giving me posture lessons,” she said. “I’m getting real good at walking with a book.”

Nita pointed her third biscuit at Blue. “Someone else could use posture lessons.”

Blue glowered and plunked her elbows on the table.

Nita gave a triumphant smirk. “See how childish she is.”

Dean smiled. Blue was definitely being childish, but she looked so cute doing it—a smudge of flour on one cheek, a strand of inky hair trailing down her neck, a mulish expression. How could a woman who was such a mess be so appealing?

Nita turned her attention to Dean. “Football players make a lot of money for doing nothing.”

“Pretty much,” Dean said.

Blue bristled. “Dean works very hard at what he does. Being a quarterback isn’t just physically demanding. It’s very challenging mentally.”

Riley jumped in as Blue’s backup. “Dean’s played in the Pro Bowl three years straight.”

“I’ll bet I’m richer than you are,” Nita said.

“Could be.” Dean eyed her over a chicken wing. “How much you got?”

Nita let out an indignant huff. “I’m not telling you that.”

Dean smiled. “Then we’ll never know, will we?”

Jack, who could buy and sell both of them, gave a snort of amusement. Mrs. Garrison sucked a food sliver from her front teeth and zeroed in on him. “And what do you do?”

“Right now, I’m building Dean’s porch.”

“Come look at my windowsills next week. The wood’s rotting.”

“Sorry,” Jack deadpanned. “I don’t do windows.”

April smiled at him, and Jack smiled back at her. An intimacy passed between them that shut everybody else out. It only lasted a moment, but no one at the table missed it.

Chapter Nineteen

After dinner, Nita announced that she’d wait in the living room until Blue had finished cleaning up and could drive her home. April immediately rose. “I’ll clean up. You go ahead, Blue.”

But Dean wasn’t ready for Blue to leave. So far, all this little dinner party had accomplished was to remind him how much he missed having her to pal around with during the day and sink into at night. He needed to fix that. “I should burn the trash,” he said. “How about helping me carry it out first?”

Riley did her best to upset his plan. “I’ll help.”