“I’ve always wanted this area to be a greenhouse.” I gestured around the patio. “Like in Practical Magic.” It hit me then that I was talking to an Army vet turned construction worker and all-around alpha. “Practical Magic is a movie—”

“Know what Practical Magic is,” he interrupted gently. “Seen the movie. Coupla times.”

I jerked my head back in surprise.

He shrugged. “Got sisters. They love that fuckin’ shit.”

“You’ve got sisters?”

He nodded. “Two hellions. Well, one is a married hellion now, Kendra, which hasn’t changed her one bit. Keith, her husband, worships her. Which of course, is the only way he’s still breathing.” He smiled as he sipped his beer. “Calliope is off in New York working on Wall Street, makin’ far too much fuckin’ money.”

You could hear it. The pride in his voice. The love.

I hadn’t known he had two sisters because I hadn’t asked. It struck me I hadn’t asked barely anything about his life. His family. The things you normally asked when you were dating someone.

But then again, we weren’t dating in the normal sense of the word. We were too intimate for strangers. Which was what we were. Strangers. But not.

It felt uncomfortable to feel like I knew him, his body, but not his background.

“You’re close with your family?” I asked.

He smiled, but it was a melancholy kind of smile. “Yeah, always have been. I’m the oldest. Though my sisters cluck over me like they know better than anything I’ve ever learned.” He shook his head good-naturedly. “My father had his own construction business back home in a small town just outside of Bangor. He was the boss. Except in our house. That was my mom. My sisters. Not that either of us minded. Though they couldn’t stop me from deploying. And each one of them tried.”

I could imagine. Not from experience, mind you, but I could feel it in his voice. A loving family. Tight-knit. Two men, both alphas—because Rowan didn’t come from nowhere. I would bet good money his father was one too—submitting to the women they loved. The family that saw their one boy—not that I could ever imagine Rowan being a boy—say he wanted to ship off to a war zone. One where he could be hurt. Maimed. Killed. At worst. And at best, he’d come home changed forever.

“Caused tension. A lot of it,” he continued. “But they were proud. Mom had the bumper stickers, she put up signs in the yard. Sent care packages.” He shook his head again. “Like if she did all that, she’d will me into coming home safe. And if anyone could, it was my mother.”

My throat burned. Not with jealousy over Rowan having that, but with joy. That a mother’s love, pure and good, existed and created this man.

Rowan looked into the fire, something in his eyes telling me he wasn’t seeing the flames but something else, was somewhere else.

I’d not seen that stare on him before. The thousand-yard stare. The one that told me he’d seen things I wouldn’t believe and that those things had followed him. Marked him.