“It’s my dad’s. Been my dad’s since I could form a memory. Dad loved that chair. No fuckin’ clue how many NASCAR races and football games he watched in that chair, probably thousands. Remember him holding me on his knee when I was fuckin’ around and climbed the cabinets in the kitchen to get something, knocked over a glass pitcher that broke, then fell on the glass pitcher, gashin’ open my leg. Deep. Long. Twelve stitches. Dad held me there while Mom wrapped a bandage around it before they took me to the doctor.” His eyes drifted beyond me as he finished, “Got a million stories like that about that chair.”

I did not like where this was going.

I so much didn’t like this, continuing to do things I knew I shouldn’t do, I noted gently, “As lovely as that is, I’m not feeling good thoughts about that chair being ten feet away.”

He stilled.

Completely.

Except his eyes.

They came right to me, working, shifting, going from blatant shock to melt to sweet warmth until he closed them from me and they were hidden.

“He’s not dead, Olivia,” he explained quietly but without inflection. “Mom got sick of that chair. Said it was an eyesore. Redecorated the whole fuckin’ family room with the sole purpose of getting shot of that chair. The minute we heard it was goin’, Knight and me started fightin’ over who would get it. Anya put her foot down that she would not inherit that ratty-ass chair. So, not havin’ a woman to bust my balls, for once in my life with Knight—and that is not an exaggeration—I won. Though, sayin’ that, that chair is worth negative five hundred dollars and it cost me a fuckin’ arm and leg to ship it from Hawaii, it’s butt-ugly, fucks with my aesthetic and on a wet day, it smells. So I’m not real certain how big a prize I got.”

“It appears you may have much the same relationship with your brother as I do with my sister.”

His arm around my neck tightened as he started moving, drawing me farther into his place.

“Somethin’ we have in common, outside we both like control, you in those shoes and you in those jeans. Though I ’spect the reason why I like you in those shoes and jeans is different than the reason you like ’em.”

“I suspect you’re right.”

He stopped us by the wine, released his hold on me, gave me an amused gleam out of his blue eyes and ordered, “You pour. Then you’re on salad duty. I got bread to sort and shit.”

After that, he sauntered comfortably around the bar in a pad that might be perfect, but to him it was home, to get to the bread, which was part of the foodstuffs arranged on the island.