Jason wasn’t surprised to discover he had been placed beside Bella at the dinner table. The women in the family tended to be matchmakers when they set their minds to it, which he could overlook considering three of them were all happily married themselves. The other two, Megan and Bailey, were in it for the ride.

He dipped his head, lower than he’d planned, to ask Bella if she was enjoying herself, and when she turned her head to look at him their lips nearly touched. He came close to ignoring everyone sitting at the table and giving in to the temptation to kiss her.

She must have read his mind and a light blush spread into her cheeks. He swallowed, pulled his lips back. “Are you having a good time?”

“Yes. And I appreciate your family for inviting me.”

“And I’m sure they enjoy having you here,” he said. Had she expected him to invite her? He shrugged off the thought as wrong. There had been no reason for him to invite her to meet his family. Come to think of it, he had never invited a woman home for dinner. Not even Emma Phillips and they’d dated close to a year before she tried giving him an ultimatum.

The meal went off without a hitch with various conversations swirling around the table. Megan informed everyone that the private investigator she had hired to dig deeper into their great-grandfather Raphel’s past was Rico Claiborne, who just happened to be the brother of Jessica and Savannah who were married to their cousins Chase and Durango. Rico, whom Megan hadn’t yet met, was flying into Denver at some point in time to go over the information he’d collected on what was supposed to be Raphel’s third wife.

By the time dinner was over and conversations wound down it was close to ten o’clock. Someone suggested given the lateness of the hour that Bella be escorted back home. Several of his cousins spoke up to do the honor and Jason figured he needed to end the nonsense once and for all and said in a voice that brooked no argument, “I’ll make sure Bella gets home.”

He noticed that all conversation automatically ceased and no one questioned his announcement. “Ready to go?” he asked Bella softly.

“Yes.”

She thanked everyone and openly gave his cousins and brothers hugs. It wasn’t hard to tell that they all liked her and had enjoyed her visit. After telling everyone good-night he followed her out the door.