Yep, Drake replied. You can quit stalking the airline app now. It doesn’t really ease your guilty conscience anyway, does it? He couldn’t resist the jab, even though he was more than a little familiar with Ezra’s lifelong protectiveness toward his younger sister, Mackenzie.

As Drake made his way toward the security cutoff, keeping an eye on the scattering of arriving passengers who passed him, his phone vibrated with a phone call. He laughed when he saw it was Ez.

“Kinda busy here,” Drake answered facetiously.

“Are you even to the airport yet?” his friend demanded from the other side of the globe.

“Relax. I’m in the terminal, watching for her. Her plane hasn’t unloaded yet.” This part of the airport was relatively calm at the moment, probably because it was nearing ten p.m. on a Wednesday.

Ez released a breath over the line, as if finally relaxing. “Thanks for doing this. I’m sorry to drag you away from whatever you had going on. I’m sure there was a woman involved somehow.”

“There was,” Drake said, “but not the way you think. Here’s a question for you. Who’s the North brother least likely to get hitched?”

“You,” Ez said without hesitation, and Drake grinned because that was tough to argue with.

“Besides me. Try Cole. He proposed tonight. Popped the question on camera while Sierra was recording an episode of the remodeling show. The whole family was there watching. We went to celebrate afterward. I had to show my face for that.”

“I guess you did.” Ezra’s surprise was evident. “Damn. One of the eternal-bachelor North brothers goes down.”

“He’s happy. Like I’ve never seen him. Cole and happy are two words you don’t often hear in the same sentence. Anyway, I dragged myself away just for you.”

“For Mackenzie,” Ez corrected.

“You do know she’s a grown woman who’s been on her own in LA for years?” Drake asked. He did the math in his head to figure she must be twenty-five now, four years younger than the two of them.

“She could handle it on her own, no question, but it’d be nice if she didn’t have to. And moving sucks no matter how old you are.”

“That it does, but tonight’ll be easy. It hardly counts as moving.”

From what Drake understood, Mackenzie’s move back to Nashville, where she’d grown up, was because of her job. She’d apparently sold her car, packed her bags, and had already signed a lease on an apartment here in town.

“Still, I appreciate it,” Ezra said, his tone going serious. “Big-brother fail on my part. And not the first one.”