Everything, if he were being honest. She was a beautiful woman on the inside as well as the outside. It pained him to watch her trying to turn herself into someone new when there wasn’t anything wrong with who she already was. He liked that she was sweet and sensitive and maybe a tiny bit naïve when it came to sex. He found her extremely refreshing after being with sleek, sophisticated Sasha the last few years. How could he have thought that was what he wanted in a woman? Now he knew better.

“Adam?”

He looked up to find his parents watching him expectantly. Crap. “Yeah?”

“Did you hear what your mother said?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t.”

“I said that it seems to me that you like Abby a lot more than you let on,” Linda said, intuitive as always. They didn’t call her Voodoo Mama for nothing.

His first impulse was to deny it. That would be the easier path, the path less fraught with peril. “Maybe,” he said, bracing himself for the onslaught of parental disapproval.

“She seems to like you, too,” Big Mac said.

“Maybe.”

“Are you worried about what might be happening with Cal?” his dad asked.

“Maybe.”

“Honestly, Adam!” his mother said. “Is that the only word you’ve got?”

“Perhaps.”

His dad let go with a low, rumbling chuckle that drew a smile from Adam. “You’ve always been the toughest of our five nuts to crack,” Big Mac said.

“Thank you. I think.”

Big Mac rested his elbows on the table. “I only mean that you’ve kept to yourself more than your siblings did.”

“Middle-child syndrome,” Linda added.

Adam chewed on the end of a plastic stirrer. “Is that your official diagnosis, Mom?”

“Perhaps,” she said, sticking her tongue out at him.

Adam laughed. How could he not? He adored them, even if he didn’t feel the need to tell them everything.

“You know we’re on your side, son,” Big Mac said. “Even if we don’t agree with everything you do, we’re always on your side.”

That’s all it took to put a lump in Adam’s throat. “I know that, Dad, and it means a lot to me. It’s always been important to me that I make you proud. Both of you.”

“There’s never been a single day when we weren’t proud of you,” Big Mac assured him.

His dad was so free with his love that sometimes it overwhelmed Adam to be on the receiving end of it. “I’m not about to do anything to change that track record. I promise you that.”

“Here she comes,” Linda whispered—loudly.

Adam turned to watch her come toward them. The impact of that dress was no less powerful the second time around. He zeroed in on her face, looking for clues to what might’ve happened with Cal, but she kept her expression neutral, giving nothing away.