"If you want."
We drink our beer in silence for a while, moving around the porch as we work on the railing until Luke finally speaks as he pounds a nail into the wood. "I saw that thing in the Gazette."
I groan. "You drove all the way up here to get on me about that?"
"Nope. I mean, well, yeah, obviously. They quoted some girl who said she was going to make the coffee shop her new study spot so she could study the guy working behind the counter."
I shrug. "What can I say? I've always been the good-looking one in the family."
Luke laughs because he's the one who's always been the one women fall all over themselves for. Even back when we were teenagers, Luke had a way of picking up the popular girls in school who wanted to slum it with someone from the other side of the tracks. I've always been as far from that as you could get. People in this town were always afraid of me. And women don't ogle me.
"Are you going to tell me what the fuck the deal is with you working there?"
"Nope." I take a long drag of my beer. "And I'm not working there anymore, so there's nothing to tell."
Luke hits a few more nails into one of the railing pieces. "I went in there Saturday."
"Yeah?"
"Yep. The owner was working."
"Oh yeah?" My voice sounds less than nonchalant.
"Cute girl," Luke says.
I shrug. "Didn't really notice."
Luke laughs. "Sure you didn't. It was pretty busy in there, you know. She looked like she could use some help."
"Yeah?" I take another drag on the bottle. "I'm sure she'll hire someone."
Luke grabs another piece of lumber and, for a few minutes, the only sound is the two of us hammering. "It would probably be good for her business if that someone she hired was you."
I grunt my response. It might be good for her business, but hell if it's good for her. I'm not the kind of man she needs, some guy living up in the woods by himself in a cabin. The problem is that I have to fight with every ounce of willpower within me to stay away from her. That's not something I've ever had to do with a woman before.
Which is why I'm building a fucking porch instead. And a deck. Hell, at this rate I might even build another cabin.
"Did you come all the way up the mountain to grill me about working at the bakery?" I ask. "You're worse than the old women in this town."
Luke laughs and sips his beer. "Are you fucking with me? I wouldn't come all the way up here for something as stupid as that. I came up here to talk to you."
"Talk to me? You're not dying, are you?"
"Fuck. No, I'm not dying, thanks for your concern."
"I didn't say I hoped you were dying. I just asked if you were."
"I'm going to ask Autumn to marry me."
"Cool."
"That's all you've got to say?"
"Obviously, congratulations. I thought you'd already asked her."
Luke sighs. "No, I haven't fucking asked her," he says. "It's a big deal."
"I just thought, since you're living together and all, and there's the baby. Hell, I didn't know you hadn't asked her yet."
"I'm not doing it yet," Luke says. "It'll be a few weeks until the ring gets here."
"Okay." Why did my brother drive all the way up here to tell me this now?
"I'm going to do it with everyone there. You and Elias and Silas and River and Tempest."
"You that concerned she's going to say no, so you want us as witnesses?"
Luke laughs. "No. I want you there. Even though you're a morose asshole, you're still my brother. And Autumn is tight with River and Tempest."
"Uh-huh."
"You've been avoiding people since you got back."
"By people, you mean Elias and Silas?"
"We've gotten together three times in the last two months for dinners and you've missed all of them."
"So they sent you up here to guilt trip me?" I shake my head as I take a swig of beer. "Do you see this place? I've been busy. And I have been to dinner with them since I've been back."
"Yeah, when you and Elias were sniping at each other," Luke says.
"That's how it's always been with the fucking twins. We get over it."
"So now you get over it," Luke says, "because tomorrow, we're going to Elias' house and you're going too."
I groan inwardly. "Alright, alright. Enough with the guilt. I'll be there."
"How is the cabin coming along?" River asks. She's perched on the edge of the sofa, looking…well, like a movie star. There's no hiding that, no matter how down to earth she is. She's beautiful, but it's not her looks that set her apart from the rest of us. It's the way she carries herself. Regal almost.
"Good." I nod. "It's good. Everything's good."
"You've said 'good' three times now," River points out.
"We invited Cade and June too." Elias walks over to join us. "You met them before. They have a couple of kids."
Great. More kids. Autumn and Luke's kid is tearing around River's place like a miniature wrecking ball. So far, all I've learned about kids is that they don't like it when you play fetch and they're basically like tiny tornadoes that destroy anything in their path.