“I should have mentioned this on Thanksgiving, but I really do love seeing you in my house. In my kitchen.” Something about her presence there, the way she made the room the heart of the house when they were staying over, always pleased him.

She blushed as she worked on the plates and he put away the excess as she was done.

“I like being in your house.” She turned after putting the plate down, sliding her arms around his waist and getting close. “I like being with you.”

“You do something to me. More than one thing. A whole lot of them. Be here with me all the time.” He kissed her and she kissed him back, rising up on her toes to reach him.

“I hate being away from you both. You two could live here, you know. We can convert your room to a home office.”

She breathed deep. “I hate being away from you too. As does Miles. But you see us several times a week, including every weekend. Moving isn’t an easy thing. My friends live on Bainbridge. I’ve built a life there. Miles has room to play and run and practice with his friends in the garage. If we moved here, he’d lose that.”

“He could start a new band. You can take the ferry to see your friends and you have friends here too now. Erin and everyone already like you. I could wake up every day with my two favorite people with me under one roof.”

“That last line saved you, son.” Her eyes narrowed and he took a step back because she was pissed off. “Who do you fink you are?”

“Fink? Is that a Britishism?”

Her narrowed gaze went wide and he realized, too late, that she had said think and her accent had thickened.

“I didn’t mean to offend you with that.”

“Do you think you can just plug me and Miles into your life and all will be well?”

While she’d said think extra clearly, the rest slid back into her Newham as Miles had called it after the area she’d grown up in back in England.

Miles skidded into the kitchen and looked from his mother to his father and chuckled. “You’re in big trouble, mate. When she starts sounding like an episode of EastEnders I usually just run for it. Protect your junk.” And with that, he turned and bolted from the room.

“I don’t think that at all. Come on, you know I’m just saying that you have a life here too if you want it.” Jesus, he wanted her to move in to his house and she was mad at him for how he phrased something?

“Let me ask you a question, Mister Brown. In my place, if I said please come live with me and Miles and don’t worry about missing Erin and the bunch, you can take the ferry to visit your old life. Don’t worry about your friends, you already have a friendship with Cal and Ryan—you tell me how you’d feel.”

“That’s not what I meant, or even what I said.”

“When I lost my gran I was a mess.” She stepped back and leaned against the center island. “She was everything to me. The only real mother I’d ever had. She’d been such a huge part of my life, of Miles’s life, that when she died the only thing I could manage to do was cry.”

He wanted to touch her, but knew if he moved, he’d break the spell, so he remained, just listening to her.

“I never heard a thing from my mother or sister. So I made the arrangements. Or I should say I put it all into motion because my gran was a very organized woman and she had everything she wanted outlined and even paid for. And on the day of the memorial service Jules showed up in my gran’s car to get me and Miles. She knew I needed it. Cal had taken it to the shop and gotten it detailed. It was Jules’s plum thumbprint cookies we had to eat with our coffee and tea. They were Gran’s favorite.” She looked up and met Adrian’s gaze.

“That’s just one example, but these people are as important to me as your sister and brother are to you. I’m flattered and touched and very tempted by your invitation to live under the same roof. But I have a life already and I’ve never seen being with a man as a way to simply stop what I was before he came along. I want to live with you, not through you.”

He took a deep breath. He got it. Understood how she could see what he said the way she did, and perhaps she wasn’t entirely wrong that he’d sort of expected her to blend in with everyone as closely as Elise had, or Ella.

“I just hate that you hold back.”

“How do I do that?”

“I want us to hang out with my family more. Don’t you want to go out with my sister?”

“I’ve arranged a lunch on Sunday to have your family and friends meet mine, if you recall. I don’t think it’s a crime for me to like my friends. I love your sister, she’s a lovely woman and I enjoy time with her, as I do Elise and Ella and everyone else.”

“I just . . . it feels to me that you like them better.”

“Well, of course I do!” She began to pace, muttering. Her reserve had melted away entirely. “I never lose my temper with other people this often,” she tossed back over her shoulder as she continued to pace. “I like the people in your circle. But I have friends too and it’s absolutely ridiculous for you to expect me to like people I’ve known for four months more than I do people I’ve known for twelve and thirteen years.”

He wasn’t used to fighting with women this way. With the people he’d been with before, if he discovered something that would have made him mad enough to argue over, he just would have moved on.

But as they stood there in his kitchen arguing, he realized he only bickered and fought like this with people he knew and trusted most. With Erin and Brody. With Cope. He wasn’t worried this would be the end between the two of them. His assumption was that they’d fight and work it out.