Gage (Pittsburgh Titans 3)

Jenna picks up her glass, takes a sip, and then leans back in her chair, holding her glass before her. “Next one.”

My mouth curves upward. “You asked for it. Celia is also thirty-three—Melanie’s fraternal twin—an accountant who would call me stuffy. Which is odd since she’s an accountant and that’s the very definition of such.”

Jenna laughs, and I rattle off the remainder in quick succession because I know my siblings so well, I can easily name my one characteristic that would stand out to them. “Marianne is an elementary school teacher. She’s thirty and would call me kind. Estella is twenty-eight and plays the violin for the Iowa State Philharmonic. She would call me strong—not in body, but in mind. Jackson is twenty-five and plays minor league baseball. He’d at first call me cocky just to be an ass, but then admit I am genuine. And Sam is the baby. At twenty, he’s still in college, but he’d call me wise.”

“Just wow,” Jenna murmurs with an admiring shake of her head. “Your family sounds amazing—and so accomplished.”

“That they are.” My chest fills with fondness upon thinking about them all at the same time.

“And your parents?”

“My dad, Jeff, is a dentist, and my mom, Sarah, is also an elementary school teacher. My dad would agree with Melanie that I’m a hard worker, but also as the oldest kid, I put myself into the position of secondary parent to the others. My mom would focus on my kindness because she’s the one who instilled it in me. Or rather, threatened to kill me if I ever treated anyone with unkindness.”

Jenna appraises me before admitting, “You’re nice and all, Gage, but I’m a little in love with your family right now.”

I bark out a laugh because this is exactly what I thought Jenna had hiding under her shy wariness. A brilliant sense of humor.

“What about your family?” I ask. “I know about Emory and how you’re a mixed family.”

Taking another drink of her wine, Jenna sets the glass down and then leans forward with arms crossed on the table to match mine, as if we’re huddled in, eager to soak up every word the other person says. I try not to be distracted by how the candlelight makes her blond hair shimmer and her eyes glow like whiskey.

“Like I told you, my dad is English and was married to Emory’s mom, who died in childbirth. My mom actually worked for him, and they were married by the time Emory was two. I came along a year later.”

“It’s odd Emory has an accent and you don’t,” I observe.

“Yeah… it’s interesting for sure. We lived in London until I was twelve and then moved to the States. I had a bit of a British accent, but when we came here, I totally lost mine. I think I tended to mimic my mom’s accent. Emory still has her accent, but it’s not very strong. My dad’s is still full-blown.”

“And what do your parents do?”

“My dad is a hotelier and my mother is in marketing. That’s how they met. He’d hired her to be the chief marketing officer in his company, and she moved from Los Angeles to London to work for him.”

“And they had an illicit workplace love affair?” he guesses with a salacious waggle of his eyebrows.

I giggle. “I don’t know about illicit. But they did fall in love fast. At any rate, he franchised his company in the States, and we all moved to LA.”

“And you went to college?” I ask, but before she can answer, our waiter arrives to tell us the specials.

When he leaves, we both ignore the menus while sipping our wine. “I majored in journalism at UCLA,” Jenna says with a mirthless laugh. “Even though I knew print was dying, I had this dream of being an editor of a big-city newspaper one day. I started out as a copy editor at the LA Times and did some ghostwriting for the editorial section.”

“Fascinating,” I murmur, envisioning her at a desk as she types out the perfect words.

“Yeah, well… it was a career probably destined to go nowhere. Like I said, print is dying. Everything is digital these days.”

“But there’s always a need for editors,” I point out.

“Yeah, I know,” she says wistfully. “But… well, I sort of got off track after the fire.”

I go still at the mention of the incident that left her with physical scars and trust issues, but neutrally say, “Big trauma in your life. Of course, you’d get off track.”

She pulls her lower lip between her teeth and her gaze drops to her wineglass as she nods. “The recovery wasn’t as fast as I’d hoped it would be.”

Without thought, I reach across the table and snag her hand. I lace my fingers lightly with hers, and I don’t say a word. I just sit in silence with her, in case she wants to talk about it or if she wants to move on to something else.