The tension was dissipating. The weirdness of introducing her mate to her family in the wake of a semi-violent confrontation was overpowering, but with every passing moment, the fight seemed to recede. The way Ken was settled easily in his seat, smiling like he always did, helped a lot.
“Wait a second,” Stella broke in. “Are you really serious? This is your mate?”
“Hi.” From the sound of it, Ken’s smile had broadened into a grin.
Lynn tensed as she waited to hear what Stella could say next. It could be anything, frankly, and she wouldn’t be too surprised if it was insulting.
“Well.” Stella sounded a little stunned. “I have to say, Lynn, I never thought you’d be quite this lucky.”
“Hey, thanks,” Ken said easily, while Lynn processed slowly through that. “But really, I’m the lucky one. Your sister’s quite a woman.”
“This is supremely unfair,” Stella said after a pause.
Lynn finally managed to find her voice. “Excuse me, that is my mate you’re talking about. He’s not open season!”
“That’s what I’m complaining about!”
“Ladies,” Ken said, “please.” A pause. “Continue.”
Stella started to laugh. “I don’t know where you found this guy, Lynn, but please take a look back there and see if there are any more for me.”
“You guys,” Eva said plaintively. “This is gross.”
Lynn finally gave in and laughed too.
It was amazing. She’d been sure that whatever Stella said, it would devolve somehow into a fight, because usually that’s what happened whenever Stella made a casual remark about something important. Lynn objected, Stella took offense, and then they had an argument.
But this time, it hadn’t happened. And somehow, she felt pretty sure that Ken was responsible. Because he hadn’t taken offense at all, Lynn had felt like it was okay to let it go.
And then he’d made a joke, too, but somehow with him, it wasn’t the same. Maybe because Lynn knew for certain that he valued their relationship just as much as she did, and he was just making a little lighthearted fun—kind of at his own expense, she thought, maybe poking fun at the idea that he could be vain enough to appreciate Stella being envious?—and it didn’t bother her at all.
That was something to think about. Why was she okay when Ken joked around, but not when Stella did? This time, at least, they’d been making exactly the same joke.
“Fine,” Stella was saying to Eva. “I’ll let it go. For now.”
“I’m not forgetting this,” Lynn said, and the words came easily to her, the idea that Stella was just joking, and Lynn was joking right back.
She settled in to drive. Maybe with Ken here, something might change, for the first time in decades. Maybe.
***
Ken breathed out an inaudible sigh of relief.
When he’d heard that Lynn’s sister—and her teenaged niece, good God—were trapped in a house with a pack of hostile wolves, his mind had instantly sketched out all of the ways the situation could go wrong. Very, very wrong.
He was incredibly glad that none of those possibilities had come to pass. And also that he’d been there in the first place, because if he hadn’t been—
If they’d only been faced with women, it would have been a different story.
That infuriated Ken. The idea that some men, knowing that they were stronger than women, would use that strength to just take what they wanted, was something he found absolutely disgusting. If you were stronger than other people, it was your responsibility to protect them. Or at the very least, the absolute minimum, you needed to make sure you didn’t scare them with it.
Stella and Eva, for all they were joking around now, had clearly been terrified. The laughter in the car had that post-adrenaline edge to it, the giggling relief that you were finally safe. And as for Lynn—Ken recognized her irritability with Stella as disguised fear for her sister’s safety.
Although there was a certain amount of existing annoyance there, too.
Now Ken had to hide a smile. As an only child, he’d always been fascinated by the ways siblings interacted with each other, and he could tell that Lynn and Stella had a well-established pattern. Lynn was the responsible one, the one who sacrificed to take care of them, and Stella was the wild child, who insisted on being a free spirit and got in trouble. It was just the way Lynn had described it, and seeing it in action was—interesting.
Eva had mostly kept quiet, so he didn’t have too much of an idea of her personality yet. Except she was very perceptive, and very good at speaking up at just the right moment to defuse a potential argument.