Miles flung an arm around his younger sibling and squeezed tight. He’d seen Harley six months ago when he’d been on a business trip to Bangkok.
“Hey, I didn’t expect to see you back home, too,” he said.
“Piper brought me through from Dallas. She’s here, also.”
“You didn’t mention anything about coming home this year when I saw you last. Is everything okay?”
“Just this wretched business with WinJet. You know they’re the primary donor to my charity, Zest. With the freeze, Zest’s funding has been locked up, too. I need to drum up new funding to tide us over until this whole mess is cleared up. Is that what you’re here for, too? To help with the WinJet crisis?”
Harley looked up at Miles in adoration, and he felt the old familiar twang of pride she’d always managed to imbue in him. His other three siblings were all older, and the twins had always been tight-knit as they all grew up. But Harley had always seen Miles as her knight in shining armor. Cute most of the time. A little less so when he’d started dating and she’d taken it upon herself to start vetting his girlfriends.
“Something like that,” he acknowledged. “Although my hands have been tied with the freeze, much like yours back in Thailand, I imagine.”
“It’s so darn frustrating, isn’t it? We’re just trying to do good things, make a living, help others to make theirs. I don’t know why anyone would be working so hard to discredit us.”
“Well, hopefully that will become clearer soon.” Miles set Daniel down onto his feet and ruffled the little boy’s hair. “He’s grown since I saw him last. But you haven’t. Have you lost weight? Are you looking after yourself okay?”
“Don’t you start,” Harley said with a laugh. “I’m doing just fine. C’mon Daniel, let’s go to the kitchen to find something to eat. Are you hungry?”
“Yes, please!” the little boy answered and put his hand in his mother’s. As he passed Chloe, he gave her a shy smile and a wave with his free hand. “Thank you for playing with me.”
“Anytime, Daniel. I enjoyed it,” Chloe answered with a warm smile.
There was definitely something about her that made everything in Miles ease and relax. He flopped down next to her on the carpet.
“Nice job on the racetrack,” he said, gesturing to the convoluted road Chloe and Daniel had obviously built together around the furniture in the room. “I had no idea you were so adept at playing with boys’ toys.”
Chloe arched a brow at him. “Toys are toys. Gender doesn’t enter into it.”
“I consider myself duly chastened,” Miles answered playfully.
“As your punishment, you can help me tidy this away. I’m sure when Ava gets back, she’d prefer to see her family room looking its usual pristine self.”
Chloe went on all fours and began to disassemble the train track and stack it into the box it came from. Distracted momentarily by her pert derriere, Miles was slow to join her.
“Well, come on!” she said in exasperation.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Once the room was back to its regular condition, they went up to their bedroom. Miles flopped down backward on the bed and heaved a big sigh.
“Bad day?” Chloe asked.
“Not a great one. I’m still parsing through the data I put
on a hard drive prior to the freeze, but it hasn’t revealed much, so far. I feel like I’m this close.” He held his thumb and forefinger close together in the air. “But something is eluding me. Whoever did this knows the Wingate business systems inside and out. I’ve got my team in Chicago working on improving overall security for the entire corporation. It just frustrates me because this all could have been avoided if they’d listened to me earlier about their IT security.”
Chloe sat down next to him on the bed. “I’m sorry this is proving so tough for you.”
“Hey, it’s not your fault. How about you? Did you have a good day?”
She smiled down at him. “Yeah, I did. I got to know Gracie a little better. She’s quite a woman. I’m glad Beth has her support. And your aunt Piper seems lovely, too. And she’s so close to Beth and Harley.”
“Yeah, Piper is the mother figure we never had growing up. We all love her to bits. And Beth is brilliant at what she does and even better at choosing people to help her who are equally as strong. Hopefully she can pull some magic out of a hat for Harley, too.”
“Harley seems nice,” Chloe commented as she lay partway down beside him and started stroking his chest with one hand.
“Harley is one of life’s truly good people. I think that by the time she was born, all the snark had been bred out of us, leaving her only what was sweetness and light.”