“Look harder,” Nash advised before reaching into his pocket, whipping out his phone, and texting someone. Presumably his fiancée. Smirking, he pocketed it again. “Let’s move,” he said.
“I’m on point,” Knox insisted.
“Then get your ass out the door so we can at least start packing snow, dumbass,” his brother said, pushing him out the door.
I followed them into the white night. Six inches of snow blanketed the ground, but it didn’t quite muffle the giggles that were coming from the front of the house.
Waylon and Piper trotted outside. The basset hound put his nose to the ground and immediately snowplowed a path to the fence that divided my property from Sloane’s. He lifted his leg, nearly peeing on the curious Piper, as she followed.
Knox knelt in the snow and began frantically forming snowballs. “Just make as many as you can carry,” he hissed at us.
Nash followed suit.
I, however, went to war, thinking bigger than a pathetic handful of snowballs. I stepped back into the garage and grabbed a yellow plastic bucket off the shelf. Outside, I dragged it across the ground, filling it in one sweep.
“Waylon, c’mere,” Knox ordered.
The dog had a full muzzle of snow and a crazy look in his eyes.
Knox held the hound’s jowls between his hands. “Go get Mommy.”
Waylon sneezed, and we heard the giggles abruptly cut off. “Bless you,” came Jeremiah’s deep baritone in a stage whisper.
“I didn’t sneeze,” Naomi responded. “But thank you anyway.”
“Guys, shut up or they’re going to hear us,” Lina hissed even louder.
“Go, Waylon,” Knox whispered, pushing his dog toward the front of the house. “Find Mommy.”
Nash looked down at Piper, who was standing on the toes of his boots, looking like she was hoping to get scooped up and saved from the indignity of snow. “You heard your uncle. Go find Mommy.”
The two dogs tore through the snow and cut around the front of the house, barking ecstatically.
“Let’s go,” Knox said grimly.
“We’ll see you on the other side,” I promised.
Knox rounded the corner of the house and earned a full-frontal pelting of snowballs before he could throw his first round.
There was a torrent of hysterical laughter as Nash eagerly unloaded his arsenal on Knox’s back, paying special attention to his head and ass.
I strolled up to Knox, held the bucket over his head, and dumped it.
Naomi was staged in the bed of Knox’s truck, several dozen snowballs piled at her feet. Jeremiah was documenting the moment on his phone while Stef stood next to him holding the largest margarita I’d ever seen in the other. Sloane and Lina were lying tangled in the snow laughing, both dogs frantically licking their faces.
There was something earthy, elemental about Sloane’s husky laugh. She didn’t laugh like that around me. Not anymore.
Naomi let out a peal of laughter. “You look like the abominable snowman,” she called to her husband. It was a fair assessment. Knox’s beard was completely coated in snow.
Knox unfroze, raised his arms, and growled.
His wife shrieked and tried to make a break for it, but Knox vaulted into the back of the truck and wrapped her in a snowy embrace. He rubbed his face against her bare neck, making her scream louder.
“That’s definitely a framer,” Jeremiah claimed as he snapped away.
Nash tugged the still laughing Lina to her feet. “You smell like tequila and bad decisions,” he said.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and gave him a noisy kiss on the mouth. “And you smell like we should have sex.”
Sloane, on the ground, mimed a fit of vomiting.
I tossed the bucket aside and held out a hand to her.
She eyed it for a beat too long, so I reached down and hauled her to her feet.
Her mitten-clad hands gripped my forearms as she regained her balance. She was still laughing. Her lovely face was the picture of joy. Up close, I zeroed in on the darker smudge of forest green around the iris of her left eye.
“Not down my shirt,” Naomi screeched from the back of the truck.
“These shenanigans better not ruin my boots,” Stef complained, looking at his feet.
Sloane was grinning, her emerald-green eyes clear and bright.
“You’re not drunk,” I observed.
“None of us are. It’s the snow. It turns us into fourth graders. Case in point,” she said and waved both magenta mittens at me. “When’s the last time you did something as undignified as playing in the snow?”
“You can take the man out of Knockemout, but you can’t take Knockemout out of the man,” I quipped.
She frowned. “Wait. I forgot. I’m mad at you again.”
“With us, I think that’s always safe to assume,” I said dryly.
She bent at the waist and picked up the scruffy Piper, who was going to need a new sweater since this one was covered in clumps of snow. “I’m extra mad because you ratted me out to Naomi when all I wanted was a quiet evening at home by myself.”
“As you can see, I too am suffering the consequences of my actions,” I said, gesturing in the direction of Knox and Nash.
Sloane buried her face in Piper’s wet, wiry fur. “For some ridiculous reason, Naomi felt the tattler shouldn’t be alone tonight either. My suffering is almost worth knowing that you have to entertain your pals instead of figuring out how to drive up the cost of blood pressure medicines or whatever it is you do to entertain yourself.”
“I entertain myself by binge-watching Ted Lasso and cheering for Rupert the villain.”
Sloane tried and failed to smother her laugh. “Damn it.”
It was a headier thrill than anything I could recall in recent history. That was pathetic.
“Hold up. Are those two actually smiling at each other?” Lina demanded.
“My God. It’s a snowstorm miracle,” Stef said, making the sign of the cross as Jeremiah slung an arm around his waist.
“I better call into the station and see if some kind of asteroid is about to hit us,” Nash joked.
“I don’t like this,” Knox said, giving me the evil, snowy eye.
“I love it,” Naomi insisted, hooking her arm through his.
“Har har. You guys are hilarious,” Sloane said, taking a deliberate step back. She turned her back on me and took that warm feeling with her.
Knox and Nash insisted on spending the night after the girls had commandeered the dogs and taken them next door for the night.
It was midnight. Knox was passed out on the twin bed in the bedroom staged for a boy while Nash slept on the pullout couch in my office.
Anyone would have thought from the long, impassioned goodbyes they shared with Naomi and Lina that they were going off to war.
What was it about love that turned men into simpering idiots?
I considered myself lucky that it was at least one thing I didn’t have to worry about.
I turned my attention back to the financial records in front of me. The digital fundraising platform would make an interesting addition to my “evil corporate empire.” I saved my notes to the cloud and fired off an email to my assistant to add a meeting with the platform partners to my calendar.