“Kevin and Sarah and their families will also be there.”
“That’s a lot of family.” Gideon sat back in his seat and attempted to form a list that he could remember. Kevin, Sarah, and…the dancer with the boyfriend. Only Rowan wasn’t letting up.
“It is. There were other kids over the years, some before us, some after, a lot of short-term foster placements. I’ve no idea where they are or what they’re up to now. For us four, I guess we got lucky, or maybe not for someone looking in from the outside.”
Gideon leaned forward in his seat as he listened.
“We didn’t have places to go back to but instead we became a family. Moms adopted us.” He smiled. “Speaking of which, I suppose I should add more names to the list you’re trying to etch into your memory.”
“I wasn’t,” Gideon bit back.
“I can hear those rusty cogs creaking. You should know my moms’ names. There’s Gill, Mom, and Jodie, who we kids all call Momo. I’m not giving anything away about them. You’ll have to wait to meet them yourself.”
So many names.
“They must be cool to have taken on so many kids.”
“They have big hearts,” Rowan confirmed.
Food arrived then, interrupting the conversation, and organized Rowan came back out to play. Everything on his plate and around him was laid out just so, and he realized Gideon was staring when he was about to take a bite of his burger, and he caught him.
“That’s big,” Gideon murmured, which was possibly the lamest thing he’d said all day.
Rowan winked. “I can take big,” he deadpanned. Gideon spent the next ten minutes not staring at Rowan and concentrating on his own burger, feeling as if that had been an inappropriate exchange one minute and then wanting to snort with laughter the next.
Rowan confuses me.
But he’d never gotten close enough to colleagues to exchange sexually charged banter before, and he wasn’t going to start now. He and Rowan were pretend friends, while being sort of real friends in a similar fashion so not everything was a lie. Finding Rowan cute or funny or being attracted to him in any way needed to be left at the door. Outside the door. Or in the next state.
Also, he was out of his depth here. He genuinely believed he could wing this as he did with any awkward situation, using a mix of politeness and having interesting subjects on hand to chat about. Only the closer they got to Rowan’s home, the more nervous he was feeling. Rowan knew everything about Gideon, but it was debatable how much Gideon knew about his PA at all, other than the fact he was friends with Darcy, was ruthlessly organized, and had a family that would put the Waltons to shame.
They climbed back into the car and for the remainder of the journey, Gideon dozed off, his head against the window. Every so often waking to hear Rowan singing along to the radio or witnessing pockets of snow that dressed some trees in a dusting of white. Maine didn’t always get snow, that much Gideon had researched so he could pack accordingly, but it was due this year for some, which would add to the Christmas spirit he guessed. If only he could chill, then maybe he’d have the first proper vacation since…he couldn’t remember when.
“We’re here.” Rowan was excited, bouncing in his seat like a kid and then parking next to a beat-up jeep and whooping. “Let’s go.”
He couldn’t see a house, just parking, trees, and an inch of snow until they rounded the corner and faced a stunning cabin of wood and glass, perched on a hill looking over a valley.
“My moms’ place,” Rowan said and pointed down the hill. “We’ll have our own cabins down the hill. Look! The dogs know we’re here!”
Two Border Collies jumped up at the gate seeming as if at any moment they were going to leap. One word from Rowan though, and they sat down, wagging their tails and wriggling with excitement.
I like dogs. I can handle dogs. But I’m glad Hilda could take Kimi in for a few days again.
“Left is Deon, right is Dog, the rest will be around in a moment.”
Two more dogs came tumbling and chasing around the corner of the large cabin, sliding and piling to a halt next to Deon and Dog. One was big and shaggy, dark fur and bright eyes, and he parked his butt calmly at the back, but the other one, a tiny terrier, was all over the place.
“That’s Bear at the back, and the little one is Widget.”
“Bear, I’m gonna remember,” Gideon admitted.
“Yeah, he’s a Newfie. Sarah found him tied up and abandoned at the gate when he was a puppy, people around here know about the barn, and that we’d never turn away a dog and since our moms got a license for the dog fostering it’s been mad.”
“So wait, your moms now foster dogs?” Instead of kids or as well as? How did I not know this?
“Yep. They moved out here a year or so before I left home. There’d always been a dog or two in the family, but once they got out here, after some time and with all the space, they swapped angsty teenagers for troublesome pups.”
“And these are rescue dogs?”
“No, these are family dogs. We just never seemed to find the right home for any of them, so they ended up staying.”
Gideon glanced from dogs to cabin and back to Rowan. “All of them?” It was effort enough for him to look after a single cat.
Rowan shrugged in that ‘what can I say’ kind of way and then carefully unlocked the gate. “Sarah lives in town, and as I said she fosters now too, so she and the kids come and help out from time to time. Guess you could call the dogs therapy.” He waved his hands to encourage the dogs to back up. “Stay,” he ordered then held the gate open and ushered Gideon through.
Gideon regretted his life choices as he stepped inside. Wearing a suit seemed practical back in New York, after all, he wanted to make an impression, but now, with the dogs bouncing from paw to paw in anticipation, how long was his suit going to last? He braced himself for the onslaught of four dogs, but instead they bounced all over Rowan and didn’t pay much attention to Gideon at all. The odd sniff, a gentle nudge to his leg, but this was calm.
“You can pet them,” Rowan said, sinking to his knees right in front of Gideon, burying his face in one of the Collie’s necks and gripping tight. “Deon is my dog. We all have one, all the kids.”
The rest of what he was saying was a blur. All Gideon could think about was the graceful way that Rowan had sunk to the ground, his dark pants stark against the settling snow. And all he could think about was his buttoned-up PA falling to his knees and—
“Rowan! You made it!”
Five
Rowan
“Kevin, you’re here already?” Rowan got to his feet, fussed over Deon as the dog continued to nudge his palm. “I know. I know,” he said softly and scratched Deon’s neck.
“Hey, Dog, come here.” Kevin clapped his hands and crouched. The other Border Collie bounded over to him with Widget the terrier yapping as he chased behind.
“It really is called Dog,” Gideon noted in a low voice.
“She really is. Kevin’s eldest daughter named her. She must have been three at the time. Never could quite decide if Kevin was a genius or an idiot to go with it.”