Quiet Nights (3 page)

It was Coz’s turn to choke.

“So, uhm,” Mia began, but then she glanced over at me, her eyes scrunched up, begging.

I knew what she wanted to know, because I did too.

“No,” Coz said hoarsely, his voice burned from the alcohol. “No-no.”

“So,” I choked out, “since it was a class where you met and all, did you guys have sex in front of other people?”

Coz’s whine was loud.

“Well, yes, sweetheart, of course.”

“Pass me the bourbon,” Mia demanded loudly, gesturing at me.

“You want ice?”

“No, just—pour.”

But Annalise finally realized the three of us were well on our way to alcohol poisoning and made us sit down at the table.

Coz needed brain bleach first.

“I’
M
CONFUSED
,”
Mia said as she served herself a third plate of sausage and peppers, much to her mother’s delight.

“Save some for the rest of us,” I groused, which earned me a pat on the back from Annalise as she poured me another glass of wine. We’d finished the Chianti and moved on to Shiraz with our food. I took two more pieces of bread from the bowl Coz held out for me.

“There’s enough here to feed a small army,” Mia volleyed, her voice louder than usual from all the liquor sloshing around in her system. “I don’t think you’re gonna starve.”

“Well, some of us actually work outside in the sun and don’t sit on our asses all day long.”

“Oh? So because I don’t toil all day, I don’t get to eat?”

I shrugged and Coz said, “Yeah.”

She flipped us off one after the other.

“Children,” Annalise admonished. “No more!” After we all went quiet, she turned to me. “Now, angel, tell us about this blast from your past that you ran into today.”

“What?”

“Coz said you had an event happen today.”

It was nowhere near the excitement of tantric lovemaking in front of a roomful of people. “Yeah, I—wait.”

“Tell me what happened,” she insisted.

But I remembered my epiphany as I turned from Annalise to Mia.

“What?” she asked as I glared at her, feeling betrayed for no logical reason. If I was right, she had no idea what she’d done. “Why are you lookin’ at me like that?”

“Your friend from college, the one you went to Harvard with… what was his last name?”

“Oh.” She closed one eye, concentrating. We were all loaded. “Uh, Lassiter. Why?”

“Crap, I knew it,” I grumbled, dropping my face down onto my folded arms.

“Oh, that’s the guy,” Coz trumpeted, just as drunk as me and Mia.
“Your guy, the guy, who ditched you and left you crying in your
beignets…. Lassiter. He’s Mia’s new partner.”

I sighed loudly. Had the beignet thing really needed to be added?

“What?” Mia asked as I lifted my head so I could meet her gaze. “Oh… the guy, the one, that was Britton? Holy shit, what a small world!”

She knew the story just as well as her brother did; it was one of the first things Coz had––much to my horror––shared with her. It had been the whole “Guess what, Mia, Kelly gets shafted by guys too” declaration. He’d wanted us to bond, and we had, just not over that. Mia and I were close because she was the big sister I had always wanted, the one who loved you unconditionally and would annihilate anyone who tried to hurt you. I was counting on it now.

“Could you, pretty please, ditch him?” I begged. “For me?”

“Who are we speaking of, sugar?” Annalise asked.

I made a noise of disgust as I leaned my head on my fist and regarded the matriarch of our family. Did I have to confess that I knew him in the Biblical sense?

“He’s the lawyer who’s going to be sharing my practice, Mom,” Mia answered. “We’ve been friends since law school and”—her gaze shifted back to me—“I’ll tell him it’s not going to work out.”

I sat there staring at her, awestruck, as she reached across the table and took my hand. That she would make that sacrifice for me… but of course she would. She was my sister.

“Are you actually gonna do that? Is that the kind of man you are?” Coz sounded disappointed.

I groaned as he smacked the back of my head.

“Cosimo!” Annalise scolded, rubbing where he’d hit me.

But he was right, and even drunk, I knew that. “No,” I sighed. “No, Mia, don’t do that.”

“I will.”

“I know, but you shouldn’t. Coz is right, that’s crap.”

“You’re sure?” She was hedging. “I don’t want you pissed off at me later.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

She nodded.

“Am I missing something? I thought you told me your new partner was married,” Annalise chimed in. “Whyever did I think that?”

“I told you he was divorced,” Mia explained. “And I guess from what he said, it not only messed up his home life, because he and his wife’s family were so tight, but his practice as well. His wife’s father is the managing partner at his law firm.”

“Ah,” Annalise reasoned. “That explains his need to move.”

“Yes, it does.”

“How long was he married?” Coz wanted to know.

“Five years or so,” she said, visibly searching her memory, slower than usual as she had to do it through the alcohol. “It’s only been like a year or so that he’s been divorced.”

“Did you know his wife?”

“Trudy,” Mia said with a shiver. “Sadly, yes. She was always scary, I never liked her. None of us did. You could see her claws underneath the kitten exterior.”

I nodded.

“And boy, is it lucky his father made him sign a prenup, or he would have had nothing to invest in another business.”

“So the Lassiters are—”

“Rich,” Mia finished. “Yeah. The filthy kind. They’re old country club, ‘would you like to buy a horse farm and some diamonds’ money.”

Perfect.

“So why’d he choose here?” Coz prodded as Mia poured him and me another glass of wine.

Mia shrugged. “He wanted to get away from Manhattan where he was practicing and just start over. I mean, I got the feeling that there was more to it than that, but I didn’t want to pry.”

“Okay,” Coz said brightly before turning to his mother. “So, I’m drunk enough to talk about
you
now.”

One of Annalise’s thick, perfectly shaped eyebrows lifted as she regarded her son. “And what is it we’re discussing?”

“This,” he grumbled, pointing at her and then Emmett and making a circling motion that meant everything.

“What else is there to talk about, my darling?”

“So,” he began, taking a fortifying breath. “How long have you and Emmett here been shackin’ up?”

“Six months,” she answered smoothly. “But as I said, it started as merely sex but has blossomed from there.”

Mia whimpered and thumped her head down on the table.

Annalise started chuckling, and Emmett—who was actually a very handsome man, now that I was looking at him—joined her.

“Did I not call it? I told you they would all come apart at the seams.”

“You did,” he agreed, “though it might have been a bit of your delivery.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“You’re very blunt, my dear.”

“But they’re used to that, for goodness’ sake.”

The way he was looking at her… I liked. And from Mia’s soft grunt, I was thinking she might too.

“I mean, I know everything there is to know about
their
sex lives.”

“Oh dear God,” Coz moaned, letting his head fall all the way back.

“Who’s having what and with whom.”

“It’s like a horror movie,” Mia groaned softly. “And it won’t stop.”

“These two,” she said, indicating me and Coz, “are gay. Mia’s straight, though experimentation with a woman might be a good thing.”

“So Mia’s the one who’ll be giving you your grandchildren,”
Emmett chimed in.

Her slow pan to him was confusing, I could tell from the look on his face. His brows furrowed and he leaned in close. “I like you ever so much,” she said softly, smiling at him. “But darling, do you honestly believe what you just said, or did you simply speak without thinking?”

He sat back and was quiet as he took a moment and reviewed what he’d said.

You couldn’t beat Annalise Renaldi, originally Annalise Sherwood, from Savannah, Georgia. She was a sweet-tempered, iron-willed Southern debutante who after one meeting with Agosto Renaldi—at a fair when she was eighteen—walked away from her life and into his. She immediately married the Italian transplant who was only a year older than her, with
zero prospects and no money. They moved to Chicago where she
waitressed
and he got a job as a plumber’s assistant. Nine months later, Miranda—Mia for short—was born, and a year later, Cosimo. While Agosto moved up, first becoming a journeyman and then joining the union, Annalise went to school at night and followed her dream of becoming a teacher. It was, by all accounts, a match made in heaven. When they were fed up with the city and the cold, they moved the family to Mangrove to start over. That they wouldn’t grow old side by side was never an eventuality either considered, but stomach cancer had come along and blindsided
them.

After she lost Agosto, Annalise devoted her life to her children and carried his spirit with her into everything she did. So when one of them told her he was gay, she decided to keep on loving him even though it wasn’t the path she would have chosen. When that same son brought home his gay friend, I became to her merely another child to love. I would be forever grateful to Annalise for accepting me into the fold, for giving me a family to replace the one that rejected me when I came out to my biologicals, and for raising a son who would become my best friend in the world. I was part of the Renaldi family and that was, so far, my greatest blessing.

“Oh,” Emmett said softly, bringing my attention back to him. “I see. You’re wondering if I thought that Cosimo and Kelly, being gay, can’t be fathers.”

She nodded.

“Oh, no, of course not,” he assured her, taking her hand in his. “I wasn’t thinking—thank you for pointing that out. It was a silly thing to say. Both your sons can give you grandchildren, my dear.”

She was very pleased with him. I could tell by the way her eyes brightened, and she gently squeezed his hand before she leaned sideways and kissed his cheek. Emmett’s face glowed in response. They were very sweet together.

“And now,” Emmett announced, giving me his attention, “let’s hear about this Britton fellow. Why on Earth would you run from this man?”

All eyes on me and all of a sudden I was nervous. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Mia says he’s a nice, smart man,” Annalise reminded me. “So why are you running from him? That seems odd.”

“I—”

She prodded her daughter. “Is he a good man or not?”

“He is,” Mia promised her. “A very good man.”

“And is he out to his family?”

“Yeah, see, that’s the thing,” she replied with a burp. “I had no idea he was gay, and he was married, like I said.”

“So he’s bi, then,” Coz offered.

“I actually thought he was straight.”

“Oh, well, I see the issue now,” Annalise surmised, glancing around the table. “That’s why you ran from him, because he’s not out and proud.”

“Mom, he might not even identify as bi or gay,” Coz explained.

Mia squinted at me. “I still don’t get why you’d run from Britton. The thing between you two was ages ago.”

“Running implies that I was scared, and I’m not,” I defended. “I was more circumventing him to avoid any unpleasantness.”

From the looks on all their faces, no one was buying my explanation, including Emmett, who didn’t even know me well enough to judge.

“He probably doesn’t even remember me.”

“Because you’re so forgettable?” Annalise smirked.

“You just think everyone will fall in love with me because you love
me.”

“No,” she countered, “it’s because you’re beautiful inside and out.”

“Oh, I’m gonna throw up,” Coz commented.

“We were young,” I explained, ignoring him.

“What does that have to do with anything? Youth is no excuse.”

Annalise wasn’t going to let it go. “I just mean, he invited me to go to Boston with him, and then the day we were supposed to go, he never showed up.”

“Pardon me?”

“That’s what happened.”

“Oh!” She was horrified and turned on Mia. “Your friend broke Kelly’s heart. You certainly can’t go into business with such a man.”

“Mom––”

“For heaven’s sake, Mia.” She was aghast. “The man’s a cad.”

Mia made a pained sound. “We already settled this. Were you even listening?”

Her mother tsked in that judgmental way she had.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Mia muttered.

“I don’t like him.”

“Mother!”

“Don’t ever bring him to my house!”

“Oh, that’s just great,” Mia mumbled as I smirked at her. “How do you know he didn’t have a phenomenal explanation for ditching Kel?”

“Like?”

“I don’t know,” Mia said dejectedly.

“Dead,” Annalise said flatly. “I would accept
dead
.”

Mia threw up her hands.

“Maybe he does have a good excuse,” Coz said to me, yawning. “And maybe you’d get to actually hear that reason if you ever allowed him to see you.”

“No thank you,” I replied petulantly.

“Oh yeah, no, of course not,” Coz returned snidely. “Then you’d have to, like, have closure or something.” He shivered dramatically for my benefit as he shoveled food into his mouth. “That sounds horrible.”

“Leave him alone,” Mia defended before her gaze slid to meet mine. “It’s hard to know things sometimes. You want to and you don’t, all at the same time.”

And she was right. While half of me wanted to hear why Britton Lassiter had not shown up, the rest of me didn’t want to know.

She shrugged. “Maybe you just let sleeping dogs lie.”

“Or,” Coz said, clearly annoyed with both of us, “you walk your ass over to where he’s staying and ask if he remembers you, and if so, inquire as to the explanation of his whereabouts on the day in question, which was what—ten years ago now?”

“Oh God,” I whined, thunking my head down on the table again. “I need to drink more.”