Abby Gaines - The Engagement Project / Her Surprise Hero - The Engagement Project / Her Surprise Hero

“He hasn’t kissed you once?” Paige asked incredulously, not able to get past that fact.

“Not since Ashley and Trevor’s engagement party.”

“That does put a different spin on things,” her cousin mused.

“Maybe he’s just taking it slow,” Ashley suggested.

“Or maybe he just wants to be friends,” Megan said again, still unwilling to let herself hope they could be anything more.

It was a Friday night and instead of being out on a date or watching a game with some friends, Gage was surrounded by females. While he generally appreciated women of all shapes and sizes, he felt decidedly out of his element and outnumbered with his four nieces.

It was only supposed to be for a few hours, while Craig was at a late dinner meeting because Tess was away on a two-day business trip. After the first hour, Gage was at his wits’ end because Gracie hadn’t wanted to stop chatting online to come to the table for dinner, Eryn and Allie were grumbling because he wouldn’t take them to the movie theater to catch a show with their friends, and Lucy had fallen off of the bathroom counter after climbing up to try and catch a particularly nasty-looking spider.

So when the pizza box was empty and the plates and cups loaded into the dishwasher, he decided to entertain them the only way he knew how: he taught them to play Texas Hold ‘em.

He emptied the change out of the cup holder in his car and divvied it up so they had coins to wager with and he spent the next hour and a half teaching them the intricacies of this particular variation of seven-card stud. Lucy had just raked in the jackpot when her father finally walked in the door.

“Daddy, Daddy. I won!”

Craig’s eyes glinted with amusement as he glanced around the table, noting the drinks and snacks and his four daughters in their pajamas.

“How much?” he asked Lucy.

She beamed as she finished counting. “A dollar thirty-two.”

“Big stakes.” He looked at his brother. “I hope you didn’t hide the beer and cigars on my account.”

Gage shook his head. “Turns out your girls prefer gin, and Gracie took one puff of a Cuban and turned green.”

“I did not,” Gracie said, then frowned. “A Cuban what?”

Craig chuckled. “Never mind. Go brush your teeth and get into bed.”

Gage gladly tidied up the cards and snacks while his brother handled the bedtime routine.

When Craig came back downstairs, he disappeared into the kitchen for a moment then came out with two bottles of beer.

Gage took the one offered to him and studied the Millhouse Brew Co. label for a moment before he twisted off the cap. Millhouse was the company his friend, Brian, had been trying to convince Gage to invest in with him. But he’d declined, because he was a Richmond, and Richmonds made pharmaceuticals, not beer.

He lifted the bottle and took a long swallow, and had to admit that it was really good beer.

Craig propped his feet up on the coffee table. “Well, you survived,” he said to his brother.

“Barely.” Gage tipped the bottle to his lips again. “Don’t they drive you insane?”

“Every day.” His brother grinned. “And I couldn’t imagine my life without them.”

Gage knew it was true, but still, he wondered. “Did you ever worry—when Tess got pregnant, I mean—did you ever worry that you might not be able to stick it out?”

“Every day,” Craig said again. “I guess that’s not surprising, considering what we went through with Charlene.”

Gage nodded, acknowledging the complete lack of maternal instincts possessed by the woman who had given birth to them.

“And then, the very first time I held Gracie in my arms, I stopped worrying. Because I knew that nothing could ever matter more to me than my family, and nothing could ever make me leave them.”

“Like Dad,” Gage said. “He stuck with us even when she made his life hell.”

“Do you remember that? You were hardly more than a baby.”

“I don’t remember a lot,” he admitted. “But I’ve heard enough stories through the years to put the rest of the pieces together.”

“Why are we talking about this now?”

“I guess I was just wondering if it’s some kind of genetic defect that made Charlene incapable of really loving someone.”

“And wondering if you inherited that genetic defect,” his brother guessed.

“I’m thirty-two years old and I’ve never been in love,” Gage admitted.

“What about Beth?”

He scowled at the reference to his ex or maybe he was scowling at his own naïveté in ever believing that he’d been in love with her. “Beth was a leech masquerading as a human being.”

“That’s a pretty harsh assessment.”

“But not untrue.”

“No,” his brother agreed. “But you loved her, anyway, didn’t you?”

“I think I was more in love with the idea of being in love,” Gage admitted. “You and Tess had recently married, and I thought—for a while anyway—that I wanted what you had with her.”

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