Perfect Together by Kristen Ashley

So I’d obviously been wrong.

“She can stay, Dad,” Sabre put in.

Remy cut his eyes to his son, and I was about to hug Yves, but I went still and stiff, like I had to be prepared to throw myself between them to protect my boy with the way Remy did it.

Sabre clamped his mouth shut.

I didn’t hug Yves, or Manon, and definitely not Sabre, as I watched with perhaps inappropriate fascination as Remy turned back to Myrna and lifted his brows.

My gaze shifted to her, and I saw her face get red with embarrassment, anger or hurt, I had no idea.

Though it was probably all three that made her stomp loudly in her Birks toward Remy, grab her multi-colored woven crossbody (I wasn’t lying) from the counter, then turn and stomp the other direction to the door to the garage where her old pickup rested beside Remy’s Tesla.

She slammed the door behind her.

She did not say goodbye.

“Can we do this?” Yves asked impatiently, but there was a pitch to his voice that had me belatedly studying him closely.

He was ill-at-ease, for certain.

I read this as the fact he knew what this was about.

And I was seeing with the way my youngest was being, and also taking in the demeanor of my middle, not to mention my eldest, that my thought processes needed to shift to dealing with something like Sabre having gotten some girl pregnant and now, I not only had to get over being a divorcée, I had to come to terms with becoming a grandmother.

We were a touchy, affectionate family. We’d started that way because of me (Remy’s mother was an overbearing, snobbish, horrendous Southern woman—the exact opposite of every single Southerner I’d ever met—and his French father was largely absent, and when he wasn’t, he was indulgent of his wife, so we could say hugs weren’t de rigueur in the Gastineau household). And our open affection had never died.

But so this could get started, then be over for my son, I didn’t do the physical greetings I usually would.

I took a seat in an upholstered armchair with a low, double-buttoned back and short legs, and tucked my clutch in my lap.

Once down, I watched, morbidly enthralled, as my kids sat one-two-three on Remy’s couch, with Yves sandwiched in the middle.

Yes, Yves.

Not Sabre.

Yves.

What was going on?

Remy strolled in, cutting across the room with long-legged purpose, coming to my chair.

I thought he’d stand beside it, since there was no other furniture he could sit on around me. The matching armchair to the one I was in was at the opposite side.

But no.

I watched with lips parted as he parked his ass on the arm of my chair.

The.

Arm.

Of.

My chair.

Like he did back in the day.

Like he did and I loved him to do. Complete with leaning back, resting a hand in the top of the chair, close to me, my protector, his long bulk ready to spring forward on attack or to defend should some rabid dog suddenly enter the room, or someone came close to landing a drop of martini on me.

He was studying our children while I had my head tipped back studying him.

And since he continued studying our children, slowly, I turned their way to see Sabre scowling at his father, Yves looking fidgety and not focused on much of anything, and Manon staring at me.

The second I caught my daughter’s eyes, she mouthed, “What…is…happening?”

She meant her dad and the chair.

I wished I knew.

But it would take a while to find out.

Because right then, the evening took two sharp and exceptionally unexpected turns.

And not a member of our family was going to be the same after them.





CHAPTER 3





Come to Terms





Wyn





“All we ask is for you to just be cool and let Yves say what he has to say and then think about it for a second before you say anything.”

This was Sabre’s opening.

And there weren’t a lot of words, but there was a lot there.

First, whatever this was about, it wasn’t about Sabre.

It was about Yves.

Second, whatever it was, Yves was so uncomfortable about it, he’d leaned on his big brother to instigate the meeting and then start the proceedings.

Third, Sabre was brash, brave, aggressive (the good kind, says his mother), a risk-taker, called them as he saw them, and rarely (okay, maybe not-so-rarely) he could be too honest for his own good.

Like his dad.

Manon devoured life. If there was an invitation, and she could physically or legally (I hoped) do it, she said yes. She was a wee bit of a Daddy’s Girl (okay, she was a lot of that). She was hyper-social, loyal, dependable, creative, highly-strung (just a little bit, says her mother) and hilarious.

Like her mom.

Yves was a mix of Remy and I both.

Except he only got the good parts.

Yves listened before he spoke. Yves walked into a kitchen someone was cooking in and asked what he could do. Yves noted a wineglass getting low and filled it. Yves did his homework without you begging him to do it. Yves kept his room clean.

In other words…

Yves was the perfect child.

Therefore, the fact this was about Yves significantly increased my anxiety.

And last, it was crystal clear our children had not missed both their parents had quick tempers.

This had me letting my clutch slide off my lap as I moved to the edge of my seat and mindlessly reached out, curling my fingers around the muscles above Remy’s knee.