“He wasn’t saying anything,” Ezra said.
The rest of the table had become eerily quiet.
It took Griffin less than five seconds to put these puzzle pieces together. This Timothy person Reid had run into had a connection to Indina—probably an ex-boyfriend—which shot Griffin’s curiosity to skyscraper levels. He knew as much about Indina’s exes as she knew about his, which was hardly anything. He wanted to know whatever he could about the kind of guy she regarded worthy of the title significant other.
“Just spit it out,” Indina said. “You ran into Timothy and…?”
“And his fiancée,” Ezra said.
“Is that all?” she asked with a nonchalant wave. “Do you think I care that Timothy is getting married?”
“No, I don’t,” Reid said. “But apparently that one over there thinks you can’t handle it.”
“I never said she couldn’t handle it,” Ezra retorted.
“So why in the hell did you kick me under the table?”
“Can we please move on to another subject?” Monica asked.
“Please,” her husband chimed in.
Harrison, who had remained quiet throughout the exchange, signaled the table attendant for another beer.
The head table attendant introduced himself and welcomed the family to the cruise ship. As he presented his team of servers who would be attending to the needs of the entire party for the duration of the cruise, Griffin studied Indina’s profile, searching for any sign that talk of her ex-boyfriend had affected her more than she was letting on. He saw none. Maybe she really didn’t care that her ex was getting married.
Griffin considered how he would feel if he found out his ex-wife was engaged. He would offer to help pay for the damn wedding.
The attendant gave a rundown of tonight’s menu. When Reid learned that he wasn’t limited in what he could order, he proceeded to order one of every appetizer on the menu.
“What?” Reid asked as the rest of the people at the table stared at him. “I went up on the top deck and played some basketball this afternoon. I worked up an appetite.”
“As if you wouldn’t have ordered the same thing even if you’d been ‘napping’ like those two,” Monica said, pointing to Indina and Griffin.
Griffin cleared his throat. Indina was a grown woman, but that didn’t mean he was comfortable with innuendoes about them sleeping together being bandied about at the dinner table, especially with her three extremely large brothers listening to every word.
Thankfully, the conversation switched to the stage show several of them had watched in the huge theater right before dinner. Within minutes, an army of servers showed up with their appetizers and everyone settled in for the meal.
As they ate, Indina pointed out the people Griffin hadn’t met yet. Her niece and nephew, fifteen-year-old Liliana and eight-year-old Athens, sat at the table with Eli and Monica’s twins, Finnegan and Fawn, and Alex Holmes’s kids, Sebastian and Jasmine. There wasn’t a chance in hell that he could ever remember all the names she rattled off.
During the salad course, Alex’s wife, Renee, moved over to the kids’ table, because Sebastian wouldn’t stop fighting with his older sister. Their squabble reminded Griffin of how his own niece and nephew would fight at the dinner table. It brought on a smile that was swiftly replaced by a frown. A heavy ache settled in his gut.
Being here in the midst of the Holmeses, seeing how well they all got along—despite Indina’s good-natured bickering with her brothers—was a stark reminder of just how much he missed spending time with his own family. Griffin knew it would only take a phone call. A simple call and he could have this again. He could sit across the table from his only sibling. He could enjoy learning about what was going on in his niece and nephew, Desiree and Garland, Jr’s, lives. If only he could bring himself to make that one simple phone call.
But it wasn’t making the phone call that was stopping him. It’s what he’d have to say once his brother picked up the other line.
I’m sorry.
You were right.
I was wrong.
Yeah, that wasn’t happening anytime soon.
He would have to be content with hanging out on the fringes of Indina’s family, soaking in as much of this special bonding time as possible. Maybe he was a mooch. He was mooching off her family’s closeness.
He quietly observed them as they progressed through the rest of the meal, until her brother, Ezra, brought Griffin into a discussion about New Orleans’s local sports team, trying to get him to break up a tie. Half of the table thought the local NBA franchise would be the next one to bring a national championship to the city, while the others at the table banked on it being the Saints.
“Well, being a football fan, I’d have to go with the Saints,” Griffin said.
Ezra shook his head. “I thought maybe we could be friends, but I see that shit won’t happen.” Then he grinned. “I’m just messing with you.”
“Speaking of friends.” Indina looked over at Ezra. “I have a message to you from Mackenna. Leave her alone.”
“Mackenna Arnold?” Harrison asked. “Where’s she been? I haven’t seen her in a while.”
“Except when she’s on the news going toe-to-toe with a reporter about some decision the city council has made,” Eli said.
“Yeah, well these days she’s being hounded by a certain journalist,” Indina said, staring pointedly at her brother.
Ezra held up his hands. “I’m just doing my job.”
“You’re being a pain in the ass. I don’t know what kind of juicy story you think you’re going to find, but you’re looking in the wrong place. Mack is one of the most honest people I know.”
“She’s a politician,” Ezra replied, as if that said it all.
“I mean it, Ezra. Knock it off.”
Her brother looked at Indina over his wineglass, but didn’t comment further.
Griffin would have never pegged him as a journalist. He looked as if he belonged on a construction site with Alex and Reid, or laying guys out on a
