moment as though he knew what Ian was thinking. As if Adam knew about the war going on inside his head.
“Don’t,” Ian warned. He couldn’t take a moment’s sympathy. “Don’t you fucking dare. Finish what you started.”
Adam pointed a finger his way. “Oh, brother, I’m not doing this in private. Break room. Right now.”
He shot Adam the finger, but he was fairly certain Adam understood that he’d saved him from a moment’s weakness.
He couldn’t cry. That was only for Charlie. She got his softest self, that place no one else could touch.
“Oh. I’m coming, you bastard.” He followed Adam. He might as well have thanked the fucker.
His brothers always knew what he needed.
He hit the break room with a smile on his face. Adam had done his job as the resident drama king. Everyone had gathered.
He looked across the break room and saw his wife standing there, talking to Eve and Phoebe, a mug in her hand. Red and blonde hair swept over her shoulder, her lips curling up in a way that got his dick hard.
Of course, all Charlie had to do was walk in a room to get his dick hard.
Gorgeous. She was the most gorgeous woman who had walked the face of the earth and she’d given him two beautiful baby girls. His girls. Charlie and Kenzie and Kala. When he thought about Theo, he held his girls close and promised he wouldn’t make the same mistakes with them.
And then he called his brothers and made sure they were all right.
Ian was fairly sure Sean and Case and Alex, Liam and Adam and Jake, Simon and Jesse and Ten wanted to strangle him. He’d turned into a worried old woman.
“Hey, babe.” Charlie grinned his way. “What did you do?”
“Not sure.” It had to be good though, the way Adam was smiling like he knew something everyone else didn’t know.
“What’s going on?” Li asked as he entered the break room. “Adam told us he had an announcement, but we had to meet in here because Ten and Faith are using the conference room.”
Ten was meeting his father for the first time. He was getting a piece of himself back. At least something good had come out of that clusterfuck of a mission.
Alex and Kai joined them, along with Eve and Grace. Jesse and Phoebe entered, holding hands as they talked to Simon.
He noticed Erin wasn’t here. She would be in her office, writing reports or plotting ways to get back into the field. She wanted something to take her mind off of Theo. He would send her out in a heartbeat if he didn’t suspect what he did…
“All right, that’s your ‘I know something you don’t know’ grin,” Jake said, sliding his partner a long look.
Adam stood in the center of the room and yes, he was definitely flashing a shit-eating grin. “I know something Charlotte doesn’t know.”
Ian went through a massive mental list of shit he didn’t want his wife to know. Some things Adam had been involved in—like the time the guys set up a ramp across the creek that ran through Ian’s property because Case had sworn he could jump it on an ATV. Yeah, they’d explained the destruction of that ATV as an accident. The same way they’d explained Case’s concussion. It had been a beautiful train wreck. But one Adam wouldn’t want Serena to know about either. The women didn’t understand a male’s deep need to watch his brothers make jackasses of themselves. It fed the soul.
Maybe Adam had found out that his preferred method of changing diapers when Charlie wasn’t around involved hosing down his daughters’ butts. They didn’t seem to mind, and he’d totally stayed away from the power washer. He wasn’t stupid.
So what the hell did Adam know that was making him grin like an asshole?
Charlie had gone still next to him. “Is this about the ATV? Because I never bought that deer coming out of nowhere story. Also, you didn’t hide that ramp very well.”
Maybe he wasn’t as good as he thought he was. Or Charlie was simply his natural match. “Baby, I can explain that.”
She put a hand up. Yeah, he’d spank her for that later. “I do not need to hear about the desperate male need to watch people fall on their asses.”
“It’s better than that, Charlotte,” Adam promised.
Ian was kind of interested now. Had he figured out the Sharpie trick he used to tell the girls apart? He’d tried to hide that from Charlie, too. Right