Harbor from Hollywood to escape the paparazzi. Their cousin Smith had arranged with Cassie for Flynn and Ruby to stay in her cabin in the woods—at which point Rory’s sister had fallen head over heels in love with both Flynn and the baby. Fortunately, Flynn was just as smitten with Cassie. Otherwise, Rory would have had to tear the guy apart with his bare hands. It helped that Flynn wasn’t just some soft-handed zillionaire writer from California. He more than knew his way around a pile of wood and a saw and hammer. He wasn’t bad with a basketball either.
“You’re usually first one on the court,” Turner said once Rory was settled into his seat with a beer. “Where were you?”
“It’s been a pretty strange forty-eight hours.”
Flynn’s storyteller antenna went up. “How so?”
“You know Zara from the warehouse?”
When Hudson shook his head, Turner quickly filled him in. “Zara makes eyeglasses frames in an office down the hall from Rory’s woodshop. They are always at each other’s throats.” Turner turned his focus back to Rory. “I’d guess that the two of you finally killed each other were it not for the fact that you’re sitting here in one intact piece.”
“Something happened on Friday morning,” Rory explained. “It’s her story, not mine, so I won’t go into the details. But as a result, we’ve been together a great deal since, including an overnight trip to Camden last night and this morning.”
“And by together you mean…” Hudson made a rude gesture with his hands.
Rory had never gotten angry with his brothers for doing something like that before. Now he was downright furious. “Don’t ever talk about Zara like that again.”
“Sorry, I won’t,” Hudson said. Then, turning to the others, he said, “That’s a yes.”
“Cassie told me she thinks your bickering is hiding a deeper passion,” Flynn noted. “Those were her exact words.”
When Rory didn’t disagree, Turner’s eyebrows went up. “Are you saying this isn’t just a one-night stand?”
“That’s what it was supposed to be. That’s what Zara thinks it still is.”
“Hold on a second. Are you the one gunning for more?” Hudson looked as surprised as Turner. “Even after what happened with Chelsea?”
“Zara isn’t anything like Chelsea,” Rory snapped.
“No,” Turner agreed, “they don’t seem to be similar at all.”
Rory wasn’t sure what Cassie had told Flynn about Chelsea’s accident, so he quickly explained, “Chelsea and I dated for a couple of years, before I finally broke it off. This was before you came to town. She didn’t have an easy time with the breakup and wound up in the hospital after drinking too much and falling outside a cocktail bar. She blamed me for nearly killing her.” He took a sip of his beer to wet his dry throat. “I blamed myself too.”
“That’s the first time I’ve heard you say that in past tense,” Turner noted.
“Talking with Zara has made me see things differently,” Rory told them. “I thought I was always going to be crap at relationships, considering that Chelsea wasn’t the first woman to crash and burn after we broke up. Even when I knew I wasn’t feeling it with the women I dated, I still always felt like I needed to be their knight in shining armor—and that it would be cruel to revoke the invitation to be a part of our family when they all seemed to need it so badly.”
“That’s an impossible standard to live up to,” Flynn commented. “Even if you could be a knight in shining armor once or twice, no one can live that way all the time. I’m still trying to accept that I’m going to fail Ruby and Cassie sometimes, no matter how much I want to be there for her every second of every day.”
“I can’t get my head around failure either,” Hudson mused, frowning yet again. “Even when it seems inevitable.”
If Rory hadn’t been so twisted up over his situation with Zara, he would have pinned Hudson to the wall about the marital troubles he’d been hinting at for a while now. But if Rory couldn’t figure out his own life, what kind of helpful advice could he give to his brother?
Turner was looking thoughtfully at Rory. “What about Zara? Does she expect you to be perfect too?”
Rory couldn’t hold back his laughter. “Zara doesn’t expect anything from me. In fact, I’ve never been with anyone who has lower expectations of me than she does. Which, in an ironic twist, is making me want to do whatever it takes to prove