Jason felt a sigh drop through him. Enough time to settle down and find his inner calm. He gestured to the muffins and made for the porch. “I’ll take these inside and say hello to Alex.”
He buzzed the doorbell. Heard a thump from inside the house. Knocked. “Alex?”
Footsteps.
The door cracked open. “Carl?”
Jason grinned. “Here to meet your mum. Uh, officially. As, you know, your uncle’s boyfriend. Can I come in?”
“Mum’s not here!”
“She’s on her way.”
“What? I’m, ah . . .”
Jason finally took in the picture before him. A half-closed door, and Alex peering around the side of it.
“We’re in the middle of a study session.”
A little step to his right revealed . . . a lot of Alex. With boxers on backwards. “Study session?”
Alex flushed bright red, from head to chest to toe. “Please don’t tell Uncle Owen?”
“You’re eighteen, Alex—”
A door opened. Two broad men in their early to mid-twenties. Both stark naked. Jason almost dropped his muffins.
Always the quiet ones.
His brow touched his hairline.
Alex glanced over his shoulder and waved his . . . study buddies back into his room.
Quite good-looking guys—“Aren’t we showering together?”
But perhaps not particularly perceptive.
Alex shot a horrified glance over his shoulder. “No-no, Mum’s coming back. Clothes on!” His gaze pleaded with Jason.
“Owen would understand,” Jason whispered.
“He’d go all cop, he’s very protective. It’s not just . . . we’re . . . together. He’d scare them away.”
Right. A lot of secrets about boyfriends in this town. Jason pretending to have one, Alex pretending he didn’t have two.
The poor kid. He was having a tough time as it was—struggling with studies, trying to help his mum with the mortgage, and now they had to buy out his dad after the divorce. Whatever this was exactly, Alex had it, and his gaze said he needed it.
“Please, Carl?”
Every day got just a bit more complicated.
“Take these.”
Alex took the muffins and, at the scuff of footsteps behind him, Jason spun around with a cheery smile. “Such a lovely day.” Clouds cast a shadow and drops of light rain fell between them. He fought a grimace. “Nice and fresh. Let’s wait for Hannah out here.”
Mary rustled out from behind a rose bush and loped towards the door. The parted door. She pushed inside, swinging it wide on its hinges.
Distract Owen. Distract him!
Jason flung himself into Owen’s rather surprised and fast-reacting arms. Oofs were expelled between them, and Owen stared at him shrewdly. “What now?”
Yap, yap, yap.
Oh, Mary Puppins. Please.
“Jason?”
In for a penny . . . he batted his eyelashes. “First of all, I want to make one thing clear: I never explain anything.”
Owen stared at him. Dark eyes and firm jaw, a little prickly at the edges, stubble darker where his lip quirked. “Why are you quoting Mary Poppins?”
“It was the first thing that popped into my head?”
“A fan, are you?”
“I watched it in bed that night.”
“What night?”
“The day you told me Mary’s full name. I figured it’d help me get to know you. You recognised the quote, so I figure I’m on the right track.”
A long, hard stare that . . . seemed to make soup of Jason’s insides.
“What is it you’re not saying?”
Jason stiffened in his arms. “Nothing?”
A reproaching look.
Jason planted a smacking kiss on his lips. “A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down?”
Disbelieving laughter, and Owen clutched Jason’s hips as if to steer him aside—
Jason tightened his arms around Owen’s neck and jumped on him, locking his legs behind his back. Good thing he wasn’t wearing the belt. Every other part of his uniform, though.
God, he was molesting a cop. This was . . . possibly not his sanest moment.
He flashed Owen all his teeth. “Nowhere to go but up?”
Owen heaved them both towards the door with impressive strength and co-ordination. “I’ll deal with you later, sweetheart.”
“Alex! Incoming!”
The walls barely muffled Alex’s shriek.
Owen reached the porch.
Jason jabbered, “He’s an adult, Owen.”
Owen halted at the door, and Jason glanced nervously into the hall. Alex was frantically ushering his boyfriends towards the other end of the house. Socks and briefs on, hopping into jeans, T-shirts slung around their necks. Alex still very much in his backwards boxers.
Owen flushed and palmed the door to brace himself and all Jason’s deadweight. The wooden frame pressed into the side of his back, and Owen dropped his forehead to meet Jason’s, groaning quietly. “I should’ve listened to you.”
Jason tightened his legs and arms around Owen, a squeeze of sympathy.
“I still see the boy that I took to the beach at the weekends to help train Mary.”
“He’s still the boy who looks up to you. So be careful, Owen.”
“I want to grill those young men.”
“Grill me instead. Get it out of your system.”
Quiet laughter ghosted over the bridge of his nose.
The sound of a car pulling up on the street had Jason slipping off Owen, and Owen staring down the hall at Alex who stared back like a stunned possum. A mortified stunned possum. “I take it my sister doesn’t know?”