Free Unforgotten by Kristen Heitzmann Page A

dessert and send them all home.”
    “Skip dessert!” Momma looked wounded.
    Annoyed, Pop pushed him toward the living room, a.k.a. Bronx Zoo. “Go make yourself useful. Isn’t that what you do these days?”
    Yeah, it was what he did. But the naked kids in South America were easier to deal with than his nieces and nephews en masse in his mother’s living room. “ Basta! Everyone under five feet down in the garden. Spicciatevi! ”
    With squeals and screeches they crashed through the door; their thundering feet on the stairs could bring the whole place down. He looked at Tony’s oldest son, Jake, who hadn’t moved from his place in Pop’s corner recliner. “What’s wrong with you? Butt glued to the seat?”
    Jake almost smiled. “I’m not under five feet.”
    Lance glanced at Gina, caught the tightness of her expression, then back to his nephew. “Prove it.”
    With sloth-like languor, Jake rose.
    Lance swallowed. When had the kid sprouted those extra inches? He would have to spend some time with Jake before he left. “I’ll make an exception.”
    Jake looked toward the wall, neither answering nor moving.
    “Come on. I’ve loosed the horses of the apocalypse. Someone’s gotta control the aftermath.” Lance scooped a sniffling tot from Lucy’s arms and told Jake, “Let’s do it, hotshot.”
    Jake came to him, glanced up—but not that far—then headed for the door. Lance looked at Rese, but Monica had her ear, so he went down alone to the garden with the rabble.

C HAPTER F IVE
    C haz sat curled over his book at the small table in the kitchenette, the lamplight gilding the pages as Rese slipped into the apartment, names and faces jamming her head—voices, questions, squalls. The silence around Chaz gaped, and she was sucked into the amber glow, the peace.
    He spread his broad, white smile and stood to hold her chair. Towering in the cramped room like a benevolent giant, he said in his Jamaican intonation, “You’ve met the family.”
    “That’s not a family; it’s a horde.”
    He laughed the slow rippling laugh she had come to appreciate in his short time with her in Sonoma.
    She sank into the chair. “How dazed do I look?”
    “Like that first morning without Lance.”
    The morning after she’d kicked him out and had to manage unappreciative guests who expected Lance’s kitchen creations and the evening entertainment her Web site had promised, when Chaz and Rico had stuck by her even though they were Lance’s friends, when Chaz’s gentle style and Rico’s pancakes and Star’s fast-talking had kept her from punching someone.
    The scene tonight had been close, panic lodging in her throat like a gob of peanut butter over her windpipe, and Lance too enmeshed in family dynamics to notice. If she had realized what she was agreeing to, she’d have sent him off to grandmother’s house without her. She had enough wolves at her door without disapproving mothers, prying sisters, knowing aunts, aggressive brothers-in-law, and so many children her head spun.
    “Relax,” Chaz said softly.
    She pressed her fingers to her temples. “I’ve never heard anything like it. They’re so …” She shook her head. “I’m not like them.”
    “You don’t have to be.”
    “I think I’m supposed to prove something.”
    “You’re a daughter of the King. What is there to prove?”
    She lolled her head to the side. “A daughter of the king.”
    “Absolutely.” Chaz flipped pages and stopped. “ ‘The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children … heirs of God and coheirs with Christ.’ ”
    Well, that was fine, but so far she’d been called a cow and an egg and endured conversation in volumes intense to deafening, and if she was any kind of heir, no one seemed to know it but Chaz. She frowned. “Lance told me we were coming to discuss the inn with his grandmother. Why can’t he ever give me the whole story?”
    “I don’t think he sees the whole story. He’s a