Free Sleeping ’til Sunrise by Mary Calmes

Takeo.
    “Really?”
    “Dad!”
    “What?” I addressed my daughter, because she sounded like I had offended her.
    “That’s so racist.”
    “I’m sorry?”
    “You don’t think Takeo can make good challah bread just because he’s Japanese?”
    “No,” I snapped. “I had no idea he had a breadmaker.”
    “I apologize for my ignorance,” Takeo began. “But what is a breadmaker?”
    Dwyer was laughing in seconds.
    Takeo was confused.
    Ivy began explaining to me in exacting detail not only about racial stereotypes, but gender ones as well.
    Mike said someone needed to make coffee, Hutch asked me where my chopping board was, and Roark turned away from all of us, taking up position at the end of the counter.
    Rushing up behind him, I leaned in and tenderly kissed the side of his neck.
    “Baby, what’s wrong?”
    He shook his head.
    “Roark?”
    As he turned so he could see me, I noted the tears instantly. “What’s—”
    “You called me your family.”
    I had. I hadn’t even thought about it, it had just popped out.
    “I’d love to be part of your family… to belong to you.”
    “You already do,” I insisted, easing him into my arms.
    The way the room went instantly quiet made both Roark and me look up.
    “You guys finally got that all figured out, huh?” Mike beamed at us. “That’s awesome.”
    “It’s about time,” Hutch chimed in.
    “Pot to kettle,” Dwyer said snidely.
    I appreciated the support.
    “Hey, Dad,” Ivy said, making a face. “I think you need to take a shower.”
    She had no idea how right she was.
    Once I got cleaned up—Roark had showered and changed at his place—I met everyone outside on my back deck for brunch. I ate like I was starved and was trying to think of how I could get rid of everyone, including my kid, without being rude, when the doorbell rang and Mike darted inside.
    When he reappeared, he looked odd, tense, and Hutch was the first to stand, even before we all saw the men following him.
    “I need to speak to my—Roark!”
    What was nice was that my new boyfriend was not scared. He was annoyed, that was clear from his frustrated groan.
    Three strangers—one older, two younger, all of whom looked a lot like the man I wanted to go back to bed with—stood there. The similarities began with height, hair, and coloring, the differences evident in things like eyes and the glint in them, the dimples, the wicked smile, the chiseled features, and the mischievous eyebrows that were, at the moment, crooked rakishly. God, he was pretty.
    “You don’t just leave your family to—”
    “ This is my family,” Roark corrected the man I suspected was his father. “This is my hometown where I’m respected and where I run a successful practice, this is my boyfriend, Essien, and his daughter and my friends, and this is where I belong.”
    “You—”
    “So please don’t throw out the word home. I haven’t had one until now, since I came home my freshman year of college and came out to you and Mom.”
    Mr. Hammond sucked in a breath. “You don’t need to air our dirty laundry; you just need to come back with us so we can work everything out.”
    Roark got up from the table to face the three men in suits, and all I could think was how good he looked, how calm, how grounded. “Would the three of you like to sit down and have some breakfast and meet the important people in my life?”
    “We would not,” Mr. Hammond said disdainfully.
    One of the men cleared his throat. “I would.”
    All eyes turned to probably the youngest man in the bunch, maybe twenty-four, twenty-five, now that I was really looking at him.
    “Crosby,” Roark sighed, reaching out a hand to his brother, who darted around the table to take it.
    “What the hell are you—”
    “Wait,” Roark ordered his father, hand on his brother’s shoulder as he shook Crosby’s hand. “Where are you living now?”
    “This is funny,” Crosby said with a grin very like Roark’s. “I live in