You've Got Male (35 page)

“He called your father when he realized you were involved with Adrian,” Dixon continued. “Felt like he owed it to the guy, I guess. And your father called in a favor, using the opportunity to have you sent to East Hampton, thinking your coming home might start to mend the rift from ten years ago. He was hoping the assignment would take longer, long enough that you would be at the house over Thanksgiving. And he was hoping maybe the rest of the family, being together again for the holiday, would start to come around.

“He wants you to come home, Avery,” Dixon said. “He wants the Nesbitts to be a family again. But he doesn’t know how to do it himself. When he found out what was going on, he saw it as an opportunity to make it happen.”

To say she was surprised by the revelation would have been a major understatement. That her father was reaching out in whatever way he could to bring her back into the family was nothing short of astonishing.

But all she could think to say was, “He wants me to come home for Thanksgiving?”

Dixon shook his head. “No. He wants you to come home for good.”

“What about the rest of the family?” she asked.

This time Dixon shrugged. “Guess you’ll have to find out for yourself, won’t you?”

“What about you?” she asked.

“What about me?”

She smiled. “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?”

He smiled back. “It doesn’t matter. As long as I’m with you. For Thanksgiving and Christmas and New Year’s and Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day and Arbor Day and every other day of the year.”

“Even if we have to spend them all here at my place because I’m too scared to go out?” she asked.

“Anywhere,” Dixon told her. “I’ll go anywhere with you.”

And hearing him say that the way he did made Avery want to go everywhere. More than that, hearing him say it the way he did made her think maybe she could.

“I love you, Dixon. I love you, Oliver. I love you no matter who you are or what you are or where you are. And I will love you forever.”

He lifted a hand to her face, cupping her jaw gently in his palm. “Binky,” he said.

She narrowed her eyes at him.

“That’s my code name,” he told her, smiling. “Binky.”

She chuckled. “Hence the reason why no one lives to talk about it after saying it.”

“You could say it and live,” he promised.

She lifted her hand to his face, too, brushing her fingertips over his rough beard. “Nah, I kind of like you as Dixon,” she said. She smiled. “But who knows what I might cry out in a moment of heated passion.”

He quirked up one dark brow. “We could find out.”

She nodded slowly. “Yes, we could.”

And in a moment of heated passion—several moments of heated passion, in fact—they did.