Reno and Trina: In the Shadows of Love, Book 12 by Mallory Monroe

go play.   And take your sister with you.”
    “Yes, sir,”
Dommi said reluctantly as Sophia gladly got down from the swing bench and took
Dommi’s hand.   They went out into the
well-lit back yard, to what Dommi called their real swing set.
    Val was the
only one who had not met Mick before, and Jimmy introduced them.   “This is my wife,” he said as Mick shook her
hand.   “Her name’s Valerie.”
    “Hello,
Valerie,” Mick said and kissed the back of her hand.   Val couldn’t help but smile when he kissed
her.   Jimmy knew Val had a thing for
older men (he wasn’t entirely sure if that monster crush she used to have on
his father had completely dissipated), and he gave her one of his what’s so funny looks.   But he didn’t comment.   Mick was a good looking guy, and even Jimmy
could see how he had that same animal magnetism his father and uncles had, so
he held his peace.   For now.  
    Reno stood
and shook Mick’s hand just as the chef announced that dinner was being served.
And when they all sat around the dinner table, Mick not only caught the
attention of Quinn, who seemed giddy with excitement to have him as her date,
but he also caught the attention of little Dommi too.   He couldn’t stop staring at Mick.   Reno noticed it before anybody else did.   Not because others were inattentive, but
because Reno knew his youngest son.   He
made it his life’s work to keep an eye on that little man.
    But when
Dommi continued to stare, and when Mick caught him staring a couple of times,
Reno spoke up.   “What’s wrong with you,
son?” he asked him.   “What’s with the
staring?”
    Dommi looked
his big, sincere eyes at his father.   “I
don’t know him, Daddy,” he said, prompting Jimmy to laugh.
    “So what you
don’t know him?” Reno responded.   “You
don’t know most of the people in this world.   Does that give you a license to stare them down?”
    “A license?”
Dommi asked, confused.
    “What gives
you the right to stare the man down just because you don’t know him?” Reno
attempted to clarify.
    But Dommi
was still unsettled.   “But who is he?” he
asked his father.
    Jimmy
decided to answer, knowing that his little brother would give him an interested
answer if nothing else.   “He’s Uncle Sal
and Uncle Tommy’s uncle,” Jimmy said.
    Dommi: still
confused.   “Their uncle ?” he asked.
    “That’s what
I said.”
    “But. .
.”   Dommi’s eyebrows knitted.
    Jimmy
smiled.   Dommi had a way of dropping
little gems when he wanted to.   “But
what?” he asked him.
    “Stop
encouraging him,” Trina warned.
    “But Uncle
Sal and Uncle Tommy are our uncles.”
    Jimmy
frowned.   “So?”
    “They are our uncles,” Dommi pointed out
again.   “They can’t have an uncle and be
our uncles too.”   Then he looked at
Reno.   “What’s an uncle, Daddy?” he asked
him.
    Everybody
laughed.   “That boy,” Trina said, shaking
her head.

 
    After
dinner, Mick sat down in one of the chairs on the patio, accepted a glass of
wine from one of Reno’s servers, and spent the balance of the evening listening
to small talk, talking very little himself, and staring relentlessly at Trina
by barely looking at her at all.
    Reno was
seated beside him with a now sleeping Sophia in his arms.   He noticed Mick’s sly peeps at Trina, and the
intensity behind those peeps, when nobody else seen him look at all.   But Reno saw everything, and he saw it.   But he also saw intense admiration in Mick’s
look, not that lustfulness he saw in Shaun Connors and all those other men he
had to set straight in the past.  
    Looking with
admiration was okay with Reno.   Because,
as he looked at Trina too, he understood why Mick would be impressed.   Trina was in their expansive yard, running a
race with Dommi, her shapely legs coming out of the shorts she wore as they
simmered against the bright back lights, her ponytail making her look even more
youthful and fresh than she