Chapter 9We arrived to a big family welcome. We could barely get our gifts indoors without being hugged by a dozen different people and caught up in about a half-dozen other conversations. As I set up the presents under the tree, and the little kids I’d come to think of as my own nieces and nephews hovered around me, I remembered why I had fallen for Tate so hard. It wasn’t just that he was tall, dark, and handsome. Or that he was kind, funny, and didn’t take himself too seriously. He was a family man through and through, and he had taught me to believe in family again.
After sitting and catching up with the kids in the living room for about an hour, Tate’s sister Denise brought me a craft beer she thought I would like. Some of the kids—mostly the young girls with boundless energy—grew bo
